unjustlyunread:

 There are people so wretched, they don't even
have a body; their hair quantitative, their wise grief, low, in inches;
their manner, high;
don't look for me, the oblivion molar,
they seem to come out of the air, to add up sighs mentally, to hear
bright smacks on their palates! They leave their...

October 5, 2011

Up from the 36 chambers! I have been extremely lazy as far as writing journal entries is concerned, so forgive me. I have been busy. I will recount that which I can remember…

…work…

I had to teach a demo course at a different school. In some ways my failure at the first school was a good lesson in what not to do, so I guess I am somewhat grateful for that experience. Also, fuck Rachael. The second demo class went well; they gave me actual kids and a lesson plan and I went in and did my thing. Great stuff. The kids were three years old and very funny. Laurel watched. No homo.

I started work there a week ago. I’m not crazy about all the foreign teachers. Jobs like foreign schools, which have low requirements and good pay, tend to attract random, uninteresting people. Something akin to restaurant work in the states. I feel like an asshole for saying that, but it’s the truth. My first several weeks of work have, and will, consisted of me observing other teachers teach class. It’s been helpful so far and it’s nice to ease into actually teaching. Plus I’m being paid. One of the guys who works there, Jorge, is from Florida. I’ve been calling him Gorgeous George. We run into him a lot at the other university which has an outdoor area where Internationals go to drink and flirt and talk about various unimportant things. Yeah, so work is good. They don’t have shirts that fit me, however, and they struggled to take an adequate photo of me for my bio. It can’t all be perfect. On the bright side there is a great baozi [baozi, pronounced bow (like to take a bow) and zi pronounced like zip minus the p and maybe throw a little t action between bao and zi, is a type of steamed bun filled with meat or veggies. Something like dhim sum (which I don’t know how to spell). Back to the show.] place right outside of the school, so that’s a win.

…food…

I got to admit it’s getting better. We branched out and found some great options that are closer to the dorm. On the west side, where are dorm is, there are several stands during lunch time. There’s this wrap thing that we eat for 3.50 kuai ($0.50ish) that is very filling. This guy cooks them on a grill but that’s misleading. It’s actually a large, flat, round surface that is very hot. With a flat stick he smears on some batter and then cracks an egg and let’s the batter cook and solidify. Then he folds it and adds a piece of lettuce and some stuff that looks like really short noodles and a couple other unidentifiable (not in a bad way) things. And then he adds a piece of crispy, wonton-y type stuff that he breaks in half. At some point he asks if you want some spice and I always say yes, but I have no idea what it is. It takes him about a minute to whip one of these bad-boys up and he’s always sweating (sometimes a drop of flavor is added to your wrap). They’re really good. We got a couple the other day and went to buy a drink. We were walking alongside the lady who is kind of the cook’s assistant [she brings more ingredients and she collects money and (probably) talks shit about us.] and I saw her reach into a bucket of murky, like actually gray) water and extract lettuce. Yay!

The north side of the school is street food heaven. Laurel had been sick and last weekend he stayed at his family friends’ house to recover. I didn’t want to eat alone so I got off of the bus from work, bought a beer and a baozi from the convenience store (Chinese 7-11), and then started walking. I bought a couple rice dumplings [shoumi (show-me), which means literally hand rice] and some mantou [(man-toe), steamed bread. It’s kind of bland.]. That’s not a ton of food, but it was filling. I was standing by a fruit stand eating when I saw a guy buy this sandwich type thing. It was like a pita filled with chopped beef (obviously it was not like this at all, but that’s pretty close to what it was I guess) and you could add an egg if you were so inclined. I was. 5 kuai ($0.90). That whole walk cost me 14 kuai ($2.50) with beer.

Other than that, we figured out how to say kung pao chicken [gung bao ji din (gung bao gee deen) which has more peanuts than chicken] and steamed rice [mifan (me f-AwN)]. And we found a different dumpling shop and a different muslim noodle shop. Still, we manage to fuck up occasionally. One time I was trying to learn how to pronounce a dish and instead of saying the phrase for “how do you say”, I pointed. We ended up with double portions. Another time a lady made fun of us for trying to speak Chinese and everyone in the restaurant laughed [I cursed at her in English for the rest of the meal.]. The other day we were taken to a pizza place that was terrible. Some of the pizzas had bananas on them. Still learning.

…school…

I’m really liking the challenge of learning Chinese. My pronunciation [fayin (fayeen)] is decent and my character [hanzi] recognition is good. I’m actually thinking of staying here and getting a Master’s degree in film theory. Like I already applied for a scholarship that they offered me, so I guess that’s more than just thinking about it. I really want to learn Chinese.

Laurel and I were asked to make a introductory video for a party that they were throwing for the internationals. The video from the year previous was two minutes long. We made a seventeen minute film [The film is titled “A day in the life of a fool.” I shot Laurel doing various activities and we intercut it with interviews of the international students talking about themselves (the best of which are the interviews of the Japanese girls). I sent the video to a friend in the states and hopefully he will throw it up on the web soon]. In English, no subtitles. We had to show it at the “party”, which was four hours long and involved games, food and no alcohol. One of the games was lentil relay, a game in which you dip your face into a bowl of water and then into a bowl of lentils and you try and transport the lentils across the room. The winner is the person with the— oh yeah, I forgot, there is no winner because they didn’t keep track or tally the lentils. None of the games had winners. And it lasted four hours. Did I mention that there was no alcohol?

The teacher [laoshi (like bao but replace b with l and shi is shhh)] yells at the Japanese guy all the time. It’s pretty funny. The other day, when Laurel was sick, he slid his desk clear across the room, away from Laurel. Also he accidentally called Laurel a Canadian. A beef is brewing. Mar Mar, our other classmate, got a stern warning because she missed a week of class and she’s been coming back to the dorm at odd hours, like seven in the morning. She goes to the clubs several nights a week and turns up in the morning, too tired to go to class [She went one time after doing this and she left halfway through class.]. We’re going to try to guide her a bit. She’s from an island and I think the exposure to a place as wild as China is difficult for her educationally speaking.

