Defining moments

[abcdefg]

I've had two defining moments in China that I can remember right off the top of my head.

 

The first was in early Spring of 2007 when I had moved into an apartment for the first time. Was walking down the street with a 12-pack of toilet paper rolls under one arm coming back from the market. Thought to myself, "Boy, you are clearly no longer a tourist."

 

The second was this morning when I rode the local bus with my second hand sword. Had taken a detour after 太极拳 (Taiji Quan) class with two elderly lady classmates who were going to show me a good place to buy a new fan. It was a long hike and after making my purchase, we parted ways. I decided to ride the bus home instead of walking.

 

Didn't give it a second thought. Nobody batted an eye.

 

[ChTTay]

Foreigners are weird. Foreigner with a sword. Just another weird foreigner. :-)

During the first week or so that I was living in Yinchuan (Ningxia), I was walking down the street toward my apartment, there were many people with small carts and trailers selling melons and nuts mostly. As I was walking, I came across a cart with live chickens in a big cage, I was wondering to myself how you buy one (alive or dead? If dead, how does that work?). A micro second later I had moved past the cart so the other side was now visable, I saw a man hunched down, another man stood with a little boy who had an expression of sheer horror and amazement on his face. I had just missed the chicken having its throat slit. There was blood all over the soil at the base of the tree and the seller was hunched over giving it a good shake before bagging it.

That was a "Oh man, I'm living in China" moment.

[abcdefg]

That was a "Oh man, I'm living in China" moment.

 

Great anecdote! I know what you mean.

[gato]

I saw a man hunched down, another man stood with a little boy who had an expression of sheer horror and amazement on his face. I had just missed the chicken having its throat slit.

This brings back memories. When I was a kid in Shanghai, only live chickens were available in the markets. I used to hold the chickens' legs while my grandma slit their throats. Seemed like a pretty normal thing at the time.

[eion_padraig]

Going to the Wild Animal Park in Shanghai. Seeing the live game hens get eaten by lions jumping up to grab them from the bus (school type bus), then watching people stick their hands out the window to feed bears who had their snouts and paws against the glass while wondering how high bears can jump. Then seeing the wonders of Ligers that the sign in Chinese and English said were breed for "Science and Entertainment purposes." Then hearing from my students how someone driving their personal vehicle had been mauled a few weeks earlier by tigers after they gotten out of their broken down car in the tiger enclosure.

 

 

[hedwards]

@gato, globally that probably is normal, it's mostly the developed world where people no longer buy their meat alive when possible. I think it's the inevitable byproduct of not having good refrigeration technology.

 

As for the topic, I remember the first time I haggled, and then the first time I got a dirty look from a vendor after haggling. The first time I got on the bus to go out of town without having anybody help me with the Chinese is something that I'm still proud of. And more recently the first time I got caught up reading a Chinese book.

[abcdefg]

The first time I got on the bus to go out of town without having anybody help me with the Chinese is something that I'm still proud of.

 

@Eion_Padraig -- I can relate to that. Also managing to shove my way through the train station crowd for the first time and actually wind up with a ticket to the place I was hoping to visit.

 

Going to the Wild Animal Park in Shanghai. Seeing the live game hens get eaten by lions jumping up to grab them from the bus (school type bus),

 

@Hedwards -- I participated in that savage rite in Harbin, feeding those big Siberian tigers. For a little extra, you could arrange to feed them a calf, dumped out of the back of a truck. The tigers literally tore it apart. The animal rights people back in America would have gone absolutely nuts.

[Meng Lelan]

The second was this morning when I rode the local bus with my second hand sword. Had taken a detour after 太极拳 (Taiji Quan) class with two elderly lady classmates who were going to show me a good place to buy a new fan. It was a long hike and after making my purchase, we parted ways. I decided to ride the bus home instead of walking.

 

 

Didn't give it a second thought. Nobody batted an eye.

 

 

 

Dammit, abcdefg. When I was at Middlebury in Vermont outside practicing 刀术 I was encircled at least two or three times by Vermont police demanding to know details about my wushu broadsword. If I hadn't explained my sword was a prop made out of tin (which it is, as a practice sword) and demonstrated how dull the blade really was, I would be in Vermont prison by now manufacturing maple syrup or something like that. That was my defining moment at Middlebury, that I did not want to ever go back there for the Chinese school, if you can't practice Chinese wushu there without the entire nation freaking out about a purported weapon on campus then there's no Chinese environment there at all. 

