Chillin' with Mao

Chinese Lesson 3: behavior in a restaurant

2006-05-11T23:27:00.000+08:00

If you ever spend some time in China, no matter what the purpose of your trip is and no matter how long you plan to stay, the following things are what you will do most:

Say “ting bu dong” which means I don’t understand what you are saying
Eat in order to survive

The first one is pretty easy to apply so we’ll talk about the second one. In a Chinese restaurant, some rules should drive your behavior. Let’s go through these with our imagination…

You are starving as you step in a restaurant with your Chinese friend who unfortunately does not speak a word of Chinese. That’s because in this story, I want you to be the one who orders the food. But still, your friend is here to notice you behave well.
So as you’ve read a lot about the country and its restaurants, you choose a not fancy one because you know they won’t try to fool you and that the food is going to be okay.

Entering the restaurant:
If you are in a city such as Dalian, the foreigners represent 0,0006% of the population, so people there get to see foreigners once in a never. As you get in, 25 customers raise their head and open their eyes wide, and the other 25 customers turn around as they were giving their back to the entrance, and put on their face the same E.T. eyes. At that moment the "laowai" sound starts to come up. Every single mouth says the word with an interval of 1 second so that it sounds like an echo to you, destabilizing. Thus, you figure out that in that place, they are not the closest ones to extraterrestrial life, but you are to them. At that point, several classics can help you. Either you grew up watching heroes such as Tony Montana in Scarface; thus, remembering the faces, you frighten the crowd with the well studied glance. Or you preferred E.T. when you were a kid, so you whisper “I want to go home”, pointing your passport with the lamp you have fixed to your finger earlier that day.

Ordering food:
The very first thing you should know is what you want to eat. Because once you are seated, the waitress will come with a piece of paper and wait right next to you, looking straight in your eyes, waiting for you to tell her what you are there for. Since there is no “Oh I’ll let you look at the menu and come back in 5 minutes”, there are three cases. You are an anxious person and you say the first meals you have in mind without thinking, in order to chase the waitress as fast as possible. Once calmed down, you think “damn stress made me order a chicken head and fried pork testicles” and you notice every customer around stares at you as if you were some kind of a warrior to eat that. If not anxious, you might be freshly out from Paris, thus you don’t know the meaning of the word “kindness”: you shout at the waitress “What are you looking at? Have you never seen a foreigner? Go away so that I can think! Damn it! Can’t I have any privacy in this country?”. In this case, the chances to have a sweet taste of spit in your rotten piece of beef are very high. Or finally, you have been clever and well prepared: you thought about your appetite on your way to the restaurant. When the waitress stands there, you take your best pronunciation out of your brain and say:

15 jiaozi (Dumplings)
1 fish
2 bowls of rice
1 tea pot
10 big bottles of beer

Comments about your order:
The beer fulfills a very precise task here. In China, if you are with a male Chinese friend, drinking beer is similar to peeing as far as possible in Europe, or it can be compared to possessing the biggest penis, suit yourself. Anyway the more you have, better it is.
Ordering dumplings and rice stands as an irrational act in China because both meals are to accompany your main meal. But we need both for the story, so let the waitress think that foreigners cannot combine tastes.

Drinking:
Concerning tea, once your cup filled up, you should be careful when you put the pot back on the table in order to not point to any one with its beak. I let you find a place where to put the tea pot when you are having diner with 50 friends on a round table.
Concerning beer, as soon as a mouthful is missing in your glass, your Chinese friend will grab the bottle and fill it. At that moment, the war is engaged, glasses will never be empty anymore. Be as fast as you can if you don’t want to end up drunk: grab the bottle before he does. Be as discreet as you can when you drink, try to hide, find ways to distract your opponent. Even in Germany, beer does not go down as quick as in China. Something you must remember though, every emptied bottle should be aligned on the table in order to carry out the far pee contest to other tables.

Eating:
People rarely make selfish diners in China. The dishes are on the middle of the table and chopsticks battle to get the food. You must be civilized in your food conquest though. People who destroy the plate layout because they want to find the good piece are not appreciated. The trick is to locate the food in the plate before launching the chopsticks. Some meals such as soups are served with a spoon to be commonly used by everyone. You are supposed to fill your bowl with the spoon, but you are not supposed to keep the spoon, remember to put it back in the meal. Don’t throw it as if you were playing basketball. This common spoon habit was suspended during the SARS epidemic in Beijing and every one was selfish. Another general clue is the table friendship concept: feel free to serve your table companion. Taking a piece of something in the main plate and putting it into your friends bowl is a mark of friendship. Again, don’t forget to locate a nice peace (putting a bone in your friend’s bowl is not considered as friendship) and no throwing.
Okay last thing is about chopsticks. Your way to use chopsticks witnesses your interest in Asian cultures; your way to hold them is significant, but moreover, if you can pick them up from the table with one hand only (Watch yourself the next time you use chopsticks, trying to position them between your fingers) it means you often use chopsticks and thus you master the art. Try it, you’ll see. Some other rules drive chopsticks usage:

Do not make big movements with your chopsticks, or do not use it to show someone.
Do not plant your chopsticks in the food. It looks like the incense sticks used during the funeral ceremonies.
Do not tap your bowl with your chopsticks. The sound reminds the beggar’s sound in the street.

Alright we are done with the general tips & tricks, let’s taste the dumplings first.

Each guest has a small plate to compose his own sauce in. I like some spices bathing in soy sauce, but you can have vinegar with garlic if you prefer. Once you got your mixture ready, you can grab a dumpling in the common plate and enjoy its dance in your sauce. The danger is here, precisely. Dumplings are not sticky but slippery; they easily escape your chopsticks and land in your sauce, giving a soy sauced design to your clothes. Many experiments underlined two solutions to soy attacks, you can either chose one or combine them. First, keep a distance between you and your sauce, 50cm is enough. Then, in the empty land, place obstacles to hold the splashed sauce. You may choose your rice bowl or your glass, but I’d rather put 2-3 bottles of beer. You can even adopt a multi layered protection with the glasses on the front line, followed by the bottles behind. The second solution comes naturally. As a well educated European, your table habit is to stand straight on your chair with both hands on the table. Well, in China, you’ll notice that you are sliding down more and more every day. First your hand disappears from the table surface, than you begin to get closer to that surface with your face. The utopian position completely hides your clothes under the table and lets your face receive all the sauce. But this position requires a lot of experience and training.
The two methods described here guarantee a full protection when combined. Of course you can always plant your chopstick in the dumpling but that looks amateur and we want to look Chinese.

It’s time to give the fish a try. I let you find your own method to get rid of the bones using chopsticks. The only thing you must know is that once you have eaten one side of the fish, you should not turn it upside down. People believe that the next boat you’ll see will capsize if you turn a fish upside down. Just take the bones off and keep eating.

We are done with behavior matters, but you should know that besides all these rules, you are free to do some stuff you would not dare doing in Europe. In many restaurants, you may spit on the ground and make awful sounds with your throat. Who cares? As long as you feel good and healthy, evacuate all the bad stuff you have in your body. Another thing you can do is talking loud enough so that the deaf across the street hears you. But don’t feel free that much! Snuffing at the table is impolite and disgusting to Chinese people; you should try to gently, silently, and discretely clean your nose instead. The last freedom is putting your trash on the table: bones, plastics, non eatable material, smoked cigarettes, ashes...Anything you want. This takes us to another rule though: do never touch the table with something you want to keep clean. If your chopsticks or some food fall on the table, you must pick it up within 3 seconds or leave it there. The 3 seconds is a result of our serious studies. We’ve observed that it takes 3 seconds to the microbes to jump on chopsticks and food.

Final point, being a guest to a Chinese friend brings two more rules. First, always leave some food in your bowl. If you don’t, it means you are still hungry. Anyway you’ll see yourself that your host keeps bringing food as long as you eat it. This rule can be meanly used by capitalist Europeans: in the restaurants nearby our school, we get more and more filled plates every time we eat. We figured out it was because we never left anything on the table, and now, we are using them to eat more. Last rule is for your host’s wellbeing: stop eating. Your host will accompany your diner, he’ll keep eating as long as you do. If you observe that he does not look good and wants to puke, save him by saying “I’m full”.

