devil's phrasebook

Until now, no one has attempted a phrasebook for the kind of people that I hang out with.. For those of you playing along at home, this pin yin list can give you a rough idea of the sounds.

My friend is unconscious. Could you help me move him?
我的朋友不自觉. 你能帮我搬走他吗。

I don't know where all this vomit came from.
我不知道这些呕吐物从那里来。

I did not steal your gigantic fake beer bottle.
我没有偷你的巨大的模拟的啤酒瓶

I don't wish to marry you. You are an ugly stranger.
我不想嫁给你, 你是一个很难看的陌生人

She surely didn't mean it.
她肯定不是故意作的

This is a very stupid idea.
这个想法非常的笨

They are not homosexuals.
他们不是同性恋者

My liver hates me.
我的肝脏恨我

That's not my urine.
那不是我的尿

Don't worry. The dog ate all the vomit.
没事那只狗把呕吐物都吃了

Props to Slackbastard for the idea and Shelley，Mark and Sun Bin for the help with the Chinese. Of course, if you find an error or wish to see something, I'd love to hear about it.

dong gone

Being a foriegner in China means that a lot of you friends are there for shifts. There's the fall to fall shift, the winter to winter shift and the odd summer to winter shift.

Well one shift is up. Jen has left and our companions from 石油大学 are slowly filtering out. Though some will be back, there isn't much time left in my tenure here either.

Foriegners are like puppies. You get attached to 'em, but you know some day they'll be gone.

tagged

6 albums that mean something. (It was 6 albums and 6 songs, but for some reason I ain't feelin the songs right now).

Modest Mouse - Good News for People Who Love Bad News
Modest Mouse has better albums, but since I was listening to this when I first started seeing The Girl, I have an extra attachment to it. Besides that, the song Ocean Breathes Salty has an apt summary of my attitude towards customer service. "Well that is that and this is this/ You tell me what you want and I tell you what you get/ you get away from me."

John Hiatt - Crossing Muddy Waters
I wish I could say that all of John Hiatt's albums are this good but they just aren't. This one puts me into thinking about Strawberry Music festival and some good times in Davis.

Bad Religion - Stranger Than Fiction
Last time I checked on Bad Religion they had just departed from the boring and self-righteous train into a little place I like to think of as Propagandhiville. I like politics as much as any body but does anyone seriously think that a pop punk song about the Kyoto treaty makes for either thoughtful analysis or good music? This album by contrast, was political but full of topics like death and conformity that pull at us from day to day. It still had the Bad Religion brains but also had an excellent sense of drama. It was, actually, fun.

Gillian Welch - Revival
Gillian Welch is my favorite folk singer. David Rawlings is as badass as folksy guitar players get. Every story on this album is moving even though each song uses only a few words to tell it.

Tom Waits - Rain Dogs
Nothing much to say here, it's just good and I still listen to it, even though I've owned it for years.

Sleater Kinney - Call the Doctor
Man, China has really brought out the Sleater Kinney fan in me. Why? Because Sleater Kinney is everything China is not. If you don't really understand what I'm saying than you haven't been to China or listened to Sleater Kinney. And if it's the former then you are blissfully unaware of the terrors of the mandatory ten songs, Irish boy bands and Danish soft rock. I whip out this album when I need a vacation from the saccharine filth that is Chinese radio.

I tag
The Joshes
John
Dani
Talwyn
Alliya

I make children cry

Friday was my last day at 试验小学

The school knew that I was a "one termer" and that I was going home in the fall. I know they knew this because my boss did his damnedest to convince them that it was not a good idea to select me as their teacher. I was already promised to another school, and there were younger, prettier, more available teachers. Teachers that weren't going home in the fall, too.

But 试验小学 had the money and I was the teacher they wanted. So I went.

I had long assumed that at some point, the knowledge that I wasn't coming back had leaked out of the principal's office and into the parents and therefore the students.

No.
The first class I told was my fourth grade. I told them this was the last day of English class. They were a little sad about that. Then they asked if I would be back in September.

"No," said my T.A. "returning home." The fourth graders were a little upset. "Going home? But teacher you live in China." They called me their friend and promised to visit me over the summer before I leave. I gave them my email address.

