The lush island

Qingdao (青岛, literally Lush Island) is a cute little German-style town on the seaside. It was invaded and occupied by the Germans from the late 1800s until the first world war, at which point the Japanese took over, then the Chinese, then the Japanese again, and finally the Chinese post-WW2. During the time it was occupied by the Germans, they built roads, sewers, shops, etc. and gave it some of the best public services in Asia at the time. They also built a brewery—Tsingtao (see? Qingdao/Tsingtao, same same but different), which is still the most famous brewery in China, domestically and internationally. Although the Chinese clearly see the German (and, subsequently, Japanese) invasion as subjugation by a foreign power, it’s one of the primary reasons that Qingdao is so nice to visit and so prosperous today. 

Actually, for those who have been there, it reminded me a lot of the Gold Coast in Queensland—tall shiny buildings, huge public areas by the seaside, people are relaxed and the weather is humid from the sea. Amazingly refreshing from the dirty, smelly and very flat cityscape that is Beijing. 

We went there for the international beer festival, which I expected to be a tiny little expat wank. But, as it turns out, it’s a huge Chinese tourist event, which attracts almost 4 MILLION people per year. On the day we were there I reckon there would have been HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people. We were fooled into thinking the half-kilometre square at which we entered was the extent of the festival, which resulted in a very long and confused phone call to our friends when we were trying to find each other.

As the day wore on, we uncovered more and more different parts of the festival—beer tent after beer tent, rides (horrendously expensive), several hundred food stalls that were ALL selling the same chuanr, incredibly kitsch mouse ears/masks/bracelet things, pole dancers (in the middle of the children's rides!), character parades, contortionists, food sellers dressed in drag, half naked men jumping on tables in response to an African man on stage yelling 中国好不好? (Is China alright?). What is it with Chinese men deciding that shirts are optional as soon as the temperature goes over 30 degrees?

The sheer volume of the festival, everything about it, was astounding. It's hard to describe how it feels to be in the middle of a sea of sweaty, drunk, loud, enthused, mostly male Chinese. To be honest, all the lights and sounds and people pushing was a bit too much for the senses. What got us in the end was the BLARING music from every direction. We are a group of young people who enjoy going out for a drink and seeing some live music, but seriously, the noise from this place was unbelievable. I honestly don't understand why it is that Chinese people must have music up just loud enough to make the speakers start crackling, no matter how large they are. Anyway, end of rant. Let's just say it was definitely a cultural experience—definitely worth one visit, but I wouldn't be going back without earplugs.

Notes for travellers: 

• Fast train Beijing to Qingdao is 4.5 hours, 315RMB, very comfortable. They book out quickly, esp on weekends for events like the International Beer Festival, so get your tickets as early as possible within the 10 day window allowed by the ticket sellers.
• We stayed at Old Observatory Hostel. Pros: great service, chilled out vibe, amazing rooftop bar with Western food and good beers and cocktails. Cons: beds are super hard, it's noisy because of the type of people who stay there, it's a taxi ride away from much of the seaside. Overall would go there again.
• International Beer Festival: Travel from the old city area is about 15km (40-50 kuai in a taxi), entry is 20 kuai , beers are 20 kuai each minimum. Beware almost everything inside is relatively expensive, and it's hard to get decent food unless you love chuanr.

Literacy

My ayi (a respectful term, I think, for someone who cleans your house) caught me doing my Chinese homework today. She smiled and said a few things I didn't understand, and then one that I did—"I never learned to read characters". I felt embarrassed, as I has asked her last week to read something for me and try to explain the instructions. She acted as if she needed glasses and couldn't see the small print.

She pointed to some characters on the page: 谢谢。我也祝你和爸爸圣诞快乐 (Thank you. I also wish you and Dad a merry Christmas). She pronounced the first three characters, and then said 'I can't read that one'. It occurred to me that, even though I constantly come across five year olds who have better command of Chinese than I do, I am actually more literate than many middle aged people in China. Wow.

Yet another great podcast

This one got me through several long train trips in Yunnan: the China History Podcast by Laszlo Montgomery.

Check it out on iTunes or at http://chinahistorypodcast.com/. I suggest starting from episode 1, but if you like to mix things up, then pick whatever you fancy.

A great leap forward

Ha. There are so many Chinese sayings to make fun of. Life here is just an endless series of classless puns.

Anyway, what this post is actually about is learning a foreign language. I spent some time in Yunnan recently—which was absolutely gorgeous, by the way, I highly recommended going there—and one day we were stuck in a little Tibetan village with no other laowai in sight. The village was one of those cute little places you see in postcards. Rolling green hills, terraced crops, big square Tibetan houses ...

