Summary

My mom visited China for six weeks. She stayed with me in Qingdao until September 19 and then traveled with a Chinese friend for her last week. A few weeks after she left my dad and his girlfriend came to visit (from October 7 through October 27) and I spent a couple of weeks with them, including a week traveling. Lastly, Marsha, my friend from Kunming, happened to be in Beijing at the end of October, and took an overnight train to visit me for two days in Qingdao. Thus, it has been a hectic couple of months.

Chinese

The quality of teaching at Qingdao University has been mediocre. I have concluded that this is the norm when studying Chinese in mainland China. When Marsha visited me, she sat in on my newspaper reading class for an hour and said that it was much too difficult for me. She said that even she did not know some of the words the teacher was using because they were not frequently used. In addition, she said the teacher's pronunciation was terrible. With 1.4 billion people and general difficulty in finding good jobs, one might think there would be more good teachers of the native language. I think the problem has got to be the system -- the hiring process, compensation plans, incentives, etc.

Recently, I have not had any one-on-one tutoring. I am concentrating more on classes at school and that does not leave me with much free time. Last term, I had a lot of outside tutoring, and the result was that my class-work was not up to par. More recently, I have been slacking off in my studies. I hope to reverse course soon.

Whenever someone says, "You speak Chinese well," I reply with something which means "Not at all," and then they often add, "And modest too!" The compliments have tapered off somewhat though.

Plans

I would like to spend another year here studying, but there's also good chance I will work next year rather than study full-time.

Stories

The first week of class

When doing self-introductions during the first week of classes in September, I said I like studying Chinese. I also explained what I did over the summer vacation - I spent most of my time (platonically) with a Chinese girl I met on the flight from Beijing to New York. One teacher in particular concluded that this meant I was a good student, and that I was friendly. He kept repeating this, "Jeremy's not only a good student, he's <blah blah, blah>." This has been my reputation since. It's a bit much to live up to.

My mom's last two weeks here

Just before coming to China my mom received a new bridge for her upper teeth. While she was here, the bridge (one piece with multiple teeth covers) broke, and I took her to my dentist, a Chinese man who had studied abroad in Canada. He convinced her to get the piece replaced. The whole procedure would require a few visits.

He immediately did some work on her and then mentioned that he would be traveling during the next couple of weeks. He introduced the dentist who would do the rest of the work. When Debby saw the young-looking 23-year-old woman, she couldn't help feeling hesitant. She had my Chinese friend Stephanie and I go with her to check the woman's credentials. As it turned out, the precocious 23 year-old did a much better job than any American dentist had ever done with her! 

My dental crown

On the other hand, a crown that the older dentist, who studied in Canada, gave me fell out one day when I got too enthusiastic about flossing. The day after it fell out, I went to the dental office and was lucky enough to get the  precocious girl. She put the crown back in, supposedly using better glue. Who knows why they did not use that glue in the first place! They didn't charge me anything. In this case, I just walked into the office without calling first and they glued my crown back on, while Marsha, who was in Qingdao visiting at the time, looked on and questioned the dentist's every move. Some things are so much more simple here than in the US, where the process can take so much longer.

Marsha, over a year ago, had fake teeth put in and seemed to think that made her an expert. She looked on while the dentist did her work, and Marsha's face (she's got an adorable round face) was so close to mine (or my mouth), and attentive, that while the dentist worked on me, I burst into laughter. I was sincerely so happy to see Marsha .

Marsha kept suggesting things to the dentist and asking questions. Knowing that I like and often use dental floss, she decided to ask, "Is it really healthy to use dental floss?" The dentist said yes, if used correctly. When asked about electric toothbrushes versus regular ones, the dentist said the brushing results are the same if you brush thoroughly and patiently with a normal toothbrush, but for the lazy brusher the electric one makes sense.

Back to my mom's two weeks here

My mom loves cooking and as her time here wound down, I had her cook for me more and more. I had French toast or pancakes every morning, as well as freshly cut melon.

The cell phone incident

One day, while on a bus, my eye caught the cell phone I had lent my mom, and I saw that it had sand in it. Yes, sand in the small space between the buttons as well as on the phone! I threw a little hissy fit. I had given her a cover for the phone and she was not using it. The result was this.

