Journey to the East

As you may recall, last week I played Ultimate Frisbee in the heart of Ji’nan at QuanCheng Square. Last Tuesday afternoon, I played a game or two of frisbee with 7 of my coworkers. Quite the curiosity, we drew a large crowd.  Lots of people with very professional looking cameras all wanted to get a snapshot of our game, and later of us posing with an elderly gentleman who had wandered over to welcome us to China. At the time, we all joked that we’d probably end up on the front page of the newspaper the next day… and we were right.

I came into work on Friday night, and was immediately shown that we had been featured in not one, not two, but THREE of Ji’nan’s major newspapers. Each had a large picture of our group playing in the square (one was even in color!). Suddenly, it seems, we are all celebrities. During the Introductory Parents’ Meetings that we are required to give this weekend for new classes, I was recognized several times by the parents of my new students as “one of the ones we saw in the newspaper.” Ahhh fame…

While I’ve seen all three papers, I’ve yet to actually get my hands on a copy. If I can, I’ll try to scan one in. Needless to say, it’s been kind of a trip. More updates will come after the end of this weekend’s classes. Until then… stay tuned.

By now, 6 months into my time in Ji’nan, I feel as if I’ve gotten the hang of being in China. I often feel as if I’ve settled into a comfortable little groove. In fact, sometimes it’s easy to forget where I am. I mean this quite literally. I understand in my mind that I’m in Asia, but like everyone who does something for long enough, that fact doesn’t phase me nearly as much as it used to. This is not to suggest that I’m over China or that I’ve lost my sense of adventure about the place. However, it does suggest that I’ve finally in some sense internalized that I’m here. It no longer blows my mind to think that I’m halfway around the world.

Sometimes, however, I’m reminded of just how far I’ve come. Often these moments are subtle: I’ll be walking along a sidewalk in the morning on a Saturday before starting class, and I’ll remember, “Oh, right, I’m in China.” This seems absurd, but it really does happen. The suddenness of the revelation is not disorienting. Nor is it unpleasant. It’s almost something that causes you to grin a little and laugh at yourself for having realized it. As if you could have somehow forgotten.

Other times, though, the reminder that you are a visitor in a foreign country are much more jarring, and they come in a way that isn’t subtle at all. In these cases, no matter how much you may think that you’ve adjusted to being in China, you’re reminded that you still very much stick out. China, in other words, may not have adjusted to you. Yesterday was such an event.

At this point, I think I should say something about my weekly routine. I only teach three days a week. Upon hearing this, most people have the same reaction: “You mean you get four days off during the middle of the week? What do you do with all of that time?” Yes, I do have that much time off. Yes, I try to use it to the best of my ability. Often this involves trying to get out and see something of Ji’nan. Some days are more successful than others. Since I’ve gotten a bike, I’ve taken to going on fairly long bike rides (I looked at a map the other day, and figured out that often, I’ll ride my bike in excess of 10 miles in a single day. Sometimes it’s even closer to 20), and I’ve found that it’s a good way to see different parts of Ji’nan. Regardless, in my free-time, I like to get out of the house and do things. Yesterday was a perfect example. Along with some friends from work, I headed out to Quancheng Square to play Ultimate Frisbee.

Upon arriving at the square, we sought out an area in which to play. One of my colleagues is a pretty avid player, who was actually on her college team, and is fairly intense about the game, so it was interesting to see how we, as amateur players would take to the game. As it turns out, it hardly mattered. We all started to play, carving a small corner out of the square where we could throw without fear of hitting innocent bystanders. Naturally, we became the source of huge commotion. During the course of the game, I began to notice a crowd gathering, ringing the playing space. We had an audience. This is not entirely unfamiliar territory: often when I’ve been playing at the table tennis tables with my fellow Aston employees, I’ve drawn some attention. Nothing like this. This was beyond what ever could have imagined. All of a sudden, there were fifty people at least, all gathered close by, all watching intently.

