western shopping paradise

It is decidedly autumn in Tianjin. Until about a week ago, the weather here was very much like Kansas in the summer. Hot. Humid. Not cool in either the shade or the evening. Then, last Monday, a cold front moved in, the skies opened up, and rain fell for about 18 hours straight. Ever since, the temperatures have been in the 60's and low 70's in the day, and even cooler at night.

I love this kind of weather. Even if it is damp, I would rather be a little bit cool than hot and sticky all the time. Even if it does get up into the 70's during the day, you can rest assured that the temperature will drop back down to the 50's and 60's in the evening, and you will wake up to a brisk cool morning the next day. One of the things I love best about this weather is that it is baking weather. I love making cookies, quickbreads, yeast breads and cakes all year round, but especially as the temperatures drop. There is something so comforting and warming about eating home-baked sweets when it's cool outside.

Unfortunately for me, most Chinese kitchens do not have ovens. Chinese cuisine isn't exactly notorious for its baked goods. An increasing number of families are buying small ovens (like toaster ovens) for their kitchens these days, but ovens are certainly not a standard feature as they are in the U.S. Most of the time, this isn't a problem. We have a microwave and stove-top, and between those two appliances, we can cook almost everything we want.

However, as the temperature began to turn, I began to be very sad about our kitchen's lack of an oven. I didn't want to spend the entire year being unable to make cookies, brownies, or breads. So, Ben, being the sweet, considerate, generous guy that he is, came home from school one day and said, "Let's go to Carrefour and buy you an oven."

As we stood in the aisle at Carrefour, looking at the four options, ranging in price from about 350 yuan to 700 yuan (about $50-$100 USD), I had a mental image of my culinary life in China changing completely. Of course, I would still take advantage of the readily available and incredibly inexpensive Chinese food at the restaurants and food vendor stalls all around me. But with this oven, I would be able to make casseroles! Cookies! Western-style breads! Just beyond the door to our apartment, the world might still be spinning wildly beyond our comprehension, but within our apartment, within our bellies, we would at times be able to experience the comforts of home.

It was not until we got home and began unpacking our newly purchased oven that I realized: we may have an oven, but I may not be able to use it, or at least not the way I would like to. Here, it is not so easy to find many of the ingredients we consider standard stock in the kitchen. For example, I had not seen cinnamon at any of the supermarkets I had been to. Or chocolate chips. Or cocoa powder. Or most kinds of cheese. Or even yeast, which I thought was baffling, considering the fact that I had seen bread at both foreign and Chinese supermarkets.

Thank goodness for my brother's friend, who I will call J. J has lived here in Tianjin for about five years, and last weekend she offered to take me and Ben shopping at some places where we could buy Western baking pans (also very difficult to find) and Western cooking ingredients. The very first place she took us to was almost unreal! It was just this tiny hole-in-the-wall shop in an alley behind some apartment buildings, but it was completely stocked with every Western food you could wish for but never find in China. Tortillas and tortilla chips. Cheeses. Duncan Hines brownie and cake mixes. Bread and muffin mixes. Smoked bacon. Hershey's Cocoa powder. All kinds of spices, including cinnamon. And much, much more--more than I can even begin to list here.

After about 15 minutes there, our kitchen was fully stocked and ready for baking. My most prized purchase was two cans of pumpkin puree. Before I saw them at that little store, I had visions of me trying to roast an entire pumpkin in our tiny little oven, in order to make my favorite fall treat: pumpkin bread. But now I'm all set. My biggest problem now is trying to decide what I should bake first!

the #1 reason I'm enjoying studying at Nankai:

My classmates are awesome.

Yesterday, Miguel, a classmate from Colombia, invited our entire class to come to his apartment, where we made food and ate together. It was so much fun--we all really enjoy hanging out together, even if we don't all understand exactly what we're trying to say to each other all of the time. There is often a lot of Chinglish/Chinorean/Korenglish/Spanglish (and other combos), as well as a lot of gesticulating involved. But somehow we are able to make it all work.

update on the golden ticket

So, it turns out the receipt I thought was the right one was actually not my internet service receipt. It was a phone service receipt. So, the other day, when I was supposed to go pay the internet fee, I instead went with the plan I mentioned on the last post: I ate a couple of Oreos, and sat down, putting off the task.

Today, Ben finally put his foot down. We HAD to pay the internet service fee, or it would be turned off tomorrow. So, I screwed myself up, all ready to try to convince the people in the internet service office that they didn't really need an internet account number that I couldn't produce anyway, and that they could probably use a phone number, or an address, to look up our account.