[abcdefg]

Oh yes, Meng Lelan, how well I remember those unhappy events. You related them soon after they happened. Gave the lie to Middllebury's "Chinese immersion." Frustrating 得很！Actually it crossed my mind as I was riding the bus.

 

Don't know about you, but my 武术 is far from being adequate for taking on a nervous and triggerhappy small town SWAT team.

[Meng Lelan]

Don't know about you, but my 武术 is far from being adequate for taking on a nervous and triggerhappy small town SWAT team.

 

 

 

Someday we will face off here in Texas, you with your fan and  taiji sword and me with my broadsword and Southern staff*.

 

*similar to the wooden staff for northern style wushu, though twice as thick and heavy for use in southern style staff forms. 

[abcdefg]

Not likely if I can outrun you.

[ChTTay]

Anyway....

Anyone else got any defining moments? Oh shit i'm in China moments?

[Lu]

Third year of university I went on exchange for a year. I'd never been in China before (in hindsight it was quite a gamble to go and study Chinese without ever having been there). Second day there the bus to the university drove past Tian'anmen. For the first time I saw it in real life. That was my 'I'm in China!' moment. A bit cliche, but still :-)

 

After spending almost a year in Beijing I came back, found a language partner I got along well with, and then got a small gig interpreting for a Chinese poet who was going to participate in a poetry festival. I came to his hotel and called his room, and when he picked up and I had to talk to him for the first time, I realised Chinese was no longer foreign to me (vreemde taal = 'foreign language', but literally 'strange/unfamiliar language'): it was the language I spoke to friends in Beijing and to my language partner with.

[hedwards]

@ChTTay, that would probably be sitting in the Beijing airport waiting to transfer to my plane to Guilin and realizing that nobody looks like me, nobody talks like I do and I've just moved a third of the way across the world from every thing I know and love. And furthermore that I'll be here for a year.

 

I don't think I've ever been so lonely in my entire life, and I generally spend most of my time alone.

[Meng Lelan]

Not likely if I can outrun you.

 

 

You could, in your Toyota Tundra. 

 

Ok my turn. The defining moment came just three minutes after I landed in China for the first time in my life in 1981. The Beijing airport was a mere cinderblock building on the end of the runway. Our flight's landing was delayed by a man on a bike laden with vegetables and a live strapped down piglet riding his bike along the runway. Then I disembarked the plane and went into the terminal and there was a chalkboard with the day's flights chalked up in Chinese along with flight numbers. PLA were everywhere. So yes, that was the defining moment, just three minutes after I landed. 

[abcdefg]

Meng Lelan, that goes waaay back! Before the Nixon visit, wasn't it?

[Meng Lelan]

Nixon came in 1972, but when I saw pictures of him in the paper doing stuff like dining with chopsticks and walking the Great Wall, I decided all that was groovy and so started planning and packing. 

[ChTTay]

I got reminded of this thread today...

Walking down a busy main street on the way to work, right in the middle of the road, was a little boy hanging around by himself. I'd guess 5 or 6. He crouches down and starts waddling around the road. When he could not be more in the middle of the road, decides nows the time to pull his pants down and swat. At first i'm hoping he is a she. Nope, drops a healthy load righht there in the middle of the road, in front of a supermarket entrance. Then, when finished, for some reason he waddles away into a corner to clean himself up. Not sure why he couldn't start and finish in that same corner.

I'm mostly numbed to things that happen in China but street pooping is one of two things that still gets to me.

[renzhe]

And I thought that the sight of a woman stopping to tie her kid's shoelace in the middle of a busy 6-lane road was bad!

[abcdefg]

I'm mostly numbed to things that happen in China but street pooping is one of two things that still gets to me.

 

I agree about those public kiddie dumps. What's the other thing that still gets to you?

 

Loud, rambling, non-urgent phone conversations in the cinema still irritate me.

 

And the other thing that still seems odd is people standing in the door of their hotel room and just hollering for the maid. “服务员，服务员！”