|
|
|
![[No next e-mail message]](r-arrowg.gif) |
The teahouse
The teahouse is a quiet room that sits above the bookstore. On Friday evenings, they have jazz music, but during the day, it's practically silent. This is surprising given the unending noise of the streets below. Foot traffic is four-thick and bike and car traffic not much thinner. The teahouse is furnished in old Japanese style furniture, bird cages (unfortunately, empty), and lots of greenery and various styles of European and Asian art. The bookstore looks nice, too.
Buying the chops
A Chinese chop is a small stone that is carved with its owner's name. It is used to stamp books, artwork and official papers to identify their owner. The name is always stamped in red ink. If you look at any Chinese artwork you have lying around, you'll see a red circle or square near the bottom with some characters in it: that's from the chop.
Somewhere in a dirty, ramshackle home on a dusty, smell unpaved road is the man who made chops for me and Mark. He and his wife share two small rooms in the north of Beijing.
Sun Peng and I went to see the couple to buy our chops. The wife of the couple is the front person, the saleswoman. She greeted us warmly and proceeded to take every chop out of the glass case--and even produced some from some other hideaway--until I was confronted with chops small and large, round and square, of every color and shape. As we narrowed down the selection, the husband appeared, clearly interested in me and in my selection process. It took the four of us to select the dark red set with the dragon and the phoenix: a Chinese symbol that I'm told symbolizes both high virtue/rare talent and a happy marriage. Also, the third word in my Chinese name-Feng--means phoenix, so it all seemed to come together pretty well.
But choosing the chop itself was only the first of many tasks. Did I want English names or Chinese? Did I want traditional strokes (sometimes called Taiwan writing) or modern, simplified strokes? Did I want grass script, scroll script, block script, or modern script? Did I want the word "chop" on the chop? Did I want the three words in a row or in a circle? Did I want positive (red on white) or negative (white on red)? Did I want any pictures along with the words? Could I look through these volumes of samples and find what suits me best?
Decisions were made, reviewed, recorded, and rereviewed. Money changed hands ($7.50) and the next day, Sun Peng delivered our new his-and-hers chops to my dorm room.
The Oscar Party
You know what stinks? Chinese visitors--friends, teachers, whomever--are not permitted in our dorms before 4 pm. After 4 pm, for some reason, anything goes, but can a 50-year-old Australian man hire a 35-year-old Chinese man to serve as a tutor or translator? Yes, but they can't work in the dorm. That stinks.
It also stinks because it means that Sun Peng and Wei Wei could not come to my Oscar party. Sounds like a minor inconvenience, but both were frighteningly overjoyed at the invitation. Wei Wei even brought me flowers and Sun Peng was especially eager because he was looking for a new English partner for when Robert and I go home.
The Oscar party itself was a disappointment. Perhaps if I knew Chinese better, I would have understood that we would not be watching the actual Oscar award presentation, but instead, 3 hours of E! TV coverage of the post-Oscar celebration parties. But two of my American friends had a blast gossiping about the stars and the other foreigners and I had a blast listening to the gossip.
The Massage
Many Chinese beauty shops--and I understand this is true in Chinatowns in the US as well--offer head, face, and body massages, either with the haircut or separately. After our last day of class, I took myself for a head and face massage. The hair wash and cut were thrown in at no extra charge. The hair wash was quite interesting: they had me dip my face in the sink, rather than lower the back of my head in. And it's their regular sink, over in the corner, the one they use for washing up. There's a little stool beneath the sink for hair-washing purposes. When they first sat me down facing the sink, I thought for a moment that I was expected to lean forward and wash it myself. In the end, they did the washing, but nearly as much water went into my eyes as went into my hair.
But you undoubtedly want to know about the massage. Since it's connected with the haircut, I assumed it would take place in the barber's chair, so I was surprised when they led me to this back room where three covered tables and three heat lamps waited. I didn't even know whether I was expected to lie face-up or face-down and language was pretty useless. My current strength is nouns, not adjectives or verbs, so I heard a lot of "Your hair is very [something]," and "Would you like me to [something]?" "Am I being too [something]?" But we managed.
And how was it? Unusual. Interesting. Cool. She started with my eyes, moved to the cheeks and spent a good minute or so playing with my ears. She thumped my temples. Stretched my arm and pulled on my fingers till they popped. I didn't even know they could pop. And, yes, the head massage apparently reaches all the way down to the chest and fingers. I came away feeling mighty fine.
Final random notes
I was initially surprised when I noticed that the telephones in China have no letters on the number pads, just the numbers 1 to 0 and the # and * keys. Of course, when you stop and think about it, they have no letters on the phone because they have no letters in their language. The first time I called home using my credit card, I had to hang up mid-dial because our PIN number is a word, not a number, and I had to translate the letters to numbers before I could complete the call.
Over by the embassy area of the city, the newspapers that they post on the walls are in English. Probably the only place in Beijing where that's true.
As the weather grows warmer, I've stopped eating grilled yams and moved on to pineapple on a stick. You get a spear (about 1/4 pineapple) stuck on a chopstick) for 12 cents.
Another oddity in modern China: my first exposure to customer service. They closed the first-floor study lounge in my dorm a few months before we arrived so they could build a café in its place. The cafe opened last week and I figured I'd relax in it while waiting for some friends. I got thrown out of the place for not ordering any food or drink. Here's the customer service part: a few minutes later, I got called back in and invited to sit. They gave me a free cup of spring water and told me to stay as long as I liked. Such service is heretofore unheard of in China.
I got to pet a Beijing duckling, a little squirmy, furry yellow cutie, on the streets on Beijing just south of Tian'anmen square.
Ok, enough of this. As you may have figured out, I'm actually sitting at home in Oakland writing this, so it's time to move on. One of you wrote and asked if I could continue this series with stories from 933 Rose Avenue and environs. Sigh. At any rate, there are many stories I haven't had the time to share with you. I've kept a list:
- poverty on the streets of Beijing
- Sun Peng's idioms
- Tweetie Bird
- The package from America
- An hour at the internet place
- character class
- our teachers
- the bedsheet
- the American wanna-be ex-pats
- how much I missed you guys
But now I'm home, so give me a call. I've called for a one-month moratorium on Chinese food, but am very happy to share these stories and hear more from you over a fresh salad or Mexican food ....
Love,
Debra.
|
|
|
|