When in the US she had given me her own cell phone to use, and now said regardless of how much sand I would have gotten in her phone, she would not have given me attitude, so I should stop giving her a hard time. In any case, my mom started crying on the bus and this was one of our typical fights, about nothing really, except me being cruel and insensitive.

Eating on the street

My mom liked some noodles we got on the street. I think she liked eating on the street even more than the noodles. The shop is like a booth (but it's an entire room). Then, on the sidewalk outside are tables which stand a couple of feet off the ground, and tiny stools, which are about one foot off the ground. The table is quite dirty, but usually wiped once with a wet rag before you eat. In any case, I also like eating at this type of place.

My mom left Qingdao about a week before her flight home to the US, to travel around China with a Chinese friend of hers, Nancy. Included in their itinerary were Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou and Beijing. She had a nice week traveling. When she got home to the US, she suddenly got a desire to learn some Chinese, , though this enthusiasm only lasted a few days.

Weird thing about taking people out to dinner

Once I invited my tutor from last term, her husband and her brother to a meal, and I had them pick out a restaurant. In China, it is usually made clear who is paying before the meal (whoever does the inviting). She chose a Japanese place that was extremely expensive, more than twice as much as a meal at a good Chinese restaurant.

Another time, I treated a friend (a 53-year old man) and his wife to dinner. I had them pick the place, and they selected an extremely fancy place, five times what a normal good meal cost and easily the most expensive meal I've had since coming to China.

That someone would pick a particularly expensive place when someone else is treating seems inconsiderate to me.

Teacher getting out of tutoring me

At the beginning of the term, I had been considering studying with my tutor from last term instead of attending formal classes at a university. At first, she seemed to want to tutor me every day for two hours and agreed that she would do it. However, she encouraged me to attend classes during the first week of school and then decide. So I attended the first week of classes and had a good first impression, and was undecided about what I wanted to do. 

The weekend after my first class, my teacher and her husband treated my mom and me to lunch and we discussed the topic. She explained how she knew she had committed to me so she would be glad to teach me, but she also let me know that recently more people were interested in studying with her, and that she would make more money teaching multiple students at a time. But she insisted that this was not an issue, as she had already agreed to teach me. So that settled it - I wouldn't study with her.

The way she handled this, was so typical Chinese. Though she made it look like she would uphold the previous commitment to me, she didn't have that intention. What would have happened if I had said that I wanted to study with her is that she'd have found another excuse to get out of it. Something similar happened last term. She got out of teaching me one on one by making excuses for three straight weekends or so.

I don't blame her for looking out for herself or for her behavior as that is the norm here. However, I do find it irritating. White lies, excuses, etc. are to be expected. On the contrary, being straightforward is considered rude. This aspect of Chinese society does not suit my personality, as I am direct and prefer no bullshit when it's avoidable.

On a side note, as lunch with my teacher dragged on, my mom got more and more annoyed. My teacher and I were speaking Chinese and thus indirectly excluding her from the conversation. My teacher does not speak English well and her husband doesn't speak English at all, so it is also understandable that they would not speak English much.

When it was time to pay the bill, my teacher's husband found out the restaurant did not accept his credit/bank card, and he left to get money from the bank. During this time, my teacher and I continued to discuss in detail whether or not she would teach me the following term. My mom finally was fed up and decided to just get up and leave, despite the awkwardness. I finished my discussion with my teacher and then ran outside to try to catch my mom, who insisted that she wouldn't be annoyed leaving by herself. I just didn't believe it.

I had a couple of weeks to myself before Isaac and Karyn (my dad and his girlfriend) would arrive.

Tea with Crystal's sister

Crystal, one of the women I had met on the flight from Beijing to New York, has relatives in Qingdao, and wanted me to meet up with her sister and her sister's daughter. She suggested via email that we find a tea house. It turned out they had never been to a tea house! I learned something about tea, like that the first cup is not that good, the second and third are the better ones, and that you can have about five cups altogether (with the same leaves). I also learned that green tea has little to no caffeine. The woman's daughter, a spunky 13-year old girl, was quite fresh to her mom!

