Hanoi crazy night traffic from v!Nc3sl4s on Vimeo.

I went to a bank today to exchange money. I wandered into the bank and the big electonic numbers clearly meant I needed to have a number. Where do I get a number? Which set of workers do money exchange? There was one worker who seemed to be some kind of greeter that I wanted to attempt in a sign-language conversation, but she was helping someone else. I stood around like a clueless tourist and started staring at a sign with todays exchange rates until a worker brought me a paper with a number on it and pointed to some seats where I could wait.

Korean banks seem to have a much more open layout than Chinese banks. Chinese banks have giant bulletproof glass to keep you and the staff apart. Canadian banks don’t have the glass, but they do make you stand around at the small counters where you are served. Here I get to sit in a fairly plush chair and show my best smile to make up for the fact I haven’t a clue what to say. As I hand the worker my passport and Chinese currency, she receives it from me by holding her right hand with palm up while placing her left hand on the right arm. I’ve learned a little about these customs from my Korean friends in Tianjin, but this was my first experience without someone guiding me. I can only imagine how rude I’ve been today in very small ways, but I’m sure everyone understands that foreigners don’t necessarily understand these customs. Jeju has a strong tourism economy, so I feel like I can count on an understanding community.

When I finish studying in Nanchang I plan to return to Jeju to study Korean language. I’m starting to see my Chinese language habbits really coming out strong. I’m always saying “hao” (good) in response to things, for example. I bought some kind of shrimp burger from a KFC and I even said to a worker “wo yao” (I want)! In China I had learned the Korean numbers from 1 to 10, but I’ve recently realized that Korea has 2 systems for numbers. One is a purely Korean system while the other is based on the Chinese numbers. Numbers are fun for me because I never know which system to expect, and it’s fair to say the system I understand is pretty slow for me to translate. What I hadn’t counted on was that Korean currency, the Won, uses high numbers. My green tea with pomegranate drink cost KRW$1,000. Maybe it’s nice that I can use the number one with both counting systems, but I didn’t have the forethought to study the words for ‘hundred’ or ‘thousand’.

I’ve ony been on my own for a couple hours, but it’s really a lovely place and I’m having a lot of fun. I took a walk by the ocean just to smell the salt water in the air and enjoy the clear blue sky. Looking toward the centre of the island is Hala Mountain, a volcano which is the major geographical feature of the island and is, of course, responsible for the islands existance.

Zhong Shan Road is dotted with mostly middle-aged ladies trying to grab my attention with cries of “hello” followed by the word for “shoes” in Chinese (rarely English) along with lots of pointing at shoes to be certain I’ve understood their meaning. I’ve yet to meet anyone who expects me to know how to say “你好” (hello), let alone make a sentence, so they tend to smile and laugh easily when I say “不要，谢谢” (no thanks) which I think is a lot more polite than the reception they get from anyone else as they hustle to work the street. They often smile at me like I’m a big fun challenge for them since they’re smiling so nicely at me and working so hard to make it clear that I should be buying shoes from them. The less English they use the more dramatic and exaggerated the hand gestures tend to be, which is not unlike how I felt trying to communicate when I landed in Beijing for the first time. Perhaps that’s why they become momentarily dumbstruck when I point to my own shoes and say with a smile “我有” (I have) until it registers that I’ve given a cheeky reply and can understand them perfectly and the dramatic gestures are wholly unnecessary. These women work very hard every day trying to attract buyers to their little shoe boutiques located in little alleys and streets connected to Zhong Shan Road —spots that shoppers would never find without some encouragement — and they give lots of character to the shopping centre of Nanchang.

On this particular day I wondered for no particular reason into a large (for Nanchang) department store located on the corner of Zhong Shan Road and 8-1 Avenue (中山路在八一大道). I let myself be carried in by the solid stream of shoppers moving as a line through the store and listened to people around me talking about what nationality I might be and how tall I am. When the man behind me made a guess at my height while talking to his wife, I surprised them both by correcting his guess with a smile which opened a small conversation with the very nice couple. Since I had come to explore, I didn’t talk long before I excused myself to run around the store to discover its many departments.