Howard has a new name: Zhao shushu [Uncle Zhao (Zhao = jao, and shu-shu is straight forward). He was a bit standoffish at first, but he’s come around. He gave me a Chinese name, but I can’t remember what it was; it meant enormous knowledge. Very nice of him to do that. Shushu is a good guy. He’s got a little kid at home that cries four times a night, requiring him to get up and go to the room, and he is studying for a Phd and working and giving lectures. I think I understand his cynicism a little more now; he’s just tired.

Laurel landed a teaching gig at the school. It’s on the weekends. He’s a bit nervous. I can’t do it with him because I have the other job. I think he’ll be fine. We both found language partners to work with and learn from. I meet my partner next Monday.

…leisure…

We wujiao everyday. It’s pretty sweet. Random days of going out set to commence now…

….Laurel was still sick and I went to the beer garden by myself. I bought a beer and some baijiu [bye-geo] and sat at a table by myself waiting for people to talk to me. Some Chinese kids came up and asked me why I was sad. They invited me over and told me a phrase which means literally “horse spirits are all like flying clouds.” Figuratively it means “this too shall pass”, basically. There‘s a whole back story about the phrase that I‘m not going to get into right now because, as was stated earlier, I‘m lazy. I drank with the kids until around one and then I went home.

…Some Chinese kids invited us to hotpot which is like Korean barbecue except that the food is cooked in a boiling pot of water. It’s decent. We drank beer and they wanted to play truth or dare (we had a private room). It was the most mild game of T&D ever and involved questions like “How many girls have you kissed?” and dares like “Make sexy with the door.” [This, coupled with the International student party, has led Laurel and me to conclude that Chinese youth are somewhat infantilized or puerile, to use one of Laurel’s new favorite words.]

…Went to a bar with some British girls. Stayed there until eight in the morning. Argued about America quite a bit. [At some point I said that time will vindicate our invasion of the Middle East and I compared it to World War II. I’m going to say that the alcohol made that happen. Jebus H. Christ.] Danced. Made fun of the French. 

…Talked to some mid-west folk who were pretty bland. Laurel made a joke about a sequel to The Passion of the Christ. He failed to notice that they were carrying a bible.

…general…

We’re pretty settled in with work and what have you. Since Saturday is has been National Day. National day lasts a week. No school and no work. It will be my last break until the semester ends, so we are soaking up the freedom of sleeping late and drinking copious amounts of booze [The eight in the morning evening was had a night ago]. 

The water in the dorm smelled funny so we told Zhao shushu and they fixed it. Kind of; it still smells a little strange, but we mostly drink bottled water anyway. 

Our internet cut off today. Like the electricity, you have to pay upfront.

Tomorrow we are going to IKEA to buy coffee and heavy sheets (Like winter sheets, which I didn’t know existed. I’m from California.)

I think that’s everything. We often play chess now. Luciano’s playing style can best be described as blitzkrieg. I’ve started watching Chinese movies. Very interesting so far. Laurel’s family friend lent us some books and I’ve read a couple of those. Laurel and I are starting a zine, so we’re tirelessly working on that. We’ve got something else in the works that I’m pretty excited about. Alright. I’m tired. Zaijian [zye ge-in, goodbye].

Wednesday September 8, 2011

Another day, another class, another meal at the Muslim noodle shop. Our tiger mother invited us to a wedding when we first arrived in China. Today was the big day. She sent her niece, Nana, to escort us. Nana is tall and pretty and speaks good English. We met her at the Television and Film building. She wanted to see the dorms, but first, she informed us, we had to buy a special envelope for our gift [Chinese weddings require a minimum cash gift. The gift for this wedding was 200 RMB]. After buying the envelopes, we hiked up the stairs to our rooms. She said my room was dirty [the next morning I cleaned it].

We were told that the wedding was a traditional Chinese wedding, so I was expecting a ceremony in an open space with very specific clothing and maybe fireworks or something. I was a little confused when we pulled up to a hotel. Several of the lower levels of the hotel are designated for events. We entered a banquet room on the third floor that hosts two or three weddings a week. The banquet room had thirty round tables that sit eight people. Each table had a Lazy Susan that had various types of pre-meal food, a botte of baiju, a bottle of wine and other non-alcoholic drinks. Apparently there aren’t any traditional weddings in China. Many people get married by going to a judge. People with money will host an event like the one that we attended. 

The ceremony was supposed to begin at six. In what has become a de facto tradition, the ceremony didn’t begin until 6:45. By then I was starting to get annoyed. Then the emcee took the stage. Yes, an emcee, as if we were at a bar mitzvah. The emcee announces the bride and groom who come forward and do some kind of weird, fake western ceremony that involves lighting candles while the emcee yells into the microphone presumably about how beautiful the bride or love or both is. I found this to be extremely annoying, but I was glad it was over. We started eating. The food was terrible. Whenever the meal is “traditional”, it’s terrible. The meat they serve you gets weirder and there is no rice and no noodles to fill your stomach. In the middle of biting into a piece of jellyfish [I have no idea why anybody would choose to eat jellyfish. It tastes like what Quentin Tarantino’s penis looked like in Planet Terror] the emcee starts yelling into the microphone again. Apparently there were more games to be played. These games lasted another two hours. Halfway through the festivities I left to go get fresh air and to relieve myself of some jellyfish. I must have been gone for thirty minutes.

When I returned Laurel was holding a stuffed animal he had won. Two minutes after I sat down they started playing “American Music” [Their idea of American Music, or at least American jazz, is Muzack. I should have mentioned earlier that when the emcee was announcing special guests he announced the three Americans in the crowd. He welcomed us to Nanjing.]. They insisted that we dance. On stage. We weren’t even drunk because we weren’t allowed to open the baiju. But rather than let down a room of 250 people, we went on stage and danced [If we were to make the three Chinese people at an American wedding dance, the UN would have our heads. Well they don’t have any power, but we would be in some kind of trouble.]. Sufficiently humiliated, we sat down. The emcee, however, was not finished. He made Laurel give a name for the newly wedded couple’s baby. Laurel chose the name Rose, very obviously trying to extricate himself from the spotlight. No luck, because five minutes later they requested that one of us sing. Laurel and I tried to pass the buck to one another. He eventually stepped up. I told him to sing “Row, row, row your boat.” It was a smash.