Meeting dad in Beijing

I flew into Beijing the afternoon Isaac and Karyn were to arrive, and met them as they came through customs. We spent the first night walking to Tiananmen Square. Over the next few days, we went to various sites, parks, the Great Wall, etc.

Before the trip I had been craving Peking duck and thus we had it various times. We had it so much when we went to what is considered the best place in the world for Beijing duck, on my last evening in Beijing, I only had a few bites and felt like I would not want to have duck for the next few months.

I flew back to Qingdao on a Sunday night and the following night Isaac and Karyn would fly to Qingdao. I helped them arrange their Monday in Beijing by having a taxi driver pick them up from their hotel, take them to the Summer Palace, wait for them there, and then take them to dinner and the airport. This taxi driver had taken us to the Great wall a few days earlier, and I liked him. He had said I could come to Beijing and live with him and his family, though I don't plan to take him up on this offer!

Meeting a random man at Beijing airport

I studied my textbook as I waited to board my flight back to Qingdao in the Beijing airport. A 53-year-old Chinese man nearby started talking to me. He made an effort to speak clearly and spoke so slow it got annoying. But actually, it was quite considerate. I found out he traveled a lot, appraising art. He is an artist himself.

It turned out he lived near me, and had the car that picked him up drop me off. We exchanged numbers. He called me the next day and seemed interested in being friends. This would work out well. When Isaac and Karyn flew to Qingdao we went out with him and his wife to lunch one day, and the following day had dinner at his place. It was a lot of fun. We helped them make dumplings, and I served as an interpreter to facilitate conversation. My dad asked the man's opinion of Mao (the man did not like Mao) and the man asked about Bush and Iraq. This is the type of conversation I enjoy!

Sege's birthday

The first day of school, at an introductory meeting, a Japanese girl named Sege sat next to me. Later in the week she invited me to have coffee with her and we became friendly. She came over to my apartment a few times to study, and we even cooked food together once. We also studied at the library. We were becoming good friends, despite that fact that we couldn't communicate much. She is a beginner in Chinese and her oral English is not very good.

Sege's birthday was the Monday after I returned from Beijing, and we spent it together, buying clothes, seeing a movie and then going to dinner. She laid her head on my shoulder during the movie and held my arm as we walked. I let things get too friendly. The result was that a few days later she asked if I had a girlfriend. In fact, I didn't, though I was dating someone, so I said I didn't. Then she said she wanted to be my girlfriend. I was flattered and surprised.

Sege's Chinese is not great, but she said, "I want to be your girlfriend" correctly. I did not know how to respond. She asked me on a Thursday and I would be going away the next day, so I said we would discuss it when I got back as there was no time to meet her in person before I left. It would not be possible to talk about this over the phone because of the language barrier. I found out later that she also did not understand my response (when I said we would talk about it later). 

A week and a half later, after traveling with Isaac and Karyn, I was back in Qingdao, and was able to find time to discuss this with Sege. I explained that I was seeing someone. I tried to use the simplest words to explain that while I did not have a girlfriend, I couldn't see anyone else. Maybe she did not quite understand how I could be seeing someone who is not my girlfriend. In any case, it was a torturous conversation, as I had to keep repeating myself and saying things that might hurt her feelings again and again. At the end of the conversation she walked away, saying she was here to study and shouldn't have a relationship anyway. I think she felt I led her on.

Since then we have not spent any time together, and I have been a little bit sad about the way it happened, but maybe it had to be like this.

Isaac and Karyn in Qingdao

Isaac and Karyn stayed at my apartment in Qingdao. They spent the majority of their days exploring on their own after watching the Yankees in the mornings on TV. I would join them for meals. They liked Qingdao and I had no trouble convincing them to stay a couple days longer than they had originally planned. This way, we could leave together for Shanghai on Friday.

Traveling

From Shanghai's airport, we took a taxi to Zhouzhuang, about an hour away. It is a tourist city that has nice canals and old alleyways. We arrived in the early evening, and left the hotel shortly after setting our bags down. At the entrance to our hotel, bicycle taxi drivers harassed us and finally we took two taxis into the city, as each could only sit two people. The drivers looked about seventy-years-old and rode at about walking speed. It was difficult to communicate with them since they didn't speak Mandarin.