Da Shan Zi - Breathe Art

2006-05-10T10:57:00.001+08:00

Sunday 11am it was, and we woke up, too late and it was a bad day to visit the classics of Forbidden City or any palace. Thus we gave Da Shanzi a chance, this unused factory district transformed into a gathering of modern art expositions, advised by a French couple we met the day before. It was one of the best visits I did in Beijing, a sunshine in the very gray city may I add :). We arrived a little late unfortunately, thinking that artists never sleep, we did not notice it was closing at 5, so we had no more than two hours to walk in the alleys where the expositions were hidden. Everything was there: Paintings reviewing communism, collages revisiting 50 years of advertisements of this media controlling country, Mao cherished in red and shiny sculptures, accompanied by graceful dancers holding Kalashnikovs. A hall of pictures reflecting china’s modern (but still Chinese) architecture contrasted with the well conserved part of the population. Bookstores full of modern art encyclopedias exposed in abstract old looking warehouses. Gigantic sculptures of Chinese chess boards, sober castles of exploding light games, illusions of eyes through semi opaque windows. Colors, shapes, thoughts, perspectives, brains, artists…loved it.

check out the pictures on Flickr

Time & Backpacker killer baijiu in Saga

2006-05-06T20:58:00.000+08:00

I stayed in the Saga International Youth Hostel, the best youth hostel ever may I say. Not because of the staff or the service, but because I had the chance to land in the funniest backpackers atmosphere. I’ll briefly describe the kind of people I met there for you to understand how the cocktail was explosive. The best example is this French guy named Hubert, he had just arrived to China to work in a company on wind power exploitation. His dream happened to be as weird as riding a horse in the desert, but he would take a surf board too in case he makes it to west coast America. Meanwhile my two weeks trip, his job sent him to Inner Mongolia by plane for one day, and the way back was by cab. You should check out the distances to realize how wicked it is. Finally, this guy asked me: “You’ve been living here for 5 months, you should have a clue, here is what I wanna do: I’d like to ask a Chinese farmer to take me with him during 5 days. I want him to teach me how to take care of a horse and how to ride it. I wanna work with him, eat with him, live with him all day long. How much money should I put on the table for a Chinese farmer to accept me?”.
Plus there was an Israeli woman freshly out of her military duty, she decided to travel in and out Asia during 3 months. Some other guys staying in Beijing for a while, looking for a job or starting a new one drew the perspective of not passing by Beijing, but living in the city. Thus the discussions and relations got strong in a weird but so nice way.
We were Friday night, and all these foreigners where hitting the hostel after work as I was dissecting my guide to plan the next week. Stories and anecdotes counted by these Marco Polos of the 21st century where the background blabla sound of the lobby when Pierre came in, holding tight a bottle of Baijiu. “Alright, now it is getting tough” I thought, with the birthday parties in my mind. The backpackers were split into two groups after the first shot: discouraged novices and the others remembering what they were going into (willing to do it again). I am in none of these groups since I am not a baijiu novice, but still, I don’t remember a lot of it thanks to the alcohol effect. I refused to go on though, but only because I had to be up early the next morning to hit the airport (I usually come up with good excuses), and watched the game take place.
The game - Initial rules:
Player 1 starts to count from 1 and indicates his right or left. According to the way, the designated next player says 2 and so on until 21. The thing is that if one player says two numbers, the next player is skipped. And if one player says three numbers the rotation way is switched. The player who messes the numbers up has to Gambei and everything starts over.
You probably know this game as it is a classic, however, in this atmosphere, every one has stories of China to tell, every one is distracted by the come and go of the lobby, and no one is willing to win. To get it harder and to drink more, each time some one makes a mistake, new rules are added. I wrote them down as they are unique:

At 10 take your hand to your head and salute the Queen
Unevens: Raise your hands to the sky
Multiple of 5: Scream "Oh lala!!" with the prettiest french voice
Swaps: say 2 instead of 7, 7 instead of 2, 12 instead of 17 and 17 instead of 12
At 4, say it in russian: "Cheteree"
Stop at 20 instead of 21
At 11 remind the direction to the others by touching the next one's shoulder, be careful if you just said 2 or 3 numbers
Don't ask questions about the rules
Play it in Chinese

Think about how the game is going on and how the people in the lobby are staring at this weird circus, trying to understand the rules and to figure out what this strange smell of alcohol is...

Beijing think again

2006-05-06T17:32:00.000+08:00

The city seemed so not charming to me during my first trip passed December. The bloody cold weather added to the disadvantages of being 10 people and the fact that we were moving from one place to another by private van made it difficult to appreciate the 2 weeks. It was not my way to have a travel I guess. Anyway, I thought “come again Beijing” and decided to renew my opinion about the city by going through it with my girlfriend I had not seen since I left France. I moved two days before her landing time and started preparing the whole thing: I did not want this trip to be a mess as usual. I was kinda hoping that these two lonely days would help me calm down Dalian’s atmosphere which had become oppressing to me somehow. So let’s forget about the crap and jump on the plane, check out Beijing again.

While heading to downtown with the airport shuttle bus, I was counting ring road 5.. ring road 4..3...2....1. Man you better not get lost in this little town, I thought. Thus I thought "look who's talking" and passed 1 hour looking for my hostel.
Settled I was, and as my dad’s best son, I took long walks in the city during the first two days. Not that I was planning to, but probably as every tourist in Beijing does, I did not take a good look to my guide’s map scale. So I started to walk from one corner of the map to the other, with the least comfortable shoes ever, getting lost every 30 minutes. Anyway, is there a better way to get to know a city than observing it at 5 km/h? 15 kilometers walked, Hotels booked, places of interest located, I started camping at the hotel, trying to reanimate my feet and get to know some backpackers.

Homesickness trapped me

2006-04-27T17:58:00.000+08:00

Would you call it nostalgia if you start crooning "Oy sana dolanayim, oy oy emine" , walking alone in the streets of Dalian? Or is it this full album of Tarkan I have on my iRiver? Is thinking of Paris with this childish smile even though I can't stand the city a betrayal of my mind? What about listening to Frank Sinatra while writing this thing down, do I miss the time of these songs even if I was not born yet? Questions I don't dare to share..

You’ve been missed so much.

Dlilittle secrets

2006-03-22T16:00:00.000+08:00

A very quick post to share this article. I met this woman called Chantelle, she was here when we arrived, and left several months ago I guess. I witnessed most of the things she describes in the linked thread. Thank god we are in a client position with DLILI, because the employee position sucks for sure.

I noted that I had upheld my responsibilities (teaching well prepared lessons and receiving praise from both students and the leaders of the English Department), but the school had not lived up to their end of the bargain.

It clearly reminds me of nothing :)

Sunny sunday, crappy paintball

2006-03-22T03:29:00.000+08:00

Out of our dominical gathering at Dalian church, we organized a paintball afternoon in order to welcome the first warm spring day of Dalian. Surprisingly, the paintball field is not out of the city in a very hidden area, but in the Lao Dong Gong Yuan located in downtown near Sheng li Guang Chang. Besides the paintball field, the park proposes activities such as golf and a roller coaster I have never seen working. And as in every park in China, sunny days come with the sound of old friends singing and playing old Chinese music. The description should be enough to your imagination.

So we 12 frenchies made 2 teams: the flashy blue fashion soldiers and the dark green fashion soldiers. We were grabbing our semi auto second hand rifles as the Laoban shouted “It is a very dangerous game, please use your weapons carefully and remember keeping ‘em up to the sky when you are not on the field. You do not take your helmet off on the field!”. Wow they are taking it seriously, real rules and all, I was not expecting this. I thought the guy would do a “how to use demo”, aiming to his most hated employee as a daily ritual. We finally stepped on the field, with a briefer for each team, being also the referees. We were fully equipped with our uniforms and helmets, and these referees were standing on the exact middle of the field wearing jeans, a shirt and their sunglasses. Their “The bullets dodge me, I am the referee anyway” attitude finally chased away the so unbelievable strictly serious atmosphere. Each team followed its briefer to discover the field as he was doing some blabla talks about the rules. While guiding us through the field, the employee first warned us on basic paintball rules such as “remember the 10 meters distance before shooting”. Then he advised: “As you can see, we are in a public park and a 1 meter high wall separates the field from the public area. You may go out as you wish, but please be careful and do not shoot on pedestrians”. Alright, we are definitely in China.

The game finally started and strategies were settled, regardless of the naked referees and the pedestrians having a sunbath in the field. Covers were blown up by the so discreet spectators and the lack of pressure in the weapons was an excuse to drop the 10 meter rule. Two hours of extreme battle and we got out as clean as we came in. Somehow, I had fun playing paintball in a kinder garden scenery. Grazie mille per il caffè.

Happy Birthdays!

2006-03-17T16:41:00.000+08:00

DLILI University has the best habit a university can have. Every time a French student’s birthday is approaching, he and 5 friends of his are invited to a fancy Chinese restaurant for a home made celebration. The first party of the kind was to welcome the 50 French students to Dalian, French reporters were also around, and all of us discovered rice alcohol, cockroaches, karaoke and delicious Chinese food seated at a huge round table. We met James that night; the head of DLILI’s foreign affairs office, the guy who killed 30 French students with rice alcohol, this Chinese pure alcohol mixed to a taste of fuel.
Past Monday, DLILI failed to his own trap: because of the whole holiday thing, we were late on celebrations’ schedule. Thus, we had to celebrate 6 birthdays at the same time last Monday.
As Chinese people have diner very early, we attacked the food around 6pm and we attacked rice alcohol as soon as the food was served. How to drink rice alcohol? Well, you fill up a half shot glass with the transparent liquid, you name one friend to drink with (that night the pair was 30 people), you shout Gambei, make some noise by hitting the table with your glass and you one-shot your glass. If the procedure is renewed 5 times at least, new friendships should appear here and there.