We wrapped up a game (apparently, in frisbee you play first to 11 goals wins…. something that I was previously unaware of), and were in the middle of a water-break.Suddenly, things got very strange. From across the square, an elderly man approached, walking with a bicycle. At first, my reaction was to think: “Old man, you really don’t want to park your bike here… we’re about to play another game, and you’re going to be absolutely in the way.” And then, I looked more closely at the bike. I noticed that attached to the back of the bike was an enormous Chinese flag, and a HUGE banner full of characters that I wasn’t able to read from my distance. Something was afoot. Before I knew it the man was speaking almost incomprehensibly, and at us.

As luck would have it, a few of our Chinese friends had come to play with us and could understand. “He wants to say that you young foreigners are China’s good friends, because you have come to China,” one explained to me. “He’d like to invite you to take your picture with him.” I was lost for words. Invite me to take a picture with him? What was that supposed to mean? Not wanting to be rude, we all agreed, gathered around the man (who told us repeatedly that he was 88 years old) and produced a camera from my friend’s bag. At once, everyone who had been watching the frisbee match ran over to take their own shots (some with cell phones, some with small pocket sized cameras, and some with really large SLR cameras with enormous lenses). There had to have been at least 100 people there. They were all taking photos of us. It was all very strange.

We took one round of pictures, which seemed to last forever. When it concluded, we assumed that the “event” was over, and that our new friend would leave. Not so. He continued to grandstand, and make dramatic gestures. He officially welcomed us to China. He talked again about all of our roles as friends of China. He insisted that we take one of his business cards (which one side warned, “Don’t Drink and Drive!” in big red characters). He talked about his travels and how he went around riding his bike all over the country. And then he called for another round of photos. Again, we cautiously obliged. Now, though, many of were beginning to be a little weirded out about the whole process (including our Chinese friends, who had become visibly squirmy about the whole deal). This time the cameras that came out were ENORMOUS. Some looked like they belonged to professional photographers, perhaps even people who worked for newspapers. Many of us turned to one another and began to question, silently and out-loud: “What the hell is going on?”

The second round of photos lasted even longer. More and more people had come over, and were looking on. We thought that with more photos taken, the crowd would finally move on. But, we were wrong. The crowd wouldn’t disperse. The man wouldn’t leave. He wouldn’t stop talking. We had been hemmed in to a corner of the square, with a crowd forming a large semi-circle around us. I began to feel somewhat uncomfortable. Finally, following the lead of one of my Chinese friends, we all made to leave. There would be no second game of frisbee. There was simply no way to play amidst the crowd.

While we were walking away, I asked my friend: “What was that? Why was he so interested in us? Why was everyone following him?” The response came that he was one of many people designated to be an ambassador for the Shanghai World Expo, opening in May. His primary job was to ride forth on his bike, spreading the news and bearing goodwill (or something like that). Naturally, as foreigners, we were the type of people he was supposed to welcome. It seemed like a very strange business indeed.

And it was a very strange and sudden reminder. I had not really felt intensely foreign in a long time… not since my first few weeks here. I suppose that occasionally I would have moments where I was very conscious of that fact that I was not from China, but nothing as jarring as this. I look back now and laugh a little at how absurd the whole thing seemed from my perspective. Regardless, it’s something I’ll never forget: my moment as a global ambassador.

Like March in the United States, March in Ji’nan is a time of ups and downs as far as weather goes. Some days, it’s really still winter and the weather is cold and windy. Some days, the weather is much more mild, and you almost feel the onset of spring when you walk out the door. Today was one of those days. The sun was out. The breeze was mild and warming rather than being a strong and icy current of wind. The high temperatures peaked at about 60 degrees Fahrenheit. It was one of the best days we’ve had here in a while. So, what did we do? We played ping-pong, of course.

My friends and I have become something like regulars at ping-pong, or table tennis as my British co-workers tend to refer to it. There’s a public park not far from Hero Mountain (one of the major networks of hills in the center of town which is surrounded by a public park) which has about 20 outdoor tables. During warm weather, my friends and I will go out and play there for a couple hours at least once a week. The park is usually pretty busy, and filled with people from all walks of life all coming to play ping-pong. Though many of the people who we see at the tables are clearly retirees who probably play about everyday, we’ve also seen lots of younger people and children out at these tables too.

