You Know You Want It Too

That's right, it is a house in a cave, siiiiick.

Startling Revelation of the Day

   So there are two Peach Blossom Trees outside my new house.  To clarify, Peach Blossom Trees are the ones with the pink flowers that you see in all kinds of Asian paintings, also it is the state flower of Delaware.
   So anyways, as I was walking back from lunch today I heard the buzzing of a bee as I walked towards my house, then more buzzing, then a lot more buzzing.  I looked up into the tree and there must have been a couple hundred bees buzzing around all the newly opening blossoms, like a whole hive all in one place.  The sound was like one of those typical swarm scenes in movies, like The Mummy or Wickerman, but without any screaming due to the bees contented pollination efforts.
   I just hope they don't try and take up residence over our porch, I was planning to do some reading and day drinking on a fairly regular basis.

Chinese Brand Sniping

So I'm sure you've all heard of this phenomenon before, either from me or the media, but I just want to reiterate that the idea of a trademark or intellectual property is almost non-existent over here.

That being said I was walking to lunch one day a couple weeks ago and I saw this logo on a car parked in the lot.

Bold and daring.

 

If it looks familiar to you that's because it should.  Whether it's because most of us watched rap music videos on TRL in middle school or because the brand is so synonymous with wealth the Bentley logo is instantly recognizable;see below.

Classic

 

And if that weren't enough the Chinese company has even gone to the lengths of naming their brand "Riich."  What a shameless play at materialism.  The ironic thing though is that the car I saw this logo on looked like this one below, but yellow-greenish.

Hardly the ideal of wealth and fortune.

 

A dinky little two door sedan that looked more in company with a Volkswagen Bug of the 70's than a Bentley.

That is the kind of car I would have someone else drive for me.

 

You be the judge.  Next up Oreo's.

A Taste of Home in Taiyuan

 Our Group down by the locker room, post-game.

 It's been one week since the other teachers, some of our friends from the university and I went to go see the provincial basketball team play their final game of the season and I think my voice and throat have finally recovered. To anyone that has ever watched a sporting event with me, on TV or at the game, can attest I can get very loud and this time was no exception. Our group was mentioned in the local newspaper as being the "main energy in the stadium." The second paragraph is the one pertaining to us if you care to stick it in Google translate.  Gerald has some videos but I'm too lazy at the moment to try and get them from him, maybe later.

The attraction for us was watching Stephon Marbury, formerly of the Celtics, Knicks, Nets, Suns and Bucks, play for the Shanxi Brave Dragons. The Brave Dragons,known in Chinese as the 山西汾酒 (Shanxi Fenjiu) which is the local liquor specialty I mentioned in my last post, are probably one of the worst teams in the league. Before Marbury's arrival 6 weeks ago they were an abysmal 3-13. How they have fared since I don't know. But regardless, on Wednesday night they thoroughly trashed their opponents to the sound of 123-90 someting.

There he is, number 33. Whether he is more fun to watch then Grizzard I don't know.

To say nothing else the experience was well worth the pain of the next few days.  It had to be one of the most fun days I've had since coming here, this semester and last.  Our seats were second row almost right behind one of the baskets so we could see all the action right up close.  Our goal was to cheer loudly enough that any other Americans in the stadium would know that Anne and I (at least) were from Boston, and that maybe, possibly, we could get the attention of and finagle a picture with Marbury.  Sadly the latter was not achieved and we can only speculate on the former.

Our team sans-Marbury sadly getting stuffed.

On a side note, as one of our friends informed me "cheerleader" is translated as 啦啦队(lala dui) for the phonetic sound of "la-la." Though they are more of a dance team since they don't do any actual cheering during the game and their dances don't involve any singing.  During time-outs and in-between quarters they have a performance routine but after those they just sit in their seats on the baselines and wait. Anyways, they were fun to watch.

Getting Acquianted

Who is my new housemate? The term "a character" was most likely invented for him.

