Summary
Happenings of the fortnight
- Travelled to an unrestored section of the Great Wall and camped in the mountains! The area was found by my friend Chris a few years ago and he organised a trip for a group of us to go, we camped in a clearing that could only be accessed by an hours hike through farmers trails so our equipment was carried by donkey across the mountains. The wall was Ming dynasty and totally untouched, we were the only ones there as its not a tourist destination at all.
- Unfortunately I had my laptop stolen from on top of my mailbox (I am now trying to get used to using an iPad and downloading all the gadgets, still not very used to touch typing though!
- Went to Xian with my class and the Oxford group as well, all inclusive trip organised by Peking University as a treat for us, transport, food, accommodation and sights all covered for a fee of twenty pounds! Such a bargain.
- Last night was invited by our neighbours to their sons second birthday party at a karaoke bar. As the native English speakers we were invited to sing all their favourite western songs, so lots of Adele and Taylor Swift renditions!
- The road outside my flat has been dug up by lots of migrant workers for no reason as far as I can see, they've paved some of it back up in a patchy way, but in the middle they've dug shallow metre wide holes and then put cones on top. Because the traffic needed more obstacles than the cars, scooters, bikes and pedestrians offered already.
- I've tried donkey burgers, which are burgers that have donkey meat in them and not a fast food brand as I initially presumed. They are actually a Chinese traditional food and really good! There are big helpful photos of donkeys in the window to make sure you can find the restaurants that serve it, as well as the signs that say DONKEY MEAT on them.
Today I wandered through the Olympic forest park which was beautiful, the leaves are all changing and it was full of colour. Speakers down all the paths gently playing lullaby versions of songs like 'Scarborough Fair' and 'Can you feel the love tonight', facilitated the peaceful atmosphere, and we had a good time watching parents posing their children beside tress with reeds or leaves in their hands to document autumn.
Xian
Last weekend's trip to Xian initially made me a little depressed about Chinese tourism and in particular the preservation of genuine culture. I've been to Xian before, it was on my school trip where I was innocent and starry eyed about everything I saw, each stop on the package tour was fascinating and I trusted the authenticity of each exhibit. I am definitely a lot more jaded now and know a lot better than I did then, revisiting the Wild Goose Pagoda for the second time I saw that the Classical Chinese signs were screwed in by metal bars and couldn't be older than about fifteen years, and our tour guide happily told us about how there was a very famous building which got too old so they were in the process of knocking it down and rebuilding it all again. Sure enough I passed by the building full of paints and ladders inside, with newly carved wood panels. I concluded pretty fast that returning to these places would not have the magic which their novelty had brought my fifteen year old self the first time. The next day my classmate Laurence and I did the unthinkable and missed the Terracotta Warriors out of our tour to explore the city of Xian itself, and I do not regret the choice. Exploring the calligraphy streets that morning, eating the amazing local foods like biangbiang noodles (the character for the noodles is so complicated that it hasn't been computerised and has over fifty strokes!) was so nice, we actually ended up being filmed for Shanxi television as part of a documentary on ancient Steele inscriptions as we had studied them a bit and bumped into a film crew interviewing a specialist. Token westerners who can speak Chinese are clearly good fleshing out footage for documentaries.
My faith in genuine Chinese culture was restored by the Xian Muslim quarter, which was just so cool in every way, great street food, really fun shops and lots of little alleyways with cool things happening. We stumbled on a courtyard where some local Chinese Muslims had brought out a speaker system and were dancing together to traditional music. Some of them were in traditional dress, some were just in casual clothes, it was too structured to join in if you didn't know the moves but also very free, same sex or different partners were both acceptable and some just moved around alone. It was strange seeing the Chinese looking so relaxed, it's not what you'd really associate with them, and it was really mesmerising!
Naming people
One thing that I've had the honour of doing is giving Chinese people English names. Giving yourself either a Chinese name as a westerner or an English name as a Chinese person feels very odd, names are so important but not something you are used to having control over, even nicknames aren't something we get much of a say in. Now suddenly you have the right to decide how a whole ethnic group will address you in a totally new language, and I have to say that most of the time I don't think any of us are very good at it. Picking a nice and normal name in an alien language and culture mostly comes from being lucky.
I will use my two attempts at a Chinese name as an example. My first one, 李心结 or Li Xinjie, was given to me by my Chinese teacher when I began Chinese. I think, the logic was that Li (means plum tree) sounds like one of the syllables in Macleod if you mispronounce it as I expect he did, and Xinjie means pure or clean heart, a bit like the meaning for Catherine. So far, pretty normal. However, what I discovered the hard way was that it also happens to be the name of a very well known actress and singer from Taiwan. Introducing myself in Taiwan last summer provoked laughter everywhere I went, much like if a Chinese person went around in England saying their name was Britney Spears. Very unfortunate, or very cruel of my Chinese teacher. I realised after that summer that I needed a new name for my year abroad, and resumed the hunt, but it is very hard to figure out on your own and eventually went to a different teacher for help, who gave me the name 李恺婕, or Li Kaijie, Kai meaning joyful and happy, and Jie meaning beautiful or something like that. On trying this name out in China I have yet again been met with some laughter though, because apparently the characters used in my name are not used in any words, and most Chinese people don't recognise them at all. The sound of the name is fine from what I can tell, but it's virtually impossible to tell people how to spell it because each sound has at least thirty possible ways it can be written. Chinese people always use other words that the character is in to help them write it, so that makes my name a bit of an issue. Still, I can't get a third name, it just feels too picky! My course coordinator was in hysterics at both my names and suggested I get business cards with my characters and their pronunciation to help people, which is never a good sign.
Naming Chinese people so far has been harder than I expected, one that sticks out in my mind for its comic value was one of the Chinese students that comes to English corner, which is where we go for dinner with them and talk in English. He had a girlfriend back home who he didn't think had a Chinese name so a friend and I decided to help and name her, by asking questions about her hobbies and interests. Eventually based on her taste in films and love for theme parks we decided to call her Daphne, as in the one from Scooby Doo. However when he came back from October holiday he told us that she already had an English name, and she was called Blue. There are worse I've heard, one friend has taught a child called Hannibal, another called Lucifer. It's a complicated process which is humorously unsuccessful on both ends I think.
Chinese people really struggle to understand how English names don't necessarily have meanings, because the meanings are really important in their culture. I was explaining how I am named after my grandma and how that was common to one Chinese girl this evening, and she just thought the whole thing was ridiculous. It's funny how things that I take for granted as normal seem so strange to someone looking from a different perspective, why does badminton have 'bad' in it? Why would it be bad? And why do we say 'watch your head' when the doors are low? It makes no sense.Things like this are being shown to me daily by my Chinese friends and pupils.