It was pretty much over after that, but I was so worn out from the whole thing that I had to go get more fresh air, not realizing that the wedding was literally ending as I left the room. The whole thing, as I’m writing it, sounds fun and harmless, but it was infuriating and frustrating while it was happening. The only upside was that we were allowed to take home the unopened bottle of baiju. I cracked it open and took a swig every couple of minutes while writing my Chinese characters. Suddenly I could care less about the wedding. And then a fuse blew in my room. Not a huge deal but a little inconvenient. Also the lounge was shut down. Basically someone closed the door and we don’t have a key. It wouldn’t be a big deal, but I was drying my laundry in there. Oy vey.

Thursday September 8, 2011

It turns out that I didn’t blow a fuse in my room, that is how the electricity works. You have to buy it in advance, a minor detail Howard forgot to mention. After class Laurel and I went to the office that Howard sent us to, but they looked at us like we were crazy when we explained that we were there to buy electricity. We returned to the dorm and I ranted and raved about Chinese beauracracy. Eventually Laurel left to run some errands and I took a deep breath and fell asleep. I awoke to a repairman trying to fix the electricity. The people in the office had misunderstood us. They thought there was a physical problem with the electricity. I had to explain for five minutes with various hand gestures that they were wrong. 

Friday September 9, 2011

Laurel and I ate lunch inside of an outdoor mall at a coffee shop. Their menu said they had western food which turned out to be a plate with rice and chicken. Soup was served on the side. Chinese soup. Very western. I called Rachel because I didn’t know how close I was to the school. It was inside of the mall, on the third floor. We were introduced to the teachers and then shuffled into a classroom. Five or six teachers acted as my students. What unfolded was five minutes of a grown woman acting like (read: retarded) five year-old. Like full on retarded. I struggled to convey my message. Because they didn’t tell me how old the (pretend) kids were going to be, I made a lesson plan for kids who understood the concept of words. Kids who are old enough to learn. The lesson was how to say “Hello, my name is John. I am from China.” After about five extremely frustrating moments Rachel and her panel critiqued my teaching style. Except most of the critique was about my lesson plan. I was growing angrier and angrier. Eventually we left. She told us that we could come back tomorrow and watch Adam, some fruitcake who works there, teach a demo class to prospective students.

Anyway, four hours and three double glasses of Jameson’s later, I was able to talk again. Laurel and I tried out an American bar that was listed in the expat magazine. It was easily the best western bar we’ve been to so far. They play sports on HDTVs and they have hamburgers, hot dogs and pizza. The name of the place is Jimmy’s, owned by a fella by the name of Jimmy. From Tennessee. He’s been in Nanjing for eleven years. For those keeping track at home, that’s a long time. As we munched down on French fries a little alley cat walked in and sat next to us. I don’t know if cats are good luck in China, but he made me feel better. I left my issues on Jimmy’s table. We called Luciano. Ellen’s bar was the rendezvous spot. Laurel and I arrived first. Ellen’s was packed, not a seat in the house. Luciano arrived in a taxi and we all hopped in and headed to a different part of the city.

[While we were waiting for Luciano, I got a call from a woman, Gloria. Our teacher gave her our number because she’s looking for Americans to voice a cartoon. We are meeting here on Saturday.]

Luciano had a friend with him. Katie is visiting from Beijing. She knows Luciano from Austria, the old country. It makes sense that they’re friends, they’re both very laid back which is a good thing to be when hanging out with two idiots. Luciano took us to a gay bar. We met a guy name Peter immediately. He asked to sit at our table. We never really figured out if he was gay or not. We ordered eight pints of piss-water (2.5% alcohol) and drank through the boredom. The bar was mildly amusing, but we weren’t sure why Luciano brought us there [I don’t know how I feel about going to a gay bar and saying that is was mildly amusing. It seems to smack of bigotry. Or at least some kind of exploitation. To be fair, they later put on a show which was more than mildly amusing.]. 

And then the show started. At first it was a couple of karaoke singers including a pre-op transvestite [Laurel and I called that she was a man, but Luciano and Katie maintained she was a woman until she stopped singing and spoke. I didn’t have to wait for that, I could tell from the breasts.]. Then two boys got up and danced extremely provocatively. There number lasted a couple minutes. Then it was someone’s birthday. They gave him a cake and made him go to the stage. In standard Chinese form, they yelled into the microphone for ten minutes about the same thing. They spoke in the regional dialect so not even Luciano understood them. That finally ended. The owner of the bar came on stage in a dress, a wig and a terrible make-up job. He was meant to still look like a man. He had drawn lipstick around his lips so that he looked like a clown. He was joined on stage by a more, but not by much, feminine drag queen. She performed a pole dance that was hilarious. She couldn’t jump up high enough to get on the pole so she had to get a stool. Comedy gold. The owner and she started to do shtick, but we were ready for the next bar.

The next bar was castle bar. Very crowded on a Friday night. We ordered a whiskey and a beer and sat down next to a pool table that belonged in a Michel Gondry film. Everything was slightly smaller: the balls, the cues, the table itself, etc. The cue ball was missing so they used the 1-ball, solid yellow. At first glance it looked normal, but once you stared at it for awhile you noticed something was amiss. That’s actually a good microcosm for China. We met a few people in the bar, Luciano’s friends. The girl, Erin, is from South Carolina. She had been in China for five years. Shiraz, her boyfriend, is also a student. We chatted for a bit and then they dispersed. The bar was getting on our nerves so we went upstairs (the bar was downstairs) to buy some baijiu. On a side street, around the corner from the bar, there was a bunch of food carts set up and a few old, rickety tables with rickety benches. There was also a liquor store type thing there. We bought two bottles of baiju, 36% and 56% respectively. We drank and ate and drank and eventually Laurel and I began freestyling. The table next to us took notice, but they said nothing. After an hour of drunken nonsense we returned to the bar in search of McFlurries. There is a McDonald’s right next door to the bar. Laurel ordered a McFlurry, but the manager informed him that it was past the hour for McFlurries. 

