I solemnly swear I am not Canadian. Also, a bit about aliens.

I interviewed for a side job last night as a native proofreader helping a local translator make his work sound like an American wrote it. We met at a coffee shop, where he was looking through recent projects. We’d spoken online and emailed a few times; this was the first face-to-face.

First question: “What’s the difference between American and Canadian English?”

I’d never actually thought about this. I don’t really think about the English we speak in the States and that of our northern neighbors as being any different at all, except a slight accent we poke fun at in movies.

“Maybe the spelling of a few words,” I said, not sure what answer he was looking for.

“This company specifically wants ‘American English,’” he said.

“Well, I’m an American,” I told him, but I had a nervous grin and probably looked like I was bluffing. This is why I don’t play poker. “I’m not Canadian.”

We moved on to other parts of the job: pay rates, frequency of work, how he operated in general. Then he came back to Canada.

“But really,” he said, “there’s no difference between written Canadian and American English?”

“I don’t know,” I said again. “Maybe the spelling of a few words. I can ask my Canadian friends.”

A twinge of realization crossed his face. “You’re really not Canadian? You’re really an American?”

I pulled out my passport and dropped it in front of him. “I was born in Los Angeles,” I said (not exactly accurate, but close enough). He looked relieved. I don’t know what’s wrong with Canadians, but I guess my nationality saved him an explanation to his client.

—

Earlier in the evening, I was sitting in a different coffee shop when I overheard a friend tutoring a pre-teen Chinese girl. I didn’t catch the topic, but I caught an explanation of UFO and ET (both the acronym and the movie).

“It’s possible that maybe, just maybe, there’s life out there somewhere,” my friend said.

Maybe this is a bit wrong-headed, but I couldn’t help thinking: “The Chinese can barely handle white people. They’ve s pent most of their history deriding eanything outside the ‘Middle Kingdom’ as barbarian. What would they do with something from another planet?”

Posted in the Dalian life | 1 Comment »

Rich Writer, Poor Writer

I ran across this critique of author Robert Kiyosaki yesterday on the Motley Fool’s website, which lumps on the self-help guru whose fame largely stems from his book Rich Dad, Poor Dad and a line of related products and sequels.

Having just finished Kiyosaki’s book last week, commentator Mike Norman’s rebuke started me re-thinking Rich Dad.

“Much of the wisdom can be best described as simplistic, unsophisticated and in some cases, totally absurd,” Norman wrote. Now that I think about it, yeah, Kiyosaki comes off as a dick.

More than that, Norman questions the value of any advice given by someone who plays a bit casual with the facts. He writes:

In a recent column on Yahoo! Finance titled “Only the Rich Survive” (again using cockiness in the headline, possibly to sell more books and self-help material, but nonetheless, something that should make you wary), he talks about a visit he made to the New York Mercantile Exchange this past June. With characteristic haughtiness, he tells the reader, “For those of you unfamiliar with the NYMEX, it’s the exchange where commodities like orange juice, pork bellies, gold, crude oil, natural gas, copper, and silver are traded.”

Orange juice?

Pork bellies?!

The NYMEX happens to be the premier energy derivatives exchange in the world. I know; I used to be a member and floor trader there. But you don’t have to be a member to know that pork bellies are not traded on the NYMEX, and while orange juice is traded in the same building, it is not a NYMEX contract. Incredibly, Kiyosaki throws in crude, gasoline, and other energy contracts as a mere afterthought.

This should raise some red flags. It should tell you something about this guy. Either he’s clueless, or he has complete disregard for you and the quality of the information he is giving you. (Think about it. How could he care if he has no qualms at all about telling you pork bellies are traded on NYMEX?)

I had my own issues with Rich Dad, from Kiyosaki’s comparisons between the way governments and businesses spend money (they are, in fact, different entities serving different purposes; I don’t think Kiyosaki gets that) to his strange misunderstanding of what a union does.

