minor change
Akismet seems to have broken and I’m getting lots of spam, so comments have been disabled on posts older than 7 days – which is probably all posts at this point. A couple of other minor tweaks, too. Now, hopefully once this semester is over and done with and out of the way, I’ll have time to think, and maybe even write something.
my first Beijing rush hour
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on December 8, 2010
…well, my first and second Beijing rush-hours as a driver, that is. I picked up my licence on Monday afternoon and got home in time to quickly whip around to the nearest carwash and get the car cleaned up. Tuesday after class I had time to take the car for a bit of a spin on the relatively lightly-trafficed roads around here. Today, though, was my first day of really serious driving in China.
Today I survived two bouts with Beijing rush-hour traffic and a mad mission to an obscure spot just inside the North 4th Ring nearby the Bird’s Nest, but buried down a wee lane, to pay a vehicle tax that from now on will be paid with the compulsory insurance – and therefore will no longer require a trip to that mysteriously hidden branch of the tax department.
Things I learnt:
1: Beijing rush-hour traffic is less daunting than I expected. Maybe that’s cos of all these years as a pedestrian and cyclist in Chinese traffic – including much worse than Beijing.
2: Driving is a lot like falling off a bicycle. Seven and a half years after having last driven, I feel quite comfortable behind the wheel, like I’m just getting used to an unfamiliar car (which is true taken on simple face value as well).
3: Mandopop is supremely suited to driving in mad traffic. Those silky, smooth, polished harmonies are the perfect antidote to the cacophony of the road. It’s calming, indeed, soothing, in other words.
4: It feels great to be driving again, it’s finding a place to park that’s a major pain in the arse.
5: Buses can be very useful. Changing lanes and turning they create large holes in the traffic that you can use to your advantage – unless the guy in the miandi behind you is cranked up on methamphetamine and his first ever double espresso and determined to demonstrate via his driving that he has the biggest dick in all of East Asia. Has? Is, perhaps…
6: Buses can be equally intimidating if you happen to be on the other side – the side that is being held back to create that hole in the traffic. Especially so if your car is small enough that the 1300cc engine provides all the power you could need. But the drivers don’t want any more trouble than you do, so claim your space if it is safe to do so.
7: I am an extremely vocal driver. Many another road user was told what they should be doing in no uncertain terms. “No, I have the right of way and you are going to stop now” in at least one case. “Bugger off back to Henan, fool”, in another case. But that SUV with Henan plates was being driven especially insanely. One thing I will miss when we head back to Aotearoa is being able to tell from the licence plates which province and/or city a car has come from. I think that was the first time ever my wife told me to shut up. Certainly the first time she ever thought I was talking too much. But don’t worry, I’m not a vocal driver in the getting in a fight sense, just in a quietly venting sense.
dalliance
When my first boy was born
I went off the road two years.
Twenty-one years on, another son,
I do the same, go offroads, and backroads off backroads.
And if that’s not enough
to keep the boys happy,
take a river of a road to the sea.
-from Doubtless, by Sam Hunt
Finally caught up with some of that Kiwi poetry I brought back with me in February. Yeah, I should’ve been studying my road code.
But I must remember, my windowshelf is not a booksill. Put them back in their proper place, to be pulled out, dusted off, and indulged in next time I need to avoid the necessary and inevitable.
Today’s dalliance: A sprinkling of a little each of Kapka Kassabova, CK Stead and Sam Hunt. Vincent O’Sullivan as yet untouched.
Doubtless is a book of new and selected poems of Sam Hunt’s, published 2008 by Craig Potton Publishing. It happens to end with an old favourite of mine (the beauty of being both new and selected), Oterei River Mouth:
I get to think that God
is somewhere there between the rivermouth and sea
glistening
helplessly
with only a broad sky a bored dog and me
listening.
I love the peace and broad acceptance of an embracing Nature of this poem. I spent many a happy hour in my youth along a river bank, estuary, coastline feeling and seeing exactly what that poem brings out into conscious expression.
The other books mentioned (albeit only by author’s name) of this afternoon’s dalliance, for those who may care, are:
The Black River, CK Stead, Auckland University Press, 2007.
Geography for the Lost, Kapka Kassabova, Auckland University Press, 2007.
And from what I read this afternoon, great books both.