We went to the curb and reunited with Erin and Shiraz and a few other people from the bar. Laurel and I began making crude jokes. We met a Palestinian who was scared of going to California because of the gays. We began telling him how everyone in California was gay and that we would sodomize him if he ever came to California, as was required by law. [I felt making fun of his homophobia exorcised any demons I had from earlier in the night.] Shiraz had a Native American on his shirt and we made some inappropriate remarks about it. Laurel began spouting nonsense at an unprecedented clip. Everyone was dying of laughter. At some point we got onto the subject of races. The Palestinian guy professed his love for Jews. That was deemed to be too weird. We took a taxi back home and fell asleep.

Saturday, Sunday, Monday September 10 - 12, 2011

I remember volunteering to go get water Saturday morning because Laurel and I were in a bad way. We were sober by the time dinner rolled around. We met Laurel’s family friends at their apartment. We went to dinner at a nearby restaurant. It lasted awhile, and even though we were tired all day long we still called Luciano to see what he was doing. He told us to meet him at the school. Katie was with him when we arrived. The four of us got into a taxi, but before we made it to the first stop sign, we saw an outdoor barbecue and beer drinking event going on across the street. [Laurel and I had met with a woman earlier that day about doing voices for animation and she had mentioned an event like this one. We didn’t know what she was talking about.] We ended up paying for a five second cab ride.

Sunday was another wasted day as far as the morning went. In the evening we celebrated Luciano’s birthday. We met up with him and Katie at a DVD store. This particular DVD store sold tons of art house movies. We geeked out and then headed to a restaurant, one of Luciano’s favorites. Many people we had met were there. There was much drinking and eating; some kind of award winning fish soup was served with rice. We drink bottles of Tsingtao and warm baijiu. Dinner ended and we walked to the always crowded Ellen’s. It was too packed to stay. The group dwindled down to six people. We walked over to a bar near Nanjing University. 

The bar was nice enough, a very typical bar for Nanjing: loud music and darkened lights. Like a club and a bar had a baby. We sat around for a long time smoking hooka and bullshitting. I think the weekend was taking a toll on me. 

Monday, the day of the moon. I forgot to mention that this whole weekend was a celebration of mid-autumn day [they call it that even though it’s the beginning of fall] when the moon is the biggest it gets all year. Monday can best be described as a “Delicious Chinese Expierence!” I think Laurel and I woke up completely unwilling to eat Chinese food. We were tired of it. We tried to order food online but then we realized that we didn’t know how to say where we lived. So we looked up a route to a local western restaurant, but when we left the dorm we realized we couldn’t make it there. So we went back to the muslim noodle shop. 

It was good, as usual, but we’ve been eating the same goddamn thing for two weeks now. After we left, we went to the grocery store to buy western breakfast. You’d be surprised how much happier we are when we get to at least eat cereal for breakfast instead of rice. After shopping Laurel realized he was still hungry, so we went to a dumpling shop. The one, a few weeks ago, where the lady stared at Laurel while he ate. Our plan was to gobble down some dumplings and leave as quickly as we came. We went inside and ordered er liang dumplings. Which is like 10-12 dumplings. What came back was two bowls of transparent noodles in a broth with bladders and kidneys. A common Chinese dish. And we had to eat it. We couldn’t just walk out, it would be rude. I was already full as well. So we sat there for twenty minutes pretending to eat a delicious meal that didn’t make us want to vomit. 

We went home and relaxed until it was time for dinner. Our tiger mother invited us to eat with her family to celebrate the moon or whatever. We went to a restaurant on the river. The meal was unequivocally the worst meal I’ve had in China so far. We ate nothing and they kept bringing out dishes that were completely inedible. “Bitter melon”, bean curd sushi, peacock eggs, soup with chicken toes and turnips. Towards the end of the meal they brought out spinach dumplings, thank God, and a turnip cannoli type-thing. Delicious and a saving grace. We finished eating and made tracks back home. Delicious!

Tuesday September 13, 2011

Back to school. Afterwards we had a bunch of paperwork to sort out with Howard. There seems to be a never ending stream of things to do with regards to our residency. Laurel had an appointment at one for acupuncture. One, actually several, of Luciano’s friends studies Chinese medicine. She offered to do acupuncture on both of us, but only Laurel accepted. I brought along the kindle so that I’d have something to read.

She stuck about ten needles into old Laurel, each one causing varying levels of pain, pleasure or sensation. Mostly sensation. At some point a random woman, a friend of the doctor in training, came in and sat with us. I read an e-book, the two women talked and Laurel lay on a ludicrously short bed with needles stuck into his abdomen and legs. A fun time had by all. She kept trying to get me to take treatment. They do something called cupping which somewhat curiously has nothing to do with your testicles. They put hot cups of water on your back and it relieves the stress. I declined, but as I type this, I can feel the cords of my muscles being pulled in my neck. Whatever. Aside from some mild discomfort, Laurel was fine. The doctor stuck a couple things in his ear that he’s supposed to take out tomorrow. Hopefully it’ll work.. We asked for directions to the local market and took off.

Laurel showed interest in a drawing class. Howard offered to let us sit in on one and join if we liked it. The class was completely in Chinese. We sat there for an hour and a half listening and daydreaming and occasionally (like every 15-20 minutes) answering background information about ourselves. He asked me if I played basketball. And then if I sang. And then if I danced. Tomorrow I’m going to do the old soft shoe while juggling mini basketballs. The basketball thing was understandable, I am tall and black. The singing was based off of my pronunciation of the little Chinese I spoke [which had to be complete bullshit because when I asked a girl later on if she spoke English (I asked her in Chinese), she backed away from me in horror. In retrospect this may have had nothing to do with my pronunciation.]. The class mercifully ended. We had to go back to Howard’s office and finish up some business before retiring to the dorm.