And his writing is just plain awful. It’s pedestrian and imprecise, redundant and round-about. Much of the book could probably be reduced to about 10 pages of colorful PowerPoint full of the little diagrams Kiyosaki likes so much.

I’m a slow reader, but I finished Rich Dad in a matter of hours. It’s interesting, sure, but not riveting. It just has the literary wholesomeness of french fries.

There’s a part in the book where Kiyosaki tells a Singapore journalist that he’s a “best-selling author, not a best-writing author.” That might be the most accurate line in the book.

But here’s the thing: I would never have read the critique had I not already read Rich Dad. I probably wouldn’t even be on the Motley Fool website. I can’t say whether or not any of Kiyosaki’s investment advise is worth the trees cut down to print it or the oxygen consumed on his lecture tours, I haven’t tested it out for myself. But it did get me off my financial ass and thinking about what to do with my pitiful savings, besides leaving it to grow at a few measly percents a year in a credit union savings account.

So I figure I can learn a few things from Kiyosaki. Maybe I’ll get rich and maybe I’ll balance my checkbook (which of these do you think has the longer odds?), and maybe it will have something to do with the bargain priced (probably bootleg) copy of Rich Dad, Poor Dad I bought outside a Beijing university my first week in China.

And maybe they’ll have a free press here for the 2008 Olympics. It could happen.
I’ll even save you a few hours you might be thinking of spending reading Kiyosaki’s book. Here’s the gist:

“Assets pay you, liabilities cost you, so get some assets. Being rich is a mindset, not a financial statement. Take calculated risks. Buy more of my books and other crap with my name on it.”

There, I’ve saved you $10 you can now spend on a book about China. (I get a cut if you buy one through a link on this blog. Check out My China Reading List.)

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Strange Days: A ’soulless bureaucrat’ and a job interview

I met the woman who hired me today. At least, I met the person who emailed me a few months back offering me jobs and pestering me to sign the contract that will keep me here at Dalian Fisheries University until July 2007. I didn’t know anything about her until recently, except for the bland communiques we exchanged in trans-Pacific email.

The picture I had in my head was always some soulless bureaucrat, a Chinese version of a DMV worker, pecking Chinglish into an outdated computer and deciding on a whim who comes to Liaoning and who keeps looking.

I was a bit off. So, who is she?

She’s a kid, a student, 22 years old and going to school here in Dalian. Thin as a rail with a mouth full of braces, she hardly seems to resemble those emails I used to get telling me about the pitiful pay and odd hours I’d put up with for the chance to live and work in China. Really, she’s pretty nice. I might even stay with a relative of hers in Shenyang over the holiday next week (still haven’t officially decided where I’m going). She even helped me find the English training center where I might pick up a second job.

Which brings me to Part 2 of a strange day.

I found this brand new private English school on the recommendation of a guy I met at a bar last weekend. I’ve been passing the word around that I could use some extra work, since teaching right now takes up about 12 hours a week, and some extra cash wouldn’t hurt, either. I took along Will, the other foreign teacher here.

We walked into one of the nicest office buildings I’ve ever seen. Not in China, mind you. Anywhere. This place holds its own. I asked for the HR director–again, going off what the guy in the bar told me–and without a word she led us into her office.

She asked where we were from, and how we had heard about the place and how much time we wanted to work. She never asked if we had teaching experience, didn’t mention resumes or references (we had none with us; I expected only to check the place out) and there was no mention of teaching styles or philosophy. We had more questions than she did.

The HR director also said it wasn’t that important how much teachers talked, “mostly, we want teachers who are attractive.” I think that was a joke. Maybe it was a joke. Is that a joke? We laughed and hoped it was a joke.

It looks like I might pick up a few classes after the holiday. If I do two hours a day five days a week it will more than double my salary.

There’s no place like China.

Posted in the Dalian life | 3 Comments »

Nothing ruins a good meal like baijiu

Baiju, for those not in China, is the local spirit. Slightly stronger than vodka or whiskey, it has a pungent taste and aroma similar to Italian grappa. It goes down with a shudder and lands with a thud in the gut.