And the one I didn’t get to this afternoon:
Blame Vermeer, Vincent O’Sullivan, Victoria University Press, 2007.
Seems 2007 was a good year for New Zealand’s poetry and university presses.
And with books back off shelf and in hand, I can’t resist (never leave me unattended in a bookshop) flipping through the O’Sullivan, and the first I find is this:
A dream of my father, winding our watches together
He hands me his watch to wind,
I give mine to him, silently.
So my time runs down with his,
His ending time with me.
To which I say, ah, beautiful ambiguity.
But I have yet to find a New Zealand poem to match Hone Tuwhare’s Mauri for sheer vital force, not raw, but quiet, eternal, boding and biding, ever-present crouched subtly beneath the surface, moving constantly through the rocks, magma and ocean currents. I struggle to think of any poem from any country or culture that can match Mauri‘s brooding immensity.
But you’ll have to search for that one yourselves, with the warning that you will be amply rewarded both for and by what you read.
football and cars
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on November 10, 2010
It’s been an interesting few days.
On Saturday a few of us foreign teachers went round to The Den where we met up with a couple of friends. Then we wandered over to the East Gate of Workers’ Stadium looking for a scalper. After a bit of to and fro we got enough tickets at what we felt was a reasonable price, and the others went in while I waited at the gate. All the others in no hassle, I gave the scalper his money and joined them. Then we went through a security check and found ourselves in the grounds surrounded by a large group of people wearing green, a smaller but far more disciplined group wearing a slightly more subdued shade of green, and a large group in dark blue, some with alsations on leashes.
The large group in green were the Beijing Guoan supporters. To be expected in Beijing, of course, especially it’s Guoan playing. They were a good-natured bunch, really, moving in their various groups towards their various gates with their flags, scarves, vuvuzelas, green devil horns and various other bits and pieces.
And there was security in spades. People’s Armed Police in green, and PSB, thousands of PSB. Some, stationed at various posts. Dog handlers lined up in perfect rows near the gates. Others, patrolling. And their vehicles parked in strictly regimented rows inside the gates, including, by the north gate, the kinds of vehicles I would really rather never see used in anger. And after a fruitless search for scarves, we found our gate and entered the stadium to find more security. PSB on patrol, of course, but men in not-terribly-expensive-looking suits, some on patrol, others stationed at particular points. We found seats, and saw out on the athletics track more security. This time men in what looked like police-issue uniform trousers and shoes and black nylon bomber jackets stationed in two rows, one inner one outer, at intervals of two or three metres all the way around the track, sitting on chairs with feet apart and hands on knees, staring seriously and intently at the crowd. We saw those last group move only when ordered to stand for the national anthem and then sit down afterwards. One did move his hand to deflect a paper airplane that was about to hit his knee -and in doing so earned a small cheer from the crowd in our corner, but otherwise they remained perfectly motionless the entire time.
At the opposite end of the field on the upper tier of the stand just below the scoreboard was a tiny group dressed in bright blue. A distinct line of dark green around their section of the stand revealed they had a very heavy People’s Armed Police guard. They must’ve been the Jiangsu Shuntian supporters. They tried to get a few chants going in the build up to the game, but the large mass of bright-green bedecked Guoan supporters in the central stands closest to them quickly shouted them down with one of the Guoan supporters’ more notoriously vulgar chant. That was fun from the “teach my colleagues rude Chinese words” point of view. But the Shuntian supporters seemed to be outnumbered by their PAP guard, from what I could tell through Saturday’s rather thick haze, and never had a show against the sheer weight of numbers Guoan musters on its home field.
We were in the northeast corner of the stadium. The Ultras, so I was informed by a friend who’s attended a few Guoan games, were that especially green, especially loud, especially passionate group not far around the curve in the northwest corner. The two other densely packed green sections straddled midfield on either side of the pitch. I found it particularly cool when the Ultras and the crowd at midfield on the east side got a call-and-response thing going, with us in the middle seeing these chants fly through the air between the two groups.