The food was flourishing on the huge turning table; sounds of chopsticks fighting around the plates were settling the Asian atmosphere and stomachs were welcoming beer and rice alcohol in this very lovely evening. James had no clue we had been working hard to improve our rice alcohol resistance skills, he was overtaken by the endless Gambeis. But since it is very hard to couple rice alcohol and Chinese, he had no chance to hear how fluent is our spoken Chinese, what a shame. Anyway, we were done with the diner at 8.30pm and our behavior was going very strange as the restaurant room was too small to contain us all. Thus, we kept our happy faces on our shoulders and headed to a night club to carry on the celebration. I would like to describe what does a nightclub in Dalian looks like at 9pm, but since the DJ is like a lonely 9 years old kid having fun in his playground, I guess there is no need for further descriptions.
My evening was over at midnight and my roommates rarely saw me in such a shape. What an awesome party, thanks DLILI.

Give me more of Suzhou

2006-03-14T10:03:00.000+08:00

Suzhou introduced its magic to us with the night life, but clearly, more was to come. We were in the powerful capital of the Wu Dynasty, famed for its successful merchants, heavenly gardens, fantastic canals and 2500 years of history. We were about to discover a city size museum, thus, instead of moving by public buses from one place of interest to another, we trusted Lonely Planet and looked for a bicycle rent, keeping in mind that “You are lucky if you rent for 30 Yuan(3 Euros)/day”. Thanks for the advice Lonely Planet; we got our bicycles for 20Yuan a day. While we were pedaling through the narrow and car less lanes, we had no clue that the city was surrounded by a colossal industrial park which cherishes the citizens in a high leveled life standard and preserves the historical places.

Great artists and distinguished architects supported by wealthy families changed Suzhou into a temple of flourishing classical gardens since the 4th Century. Nowadays, only a dozen gardens have survived the destruction of wars and development. Julien and I decided to visit four of them, and I’ll describe only two of them, both descriptions will be melt in one. Nah I am not lazy at all, let’s say I shorten it because of political issues. This is the best excuse in China, if you don’t want people to ask you questions, you whisper “political issues” and they drop it, please do so.

The first garden is called Humble Administrator’s Garden. As most Chinese gardens are, this one is a 5ha microcosm of earth, reproducing natural elements such as forests and sea. However; Humble Administrator’s Garden is bluffing, the scenery is doubled in most places thanks to the water covering one-third of the garden area, reflecting pavilions as if they were unreal, transforming bridges into rainbows. The garden was thought in such a detailed way that constructions and trees do not disturb sight at all, providing a spectacular illusion of perspective, piling pagodas, massive shapeless rocks and water streams in a dream of harmony. A small museum describes the techniques of building Chinese gardens with plans and pictures. The Humble Administrator’s Garden’s pictures taken during different seasons give an idea of how each spot look wonderful and perfectly fit the natural environment no matter how the weather is.

Out of here, we grab our bikes and head to the Liu Garden, passing through very local neighborhoods, crossing canals, eventhough the rainy weather rinses our clothes. Once arrived to the Liu Garden, for the very first time since we had left Dalian, we felt the Chinese holiday around us. The garden was way too crowded; we were supposed to walk a 700meters long covered lane and discover this very rocky place trough perspective plays, but we had no choice but surfing on a human flow of visitors. The tricky thing is, in Chinese museums and gardens, you rarely see lanes for tickets (the lane concept does not exist yet), and so you cannot know how crowded it is. As a rookie, you think it is empty inside; and it is a hell of a surprise every time you step into the garden. They even manage to cut the sound off at the gate (Chinese are very very noisy tourists), so as you step in, your ears are immediately waken up and you see hundreds of Chinese going back and forth with their eyes: the foreigners – the garden, the garden – the foreigners, foreigners, foreign, for, f, p, pic, picture, take picture, take a picture of the foreigners...

Alright, the afternoon’s visit was a bit disappointing, and we were leaving the day after for Nanjing. So we enjoyed Suzhou a bit more, driving to the KFC first, to the train station right after. We wanted to see the bird market in this very bird flued period, but it was unfortunately closed, what a shame. We did not go back to the night club we checked up the night before. Instead, we fought with prostitutes who wanted us to have a beer with them, in their bar. We ended up in a foreigners bar around a pool for a calm evening.

I’ll meet you in Nanjing, reader.

What's in my hosts' bookstore?

2006-03-10T01:45:00.000+08:00

I headed to the Dalian bookstore this afternoon. Near downtown, the store is settled in a 5 floor building and has a foreign languages section. I was looking for the Pen Tsao kang mu (About Chinese medicinal methods, you may buy it online at Amazon.com), hoping to find its English version: Utopia. So I spent time looking for some books aiming to help you out with Chinese writing practices. The shelves are pretty poor and propose books for kids; anyway it suits my needs well enough since my Chinese is way worse than a Chinese kid’s. So I got 6 little workbooks and started strolling around the huge book collection, some are in English, most of them are in Chinese though.

My tiny books to practive Hanzi!

Are the literature habits the same in Europe and China? I actually don’t know much even after visiting Chinese bookstores since I rarely spend time in French stores. The interesting point is that by observing what people read, you can have a clue on their interests, am I wrong? Moreover, the content is managed by the government which does not seem very sincere to me. Maybe I’ll discover books titled “How did the U.S. copy Chinese brands such as Nike and Adidas”. Anyways, some of the proposed books had to be pretty surprising and I kinda found what I was expecting.
First section, no need to read Chinese to catch the lessons of computer books, Java is Java and Windows is Windows for every geek on Earth. Thus I was staring at computer books as TinyDreadMan shouted “You must see this!”. He had bumped into a summary of every model of screen of every existing brand of CRT monitors. What’s so awesome? Well a brief look to the following pages is. This book simply describes how to assemble and create your own CRT monitor by copying original digital circuit designs, all you need to do is choose a brand and a model. It is not so much of a surprise tough, since China has copied everything. We even have a Sydney Opera look-alike construction right outside our campus.
Then I passed by the Encyclopedia sponsored by Google and the Universal Howtos shelves appeared. The first Howto responds to today’s many Chinese’s envy: be white. It might be because of their definition of beauty or to look more European maybe, but Chinese people want to be white. Some young woman use syringes to inject chemical crappy things into their blood in order to be whiter. Caroline Snow’s (the link is what Google gave me :) ) Yoghurt Lady takes 50 pages to explain how to become whiter, soft skinned and so on…
Even better in the Universal Howtos collection is the life for dummies set of books. These explain e-ve-ry-thing. Have some examples:

Use a screw
Learn how to sail
Peal an apple
Understand a wine bottle opener corkscrew
Recognize weapons you’ve only seen while playing Counter Strike

Can we find this kind of books in Europe? Did I miss something? Even my buddy Google's results were not satisfying. I know Spud is the kind of websurfer who can find useless websites treating these subjects, I don't know if she's been reading me though. Meet her.

Chinese Lesson 2: Writing

2006-03-07T08:20:00.000+08:00

Have you ever seen the TV shows proving the efficiency of innovating memory and mind training techniques? These programs where the 10 year old kid takes a quick look to a board on which 100 words are written, and turns his back. The showman randomly asks him “tell me the word at the Xth position”, the kid proudly answers “cardiograph” without wasting the least second for a thinking. And normal human beings like you and I watch it, trying to find the trick, looking for the cheat, following the kid’s eyes to catch where he reads the words. Once you have accepted the theory, you think you might be using 10% of your brain as most people do.

I’ve been dying to be able to use 2% more since I started studying Hanzi. Chinese writing looks like shape recognition at first, meaningless shapes shouting “Forget it faguoren, I’m unrecognizable anyway”. Some interesting similarities between French and Chinese appear with this writing thing. In Chinese, Xie Hanzi means "write chinese characters". Well if you have the right pronunciation for xie, it should sound like a "pooh hanzi" in French. I turn out to be stupid sometimes.
Even though some dictionaries claim 80 000 different characters, 3000 may be enough to have a classic Chinese life. The level of character knowledge mirrors the level of education though; a well educated person may master at most 5000 Hanzi. Why are there so many? Because a Chinese character orally represents only one sound, reported to French or English, it would be one syllabus. Every sound used in oral Chinese has its own written equivalent. Moreover, the same sound can be associated to more than one Hanzi, because its meaning is different from one context to another. A bridge from Latin alphabet to Chinese Hanzi has been set up in 1979. Thus, the Pinyin language was the first step of Romanization of Hanzi. But, as if Chinese was a spoken language only, it remains very hard to master tones as they are notified in Pinyin. The reason is simple; tones written in Pinyin must be backed up by pronunciation rules in order to fit oral Chinese: if there is more than one vowel and the first vowel is i, u, or ü, then the tone mark appears on the second vowel (Wikipedia) and so on.
I’ve started recognizing few shapes after two months spent in China, such a long time with the so heavy handicap of not being able to read anything around.
Yet, once I’ve started studying the characters I noticed shapes are recurrent, and they actually mean something. These parts are called radicals and give the main meaning of a character, in theory. Still, I have no clue of what do main parts of most Hanzi mean, but I guess they are evolution of drawings. I’m even sure, as this sweet website exposes, but there is no way you can link today’s character to its origin.
Moreover, if you start digging the Hanzi culture, you quickly discover the writing styles. There are 5 ways to write Chinese, zhuànshū being the standard one. I’m killing myself to learn one character; I also luckily have a Chinese friend who masters the 5 written styles.