Once in town, the drivers suggested they show us around and take us back to the hotel at the end. I should have declined, but I accepted this offer after negotiating a cheap price. At that point, their goal changed. It was to get us dinner and then back to our hotel. I think they would get a commission off the dinner.

But we were stubborn and walked around. They parked their bikes and followed us everywhere we went. One driver, who smoked, kept following Karyn around, and she became obsessed with getting away from him, though it was not possible for her. I finally told him to stay away from her. The two of the drivers were keeping close eyes on us, and it was suffocating. Maybe they thought we would bolt.

At the end of the evening, when it came time to pay the taxis, they tried to get double the original price from me. It was 15, and they wanted 30. I just gave them 20 and left. This type of thing happened a few times over the course of the trip. Prices were clearly stated, but the drivers just try to get more from you. Who can blame them?

The next evening we took a taxi to Suzhou, over an hour away from Zhouzhuang. We spent most of our time there exploring the city and visiting some parks. All mornings were taken up watching the Yankee playoff games. Our hotel did not have ESPN. Our first morning in Suzhou, Isaac and I jogged to a 5-star hotel and snuck into their gym and watched ESPN for an hour. It turned out this was not necessary. Karyn checked out TV and the game was being broadcast on a Japanese channel! Isaac and I walked out of the gym as if we had never snuck in and then took a taxi back to our hotel. One advantage to watching the game on Japanese TV was seeing every move of Matsui, the Yankees one Japanese player, multiple times.

One evening we had hotpot and I got Isaac to unknowingly try pig's blood. He did not like it, but still does not know that is what it was. I actually do like it. It tastes like tofu, but richer.

We took a regular train from Suzhou to Shanghai and spent a short two days there. It turned out our hotel in Shanghai also did not have ESPN and I made many phone calls until I finally found a hotel with a buffet breakfast open to the public which had a TV with ESPN in the room. We were in Shanghai for two days, and both mornings were spent watching the Yankees. One of the games set a record for the longest playoff game ever. It was awkward as we sat at the buffet from 6:30 AM till noon, well past the time the buffet closed. Then the next day we did it again, and again it was a long game.

On our one full day in Shanghai, I left to make a day trip to Hangzhou and Isaac and Karyn spent the day by themselves. As I had been before, I did not care much about spending time in Shanghai. This turned out to be a terrible day. It started with the five and a half hour Yankee game. Then I went to the bus station, and there was no bus leaving for an hour. There were some people in the bus station who were offering car services to Hangzhou as well, and I decided to take one. I got in the car, and waited for two more passengers, who had to be recruited. While in the car, I spoke with the driver for awhile. He suggested I not go with them, because it wasn't safe. They would switch cars later in the trip and he thought there was an outside chance someone could try to rob me. He said he didn't care about the business, which is why he was telling me. I found this quite nice of him, and I left the car immediately to buy a ticket for the bus. At this point the earlier 12:30 bus was sold out, and I settled on the 12:50 bus. The bus took close to three hours, while I was expecting it to take two, leaving me with little time to explore Hangzhou. I took a taxi straight to the famous lake, and walked around for a couple hours. I was impressed. It was huge, with gardens all over the place. After the sunset, I went to the city center, got some street food, and checked out a neighborhood or two before taking a bus back to Shanghai. I got back to the hotel close to midnight.

The next day, our last in Shanghai, we watched the Yankee game, and then walked around for a couple of hours, having some delicious street food before heading for the airport. We were off to Xian.

We spent three days and four nights in Xian. The first morning we watched the Yankees on a computer from our hotel room, on Internet video. It was much better quality of video than I expected. However, the game was horrendous, and the Yankees lost. After being up three games to none, we ended up losing to our arch-rival Boston Redsox four games to three. This was the first time a team ever came back from a three game deficit in the playoffs to win a series.

We walked the streets of Xian, saw a mosque, some pagodas, and walked on the wall of the old city. The street food was excellent, and each night we met a friend of mine from Qingdao, Ann, who now lived in Xian. 