The game started, and the first half wasn’t much to talk about. Guoan was definitely the dominant and more agressive team, but they seemed to lack urgency or much idea of a game plan. Shuntian, although very weak on offense so far as I could tell, did have one huge asset in a very tall, well-built defender who looked perhaps Arabic so far as could be seen through the haze and failing light, who had that magic ability to be everywhere the ball was and stop it from moving towards the goal. And not just the ball. A Guoan player tried to get around him but literally bounced off him the way a tennis ball bounces off a concrete wall. But a Shuntian player fouled in the box, and Guoan had a shot on goal. It should’ve been easy: one on one, and the goalie has no way of knowing which way the ball is going to fly until it’s in the air, and the spot is so close the goalie has no time to correct himself if he guesses wrong. And what happened? The Guoan player hoofed it so high over the bar it looked like he was shooting for the moon. Well, slight exaggeration, but it should’ve been an easy goal, and it was right in front of us.
The second half was more of the same until about halfway through when, way down at the far end of the field we saw a flurry of activity and a ball entering the net. The crowd, including us, was instantly on its feet roaring with long-delayed satisfaction. And this, finally, brought some urgency to the game. Both teams came back out firing, although with Guoan still the more dominant. Shuntian made the Guoan defence work – although their offense wasn’t great – and Guoan threatened the Shuntian goal a few more times. But fulltime came with Guoan winning 1-0.
A pleasing result, to be sure, but the best part by far was the atmosphere. And I don’t mean that thing that should’ve been a perfectly clear mixture of gases dominated by nitrogen that became increasingly opaque as darkness fell. Our corner was a relaxed, easy-going bunch looking for some decent football and a hometown win. To our left and right were the more passionate supporters, but they, too, seemed to be out more for the enjoyment of it.
And so we wandered out feeling good about the world and headed back to The Den for nutrition and liquid refreshment.
Crossing the road I thought we were about to see a great example of people power as the sheer mass of the green-bedecked created two small traffic jams, one that would be northbound, and one that would be southbound. But a southbound bus driver called the Guoan supporters’ bluff. Oh well, you can’t win them all.
I’ve never liked The Den. It’s the kind of place that leaves me desiring a long, hot shower with bucket-loads of soap. It’s something about the sheer number of sifty older men, the crowd they attract, and the vibe they create. Still, it’s tolerable as a place to meet and a place to watch the sports one can only watch via satellite TV. To make it worse, I’d been feeling a bit rundown, tired and headachy the whole day. More importantly, having a pregnant wife waiting at home really cut down on any desire to stay out late. But I hung out for a while, then left my friends with money to cover my share of the bill and headed home.
Sunday was just as much fun. We headed over to a Suzuki dealer not far from here to look at a few cars. The two models we were most interested in were the new Alto and the Gazelle. We had a look at the new Alto, but as soon as I got in the driver’s seat, I said no way. There’s something about the way the roof curves down into the windscreen that makes me feel like half my vision is cut off, and there’s no way I’d want to drive feeling like that. Not only that, but it had close to zero boot space (the old Alto could fit a fold-up bicycle – I know from experience) and very little room for passengers. The Gazelle, on the other hand, felt perfectly comfortable, had plenty of boot space, and room for passengers (although not for an adult passenger behind the driver’s seat if I’m driving – I need to push the seat back all the way to accomodate my legs). And so we indulged in the best form of impulse buying and bought one.
While we were waiting for the paperwork to be processed we tried all the other models on offer except the Grand Vitara. The SX4 and Swift had the same visibility issue as the Alto. Only the Jimny was one I would feel comfortable driving based on that visibility issue, but we don’t want an SUV, it’s out of our price-range, and two-door vehicles aren’t so convenient for getting infants in and out of.
Today I met my brother in law at the dealer and we picked up the car, got some petrol, and headed off to get the car tested and registered. As he’s the only one in the family with a valid driver’s licence (I’m still in the process of getting my New Zealand licence converted to a Chinese licence), he’s the only one who could legally drive the car.
I never really thought I’d ever have to teach somebody to drive. I certainly never thought I’d have to teach somebody to drive in what is in chronological order the fourth foreign language I have studied, or in terms of actual ability, my second language. If it had occurred to me that I may need to, at some stage in my life, teach somebody to drive, I certainly never thought I’d have to do that in any foreign language. But it very soon became clear that although he had learnt how to operate a motor vehicle, his skills weren’t great, and he had absolutely no idea of how to handle a car on the road in traffic. There were too many conversations along the lines of:
“STOP THE CAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Car stops.
