The Dorm

Why haven't I been posting? Because I've been studying. Hard. Every day. All day. It was starting to drive me over the edge, so I took a break for some retail therapy. Today I bought a digital camera. I should have bought one in the US as so many folks advised, but no, I can't do it the easy way. I had to buy it here. Something of a struggle, and all I could find were really recent models with all the bells and whistles that I definitely don't need. I bought the simplest thing I could find and got them to knock $90 off the price and throw in a 4G memory card. Fortunately, it's very simple to figure out, which is a good thing because the user manual is in Chinese. I hate reading manuals anyway.

I have gotten a few questions about the dorm, so I'm posting pictures. The picture above is a 10x12 room and the picture below is a 5x5 shower/toilet room. There is a very small entry. That's it. The plumbing in the bathroom leaks constantly, so the orange bowl is there to catch some of the water. The leaks on the other side of the bathroom go down the drain. Unless the bathroom door is closed, the constant dripping is something like the Chinese Water Torture. It's the hot water that is leaking, so long hot showers are not possible.


If you look closely, you will notice that the handle of the toilet is hanging a bit outside the toilet tank. This is because the handle is tied on and then the rest of the mechanism is tied to the flange in the toilet. I did this when the toilet handle fell off one day a few weeks ago. I used several pieces of dental floss. Used dental floss of course, because although I have seen dental floss here, so far I haven't seen my brand.


There is really no point in asking the management to fix things here. Not only is the guy in charge an extremely unpleasant person, he has already "fixed" the plumbing twice. When I requested a mattress that wasn't broken (the mattress is too long for the bed frame, so it was forced in and the mattress buckled in the process), his response was an angry tirade and then a refusal. After a few nights, I realized that the lumps were only at the head of the bed, so now I sleep upside down.

This room is much nicer than the previous two rooms I was in, really not bad at all. It's just that it's some new problem every day. Yesterday, there was no water, and since the hot water heater is drained by the leaky plumbing, it got extremely hot and smoky after the water was shut off. I was afraid it was going to catch on fire. Today, the curtain rod, which was barely connected, fell off and it took awhile to reattach it. In the process, I found a piece of my chair which had broken off last week. Be warned: if you are considering going to school at
Shandong Normal University in Jinan and you have seen the pictures of the foreign students dormitory posted on their website, you might be somewhat disappointed.

The Thunderbird Aisle

Today, Anja and I decided to do a little shopping/exploring. The weather was pleasant so we walked along the old city moat to, I am embarrassed to admit, Walmart. The Chinese version of Walmart is not the US version of Walmart. Although they tried, the "lowest possible price" model didn't work in China. They simply could not beat the local Chinese vendors and they lost a lot of money in China before changing their customer target to middle-class Chinese. The store is more like a mid-level department store in the US that has some good loss-leaders. There were a lot of clerks, but not a lot of shoppers. Strangely, many of the signs had English translations.

We did a lot of looking, but we didn't buy much. On the wine isle, we were very amused to see this sign:


The Chinese characters say the same thing, so it's not a mis-translation. Maybe these are "fortified wines"?

Wo gan mao le

Yesterday, I got a visit from Li Jie, the deputy dean of the international program. I was curious as I followed him to his office; maybe my Chinese is so bad I'm being kicked out? But no, he actually wanted to invite me to dinner.

Tammy's (a friend in Washington who grew up in Jinan) father and mother, Li Jie, another woman from the school, and the deputy director of the Foreign Affairs Office in the Shandong Provincial Education Department and I went to a fancy hotel restaurant for dinner last night. I'm not really sure why. I think Tammy's parents wanted to thank me for bringing some items from Tammy to China and also just to show their hospitality. They were both teachers at my school some time ago, and more recently, Tammy's dad was the president of another local university. I felt nervous hobnobbing with these well-connected people, but they were very warm and kind, like everyone here. Fortunately, Li Jie speaks English, so he helped me, but I was mostly in the dark.

The food was delicious, very fresh, lots of seafood and vegetables, some things that I had never heard of. The wine was also delicious and there were lots of toasts. I just smiled and did what everyone else did. Eventually, the dean of the college showed up as well. Strange. And tonight I'm eating instant noodles in my room because I caught my roommate's cold and I just don't feel like going out into the sub-freezing weather.

It's because I look like Paris Hilton, right?