Three of my students–Power, Leo, and the aptly-named Sober–invited me to dinner last night for a home-cooked meal in their dorm. By the time I left we were all intoxicated, and I was swaying as I walked home. I don’t know if it’s ethical to be drinking with my students (they’re graduates, and about a year younger than me) but it doesn’t feel entirely out of place here.

We ate chicken and scrambled eggs, fruit salad and celery, and finally a soup of stewed fish and stringy lamb. “This soup is called delicious,” said Leo, our cook for the evening. He drew the characters for fish and mutton. Combined, he said they form a new character: delicious.

The soup turned out to be my least favorite part of the meal. The mutton was rubbery and clumped with fat; the fish still had bones and little flavor. I ate most of the chicken and had an impressive pile of bones next to my bowl.

We began the meal with a toast. I drank baiju from a coffee-on-the-go type mug. Power used a little orange plastic bowl. Leo and Sober had water jugs and beer.

Drinking is always done with a toast here, and among men it’s an ongoing competition. I couldn’t just sip my drink to wash down whatever I just ate. As soon as I touched my cup, Power would raise his bowl and the others would follow suit.

The baiju hit my stomach before my head. On the third toast, I took a large swig, maybe two shots worth, and felt the aggressive spirit work it’s way to my stomach, kicking the whole way down and turning somersaults after it landed.

I didn’t feel tipsy in the slightest (the stuff doesn’t seem to inebriate immediately) but something lurched in my midsection and my mouth salivated the way it does just before vomiting. I ate a few pieces of fruit to calm my stomach, but I was done with the baiju, and Power happily drank what was left in my mug.

Beer brought out one-upmanship in the Chinese. We began simply toasting, but as the food thinned and the alcohol took its effect, Power turned the toasts into “Bottoms up!”

I played along, teaching him the Italian version–bebi la tutta–and downing the Harbin lager at an equal pace. We went on like this until close to 10 p.m., all of us knowing we had classes at 8 o’clock the next morning.

I was swaying when I left, and Power followed me down the six flights of stairs. He meant to help, I think, but in my drunkenness I was making a game of rushing to each landing, letting gravity work in place of my leg muscles.

The sun was mercifully hidden behind a gray overcast the next morning. I hate being hung-over on a clear day; it feels like such a waste. I jogged to class with a vague lesson plan in my head. I wanted to do something more fun than last week’s lecture on American history, and I’d settled last-minute on 20 Questions and a spelling bee.

It turned out to be one of my best classes yet. The games got students participating, and no one complained that it was boring. I barely had to do anything. I explained both games in advance, then let the students run them.

I left class with a clear head and told the students to enjoy next week off for National Day with no homework.

Posted in the Dalian life | 1 Comment »

Do not pet the pandas. But if they bite, bite back

Here’s the situation: Following your sudden urge to pet a live panda, and urge only heightened by alcohol, you’ve jumped into the bear den where the loveable-looking creature is taking a much-deserved panda nap.

It’s just lying there. Of course you should pet it.

Stay calm, you tell yourself, they’re endangered. How dangerous can they be?

Were these the thoughts of one Zhang Xinyan, 35, who performed the scenario above on Wednesday? We have no way to know. But the scene turns quickly from tranquil to terrifying, when the panda, remembering that he’s a bear, wakes up and bites Zhang on the leg. He kicks back, putting his other leg right into that toothy maw.

So now you’re really in trouble. The panda has taken chunks from both your legs, and you are beginning to realize why the word “petting” appeared nowhere near the word “zoo” on the entrance sign. What do you do?

“I bit the fellow in the back,” AP quoted Zhang saying, sourcing a local paper. “Its skin was quite thick.”