From jewellery to shoes and bags, I moved upstairs finding myself surrounded by womens underwear. Not unlike other stores I’ve been to in China, the escalator to the 3rd floor was located in an obscure location requiring you to wander through isle after isle of lingerie before moving up to the next floor devoted to womens clothing. It’s not until the 4th floor that you start to see anything for men, which means that men have to really travel across the store from one escalator to another just to buy some clothing. I don’t know anything about the shopping habits of Chinese men, but I know many of my friends in Canada like to go inside, make their purchase, and get out quickly, but many stores in China don’t appear to cater to that style of quick shopping.

As I wind my way through the store I can hear the workers — usually young women — talking about me, encouraging their coworkers to say hello to me, calling other workers over to get a look before I’m out of sight, etc. One worker was standing with a group near a corner and, once I’d passed, expressed to her friends that I’d scared her. She just didn’t expect this tall foreigner to appear from around the corner. Somewhere else in the store I stopped to retie my shoelace and caught a group of workers having a very nice conversation about me. Only when I starting laughing along with their discussion did they start to become a bit quieter. One girl was too embarrassed and hid around the corner, but the other three coworkers tried to tell her not to be embarrassed, because I couldn’t possibly understand. Ha ha!

I imagine that the original building wasn’t big enough for the store, so they knocked down the wall that joins the neighbouring building and continued their products on a floor that might be correctly termed the 5th-and-and-a-half floor, reminding me of Being John Malkovich. I’ve seen this solution to lack of space used in several stores in different Chinese cities. What I liked about it was that, on this particular day, the store appeared pretty average from the outside yet, once inside, the store seemed was much larger as I wound my way from escalator to escalator.

The top floor was devoted exclusively to baby products and children’s toys… or so I thought. Hidden among the toys was a sight I still can’t explain or understand: a grocery store. Why would anyone put a grocery store in such an obscure and awkward location? Do they really have enough customers willing to wander around and trek to the top floor to buy food? There were a few customers, but it was practically empty compared to any other grocery stores I’ve seen in Nanchang. I keep imagining that there must be another entrance to this grocery store that I failed to see. Even if customers relied on an elevator, there is no way this store could achieve any economies of scale.

Apparently there is now an Ikea store in Nanchang which is also located in a bizarre location. I’m preparing to leave Nanchang for the winter holiday, but I’ll go looking for it when I return in March. If you know how to find the Ikea, please leave a comment!

Canada Post stamp: Year of the pig

CBC reports that Canada Post (加拿大的邮局) has released it’s latest stamp celebrating the year of the Pig.

I think most Chinese people I’ve met (and foreigners too) are quite surprised when I say how Chinese traditions are woven into Canadian life. A symbol of a Chinese festival being specially acknowledged in this way does not seem like a very politically motivated action in the vein of one-off stamps to honour certain famous figures.

Looming lion (Chinese new year in Vancouver, 2004)

Canada Post, as far as I remember, has been making special Chinese New Year stamps honouring the Chinese zodiac for many years now. This new stamp is simply the latest edition for the coming Chinese new year on February 18^th, 2007. The greatest symbolism for the relationship between China and Canada might be seen in how un-extraordinary things like this are. My experience is certainly biased from my life in Vancouver, but I can remember living in the beautiful small town of Squamish, BC and celebrating the Chinese new year in my primary school. Doesn’t everyone celebrate Chinese new year?

Sitting alone in a quiet corner of CBC Chicken I smiled as I replied: “hello.”

“What is your favourite colour,” she asked after a slight pause. Obviously curious about the bearded foreigner, she felt confident enough to practice her English while never taking her eyes away from mine. As I answered, I asked her for her favourite colour. “Orange,” was her reply.

“That’s a very nice colour,” I said. She paused again. Perhaps she took a moment to comprehend my words. Maybe she felt unsure about asking another question, or what question she could ask. I just grinned long after she disappeared beyond by view to tell her mother about her experience. When their food came, they took it to go, but the little girl popped into my view one more time. “Goodbye,” she said.

“Bub-bye,” I answered waving to her. Mom didn’t peek around the corner as they exited the restaurant; however, I noticed a familiar face peeking through the store windows. Partially hidden by posters on the window, she peered in with her mom before escaping into the brisk night of Nanchang city.

A quiet hidden street

Another foreigner introduced me to a small restaurant that was in an area hidden from me until I was introduced to the pedestrian thoroughfare that links two major shopping streets — essentially a shortcut. I’ve now decided this little restaurant has the best eggplant dish I’ve eaten in China. Tonight I decided to show this restaurant to another foreigner.