I've known Matthias Meyer since the first day I got here. We, with Nick, went to an all you can eat and all you can drink barbecue joint just off campus the night of my arrival on September 3rd, and at 30 yuan a person or roughly $4.50 we've been back frequently. Following dinner we took advantage of the absence of open container laws and had a street party where thankfully I did not meet any of my students-to-be. After the beers for the street party were gone we made our way back to Matthias' house (where I am living now) and continued to imbibe all variations of alcohol. From what I can recall now there were shots of 1/3 Baijiu (the infamous Chinese grain alcohol nicknamed "white lightning" by many foreigners) 1/3 coke and 1/3 Soju (a Korean Rice wine along the same lines as Saki). There was of course more beers, some Fenjiu (a special kind of Baijiu special to Shanxi province) and several concoctions of which no one was really sure what the contents were, juices, wines, what have you. And so on my first night here I was convinced to drink sufficiently enough that on my first morning here I had to throw it all back up. I'll hock that up to a combination of jet-lag, a hang over, and an insufficient diet for the 48 hours preceding the evening, but that's still just an excuse.

Matthias, Anne and Daniel at Golden Hanz, the German microbrewery, Brazilian barbecue,Chinese buffet restaurant in Taiyuan.

Since after our initial debaucherous encounter Matthias' character has continued to evolve. He is German and as my first night would elude he loves his beer. He regularly asks Nick or I to order him 90 or 120 or even upwards towards 200 beers at a time from a local shop. These he drinks himself as well as grudgingly parcels out during his many parties. Part of his teaching curriculum is to invite his classes to his house (almost every night of the school week) to eat and drink and converse in German. I say he asks Nick or I because his Chinese is extremely poor, despite the fact that he has been here for a year already. From what he told me he used to attend Graduate School in Australia but was repeatedly failed on papers and the like because his English was not good enough. He was then told by a friend about the program in Taigu and decided to come here to teach German. Since then ironically he says his English has improved tremendously.

He is rather eccentric. Aside from the 200 bottles of beer, at 600 ml each, stacked across a wall in his kitchen he also has 20+ McDonalds hamburgers in his refrigerator. He has boxes of t-shirts to market his product the "Cuddle-Beer" which is essentially a thin beer koozie with a smiling face and pillow hands for the over sized Chinese bottles. He has an enormous beer belly, upon which he rests his cellphone which he slings around his neck on one of those key-chain straps that bro's in high school used to let hang out of their back pockets. When he isn't texting he enjoys using it to play loud German techno music every once in a while, at home or at a restaurant. He has over 300 people on his QQ lists(a similar program to MSN Messenger or AIM) that he has divided into 5 tiers which you may ascend if you talk to him enough, I'm unsure which one I reside in. He is 36 and has been in the military, worked as a nurse, managed a nursing home, managed his own hotel, has written 3 books and is now working with us in Taigu and calls himself the only real "taigu ren" 太谷人 or person from Taigu. At a whim he'll tell you how in Germany he would regularly drink, boot, nap for 20 minutes (sometimes under park benches) and then rally. I am extremely excited to see what this next month or more will bring to say the least.

I think in the future the other fellows and I will be making "Jesus Matthias" shirts and the next German Party is this Monday and I don't know how many more beyond that.

Post-house-move

So as I said in the last entry I've been asked to move into a new house to allow the school to make repairs on my old house. They are planning on completely re-doing the roof and the interior to make it a suitable work-place for one of the school Vice-Presidents. And so today we moved all my junk out (which has brought to my attention the fact that I have way too much stuff) starting at around 2:30. To give you a sense of how direct and to the point people over here are by 3:30 our director already had guys in our house demolishing our kitchen and bathrooms while we were still taking bags over to our new residencies.

So lets look back on the timeline so far.
1pm on Thursday : We get calls saying we need to meet with Xiao Fan at 5pm.
5pm on Thursday : Xiao fan tells us that we need to move out of our house.
2:30pm on Friday : We start moving our stuff out.
3:30pm on Friday : Demo begins.
5pm on Friday : Gerald and I are completely moved into our new houses.

For what it's worth Xiao Fan shared with us the entire plan that the school has in store, the renovation of our house and our relocation is only a tiny piece of a much bigger move. All in all the school is planning on razing some 20 buildings, most of which look like the house on this blog except they are gray and in poorer shape, including our dining hall (which the administration has not found a new location for). Once the buildings are gone the trees will be removed and then the earth dug up for a brand new lake. It's a grand new vision for Shanxi Nongye Daxue 山西农业大学 （Shanxi Agricultural University).