“What? Why? We need to go through…”
“But the car in front of us is stopped! Can’t you see the brake lights shining?! When the brake lights of the car ahead of us are on, we need to stop, too!”
There were far too many obvious holes in his knowledge and understanding of motor vehicles, traffic and roads. It made for a very stressful day.
And just to add to the stress, the dealer sent the wrong document to the testing station, so we had to wait while they went back and got the right document. This meant that we couldn’t complete the testing and registration until after lunch.
But the staff of the testing and registration stations were on the ball, and once we had the right documents, everything went smoothly. It also helped that over the lunch break, we left the car parked at the front of the queue, and that anyway, there weren’t that many cars to be processed in the afternoon, and so we were out and back to the dealership to finish up the paperwork pretty quickly.
And so now we have a brand new Suzuki Gazelle paid for and registered and sitting in the driveway outside our apartment block. It feels good, but it will feel better when I have my Chinese drivers licence in my hands.
reversing the brain drain
Posted by wangbo in tilting at windmills on October 31, 2010
It’s been a surprisingly interesting morning in the New Zealand Herald, one of the more interesting articles I’ve come across being this one: Kea lures Kiwis to fly home. I’ll resist the urge to pick the headline apart, but it is surprisingly well constructed for a newspaper.
Kea – the Kiwi Expat Association – has been around for a few years now. I’ve been a member for I can’t remember how long. It was founded to link up expat Kiwis and use our ties internationally and to New Zealand to help boost the New Zealand economy. All well and good, and a mission I agree with and support. I haven’t found Kea to be terribly useful, personally, but that is in large part because I haven’t been the most active member [that was my attempt to win this year’s “Understatement of the Year” award], but part of the reason for my inactivity is that the China branch for a long time seemed focussed on the Shanghai business community. It has expanded to include Beijing a lot more, but I never see anything in the email updates which would be useful to me or to which I could contribute. I don’t mean to knock Kea. Given the level of activity, it must be useful to many expat Kiwis and plenty of them must be contributing, it just seems to all be happening in fields far distant from those I work in.
And, of course, one thing New Zealand as a whole has been worrying about for decades is the Brain Drain. Trouble is, nobody’s been able to come up with a way to attract us expat Kiwis back. Sure, there is the lifestyle and environment. There is education – a field in which New Zealand does pretty well. There is family. And no matter which way you cut it, it’s just home. But is that enough to attract us back? Some quotations from that article might shed some light as to why so many Kiwis prefer to live and work overseas:
“Have to say returning to New Zealand has been a very negative experience. I earn less than a third of what I did in Europe, work at a level of about half I did over there and now have an inferior lifestyle …”Most New Zealand employers also did not want to recognise overseas experience or did not understand it, he said. “However, definitely applaud the efforts of Kea in aiming to provide support.”
…
“I’ve been hearing media and academia harping on about the ‘brain drain’ for the past 10 years … If we’re such good innovators, why can’t we come up with innovative ways to keep our local talent and attract global talent to our shores?”
…
“Opportunities in New Zealand for science are quite limited, especially for research.
“What I am struggling with at the moment is the way New Zealand industries place you in a particular category or give you a specific label and don’t see the crossover skills that you can bring.”
Well, the simple fact is that New Zealand is a small economy, and that is always going to restrict opportunities. But New Zealand’s employers could, and should work harder at paying better, expanding research and development, recognising the true value of language and cultural skills, and valuing overseas work experience.
With a baby on the way, my wife and I have done some hard thinking about where we’d rather raise kids, and when it comes to the natural and social environment and education – especially education – New Zealand looks really attractive. But we’re going into this knowing that with our skills being in language and culture and our work experience all in China, it will not by any means be an easy transition.
Another quotation:
“If you’re coming back to Auckland, think about doing something outside the square.”
Oh, absolutely, it is always good to think outside the square, and I’ve been pondering outside the square ways in which we could make our skills and experience work in New Zealand. And we probably would aim for Auckland, as it is the largest, most diverse city with the largest Chinese population and the university best set up for our further educational needs in New Zealand. But outside the square thinking should not be necessary. New Zealand needs to offer paths both inside and outside the square, with outside the square being an optional lifestyle choice.