My hanzi practices

Five Hanzi types - Tang Yuan

Although in written Chinese, each tiny spot and line seem very important and, thus, written Chinese seems to not allowing your freestyle habit you get when you write French or English, but somehow, hanzi is flexible. Everyone has his own handwriting style and I can hardly guess the character even if I know what is exactly written. I’m still a novice, while Chinese turn handwriting to an art by the means of calligraphy.

Street Calligraphy with watered brushes - Beijing

Hanzi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/hanzi
Pinyin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin

Chinese sayings

2006-03-05T23:28:00.000+08:00

You'll probably need to install Chinese fonts to be able to read this post. I'll add more sayings as soon as I learn more, and push the post up.

肚子疼不是病，有泼屎，没垃净 - du zi teng bu shi bing, you po shi, mei la jing.
Stomach ache is not an illness, it means you haven't been to restroom yet.
听我的，准不错 - Ting wo de, zhun bu cuo.
Listen to me, you won't be wrong.
一日夫妻百日恩 - Yi ri fu qi bai ri en.
Once being a couple, even only one day, each person should be appreciated by the other.

窈窕淑女，君子好逑 - Yao tiao shu nu, jun zi hao qiu.
Every gentleman like beautiful and gracious woman.

船到桥头自然直- Chuan dao qiao tou zi ran zhi.
Don’t be afraid when some bad things happen, if you meet some difficulties, don’t worry too much about the conequences, because everything will have an predicted answer and result. Just like the ship will be straight when it stops at wharf.
This sentence is usually used when you want to comfort somebody at his difficult time.

爱屋及乌 - Ai wu ji wu.
If you like someone, you will naturally like his or her surrounding people or things.

心急吃不了热豆腐 - Xin ji chi bu liao re dou fu.
If you are worried very much, you still can not eat hot and mature bean curd. It infer that when you are in trouble, however you feel worried and anxious, it’s in vain. You should keep your heart quietly.

好好学习，天天向上 - Hao hao xue xi, tian tian xiang shang.
Good good study, day day up.

Shocking left handed young man

2006-03-05T18:22:00.000+08:00

The back packs were heavier, drenched by the huge tropical rain drops. We all knew the Viets where hiding all around us, it was an early morning the fifth of august 1936…

..Oh this is not my story. It is not even a story at all.
Actually, it begun the very first time I had to practice my hand writing in front of my Chinese tutor. The moment I started shaping the hanzi, he took my pen off my left hand and pointed my right hand with his finger. “To write Chinese, you should use your right hand”, he said. I gently explained I was left handed as he and his friend giggled.
I had no idea it would be such a trouble to be left handed in China. Every single Chinese is right handed, and I am still looking for the exception. The frustration is here, they don’t understand why I use my left hand. Moreover, I feel like the thought “yeah, left or right, it may be the same” does not cross their mind, even one second.
Your reaction is probably “who cares”, but still, think about it. Each time you grab a pen in a public place, you get this weird look on surrounding people’s face. Each time you study Chinese characters in your room, your roommate drops a nervous smile and observes: “It would be easier if you used your right hand”. Moreover, he decides to teach you how to write. The feeling is way beyond the “oh! You are left handed” reaction I usually get back in Europe. Often, it sounds more like a “look! He is obese!”, shouted on a crowded Brazilian beach.

Thus I asked some friends if it was impolite to be left handed. The most gentles gave an answer conflicting with the facts: “No, it is okay, we rarely see left handed. We think they are cleverer”. The less gentles laughed and remained quiet.
Even the teachers noticed : “you look like you are drawing, not writing hanzi”. Such situations underline the gap there is between the country's evolution and its people's minds I guess. Please people, try to think a little, it is about time!

Reporters caught me naked

2006-03-04T15:59:00.000+08:00

11am last Thursday, I was in my room doing nothing in my usual home wear: half naked, boxers only, when someone knocked my door. Of course, I immediately opened the door without thinking who might be on the other side. Two French students were standing there and left a "huh?!" come out when they saw me:

- Some reporters from Dalian news are preparing an article about our life in Dalian, would you mind being interviewed? They are waiting outside.
- That means I need to put a shirt on, do my bed and tidy up my stuff right?

This maybe the third time we, French students, have to deal with Chinese newspaper. They like us being around, I guess. The two women started to ask questions about my life here, what I like most, what are the unforgettable I've experienced around, what are the significant differences with European lifestyle and so on. I would have liked to take the interview all the way in Chinese but it is so hard to think and talk at the same time. On top of it, while you try to express yourself in front of a Chinese person, you are so slow that you keep thinking you are wasting his precious time, even though they are way too patient. Thus, you cannot focus; you mess words up, and switch back to English. Fortunately, that day, Yu Heng, our so loved French/Chinese student, was here to help me out.
It is quite difficult to have an interview like that, many things you better not say, not because Mao is a devil and it is dangerous, but just because if it is too “not normal”, they simply won’t publish it. I feel like you have to provide the media some regular information. However, it is frustrating to feel that you are giving them the answers they are waiting for. Thus, you work it around in order to balance the “my thought/their thought” equation.

The interview was interrupted several times by the F-16 taking off nearby our campus, at the airport. Even better, as some guys have been trying, since few months, to take down one of the mountains around our school, we experienced the charm of a huge explosion followed by a homemade earthquake. Houston, we are still alive. DLILI, what a fantastic place.

The article was published in today’s newspaper. And I had a kind of proof about the “give me what I want” rule. The reporter wanted to take some pictures of me faking some regular activities. Thus, I sat at my desk and faked I was writing a letter, she kept saying “Smile” as I was almost tearing my lips to give her satisfaction (Alright this sentence fragment sounds way too sexual, take a look to the Google search results, ahaha). I finally told her I stopped being a clown and she would get no monkey smile: picture not published :) . See the students on the picture below? There are so good fakers of “we are studying hard, altogether”. This is the most amusing game in China I guess: open the newspaper, observe the pictures and guess: what are they faking?

Listening to: David Guetta - Fuck me I'm Famous

Radio show - be my guest

2006-03-03T10:10:00.000+08:00

The event is not the most recent one, but so particular I think, I wanted to have this memory written somewhere.

I met this Chinese student named Xiao Dong, we had to work together for DLILIs show presentation. To earn money, Xiao Dong handles a part time job at the Dalian TV & Radio Center, thus has professional relationships with "famous" radio showmen. As 50 French students arrival was the attraction of Dalian at that time, Xiao Dong asked me whether I would like to take part in a radio program as the foreign guest. Clearly, I accepted the invitation; the program was going to be produced 1 week before Christmas. Since the show is the most listened to, from 6pm to 7pm during the rush hour, we had to prepare our speech a bit. The main purpose of having me over there was to introduce one of the 50 French students to the Dalian Radio listeners, and moreover, to share some of the music we listen to back in Europe.
Therefore, Xiao Dong and I headed to the radio center with an USB key full of different kinds of music I listen to. We listened the songs while having a conversation on how I should act during the Show. The rules where mainly normal I guess: no slang, no politics and so on. One instruction shocked me though, the DJ warned me on not talking about Christmas. I asked for some explanation, he simply answered “It is forbidden to talk about Christmas on the Dalian Radio waves, I don’t know why”, the kind of answer which makes me want to chat about Christmas, but I cannot afford a dead man though. All I noted is that the show had to be the most serious thing ever, no going out of bounds, no doing freestyle.
Let’s choose the music we’ll play now. I anticipated the global atmosphere and took mainly soft music such as Manu Chao or Jackson Five. However, the DJ liked more my Dancehall Ragga songs and the band called Brooklyn Funk Essentials. “Bring me more ragga next time okay?” he said. Oh boy, if Mao only knew what these songs are about: sex, drugs, alcohol. What ever, Ragga it is!

Finally, we met again the following week for some live performance. My friend Tang Xuan (Betty is her English name), came along to do the Chinese/English translations. The show was just fine, we discussed of my life in China, and I took the clown out, spoke Chinese and sang a Chinese song, while Papa Tank was shaking the Dalian Radio waves with his kick ass Ragga vibes.
I sometimes listen to the show, making sure the DJ did not die because of me passing that kind of music. Everything is fine in Dalian.

If you want to hear some Chinese, download the programs mp3 here.

Chinese Lesson 1: Tones

2006-03-01T23:21:00.000+08:00

The “Tones on words” concept is something we don't have in our occidental languages. Thus, we have difficulties applying tones, and somehow, we don’t get it when Chinese people don’t understand us if we mistake tones. But what are tones exactly? They are a kind of dictatorial language rule: a mistake completely isolates you and you cannot afford your voice to go out of bounds. There is nothing like the frustration you feel when you give your best pronunciation and nobody hears you. Moreover, you lol it so hard when you notice that Chinese people cannot whisper or shout because of the tones. You cannot mumble even when saying “hello”. Since I can observe 50 Chinese learners here in Dalian, I found out why most of us have the tones wrong. In most languages we speak, we don't spend more than half a second pronouncing each syllables of a word. However, you can barely apply a tone in half a second. Consequently, as long as we don't practice our syllable lengthening, we'll hardly acquire a good pronunciation.