It’s a very egalitarian setting. You’re likely to be asked by just about anyone to play, and most people that show up there seem to have a take-on-all-comers kind of attitude towards the game. It’s also a good place to get to chat with people, as they will inevitably wander over and seek out a match against the group of foreigners standing around. When this happens, we’re always happy to oblige and usually end up getting to chat a little with out newfound Chinese friends.

These are usually friendly games, and are pretty good areas for cultural exchange, too. I’ve found that sports are usually a good venue for cultural interaction, and while there are some notorious examples of times when international sports rivalries get to be too heated (e.g. England v. Argentina in soccer, Russia v. Czechoslovakia in water polo in the 1968 Olympic games, China v. Japan in anything at anytime) I think that friendly competition and mutual recreational past-times help to break down cultural barriers. Is this not what the Olympics are all about? My experiences at the ping-pong tables have, in these sense, been overwhelmingly positive. It’s a way for me to go out and meet and interact with Chinese people.

While the games may in fact be friendly, I should perhaps mention something about the skill level of the average player over here. Ping-pong is a serious past-time in China. I’ve been told by several Chinese people that I’ve met that this is China’s “National Ball Game” (which makes it, I guess, like baseball in America). While the game tends to be relegated to “basement game” status in the US, one thing is very clear about the sport here: it’s serious. In the individual world championships in 2005, 2007 and 2009 a Chinese competitor won in every category: Men’s and Women’s singles, doubles and Mixed doubles. This sport is not taken lightly.

Today, I was reminded of that quite clearly. How? When my two other friends and I arrived at the tables, we were met by a Chinese woman who wanted to play doubles with us. Fresh from having purchased a small lunch of egg-fried rice from the nearby “eat street” (literally a long alley lined with food vendors), my first priority was to have lunch. Little did I know, this would provoke quite a reaction from our new friend.

“Hey. Why you eating? Don’t eat that. You’ll get fat.”

I was astounded. Was she trash-talking?

“Hey. Eat faster! C’mon, faster!”

Yeah, yeah she was.

“Hey! You don’t need to eat! You’re already fat. C’mon, let’s go!”

I couldn’t believe this. I slowed down a little… and took my time, savoring my none-too-extravagant lunch, just to force her to wait. When I got done I found, to my distinct pleasure, that this woman was going to be my doubles partner. And, shockingly, she was incredibly intense about ping-pong. Playing doubles ping-pong Chinese-style usually means that you end up having to alternate hits. You basically return the shot from the person diagonally across the table from you. If you hit out of turn, you lose the point. This is both occasionally confusing and sometimes a little difficult to keep up (it involves a lot of coordination and communication and knowing when to get out the way). My new partner was not very impressed with my skills.

“What was that? Why didn’t you hit that? Were you asleep?” she asked, as I missed a return on a shot that was not only on the opposite side of the table– far out of my reach– but which she was clearly in the way of, because she hadn’t moved an inch. This continued for nearly the whole time we played (probably about two hours on the whole). Eventually we switched partners, but the smack-talking never ceased from this woman. Which just goes to show, I guess, that smack-talk is a universal language. All in all it was a very bizarre afternoon.

Meanwhile, the new semester continues to roll on in. We’re heading into week two of classes, and all of our new foreign teachers have arrived. Stay tuned for more on that later!

Before.

After.

Tonight, I did what, admittedly, I should have done quite a long time ago. I got my hair cut. It was the first one I’d had since August, and I suppose I was overdue. There are many reasons for my reluctance to get my hair cut over here. One is the issue of translation. Even now, I still lack the kind of Chinese vocabulary that one needs to be able to ensure that you’ll get a decent-looking haircut. Reliance on hand gestures and broken Mandarin seemed like a surefire recipe for a disastrously bad haircut. I rationalized that I’d be better off not getting my haircut because of this.