Later, as I was making flash cards I received a call from a guy we met at the bar a couple nights ago. He had the drop on a modeling job for Laurel. He asked if he could give my number to a friend of his, a girl. I agreed. She called five minutes later and mentioned that she may need a second model, “so send your pictures along if you think you’re good-looking.” I sent the pictures along anyway. Yes, Laurel and I took the worst pictures of our lives, in our dingy dorm rooms, in the hopes of making some fast money with our good looks. What have we come to? 

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

I’ve yet to explain about the sun in China. It hardly exists. Usually the city of Nanjing is cloaked in layers of pollution and clouds that create a type of grimy, overcast quality that is perfect for manic depressives. Coupled with the humidity the effect of the gray sky is exhausting. The last couple days had been cool, as in cool enough to wear pants during the day and not break into disgusting sweating bouts that soak shirts through and sour moods. Today, I kid you not, was the first time Laurel and I had seen the sun since we arrived in China. And the sky was blue. Unfortunately it was hot and the humidity returned, but you can’t always get what you want.

After class we had planned to get our student visas, but we were missing pieces of paperwork [a residency permit that was to be filed within 24 hours of entering the country. (clears throat)] and signatures from Howard. We went to his office after class, but Howard was on his “rest period.” The Chinese have a siesta called wujiao which lasts around three hours, in some cases. It’s pretty much always three hours in Howard’s case. Due to the siesta we couldn’t get the necessary paperwork in order for the visa. We decided to get the residency permit anyway, as that would save us sometime the following day. We arrived at the police station only to find that they too were on wujiao. Upset and sweaty, we went to a coffee shop, running into three people we knew on the way. The coffee shop restored my spirits and when we returned to the police station an hour and a half later, the paper work was already finished.

The importance of getting the paperwork done on time was that we had an audition for an animated television series produced in China. We took an expensive (for China) cab ride to a remote, business-y part of the city. The company we went to does video games and animation all of which require motion graphic technology. The audition was strange in that we were handed three sides (sections of a script) and told to choose only two (which was even weirder because we could choose 1-2 or 2-3, but not 1-3) sides to read. They already had audio recorded for the sides, which they played for me. [We auditioned one at a time. Laurel waited downstairs, on the floor where they produce video games, not that he was allowed to play with anything. He sat practicing Chinese.] I had to read both characters at once, reacting against myself which made it extremely difficult to pace correctly or generate real emotion [Not that I necessarily would have been able to, but reading to myself and the melodramatic script, about a Viking boy who chooses a dragon over his clan, didn’t help.] for the scene. The responses were devoid of abject praise; it was difficult to tell if they were smiling out of politeness, actual pleasure with my reading or because that was an automatic reaction to a foreigner who just willingly acted like a schizoid. I left the room rather dejected. Laurel had much the same experience, but seemed to be more upbeat about the whole thing. We find out in a week.

After dinner we went to the library which is huge. The 2nd-5th levels are substantially longer than the first level and so they protrude out over a Greek amphitheatre [Chinese students were watching a film in the ampitheater tonight. A dubbed, American film. I don’t understand why people watch dubbed films, it’s lazy and it robs the original movie of inherent emotion. What was cool was that it was a film print being played off of a reel projector.] type thing; those levels are supported by cement pillars that makes one pray that he is in Abu Dhabi [the nickname we’ve given the Muslim noodle shop] when/if an earthquake hits. The massive library is brand new, state of the art, and boasts an impressive art book collection in English that will become my new obsession whenever I have free time. Luciano elected to show us his department, calligraphy, so we took a slight detour before heading back to the dorm. Tomorrow I plan to participate in the wujiao. Time to embrace the culture.

Rob’s Room

This was originally twice as long. I cut it down as best I could, but it was difficult. Also, certain leaps in time may not make sense. Please to ignore.

Wednesday August 31, 2011

After a dinner of steamed dumplings, we walked around the local mall in preparation for our massage, which was to be a gift from our hosts. Apparently a full stomach is not just bad for massage, it is also “unhealthy.” Also making the list of potentially dangerous/unhealthy acts that Laurel and I have committed include, but are not limited to: walking with a pen in our pocket, eating Trix cereal [It should be mentioned that the way in which Trix cereal was shown to be unhealthy was by lighting it on fire thus demonstrating the delicious “trick“ to be full of chemicals. Laurel and I tried to explain that we bought it precisely for those chemicals to no avail.], being negative, drinking cold beverages, laughing too much, and the list continues [not included on the list: smoking every three minutes, driving in a car without seatbelts through a city where lane lines are a suggestion that no one takes seriously, AIDS]. For the last week we’ve had our own personal “tiger mother” which is something like a Jewish mother, an Italian mother and a high school football coach rolled into one.

We made our way out of the mall and into the massage parlor. The last time I got a massage I was in Koreatown in Los Angeles. Different Asians, different continent and a markedly different experience. Laurel warned me that there would be a foot portion of the massage. What he, and I, didn’t know was that the only thing we would be receiving was a foot massage. I snickered at the fact that the massage would be painful but after about two minutes into the process, I suddenly understood why Laurel had described it as “something akin to torture.” Though that is an exaggeration, it actually was very painful. The massage worked, my feet felt better, but I’d almost be more willing to be in a normal amount of pain daily rather than endure forty minutes of Chinese foot massage [Picture two big men, over six feet, squirming every time a tiny Chinese woman “massages“ a different area of their feet. And then picture the Chinese girls laughing at them. And then picture the two men trying to mask their pain by laughing like mental patients.]. Finally the foot massage ended and Laurel and I smoked a victory cigarette. We spent another thirty minutes in the massage room awaiting instructions from our hosts who were enjoying something on CCTV. Eventually it ended and Laurel and I limped back home with our hosts. It had been an eventful day. We said good night and I retired to bed where the bugs fed on me until morning. I currently have over twenty bug bites. It’s good to be popular.