There are five tones in the spoken Chinese language, illustrated by the following famous chart:

The fifth tone is our normal pronunciation I guess (I don’t even know where I am anymore). The tones are clearly written in Pinyin (Chinese written in Latin alphabet), but I can rarely catch them in Hanzi (Chinese characters). Why should we pay so much attention to tones? Because in mandarin Chinese, the tones are as important as the sound for determining the meaning of a word. Have an example:

Let’s take the word ma, the example you see the most:

ma
This ma stands for the question mark. You just place it at the of your interrogative sentence. Remember, as you are stuck by the tones, you cannot modify your tonality to mark a question, so our guys created the ma word.

mā
The first toned ma means mother (māmā actually). You may have noticed the character is made of two shapes. The first character, the one on the left, is the key for "female". It gives you a trick to easily find the meaning if you see it written somewhere. You get to find the trick to remember the shape of the "female" character. Yeah, this is what Chinese writting & reading is all about: tips & tricks. If I am drunk enough someday, I'll blog my tricks for keys for you guys to understand how my brain is done and, moreover, how fucked up it is.

mǎ

The third toned ma means horse. No key, just horse, since there are no additives, should we consider this is the original character? If we do so, something may have inspired Chinese people. At first, this character probably had a horse shape, than evolved. Brains, warm up, imaginations, wake up. Try to find the horse shape and comment me your drawings.

In case you still don't get the importance of tones, let me give you a hint: you don't want to call your mother a horse do you?
We are done with ma. Actually, I am done with it. I exposed three tones, there are still two more. It is enough for the following translation exam though.

Nǐ māmā shì mǎ ma?

Alright dear reader, I'll give something I haven't decided yet to the first non-Chinese who sends me the english translation of this sentence. I'll give something even more something to my reader who sends me the answer to this question, written in both, pinyin and hanzi. Two clues: Nǐ means "you" and shì means "to be".

Tones are hard, I confess. But what about the writing? Soon...

I'm gonna tell your parents!

2006-02-27T16:38:00.000+08:00

This is about me and my anger towards EPITECH.

EPITECH signed up a contract with DLILI, the university we are hosted by in Dalian, China. Proud of their job, EPITECH administration members had some reporters come and see what's going on in here and do some ad. The main argument of EPITECH's pride was:

This is the very first time French students are in a total immersion in China. Our students will share their room, have class and live with Chinese people during 10 months.

Let me tell you what is really going on here in Dalian. We share our room with Chinese people and have Chinese friends. That's about it. We take two main different classes: computer science and Chinese. The computer science class is the most boring thing ever. Imagine that you are in classroom, you have a computer connected to the Internet in front of you, and the teacher is Chinese and barely speaks English. We have been self-studying computer science for 3 years now, and these guys want us to focus during 3 hours on what the teacher is trying to explain. Do we have homework? Sure we do. Install Oracle on Windows 2003 Server, make screenshots and describe step by step the procedure. Uninstall Oracle and do that screenshot thing again. Now, install Linux and apply the same procedures. Oh and as so you know; now that you have uninstalled Oracle, install it back because you’ll need it for the next class. Sweet lord teacher, are you having fun wasting our time or something?
Reader, if you wonder what is the meaning of “install Oracle”, it consists on clicking buttons, as if you were installing MSN messenger.

Thus, I skip the useless computer science class.

We have Chinese classes, those are hen you yisi (very interesting). We talk a lot, we read a lot, and we learn 50 new words each week. We get to practice our Chinese as soon as we are out of the classroom. And I finally started studying seriously my Chinese writing, so everything is cool.

Last thing we have to do here is the monster called PFE. It is the end of studies project we must develop and promote during our last two years in EPITECH. Such an important thing requires a lot of time, especially the research and discovery part you have when you start a new project. The time we spare for the PFE is kinda doubled because of the low bandwidth-not working on Sundays-non existant on week days Internet connection we have.

I am done with our weekly schedule even though I did not say a word about the “get out of school and discover China” thing.

So what am I mad at? This week, my so loved school EPITECH sent a threatening letter to our parents explaining that they are not happy about us missing class. They can “cancel the exchange program and bring us back to France at anytime” if we don’t consider the program seriously.

For gods sake, are you guys dumb or what? How do you dare sending such a letter now? First, you cannot manage mixed classes with Chinese people, thus you completely fail your contract. Then, after three months that you’ve sent your students abroad, you notice they are not even registered to the French embassy of China. You have no idea of what is going on here, you cannot even come up with an adequate grade system. Do you even have a clue of how much time it takes to learn 50 Chinese words?
On top of it, to all these arguments you reply “EPITECH just settled this student exchange program, it cannot be perfect”. Hell with you.

Bir sabah

2006-02-17T08:25:00.000+08:00

Bir sabah öldüğümü duyacaksın.
Sapsarı bir sonbahar sabahı.
Kapanacak gözlerim,
Ağlayacaksın...
Köşebaşından bir tabut çıkacak.
Ve arkamda sen,
Elinde bir demet çiçek,
Dudağında dualar,
Mahzun gözlerle bakacaksın...
Gözyaşların güneşte parlayacak.
Ağlamak gelmese de içinden,
Ağlayacaksın...
Hayalim belirecek karşında.
Belki de bana benzetemeyeceksin.
Koşup kapanmak isteyeceksin,
Taze toprağına mezarımın,
Bırakmayacaklar...
Yeniden beni hatırlayacaksın.
Sessiz gözyaşlarıyla,
Ağlayacaksın...
Keşke o iki kelimeyi söyleseydim diye.

Stories from Africa

2006-02-13T19:12:00.000+08:00

Penis

In a very isolate village in Africa, little Isidor asks his father:
- Dad, can I play with your penis?
- Sure kid, but don't go too far!

Black sheep

In the same village lives one white guy, the only white around. He works for the Red Cross and heals sick people. However, a matter worries the whole town. A few days ago, a woman gave birth to a half caste girl. Thus, every body thinks the white doctor has something to do with this affair, but nobody dares talking. Embarrassed, the chief of village finds the doctor and says:
- Would you please explain me why this kid is not black?
- Well sir, the nature has made the choice. you know sometimes you have 100 white sheeps and only 1 black. You cannot control these things.
- Listen kid, I won't say anything about the kid, but don't you say a word about the sheep!

Torino 2006 Winter Olympics

2006-02-12T21:05:00.000+08:00

Alright, Winter Olympics take place in Torino Italy this time. As we have fully integrated the Chinese country, culture and lifestyle, we copied the winter games as if they were a dvd..

We counter attacked the boring sundays and went skiing for the afternoon. There are 2 artificial ski slopes only 30 minutes away from our campus, so 6 friends and I decided to check it up.
Since we'll be there for the afternoon and there are not many slopes, I wanted to try snowboarding, 'cause i also wanna be a cool surfer. And now it hurts. I'm glad I finally figured out a way to know how many muscles human body has: snowboarding. I even located some bones.
Clearly, we were not expecting to ski when we signed up for the student exchange program, so I had no choice but to ski with my jeans. It is not comfortable, and, on top of all, once wet, you are cold.
No matter what, neat Sunday for only 20 Euros, isn't it?

TrackManiaNations - Blessed

2006-02-12T00:26:00.000+08:00

I guess most readers have already heard about Nadeo's TrackMania series, the funniest car racing game ever. Fellows, a new one is available since a while. Nadeo has developed TrackManiaNations to take place in the Electronic Sports World Cup which has began January the 27th, and it is free to download! As previous releases of the game, TM Nations reveals your stunt race driver skills (maybe for some people, it does not), but this time Nadeo dropped Formula1 cars into the usual twistered, half-piped, ramped, chicaned and boostered tracks!
Acquire driver skills in the Solo mode, winning the Gold medals.. Become the solo guru by beating every Nadeo best times, would you dare?
Tune your car and challenge players all over the world in the Internet mode, the craziest mode of the game. You can race, chat, try to beat the best times. Trust me, TM gamers community gathers the most pleasant players in the world.
Once you think no one can beat you, open the track editor and assemble pieces as you wish, record your best time, create your server and wait to be taken down.
I hope you'll like this, but please don't be fired because you were open-space-playing, and there is no need to divorce just because you are spending more time playing TM than being with your wife. Enjoy!

By the way, if you have a crappy 56k modem, try Mini TrackMania while the download manager does its job.

Google owns it!

2006-02-09T16:29:00.000+08:00

The Search Engine & co might have missed the target, as published reports of the fourth quarter witness. The censor agreement signed with the Chinese government might have disappointed many people. Anyway, Google still owns it all.
Checking my mails this morning on Gmail, I noticed the Gtalk integration to the pages. A few minutes ago, I checked it out with a friend. How sweet it is! you don't need to install any software on your machine (no Java, no applications at all), your contacts are loaded on the left side of your email listing and you can see whether they are on or offline. As you double click on a contact, a layer appears in the window, with a chat box in it.. You can now read your mails while chatting, using your web browser only.
Some other features such as "minimize the chat window" and "pop out the chat window" make it more enjoyable.
Gmail uses Ajax to implement the webmail, thus a perfect example of what is doable with this technique..
Some dinosaurs should better be afraid of Google..rising..rising..
Are you still not using Gmail??? Shame on you!