Secondly, there’s the matter of the guys holding the scissors and doing the actual cutting. Even if I could work out what it was that I wanted in a haircut, and get that point across in Chinese, there was no certainty that the stylist/barber/whatever would be able to deliver the goods. As a friend of mine pointed out, a westerner’s hair is likely to be much different than that of the usual customer in a Chinese barbershop/hairdresser (this is to say that my hair is softer and wavier than that of the average Chinese male), and thus might present some issues for anyone trying to cut it. Would they know how to handle hair like mine?

And last, I was a little scared by the hairstyles I’ve seen being sported by a lot of Chinese men of my age. There seem to be only two real options for hair style among Chinese men. Option 1: The Crewcut. My former Chinese teacher, Winter, once informed me that most Chinese men (himself included) believed that the crewcut was the best possible haircut that you could ever get… as if God himself (and by this I mean the God typically conceived of in the western popular imagination, the one depicted in Michelangelo’s frescoes on the ceilings of the Sistine Chapel) one day decided:

“You know, this whole long white hair and beard thing is SO 1500s. What I need is a new, hip look. What I need is a crew cut.”

Needless to say, the look doesn’t flatter me. Or at least not the current me. I suppose I had a really similar haircut when I was about 7. Not something I’d care to revisit, personally . The other option is similarly distinctive and unpalatable: REALLY HUGE feathered and dyed hair, or hair cut at very crazy and sharp diagonals and uneven length. This is a look sported by a lot of hip looking young Chinese men. In the end, they all look sort of like they just stepped out of an ’80s rock video. Again, not flattering.

Thus, for obvious reasons, I was a little afraid of the barber shop. Necessary precautions were taken before taking the plunge and getting a trim. First, I brought back-up: a friend of mine who could stand around and observe, making sure that the guy cutting my hair wasn’t doing anything too drastic, or that couldn’t easily be undone. Additionally, I thought long and hard about how I was going to say what I wanted him to do: “A little shorter, all over,” I decided, would be a safe set of instructions. In the end things worked out, and my much less unkempt-looking appearance is a testament to that.

More updates will come soon, so stay tuned.

The thought of celebrating Thanksgiving in another country is one that I hadn’t really considered until it was nearly upon me. In fact, the idea seems so foreign to this place that it wasn’t something that I had even really considered at all. How would we do it? Like Halloween, Thanksgiving isn’t really something that China observes. In fact, as I understand it, even my friends from the UK hadn’t really celebrated Thanksgiving before. Not surprisingly, the ritual begun at Plymouth Rock in 1621 remains a quintessentially American experience. So, how would any upstanding American mark this day while abroad? By eating roast duck, of course, just like our Pilgrim forefathers. Turkey (which is called 火鸡 huǒ jī, ”fire chicken”) is not available here.* As such, we found the best poultry substitute that we could… Peking Duck. About 30 of us set out for the Quanjude Kaoyadian (or Quanjude Duck Restuarant), which is a major franchise started in Beijing, and is easily the most famous duck restaurant in China.  Oddly enough it felt much like the scene from the movie “A Christmas Story” when the neighbor’s dogs eat the family’s Christmas turkey, thus forcing the bewildered to eat a roast duck dinner while being seranaded by the staff at the local Chinese restaurant. It’s an experience that doens’t really translate entirely accross cultures. This isn’t to say that this Thanksgiving wasn’t fun. I was incredibly glad that we found some way to celebrate this, my favorite, holiday. It ended up being a pretty good substitute (of course there is no substitute for a Thanksgiving turkey… no matter how incredibly delicious Peking duck is– and it is delicious. Also, no mashed potatoes, corn pudding or pumpkin pie… not quite the same), and everyone seemed to have a good time. In the end, the spirit of the day carried through. There we were, all of us together as friends, having a good time. Which certainly seemed to hit the mark for me.   

After dinner, we all headed out to KTV (a karaoke place). It’s a pretty intense deal over here, karaoke. Essentially, you rent a room in which you and your friends can choose to sing from a MASSIVE catalog of songs. For a lot of people, karaoke also means buying lots of snacks and beer, and can be a really extravagant and expensive night out. If nothing else, it’s a really good thing to do when you get a big group of people together, and seemed like the logical next step after dinner. Anyway, that was the way Thanksgiving unfolded: lots of duck, lots of singing. The way that Thanksgiving should be I guess.

