Holidays Wrap-up

Well, the holidays are finally all over, and a normal pattern is establishing itself at work. Now there's just a stretch of a month or so before the next holiday (Spring Festival) throws the schedules into chaos again. Fortunately, that means it's also only a stretch of a month or so before I get a whole week off again, for the first time since October (which was a less than satisfying holiday). My week off, I'm hoping to hire a few tutors and take classes as many hours as possible to help tie down some of the vocabulary and sentence patterns I've been cramming for the last month.

I'll repost my Shengdanjie summary below, and I can add at least one additional note to it. A co-worker gave me a great custom-made, novelty T-shirt, a photo of which I'll have to post once I've figured out how to do so. The bottom of the shirt reads, "I am not a Capitalist Drover," due to a slight confusion over Communist terms (see story below).

"Shengdanjie, and Other Holidays"
Originally posted: 01:38, 2007-12-26

Well, Christmas (Shengdanjie) has come and gone, and normality is soon to be restored. The holiday went well and stirred up some interesting little notes:

1) In addition to the Watson's advertising campaign, nearly every store in my area felt the need to break out decorations or uniforms for the holiday season. Most simply wear Santa (Shengdanlaoren--Christmas old man) hats, but I did get to see a number of Shengdanlaoren in full costume, usually handing out candy (and in one case a business card for a prostitution service). For some reason, the men chosen to play the part are invariably young, short, and thin as toothpicks; all told, bizarre renditions, especially when hearing them call out, "Hou, hou, hou, Shendan huaile," which sounds to me just now like "Behind, behind, behind, Christmas happy."

2) Shops are of course putting up decoractions as well. My two favorite are the hair salon I pass on the way to work (whose windows read, "MErry hAPPy") and the kafeiting below work (whose windows read, "Merry Christmas 2008").

3) Our school, of course, held a Christmas party for the students last week, chock full of "genuine Western Christmas activities." The activities included making Christmas cards, meeting Santa (played by a Nigerian), Pin the Nose on Rudolph, Musical Newspapers, Balloon Fights and Fortune Balloons (the object of the last two simply being to pop balloons). The Christmas pinata we'd been planning didn't happen, but the student "gift exchange" (with a 20 kuai limit) went off just as planned--i.e., horribly; it turns out the idea of bringing a gift, then taking another, isn't that easy to grasp, so most of the students brought things they wanted and then cried or screamed when they saw others were taking their gifts. Even more in the holiday spirit, some students simply chose not to bring a gift, then steal one while everyone else was playing games. 'Tis the season to be greedy.

4) A friend from Bao'an noticed on our last trip to the nice jazz club in my area that they have a menorah on display alongside a random collection of objects. No, this isn't an attempt to acknowledge a non-Christmas winter holiday: it turns out the menorah is there because a) it holds candles, and b) candles are romantic. I hope everyone had a sexy Hanukka.

5) Friends and co-workers celebrated Christmas afternoon with a brunch at my apartment, which turned out quite well. My guests showed up bearing gifts--fruit, vegetables, pizza, and KFC--that went well with the breakfast food (deviled eggs, sausage, bacon, potatoes, egg-and-sausage casserole) I'd cooked or bought, and I wound up with some useful leftovers (mostly cheese, butter, and bread from Bread Talk).

6) After the brunch, Nersey apparently headed home to have his normal Christmas celebration (eating Chinese food and watching a movie), and the rest of us headed out for Christmas hot-pot.

7) Unfortunately, no one seems to want to come for a "Clean my Apartment" party, so I'll be working to clean up for the next day or two.

"Tale of Two Restaurants"
Originally posted: 08:10, 2007-10-18
I've been getting a mixed sort of welcome from China this year. Two restaurant visits in one week sum up this welcome nicely.

At Qongqing Lao Huzi (a restaurant I like especially for it's name), I had difficulty on Tuesday ordering suan cai (garlic vegetables, I think). No matter how many times I tried to say the dish's name with different tones, the normally patient laoban (big boss) just couldn't understand what I meant. She finally took me back into the restaurant's kitchen, shrugged and pointed around. I found garlic, held it up and said, "Suan?" She nodded; I asked about cai, and she took me over to a cooler, from which she held up different types of vegetables. I picked a nice little leafy vegetable that tastes a bit like spinach and indicated I wanted it fried with garlic. She personally instructed the chef how to prepare the dish, walked me back to my table and tried to chat with me a bit in Chinese. The dish turned out wonderfully, and in the end only cost eight kuai. I'm not even sure whether the dish is on the menu, and she could have charged as much as she liked (after all, I can't find the dish on the menu to check the price), but didn't. So far this is one of my favorite restaurant experiences in China.