Thursday September 1, 2011

We went to school and met our academic advisor. I’m not really sure if he’s our academic advisor or if he’s simply the guy with the best English skills. He studied abroad in England and I think he adopted their cynicism towards life. It doesn’t help that he’s studying for his PhD. I call him Howard [His name isn’t remotely close to Howard, but I’ve been calling him that this whole time because I think it suits him. So far he hasn’t said anything, but I begin a lot of my sentences like, “So Howard, can we have girls in the dorm room…?”]. We paid Howard a deposit for the room and I remarked that I “didn’t want to see him out at the bars with that.” He laughed in the way that implied that he knew it was a joke but that he was also systematically incapable of feeling humor. After paying Howard we went and got a voucher from the administration office that we had to keep and show him the next day. Instead of updating the computer system with our information. China is big on this voucher system. Alas.

Soon enough we were all paid up and ready to schlep our luggage up the six flights of stairs. I immediately began setting my room up. It is intended for two international students or four domestic students but it is smaller than a normal one bedroom. Or even a normal studio. Nevertheless I was really excited to be moved in. We left for dinner. If you walk out of our building and turn right you exit the university from the “West door” [I’m not really sure that they call it door on purpose because it is a road, but I didn’t care enough to clarify it in conversation.]. That side of the university is all street food with a certain kind of peasant charm: cracked sidewalks, shirtless men and cats playing in puddles. We walked up and down the sidewalk a little leery of the choices and a little to hungry, lazy and thirsty to walk the five to ten minutes to the East door. We settled on an Americanized fast food establishment. It was about the size of a small kitchen and there was seating for maybe five or six people. On the walls were various nonsensical posters including a Crab poster from SpongeBob that did not inspire confidence in the food. In the corner a lady did needlework. Behind the counter a man watched an American movie. Laurel and I ordered our chicken and sat down. Of course they were very nice and when I asked to smoke after my meal the answer was a non-verbal “of course.” The food was alright. I accidentally ordered fried fish which is something you should probably avoid in a foreign country. 

Heading back to the dorm we tried to smoke as much as possible so as not to have to climb down the six flights of stairs or smoke out of our window, which is banned. As luck would have it we ended up climbing the stairs behind ten or so giggling Chinese girls. Laurel said hello in Chinese and they asked us where we were from. When Laurel said America they all, in unison, said “ooooh” in the same way that the green aliens in Toy Story did when the claw appeared. They live on the same floor as us but we are separated by a hallway (boys side, girls side). Laurel and I waved good-bye and burst into our side of the dorm laughing. 

Friday September 2, 2011

I was laying down, fully clothed, staring at the wall, when I see Howard scuttle into the room with four strangers. He introduced the first two as our dorm-mates and the latter two were here about a job opportunity. I shook hands with them, but they only seemed interested in Laurel so I went to lay down again. A few minutes later Laurel asked if I was interested in acting in a video. Apparently they needed Americans for a promotional business video that was debuting at the Shanghai Expo, a huge technological event. Laurel and I agreed to the terms, 500 RMB for an hour’s work. We were then chauffeured to an area of the city that is roughly twenty minutes away from our school. The driver pulled into a business park. We took an elevator to the third floor of an office building and then we ushered into a waiting room while the crew dressed the set. Laurel and I couldn’t believe it; twenty minutes ago we were in our rooms thinking about jobs or school or whatever and now we were doing our best Bill Murray impersonations. We smoked a couple cigarettes and drank a couple glasses of boiling hot water and then they were ready for us.

The scene was really simple: Laurel, Ian (the gentleman who came to pick us up) and I were going to be discussing business and gesturing strategically. I was the boss, standing, perched over my underlings. During the scene, which didn’t require sound, we simply improved, saying anything that came to our heads. Ian, who is Chinese but studied in the UK, kept up for the most part, but occasionally he thought Laurel and I were serious. I think at one point the really thought I wanted a cow. Topics ranged from vegetables, penises, peanut butter, the iphone 5 (or, potentially, the iphone 4S) and occasionally business. The company, and Ian who is an engineer, have designed a remote that doesn’t require batteries; the clicking of the switch on the remote generates enough energy to send a radio signal to the device. They also have an app for iphones and droids that allows someone to control lights, radios, televisions and other devices in their home. The service can be installed on the internet. Ian explained all of this, plus he told me where I could get a glass of whiskey in Nanjing, during our scene.

We were tired and we needed to gather our strength because we had sworn to each other that we would go out that night. We hadn’t been out properly since our first night in Nanjing. After about an hour’s rest we walked across campus to the East side and picked the place that looked the cleanest. Of course the menu was completely in Chinese and no one spoke English so we had to point at what other people were eating. We ordered beers as well. One of the cooks mocked us for being American, saying in a thick Chinese accent “Thank you very much please.” I told him to go fuck himself but I don’t think it registered. When the beer came we found out why we hadn’t been able to get drunk from it. It was only three percent alcohol. Luckily I brought my flask along. After the meal we hailed a taxi and killed the contents of the flask before arriving at our destination, an Irish pub aptly named Finnegan’s Wake. 

The pub offers steak and burger nights, fifty types of whiskey and beers on tap and by the bottle. It’s the only bar in Nanjing so far as we could tell. Everything else was night clubs or restaurants. We had explained to our tiger mother and her friend a couple nights before this that the concept of the American bar was a simple formula. It did not require a dance floor or music or even ambience. If you simply have a room with liquor in it, Americans will drink. God bless us. So anyway this place was a nice for those reasons, but it wasn’t the kind of fun we were looking for on Friday night. So after a shot and a beer each we taxied over to a “westernized” area that has western-style restaurants and night clubs. On the ride over Laurel and I freestyled for about twenty minutes, back and forth. I don’t think the driver understood anything, but it couldn’t have been fun for him.

