Taizhou Oct. 2, 2005
I had quite the morning. I had done yoga, had breakfast, and was watching my cheap movie when someone started pounding on my outer door. I can rent movies from a little Mom and Pop place for one RMB (actually, I have to give them ten, but when I return the DVD I get nine back). Once I ended up with a movie dubbed into Chinese and another time Japanese, so now they play the DVD for me to make sure it has an English option before I rent it.
My outer door is metal. The other foreign teacher they should be hiring will also have a key to that door, because it separates our apartments and the washing machine we share from the offices. So I opened the metal door and there's this Chinese guy whose a friend of one of my students. I can hear girls giggling down the hallway. It turns out they are stuck here during the national holiday, and thought it would be fun to hang out with me. They gave me a Chinese name which they said meant Little Mountain, and I used it for a couple of years until I found out it could also mean "Little Hill," which is less impressive.
So the lot of us go grocery shopping. We pointed out the names of things in our respective languages and chatted. We stood in the egg line (you can get slightly older eggs at half price if you stand in the LONG line). This grandfatherly fellow wanted to talk so there was translation galore. He asked me about my line of work and if I was married. I gave him my standard answer about the divorce and he said I should get a Chinese wife. I asked him how long he'd been married; he said for 50 years. I asked how they did it, and it turns out he works in oil exploration and they aren't together enough to quarrel.
So back at my apartment the boy gets on the Internet and we find names for the girl. The ringleader is now named Lana and the other two are Anna and Tina. Lana leads by being the sort of energetic personality that just sweeps people up in her wake.
Then we went back to the streets to find a bookstore I'd heard about, but the guy left to do something and two more girls joined us, so I had quite the adorable escort as we found the #10 bus and took it downtown. By Chinese standards the books are very expensive, but for under a 100 RMB ($15) I got a better dictionary and a novel called "Fortress Besieged" with the English on one page and the Chinese on the facing page. It's a pre-CP satire about the educational system, starring a guy who went abroad and goofed off, then bought a mail order diploma to avoid the embarrassment of not having studied, but then everyone makes a big deal of his success and he ends up having to teach.
My outer door is metal. The other foreign teacher they should be hiring will also have a key to that door, because it separates our apartments and the washing machine we share from the offices. So I opened the metal door and there's this Chinese guy whose a friend of one of my students. I can hear girls giggling down the hallway. It turns out they are stuck here during the national holiday, and thought it would be fun to hang out with me. They gave me a Chinese name which they said meant Little Mountain, and I used it for a couple of years until I found out it could also mean "Little Hill," which is less impressive.
So the lot of us go grocery shopping. We pointed out the names of things in our respective languages and chatted. We stood in the egg line (you can get slightly older eggs at half price if you stand in the LONG line). This grandfatherly fellow wanted to talk so there was translation galore. He asked me about my line of work and if I was married. I gave him my standard answer about the divorce and he said I should get a Chinese wife. I asked him how long he'd been married; he said for 50 years. I asked how they did it, and it turns out he works in oil exploration and they aren't together enough to quarrel.
So back at my apartment the boy gets on the Internet and we find names for the girl. The ringleader is now named Lana and the other two are Anna and Tina. Lana leads by being the sort of energetic personality that just sweeps people up in her wake.
Then we went back to the streets to find a bookstore I'd heard about, but the guy left to do something and two more girls joined us, so I had quite the adorable escort as we found the #10 bus and took it downtown. By Chinese standards the books are very expensive, but for under a 100 RMB ($15) I got a better dictionary and a novel called "Fortress Besieged" with the English on one page and the Chinese on the facing page. It's a pre-CP satire about the educational system, starring a guy who went abroad and goofed off, then bought a mail order diploma to avoid the embarrassment of not having studied, but then everyone makes a big deal of his success and he ends up having to teach.