And the mention of Linked In had me doing a quick search for the Kea group. Found it easily, joined, and browsed through the list of members. What I saw was a lot of very successful Kiwis, what I did not see is any working in linguistic fields. Yep, a definite lack of language teachers, translators, interpreters, or academics working in linguistics, applied linguistics, translation studies, or languages and literatures. I may well have skipped over a few – the Kea group has many members – but I didn’t see any. Given the wide diversity of countries these people are working in and the huge variety of surnames, there must be plenty of polyglot Kiwis out there, but bi- and multi-lingualism are not enough. We need people working in linguistic fields, too. Gotta train up the next generation somehow, for starters, and there will always be a need for professional translators and interpreters, even if we do magically transform our country into a nation of polyglots.
And this brings me to another article I found interesting: John Key has been busy at the East Asia Summit. And it always slightly frightens me when I found myself agreeing with a National Party MP, especially when that MP is the PM, but he’s right:
More jobs and a stronger domestic economy will flow from further building New Zealand’s trade ties with Asia’s surging major economies, says Prime Minister John Key.
But to trade with Asia, and to do that business well, we need to learn their languages and cultures. It is not enough to stick with the usual lazy Anglo assumption that because everybody’s learning English, we don’t need to learn foreign languages. It is most certainly not enough to continue feeding the stereotype of the naive Kiwi businessfolk flying in, signing a contract, and disappearing back home again, apparently thinking they’ve been successful, but having actually achieved only a tiny fraction, if any, of the success they were hoping for. If we’re going to be successful in our trade with Asia, we need to understand them. How? We start with learning their languages, because language is the key to culture and so learning their languages will allow us to understand thier cultures. Learning to understand their cultures will enable us to understand their situation and view of the world. Why do we need to understand their situation and view of the world? Because without that understanding, you’re going to have a hell of a time pitching your products and services to them.
If we’re going to make a go of trading with Asia, New Zealand’s business leaders are going to have to value Kiwis with Asian experience and skills in Asian languages. It really is that simple.
In my experience, expat Kiwis are a pretty proud, patriotic bunch. I don’t expect you lot back home to understand or even believe that statement, or the one that follows this sentence. Sometimes I think we’re even more patriotic than you lot back home. We’re always excited to see our fellow Kiwis succeeding, and we want to see our country not just do well, but kick arseingly do well on the global stage. And we want to contribute to our country’s success. And we want to know we have a successful country to go home to. New Zealand’s small size means that there will always be some of us who need to leave to fully develop our potential, that much is unavoidable. And there will always be those who prefer the expat life or the lives they build for themselves overseas. That is also unavoidable. But we don’t need such a huge brain drain. You want us back? Respect what we’re bringing back with us.
in praise of subtlety
Posted by wangbo in random, tilting at windmills on October 24, 2010
A few days ago, after I’d escaped work, the damp chill that has settled over Beijing for a week now not being overly conducive to sitting in the garden with a book as I usually prefer, I sat down to watch a couple of films. What I really appreciated about these two films is that they had a certain quality that seems to have vanished from Hollywood.
Subtlety.
Hollywood no longer tugs at the heartstrings. It takes a heavy duty chain, ties one end firmly to the heartstrings and hooks the other up to a high-powered winch, and tears the heartstrings out with extreme violence. Hollywood no longer trusts our intelligence to read between the lines or correctly interpret understatment. Instead it takes all the gory details, heats them up white hot, and sears them into our eyeballs, you know, just to make sure we don’t miss anything.
But subtlelty makes for a vastly more powerful film. What gives Shooting Dogs its force is that the horror and violence of the Rwandan genocide happens mostly off-screen, and appears on-screen only from a distance or behind a conveniently-placed bush. Most of Apocalypse Now is a quiet boat ride up a river, allowing time to properly develop the psychological play. I would argue that the battle scenes in Platoon are almost purely incidental and the real action, Charlie Sheen’s character’s psychological journey, happens in the quiet moments. Each of these films could’ve been Just Another Flick About Some Big Historic Event We’re All Conflicted About. Instead, they tell their stories not through events on the screen, but through allowing the characters to present themselves and develop as the story unfolds, and allowing the development of the characters to unfold the story. In other words, they engage the mind and the true, deeper emotions. We want to smash the French captain to a bloody pulp not because the soundtrack or his black hat tell us he’s a Bad Guy, nor because he does anything in particular (indeed, very little is actually done in Shooting Dogs), but because the film has brought us in to the refugees’ situation and gotten us emotionally involved. We feel the full range of emotions all the characters caught in the mission school feel not because the soundtrack tells us “You must feel despair now!” or “You must feel rage now!”, but because when we watch Shooting Dogs, on an emotional level we are in the mission school with the Belgian peacekeepers, priests, students and refugees.