Long story short: We went down there. I asked the woman behind the desk if the phone number was what they needed. She said yes, and looked up our account. And then she told us we didn't have to pay the bill until next month.

Ahem.

Guess it's time for another couple Oreos.

waiting for the golden ticket

One of the most difficult things about living in China is this: things that were simple, easily accomplished tasks in the States become great big, pain-in-the-butt chores, partly because of the language gap, but also partly because things operate differently here. For example, today I went to the internet place to pay my monthly internet fee. This is a task I wouldn't even go somewhere to do, were I in the States. I would just punch a couple buttons on my online bank account, and then: click. bill paid. done.

But there is no automatic online paying here, so, bill payment must take place in person, a task made all the more difficult by my lacking language abilities. Anyway, when I got to the internet service office today, I realized I didn't have my account number with me, and I wasn't going to be able to pay the bill without it. Then I realized, I had absolutely no idea what or where my account number was! I assumed it was on one of the many receipts we collected in the first few days we were here. So I came home, took out all the receipts we had saved from those first few crazy days, and spent about 20 minutes trying to figure out which one was the one from the internet service.

Now, here I am, half an hour later, thinking I've figured out which receipt is the right one, but I'm not entirely sure. None of the receipts say anything remotely resembling "internet" in bold print across the top, and I'm tempted to just sit down, eat a couple of Oreos, and put off paying this thing for a couple more days, in the hopes that the magical receipt with the magical account number will magically appear.

the most important lesson of the weekend is . . .

Just because a website tells you that the universal power strip they are selling acts as a converter, and is adaptable to appliances from anywhere in the world, all for just $35, doesn't mean it's true.

Mom brought us one such power strip (thanks, Mom) while whe was visiting last week. On Sunday we tried it out. In the process we blew a fuse in our apartment and completely fried both our modem and our wireless router (both of which we brought over with us from the States). Lucky for us, when the internet account was set up, the guy from China Mobile brought us a modem, so we had a spare lying around, and we now have internet access through that (Chinese outlet-friendly) modem. Unfortunately, we're going to have to buy another router to set up the wireless connection again.

Oh, well. At least Ben and I won't have to lug that modem and router back to the U.S. when we return next summer.

sam and zhou you, 百年好合

It has been a few days since the wedding, but it's been a flurry of activity all week, so this is my first chance to post about it. However, it's a good thing I had to wait so long to write about it, because I now have many, many more photos to share. I was given a bunch of photos from the wedding last night, most of which turned out much better than the photos I tried to take. I have more than a hundred pictures, I think, but I'll just post a few of my favorites here.

If I were to describe a Chinese wedding (or at least this Chinese-American wedding) in one word for my Western readers, that word would be "loud." I have many other impressions, too. The ceremony was very nice, Zhou You was beautiful, Sam was handsome, the food was delicious, much fun was had by all--but comparing it to most weddings in the States, the clearest distinction I can make is that it was LOUD.

The ceremonies began with hundreds of firecrackers going off as the bride arrived with her attendant in a red convertible. That was crazy--a little bit like a war zone, with flying bits, explosions, and smoke everywhere. Ben and I actually had to run away once the firecrackers started going off, because little burning bits were hitting us in the legs! After the smoke cleared, confetti-poppers (I'm not really sure what they're called, so that's the term I'm sticking with) were set off as the bride got out of the car. That was actually Ben's and my job for the evening--to set off two of those poppers. It was kind of a lot of pressure, actually, because people kept telling us things like: "Make sure you stand here, not here, and with your back to the wind," and "Do it quickly," and "Are you sure you can do this?" But we managed it in the end.

Once we got inside, the ceremony was a kind of amalgamation of Chinese elements and American elements. For example, Sam and Zhou You exchanged vows and rings. But they also included a tea service in the ceremony, in which the bride and groom serve their new parents-in-law tea, calling them "mother" and "father" for the first time. The majority of the ceremony after that was made up of people giving speeches, vouching for the integrity and character of the bride and the groom, and sometimes presenting gifts as they did this. Sam's friend Charlie served as an interpreter for the ceremony, interpreting the Chinese speeches into English, and the English speeches into Chinese. This was really a lovely part of the ceremony, and it was very interesting to hear what each person had to say about these two.

However, even this part of the ceremony was loud. It all took place in a banquet hall, and throughout the whole thing, there was pop music playing, not exactly full-blast, but much more loudly than you might expect at an American wedding. All the guests sat around round tables, and many of them were drinking, smoking, and chatting throughout the ceremony. In fact, at times it was quite difficult to hear what was being said by those giving speeches, at least from where we were sitting. It was also kind of difficult to see. And so a lot of people decided to stand rather than sit. But then they were standing right in front of where you were sitting, so you had to stand, too, or else join the guys smoking and chatting at the table next to yours. In the end, we stood some, sat some, stood some more, chatted a bit, listened here and there. It was a very casual, but festive atmosphere.