I looked at some handicraft work and when I put it down, it broke. The lady wanted me to pay for it, and grabbed me, and I had to be very physical to get her off me. Finally, I got away and the three of us walked away, but I was afraid because I had heard Xian is dangerous and the people are very united. Thus, I thought we could be attacked by a mob. I like to stand up for what I think is right, but it often doesn't seem worth it. This put me in a bad mood for the day.

Later in the afternoon, Karyn realized her digital camera was missing from her pocket. It was stolen. I wonder if this happened while I was fighting with the woman, but I don't think so. I had mentioned in the morning to be extra careful, but unfortunately that warning was not strong enough, and the camera was placed in her simple jacket pocket.

I had debated going to Hong Kong from Xian with Isaac and Karyn, but after buying my ticket, I found out that I could not get a good visa in Hong Kong. I did not want to make the trip unless I could get such a visa, so I ate the cost of canceling my ticket, and took an indirect route home to Qingdao, as there were no direct flights that Sunday.

Marsha in Qingdao

Marsha had emailed me a few days earlier that she was in Beijing and wanted to come to Qingdao. I originally thought it would not work out as I was planning to go to Hong Kong, but once I changed my ticket, I gave Marsha a call and she arranged to take the train to Qingdao that Saturday night. Marsha took a hard-seat. I admire her toughness, and always have. We spent a couple of nice days together. I gave her a beautiful silk scarf I had bought in Suzhou, as it had been her birthday the previous Wednesday. The next morning, she wore it as we had lunch on the street right by my apartment. I had her take it off, because I did not want the scarf to get dirty. She put it under her sweater. After lunch, she went off for a walk while I went home to study. When I got home she called me. She said she lost the scarf. She thought it had fallen out from under her sweater and that someone quickly picked it up and walked away (there was a food vendor she suspected, as she had seen him before looking at us and now he was not there). That's probably the last time I'll give Marsha a gift she can easily lose.

On Tuesday she left on a long train ride back to Kunming, two and a half days. She would take a train to Chengdu, and from there switch trains for Kunming.

In Chengdu, she walked around for a few hours after buying her train ticket to Kunming. During that time, her wallet, which contained her train ticket, money, and a birthday card I had made her the year before that she carried around because she liked it, was stolen. 

She was stuck overnight. She was told that there was a "Safety house" she could go to get help in this type of situation, but when she got there (after a long bus ride and long walk) it was like being in jail, and most of the people there were crazy. In any case, I didn't know about this until the following afternoon, when she called me in tears. She was able to open a new bank account in Chengdu and I sent her some money to get a train ticket home. She told me how when she opened the bank account, they wanted one Yuan for the bankbook, which she didn't have. No one at the bank would lend her this (the equivalent of ten cents), and it was extremely upsetting for her, even worse than the night before in the nut-house. Finally, someone who was not a native Chengdu person gave her a little money to make a phone call and get the bankbook, enabling her to open the account and call me.

She had spent the previous evening in a place like a jail, with crazy people who could not speak because they were so crazy, and had shared her food with them. In fact, she had given them all of her food because she felt so bad for them. Today, she needed a little help, a tiny amount of help, and couldn't get it until someone who was not from Chengdu helped. She had a terrible impression of Chengdu.

In any case, she did get a ticket back to Kunming and left shortly after I sent her some money.

Meeting the artist again

The man I met at the airport in Beijing a few weeks earlier, whose name I don't know (on my cell phone, his name is listed as "Airplane") called me and we got together again. I went over to his house. I had thought he wanted to study some English with me, but it turned out he didn't. We chatted, and he made tea for me. I had a stuffy nose, so he gave me some medicine and horrible-tasting tea, meant to help my cold. Later in the evening, he gave me a head massage meant to get rid of the cold. In the evening, when his wife came home, we went to get dinner together, and I was amused by how he continually got annoyed by his wife. She called him on it too. He criticizes some things she says which he finds stupid. He criticized her Chinese, saying "How do  you expect Jeremy to understand that?" though sometimes I did understand it. The way he behaves towards his wife is awkward for me.

Walking home

After class one day, I walked home, and a girl from Qingdao University walked right behind me for about 10 minutes. Finally, she got up the nerve to start talking to me, and eventually suggested we exchange numbers. The next day we met up for lunch. She has a boyfriend but does not think she can marry him because her family is much poorer than his.