Yes. Bite the bear. It really makes for a great headline, straight out of that intro-to-journalism course I took at UC Santa Cruz. “That’s man-bites-dog,” my mentor used to say when a good story came up. Except this is man-bites-panda, and you really can’t get anymore man-bites-dog than that.

The AP story continues:

Other tourists yelled for a zookeeper, who got the panda under control by spraying it with water, reports said. Zhang was hospitalized.

Newspaper photographs showed Zhang lying on a hospital bed with blood-soaked bandages and a seam of stitches running down his leg.

The Beijing Youth Daily quoted Zhang as saying that he had seen pandas on television and “they seemed to get along well with people.”

“No one ever said they would bite people,” Zhang said. “I just wanted to touch it. I was so dizzy from the beer. I don’t remember much.”

So, we come back to the drink. Zhang apparently drank a few jugs before diving into the bear’s den. At this time, I think it’s best we remember the wise words of Homer:

“Ah, beer. The cause of, and solution to, all life’s problems.”

Editor’s note: This is a story dripping with possible headlines. Here are some others I considered:
Of People and Pandas
Man Bites Panda, Dog Remains Best Friend
Mmmm…. Panda….
What’s black and white and red all over? A panda eating a tourist.
Don’t be a pandavore
Pandas are people-vores

Posted in News | 4 Comments »

I’m teaching Bon Jovi, Christ and Only You

And that’s just one class.

This is something about China’s way of learning English I was looking forward to long before I came. Students learning our blessedly complicated language get to choose an English name, and there’s really no guideline on what to choose. A few have the generic American- or English-type pseudonyms, but a creative few go really all out.

This is how I ended up with a hard rock fan named Bon Jovi. My class monitor (still not entirely sure what the job entails) in the same group decided to call himself Christ, because “it’s important, right?” Kinda, yeah. What’s the correct answer here?

Only You came from another student’s family name in Chinese. Clever, actually.

Other colorful names include several varieties of fruit: Orange, Lemon, Cherry and others. A few have asked me to give them names, which has been fun. One girl was choosing between Pheobe and Sophia. I couldn’t spell the first (is it correct here?) and the second was taken, so I left it to her. Another student was thrilled when I dubbed him Waldo. I just know that someday I’m going to ask, “Where’s Waldo?” and he’ll stand up.

Turning things around, I still don’t have a Chinese name, something else I’d been looking forward to. I’ve had a few people here write characters that combine to sound like Ke-Ri-Is or something, but I’m not sure what the individual words mean, so I haven’t claimed it, yet. Hopefully, I can have as much fun with nomenclature as my students do.

Maybe there’s even a Chinese rocker I can emulate.

Posted in the Dalian life | 4 Comments »

They called me “teacher.” I’m not sure why.

I arrived to my first class about five minutes before the bell rang. I’d gotten up early to make sure I was on time—bad form for the teacher to be late. Almost every student was there waiting; there was a momentary hush as I walked in. These were graduate students, and not English majors, so they said nothing to me at first.

I wrote my name on the board, then waited behind the lectern until my watch ticked passed 8 a.m.

The students are in their mid-20s. A few are older than me, having spent time working between undergraduate and graduate schools. They are respectful but shy. Most prefaced each sentence with an apology for their poor English, then stammered out what I thought was entirely understandable. They’re far from fluent, but their English is leagues beyond my Chinese.

“You have to make mistakes when you’re learning a new language,” I told them after an hour of pulling words from their mouths and trying to string together a conversation. “It’s OK, but you have to try.”

This class is called “Listening.” From what I understand, the students are supposed to have tapes or CDs or something to listen to. The textbook I got from the English Department is little more than a series of quizzes on these mysterious recordings. But I have yet to see or hear any such materials; nor have the students.

So instead of listening to a recording about entertainment—as the textbook would have had us do—we spent the second hour of class talking about movies and music and other things American. I figure I can at least give the students a chance to hear some English by talking to them, and maybe they’ll get up the courage to add their own thoughts at some point.