After the ceremony, the banquet began, and boy, was it a ton of food. The servers just kept bringing out more and more dishes--more than anyone could possibly eat! And all the tables were supplied with endless rounds of beer, red wine, and baijiu, which is sometimes translated as "white wine," but is actually a kind of clear alcohol made from sorghum. As you can imagine, things became all the more festive as the bottles emptied.

As everyone began eating, Sam and Zhou You changed clothes. Then, throughout the banquet, they went from table to table, thanking all their guests for coming, and toasting them all. That's one thing that seems to be the same about American and Chinese weddings (at least in my experience): the bride and groom hardly get to sit down and eat.

Here are just a few more photos. In the top left photo are Zhou You's parents, Zhou You, Sam, and my Mom. Top right is Zhou You's dad presenting a poem to the couple during the ceremony. Bottom left is Zhou You and Sam with her maternal grandmother (left) and paternal grandmother (right). The bottom right photo is the couple, their parents, and me and Ben.

ahh...love...

A lot of people have been coming into town for Sam and Zhou You's wedding (which is Wednesday evening), so we've been invited to a lot of events lately: dinner parties, all-day shopping extravaganzas, and bridal showers among them. In fact, all this celebrating has definitely limited my proclivity toward studying. I had a test this morning that I was less-than-well-prepared for. But it's worth it--how often do you get to participate in your own brother's wedding festivities (and in China, no less)?

I'm including a couple of photos of Sam and Zhou You, in honor of their quicky upcoming wedding. I really wish I could share their wedding photos (which I saw last night) with you. Wedding photos in China generally involve an entire day in the studio, and several costume changes, and Sam and Zhou You's photos are no exception. There are a couple in which Sam looks straight out of Saturday Night Fever--they're fantastic. But, alas, I don't have any of those to share. . . yet!

I will try to take (and post) plenty of pictures of the wedding. From what I hear, it should be quite a lively event.

let the festivities begin!

So, I have completed one week of Chinese class, and I've managed to slide (mostly unscathed) into a three-day weekend. Tomorrow is Mid-Autumn Festival (zhong qiu jie), a traditional Chinese holiday I know very little about, except for what I've read on Wikipedia. Apparently it involves celebrating the harvest, appreciating the full moon, lighting lanterns, and putting pomelo rinds on one's head (?!). I do know that people give, and eat, a lot of mooncakes around here at this time. I also know, as of yesterday, that I don't like mooncakes. They're kind of oily, and they have a bit of a funny taste to my tongue. Not fully sweet. Not savory. Just kind of . . . sweetish, heavy, and, well, blech. Or at least the ones I tasted were.

Nonetheless, I'm pretty excited about this holiday. First of all, it means I get a much-needed extra break from classes. I feel like my brain is in a bit of a fog here. I'm learning tons, but I'm also a little overwhelmed by all the new information being thrown at me. Studying language in an immersion situation is, I'm finding, all-consuming and a bit exhausting. Hooray for 3-day weekends!

Secondly, I'm excited because my mom is coming to visit this weekend. Sam and Zhou You's wedding is on Wednesday evening, and Mom is going to be here for the week, for the festivities. We're picking her up at the airport tomorrow night, and I can't wait to see her. For me, that's a celebration all in itself.

comments are welcome

I guess I've had this blog set so you had to log in to comment. This is no longer true. I changed the settings so anyone can comment. So, please: comment away!

small world after all

This week has been a bit of a whirlwind. My classes started on Monday, so I have now finished four whole days of Chinese class. I have class for about three hours a day, and then I go home and have about three hours of homework to do for the next day. We actually had our first test the second day of class! So, it's a pretty intense learning environment. But the thing about intense learning environments is that you either do or die. I have to stay focused and do all my work, or else I'll get lost pretty quickly. As a result, I feel like I have learned as much in the past four days as I did in an entire month in the States!

I was pretty anxious before the first day of class. First, I was worried that I had been placed in the wrong level. I knew I didn't do very well on the language placement test last week, and I was worried that either 1.) I would be placed in a very low-level class, and that it would all be pretty boring to me, and I would have to go through the headache of being transferred to another class, or 2.) everything was going to be just as difficult as that first test, and I would spend the entire year wondering what the heck was going on. But, it seems like the school is doing a pretty good job of putting students in the right place. I've found that the class I'm in is a pretty good level for me. I'm not at the top of the class, but I'm certainly not at the bottom, either. I have already learned most of the grammatical structures we've talked about in class so far, but I'm learning tons of new vocabulary, which is something that I really needed. So, ultimately, I know enough to know what the teacher is saying (most of the time) but I'm still being challenged to learn more and more.