Today, my roommate Anja and I went with Stephanie and her friend Beauty to visit some springs in downtown Jinan. There are apparently 72 springs here in Jinan, and several are quite large. Many people actually get their drinking water from the springs rather than buy it. We walked through a narrow street and then down some very non-descript stairs and suddenly we were at the river that surrounds the old section of the city. A very pleasant walkway has been constructed along the river, and there are a several springs on the side. Of course there were throngs of people, like everywhere in China, especially on the weekends, but the willows were just greening up, and the weather was very mild, so it seemed like a peaceful place.



We walked along until we got to QuanCheng square, one of Jinan’s most famous landmarks. It was totally crowded with people flying kites and playing with their children, vendors, visitors, and just everyday people doing shopping or hanging out. The two foreigners drew a lot of attention, but that is normal. If you are not Asian and you can’t handle being stared at by 100s of people every day, don’t come here.



After another 15 minutes or so, we got to Five Dragon Pool. We paid the 75 cent admission and went it. It was also crowded, but not nearly as densely. It’s a pleasant place with several springs, walkways, waterways, fish, trees, and some historical and cultural displays. There was a display of calligraphy by a famous Jinan calligrapher, Wu Zhongqi. I think the style is called Cao Shu or Running Style. It’s the rather messy free-flowing style that can be difficult even for Chinese to read. It’s my favorite style. It reminds me of a Jackson Pollock painting. There is some meaning hidden there, and if I just stare at it long enough, it will suddenly emerge, like a figure coming out of a thick fog. The lighting in the hall was dim because over time, light damages the scrolls. I was one of the only people in there and I could have stayed all afternoon, losing myself in the peaceful script. Each calligrapher has his own style and many of them do not have much effect on me. Wu Zhongqi certainly did, though. I will go back there again. This is an example of his calligraphy from a website:



We walked back into the shopping masses and found our way to the old district of Jinan, the remaining hutong area that has not been demolished for new construction. It’s an area of narrow winding alleyways, and dates from at least the Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1644). There were not too many people there besides the people that live there, and their families have inhabited the same small homes for centuries.




There was a famous pool in that area that a prince from long ago swam in regularly. There were a few men there swimming, and that’s where we picked up our own personal paparazzi. A maybe late-20s guy wielding a digital camera with a large lens started snapping pictures of us. First, he was very unobtrusive. I thought I was imagining it, but when he started following us, there could be no doubt. The guy followed us for almost 2 hours as we wandered the ancient alleys. He kept taking pictures, no matter what we did. I wished I’d dressed for the occasion. I got a little glimpse of what it must be like to be famous.
Beauty took some pictures of him taking pictures of us and asked him what he was doing. Apparently he was taking pictures for a magazine. Wait, don’t I get some money for that? And what could the story be about: Foreigners Visit the Hutong? How exciting. It turns out that Beauty and he were both from the same town, so they chatted for awhile…perhaps a budding romance? We stopped to buy some fresh rolls, and I offered him one, but he refused. After another 20 minutes or so, he disappeared. Very strange indeed.

For dinner, we had some delicious food, including a famous Sichuan dish Shui Zhu Yu. It’s cooked in chili oil and peppercorns with lots of red chilies. It was very delicious, but the fish is so hard to eat here because they just chop it up, head, tail, bones and all. Apparently one of the most common reasons for a hospital visit is a fish bone stuck in the throat. I was very cautious, but it makes eating a bit of a chore. We had a few other delicious dishes and then headed into an extremely windy night to return home.

Adventures in laundry

It's been time to do laundry for the past few days, but every time I walked by the washing machine (small capacity, cold water only), someone was using it. Not surprising since over 75 people are using two small machines, one of which is rumored not to work very well. Today I saw my chance, and although I was very tired from moving yet again (more on that later) I decided to go for it.

The machine has several settings and buttons, all of the instructions of course written in Chinese. I figured I could just push buttons until the thing started and I would be ok. After punching a few, sure enough, it started up, and I went back down to wait for what I figured would be 30 minutes or so. When I went back up to check, the clothes were soaking, so I gave it another 15 minutes and went back to check. Nothing had moved. This did not seem right. I pushed a few buttons and it started up again, so I decided to come back in a bit...surely the clothes would be done in another 15 minutes.