The second class went smoother. These were English majors, sophomores, 19- and 20-year-olds in the prime of their university experience. I walked into class 10 minutes early and was greeted by “What’s up, man?” from a student who called himself Rock. I tried to joke with him a bit, but his English isn’t quite there yet. My guess is he learned the bit of colloquialism from his last foreign teacher, or from TV.

In all, the sophomores were livelier and much more willing to speak. We played hangman in the second half of class, and this group had little trouble with “paint,” “sensitive” and “ambitious.” Next time I’ll try something harder.

The biggest challenge with the sophomores is the usual Chinese chaos. I’d ask a question and have four or five answers shouted back at me. I kept trying to get the students to raise their hands, like back home, but that’s a foreign concept I suppose.

Posted in the Dalian life | 1 Comment »

Army Men, Old School Style

On my second day in town, I took the bus out to see the Army of Terracotta Warriors with Marco (the Italian), and we met Amy and Laura (from Scotland) at the exhibit. It’s really a nice set up. We skipped the packaged tour, which costs Y285. We spent Y14 for the bus there and back, plus Y90 for admission. The bus ride was about 45 minutes each way, and I met another Italian family on the bus.

The Warriors are housed in a large complex with air conditioned museums and winding stone pathways leading through grass hills studded with young trees. Along the way, we were harangued by men and women hawking miniature terracotta figurines, which the men kept hidden in their shirts. Marco wanted one for his nephew, and the slightest attention to one seller drew the attention of a half-dozen others. Each time Marco asked to see a different set of statuettes, a hawker would pull a new box from his shirt and say, “Ten Yuan.”

The Warriors are amazing both for their detail—each one has a unique facial expression, and the entire army is positioned according to ancient war strategy doctrines—and for their sheer number. There are thousands.

What amazed Marco and me more than the Warriors themselves was the massive ego that must have driven their creation. What kind of ruler could order his subjects to construct thousands of life-sized and fully armed soldiers to protect him in the afterlife, knowing that the army would be buried with him and never be seen again?

The Qin emperor, the man behind this self-aggrandizing monstrosity, was 13 when he came to power, and he was the first monarch to unite all of China’s factions under one banner.

“This is what happens when a kid doesn’t get to play with army men enough,” Marco said.

“Maybe it’s what happens when he doesn’t do anything else,” I replied.

Posted in roadside blogging | 2 Comments »

A brief commercialism interruption

If you read this blog regularly (and really, you should) you might have noticed that I’ve recently plastered ads above and to the right. I hate to do it, and I don’t mean to be so commercial, but it might generate a few extra dollars. And maybe that will lessen the blow of my next train/plane/bus ticket, not that I have a destination in mind. Anywho, if for any reason the ads are useful to you, please click them, so hopefully I’ll be paid and they won’t just take up useful writing space.

Thanks all.

Posted in self-indulgence | 1 Comment »

A Walking Tour of Xi’an

I think I walked every street within this city’s walls. I usually like the self-guided walking tour (i.e. getting lost), but this one went on a bit longer than I planned. Here’s what I found:

In Xi’an, like Beijing and probably other large cities, gleaming new wealth lives next door to staggering but persistent old poverty. I spent my first day here walking to nearly every tourist spot within the walls. I ate breakfast at the hostel—fresh coffee and a Spanish omelet—then headed out.

It was raining by then. I bargain-shopped for an umbrella as the rain got heavier, finding one for Y10. That sounds like something that would make a good insult, like calling someone cheap, saying he’d bargain shop for an umbrella in the rain. Except I’d be talking about myself.

I walked south on Shangde Lu toward Revolutionary Park. Merchants shouted “halloo” as I passed, and one woman, probably a prostitute, grabbed my shirtsleeve and started pulling me toward her salon barking, “You want massage.” It wasn’t stated as a question.

I yanked my arm free and ducked into the park.

