A Misty Moisty Morning and Musty Pages

Happy February 29th, everyone! It's a day that comes just once every four years, so I hope you make the best of it. I, for once, rose early and raring to go, ready to seize the day, blaze new trails, explore the undiscovered country. Then I looked out the window and saw that even the sun had decided to sleep in, so I did the same.

Life among the clouds.

It is seriously foggy today, and hovering in the mid-fifties. Actually, it has been rainy and gray for a couple weeks now. The humidity is so bad that condensation has been forming on the walls, floor, and ceiling. My laundry refuses to dry and smells musty when it does. Our wooden spoon in the kitchen bloomed green mold before it could dry. Yesterday I bough a bunch of dehumidifiers (little plastic boxes with a layer of water-absorbing chemicals) and seeded them around the apartment. Hopefully that will help.
So all in all, I'm not exactly inspired to leave the apartment. Plus, I have a lot of incentive to stay in. Yesterday I restocked on milk and tea, so I'm set for an endless supply of cocoa, tea, and milk tea. Best of all, there's a pile of new reading material!

Books! Books! Books!

I mentioned in last week's post that I had gotten some new books while in Hong Kong. They are Songs of Love and Death, The Mao Case, and February Flowers. The latter two I got at the Book Attic, a second-hand bookshop, which took a little effort to find, but was worth it to get books a little closer to their actual cover price (as about to 33%-50% more). I've read another book by Qiu Xiaolong, A Loyal Character Dancer, which I got in a library discard sale... Bath's, I think, a couple of years ago. They are police procedural mysteries set in modern Shanghai. February Flowers was rather an impulse purchase. Considering it's February and the book is set in modern Guangzhou, I couldn't resist. It seems to be a memoir/fiction based on reality. I'll tell you when I get there.

February flowers, on a sunny dry day (come back, I miss you)

I started with Songs of Love and Death because it is a book of short stories and I cannot resist a short story. There's something about the idea that you can start and finish a whole, complete work in one go, without kicking yourself for accidentally staying up until 3am reading (that's what happens when you go "well, just one more short story" a few too many times). Anyway, I'm 384 pages in, so clearly I'm enjoying it. Except last night, I read one story before bed. Going in to it, I was thrilled. Post-apocalypse! Zombies! Vampires! Farming communities! A no-nonsense, kick-ass female protagonist with a shotgun! Everything was going so well, too, until we got to the sentient bloodthirsty trees. You think I'm kidding, don't you.

TREES! my zombie survival plan now has a "Zombie Trees" contingency

Be prepared, friends. The Great North Woods might be out to get you.

It's really nice to have books to read. I do a lot of reading on the internet, and I do love the available variety, endless supply, and instantaneous gratification. But, there is just something immeasurably wonderful about the smell of a paperback, or the crack of a hardcover's spine being opened for the first time. I like to look at the cover art. I like to be able to fling my book across the room if it makes me angry or otherwise overly emotional. I like to leave them lying around so that others can discover them serendipitously. Now, I've been thinking about eReaders and I know a lot of people who have them and are very happy with them. I don't know. Then where would I put my cool new bookmark?

Bookmarks make me feel smart. Why is that?

To the Beautiful Sea

I took a rather impromptu trip down to Hong Kong this week, and I am very glad I did. Hong Kong is not very far from Guangzhou -- you can be there in three hours by train or by bus -- but it feels like another world entirely. There are scores more foreigners, you hear English (and half a dozen other languages) spoken by passersby, and you hear a lot less Mandarin. Most of all though, everyone is nice and polite. Really nice and polite. People even manage to queue properly, stand to the side on escalators, and move away from the doors while riding the subway. Now, I don't mean that people in Guangzhou are rude, it's just in Hong Kong, it feels deeply ingrained.

Lamma Island

Hong Kong also has the advantage of having the ocean, gorgeous mountain, and abundant green space. My friend with whom I was traveling is a couchsurfer, and we were staying with a very nice woman who lives on Lamma Island with her two kittens.

Our host's apartment building.

Lamma is only a 25 minute ferry ride from Hong Kong Island. Instead of skyscrapers, it has mountains. Instead of cars, it has footpaths. Instead of shopping malls, it has beaches. It was balm to the city-worn soul. Here's a little photo tour.

This is the main road on Lamma Island.

A small shrine at a local temple.

A gorgeous beach, from the angle where you don't see the giant power plant.

To my family.

It's February? I wish I had a swimsuit.

Can any of you guess what this is?

papaya tree

These are the weirdest looking lobsters ever.

On our way back to Guangzhou, we took a moment to stop in Kowloon, where we took a look at the infamous Chungking Mansions (don't know what that is? Go read Ghetto at the Center of the World and watch ChungKing Express).

Finally, we had afternoon milk tea and caught our bus back to the mainland. Back to old Canton. Ah, well. At least I have three new books to read!

