On being stuck
I was just watching an episode of Nurse Jackie and her boss got stuck in the elevator for a few hours. That scene made me think of how much I like taking the bus. Most of the time I can get my own seat in the back. It takes as long as 30 or 45 minutes for me to get home, and during that time, there's nothing I can do but sit and watch the traffic pass by outside the windows. Even if someone were to call me and tell me there was an emergency, there would be nothing I could do but sit there and listen to the music on my mp3 player. I can only sit and think and occupy myself whatever book is in my purse and whatever thoughts are in my head. There's no work I can do, no problem I can solve, no one has any use for me. The bus ride to and from work are my favorite times of the day.crossing the line
I am going to start a new blog that is more focused and more professional. I am still up in the air about whether I should use a pseudonym or my real name. Here's the thing: the internet is a public forum. If you show up at that forum wearing a suit and tie with a pile of business cards to pass out, then you are taking advantage of that opportunity to put yourself in a good light. You are taking control of the situation and using the forum as a tool for your own purposes.I have a general rule, sometimes I test it, but basically it's not to say anything on the internet that you wouldn't want to say to a bus full of people. Some people like to use the internet for free therapy. That makes me very uncomfortable. Not only would I not want to tell the people on the bus about the most intimate details of my personal life, but I wouldn't want to be sitting on a bus with someone who was talking loudly about their sex life or their personal problems.
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running on fumes
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -AristotleThe roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
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muumuuhouse.com
As I spend more free time writing, I have also devoted more time to studying contemporary writing.(This is all cutting into my special TV time with Beau when I come home from the office emotionally, physically and sometimes even morally drained to stare at a TV showing any one of the following three programs: Californication, Sons of Anarchy or Big Bang Theory. But I digress.)
I am definitely a reader, but I tend to buy my own books, and I don't ever let myself buy new fiction. Not only do I suspect anything very popular and easily obtained of being poorly written, but also a college classmates and self-appointed intellectual superior (JD, you know who you are) once told me that I shouldn't read anything contemporary until I have read the rest of the Western canon. I started following his advice but at some point I must have lost my way as I ended up with a lot of Henry Miller, some Proust, a collection of Flannery O'Connor's short stories, a secondhand copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, some political non-fiction, and a slew of textbooks for learning Chinese and French. All in all, it's a pretty shameful disarray of a collection for someone who likes reading and wants to write.
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Karma
Why is a belief in karma sufficient to stop you from doing something stupid or mean? Did you ever stop to think, in the middle of second-guessing yourself, that maybe you were karma's bitch? Maybe that mean thing you aren't sure if you should do is somebody else's just deserts, and karma picked you as just the girl to get the job done?cultural misunderstandings
I just read this in a book review:The books that tend to sell well in the US and the UK are similar memoirs about the abominations of the Cultural Revolution, the Great Famine and the Great Leap Forward (Wild Swans by Jung Chang having led the way, perhaps).
“Americans do not know much about China, so everyone takes advantage of the same familiar elements: Chinese restaurants are called either Panda or Great Wall. Reading about China, then, people anticipate pain and persecution, they expect to see wounds, little realising that this is but one facet of China,” wrote Berlin Fang, a columnist for the Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper in Guangdong
I find it interesting because foreigners have the same complaints about what appear to be Chinese folks' misconceptions about our culture. Locals—usually not the ones who have actually traveled to the States—think that American men are always trying to get laid and have no respect for women. Likewise, they think American women are easy and always eager to crawl into someone's bed. American children are disrespectful, Americans all have guns, but we are also all rich and live easy lives in the lap of luxury back home. I have been asked more than once if white people hate black people in the US. To all this, the best I can say is also "this is but one facet" of America.
The best remedy for these kinds of misunderstandings is continued dialogue. It's so trite but it's true. A lot of the dialogue about racism has been stifled in the States by people who just want to move on without airing out the dirty laundry or by people who are too scared to talk about sensitive subjects. If we can approach another culture with humility, if we can be honest about our ignorance and open to seeing more than one easily accessible facet of that culture, we stand to learn a lot.
Chinese Food Pagoda
Those of us in the West grew up with the food pyramid, a visual aid that illustrated how many servings of each food group we should be consuming daily to have a healthy diet.
I found it amusing to learn that there is a Chinese food pagoda:
Honestly, if I were to make something like that up, it would seem like a tasteless joke. But there it is. And for your reference, a lot of other countries have their visuals: a top is used in Japan, while a flag is used in Thailand, among others.
As a side note, I find it slightly alarming that the American food pyramid has been altered within the past few years.