Jianzi (毽子)

2006-02-08T23:48:00.000+08:00

If the temperature outside is -15 C°, if you are stuck with a friend in a 3 square meters room and if you want to lose some weight, Jianzi is what you need. Wikipedia gives a more detailed explanation of this sport. You can find the rules in English and in French on the websites of the Jianzi federations. I advise you to watch the videos on the French federation's website (bottom of the page).
Jianzi is a very popular activity in China, no matter how old you are, you can burn calories in parcs all over the country: there are always people practicing somewhere...

We have been playing this game for almost 3 months now; I discovered the federations a few days ago. What a shame! I thought we were the only players on earth! We had our own techniques and our own trick names:

Black lotus
Pigeon wing
Out of control
Kiss of death

I'll upload some videos of us kickin' the Jianzi as soon as we record them :)
You will see, even the Hungarians cannot challenge us. We break a Jianzi every two days, and believe me, it has nothing to do with the quality of Chinese Jianzis. Ours are made with feather of chickens killed by bird flu and balanced by peaces of soda cans.

Joke - Don't mess with the old chinese..

2006-02-07T22:18:00.000+08:00

After being lost in chinese mountains for 3 weeks, a man finally sees a house, he knocks:
- YES? (thanks god, the chinese man speaks english)
- Good evening sir, i've been lost for 3 weeks. I am hungry, tired, i was wondering if you could host a poor man.
The old man accepts but warns:
- Nobody can do my daughter. If i catch you with her, you will go through 3 chinese tortures.
The man accepts the condition and sits with the family for supper. Since he has not seen a woman for a long time, the young man can't help staring at the gorgeous lady, as she does the same. During the night, the man cannot resist and joins the old chinese man's daughter. The sex lasts for hours, he gets the best sex ever. Back in his room, he thinks:
- Wow!! this sex was worth every torture! On top of it, the old man might have heard nothing!
The next morning, the man feels a pain on his stomach. He opens his eyes, and notices a huge stone on him, with this little note: "Torture number 1: 50 Kgs stone on your stomach".
- What a stupid torture! he says, and throws the stone out the window. Meanwhile, he barely has the time to read a second note on the wall next to him: "Torture number 2: stone tied to your right testicle". - HOLLY SHIT!!!
The young man jumps out the window since it is too late to catch the stone, death should be less painful, he thinks.
But, while falling down, he reads one more note on the rope: "Torture number 3: left testicle tied to the bed".

Suzhou, launch the surprises

2006-01-29T23:50:00.000+08:00

Lonely Planet: If you want to see the most beautiful gardens of China and the most gorgeous women of China, take a trip to Suzhou.

The train is crowded as usual; remember we are in the middle of the most important Chinese holiday. We were seated with 4 other travelers; everyone was busy glancing through magazines or playing cards - Chinese love to spend time playing games: cards, Chinese chess, mahjong, dice etc. – as Julien and I were brainfucking. He was trying to solve his new Chinese brain twister and I stayed more traditional, solving Sudoku puzzles of my Black Belt Sudoku book. The kid next to me was quite amazed by me using my left hand to place senseless numbers in a senseless grid. Niu rou mi fan (let’s say this was his name, actually it means “rice with beef”, but I can’t remember his name so keep on track) started questioning me in Chinese about who I was, what I was doing and so on. I ended up trying to explain the principles of Sudoku to my little buddy, but failed under the pressure of people around laughing at me speaking Chinese (as usual, may I add). We changed the subject and started Julien's favorite game: guessing Chinese characters in a newspaper. People around laughed again.. Hell with it buddy, why don’t you try to read the English foreword of my Sudoku book? Oh can’t you guess more than 5 words? ..Hmm alright (hehehe).

We arrive to Suzhou around 10pm, it seems like there are no public buses around. As we were staring at the bus information board, a man approached us…

…what would have happened next in France…
Noticing that we are lost, the guy claims that he knows where our hotel is and proposes to guide us. We walk through dark and narrow lanes, suspicious. 10 men come out of nowhere and fight us to death. Once they have screwed us, our guide and his friends disappear with our bags, phones and wallets.

…what would have happened next in Turkey…
Noticing that we are lost, the guy claims that he knows where our hotel is and proposes to guide us. We walk through dark and narrow lanes, suspicious. We finally get to our hotel, relieved. The man helps us to our room, translating what ever we need, without dropping that friendly smile on his face. Once settled, he asks us whether we are hungry or thirsty and takes us to a restaurant. Last thing we remember: he chooses the meal for us… The next morning, we get up in a bathtub full of ice, with a missing kidney.

You love shitty clichés don’t you?

Here is what happened in China…
Our man, David Sun (that’s his real name) noticed our distrust and insisted on taking the bus with us, telling us about Suzhou, the history and the places we should not miss. He felt so sorry when he understood the first hotel he took us to was not the one we had booked. We walked 15 minutes more; it was almost around midnight when we finally made it to our hotel. He came with us to check the rooms, and was the only one of us three not happy about it. “The shower is not even in the room guys! I’m 35 years old and I earn my own money. Let me pay the difference for you to have a room with a shower in it, please!”. We had to fight 20 minutes to keep is hand away from his wallet. Then, we went to a restaurant all together, discovered the Cai dan (menu) and ordered while David Sun kept talking about Suzhou. I finally told him about the “beautiful girls in Suzhou” thing, thus I got my answer full of humor: “I don’t think Suzhou has the most beautiful girls in China. My wife is from Suzhou, you know what I mean? If you guys are done, I would like to take you to a night club to have beers”.

Indeed, the night club had an entrance fee and the beers were quite expensive, but he kept telling us about China, showing his happiness of meeting foreigners while fighting to keep our hands away from our wallets, even though we were not really fighting back. However, we were not listening to him anymore. Since 3 months we had been in China, and it was the very first time we had stepped into a nightclub that you can actually call “night club”. Sexy women, more women than men, hell of a sound system roaring Sean Paul, Chemical brothers and Mister Oizo, women who like foreigners. We forgot about David Sun and went to hit the dance floor. Two hours later I had the decency to ask David whether he wanted to stay or go: “I would like to now”. Over.

Thus, we went back to our hotel, surprised by our host, cherishing our positive thoughts about China and longing to discover Suzhou. Of course, the same could have happened in France or in Turkey, don’t you be mad. It’s just that I have never seen such friendliness in Turkey, even though Turkish people are very kind and are willing to make other people love their country. Well, in France, I cannot imagine happening even the one tenth of this story.

Wassup doc'?

2006-01-29T20:18:00.000+08:00

Yeay!! It's time to take a look to the Hangzhou Museum of Traditional Chinese Medicine!! I will finally learn more about the very well known natural healing methods. As we are full tourist blended humans, we got in the museum by its way out and started our visit with the "take care" shop. At least, they are selling some real stuff in here: plants and parts of animal bodies! And the prices are the funniest thing to see: China, the country where you have a delicious meal for 4 euros - China, the country where you can buy crappy plant roots for 53700 Euros. Okay Hangzhou's citizens are known to be rich, but who would buy these?

Click the picture and take a good look to the price

What can a tourist possibly think about the root healing? Here is my thought path:

What the hell??
How did people find out about healing properties of roots?
Do you take a bite every time your back hurts?
Maybe you have to put some in your tea!
..or up in your *ss?!?!
How many people died trying to uproot this on high mountains?
Shall I tribute these people and take a picture?
"Click!!"
Sir!! Taking photos is not allowed in here!!
.....Don't you worry, I won't blog this picture, I swear.

Roots are so expensive, you'd better not spoil the recipe. Whatever, lets have this museum tour..

The first part counts the historical and cultural aspects of traditional Chinese medicine. How did Chinese people study the nature and discover its power. What was the influence of occidental medicine on Chinese knowledge. How did the trading with the entire world thing begin. Many interesting information aim to enlighten the tourist's apprehension concerning the mystic Chinese medicine.
The second part of the museum is made of for more concrete items. A dozen rooms exposing jars full of animals, rocks, plants and their legend which more or less look like this:

Rana Temporaria Chensinensis David
Effect: nourishing lung and kidney

Okay who the hell are Lung and Kidney?? can't they eat by themselves? Whatever, legends you cannot understand without an encyclopedia. The section awakes your brains imagination area though. During one hour, I built scenarios of how did Chinese people discover the benefits of these exposed items. It could have gone like "Hey, how should I use this Rhino horn to feel relaxed?" or "Go catch that monkey and we'll figure out what to do with it later! Oh by the way, grab the dead pigeon laying near by the tree over there, and bring it to me on your way back, I have an idea..".

I felt like this is not the kind of museum enjoyable by anyone. Scientist or plant passionates would appreciate the knowledge exposed in here. I enjoyed my own imaginary Chinese traditional medicine.

Grab your bags, jump on the train, move to Suzhou..

First day of the year - Have it in paradise

2006-01-29T13:14:00.000+08:00

As I wrote before, there are two islands in the middle of the fantastic Hangzhou West Lake. We wanted to appreciate the first morning of this New Year with a boat trip to the islands and a "natural" walk in this very peaceful after-party atmosphere; fireworks still illuminating the sky though.

