Sunday, October 16, 2011

Death to Hello Kitty

Oops, been awhile - I promise, just as soon as I stop napping for five hours everyday, I will work on making up things to write about. Next blog: about my encounter with Jackie Chan, and how he asked me for advice on how to bitch slap someone....bwahahaha (I wish.)

One of the twin girls (15 years old) that I tutor was grilling me about stuff she could find and buy in America, because I've been raving about American clothes, which she says are "so very lovely", and we were finding quite a lot of interests in common (ok, so just shopping), when she suddenly dropped the bomb. She wrinkled her nose and told me, in a serious voice, "but I think your pens in America, they are NOT so lovely" waving her baby pink and glittery pen in front of my face; "this so beautiful" she said, "and I think America does not have like this". She then showed me her "lovely" notebook which was also pink, showing a cartoon cat, or possibly a llama, crooning love haikus and embellished with lots of bubble hearts and swirlies.

An example of weird decorations that you would probably only see in China...a cat and underwear hung up on a clothesline....on a moped.


I had no idea what to say, since every time I have seen that type of sophomoric decoration on pens, backpacks, notebooks, and clothes alike, I totally grimace. I was kind of offended, that she thought America didn't have "lovely" stuff to offer, but its incredible how different Chinese and American tastes are when it comes to embellishments.
Well no, we do not put baubles on top of our pens, making the act of writing nearly impossible; nor do we put animated woodland creatures on our notebooks declaring desperately romantic cliches like, "from when I wake up to when I sleep, you are my love!" - and this coming from a girls who declare their intention not to date until the ripe age of 22.
In the same way, I do not understand the appeal of Hello Kitty - that mature people (not just 15 year old girls) can be thrilled with such gaudy characters splashed over their clothes, school tools, and anywhere else imaginable, is something I just don't understand. The louder and more puerile, the better.

And now that I've offended approximately half of Asia, and a good portion of the feminine males too, I'll move on to the past couple of weeks.

It's almost been two weeks (holy crap, does time ACTUALLY go THAT fast?) since my mom visited - and she was most welcome. I begged her to bring me a healthy (ha) supply of butterfingers and Emergen-C, since those things are pretty much non-existent here, and she pulled through quite well. She brought me my winter clothes too, just in time for Shanghai to start becoming a bit chilly and windy. As to what we did (besides a lot of napping) - I surprised her with tickets to Cirque du Soleil Saltimbanco, which was really cool and surprisingly funny, and also made me want to work out a lot. The chance of me bungee jumping while performing acrobatic moves and displaying my flexibility and macho strength are fairrrrrly slim, but I think I would make a good Carnie. I kept having this little fantasy after we went that I would meet one of the carnies in the show at a bar that weekend and they would train me like how to juggle or touch my tongue to my elbow or something. Alas, my daydream didn't come true, but I'm keeping an eye out.

My mom came during a national holiday week (sort of like Communist fourth of July), but really I only got one day fully off, as I had to work Thursday and Friday. For some reason, they say that the whole week is a "holiday" and there's no school, but kids have to start going back to school on Saturday and Sunday - it's a very strange system. 

I may not have gotten a ton of downtime, but at least I got a lot of fun times, because a week after my mom left, Cliff Champion came to town! For those of you who don't know Cliff, he's a fantastic friend of mine who lived with me in Shanghai the first time I was here, studying with Pepperdine. Anyways, he's been in a super intense Mandarin program in Beijing, and took his holiday time to come to Shanghai (all to visit me, I'm sure) and brought some of his friends from his language program. I haven't gotten to hang out with them as much as I wished, mostly due to work and school, but I already can't wait for him to visit again. 

We and his friends had dinner at Angela Zhou's parents house (sadly, sans Angela), with a bit of a surprise. In Cliff's program, the students are not allowed whatsoever to speak English, or they get in trouble, and if they speak English three times, they are kicked out of the program. I didn't know until my way to dinner, that one of Cliff's teachers was coming to dinner, so they were only able to speak in Chinese the ENTIRE time. Basically I was relegated to the same rules, although I did use English occasionally, and what practice it was! They were all, naturally, better at Chinese than I was, but it was really good just to be talking about whatever and getting to used to speaking Chinese for hours, rather than just memorizing it.

I guess I must be getting used to speaking it more anyways, because I have been being approached by a lot of the Chinese people I see frequently, including the guards and maintenance people at my building and some waiters at a Xinjiang restaurant I go to sometimes, because now when they see me and I say hello, they wander over to talk and ask me questions about whatever they think I will understand. I had a conversation with three workers in my building the other day about my scooter - (not quite at my leisure - I was late, but didn't want to be rude) how much it cost, how fast it could go, how old it was, did i ever wash it, etc. One of the guards has even taken to saying "Hello!" in English to me when I pass by. Something, I can tell from his pronunciation, he has just learned to say, and I flatter myself to think he learned it because he learned he had an American in the building (totally not true).

A fun add-on: two Chinese people making themselves at home in a nice coffee shop - shoes off, snoring, and completely not caring.

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