I was also kind of worried that I would be the only (or one of the few) Westerners in my class, and that I would be surrounded by Japanese and Korean students who would all be able to talk to each other, but that I would be left completely out of the loop. Not the case at all! My class is made up of students from everywhere: Germany, Kazakhstan, Columbia, Finland, Russia, France, the Ukraine, as well as Korea and Japan. And the really reassuring thing that I've discovered this week is that most of them were worried about exactly the same things I was anxious about--about their placement, the difficulty of understanding the teachers, and even the most basic things, like where to get food on campus. I don't know why it surprises me to find out that everyone is worried about the same things I'm worried about, but for some reason, I always think I'm the only one freaking out. But I've discovered this week that we're all kind of in this process of discovery together. And I think we're all finding that there's really not that much to be worried about, after all.

this post is worth 6000 words

The other night, I took a really cool video of the market in the alley at night. It's a really vibrant place in the evening because all the street food vendors come out and set up shop, and everyone comes out to buy snacks, drinks, fruit, and vegetables. It's all lit up with strings of lights, and it's a very exciting place.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to upload that video to my blog (yet). I'll post it as soon as I'm able to get it to work.

In the meantime, here are some shots taken over the past few days. They don't really share a theme; they're just kind of random pictures: some of the canal running by Nankai University's campus, one of my bike amidst many, a couple shots of the neighborhood around our apartment, and a picture of Sam eating hot pot (a traditional food in much of Northern China). Like I said, random. But here they are:

when "simplified" isn't simple

It's been a busy week here at the Billing-Cartwright abode.

Ben has nearly completed his first week as an English/History teacher at a Chinese International school. It's been a pretty hard week for him, I think. He's had to deal with a lot of unexpected situations, while trying to gauge: 1.) exactly what level of language ability his students actually have, and 2.) what exactly his employers are expecting of him as a teacher. Add to the mix the facts that he doesn't speak Chinese or Korean, and he has never actually taught history (or high school students, for that matter), and it all makes for a pretty stressful week for Ben. But he's done a great job of making the best of things, and I think he's starting to feel more and more comfortable at work.

I've been pretty busy, too, which is why I haven't posted much in the past couple of days. This week was registration and orientation week at my school. I told you a little bit about day one of registration. Well, yesterday, I took part in the most stressful part of registration, which was a grueling language placement exam. Before you ask, I'll just tell you: it didn't go so great. But then again, I guess it didn't go so badly, either.

One problem was that I showed up about 5 minutes late, thanks to my bike tire going flat again. (I hope I have finally taken care of that problem for good, or at least for good for awhile.) The test was broken into four 20 minute segments, so I had to do the first segment, "vocabulary" in about 15 minutes. That was a bad way to start the exam. I started out pretty anxious, and that was before I had even read any of the questions.

Another problem was the fact that, in mainland China, they use jiantizi, or simplified characters. For the past two years, I have been studying fantizi, or traditional characters. Sometimes simplified and traditional characters look mostly or somewhat the same. But sometimes they don't look anything alike at all. That element made reading the test rather difficult at times, and made me move very s l o w l y through the exam. Even when I had learned the vocabulary, I sometimes didn't recognize it because the characters looked so different. That really heightened my frustration level.

Also, all incoming students of all levels took the same test. That means there were questions for people way below my learning level, but there were also questions for people way above my learning level. When you get to several questions that you just completely don't understand (full of words you've never seen or learned), it can be a rather intimidating situation. In the end, I think I let myself get overwhelmed over the course of the test. I probably could have scored better if I had just taken a deep breath, relaxed, and been able to calm myself down, but . . . no. I totally botched the last section, the reading comprehension part--I hope no one I know ever sees that section, because it was embarrassingly bad.

Anyway, the result, as I found out this morning, was that I was place in Beginner's level 2.
Before the exam, I thought I might be placed in Beginners 3 or Intermediate 1, so my placement was a bit below my expectations. On the other hand, immediately after the exam, I wondered if they would have a low enough level to place me anywhere, so I can't be too unhappy.