We were led towards a hut that had a gated yard out the front of it. Immediately on entering the gate, the pungent smell of cattle arse attacked our noses. Suddenly not so picture-perfect. Into the small shack at the back and I realised this is where we were having lunch. 

Feeling a little out of place, and unable to ask anyone in English what the hell is going on, I decided to throw caution to the wind (I suddenly realise what a strange saying that is ...) and try out some of my Chinese. I'm mentally trawling through pages and pages of vocab lists from my textbook.

"这是什么?" What is this? (pointing to the small bowl that is being laid out in front of me)
"是酥油茶." It is suyou tea. Suyou? What is that? Whip out my iPhone dictionary ... ah it's butter tea. Oh, and it tastes like watered down butter. Funny that.

Also I see a hard yak cheese served with sugar, soft bread rolls and yak's milk yoghurt—this is cultural experience at its best.

Ok, so we've established what we're eating. This is going ok! They can understand me, and I can pick up some of the words they're saying. Let's keep going.

"你叫什么名字?" What is your name?
Ok, I didn't really understand the answer to that, probably because you have a Tibetan name that's hard to pronounce.
Let's try ... "你去学校马?" Do you go to school?
"是的" Yes. 
"你 每天去学校马?" Do you go to school every day?
"每天" Every day.
"你今年多大?" How old are you?
"十三." 13. What the? You look about 6! 
"你今年多大?" How old are you? Ooh you cheeky little boy.

So we progress like this for a while. How many brothers and sisters does he have? Is that his older brother? Why is he not at school today? Then he asks:

"你哪国人?" What is your nationality?
"澳大利亚人" Australian. 
Wait a second, I have an idea.
"你要看照片 ... ahhh [I don't know the joining words] 澳大利亚?" Do you want to see photos ... Australia? With a smile.
Oooh that's done it. Now I have a large crowd of Tibetan children pressing in on either sides, eager to see the image being projected from the iPhone.

I show them kangaroos ("袋鼠!" How is it that this 13 year old Tibetan boy knows the mandarin word for kangaroo?), emus (no idea what that one is!), some scenic landscape from near my home. Next I find some pictures of my 妈妈 mother and 爸爸 father  ... now how exactly do I explain the concept of step-parents? "不是我爸爸 ... 是 ... 我妈妈的男朋友" This is not my father ... it is ... my mother's boyfriend! Oh my vocab is failing me, that elicited a bit of shock. 

And this is a picture of 我的男朋友 my boyfriend. "你有几男朋友?" How many boyfriends do you have? What? Did you really just ask me that? "一个!" One! He almost looks disappointed. 

Oh now this has really got them started. Questions are coming from left, right and centre. What's you're name, what's this place, what work do you do? And many that I can't understand. My head is exploding from trying to translate backwards and forwards from this crazy language. Time to redirect their attention.

"你们看, 这是北京" Look, this is Beijing. Attention is glued back to the iPhone.
"我们的中国!" Our China! They suddenly recognise the photos I'm showing them. It's a place they've never been, and they may never go there. It's more than 2000 kilometres away from here. I realise how lucky I really am, to be able to live in a place that is, in their eyes, so magical.

This is one experience I'll never forget, and not only because of the yak butter tea. It's the first time I conversed with someone in China in their own language!

The aircraft experience

So you kind of assume that flying in China is just like flying in the rest of the world. It's a straightforward process of check in-security-wait-board-fly. At that point I start to enjoy myself, forced to curl up with a book or a movie for hours on end, accompanied by hot cups of tea brought by the very responsive flight attendants.

Chinese planes? Well they are a different experience altogether. You start with the check-in queue, which, despite being signposted in both English and Chinese characters, somehow always manages to fool the locals into thinking they can take the express queue just because they don't really want to wait in the others. I can see why they give it a try, really, because Chinese airport staff seem to have a problem with actually doing their jobs. It's like every person is the first flyer ever to approach the check-in desk, and the staff can't figure out how to work the machinery, despite having two people behind every counter (one to move your bags between the two luggage belts that don't connect, of course!). If you're lucky, you might get some entertainment as you wait for the paint to dry in the form of a local guy who's got himself drunk and can no longer stand up in the queue.