While sitting together in the small empty restaurant, a Chinese man came into the restaurant to pick up some food to take out. As he walked past us he stared a little bit and casually asked the restaurant owners about their new foreigner customers in the same way someone might ask about the weather. I met his gaze with a polite ”你好“ (hello) and suddenly he was standing over our table and interrupting our conversation with 3 questions:

1. Where country are you from?
2. Where do you work?
3. What is your salary?

Every conversation I have in Nanchang starts with #1 and #2 and usually becomes a chance for the person to ask as much as they can about my personal life. People are curious in cities where foreigners are a rare sight, but it surprises me that no one seems interested in my opinion of their city, or what life is like in other parts of the world. Not that my opinion matters, but instead of talking to people, I find myself being interrogated.

Recently I mentioned on this website about different privacy boundaries held by North Americans and Chinese people. The students of my oral English class think it’s pretty funny that western women would keep their age a secret, let alone lie — even jokingly — that they’d been 30 for the past 10 years. It seems equally amazing to me that a total stranger would ask me about my salary.

In Tianjin I had purchased three sets of flash cards that each have 100 cards to help learn 汉字 (Chinese simplified characters). I don’t use them very often, but they are still very helpful to me. Today was one of those days when I whipped them out while sitting cross-legged on the styrofoam floor mats in my living room. Despite the foggy feeling of having a cold, and having not looked at these cards in months, I managed to correctly identify 75 of the characters in the first set. The frustrating ones are the characters that I recognize, but I can’t identify — after 14-months, every character looks familiar.

When studying, I often listen to the TV to hear what a good accent sounds like; I think Chinese TV is particularly good for this because almost everything has subtitles that are really great for studying. Like other days, today I kept catching words I understand, but were used in contexts I did not understand. Some text messages with a good friend of mine in Tianjin enlightened me to the meaning of these words, but there’s no dictionary that can help in situations like that. It’s comforting to know this is the universal experience of learning a foreign language.

Feeling dizzy and hungry, I escaped my apartment to catch dinner with a friend. My apartment is about 3-blocks away from the school and one can never be sure how the local people will react when I emerge from my apartment. The people I pass in the hall of my building are quite friendly, always giving me a “你好” (hello), or asking “你吃了吗” (have you eaten?) — especially when I greet them first in Chinese. Outside the building there are always lots of people walking around, playing poker or mahjong, and otherwise being very social. I suppose I’ve never wanted to submit myself to the endless questions of nosy and curious neighbours (who could blame them), but each day I can feel like I’m on parade as I leave my apartment.

I walk through the complex to the only exit gate and sometimes get a friendly response from the security guard, or the old men and women who perch there. Less frequently now I can still occassionally catch someone’s voice behind me asking other residents what building the foreigner lives in. Today a girl younger than 10 was looking at her friend while they walked toward me along the sidewalk. When she turned to look at the person in her path he jumped in surprise and put her hand on her chest momentarily winded. Some old people snickered quietly while I just smiled and said, “你好” (hello), to the stunned little girl. The expression on her face was so dramatic, thus inspiring the title of my article today.

Today I was greeted by a family possibly from the Xinjiang autonomous region. Fairly or unfairly, most people warn that crime and pick-pocketing is high when many of these migrant workers pass through. I dislike generalizations, but this particular band was suspiciously walking up and down a small strip of a busy sidewalk and my friend suggested we’d better move along quickly just in case. It seems like everyone I’ve met in Nanchang has a story of being pick-pocketed. I haven’t had the experience and I have no wish to change that.

Tonight, I turned around to listen to two guys talking about me. I had been listening to a video when the cool breeze of a fan moved. I turned around to see what was happening and I only caught the words “加拿大人” (Canadian) while two boys were turned looking at me as they discussed me, obviously thinking I can’t understand their words.

It’s hard to know exactly how they know where I’m from, because no question seems to be off limits. Questions from university students and random locals usually centre on whether you like Chinese food, Chinese girls, your nationality, and any other detail of your life that pops into the mind of the interrogator. Even Chinese basketball superstar Yao Ming was recently mentioned in the China Daily as saying how there is no topic off limits in the locker-room with his fellow countrymen, but he had to learn there were certain topics off limits with his American teammates, because other cultures have different privacy boundries. I don’t have much problem with this, except that it’s annoying when I purposly come to the internet bar for the chore it has become. There’s simply nothing fun about writing a travelogue in a place that is inconvenient and uncomfortable.

