July 4, 2007

Yay! It’s July 4th … but in China. Today was super awesome – we had the day off class, and we took some taxis to Lushun, which is closer than Dalian, though not as big. We went to the department store and supermarket there, as well as a few bookstores, and KFC for lunch. Yum!

I finally bought something cool for Mom – a jigsaw puzzle – 1,000 pieces – it’s a map of the world with both Chinese and English names – and the best part is the projection used – China is in the Western Hemisphere and the United States is in the Eastern Hemisphere. I finally found a decent Chinese-English, English-Chinese dictionary, only 36 yuan – less than US $5. Would have cost at least two times that in the States. I won’t lie – I love buying stuff in this country.

One of the stranger things I’ve bought in China was a particular children’s picture book – full of military words like “mortar” and “anti-aircraft artillery” – with the characters and pinyin! I also got some more innocuous kids books (some very simple stories and more wholesome picture books), but I just couldn’t pass up the weapons picture book – now I can learn how to say, “Look, there’s an aircraft carrier!” Lord, this picture book is fucked up. Caroline bought a similar one that’s all different types of guns. My.

A lot of us in the group feel that our Chinese really improves when they loosen our leash and let us strike out on our own. Usually we’re kept on such a short leash – but getting the chance to run around the shops of Lushun and practice our “survival Chinese” (as Jade calls it) is invaluable. As Jade points out, it’s still crucial to learn new vocabulary by being studious – but the real life use is incredible (both incredibly frustrating, and incredibly rewarding when you vaguely manage to have a quasi-conversation with someone in Chinese).

Several of us in the group are obsessed with seeking out terrible English translations. It’s not with malicious intent, I don’t think any of us have the attitude, “Oh haha, dumb Chinese people can’t handle English.” Probably because we realize how goddamn hard Chinese is, so it’s hard to posture about language superiority when we can barely get around without help from Jade, Jay, or one of the Laoshis.

Anyway, some of the English translations are so awful you have to be amused. We especially like seeing unfortunate English phrases on t-shirts. I’ve seen a shirt worn by someone on campus that said “National American Cakewalk Stadium”. Eric swears up and down he saw a tee on a girl that said “Rock My Kitty”. So at the shops today, Chris and I were hell-bent on finding some ridiculous shirts. I found one that was pretty crude – I didn’t buy it, but I was tempted – it had a sexy girl on it, and it said “Please give pleasure to me”, and there was a second line that said, “Let’s dance in my body”. Whoa!

I ended up buying a tee at the big Chinese version of Meijers or Wal-Mart in the basement of the department store (Trust-Mart, I think). It’s baby blue (maybe the end of my black tee era?) with these random little cartoon characters (pigs? dogs with pink noses?) and pink writing: “Life to be worthy of a ration being, must be WORTHY”.

Right.

I have more I want to (need to!) write about, but I should really go to bed right now. Until then, I’m off! (Just saw another Beijing 2008 commercial – 400 days to go! I love those commercials)