Past check-in, the next phase of the party is airport security. Now this is the bane of any frequent traveller's life. But there's a special level of profanity reserved for Chinese airports, surpassed only by US airports. You've got to understand that there are far more people in China at the moment than worthwhile jobs, so they've got to find as much space as they can to absorb labour. It also increases the chance of them actually delivering the service you're supposed to be providing, because it compensates for the extreme incompetence of their workers. So keeping those things in mind, it's really quite reasonable that you have five staff per line: you need one to check your passport again (with video camera behind on case of any mishap), one to play solitaire on the computer as your luggage goes through the scanner, two to feel you up after you go though the full body scanner (one for each gender, of course), and another to stand around looking completely useless but very authoritative in their freshly ironed airport uniform.

Next stop is the departure hall, where you have your choice of a range of Chinese delicacies to pick from. These include such delights as chunks of meat in vacuum packs (not refrigerated), dried packaged baby tomatoes and hawthorn berries, unidentifiable fresh fruit with spikes and fingers, pine nut and rose happiness cake, cigarettes, and of course the ubiquitous baijiu ... all at only four times the price you'll pay on the street! If you can drag yourself away from the shopping, waiting at your gate before it's even open will be a long queue of Chinese people, making sure they get on the plane first to get the best spots for their carry-on bags. Wander past the three separate people checking your boarding pass within five metres of each other, and you're finally aboard your blessed plane. The quality of the infrastructure is significantly better than you've been lead to believe (what with all those stories of Chinese planes falling out of the sky mid-meal service), and the flight assistants are quite pleasant, so you're thinking maybe this is on the up. Maybe you'll be able to relax now.

And you can ... at least until the crew tell you that you're about to land. The seatbelt light, you learn, is really more of a vague suggestion than an actual rule, and your fellow passengers are actually allowed to get up whenever they like. Particularly just when the plane's wheels touch the ground, at which point it is totally acceptable to spring out of your seat with the agility of a surprised kitten and open the overhead lockers, spilling the contents on all those who were stupid enough to heed the seatbelt sign. Of course, the next battle is to get off the plane as soon as you can, lest you be one of the suckers left behind with a 30 second delay to the baggage collection, which means you obviously can't secure the best spot to wait 20 minutes for your baggage to come out.

At last your baggage has arrived, despite the team of 7 airport staff cleaning the baggage belt with filthy rags where your baggage is supposed to be coming out, and you think maybe you're nearing freedom. You can almost smell the fragrant wafts of Beijing smog coming from the exit. But alas, another uniformed airport staff member is shouting at you in urgent Chinese. She's pointing at the sticky bag tag on your luggage and waving frantically. You see someone else motioning to the luggage tag stuck to their boarding pass. Your boarding pass, of course, is long forgotten in the depths of your carry-on as it's now adopted the stately title of most-favoured bookmark. Dig it out, prove that you did not, in fact, steal someone else's luggage along with their dirty underwear and you're freeeeeeee … 

At least, you're free to sit with a cranky taxi driver in a traffic jam for the next two hours.

剩女 and 小姐

A fascinating read on sexism and the Chinese language: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4116

(with translations and pinyin for those of us who have only learnt 3 of the 50 or so Chinese words for women mentioned in the article!)

The train experience

I am just finishing off The Joy Luck Club  by Amy Tan (yes yes, I know, I should have read it years ago, but here in China it somehow seems more appropriate), and I found a passage that describes almost exactly my experiences with trains, planes, and, well any kind of public transport in this place really. I'm sure many expats will sympathise!

The landscape has become grey, filled with low flat cement buildings, old factories, and then tracks and more tracks filled with trains like ours passing by in the opposite direction. I see platforms crowded with people wearing drab Western clothes, with spots of bright colours: little children wearing pink and yellow, red and peach. And there are soldiers in olive green and red, and old ladies in grey tops and pants that stop mid-calf. We are in Guangzhou.

Before the train even comes to a stop, people are bringing down their belongings from above their seats. For a moment there is a dangerous shower of heavy suitcases laden with gifts to relatives, half-broken boxes wrapped in miles of string to keep the contents from spilling out, plastic bags filled with yarn and vegetables and packages of dried mushrooms, and camera cases. And then we are caught in a stream of people rushing, shoving, pushing us along, until we find ourselves in one of a dozen lines waiting to go through customs. I feel as if I were getting on the number 30 Stockton bus in San Francisco. I am in China, I remind myself. And somehow the crowds don't bother me. It feels right. I start pushing too.

My favourite podcast

I listen to this weekly podcast while I'm walking through the hutongs to have dinner, while I'm riding to work (don't worry, Dad, I have the volume turned down pretty low!), while I'm staring out the windows of public transport, or while I'm shaving my legs. Yep. So check it out:  http://popupchinese.com/lessons/sinica/ (this week's podcast is on the Beijing floods)