It’s nice to have something of a holiday feel in the middle of this week, which is otherwise consumed with evaluating students, grading and preparing for this weekend’s midterm exams. It’ll be a busy time, and the distraction of a holiday was quite nice indeed. December promises to be an exciting month with the promise of a trip to Shanghai looming in the middle of it. We’re also going to be doing a big Christmas thing over here (we’ll actually be working on Christmas Day, which is no good, but we’ll make up for it, I’m sure), and we’ve set up a whole “Secret Santa” thing which should be fun (the added rule of, “you have to write a poem about your person to accompany your gift” is an interesting twist that I kinda like). Should be a lot of good stories in the coming weeks. Now, if I could only get a new computer… 

*=On second thought, you can probably buy a turkey in Shanghai. You can buy just about anything in Shanghai.

Most of you probably know that President Obama was in China for the last couple of days (though it sounds like a certain gesture he made towards the Emporer of Japan maybe the most notable thing to come out of this diplomatic visit to Asia). Based on my reading of American newspapers online, I get the sense that there’s been a lot of coverage with this trip, so I won’t rehash those stories… you’ve probably already heard all about them. There is however, one interesting moment from the Obama trip that held relevance for my life here in Ji’nan, and I thought I would share that anecdote with you.

Tuesday, I was returning home from my weekly Chinese lesson with my tutor, Winter. We conduct our classes at, of all places, the KFC near my apartment, and for two hours I study Chinese. I get to and from these lessons by taking a very short bus-ride. Usually this is a fairly uneventful experience, aside from the possibility that the bus will be jam-packed with people, and my short trip will be a rather cramped one.  As a result, I’ve gotten into the somewhat bad habit of just putting in my headphones and listening to my iPod for the duration of the trip. I’ve sworn to myself over and over again that I’m going to stop listening to my iPod so much while I walk around over here… After all, isn’t part of experiencing a place being able to hear how it sounds? And don’t I cut off part of that experience by walking around tuning everything out with an MP3 player? I’m beginning to think so. On Tuesday, however, I had left my iPod at home, and was simply staring out the window of the bus at the passing scenery. The only noise which was catching my attention was the sound of the TV at the front of the bus, to which I was not paying attention. Many of the city buses of Ji’nan are equipped with TV screens which play during the commute. Mostly these become background noise for me as often the speech on the TV is so fast that I can’t make out what is being said, especially amidst the din of people talking or the engine of the bus. I was incredibly surprised, then, when on Tuesday afternoon, I suddenly heard something familiar coming from the speakers on the bus. Music. The Star-Spangled Banner. I looked up, and sure-enough, the television was broadcasting the joint press-conference between President Obama and China’s President Hu Jintao.

It was surreal. Hearing your own country’s national anthem being played in another country is an odd experience. I don’t really know how to describe it. The song is something that is incredibly familiar to me, and in this context it seemed very alien, because… well, it was. I didn’t know how I should respond to it: I was the only American on the bus… “Should I take  my hat off?” I wondered to myself. I decided that was the appropriate measure, and so I did. I took off my winter cap and stood silently, watching the screen. The song ended, and almost immediately, the Chinese national anthem began to play. The girl behind me, grade-school aged probably, began to sing the words, and I had to crack a smile as I wondered what would have happened if I had done the same thing. 

Either way, it was an experience that I think will stay with me.  I’m not sure that it was particularly significant, but it made quite an impression for reasons I can’t quite understand.  Unfortunately, I reached my stop before I got to hear any of what was said at the conference… something that would have been equally fascinating, I’m sure.

There’s lots more to say about what’s been going on here, which will require a much more thorough entry, but I wanted to share this small experience with you all. More later.