Such films are rare.
And the two I watched the other day that sparked off this little ramble? The first was Casablanca, and the second was Roman Polanski’s Ghost Writer.
What I loved most about Casablanca is that apart from a brief introduction to the time, place and general situation and a flashback to Paris just before the German invasion, the characters are simply presented as they are, where they are, when they are. There is no melodrama, no cliché, and the soundtrack is possessed of considerably more subtlety and tact than your average sledgehammer. The characters are not grossly oversimplified Good Guys, Bad Guys and The Love Interest. Instead they are presented as highly complex people, and it is left to us to try and make sense of their personalities and motivations through their actions and interactions. Indeed, of all the main characters, I think about the only one whose motivations are entirely clear is Major Strasser, and even he is not some simple stereotype of the evil Nazi. But about the only thing I find clear about Bogart’s Rick Blaine and Rains’ Louis Renault are that they are both playing roles. But why? Partly to help them survive and navigate a rather chaotic situation, partly, in Blaine’s case, as an emotional defense. But then the ending raises still more questions. These two who could not be described as friends so much as rival players who merely cooperate when they need each other or the services the other can provide ride off into the sunset together with a common objective. How did that happen? Force of circumstance is not enough of an explanation.
And Roman Polanski. He can make some really good films (The Pianist) and some absolute rubbish (Macbeth). Ghost Writer belongs in the really good category. Like Casablanca the characters are presented simply as they are, where they are, when they are, and no judgements are made. A lot of background information is necessary to understand the story, but that is slowly fed in through conversations between the characters, and done so in a way that gradually increases the tension. Like Shooting Dogs, most of the action takes place off-screen and is revealed indirectly through the actions and reactions of the characters. And the ending, I felt, quite nicely left everything but the ghost writer’s life wide open. And one thing I found to be quite a nice little touch is that Ewan McGregor’s ghost writer remains unnamed throughout the film.
So why do so few films take this quiet approach of engaging the viewers’ mind and deeper emotions? Am I the only one who feels insulted by such nonsense as Avatar? Can we please get some more intelligent film-making, or am I asking too much?
what on earth is going on?
Posted by wangbo in ranting, tilting at windmills on October 1, 2010
I remember being asked quite some time ago why I no longer rant about New Zealand politics on this blog. My answer was something along the lines of NZ politics being so depressingly pathetic that I couldn’t face it anymore. Add to that the fact I haven’t been eligible to vote since 1999, having been outside NZ for longer than 3 years at every subsequent election, which takes away some of the incentive. And in 1999 I didn’t vote, because my voting papers arrived in Changsha mere days before the deadline, leaving me essentially no time to decide which was the least bad party of a rather bad bunch before sprinting to the nearest post office in the hope I might get my papers to the nearest consulate (Hong Kong, and assuming consulates could handle such things, otherwise the embassy in Beijing) in time. I suppose, having been in NZ last February, I’ll come in under the 3 year limit next election, but I was only there for 2 weeks, whereas one has to have lived in an electorate for one month to enroll, so I still can’t see how I’ll be allowed to vote. Basically, my participation in NZ politics is limited to vain ranting on this blog, and that’s not much of an incentive to involve myself.
But since that trip to NZ in February, I’ve been paying more attention to the NZ media and goings-on back on my home islands. The rate NZ politics is going, I might have to stop for the sake of my cardiovascular health. Things are building up to a point where I may not be able to resist resuming my ranting about NZ politics. And a gigantic rant follows, so I’ll put it behind a break.
shopping
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on September 24, 2010
The results of today’s trip to our local Carrefour were, as always, mixed. There were the usual crowds, though timing our trip for midday-ish seemed to moderate that eternally frustrating aspect of any Carrefour trip. Well, it’s not the crowds so much as the dopey twits that crowds contain. They were present today, of course, but in the usual proportion to the total crowd, so manageable.