It was pouring by now. I took shelter under an awning with a family who seemed to find me entertaining. The father, who was 42, offered me a cigarette. I flipped through my dictionary and tried to say simple phrases, like “It’s raining,” and “My name is Chris.” Stumbling to introduce myself, I handed the dictionary to the father. He read the Chinese characters, then looked at me and said, “My name is Louise,” like the example. I’m pretty sure the family left thinking my name was Louise.

I left Revolutionary Park and headed south again, toward the Muslim Quarter. I turned west at Xiwa Lu, passed No. 2 Jiaotong University Hospital. I stuck to major thoroughfares on my first run through the city, which meant I had to dodge hurried cabs and oblivious bus drivers every time I wanted to cross an intersection.

Xi’an doesn’t have hutong (dense residential streets where people live practically on top of each other) like Beijing; it just has slums. The back alleys were quiet in the rain. Residents huddled in doorways and noodle shops, clustering around small coal fires or cooking grills.

The rain drew out the browns here. Everything looked like it had a fresh coat of mud on it. Few cars passed through the narrow roads. Mostly it was just bikes and motorcycles and pedestrians under umbrellas. I kept going south until I reached the Drum Tower, where children ran along the parapet thumping the arcane instruments, their parents close in tow.

I found a restaurant nearby. “This is a dumpling restaurant,” the hostess told me as I walked in, as if I were the sort of person who would be dissuaded by such a warning. I ate fat lumps of meat and spices wrapped in dough, with vinegar drizzled on top.

Continuing south, then east, I found the Forest of Steles Museum, a library of ancient texts carved on stone tablets, some set down by emperors. A handful of dynasties made Xi’an their capital, so there was a wealth of material lying around.

I turned east, taking a roundabout route back to my hostel. A block past the main strip of commerce and tourism, China is again a third-world country. I wandered up an alleyway, a place that smelled vaguely like a sewer. I suspect few of the dwellings here have indoor plumbing. Men played cards and a board game the looked like Go, the Japanese strategy game. Women played mahjong. Children ran through the streets, oblivious to their country’s income gap. I saw young kids and middle aged or older adults, but almost no one my age.

The people I saw in their 20s all showed outward signs of new money: cell phones, designer (or knock-off) clothes, styled and colored hair, and that strange pinky nail that’s kept longer than all the others.

Xi’an struck me as a gray and brown city with colorful people. Even when the rain subdued the people’s usual brightness, they showed through in vivid hues. Women in orange shirts and blue jeans ran after lime green and cherry red buses whose sides were painted with the Olympic rings. Taxis, all a matching shade of turquoise, flooded the streets. The Drum Tower was a shade of red reflecting both China’s imperial past and its more recent communist history. The girl I watched running along the parapet wore a pink sweater, and her mother’s top matched the tower.

When the rain came down the heaviest, people hid under silver, pink and blue umbrellas, and shook the water out of their dyed hair. Later, I followed a squad of green camouflaged workers until they passed a gray-haired woman whose purple shirt caught my eye.

In the Forest of Steles Museum, everything reverted to black and white. Ancient Chinese characters were chiseled out of black volcanic stone, leaving pale gray inscriptions. A black-clad artist pressed sheets of white paper to the tablets, then dabbed them with ink until only the unimpressed script showed.

Poverty didn’t sap the color, as I thought it might. I watched a girl in a red and white striped shirt ride down a brown street under red awnings. I saw a child, maybe five or six years old, wearing orange shoes, bright red pants and a yellow shirt, almost neon in its boldness, standing under an eve catching water in a little cup. Another kid in green and blue, maybe 10 years old, stared at me while I watched his friend take aim at a bird with a slingshot. The shooter’s red pants probably gave the targeted fowl enough warning to evade the stone.

And where the people lacked anything vibrant to wrap themselves in, they sold it in fruits and vegetables from hand- or bike-drawn carts. Green celery, golden apples, yellow bananas and other fruits I didn’t recognize were stuffed into red bags in exchange for crumpled Yuan of every color.

Posted in roadside blogging | 2 Comments »