mocha

the other day, i went to a coffee shop and ordered a mocha (cost: 20 yuan, or about $2.50). after about 20 minutes, the waitress gave me a small cup of black coffee, a pitcher of cream, and a packet of sugar. i turned to her and said, "i'm sorry, there must be a mistake. i ordered a mocha." she told me. "oh, this is a mocha." i tasted it and sure enough, it tasted like mediocre black coffee, so i turned back to her and told her that it definitely was not a mocha. she took it back up and came back about two minutes later with the same cup of coffee. she told me that she asked the woman and it was a mocha. i told her that usually a mocha was made with chocolate and steamed milk. she said, "well, our mochas don't have chocolate in them. we can add chocolate powder to your mocha if you want" i asked her what the difference was between the mocha and a regular cup of coffee (besides the price, of course. she said to me, "the mocha is made with mocha beans, of course." then she said, "our mocha is hand made, and the regular coffee is machine made." at that point it i decided it was futile to argue, i just made a mental note never to go back to that coffee place again.
that's one of the surreal things about china, is that most people who make or sell western products really have no clue what the names mean, and so there's sort of an orwellian (or as some people might say, postmodern) redefining of products. i have had people with completely straight faces insist that a margarita was a strawberry daiquiri and that a piece of toast with spam on it was pizza. there's no point in arguing, or pointing out that it isn't the case, because assumptions that are commonly held about what the definition of something like a mocha or pizza or a cocktail just simply don't exist. though maybe if a chinese person went to some chinese restaurants in america they might feel the same way.

also as an update, i am completely recovered now.

"dear leewen, please excuse comrade ingebretson from work today. she is very sick and needs two days bedrest. --doctor wang, shi li hospital"