We happened to come across the last 100% pure New Zealand wool quilt on sale, the one that had been put out on display. It was still clean, though, miraculous as that may seem, and so we got the woman in charge of quilts to get us a box and pack it up for us. 200 kuai, not bad. Especially considering there was a stack of Aussie wool quilts right next to it going for absurd prices. So tell me, what would you do? Snap up the last example of top quality product at a very good price, or go for the second rate product at a grossly inflated price? And yes, that question was motivated as much by trans-Tasman rivalry and my patriotic duty as anything else. And our quilt came with a free facecloth! Awesome!
Lamps? Forget it. Fortunately we’d already scoped out the B&Q next door and had noted one that a) looked cool; b) would serve our purposes exactly; and most importantly c) was reasonably priced. Want a desk lamp suitable for study? Fine. Anything else? Forget it.
In the queue to pay for our new quilt: Sheesh, I’m in the wrong line of work! Making baby products is the way to go. Really. And Carrefour is generally good at keeping the prices low, so I hate to think what the price tags on those things would’ve been in any other store. I guess we’re going to be spending the next 6 or so months scrimping and saving. I’m not worried about what comes after that, as I’m sure that from the end of March onwards, even if we have time, we won’t have the energy to waste money.
Downstairs and headed in my usual direction. Half-litre cans of Apostel Bräu Extra Strong (yes, on these cans ‘extra strong’ is written in English) at 9.9 kuai each. Best deal. Carlsberg cans of the same volume were cheaper, but that’s the local version, whereas the Apostel Bräu is imported from Germany and, as the cans proclaim, “GEBRAUT NACH DEM DEUTSCHEN RHEINHEITSGEBOT”. I’m not sure about the lack of an umlaut on the a in gebraut, but from what I remember (and it’s been a hell of a long time since I studied German, so corrections are more than welcome), umlauts are not needed on capitals, and it is all caps on the can. I really miss the days when our local Carrefour used to stock Greene King IPA, imported from England, half-litre cans at roughly the same price as this Apostel Bräu. Apostel Bräu is good, but the Greene King IPA was better, and I really loved having such a good brew available at such a reasonable price. Still, the Apostel Bräu is a good enough substitute, and better, I hate to say it, than the Malaysian-brewed bastardisation of Guinness.
I wish I could afford, or justify splashing out on, a Chimay…. Maybe for 满月.
The pizza in their deli looked good, but then we got home and reheated it (Carrefour’s just far enough to require reheating). So I spent a slightly delayed lunch slowly, patiently, frustratedly chewing through what felt and tasted like warm, stale rubber. Carrefour usually has passable product at reasonable prices, but in this case the product would have been better used as punishment for misbehaving kindergartners (you want to hit your classmate? I’ll make you chew Carrefour pizza if you do that again! – nah, perhaps a bit too cruel) and was grossly overpriced. If they want me to ever eat their pizza again, they’ll have to pay me 790 kuai per slice rather than charge me 7.9 kuai per slice.
And then a quick trip back to B&Q to pick up that lamp we need, and a mop, then home.
So we got most of what we needed, with the sole exception of light bulbs, which were forgotten amidst all the excitement, but still, yesterday’s shopping trip was far more successful. One trip in which we acquired exactly what we intended to for the prices we wanted to pay and managed to dispose of our old sofa-bed, albeit for considerably less than we would’ve liked, but hey, how much can you get for a broken-down old sofa-bed? And all of that happened within the space of an hour.
That was a quick trip to one of the bigger and more comprehensive of our local markets and a quick look round their furniture section. Beds came in three varieties: Superexpensive (but probably quite reasonable compared to regular furniture stores) all wood; expensive, but some lesser variety of wood; and cheap steel frame quickly and easily assembled. That third variety came at pretty much what we wanted to pay, and we had decided that we don’t need top quality, just good enough.
A quick check of the rest of the market revealed that, as I had expected, they didn’t have any lamps of the kind we were looking for, but they did have DVDs, so we stocked up on a few, and I made a mad dash for the nearest ATM. That was out of order, and I’m sure it’s because of the absurd amount of cash the guy in the queue ahead of me withdrew, so I made a mad dash for the second nearest ATM, then back to the market. Arrangements had been made for the delivery of the bed we bought, so we headed home, with the Mrs stopping off to see if our local recycler wanted our old sofa bed. He did. Price negotiated, sofa bed removed, the bed deliverer phoned to check our address. He arrived within a few minutes, and quickly assembled the new bed.