Ah, milk tea and a warm bun. Proof that British colonialism wasn't always terrible.

When I Grow Up

Don’t look now, but I’m afraid I might be an adult. I don’t know when it happened. Actually, I’m not positive that it has happened. Every time I do something grown ups do, I half suspect someone is going to jump out from behind a bush and arrest me for impersonating an adult.

Interestingly, a lot of this feeling comes from the sneaking suspicion that this “living on my own” thing isn’t hard enough. Is the crisis just around the corner? When does the trial by fire begin?

Let’s recap some of the real world experiences I’ve accomplished. I managed to successfully get myself to another country. I found a flatmate and an apartment. I pay my rent and my bills on time. I pay my student loans and file my taxes.  I buy my own groceries and living essentials, and manage to feed myself on a daily basis (healthy eating is a different story). I go to work even when I don’t want to get out of bed. When my plumbing leaks or my washing machine won’t drain, I call the plumber. I can change a light bulb and troubleshoot my internet connectivity issues and repair the peeling veneer on my desk.

This life experience is "How much dignity are you willing to lose for corporate team building?"

So why do I feel like I’m faking it? I think part of it has to do with the amount of financial support I still get from my parents (real debt owed to them is bad enough; debt of gratitude is incalculable in real dollars). This is then complicated by the fact that I get paid in RMB, so when I look at my bank account I feel like Bill Gates. Then I divide my 6.5 and add in international wire transfer fees, and I feel a lot poorer.

The thing is, though, I’m not poor.  While bumming around the internet last week, I came across this great quote by Richard Beck in n+1 magazine:

 In the two years since I graduated from college, I’ve had a pretty good time being “broke” in New York … but sometimes I remind myself … I am not actually broke … The truth is that I inherited expensive tastes and moved to an expensive city, and sometimes I get cranky about not being able to buy what I want. (read the article, actually about music, here)

Now, I don’t live in New York and, if I compare cost of living expenses to America and not the rest of China, I don’t live in an expensive city. My rent is quite high by local standards, but converts to about 600 USD for a two bedroom apartment. I don’t really have to think about whether or not I can afford to do anything. Actually, if I wasn’t worried about saving money to pay my loans during my inevitable next period of unemployment, I would barely think about money at all. I’m not broke. I’m not even close. And, I feel like being broke is an essential part of being an independent, fresh-out-of-college adult.

In summary, I am not broke, because I make decent money and my parents don’t collect on my debts. Because I am not broke, life doesn’t feel too challenging. Because I am not crushed beneath the weight of insurmountable challenges, I feel like I’m faking this being grown up business. Ah, well. There’s nothing to be done about it except to keep doing it. That’s the thing about life: this is it. It’s happening now.

 If you’re interested in how other people my age are faring in general life, and how we feel about our lives and our future lives, I highly recommend this article on Autostraddle about the “Young, Underemployed, and Optimistic” report from the Pew Research Center.

There is no Academie Francaise for English

Hola, chicas. How’s everyone doing today? There’s something I’ve come to realize, living here in Guangzhou. I so very rarely say ‘Hello’ in English. Hola, Hiya, Bonjour, Salut, Buenos Dias, Gutentag, you name it, I’ll usually go for some variation on the standard. This seems to be completely comprehensible by my foreign coworkers, but my local Chinese coworkers are sometimes confused (not entirely, as the intention of my greeting is rather clear).

In other news, belated Happy Lantern Festival!

I am the product of what I imagine to be a typical American public school education (except when it comes to math and science), and so I was required to study a year of Spanish and a year of French. Television, movies, books, and multicultural appreciation days introduced German,  Swedish, Japanese, and Latin. So, as a result, I know maybe 20 words in Spanish, 5 words each in the rest. American schools’ foreign language programs don’t lead to fluency, but they do give you some exposure. English itself is a wonderful mélange of vocabulary from a variety of languages. I have a coworker here who is a Guangzhou native. She speaks excellent and fluent English, Cantonese, and Mandarin. When looking at a sign-up sheet in the office, she saw another foreign teacher had written ‘si’ instead of ‘yes’ and she didn’t know why. We explained it, and it reminded me that, while I may not be particularly fluent in any foreign languages, I can apologize for not speaking them in five.

This is not typical. Also, this picture is six months old.