I’ll pass the first island we visited as it was 5 meters large and 10 meters wide, with one classic pagoda in the middle, the kind you see everywhere in China.

The second island we stepped on is called Xiao Yingzhou, we are supposed to watch the moon reflecting in the three central pools. In fact, the island is split by a zigzag bridge which lets appear four tiny lakes: "an island in the lake, lakes in the island". What a shame the moon is not around at 10am. Anyway, the scenery is the nicest I have seen since I arrived to China. Bamboos, pools, lake, paths look like a movie set in this foggy morning, I wish there were less people around. Hang around, enjoy the landscape, take pictures for yourself, take pictures with Chinese people amazed by the foreigner presence, practice Taichi, be an R'n'B lover..the pictures say it all.

"Above is heaven, below is Hangzhou and Suzhou"

Chinese New Year - Who let the dog out?

2006-01-28T23:38:00.000+08:00

Sorry reader, I have been busy lately and had no time to write. Here is the next chapter of our road trip in China.

January 28th is the Chinese New Year. These days, wherever you go in the country, firecrackers and fireworks are talking to you: "Hey, aren't you deaf yet? Alright, I’ll destroy your ears, gimme some time!". The sound of firecrackers is a distinctive feature on Chinese festivals, more than in any other country I have visited. Since there are no laws to supervise these "toys", anyone can sell/buy/fire rockets almost anywhere. But especially tonight, sounds of explosions have started around 5pm and we were told it won't stop until tomorrow morning. Burners will have fun during several days to welcome the Dog Year. Chinese people use fireworks to express the fact of being ready for the New Year, and also to get rid of evil spirits by frightening them. We wanted to spend this evening in Shanghai to see some real kick ass celebration, but we didn’t manage our trip well enough.

Anyway, it is quite fun to live such a joy around us. We studied the event with our Li Laoshi (Teacher Li) in Dalian, before the holiday. Thus, we know the special words to use today. In each coffee shop we get in, each restaurant we leave, we practice our "Xin nian kuai le!" (Happy new year), and the "Wo gei ni bai nian!" (Wish the New Year to the elders).
Who can resist to the firework sell-spots flourishing in every single street? We stopped at one of those; it is hard to tell everything we saw. There are these huge boxes, one meter wide, you can hardly imagine what kind of think it launches in the sky. And there are these colorful tubes, 5 cm diameter, and 1 meter long.

I am looking around for some rockets and missiles while the others buy firecrackers, the small ones, 300 little red crackers linked with one flammable line, how neat it is.. Please imagine Rambo with his machine gun bullets around the neck, make Julien the Rambo and have the bullets red colored, there you are.

It is time to find the best place to burn our crackers. Is this lane good? No, too many trees. Is this street okay? Nah, too crowded. We finally got to a wide square where no one seemed to fire anything: “Great! We will see our fireworks well enough”. As soon as we light up our first firecracker, a policeman comes: “Here, you cannot!”. How on earth did we manage to end up in the only place were this thing is forbidden?? We probably are the best tourist ever.
We head to a narrow street, illuminated by the fireworks burned on its sidewalk. To be clear, when I say fireworks, I am not talking about little glitters. Each family here can challenge the French 14th of July national day celebration fireworks show. But in a dangerous way though. For example, we saw this 10 years old kid borrow his father’s cigarette, run to the huge firework box, light it and return the cancer stick to his daddy. Hence, the box launches 3 war heads straight to the sky and knocks off balance, aiming the sidewalk across the street. The next missile hits a car; the last one hits a building. Who cares anyway, Xin nian kuai le!

The more lately it gets, the more fireworks explode. There is not a single silent second. Around 8pm, you feel like being in Baghdad, in the middle of American/Iraqi riots, explosions sounds surround us. You can grab a Kalashnikov and fire around, kill hundreds of people. Nobody would notice. Thankfully, Mc Donald’s sundae ice creams are here to remind you there is no war going on. The fast food restaurant is also useful to give our ears a rest.
We make it to a park where a lot of people are gathered. The ground is covered by the fireworks’ red paper. We watch happiness around. 3 young guys decide to settle their bombs one next to another in order to fire them at all together. Of course, one of them gets late because his lighter won’t work. He is soon hidden by the white smoke, which is, by the way, allover the city, making the Baghdad illusion truer. “Forget about the guy, we’ll see how he did in that smoke once the fireworks are done exploding”. Alright.

Besides fireworks, Chinese New Year must be traditionaly celebrated with “Jiaozi”s, the meal we call dumpling or raviolis. As we want to be as Chinese as possible, we decided to find a restaurant to eat jiaozi and ended up in a cheap dirty place, the kind we are used to eat at in Dalian. This one was hardcore though: cold solid rice, oil bathed jiaozi. Whatever, lets have this meal short and grab Snickers back to our Hotel.

What a pity Chinese New Year is the busiest day for hospitals. But at least, it is a hell of a celebration achieved in such a happiness we hardly live in Europe.
Wo gei ni bai nian.

Tea time!

2006-01-28T20:54:00.000+08:00

A town named Longjing near Hangzhou is famous for its tasteful tea, a little museum explains the history of tea culture: why on earth Chinese people started to drink trees, how the dynasties used it to pull up the country's economy, how to recognize different types of tea, how to prepare the best tea ever? The museumbuildings are spread in a beautiful garden, surrounded by tea plantations. Tea smell is allover, and no one is around. Considering that we are road tripping during the Chinese New Year, being alone in a museum is quite incredible. You end your visit with a cup of the famous Longjing tea, given the price however, we did not.

Tea plantations in Hangzhou

Tea museum

As we had started our day with a "natural" visit, we headed to the Buddhist Lingyin Temple, a few kilometers away. No buses around, we are in the middle of nowhere. Let's follow the highway and take a walk through the country side. In a little village, we admired a woman smashing a turtle's carapace with a chop, as village people admired the two tourists we happen to be. In China, no matter where you are, people rarely get to see white people. Even if they are used to it in places of interest, they stare at you because they are, in some way, happy and proud to have they country visited. Moreover, Julien has dread locks and my height is 2 meters, does not help does it..

We finally made it to the park where the temple is supposed to be. We discover Buddhist sculptures incrusted to the rock, their layout on high places and down in caves are amazing. On top of it, the sculptures perfectly fit the natural scenery, offering to the visitors a wonderful sight of the park. We decide to climb the hill ahead of us, to take a picture of Hangzhou. As we walk, we can hear rising sounds of drums hit in a ceremonial rhythm. There are too many trees around, we won't have the opportunity to see the city from the hill, let's go back down to find the temple.

Doors are closed, few people are coming out. The little Buddha at the gate explains us "the temple is closed". Quick look to my watch: 2:30pm. Whatever, never mess with religion. Let's enjoy the park a little more and go back in town. I was chillin' around while Julien was playing Karate Kid with a branch of bamboo, when we bumped into Dara and Nicolas. These guys are two EPITECH students who came with us from France to China, we had no clue they would be around. They were as disappointed as we were by the closed Temple, we exchanged anecdotes about our trips, and took a bus to downtown to see how Starbucks was doing.

Hangzhou the fantastic

2006-01-27T01:32:00.000+08:00

Subway 1…hall 9…wagon 14…seat 76…11:30pm…180 kms…Bus K9…101 Nanshan Lu…
…We moved to Hangzhou.
Does every Chinese city offer factories as a scenery? Hangzhou does not. Its forests, parks and its West Lake have charmed and inspired many poets and artists. Pagodas appear on every surrounding hills. Sunny, foggy, rainy, who cares? Hangzhou is beyond dispute the finest and the noblest in the world, my friend Polo (Marco) said once.

As we were looking around for our hotel, we ended up in a street nearby the lake, a bars & nightclubs neighborhood. Our address indicates a lane; it looks like the night clubs' backdoor street, we are almost there. A flashy red post with its Latin characters pulls my attention; it says “Paul Van Dyk – The politics of dancing: Absolute House”. You might have no idea who this guy is, but as God is a DJ, Jesus probably bounces on this German’s mixes. He and Tiesto (This God mixes in stadiums, not in clubs) are the progressive trance masters I prefer. Just find their music somewhere, plug it into your head, and start to climb the Everest. The DJ will perform the 29th, we will probably be gone by then. Now that I am posting about it, I regret, I wish we had spent one more day in Hangzhou.

God, the DJ - Crunked Media

Alright, back to my story, we made it to the hotel, practiced our Chinese 5 minutes and switched to English as usual, dropped our stuff in the room and took a walk around the lake (scheduling our visits, of course). There are 2 main islands we should visit, some boat tours take tourists there..boring. We want to have our exotic conquest of the islands. Little crappy boats are to be rented nearby our hotel. No questions, we jump on one of those as soon as we see that we can go alone with our life vests. The Captain Hostel might have influenced us way too much and our stuntman souls might have blinded us: clearly, we cannot go further the buoys. We had fun though, our motorboat was slow enough to be passed by swimmers, we had enough time to detail the mountains… forget about the adventurous island discovery, I’d rather represent the tourists, we are cool people :).