I spent some time talking to Sam about all this (he has a lot of experience both studying Chinese language here, and advising others who are studying Chinese here), and he convinced me that, no matter where I'm placed, it will be a good opportunity for me to learn simplified characters, and to really solidify the vocabulary and grammar points I have already learned. I think he's right. I bought my books this morning, and I can already see that there is a lot of vocabulary in them that I don't know already, so I know I'll learn a lot this year.

Next step: learn the simplified versions of the hundreds of words I already know. Before Monday. (um. sure. I can do that.)

school days, school days . . .

Today is Ben's first real day of school. Yesterday morning, he had to be at the school for an all-school assembly-type thing, where they welcome the new students and introduce the teachers. It was also the first day he was given the books he is supposed to teach from. That is kind of short notice, but is also kind of the way things run around here.

But today is the first day of teaching. He was prepping lessons last night, and I think he's ready to go. Good luck, Benny!

Here are some shots of Ben getting out the door for his first day of school. I hope he'll have some good stories to tell when he gets home.

Here he is all packed up, and showing off his address card, which he will show to the cabbie, who will (we hope) take him to his school.

Look out world, here he comes! (I know he's going to tell me I'm a dork for posting that under this picture, but...well...he's right. I am a dork.)

the word of the day is . . .

Registration at Nankai University began today. For some reason, I had it in my mind that it was going to be a rather quick, organized process. I even told Ben that I would pop downtown afterward and pick up a coffee maker, so it would be all set up before he got home from school. Heh. Yeah, right. I guess I temporarily forgot I was living in China. If there is one word that characterizes Chinese life, it is "bureaucracy."

In bureaucracy's defence, I kind of got off to a bad start. I originally thought I would ride my bike over to the building where registration was supposed to begin, but when I got outside, I found I had a flat tire. It shouldn't have been a surprise--the tire was flat when I inherited the bike from some of Sam's friends, and we suspected it had a slow leak. But, I haven't quite figured out where to have my bike repaired yet, so instead of taking it somewhere to be quickly fixed and then riding over to the registration location, I decided to just hoof it.

I mentioned before that our apartment is located very close to one of the gates of the university. This is true. However, it is not located very close to the building where registration (or at least the first step of registration) occurred. The gate is on the far southwest corner of campus. My destination was in the far northeast corner. So, the walk was about 45 minutes long (it probably should have been more like 30, but I got lost a couple of times).

When I finally made it to the room for registration, the smokestacks of bureaucracy began chugging along. First I had to fill out two, nearly identical forms. Then I had to attach photos to those forms. After standing in line for about 45 minutes, I had to sign my name a couple times, procure my passport three or four times, and fill out another form. That was all step one.

By the time all that was completed, the room was closing down for lunch, so they told me to go to a particular bank that was located on campus, and open an account there, so they would be able to put my monthly stipend directly into the account. That was a painful process I won't really go into. Suffice it to say, opening a bank account when you don't know the vocabulary involved in opening a bank account is a very difficult ordeal. But, I did find the bank, fill out another form, procure my passport once again, and was, through difficulty, able to open a bank account . . . I think.

The best thing that happened to me was that, while I was trying to fill out the forms to open the account, two American guys from Minnesota came in, and the had to complete the same process. They were able to help. . . a little. But more importantly, they informed me that, in order to complete the next step of registration, I would need to have at least two more passport photos than I had with me. Good call, guys. So, I walked most of the way back to the apartment (Ben met me part of the way there) and got some passport photos.

Then, on to another building, where once again I had to fill out a form. It seemed identical to the first ones I filled out that morning, but I may have been hallucinating at this point in the process, having been exposed to heat, wind, and lunchlessness. I showed my passport again, gave them some photographs, and was given a student ID card. Now we're talking--finally, something to show for all this walking and signing and standing in line.

I was then quickly ushered into an adjacent room for a "Chinese interview." Basically, it consisted of a woman asking me (in Chinese, of course):"How long have you studied Chinese? At what level would you describe your ability? How well do you write characters?" Based only on my answers (and no proof thereof), she then told me she would put me at "Intermediate II." That seemed about right to me, but what do I know? Also, I'm not really sure what purpose the interview served, because actually, I have to go back on Thursday for a real interview, where her decision to place me at Intermediate II will be either confirmed or proven inaccurate.

So, finally, five hours later, I'm done. Right? Wrong. Now it's back to the first building (which, by the way, is on the opposite side of campus from me once again) to prove I have opened a bank account, and provide my bank account number, so that deposits will be made on a monthly basis.

Whew! That was a long six hours, chock-full of walking long distances and standing in long lines. And in the end, Ben actually got home about 3 hours before I did. After all that, we rewarded ourselves by going downtown and picking up that coffee maker together.

Now, we just need to get our hands on some coffee . . . .