My holiday has not been as festive as it would usually be– I had to teach today, as it is a Saturday. So, I made sure to carve out a good 10 minutes from every lesson to properly explain the concept of Halloween to my kids. This made me realize just how American the holiday is (or, rather, has become). As anyone who has been abroad on Halloween, or tried to teach foreign children about Halloween will tell you: other countries simply don’t celebrate Halloween like the US does.  Even in the West, it seems, there’s not as much buzz or anticipation of the holiday (Even my British co-workers today joked with me, “Today’s Halloween. You’re an American. Shouldn’t you be in costume all day or something?”). Certainly, the US is among the only major countries of the world which does trick-0r-treating. Like many other countries, then, Halloween isn’t really a huge deal in China. I’ve seen a few Halloween items for sale at the local RT Mart (A domestic competitor for WAL-MART) and I’m told at the Ji’nan WAL-MART there are costumes for sale. Also, in a shopping center nearby the major square in town I did see the displayed results of a pumpkin-carving contest: about 15 or so very small jack o’ lanterns. So, it’s clear that Halloween has some fringe-level awareness in this country, but it’s certainly not what I would call a huge, mainstream holiday. The major Autumn festival, Mid-Autumn Day, has passed, and holiday-wise the next big thing coming up is Christmas (which is also sort of a foreign curiosity to most Chinese people). When I was planning lessons, I began to wonder just what my students would know or be able to understand about today.

As it turns out, they knew more than I suspected. Almost immediately, when I asked about the day, at least one kid(often several kids) usually said something about candy. So, there is a general understanding of the basic premise of trick-or-treating: I come to your house; you give me candy; everybody wins.

The particulars of the arrangement are a little more fuzzy. For instance, that you have to wear a costume. In fact, the idea of a costume was one that was difficult for me to get translated into Chinese today (though I don’t know why… perhaps because the word that was being used by my translators–服装, or fú zhuāng– has a similar meaning to just plain “clothes”). The best I could work out was “to put on funny/strange clothes.”  Also particularly difficult to understand was asking “trick-or-treat?”  (and the meaning the phrase carries) instead of just marching up to the door and demanding “Give me candy!” When I explained the general concept of the term to the kids (i.e. “if you don’t give us candy we’ll pull a prank on you”) they seemed to expect that it came with some kind of eye-for-an-eye understanding of reciprocity, as if when someone told you that they didn’t have any candy in the immediate next moment, in plain view of the offending party, you were entitled to TP their yard, which the owner must accept as consequence for not having sweets.  I tried to explain that this was merely an expression, and that doing such things was often thought of as being pretty nasty and was frowned upon. I think the point came accross.  As you can imagine, I felt somewhat like David Sedaris in the chapter of Me Talk Pretty One Day, when in a French class full of non-French speakers that could only communicate through their pidgin French he attemped to explain the concept of Easter to someone who’d never heard of it (“He calls his self Jesus and then he die one day on two….morsels….of lumber.” … “He weared of himself the long hair and after he die, the first day he come back here to say hello to the peoples.”).

In the end, it was fun to explain the traditions that we are so accustomed to. It made me remember a lot of the little details about the holiday. We didn’t really celebrate today, as we have a full work day tomorrow, though I believe something is in the plans for tomorrow night, after the day has passed. None the less, I hope that everyone is enjoying themselves in on this day today in the US. I wish you, who are in a country where today is infinitely more significant than it is here, a Happy Halloween! Hope it’s a good one!

Here’s a small cultural experience to share with all of you: In my Chinese class this week, I learned this poem. It’s by Li Bai, a poet and courtesan of the Tang Dynasty, roughly around 700 A.D. Apparently, every Chinese school child learns how to recite this during grade school, and therefore everyone knows it by heart. Also, because of its references to family and home, its strongly associated with Mid-Autumn Day. I thought it was kind of cool, so I’ll post it here. The translation in English is in italics below:

静夜思 Jìng yè sī  – 李白Li Bai

床前明月光， Chuáng qián míng yuè guāng,
疑是地上霜。 Yí shì dì shàng shuāng.
举头望明月， Jŭ tóu wàng míng yuè,
低头思故乡。 Dī tóu sī gù xiāng.

“Thinking in the Quiet Night”- Li Bai

A shaft of moonlight falls across my bed, 

and I believe that it is frost on the ground. 

I raise my head to gaze up at the moon, 

then put my head down in memory of home.  