Then last night I tried a new restaurant that is a much further walk away from my apartment and had my least favorite restaurant experience ever. I'd gone there with a new Chinese friend, Al, and was in a great frame of mind, having gotten to play chess earlier that night with another expat, Dawei. Al and I ordered drinks, and when they arrived, I was asked to pay for mine in advance. I paid, thinking it odd that I was the only one at the table who had to do so. I asked for some hua sheng (peanuts), and when they came, I was asked to pay for those up front as well. While Al was going through the menu, I watched the other tables in the restaurant and saw no evidence of pay-as-you-go dining. I had Al ask the next table over whether the restaraunt's policy was for people to pay item by item; they laughed loudly and said it wasn't. When our food started to come out, the same thing happened; dish by dish, I was expected to pay up front.

I asked Al if he'd ever seen this before, and he said he hadn't. "Maybe it's you're a foreigner, so they think you'll run away without paying." Stupid people, I thought; I've never known a foreigner to dash and dine in China; then I thought I maybe wasn't being fair, maybe they'd had a bad experience with a foreigner before. Still, the idea of my (and only my) having to pay in advance rankled a bit, and I made a few jokes about the laowai fei (the foreigner fee); Al and I talked a bit, and the food wasn't bad.
A nearby table heard me mangling the Chinese language and invited Al and I over to their table. We joined them and I fielded the normal questions, then stopped to listen as Al spoke to the others. He made some joke about the unusual payment arrangement I had with the restaurant, and conversation went on relatively happily for a few minutes.

At this point, the laoban, an angry-looking little woman with short hair, came over and started talking sharply to Al. "She says we have to go," he told me. "Oh, are they closing?" I asked. "No, she says actually just you are to go." "Why me?" I asked. The two talked for a while. "She says you're making people uncomfortable." "What people?" I asked. Again they talked. "She says everyone."

Meanwhile the woman was talking to the people at the table, all of whom now did really seem to be uncomfortable. "Why don't you ask them what they think?" I suggested. "After all, they invited us to join them." Al tried, but whenever he spoke to someone at the table, they just put their heads down in a gesture common among Chinese in embarrassing situations. I suggested to Al that maybe we should move back to our own table and finish eating.

"I think maybe we should just go," he said. "I paid for food, and I'm going to eat it," I said. "If these people are really uncomfortable, fine, I'll sit at a different table, but I shoudln't have to leave." The whole thing was really puzzling.

Al and I moved over to our table, and he fidgeted nervously while we kept eating. Meanwhile, the laoban kept talking to the other table, more loudly than before. The waiters and the cooks had all come out and gathered around her. Finally Al said, "We really should go," with a peculiar urgency. I asked why we had to leave so quickly. "She's using old words, very bad words." I asked him what he meant, and he said, "She says you are . . . " He had to consult a pocket translator for a minute. He held it out to me so that I could read the word "capitalist roader" on the screen.
"Are you sure?" I asked. It didn't make any sense to me; how could I be a capitalist roader? More importantly, how could a Chinese capitalist (i.e., business-owner) use even the word "capitalist" as an insult? He said he was sure this was the word she was using. I noticed that by now the whole table was starting to glare at me, and there was a twingy nervousness to everyone at the restaurant. Al and I left, started to walk home.

"What was that about?" I asked.

Al said, "She I think is scared of foreigners. She says you are capitalist roader, you will make the country bad." I asked whether people talked like this normally. (Actually, I asked what the hell year it was that people were still talking this way.) "This is old words," he said. "Old, bad words. No one says this now. She is . . . backwards . . . We should be faster." He started to walk more quickly, so I looked back. One of the waiters and a cook from the restaurant were following us. Al and I walked faster and faster, and still the two men followed us. They didn't leave off until we were close to my apartment, where the security guards walked over to talk to the two restaurant workers. The whole thing was quite unnerving.

Last night the thing that amazed me was that this old word, capitalist roader, could be used now by someone who is quite clearly a capitalist about someone who really barely qualifies as one. The use of the word just seemed empty, hollow, as though it were meaningless--just something mean and ugly to say about someone. I thought all these political words and phrases had always been that way, just negativity and insults thrown at people without taking the target into account.

Today I realized that the most amazing thing about the experience was that the word still works. I had watched the mood of the whole restaurant change, just because one nasty, little woman used this meaningless word from the past. People who had been excited to talk to me only moments before had become detached and maybe a bit hostile just because of these words. It seems there's an incredible amount of mob mentality still tied to what should be obsolete language. Truly bizarre.