Tomb Sweeping

I mentioned in my last blog that my schedule has been choc-a-bloc.  Well, something had to give.  After a few weeks of juggling teaching, education, my new hobbies and sightseeing, I realised that I was trying to do too much at once.  As a consequence I’ve stopped my Mandarin lessons at Global Village on Tuesday and Thursday.  However, I’ve paid the school ¥1000 (£100), which equates to 40 hours worth of lessons, and so far I’ve had less than half of those.  I was hesitant to ask for a refund, because I don’t think China is big on the Western “We want you to be satisfied with your purchase.  If you’re not, then we’ll give you a 100% refund guaranteed” policy.  Instead I’ve asked for private tuition; it’s a lot more expensive, meaning a lot less lessons, but it also saves me a 3 hour round trip going to the school.

This free time has been put to good use, as I’ve been able to review what I’ve learnt during the lessons at Global Village and also during the free lessons with Aston.  In effect I’m actually retaining more Mandarin than before.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a beginner (in every sense of the word), but transactional Chinese is becoming easier.  Buying groceries and directing taxis is less daunting.  Although, as well having to know the name of where you want to go, you also need to know the pronunciation.  Otherwise you leave your destination up to the interpretation of your given taxi driver at the time, as I found out the other day when I vacated a taxi before realising I didn’t have a clue where I was.

I’ve pretty much got the numbers down:

一 yī (one)

二 èr (two)

三 sān (three)

四 sì (four)

五 wǔ (five)

六 liù (six)

七 qī (seven)

八 bā (eight)

九 jiǔ (nine)

十 shí (ten)

When you’re buying something this can become complicated, or less complicated depending on how much effort you’re willing to put in.  The simplest way to go about buying, say 4 apples, would be to point, say “zhège” (this one) and “sì”.  The correct way to do this is to say “sì ge”, meaning four of that.  In turn then, it’d be wǔ ge, liù ge, qī ge (5/6/7 of that) and so on.  However, two is different.  The Chinese don’t say èr ge, but instead they say “Liǎng ge”.  I’m not entirely sure why; it may be similar to Westerners saying “a couple of” something, as opposed to two.

Regardless of whether you’re saying something correctly or not, the Chinese will sometimes still laugh at you.  Perhaps due to poor pronunciation, perhaps because of the fact you’re a Westerner or maybe because they didn’t expect you to be able to speak any Chinese at all.  And here is something else to be wary of: do not tell Chinese people you can speak a little Chinese, when you know that even “a little Chinese” is a vast stretch of the truth.  I’ve made this mistake twice now.  Mainly because within my first Chinese audiotape I was taught the phrase, “I can speak a little Chinese”.  Wow.  Each time I’ve said those words I’ve been bombarded with more Mandarin than I know what to do with.

The other day, hung over and not really caring what anyone thought of my pronunciation, I bought a bottle of water.  In Chinese, I said hello, I asked for the water and I said how much.  The Chinese woman replied slowly, “yī kuài wǔ”, which I casually repeated as I counted my money.  She was slightly surprised by the fact and I didn’t say “what?” and asked if I spoke Chinese.  I replied with, “wŏ bù huì shuō zhōng-wen”, which translates into English as, “I don’t speak Chinese”.  Obviously the conversation was simple, she understood everything I said and it left open the possibility that I might actually know a little bit more than I was letting on.  For now I’m much happier to do this, than to say, “oh yeah I know Chinese”.  Just to be thrown head first into a sea of unknown vocabulary and then at the end of the ordeal splutter an idiotic, “sorry, what?”

Another little gem worth mentioning: Chinese is in many ways a frustrating and difficult language to learn, because the tones can completely change the meaning of the word you’re using.  However, at times, it’s almost too simple.  For example, unlike English, their verbs don’t change depending on the past, present or future tense.  So played, playing and play would all stay as play.  Thus, yesterday I play, today I play, and, tomorrow I play.  There are also other very logical aspects to the language, like the fact they don’t have names for days or months, but just numbers: day one, day two or month one, month two etc.  And the numbers are extremely simple after 1-10.  Remember that “shí” is ten? Well 11 is shí yī, 12 is shí èr and 13 is shí sān. By the same token, 20 is èr shí, 21 is èr shí yī and 22 is èr shí èr.

The past week or so it’s been getting gradually warmer.  Living on the top floor of our apartment, Brian and I decided to see if it was possible to get out onto the rooftop.  As expected, access to the roof was extremely easy and the door was wide open.  The view from the rooftop is breathtaking, as is the lack of preventions in place to stop you falling off the edge; there is literally nothing there.  There is a small gap about two feet deep before the edge, which you can sort of sit in and look out of.  We’ve spoken to a few other Aston teachers about going up there for beers and a bbq in the full swing of the summer.  I’d be lying if I said the prospect of getting drunk next to a seven floor drop didn’t worry me slightly though.

Brian and I have continued to explore the city.  We’ve even been finding new things in areas we’ve already been too.  China loves its European bars, but even more so, it loves its German bars.  In fact, there’s one less than 5 minutes away from our apartment.  The only problem is the price of the European beers in the Europeans bars (Chinese beers are cheap almost everywhere), which aren’t necessarily expensive by European standards, but they are expensive by the standard of our living wage.  This brings me onto another key point, or rather, mistake: don’t compare what you’re buying to prices back home, but compare it to your living wage.  It’s taken me awhile to break this habit, and needless to say, I might need to budget slightly when I do eventually get my first paycheck next month.

The idea of budgeting isn’t helped by the discovery of new places like these.  Nor are they helped by the discovery of not just one new place, but two places simultaneously.  On Monday a small group of us found another German Bar near The Big Goose Pagoda, which just happened to have the nicest draft beers we’ve had since arriving.  We sat outside drinking in the sun, and after a couple of points we came to the realization that we were also sitting opposite a curry house.  Well, if were amazed by the standard of the beer in this pub, then we were even more dumbstruck by the quality of the Indian food in the restaurant.  The curry house was filled with other Westerners and many of the staff were from India, speaking perfect English.  We even got to use a knife and fork … for the first time in a long time.  It was a welcome change because we’re constantly laughed at by the CTs for our chopstick skills.  So, on this rare occasion, the tables turned.

Coming up is China’s National Tomb Sweeping Holiday, referred to in China as Qīngmíng Jié.  In all honesty I’m ashamed to say I know very little about this holiday, except for the fact I have Saturday and Sunday off teaching because of it.  If I’m not mistaken, this is a time for the Chinese to remember deceased loved ones by visiting their graves, paying respects, offering gifts and, well, sweeping tombs.  As you can see, I definitely need to do more research in this area.

Anyway, as a result of this holiday, schools and businesses close.  The schools close during the week and the students are then expected to make up this time up over the weekend.  Hence why Aston is closed.  Due to a distinct lack of holidays over the course of my six-month stay here (one weekend off), Brian, myself and two other teachers have decided to use this as an excuse to go to Shanghai.  Originally we attempted to purchase tickets for an overnight train on the Friday after work, because we’d be sleeping whilst travelling, we’d be saving money on planes/hostels and it’d be another slightly surreal Chinese experience.  However, because of our “last minute” idea, the trains were sold out and we’ve had to spend a lot more than we wanted on flights. 

At the end of the day though, if we don’t grasp opportunities like these, we won’t see very much at all!  I’ll report back in a week or so on my Shanghai experience!