through the looking glass

I’ve managed to make a friend (and by this I mean an actual friend, not someone who just wants to practice english and calls me a lot to see if I need help buying food) in the city, hu, a photographer for the local tourist spot maijishan (maiji mountain). he’d run into antony one day while we were out shopping and we started talking about a book of american photography he was carrying. we’ve since had many a pleasant chat about random underground music (he listens to leonard cohen, ween, dar williams and the gourdes), movies (he owns all the weird dvds I’ve bought here), european and chinese philosophy (he’s read deluze of all things), ginsburg and the beats, and of course computers (he’s got a mac). every now and again I’ll be listening to him speak in the mix of chinese and english we use and swear I’ve fallen into a twilight zone episode. because really, what are the chances that I find a person with such similar interests in a place so different so soon after my arrival.

his family history’s quite interesting as well. apparently they’ve been here for ~500 years, we tried to wander around the ancient house he grew up in, currently being restored and turned into a museum, but only made it into the courtyard. both his parents and all his grandparents are/were teachers, so there’s quite a bit of interesting history there as well, I feel I’m learning more than I thought possible about things I cannot even begin to comprehend.

thinking on my toes.
had a little confusion at english corner. I’m getting the kids to organize it themselves, antony, alison and I can be invited as guests. (this is to avoid 120 kids swarming around the foreigners all expecting to talk only to us.) the girl who’s organizing this week wanted to teach a song, I said rock on, go ahead. later that week I stopped in about 20 minutes after it’d begun, thinking I’d listen for a bit then head upstairs to work. I arrived to a room full of kids watching two 18 year old english girls desperately trying to fill time. the relief on their faces when they saw me was priceless; they had expected to listen, not lead, just stopping in from their day jobs as middle school teachers with project trust.

written on the blackboard was ‘annie teaches us a song’. oh my, crossed wires are fun. so I grabbed one of the girls and ran up to the english recourse room to find some music. teaching a song just wasn’t going to happen, but I huck finned the brits into teaching them some popular dances. ten minutes later I’m watching a room full of chinese students doing the macarena to ‘I’m too sexy’.

random.
walking down the street the other day, an older man walking a bicycle scurried up next to me. he said something in tianshui dialect I couldn’t even begin to understand. rummaging in his bag he pulled a small printed piece of paper from a wrinkled tissue envelope and held it up for me to read. below some chinese charachters were printed the english words : I am a christian, are you?

synchronicity.
wandering around today looking for funny hats and other props for my students (we’ll be doing skits, and sometimes dressing up, becoming someone else, helps alleviate fear). passed a music store I haven’t been in, went in to see prices on erhus and violin hunt. the two strings were waay expensive, out of my league. I asked the woman if she had any old violins and she looked at me blankly, sending someone off to get the english speaker. sigh. he said he didn’t have any old ones, but there was a new professional one I could try. which I did, having the time of my life sliding up and down the board even though my fingernails were entirely too long to play. too pricey at 3,000 kuai, but damned I needed that feeling.

the english speaker turned out to be a tremendously interesting classical guitar player, recently returned from beijing to teach. with his father, who happens to be the best erhu player in tianshui. after listening to him play I have to agree, the man made this instrument cry and laugh with the lightest touch. two of his students asked to play for me, and I enjoyed watching and hearing the older girl (maybe 14) playing traditional songs passionately, then the 7 year old girl playing a more modern piece in perfect time. we let them get back to their lesson, once outside the english speaker picked up a guitar and started playing my favorite classical piece. we chatted a bit more about music, and I asked him to think about who might be a good erhu teacher for me. (the bow runs between the strings, not over them, so it won’t be like instruments I’m used to). I just got a call from Zhang, letting me know he’d talked to his father, who would very much like to have me as a student. I protested eight ways to sunday, a master should not teach a novice, but he finally won when he told me I was being a moron. ;-)

did I mention that I’ve walked down the wrong apartment block and into the wrong building twice recently? only noticed when I got to the second floor and realized I was not in fact standing in front of my door.