My second graders were more blasé. The second graders and I, we got on okay but they just weren't that good at or interested in English. What they were interested in was kicking each other and running around. So I tended to have a more adversarial relationship with them.

"Oh," they said, "bye teacher."

Then there were the first graders. I was pretty proud of the first graders. They were a lot smarter than the second graders. Cute, smart and mischievous, they gave me a lot of headaches and they absolutely wore out their T.As. But they were just so damn adorable.

I told class nine, grade one at the beginning of class. Their little eyes got sad. I gave them some candy, announced who got the best test scores and played a final game with them. A game to try to get them to remember how to write their English names.

Then it was time to go to my other first graders, class ten. Some of the kids ran up and grabbed a hold of me. Some started crying. I began to feel very bad. One little boy, Saul, was very upset. After I sad goodbye few times and pried a few children off of me I made my way to class ten. Saul held on to my hand and walked over with me to class ten, crying the whole way. Melvin, a smart little boy from class ten met us in the hallway. He looked at Saul and asked what was going on. Saul told him.

When we got to class ten, I gave Saul my signature and sent him on his way. That seemed to make him feel better. But then word got around the room. When I looked up, about twenty first graders were crying. Wow, I thought, that's a lot of crying children. I've never made that many children cry before. (The previous record was three - I took away their pogs).

So I gave them candy. That made things better, like it does for every first grader in every nation. Children differ more from one grade to the next than they do from one country to another.

Candy having suitably soothed them, we played some games and soon it was time to go. Then it started all over again. This time almost every child in class ten was crying. My T.A. and I both felt like joining them, seeing all those unhappy kids. There were two exceptions: Evelyn, who for some reason thought this was all hilarious and Oliver, who hadn't the foggiest idea what was going on.

Over the course of the term I had found Oliver quite resistant to instructions in any language. I guess his classmates had similar difficulties in communicating with him.

Oliver was bounding around happily until he noticed that something was wrong. He walked up to me with a look of profound confusion. "What's going on?" he asked. Then everyone explained to him at once. Oliver started crying too.

Poor Oliver. Doomed to forever be the last to know.

footnote to dongyang

Do yourself a favor and read the tale of the Dongyang rebellion over at angrychineseblogger.

Then try not to bleakly laugh when you get to this part.

Later that night, villagers said, some migrant workers sneaked into the courtyard and started scavenging for parts among the destroyed vehicles. Outraged, villagers immediately called police. Officers refused to respond

Why? Well, the tale of the destroyed vehicles is a long one. But the essential fact of the matter is this: the vehicles had been destroyed by the villagers and the vehicles used to belong to the police.

I have as much sympathy for the uppity villagers as anyone but come on!

Police: Crime hotline.
Villager: Hey yeah, I'm a villager one of the ones from the uprising today.
Police: oh yeah with the rocks and the beatings and all.
Villager: that was us.
Police: I took a rock in the arm. That really hurt.
Villager: Yeah, well you deserved it. But anyway remember how we took your vehicles away and ripped them apart.
Police: Yes. Yes I do.
Villager: Well, you won't belive this, but some migrant workers are scrounging around them looking for stuff to sell for scrap.
Police: That's just shocking.
Villager: Can you come out and stop them?
Police: Uh. No. Fuck you. No.
Villager: why not?
Police: You like to throw rocks at us.
Villager: Only when you beat up the elderly. If you manage to round them up without smacking any geezers then no one will hurt you. Okay?
Police: No not okay. You want to rip apart police cars, you get to protect them from scavengers. Good day.
Villager: Jerk.

oops

Hanzismatter always stands as a warning to westerners who fuck around with a language that they don't understand. The warning reads if you get that Chinese tatoo, you might be hilarious for the rest of your life.

A few of our friends have gotten bitten by hanzismatteresque tatoos. One now possesses a tatoo which we are reliably told reads "the American version is also acceptable." And we know a girl who now has "mayonnaise" tatooed in hanzi accross her breasts.

Chinese is not to be trusted. Chinese can be tricky even to native speakers. An example follows.

I have a child in a clas whose name is 天花.