I’ll upload pictures from Tai Shan soon… a full weekend of work awaits.  Stay tuned for more later.

So, I’m back from Xi’an (more on that later). There’s a lot to tell about it, but I wanted to reach back and describe an amusing experience I had on the Thursday before I left Ji’nan and have yet been unable to write about.

I think it’s fairly obvious to say that my physical appearance gives me away as not being Chinese. Put me in a still photo of any given street in China, and it would be easy to single me out when asked “which one of these people is a foreigner?” (or, if you will imagine me in the Sesame Street “One of these things is not like the other” song). That being said, when my friends and I go out into the streets and interact with people, we’re often asked that Chinese equivalent of  “Not from around here are ya?” (”Ni shi na guo ren?” or  ”What country are you from?”). This happens frequently when I’m talking with a vendor, or sales associate, etc. (someone I haven’t met, but am interacting with only for a very brief time). Most of the time, this is followed by a short exchange. “America,” I’ll say. “Oh, you’re American. You speak Chinese very well. How long have you been here?” etc.  These are polite conversations, and usually the Chinese  person informs me that I speak Chinese “ting hao de,” or “very well.”  There’s also usually some discussion of my line of work. “I’m an English teacher,” I’ll say… usually drawing a response of “At Shan Da (Shandong University)?” ”No,” I say, “Aston.”  Things continue this way until the conversation must end.

Nowhere does this happen more often than in taxi cabs. Some cab drivers will chat you up (I’ve had conversations about everything from famous Ji’nan landmarks and the upcoming All China Games– the Olympic Trials– to what I think about President Bush with cab drivers). Others, however, speak a very thick and fairly unintelligible local dialect, and are nearly impossible to understand, let alone communicate with. On Thursday afternoon, I had an interesting experience with just such a driver. I caught a cab near the school where I work. I am a member of a gym in the basement of the same building, so often I’ll multitask, using a trip to the gym as an opportunity to pick up classroom materials I need for lesson planning from school. On Thursday I emerged on to the street from one of these multipurpose trips clutching a fresh set of lesson plan sheets (t0 be filled out at home), and dripping with sweat from the treadmill. I looked a bit like someone who’s has just gone for a swim. I hailed a taxi, looking to return home quickly. The driver and I had a brief exchange. I told him the address, which he didn’t recognize. I told him the general neighborhood, and told him I could direct him from the large intersection near my apartment. At this he was impressed. He gave me the usual line about my Chinese being better than he expected, and asked where I was from. I told him “America,” thinking that the well worn conversation about who I was, and why I was here was about to begin. Not so.

What happened next was strange. He moitioned to my head, and said something about “ni de toufa,” or “your hair.” I’m sweaty, I thought. He doesn’t want me sweating all over his cab. “Sorry, I’m sweaty… I just went to exersize,” I told him. “No,” he said. In the same garbled Ji’nan dialect, he repeated what he had said, and made the same gestures. “Your hair,” was still all I could understand. “Sorry,” I told him. “Wo ting bu dong,” I told him “I don’t understand.”  He chuckled, and repeated “Ting bu dong,” not an unusual response. As he did so we pulled into a stoplight. He turned, not his head, but his whole torso, to stare directly at me. I noticed from the corner of my eye. I glanced over, and there he was, staring directly at me, expressionless, perhaps a little bemused. Naturally, the stoplight lasted an eternity. We stood there for a full 3 minutes, him staring at me and saying nothing, me nervously trying to avoid his gaze. Finally, the light changed, and we drove on, as if it had never happened.

Let me be absolutely clear… the major reason, I believe that the guy was staring at me was because he found my appearance so very curious (this is at least what I was able to determine from what little I could understand of his speech… also, I think he was more than a little surprised to learn that I could speak Chinese). I don’t know why this strikes me so. It’s not a significant event. And it’s not the first I’ve been stared at. It is, however, the most intense curiousity I’ve ever been subject to. Similarly, my inability to leave ensured that it would be a prolonged, and intense awkwardness. No, the event is not significant, just another reminder that I am still a stranger in this foreign place.