They were not. Time for plan B, actually learning what the characters meant. This is a rather tedious process, which involves determining the radical for the character (no hard and fast rules about this), looking up the radical in an index, finding the character, and then figuring out which of the dozen or so meanings might be relevant in this particular situation. Ideally this is done in a relaxed manner, in good lighting while seated in a comfortable chair. In this case, however, I was under pressure, the lighting was low, and the font was 10pt. Slowly I worked through the meanings of the settings on the machine, and was gratified to see that what I determined to be the rinse cycle actually did output water. And by output, I mean the water came out of a hose on the back of the machine that was attached to...nothing. The hose is simply on the floor. When the water comes out, it pools around the machines and runs down a hole in the floor, presumably to a pipe, although no assumption is safe here, particularly the assumption that the electrical appliance now standing in two inches of water does not have a short in the wiring. I was careful not to stand in the water as I peered at the characters. I should mention that this is completely ordinary for China. In another month, I will not even bother mentioning such things, but I am still a newbie.

Eventually, the machine beeped it's closing beep, and the clothes were finished. They smell reasonably clean, but don't get too close...

It's hard to keep a good market down

When I went out the other night, I was shocked to discover that the night market had been shut down. This was a huge market lining the sidewalk on the main street in front of the campus. It went on for many blocks and anything could be found there. Adidas clothing, Nike shoes, IPod Nanos, batteries, cactus, bowls, underwear, puppies, turtles, food of all descriptions, vegomatics, cell phones, bras, lamps, etc. Of course, the sidewalk is very narrow, and very crowded at the best of times, so the market made walking pretty impossible. Many people walked in the street, which made it more dangerous than usual, and difficult for cars to get by since there are only two lanes and many cars, bikes, motorbikes, etc. Apparently, the vendors were out every single night, no matter how cold and most people had the same spots every night. It was definitely crowded, but really convenient for students. I suspect that over time, people will gradually come back to sell and the market will slowly reform again until it gets big enough to attract attention.

Maybe not, though. When I went out for a walk tonight, there were 30 or more police cars and motorcycles and more police on foot, along with a huge crowd, standing in an area where the market used to be. Of course the police were all parked on the sidewalk. I can't imagine there was any concern about public safety. Even if I spoke fluent Chinese, I think it would be hard to know what is really going on.

In any case, I noticed one of the side streets that I often use as a shortcut to the dormitory had many more vendors than usual tonight, and I recognized several from the night market. Maybe the reforming has already begun...

How about a nice big bowl of scorpion dumplings?

After studying all morning on Saturday, I headed farther into Jinan to meet Stephanie and go to an open-air market. The market was enormous and full of stalls selling traditional Chinese artisan products and supplies. Calligraphy brushes, jade chops, carving tools, collectables of all kinds, books, paper, instruments, turtles, cactus, jade and other minerals, medicinal supplies, and thousands of other categories. And the strangest site: bowls of live scorpions. I’m not sure what they are supposed to cure, but they’re used in Chinese traditional medicine.

After the market, we climbed Hero Hill. At the top is a monument reproducing some of Mao’s (messy) calligraphy and dedicated to soldiers who died in the war against the Nationalists. As I was headed down the steep stone stairs, I heard a yell from behind, and I was quickly passed by a man running down the stairs backwards. Two flights at least. Running. Down. Backwards.
We walked around for another hour or so and then went to Stephanie’s home for a big meal. I’d met her mom briefly before, and this time I met her dad as well. They are such warm people. And of course the eating started the minute we walked in the door. They sat me down behind a big table of fresh and dried fruit and nuts and delicious green tea and started insisting that I eat. Gena came over, too and was also placed in front of the food. After a while, we started making dumplings. Unfortunately, the technique I’d learned at Vivi’s was not the same technique they used, so I had to learn a different method, but I didn’t do too well. All of my dumplings were long and skinny. They held together though, so I guess that’s the main thing.







I also watched as Stephanie’s dad cooked 6 different dishes that we would eat before the dumplings. There was a very tender chicken that is a Shandong specialty, perch cooked in a savory sauce, shrimp and cucumber, lotus root, some amazing kelp and beef, and broccoli with some kind of fungus. In the traditional family style of Chinese meals, these dishes were placed in the center of the table, and we just used chopsticks to take what we wanted; there were no plates. Also, no rice. They don’t eat very much rice in this part of China. I miss it. I tried to save room for the dumplings, but by the time I was able to convince them I was full, I was really stuffed.
After dinner, Stephanie’s mom taught me to use an abacus, and she also demonstrated some acupressure points on me. Fortunately Stephanie and Gena were translating. We watched a TV show about a Chinese family, and then Stephanie’s dad drove Gena and I home, but not before they’d given me a large container of green tea and most of the nuts and dried fruit that we hadn’t finished. I was so stuffed, I slept like a baby.