天 means lots of things, including heaven and day. 花 also carries a number of meanings, mostly centered around flowers.

Yesterday I was loooking up a couple words formed from character 天
and I came accross the translation of smallpox.

smallpox: 天花 (tiān huā)

Aim for heavenly flower, get smallpox.

translation of description

你可以显示我出口吗
我的裤子着火

department of "wha . . .?"

The otherwise sane Fred Bergstrom says America needs to slap China with tariffs before America has to slap China with tariffs.

On behalf of China, I say shenme yi si?

chinese boss theatre

[after a long speech in Japanese]
Mrs. Kawasaki: He want you to turn and look in camera. Okay?
Bob: Is that all he said?
-Lost in Translation

Ah, meetings. Tedious in every language but hilarious in two.

Managers are not selected for their speaking capabilities. Nor, I have noticed, are keen analytical skills usually what separate the managers from the managed. I have never met a manager who could keep meetings from being time-wasting, dull, perfunctory affairs.

Meetings are usually a group affirmation of the obvious. The boss says to do a good job and then reminds everybody that they already know what their job is. Then the whole company is related back to the foundations of this or that cultural philosophy.

Then the employees, thus enlightened, are allowed to go back to work.

Meetings are there to remind you, there are worse things than your job. Like meetings.

Our meeting was conducted in Chinese and English with Shirley moving the words between languages. Both sides needed a bit of editing in the trip from one culture to another.

Laoban: [Extended metaphor about how your boss is like an umbrella that should only be taken out when it rains, and it's better than other umbrellas so you shouldn't sell it to buy a pancake. Reminder about the ancient Chinese saying that you shouldn't climb trees to catch fish.]
Shirley: What he means is loyalty is good.

I've been in meetings with our boss before. He's fond of alarming metaphors mixed in with football coach exhortations as well straight dull recitation of the obvious. "We're here to teach English, and if you do a good job, every one will be happy."

Today he had a misfire while he was shooting off his glittering generalities. He managed to thoroughly alarm the staff when, in retrospect it appears he wasn't even talking about anything at all.

Shirley: He says that you should think about the children if you want to take days off. You should take days off when you don't have class.
Jessie: [annoyed] when is that?
Laoban: [looks really surprised and then names off the major holidays]
Me: [interrupting] don't we usually have to work on those?

Actually, we usually get some time off for holidays, but frequently Chinese parents want to send Little Flower to intensive English courses over the long holidays.

Then it was our turn to give them the Lost in Translation moment. The foreigners then had a very frantic looking discussion wherein it was revealed that indeed we did not come here because of our passion for teaching English to small children. The kids are sweet, but uhh . . .

Shirley: You want me to tell him that?
Foreigners: no.
Elizabeth: We want to have days off when family and friends come to visit.
Shirley: [They want to have days off when family and friends come to visit.]
Laoban: [Oh. Okay.]
Shirley: He says that's okay.

And of course he wouldn't be our boss without a massive dose of personal awkwardness.

Laoban: [shenma shenma Otis neige neige Elizabeth neige]
Everyone Who Speaks Chinese: [gets an embarrassed expression and looks apologetically at me]
Shirley: He said everyone has responsibilities. Like, Otis if you and Elizabeth get married, you will have the husband responsibilities.

Note: obviously a lot of guessing and outright making things up went into what I said was being said in Chinese.

bar baby

It is not that weird to walk into a bar and find a small child sitting behind the counter. It's only slightly weird to pass most of the evening in a playful chip fight with said child.

I like to talk to toddlers because they are usually about at my level, mandarin-wise. They good at have and want type sentences, but frequently just say the name of whatever it is they want put in their mouths. I did hear some very standard phrases from the kid such as "go over there" and "it's okay to eat these chips" (the second being untrue, his chips were covered in baby slobber). The rest of the time he was pretty unintelligible. This turns out not to be because he was speaking Chinese or baby talk, but because he was speaking some impenetrable northern dialect, that no one in the bar understood. Not even his guardian.

How this came to be was a long story that no one really wanted to tell. The kid seems doomed to an interesting life.