Better than Josh Beckett

So Taigu has thrown us yet another curve-ball today. My housemate Gerald and I were told, in true Chinese last minute fashion, at 1 this afternoon that we needed to meet with Xiao Fan (the director of the Foreign Affairs Office) at 5 this evening.

To say that the news we were given was surprising to us would be an understatement. We were told that our house would be undergoing repairs to the roof before the rainy season and that we would need to move out annnd that we needed to move out by this weekend, this is Thursday by the way. Then after the repairs are finished we won't be able to move back in, the house is being given to a Vice-President. We're being relocated to another house that is already undergoing renovations. So we'll be moving almost every month this semester. If this were happening in the US we would be up in arms about it but over here what can you do? Quitting would be an option, except for the $1500 price tag that comes with it to get back home, plus I wouldn't want to to begin my professional life as a quitter. Being part of this system and in this environment you just have to learn to roll with the punches.

Silver lining? The house I'll be staying in for the next month will have wireless internet. So that's something I guess.

Recap

So I know I only started this little blog at the beginning of my second semester here in good ol' china but fortunately our gadget guru Gerald was genius enough to document our first semester with a couple videos. He's compiled them into a nice short, entertaining recap that sums up Fall/Winter in Taigu pretty well.

Here is the result of his labors.

China Winter 2009 Highlights from
Gerald Lee on Vimeo.

Courtesy of Spence

Just a little thing to get through the day.

It's just different

After living in Taigu for a while you have to come to understand that things just work differently over here, people think differently and act differently. You'll have to come to grips with the idea that you have no idea why all this stuff happens and there is no sense in trying to explain it. Even if you ask another Chinese person they'll just tell you it is because it is.
To give an example we recently took a trip up to Taiyuan on the school shuttle bus. After an hour of passing on the left into oncoming traffic and triple lane changes in front of semi's we were treated to a very special sight (for us). Parked in front of a toll (like the ones you'll find on the mass pike) right in the middle of the highway was a big red travel bus, the kind you would have taken on a middle school ski trip. As we passed by it I noticed there was no one inside, no passengers and certainly no driver. So where the hell was he? Taking a piss? Possibly. Yelling at or with someone about money for the toll? Probably. Is anyone bothering to get the bus out of the way? Nope. And business goes on as usual.

The Lantern Festival

So the holiday turned out a little bit lack luster for us. As is the way if things at SAU (NongDa) our hopes were at once lifted and then dashed in one definite stroke. When I arrived in Taigu last week the weather was warm, comfortable, even shorts worthy. It was the beginning of a new semester, the North Yard was being re-opened and the dream of a bright and sunny semester seemed within reason for once. We even played frisbee on Saturday afternoon.
Then, of course, Taigu laid a big dump on us. 20 degrees on Sunday, the day of the Lantern Festival, heavy wet snow all morning, it was less than pleasant. But we decided to make the trek into Taigu regardless for the sake of seeing how the town was celebrating. The plan was to find a place for lunch, walk around, take our time, pick some things up at the grocery store and make an afternoon of it. That's when Taigu tricked us again. Whether intentional or not, the restaurants we tried to eat at told us there were no seats available, we had to go somewhere else. I distinctly remember an one open table, though it did not have a table-cloth so I'll give the benefit of the doubt. So this, in the end, meant our only feasible options would be to either eat at one of the outdoor stalls in the snow, or go to DICO's, we chose the latter.
DICO's is like a Chinese version of KFC, but without the slaw, potatoes and corn. Now in December I was itching for dico's at times, fried chicken sandwiches were a welcome departure from our predominantly vegetarian meals, but on day five of my return I had not yet sunk into such a mindset. The sandwich however found it very easy to sink into my stomach and rumble around for a good while, giving me a nice nauseous feeling when we finally made it back outside.
To be sure, the Lanterns that were hung were very cool. There were hundreds of them lining the streets, and they ranged in shape from apples to rabbits to maps and characters. Had the snow not been blowing so hard it would have been nice to actually look up and enjoy them.
But that's Taigu.