We hopped around from club to club for a couple hours getting progressively drunker. We saw people from Turkey and Canada and other places and tried to talk to them, but nothing stuck. Every place was too loud to have conversation. No girls would talk to us for longer than the time it took to say “ni hao.” It was frustrating. The last place we went to had dancing so we got drunk and danced for a while. I tried dancing with one girl but a bald Chinese guy kept cutting in; eventually she left and he danced next to me and kept talking to me as if I could understand a word he was saying. I would yell a response back of whatever nonsense I could think of and then smile. As we were leaving the bar Laurel took a spill and cut his hand. It was a nick, but there was a decent amount of blood. We found a bathroom and then after about ten minutes of deliberation, that included not being able to order whiskey, we decided to head back. 

I think we both fell asleep in the taxi. When we got to the dorm we couldn’t open the front door. Eventually the attendant woke up and opened it for us. We thanked her and apologized [we later found out that it’s her job to wake up and open the door for us. What a shitty job.] even though she couldn’t understand us and headed up the six flights to our rooms. When we got there we couldn’t open the door to get to our rooms. The same thing happened the night before but we eventually figured out. Not this night. I kept fooling with it and then Laurel asked to do it. He wanted to go get the lady from downstairs, but I didn’t want to wake her up and make her climb six flights for a couple of drunken assholes. We starting yelling at each other. We had both taken off our shirts because after the climb up the stairs we were hot and tired and sweating. Finally the door opens, without my key, and it’s our dorm-mate, the one we met earlier for all of ten seconds, the one whose name I didn’t even know. We walked in, sweating, half-dressed and angry and tried to thank him, but he’s wasn’t American or Chinese. It didn’t matter. I made a bee line for my room, cut out every light in my room and fell asleep without any trouble like only a drunk person can.

Saturday September 3, 2011

As I knocked on his door, a new student was arriving. The new student introduced himself as Luciano and it turned out that Laurel had met him on the previous trip. Luciano is half-Austrian, half-Venezuelan. He speaks Mandarin and came to China after earning a law degree in Austria. He spent the last 8 months living in a village with peasants. He is one of those people who are preoccupied with living life, everything else (money) is banal. Laurel and Luciano did some catching up and then he invited us to a concert. We, in turn, invited John [we gave Roger a choice of American names and he, to our dismay, chose John]. Luciano’s ability to speak Mandarin bridged the gap between John and me.

The concert was classical music perform by University students. It was good and very stimulating. I felt like it would have been appropriate to have a notepad and write down everything I was thinking, but I didn’t want to be weird(er). Laurel mentioned that he doesn’t think that the conductor does much and I wondered how many times that observation has been made. I think the whole world is doubtful of the necessity of the conductor.

After dinner we went to a Chinese-Muslim noodle shop. Dumb American that I am, I didn’t even know that China had Muslims. According to Luciano they’ve been here for centuries after Islam was spread via the silk trade. The food was the best food I’ve had in China so far. Later when I was chatting with a friend online I mentioned that there were Muslims in China. She, having been to China, immediately blurted out, “I love Chinese-Musilim noodle shops!” Apparently many Westerners prefer their food because it isn’t as greasy and it feels cleaner. I can concur with that. There are two other nice things about the Muslims in China: 1)The place isn’t crowded because most Chinese do not like them. And 2) They are not overly humble so as to make you feel guilty. Whenever you eat at a Chinese restaurant they serve you as if, at any moment, you may smack them for insubordiantion and then light the table on fire. The Muslims treat you like you’ve entered a restaurant, nothing more, nothing less.

Once back home we watched a few episodes of The Wire. Later, I spoke with a few friends on Skype. Around 3 in the morning I drank my first Chinese red bull which was non-carbonated and apparently contained less caffeine than American red bull. I had to stay up until 4 when my fantasy football draft was starting. It went well, but I’m still in need of a bar that will allow me to watch American football. Of course the big problem is that the games will be on at one and four in the morning. I’ll have to make do somehow.

Sunday and Monday September 4th and 5th, 2011

Ellen’s bar resembles an American restaurant. The smoking indoors and full bar is what makes it in expat locale in Nanjing. They also offer hooka. We ordered a round of drinks and waited for Luciano’s friend. As always the flask was with me and I passed it around the table. Eventually Halla showed up; she is a Syrian studying Chinese medicine. She wants to join an international medicine group when she graduates. She sat down and we ordered a hooka and conversations began. Mauritius [The girl we invited from the dorms has a complicated name that only Luciano remembered. From here on out she will be known by her homeland’s name and the abbreviation Mar-Mar.] was hell bent on going to 1912 (clubbing), but nobody else was remotely interested in going. She told me that she didn’t want to go alone because she had hooked up with a guy the night previous who was going to be there tonight and he wanted to [and then she made a grunting noise and a weird hand motion.]. Eventually she left the bar and went to 1912.

On the cab ride home Rob and I freestyled and Luciano laughed the entire way.

Monday morning was our first Mandarin class. There are four students. Laurel and I, Mar-Mar and an old Japanese man. At least we think he’s Japanese. Mandarin has four different tones that must be mastered to speak the language. As far as foreign language goes, I’m usually pretty good at reading, writing and listening, but I have trouble speaking it. Such was the case on Monday morning. I forgot how boring and monotonous class could be. I was frustrated and annoyed, but eventually I began to get excited about learning something new. Our teacher is young and nice and speaks good English. She speaks in Mandarin about ninety percent of the time. Mar-Mar looked near her deathbed this morning. The Japanese guy is a little lost, but I think it has to do with age. It’s difficult to be in an academic setting when you’ve gone through so much life.