It's old news to anyone who followed the "controversy" at this point, but the new food pyramid makes it more difficult to distinguish the proportions of food you should be eating. Apparently, beef producers in the States didn't like the old pyramid because it made it more obvious that one should consume less meat than grains and veggies, and probably less meat than one is already regularly consuming. The new pyramid also does no better than the old one in explaining to people that simple carbohydrates and refined grains are pretty unhealthy. The biggest thing the new pyramid has going for it is the running man, and you could have just as easily slapped him on the side of the old one.
Trailing Wives
When I read two articles about an interesting subject in two days, I feel compelled to blog about it.Yesterday at lunch, I mistakenly picked up the "Parents and Children" edition of City Weekend Shanghai, but the front cover featured an article on women reconciling their identity as successful businesswoman with their new identities as mothers. One woman, the author, gave up her career in the US to follow her husband to Shanghai, where she devotes herself to taking care of her two little sons. With an ayi to take care of all the household chores, she has nothing to do but care for the children. With the birth of her children, she became a trailing wife—one of the spouses that follow her partner to another country where she can't work. She aspires "to one day be as comfortable in her Juicy Couture sweats as in her Armani suits." (No, I don't know why she had to specify the brands of clothing she wears. I think it's distracts from her point. She could have just said "sweats" and "suits;" the alliteration would have even been pleasing. Instead, as the reader, I am left wondering if she has such a shallow sense of self that mentioning she buys overpriced velveteen track suits makes her feel like a better person.)
The second woman profiled also gave up her career when her sons were born in Shanghai, but she opted for the life of a mompreneur, opening up a children's play center here in Shanghai. In this way, she could spend time with her own children while still working outside the home. She still relished her identity as a career woman, but modified it to meet the realities of being a mother. (I looked for a link for this article but couldn't find it. You can read other articles about parenting in Shanghai on the City Weekend site.)
I read a similar article in the Wall Street Journal about a woman from India who moved to the US with her husband as a trailing wife. It seems like they don't have any children, so she has all her waking hours to herself. At first, it was difficult for her to spend all her time waiting for her husband, but then she realized she had all the time in the world to do the things she never had time to do before—cooking, writing, reading, and wandering around New York. "I think that perhaps my dependent visa has changed me, I no longer need to be exhausted to be happy," Meeti Shroff Shah concludes.
The last article reminded me of the first part of the cinematic triptych Tokyo!, if I can draw a comparison without undermining Ms. Shah. In it, a kind-hearted woman who lacks ambition finds her calling as a chair. Yes, a chair: the wooden kind with spindly legs that you would expect to find at a dining room table. She spends her days making paper cuttings, reading books, and watering the plants in the apartment where she lives. She claims to have never been happier, all the demands she couldn't meet having been removed. She has a very defined task and she is up to it; all the little things she enjoys doing when she is alone are secret pleasures, easily realized.
My mom was a trailing wife throughout my childhood. My dad's career required him to relocate every year or two to another country, and my mom was the one who packed us up and took care of us every time. She did teach and hold other odd jobs, but being a mother and a wife were her most obvious priorities. In the end, her dependence on my father backfired and she was left with nothing.
I don't think my own personality would have ever permitted me to be a trailing wife, and I don't understand how women who invested so many years and so much energy in their careers can give it up. Likely, I'll never be faced with that choice. I'm still trying to get my feet planted firmly on this path I've chosen, and Beau seems content to do whatever comes his way. We might actually have a dynamic opposite to that of the expat couples in the articles I've just read, except that I am not earning enough money to support both of us and a family. Yet. ;)
networking
My sister has recently just moved to China as well, though she's landed further south. She also just landed a job teaching history and she's pretty excited about the new occupation, the new city, the new people, the new apartment. When I last called her she was at an American mixer. I asked her how the party was and she told me there were lots of people there, she was meeting them, exchanging business cards, whatever. So strange—we only network now, we don't make friends.I don't like the word "networking." It implies something utilitarian, a way of using people like tools or objects. I suspect it means you have no loyalty to the people you meet, and they have no use to you beyond their specific purpose, like a hairbrush or a fork.
I have been grossed out watching friends work a room in the past. I don't like fake and superficial people. I don't like watching people adopt the mannerisms and vocabulary of the people they are trying to impress. I don't like the stink of brown-nosing. I don't like people who give me the impression they are trying to talk to me for a reason other than the happy coincidence of friendly people standing side-by-side. It's difficult for me to approach someone with hidden or false motives. I'd rather just ask for a favor if I really need to and not pretend first that I want to be your friend. If we work together, if we have an overlap in our social circles, and it comes to pass that we get along very well, so be it. But I don't care to know your credentials before I know what kind of person you are. I want to be honest and straight-forward when I deal with people and I want to know I can expect the same from them.