We kept breathing fresh air around the lake, even though on some places, you can touch both, lake and highway, at the same time. We experienced once more the ‘show me the money and I’ll trick you the Chinese way’ thing, I won’t write long about it. Just so you know, around 6pm, we ended up at the opposite side of the lake, and had to find buses to get back to our hotel. Oh, By the way, we had not lunched yet :)

Old Shanghai

2006-01-26T21:53:00.000+08:00

We tasted new Chinese meals in an expensive cafeteria of the old Shanghai before taking a walk in those narrow streets. I fell in love with the ambient disorder. While some people sell food on the sidewalk, others hang their wet clothes to wooden sticks fixed to buildings. Scents of cooked meals tickle our nose; we keep dodging the kids running around us and the bicycles trying to make their way out the crowd. Slowly quitting the neighborhood, we visit some houses as “naïve & curious tourists”, with this permanent eye dialog we have with Chinese people, who usually stare at tourists as they pass by.

It reminds me of Istanbul, you can find the exact same scenery in the Tarlabaşı district i guess.

Yu garden (豫园)

2006-01-26T12:51:00.000+08:00

The Yu yuan is a perfect example of Ming style gardens. Created by the Pan family in the 1550s, the garden was destroyed two times. Heavily damaged during the Opium war, it was then ransacked by the French troops. The present-day Yuyuan occupies an area of two hectares (5 acres) and is built in a style associated with the renowned Suzhou gardens, which are characterized by an exquisite layout, beautiful scenery and artistic architecture. Each pavilion, hall, stone and stream in the garden expresses the essence of South China's landscape design from the Ming and Qing dynasties.

Having no knowledge about Chinese history and culture, we did not know what we were about to discover here. I expected a Beijing heaven palace look-alike garden. We entered the place and saw a charming composition of rocks, trees, pavilion and streams. The garden is supposed to reflect the nature with its mountains, forests and seas. In the summertime, Yuyuan probably appears as an oasis in the middle of Shanghai, all green and flowered.A great place to have some fresh air and a rest after Chinese train stations.

Organization for dummies

2006-01-26T10:54:00.000+08:00

We got up early today and headed to the train station to grab tickets to spend the day in Wuxi. I should briefly describe the state of Chinese train stations during the Spring Festival. Remember the context though, everything around us is written in Chinese, and we can guess 15 characters out of thousands. Back to the description, imagine 20 Michael Jacksons, each of them sitting at a desk. They all fired their bodyguards yesterday night. Add 600 teenagers, fans of Michael Jackson. They don’t want to wait and yet, they have not heard about the “stay in the line” concept. We get this math:

600 / 20 = 30 fans per desk
Swaps needed:

Michael Jackson -> Train station employee
Teenager -> Chinese willing to go home to visit his family

Here we are

9 o’clock, I jumped in the crowd to get our tickets. Luckily, I came out 15 minutes later. Julien took a look at the tickets and said “cool! We are leaving this afternoon at 3pm. We were supposed to spend the day in Wuxi, not 2 hours!”. So I went back in there, got our money back and asked the guy for tomorrows tickets, “You are in today’s tickets selling building, you should go to tomorrows ticket selling building instead”, he answered. What kind of railway station is this? Do they have buildings for every god damn day?? Half an hour later, we found the so wanted building and got our tickets for Wuxi, we will leave tomorrow morning. It is 10:30am, let’s think what we do today, visit Shanghai, alright, what about the next days? Since we want to stay at most two nights in Shanghai, we should buy tickets for tomorrow night for Hangzhou. We have to be careful with the timing though; we don’t want to miss the train to Hangzhou if the train back from Wuxi is late, right? Let’s settle it, let’s think it over (we are still in the train station):

We have tickets two Wuxi (go and return), but we care more about going to Hangzhou.
Best theory: we find a train to Hangzhou; it leaves at least half an hour after our train back from Wuxi’s arrival.
Middle theory: we can find tickets for Hangzhou, but the departure time is too early. We manage to sell back the train ticket for Wuxi and waste no money.
Worse theory: we have no tickets for Hangzhou before 1 week, we can’t get our money back for Wuxi, our hotel doubles the prices, China is bombed by the Japanese and Michael Moore turns out to be Bush and Monica Lewinsky’s secret son. Meanwhile, Jacques Chirac informs the Chinese government that France is planning to suspend the textile cooperation. Thus, Chinese people hate French people.

Considering these 4 theories, we jumped back in the Michael Jackson’s fans to practice our Chinese. Thankfully, the nature preferred the Middle theory. Forget about Wuxi, we have more time to visit Shanghai and we leave for Hangzhou tomorrow at 11:30am.
What’s next: Old city and Yu Garden.

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Walking on the Bund

2006-01-25T23:52:00.000+08:00

We had our digestive walk on the Bund, this embankment along the muddy waterfront of the Huangpu River, or what it used to be in the 1850s. The river splits Shanghai into two parts. A fabulous sight on the Pudong on the east side, with its business buildings, huge screens and illuminations; and the west side where you can appreciate constructions in western-inspired styles --classical, gothic, renaissance, eclectic and modern--a reported seventeen styles of architecture. Formerly, this place used to be vital to the interests of the entire foreign settlement. But today, tourists have invaded the Bund and you can see camera flashes everywhere. Shanghai souvenirs are to be bargained allover the place and weird monsters come out from nowhere.

Back to our hotel, we wanted to check out its roof top bar and the “special happy hour for our very special guests” thing. The bar is designed as a boat (right, we are in captain hostel), the warm atmosphere sticks you to the red couches. The sixth floor, please enjoy the magnificent Lu-Jia-Zui New District and the Bund's most gorgeous buildings.

Shanghai (上海 ) day one

2006-01-25T17:06:00.000+08:00

Two and a half hours on a plane to reach Shanghai. First question at the airport: what do we do next? Remember, we haven’t thought of where we are going once landed. Our guides (we are both, Lonely Planeted and Guide du Routarded) say: Captain Hostel cheap dorms in downtown. Let’s keep it movin’.
Our first attraction in Shanghai is the machine called Maglev. As we did, you probably think the nephew of Mendeleev made some molecular research and modified humans in the city, but Maglev stands for MAGnetic LEVitation. This high speed train is supposed to take you from the airport to downtown in less than 8 minutes; reaching 430 km/h and without touching the ground. It works pretty well, since you don’t have time to enjoy the view of the highway and the ghetto.

Settled in the Captain Hostel, we are heading to the Museum of Shanghai, well known for its classy atmosphere. Traditional costumes, jades, bronzes, calligraphies, paintings, furnitures from Ming and Qing dynasties, the museum is awesome. We even have the chance to see a temporary exhibition of precious stones, absolutely amazing. In museums, you usually don’t pay attention to other people, do you? Each visitor makes his own way trough exposed items. But what if the following happens: you are quietly reading a vase’s description when you barely notice that one Chinese father & son are approaching the same object. I wonder, how does a vase from de Ming Dynasty inspire Chinese youth? Well, this kid just freed his stomach of its disturbing gases. Laffin’ loud with Julien, we watched the father congratulate his son for his effort. How lovely. In China, you can freely free your mind, stomach, butt, nose and mouth.

Once the museum tour was over, we walked in famous Nanjing Donglu looking for some nice place to have a drink. Shanghai and its streets: a very pleasant melt of many unmixable concepts. Imagine the buildings of Gotham city (the hometown of Batman & Robin) in the chaotic and tiny streets of London; add kilometers of electric wires (you should imagine enough wires so that you can’t see the sky), rushes of bicycles at each stop light and store names written in Chinese. The final touch is tons of people getting busy around you. Oh and I almost forgot, you should also have 8 municipal employees at each street crossings. Their job is to contain the pedestrians and to prevent them from crossing the street when the light is green for the cars. Now you got Shanghai! We finally ended up in a shopping mall for the so wanted drink. The only interesting detail here is the young people of Shanghai. You know, when you watch some fashion shows on TV, you wonder who would wear such clothes, how anyone could feel comfortable with a transparent shirt or with a one meter diameter solid skirt. Well, in Shanghai, it seems like there is a rave party going on in every single street. Every one is top fashion dressed and all the colors of the nature are there. Neat!

Unpack, have a rest, meet your dormmates, day is over.

Soon on holiday

2006-01-24T16:59:00.000+08:00

Enough! The campus has been empty since one week. Every student went home to celebrate Chinese New Year, but the 50 frenchies are supposed to stay to learn Chinese (I am not talking about computer science classes anymore, useless). Of course we also deserve two weeks holidays, and, anyway, it is not such a bad thing to see the emptiness of the campus, at least I know I want to get out of here for two weeks!
What does a well organized road trip look like? Well, here are the basics. Monday, you grab your buddy named Julien, you go downtown and you buy a plane ticket for Shanghai for the Wednesday of the same week. Than you realize you won’t go on a road trip with the huge luggage you came to china with. Thus, you run to the shopping mall and bargain a crappy 80 liters backpack for 9 euros. This is probably what you need to get started, although we spiced it up a little by packing our stuff while they were not dry yet. Yeah we wanted to leave with clean clothes, what ever. Oh, and we also messed up with the departure date: at 8pm, we realize we were supposed to be at the airport at 7am next morning. Will we survive such an organization? To be continued...