I spent this past weekend in Beijing and made a big purchase intended to remove myself from the ritual of the internet bar: I bought a laptop computer. Less than 24-hours after my purchase, I arrived in my Nanchang apartment where the keyboard ceased to function. It is a hardware malfunction and I will have to pay to ship my laptop to Shanghai for repair.

Normally I detest laptops. They are not scalable like desktop computers. They lose value quickly. The components are specially engineered and thus have less market pressures to be price competitive compared to desktops — that translates to “freakin’ expensive” for non-economists. Since my goal is to stay in Asia to study both Chinese and Korean language, I had to concede to the fact that I can’t travel every year with a giant computer in tow.

I suppose this is all to say that once I have a computer I can write more often. So it might be another week or two (hopefully not longer than that) until I can return to writing regularly.

You can imagine my surprise when I was dining with heads of the International College at Nanchang University (NanDa 南昌大学) and I’m told that a decision was made to hold a meeting for foreign students 3-days later on the Monday. At the meeting, we’d have the chance to meet our classmates, and possibly learn when class will actually begin. At this point the start of classes sounds like progress, and I find it interesting to know at least some of my future classmates already in Nanchang. Since I arrived here months ago I’ve been asking to be introduced to some of my future classmates so we can get to know each other and share discoveries about the local area. With the exception of some Americans I had approached in a restaurant (“Do you study at NanDa?”), the International Department has always maintained that other foreign students wouldn’t arrive until closer to class starting. I’ve since learned, other foreign students have been here for several weeks (at minimum), with a few people having already spent 1.5 years in Nanchang.

Saturday night rolls around and I get a text message from my new American friends saying that they’ve heard class might be starting on Tuesday. Class on Tuesday? We’ll wait for the Monday meeting to know for sure, but this sounds good. Alright! Great! By this stage, I’m itching to start my lessons. The novelty of being in a foreign country has worn off a lot from my year in Tianjin. My studies in Tianjin were in English and did not include a language component so now it can be frustrating to be locked out of simple things just because I don’t have a rudimentary command of the language. Studying in class will be much more effective than trying to study on my own in my quiet apartment, but I can’t understand why I’m (1) hearing about class dates much earlier than expected, and (2) why I’m hearing about them through unofficial channels. I keep asking myself, if they want to attract foreign students to Nanchang, wouldn’t the class start date be considered as critical information? I can only assume that some approximate date had given to the other students since everyone is already here. I guess I didn’t get the memo.

“Umm… yeah. I’m just going to go ahead and get you another copy of the memo.” -Bill Lumbergh, Office Space

I was looking forward to this important Monday meeting, and decided that regardless of it’s outcome, I would at the very least be able to say I enjoyed an excellent breakfast of slightly overooked pancakes, eggs, and toast. Well, it is now Monday night and the meeting was a good one. Once we found the meeting room, 40 or so students sat themselves around a giant boardroom table with giant fake flower centrepieces adding colour to the room. The chair of the meeting had the understandable problem of picking a language to speak. We have people from Niger, West Africa (country unspecified), Mexico, USA, Canada (me!), Russia, Korea, and Japan. Do you use Chinese? Most people present understand a bit of Chinese, but most (certainly including me) can’t understand a full meeting in the language. What about English? Everyone who doesn’t speak English natively at least has some English training; however, nothing beats the clairity of your native tongue. Everything was spoken in several languages in turn: first Chinese to set the tone, then English for almost everybody, with some French and Korean used to clairify.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, class will not start. Instead, we’ll meet at 9 AM and take a trip the new campus of NanDa, on the outskirts of the city, to familiarize ourselves with the school’s third and biggest campus.

We were told class is expected to start either Thursday or Friday. It sounds like we’ll be starting with a review of phonetics while the teachers assess our ability. Then they’ll divide everyone into classes and make a plan.

After months of waiting, it has begun.

• Kevin Lim (and dad) post advice for Singaporeans and others living abroad.
• JAVA JIVE – Quarter Life Crisis: Part One (Life as an Expat)

(touque tip: AsiaPundit)