And all of this, apart for the bit where I lament the loss of Greene King IPA from the shelves of our local Carrefour, is because there is an imminent change, a rather permanent change, about to happen to our family. One that requires the retiring of our old sofa bed, which was fine when we had family crashing overnight or for a couple of days as they passed through Beijing, but is not suited to long term stays. A change that will require my mother in law to be here for rather longer than she has previously spent. A change that requires my wife to buy an ever larger wardrobe. A change that will require us to bite the bullet and spend bucketloads of money on all that expensive baby stuff we saw in Carrefour today. A change that is both exciting and utterly terrifying.
And so all this shopping is about us making some of the necessary rearrangements. I do have to say, our apartment looks a lot more like a family home now.
my first Chinese novel
Posted by wangbo in Chinese study on September 11, 2010
It was actually about two weeks or so ago, but I finally finished reading Lao She’s Camel Xiangzi (老舍的《骆驼祥子》, which I believe is also translated as Rickshaw Boy). This makes it the first Chinese novel I have completed reading in Chinese (I have read quite a few in English), although it is not the first I have started.
my first Tang poetry
Posted by wangbo in Chinese study on August 15, 2010
So I finally made it up to the chapter in my Classical Chinese textbook introducing Tang poetry. It seems a little ridiculous that it took me so long. 10 years in China, 10 years studying the language, right from the word “go” I’ve been curious about ancient Chinese literature and philosophy, and ever since the day in Changsha in late 1999 I found a surprisingly good little bookstore, I’ve been collecting various versions of mono-, bi- and trilingual editions of various of the classics. And finally I actually sit down and learn myself something about this poetry that is supposed to represent a high-point in Chinese literature.
Of course, all of my Chinese study has been done in my spare time, which does not help. And I’ve followed the usual process of burst of solid effort and serious improvement – plateau – burst of solid effort and serious improvement – plateau. But a quick glance at my blogroll and an observation of just how sorry a state it is in will show you that probably the biggest factor holding me back has been my own natural laziness and inertia.
Anyways, this summer, as soon as all the semester’s loose ends were tied up, I sat down and studied. I head over to the office at about 10am Monday to Friday, study through till lunch time, and many afternoons I’ve gone back to the office and put in another hour or two. It’s felt good. Why the office? Less distraction, and I’m already there for those odd occasions when a prospective student comes in for an interview, further minimising disruptions. And considering the absurd heat and humidity we’ve had to suffer through this summer – aircon that is not buring through my electricity.
And why Classical Chinese? I discovered quite some time ago, through one of the more useful comments to have been left on this blog, that considering Chinese writers often throw a little Classical flourish into their writing, learning a bit of Classical would help improve my reading ability. Also, see the first paragraph where I wrote “right from the word “go” I’ve been curious about ancient Chinese literature and philosophy”, and throw into the mix that I firmly believe literature is the highest form of art, and poetry the highest form of literature (actually, come to think of it, that rarest of creatures, good literary translation, is probably about equal). My reading level has been good enough for some years now to handle modern literature (I just need to stop wasting so much time online and start picking up the books and reading them), but Classical is a whole other story, and something I need to work on. And to me it makes no sense to learn a language without exploring at least some of the literature, and there’s no point exploring the literature if you’re not going to read the classics as well as the modern stuff. I am very glad that my French education included Racine and Molière as well as Sartre, Duras and Camus. At the very least, that allows me to say, “Well, I’m not such a great fan of Molière, but that may be as much to do with a clash of teaching and learning styles between the lecturer and myself.” That’s a million times better than, “Molière? Yeah, sounds familiar….” Likewise, I’m sick and tired of only being able to say, “Yeah, I’ve heard of Li Bai. He liked his booze, didn’t he?” At least now I have actually read three of his poems in the original and have an idea that I think I do actually like the guy. I’m a long way from being able to tell you anything intelligent about Tang Poetry (or any aspect of Chinese literature), but at least I’ve made a start, and that feels good.