That being said, in a situation like mine, where I am a virtually unknown person in a new city trying to break into a very different career (during a global economic crisis, nonetheless!), I can't pretend like it won't help for me to meet as many people as possible. A network right now means a safety net. It's not only people I can socialize with, but also people that can orient me in an unfamiliar place and keep me from getting tossed around in unfamiliar and unfriendly seas. To that end, I have been actively searching online for various forums to meet people here. There are a lot of established networks, just as there many individual folks looking for a connection.
You can't make it here without a social group. By "make it," I don't mean have a successful and lucrative career; I just mean live. Conversely, not making it means quitting and going home, retreating to a place that provides you a sense of belonging and therefore gives your life a sense of meaning. Some people don't realize that you can have that anywhere, but in a new place, you have to actively create it for yourself.
Chinglish
In preparation for hosting the upcoming World Expo starting in May 2010, Shanghai is reportedly going to purge itself of its embarrassing Chinglish signage. That's right--no more "carrying tinder and exploder," no more "deformed man toilet," and no more "Please bump your head carefully."The proposed solution to this problem reportedly involves Chinese students seeking out these wayward signs. It was non-native speakers that got us here in the first place—how are a horde of "herpes schmerpes" T-shirt-sporting college kids going to get us out of it? Cities elsewhere have employed everybody's favorite expats, Mormon missionaries, to identify the problematic signs and propose better English translations. Mormons are pretty much perfect for the job: they are native English speakers, they can also speak and read some Chinese, they cruise the whole city on bicycles, and they'll do it for free.
Maybe we should keep just a little. Some of us would be sad to see all the Chinglish go. It's an endless source of amusement: What native-speaker wouldn't smile when he reads "No climbing! Yes to life!" as a cautionary sign on a wall? It can also be thought-provoking: What can a menu possibly be offering as "stir fried wikipedia"? It can even be metaphysical: If I were indeed stolen, how would I contact the police? No matter what the sticklers do, they can never take away "Dalongdong." That's a neighborhood in Taipei, and that's just the pinyin, not a bad translation.
The worst arguments against eradicating poorly translated English signs in public places referred to a piece that was posted last year on the technology news site wired.com. In "How English Is Evolving into A Language We May Not Even Understand," Michael Erard conflates the bad English of these signs with the interesting turns spoken English takes when non-native speakers are at the wheel. That's confusing the issue. Non-native speakers using English to communicate must still strive to be understood. Understanding is, in fact, the bar. If they fall short, they have failed to communicate, and that will be obvious.
I understood my Taiwanese students when they used "I yes go" for "I went," "no have" for "there isn't any," or "Jimmy there" for "next to Jimmy." I cannot, however, be entirely certain what "Point proless your excellency seat securityscatting sketch exit" means. Erard manages to figure out that Chinglish won't be replacing English the way a creole language might have in another context, but that's exactly the point. Chinglish and its cousins, as they are now defined by these funny mistranslations on signs, t-shirts, and menus across Asia, have no rules. Chinglish not a language. It's a bunch of English words pulled out of thin air by people who obviously have no idea how to communicate in English. Furthermore, there's no one to hold them accountable. English-speaking customers might giggle at the "deep-fried cock" on the menu, but if they don't speak the local language, they're never going to communicate the gaffe to the owners. I can imagine "English with Chinese characteristics" become a systematic, effective form of communication in this hemisphere, but a string of English words that fail to communicate the right idea—or any idea at all—are no "threat" to the English language.
If this is an issue even worth discussing (as I think linguistic issues are), I think we should refer to these funny accidents of English as "Engrish." That term is already poking fun at non-native speakers who pronounce the English l sound like an r. Portmanteaus like Chinglish, Spanglish, Singlish, and Franglais should be reserved for the hybrid languages spoken by people who are more or less comfortable in two languages. For example, foreigners who have been here for a while can tolerate a fair amount of Chinese sprinkled into an English conversation. Just yesterday I overheard two European co-workers discussing a sum of money, "cha bu duo three thousand kuai" or, "about three thousand dollars." It makes more sense to describe that kind of comfort with Chinese and English as "Chinglish" than to pretend that what we're now calling Chinglish is going to evolve into a creole.
Good luck to Shanghai and anyone who wants to make traveling easier for the anticipated 5 million foreigners who will be visiting the World Expo next year, but I hope they keep in mind that we don't really mind the Chinglish that much. As for me and my grubs, we think it's pretty funny.
PS: We can't always get it right, either. Check out www.probablybadnews.com if you haven't gotten fired yet for looking at engrish.com at work.