Tuesday September 6, 2011

Today we had to get a health check. We were instructed not to eat because of the tests. I threw down some coffee on an empty stomach, something that I regretted as I trotted down the stairs in search of Howard. The rest of the foreign students, most of whom are foreign, accompanied us to a bus. A bag full of croissants and lactose-free milk were passed out as the bus was in transit and we were explicitly warned to save them for after the health check. Ten minutes into the trip Laurel passed out. Five minutes later, I noticed the bus hadn’t moved. We were holding up traffic and as far as I could tell there was no reason for it. I waited awhile before I decided to wake Laurel. Soon we were shuffled off of the bus. Apparently the driver had chosen a street that had been narrowed due to construction and there was no way the bus could make it the rest of the way. As we walked down the street towards the health offices, we saw the driver exit the bus and break into a dead sprint. I’m no sure why.

After a series of forms we went upstairs and underwent a series of tests. We got the most worrisome out of the way early: the blood test. Laurel and I share a healthy fear of needles and of the kind of diseases detected in the blood. Luckily we only have to wait an excruciatingly long four days before the results. Yay! I hate hospitals. The worst part is that had we known, we could have done the test in the states. Not that we would have hated it any less, but there’s something about people grunting at you while running medical test that does not sit well with your person. I know I’m in a foreign country, but this hospital’s sole purpose is to conduct tests for foreigners. Shouldn’t someone speak English? Or if not English, some other language: French, Spanish, etc. Instead we had grumpy Chinese people barking orders at us in a language that none of us understood. The only upside was that I got to take some tests I would never normally take and it will be nice to know that I have a clean bill of health. Fingers crossed.

Laurel and I grabbed lunch at the Muslim Chinese restaurant. On Tuesdays the word for dumpling [Laurel asked the teacher what the word for dumpling was yesterday. He did it repeatedly and sometimes in the middle of an exercise that was completely unrelated.] changes to something that no one has ever heard before. After much confusion, we found a picture on the door and reverted to order by pointing.

Later in the day I played basketball for the first time in China. Uneventful. I forgot to mention yesterday that John has left us. We’re pretty sure that he wanted to be on a lower floor, but he it’s possible that he didn’t like us. We’ll never know because he hardly talked, or did much of anything else. We successfully converted his room into our entertainment lounge with the help of a few extra mattresses. We will be screening films in there from now on.

It’s hard to believe it has already been a week. I’m sure by now most of you have forgotten who I am. As you should. I do remember a few people who requested updates from the Orient, however, so this blog will have to do the trick since my normal blogspot (chewingbones.blogspot.com) is unavailable. As is twitter. And the good old facebook. But I digress.

We arrived in Nanjing after twenty-odd hours of traveling. We were greeted by a couple family friends of Laurel (Robert Sobel, the thin man to my stocky Hardy) and driven to their apartment in Nanjing. After settling in we went to a traditional Chinese dinner. Traditional Chinese dinners consist of a large round table with a Lazy Susan in the middle which rotates plates of Chinese cuisine around the table for all to share. Most of the food is steamed or sauteed in a light, non-greasy cooking oil. Dumplings, various meets, vegetables, savory soups and seafood (with the head and eyes in tact) make up a vast majority of the food. Chinese shrimp retains the crunchy shell and the eyes. I didn’t even know shrimp had eyes. Several officials, of varying importance, involved in many industries attended the private diner and we drank baijiu or “white lightning” which is a traditional Chinese liquor. It has a little kick, but it is very light and does not cause hangovers. No matter how much of it you drink. And everyone drank a lot. At some point one of the gentlemen there gave me an impromptu karate demonstration; he instructed me to hold my chopsticks with both hands and then he karate chopped them in half. It was like being in America: everyone was drunk and there were displays of physical strength and affection that made one feel uncomfortable. Due to jet lag Laurel and I were a little less than 100%, but we managed to hang in there until the bitter end.

I don’t remember the second day. All I know is that for the first three days in a row I woke up at four AM and barely made it to the bathroom without peeing on myself. I’m sure jet lag was a factor, but I think it might just be the climate. China is unbelievably humid. It’s like walking into a sauna. In the middle of a rain forest. In hell. It has started to cool off a little bit, which is good because the Chinese do not like to drink cold beverages. You can get cold soda and water and sports drinks at the super market, but at restaurants the first thing served to you is a glass of steaming hot water. Delicious! The cuisine and beverages take getting used to, but I think it’s a good experience. I’m trying not to succumb to the Western outlets they have in the city because 1) they are disgusting (KFC, McDonalds) and 2) I’m in China, I should soak it up. 

On day three, or maybe day two, we went to Nanjing University of the Arts. We met with an administrator who was happy to be receiving two strapping, young Americans into his institution. We were then shown our dorm room which is on the sixth floor. No elevators. Two unhealthy, smoking, American slobs residing on the top floor of a dorm. With any luck will make it up the stairs daily without cardiac arrest.

The next day Laurel and I went back to school shopping at the Chinese equivalent of Wal-Mart: Carrefour. Or maybe it’s the French equivalent. Either way it is popular here in Nanjing, which also has Wal-Mart. We bought all of the essentials and then we made our way to a pool hall in the business distrcit where we drank beer and smoked cigarettes until our little hearts were contented. Obviously smoking indoors has been one of the highlights of the trip. According to our guide, the policy is to smoke wherever you like until someone asks you to put it out. So far nobody has asked us to put it out.

For the last two days we have been staying in North Nanjing, a former village that is currently a burgeoning consumer area. We drove here. Don’t drive in China. Just hop in a taxi and close your eyes. The closest American equivalent is when we have those mega-after-holiday sales and ten different people are trampled to death because they had to have Fred Claus at the bargain price of $5. That’s what Chinese traffic is like all the time, but for some reason there never seems to be any accidents. It’s really impressive and terrifying.

Today we move into our room on the sixth floor and Monday we start class. Apparently we are going to get to teach English at the University and we might be allowed to give a couple lectures on Hollywood film. I’m pretty excited about that. 

I’m excited to get out of our friends’ hair and start to explore the city on my own, with Laurel. Should be pretty fun. Alright, that’s all for now. See you kids next week.

Hardy

P.S. Stay tuned for pictures and other shit

P.P.S. Email at bobbywwilsonjr@gmail.com or skype me at chewingbones

San Diego Airport has no sense of humor.

Scratch and sniff t-shirt.