Miscellaneous

• Barbershops - I had heard about how barbershops often offer sexual services, but I had never seen it. However, in Beijing, when walking around with Isaac and Karyn, one street had a bunch of barber shops with red lights and scantily dressed women inside. I asked a couple of taxi drivers and learned more about this. Interestingly, just earlier in the week, Isaac had asked me why there were so many hair-cutting places that were open late at night.
• One day in class a male teacher asked why none of the girls in class had boyfriends. He took out a picture of the boyfriend of a previous student of his, to see if the girls in my class found the guy in the photo attractive. They didn't. Then the teacher asked what the girls found important in a guy. No one mentioned that he should be good looking or in good shape. No one mentioned that he should have a good sense of humor, or be fun to be around. No one said he should be creative and original. There were two comments made. He should be competent, and tall. I still don't quite get why women find height as important as they do, but have accepted it.
• One day, at a dinner arranged by a German girl at my school, a Korean male classmate of hers, upon meeting me, said how handsome I was, and put his arm around me. This put me off a bit and I kept my distance. What's the appropriate non-homophobic reaction? Recently, I told this story to a few American friends of mine, and it turned out the same Korean guy had done this to one of them too. So, if we were both flattered, we no longer were!

People

Daxiong

Daxiong is doing well, living in Harbin. He is studying Chinese there, but I think he's spending more time coaching the girl's national junior hockey team. He's very involved in the hockey there and maybe next year will have a job related to this.

Marsha

I find the things she says very funny. They have wisdom to them. Having a conversation with her is often not trivial, and may end with her making some comment about human nature, or something to that effect. She is part ditz and part genius.

She flew to Beijing to meet my mom and me in August. She had never been to Beijing before. She grew up in the countryside and is very poor. In any case, when I told her my mom was coming to China, way back in June or July, she asked if she could come meet us in Beijing. I told her maybe, we'd see as the time drew near. In addition, she did not ask me to pay for her ticket; she said she would take the train to Beijing (the ride two days) and start saving up.

In early August we finalized plans to meet up. I told her that I didn't want her to take the train, and would pay for the difference between the train and flight tickets, so that she could fly to Beijing. In a recent conversation, she said how I felt sorry for her, poor little Marsha, never got to see her country's capital, so I flew her to Beijing, blah blah blah. Then when I said to her, "First of all, it was you who asked to come, I didn't invite you. Secondly, you were going to pay for the ticket yourself. I guess I should apologize for not wanting you to be on a train for four days?" And Marsha started laughing. That's a problem. She has a chip on her shoulder, and I've seen it before with people who grew up in bad financial situations. They may be very unappreciative of help and think you do things out of pity, when in fact you don't.

Garisson

I work out with him once a week. Our workout consists of pushups and jogging. We chat during the jog, he in English and me in Chinese. He told me about his foreign teacher. She wanted all of her students to keep a diary, which she would read. It turned out that many students copied work from the Internet, or from who knows where, for their diaries! The teacher noticed the first time she collected them and lectured the class about plagiarism, and how it's a serious form of cheating. The students are used to teachers either ignoring the fact that they plagiarize or not noticing. There are some strange things about college education in China.

I have been slow letting Garisson back into my life, after some things that happened at the end of the summer. But he seems to have learned to be more considerate, and doesn't loiter at my house or assume he can stay for more than a short amount of time. I am glad about this. He has also learned the American characteristic of being direct, maybe too well. I brought a sweater for him from the US, and asked him how he liked it. He said he wore it a couple of times and did not like it. So I told him he could give it back to me, and I could use it. I don't think that is a good habit to get into, telling people you don't like their gifts.

I do not have any new stories about Stephanie. I see her once in awhile. I also stopped keeping in touch with Florence.

Sherrie

A Chinese girl who Garisson introduced me to, Sherrie, and I had dinner together. I asked her about giving gifts, because I knew there were some customs but didn't know the specifics. Sherry told me that only a girlfriend (not a regular friend) can give a watch or a wallet. The girl gives the wallet so the man can save his money and keep orderly finances, thus their future family will have a good economic situation. But she had no great suggestions for what to give a female, but rather just repeated the obvious (jewelry, chocolate, etc.).