it’s also been pointed out that my posts make war and peace look like a bedtime story, so I’ll shut up now

real coffee!
went to a local bar, where antony and I were instantly swarmed by a large group of swaggering students. oh my chinese boys just lose their inhibitions after they’ve tossed back a few. heh. after they left antony and I got into our usual arguments, him vs the american journal of medicine, the man has some brilliantly wacky ideas about what’s bad for you and why, truly astounding to listen to : )
a group of ‘moderns’ (this is how I’ve begun to think of some of my richer peers in the area. western dress, more formal. wouldn’t be particularly out of place in most manhattan bars sort of thing. less inhibited about affectionate (pda) than the average chinese couple) they ordered irish coffees, and I watched as the proprietor brought out an elaborate japanese brewing system and what turned out to be xi’an coffee beans. real, honest to god grind em yourself coffee beans. mmmmmm. I showed so much interest he generously gave us a cup on the house, and even though I’d been drinking local beer all evening it was the sweetest taste I could have imagined. weaker than the american brew and a little milky (though I don’t know how or why, as I didn’t see him add any milk), almost a vanilla almondy note. not flavored, mind you, but that subtle undertone that you get with a nice wine. beauty.
not cheap at 7 kuai a cup, but damned if it wasn’t worth every penny.

musical migrations
I’m toying around with the idea of learning to play the erhu (two string). lovely instrument, long neck with two tuning pegs at the top and a drum of sorts at the bottom. it’s played with a bow, holding it vertically on your knee while sitting, almost like the world’s tiniest cello. which is perhaps why I’m drawn to it, my fascination with the cello reborn after playing ??michael’s beauty but not quite enough to deal with the logistics of hauling a mansized object around china.
prolly doesn’t hurt that I heard a man playing a subtle melody while wandering the other day. I went to enter his shop and he immediately stopped playing, so I walked out and hid a bit around the corner. a few moments later he returned to playing; I sat mesmorized by the haunting tune.
then again, I’ve always dug the pan flute…..

mongolian bbq
sensory exploration. lit by a single bulb the size of a christmas light, twinkling in the dark street, enticing you down the road to them. little carts on the back of a bicycle, stacks of veggies, meat and tofu on sticks. pleasant middle aged men (and sometimes their wives or sisters) pop your order into the wok of boiling oil over a small smokestack fire. remove, pass to the drenching station, where chili oils and spices coat your treat. my favorite vendor looks like a chinese lurch, complete with a goofy smile. every now and again he comes out with a single word in flawless english.

crossing the street
every chinese person I’ve walked with thus far seems to think I’m mostly blind and partially deaf. even after I’ve moved out of the way at the sound of a rowdy bus hurtling down the street or errant sidewalk motorcyclist they still take my elbow and say ‘watch out’. it’s sweet, really, but sometimes I wonder.

accosted by miscelaneous chinese people
in the best possible way. buying fabric for the resource room (trying to turn a room filled with desks and bookshelves into a eurpoean coffeehouse atmosphere, oh my), chatting with the ladies, a woman standing at the door started motioning to me with her head. so I went over and she started walking with me up the road, asking the usual questions. she’s got the wonderfully affectionate thing going, putting her arm around me when we laugh. she tells me she wants me to come up the street to pick up her daughter. okay, sure, why not. her daughter works at china mobile selling phones, she’d apparently also gone to my university. we all wandered a bit, playing quite a bit of charades and excercising my psychic abilities attempting conversation after my chinese ran out. getting hijacked by random chinese people is turning into my favorite way to spend an afternoon ;-)

hopped into a taxi to head home, told him the address (shi fan xue yuan, aka teachers college) and he looked at me like I was completely mad, asked me to repeat myself three times (and I might add that as often as I hear this said about me, or say it myself, this is the first time I’ve heard a native has said about himself ‘ting bu dong’, ‘I hear but don’t understand’). I laughed and pointed in the direction I wanted him to go. a few minutes later he said the name of my school. due due due! right on. he then told me he’d thought I said ‘che fan xue yuan’….which would translate to eat dinner college :)