On the subject of foreigners, I’ve got an anecdote to share from this morning. I was over near Ikea, which is a great district for running into other people from away. As I crossed through an intersection, I got the foreigner wave from an older Middle Eastern man in a turban. The foreigner wave is what happens in China when two foreigners, although strangers, nod, wave, or otherwise acknowledge each other in passing. I believe it’s a function of our daily reality, which is seeing mostly Chinese people. Now, this doesn’t happen all the time. I did it more, and expected it more, in my first few months here. These days, I often walk right past other foreigners without so much as making friendly eye contact. This in general is probably the weirdest aspect of city living for small-town me: the extent to which everyone willfully ignores each other. Locals stare at me all the time, and the bulk of people slide right by without any acknowledgment. I don’t know if the foreigner wave is about acknowledging our common position as people far from home, or if it’s about ingrained social expectation of friendliness in public spaces, but it does make me feel warmer toward my fellow man. So today, getting eye contact, a nod, and a smile from this nice grandfatherly man made me feel quite cheerful.

vegan chocolate chip cookies also made me cheerful

Then I popped into Corner’s Deli for a day-off treat (A&W root beer, yum) and found a product that made my day. I have been keeping an eye out for Campbell’s chicken noodle soup for months. Campbell’s soup isn’t hard to find (at import grocery stores, mind), but while Oxtail is everywhere, no one has chicken noodle. Today it was there, brightly labeled with a ‘new product’ sticker. I bought a can (only 2 USD!). It’s not even that good, and honestly, I don’t remember the last time I ate it. But, it is iconic and it is nostalgic, and it is on the list of things in my head called “things you can buy at any grocery store in America, but that you must go out of your way to find in Guangzhou.” I will enjoy it to the last drop, just like the kids in the soup commercials.

I mostly blame Warhol for making me want this.

That’s all I’ve got to say. Winter vacation courses end this week, and I am almost through. I can’t wait to have two days off per week again, so I can go back to pretending my life consists of something more than sleeping, working, eating, and surfing the internet in bed. A bientôt! Sayonara!

Spring Festival is over. Time to throw out the orange tree.

Pajama Wednesdays

A few weeks ago I was playing Scrabble with one of my classes and one student played the word ‘jamas.’ I challenged it, but he said he found it in the dictionary on his phone, and promptly showed me the entry. It is, apparently, somewhere, an accepted short from of ‘pajamas.’

In my head, I think about Wednesdays as “Blogging Day” but if recent weeks are a trend, perhaps I should call them “Pajama Day.” As I write this, it is Wednesday afternoon. I am wearing my pajamas. To clarify, I got up, showered, and then put on what other people might call ‘lounge wear’ but given my relatively limited supply of clothing that isn’t work uniforms, I also sleep in it. Ah, to heck with it, it’s comfy and I didn’t actually leave the apartment today. Also, my jeans are still wet from laundry day last night. But, I also spent last Wednesday in pjs. Just, they weren’t my pajamas, and I wasn’t in my apartment.

Have you ever wished you could live in a mental institution? No? Just me? Okay, forget I said that. Really, thought, I sometimes wistfully think of how nice it would be to be committed. There would be lots of free time, security and safety without work or responsibility, lots of time for self reflection and therapy, and lots of lounging about in comfy clothes. Of course, I also occasionally think it would be nice to be in minimum-security prison. I’d get a lot of reading done. I know, however, that my conceptualizations of both prison and mental institutions come from television, where everything is nicer than reality. If I was in prison, I’d have no freedom (plus, I’d probably have committed a crime), and if I was in a mental institution, I’d likely find that it isn’t all fun and games (plus, I’d probably have a serious mental illness).

No matter, last Wednesday was all the fun of a fictional mental institution, crossed with an all-girls college slumber party. In fact, about at the point where I was standing in front of a row of sinks and mirrors, fixing my hair, with a coterie of strangers and friends, I was strongly reminded of my not-so-distant college days. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s begin at the beginning.

So, where was I last Wednesday? At a 24-hour spa. How does this work? Well, you pay one fee to get in, and you can stay for up to 24 hours. Whilst in, you are provided with a lovely set of pink and white pajamas (think scrubs, but knee-length) and rubber shower shoes. You are free to avail yourself of the sauna, the steam room, the buffet, and the relaxing chairs. You can also, for an extra fee, indulge in various spa services, from massages to pedicures (to “ear cleaning,” which supposedly would take 25 minutes and none of us were quite daring enough to try). I went with a couple of my friends and some friends of friends.  We got there at around noon and didn’t leave until about 8pm. It was great.

We indulged in the sauna and the steam room, then had some lunch at the buffet, then retired to a private room for some lounging about. I played a few hands of mahjong with my compatriots (I even won a round!) at the coolest mahjong table ever (It shuffles, stacks, and rolls the dice automatically. It also had cupholders.) We delighted in various spa services, snacked on fruit and tea, and generally were total laze-abouts. After dinner, we lounged about in the sauna again for a while, then showered and primped at the brightly lit row of sinks and mirrors. I blow-dried my hair (I never do this). Oh, funny note. I used some of the available facial moisturizer, which has skin whitener in it (as I swear they all are when I try to buy some in the store). Well, we’ll see if it works, yeah?

Anyway, that is the story of my day in pjs. It was fun and comfy and warm. Actually, I feel like the weather might be warming up again. I’d love it if it could just hit the mid-seventies and just stay there for a couple months. That would be nice.