[expanded upon June 14th]

know your limits

Well, I'm back from my exile to myspace. I was never too comfortable over there on that social networky thingy. I like having my own anti-social network over here. All of the content that I posted there since crumpled's server issues is now here.

I'm using blogger and this rather stripped down template for now and for the short term future. Movable type had some upsides: I liked the trackbacking system and the freedom of design. THe downsides included: horrifying vulnerability to spam, and the MT blacklist. Installing MT blacklist is rather like getting cancer to cure AIDS. Blogger is something I can easily fix when it goes wrong. My old website, the fruit of a lot of elex's hard work, has been safely backed up on to my laptop.

I plan on basically reposting all of the old stuff on to this blog because blogger doesn't appear to have any importing abilities. Plus I can't log into MT right now, and that's usually a prerequisite for importing files.

So, slowly the old archives will come back and the look here will become less generic.

Hao bu hao?

it's quite possible that you had to be there . ..

Yesterday, I had the 4th graders "play game" as they like to put it. They were practicing their prepositions, so I took a boy and a girl from each team, and would make a statement "the boy is in front of the girl" and the first team to achieve it would win.

I decided to mix it up by saying "the boy is between two girls." Challenging because I only picked two kids each to play the game. Ian, the sly little devil, figured it out quickly and got between his team mate and a girl from another team. Kevin, was a second behind, getting between his team mate and my nearly asleep T.A.

Kevin's team tried to declare victory. Ian, in a rare moment of clear English, shot them down. "She's not a girl, she's a woman."

That now tops Larry's invention of a dance called "The Beijing Duck" as the funniest thing to happen in English all year.

revenge of the sad bastard

I made this mix a couple years ago, which is why much of itis a mixture of timeless classics and songs nobody remembers froma few years ago. Still it's a warming comforting warm comfort.

You can tell I'm a sucker for mopey alt-country.

Wayside / Back In Time - Gillian Welch
Furnace Room Lullaby - Neko Case
Killian's Red - Nada Surf
Can't Let Go - Lucinda Williams
Still in Love - Cat Power
Crossing Muddy Waters - John Hiatt
Mess - Ben Folds Five
Lost Cause - Beck
Cold Cold Heart - Hank Williams
Dead Flowers - Townes Van Zandt
Dont Think Twice - Bob Dylan
To Be Young - Ryan Adams
How To Fight Loneliness -Wilco
Making Waves - Golden Smog
Runnin' Out Of Fools - Neko Case
Salome - Old 97's
Invitation to the Blues - Tom Waits
Eyepennies - PJ Harvey & Sparklehorse

red banner month

There are lots of red banners all over town, all over Shandong.

They say lots of stuff. I can't read most of it. But I'm told that it's generally about Dongying being a model city.

The thing about model cities is that they don't have vendors, beggars or motorcycle taxis. It's harder to negotiate with taxi drivers in a model city. A model city has little blockades that prevent taxi drivers from making u-turns. That one seems like a fine idea excpet that Chinese sidestreets don't go anywhere. A taxi that can't make a u-turn is frequently doomed to go along the same road for quite a while.

Model cities also don't have pirated DvDs.

The residents of Dongying seem rather nonplussed by the model city business. But, then again they rarely complain to foreigners. They've conspicuosly not praised the program either.

One of my freinds did ask me if I had ever been treated rudely by a vendor. I told her no. Eleven year olds, many times. Random old fat guys, sure. But vendors are a pretty polite bunch, save for that one ice cream seller outside my apartment who always yells, "hey foriegner! Eat ice cream!" at me when I walk by.

I reckon that this model city business is a failure as far as shaping Dongying into a model city goes. I hear it's rather successful as a way to line some Beijing bureaucrat's pockets. But chasing away the cheap food, and cheap rides with no noticable uptick in politeness is a net loss.

Model City Program: I don't like you. I want to live in a non model city that ignores the crazy unworkable laws that it's supposed to follow. (Note to the ruling powers of the world, if they should ever happen to read this blog; ALWAYS REFORM THE LAWS BEFORE YOU REFORM ENFORCEMENT OF THEM! ahem)

We won't even talk about the Dvds. It's a non-issue. I'm gonna swallow my tongue.