well, that's not exactly what the note said, but it did say that "comrade ingebretson" needed two days bedrest. yes, in my efforts to increase my familiarity with qingdao, i decided to take an all-day field trip to one of qingdao's top hospital's emergency rooms.
on thursday night i went out for my usual evening of bowling and beer drinking. i came home around midnight, and began to feel a little nauseous. at first i thought it might be from drinking beer, which i found a little surprising since i hadn't drunk more than one qingdao beer (not known for high alcoholic content) nor had i eaten anything particularly unusual or unsanitary that day. i will spare you all of the unnecessary graphic details, but i basically think i came down with a particularly nasty case of the stomach flu. i didn't get any sleep thursday night, and dan decided to take me to the hospital early next morning, mainly because i was unable to keep any water down. we got to the hospital around 6:45 am, and walked in to a darkened lobby with no sort of staff in any kind of attendence. we went to the second floor to see if the international clinic was open (it wasn't) and ran into another patient who told us to go to the 6th floor. we arrived at the 6th floor to find a lit desk, a sign that said "nurses station" and of course, no nurses. dan went off to find a nurse while i squatted on the floor because there were no chairs or any sort of seats in the waiting area. finally a nurse came out and told us that we could wait for the international clinic to open at 8 (over an hour) or go to the chinese emergency room. we went to the emergency room, which turned out to be a room, with two somewhat dingy examining tables and two desks. the doctor came in and asked me what my symptoms were, and then pressed on my stomach and asked me where it hurt. he then wrote up some notes and my medications, and told me what he was going to give me through an i.v. now, if medication names are slightly incomprehensible in english, they were completely incomprehensible in chinese, so i just nodded and smiled and hoped that he didn't just say he was going to inject toxic waste into my veins.
another note about our hospital is that they are run by the chinese communist party, which means that it is staffed by fairly hostile beligerent staff who have better things to do than explain hospital procedure to ignorant foreigners. the hospital, unlike american hospitals, was pay-as-you-go, which meant that while i was getting my exam, a nurse came in to yell at us for not having payed the registration fee or picked up any forms(11 yuan, about $1.25). after we managed to let her know that a)i spoke chinese but was not about to leave the examination table, and b) dan was willing to go but didn't speak any chinese, she sighed a heavy sigh and grabbed dan's arm to go and get me registered. when we got back, it was time for the nurse to escort dan off again to the pharmacy and buy my medicines. meanwhile, a nurse escorted me to one of the rooms in the emergency ward where they would administer my i.v. the room turned out to be straight out of the 50s, a bare white room with four metal frame beds in a row, all with dingy (though not unsanitary) cotton bedding. above each bed was a string to pull to call a nurse, and next to each bed was a table and an i.v. stand. the nurse put me in the bed by the window. i went to go to the bathroom, which had the hygenic standards of a cheap restaurant. the toilets were dirty and there was no toilet paper. the sink only had cold water and no soap, and on one side there was a trough filled with dirty mops. on the whole, it was not a bathroom that inspired confidence. back in my room, the nurse hooked me up to the i.v. with only minor difficulty (she missed my first vein), and then left me and dan.
we were soon joined however, by a woman of about 60 and her somewhat senile elderly mother who was put in the bed next to me. at first she said in a loud, exaggerated voice, LOOK MOTHER, FOREIGNERS. LOOK AT HER HAIR. FOREIGNERS ALL HAVE DIFFERENT HAIR LIKE THAT. the mother seemed confused, and said that we looked different. the woman responded, WELL OF COURSE THEY'RE DIFFERENT, THEY'RE FROM DIFFERENT COUNTRIES. HE'S FROM XINJIANG OR SOMEWHERE LIKE THAT (an autonomous region of china with a turkish ethnic minority). then she asked dan if i was his wife. dan looked confused, so then she tried out fiancee, and finally girlfriend, and dan said that i was. some more people came into the ward, and the woman said SHH, FOREIGNERS, YOU NEED TO BE QUIET BECAUSE A FOREIGNER IS SICK. then she asked dan what was wrong. dan managed to communicate that it was my stomach, and she gave a knowing tut tut and told him that i needed to eat more carefully. she then read my chart and told dan that one side effect of my medication was dry mouth, and he needed to give me some water. when she found out we didn't have any cups, she again was horrified. HOW WILL YOU TAKE CARE OF YOURSELVES?? YOU NEED TO GET A CUP IMMEDIATELY! she hurried dan out and several minutes later they came back with a paper cup and two bottles of water. dan opened a water bottle and was about to pour when the woman again got really agitated and said WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING? YOU CAN'T GIVE HER COLD WATER, IT'S BAD FOR THE STOMACH. SHE NEEDS WARM WATER!(there is a belief that cold water gives people stomach aches, and all water needs to be at least luke warm). at this time i stopped feigning sleep and woke up and drank some luke warm water, and i was actually very grateful to the woman because i was very thirsty. when the woman found out i spoke more chinese than dan did, she began her round of questioning all over again. when she found out we mainly ate out instead of at home, she again tsk tsked, basically telling us that we had brought misfortune upon ourselves. all in all, it was like having a somewhat overbearing grandmother around taking care of me, which was occasionally exasperating but mostly nice.
another highlight of my 12 hours in the room was one time after i threw up, i called in the nurse and told her. she told me to save my bucket of vomit(it was a byob, or "bring your own bucket" emergency room) to show the doctor. (i'm not trying to be too graphic, but it's part of the story, so bear with me a moment) i had taken some pepto-bismol, a bright pink stomach medication, and my vomit was similarly colored. the doctor took a look and was incredibly horrified. "what did you eat!!??" she yelled at me, and i tried to explain that i had taken a medicine at home to prevent vomiting. the doctor took another look and said, "i don't know what that is, but never take it again. if you get sick, just come here immediately" and then walked out. meanwhile, everyone else in the ward came over to take a look and add their own versions, of "what were you thinking," "trying to poison yourself" "how unnatural" etc. then a little bit later when i tried to suck on a vitamin c candy to get the vomit taste out of my mouth, the grandmother figure caught me and said LOOK WHAT YOU'RE DOING NOW! DIDN'T YOU HEAR THE DOCTOR? SHE SAID NOT TO EAT ANY STRANGE FOODS, WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO TO YOURSELF? YOU DON'T NEED TO TAKE ANY VITAMIN C, IT'S IN THE I.V. STRANGE FOODS LIKE THIS, NO WONDER YOU'RE SICK.

on the whole, when i wasn't sleeping it was a fairly interesting 12 hours.

food food food...

i just got back a little while ago from a goodbye lunch for a friend of mine who's going back to england in two days. we went to an all-you-can eat buffet in one of qingdao's five star hotels. there for about 12 dollars you get as much as you want of western, japanese, chinese, korean, and indian cuisine. to tell the truth, the western and indian food is ambitiously fancy yet somewhat mediocre, however, it's the only indian food, and basically some of the only western food that isn't poorly done pizza and spaghetti, so it's always nice to do for a splurge every once and awhile. however, cash splurging is only one kind of splurge, it's more the food splurge that's deadly; i am writing this in a sleepy stupor, and feel no desire to eat for the next week. we all had about 8 courses each, all involving a mixture of sushi, cheese, bread, roast beef, samosas, tandoori chicken, pretzels, salad, croissonts, raw salmon, cheese cake, chocolate mousse, ice cream, coffee and fruit salad.
though one quick note; the roast beef was tender and flavorful, and the rye rolls were firm and chewy, a nice change from the soggy and tasteless "french bread" many bakeries and western restaurants sell.

well, off to take a nap now.

My youngest class consists of students who are all, as they tell me, five and a half years old. (well, two exceptions, a 6 and a 7 year old). Even though they know their age down to the month, 9 out of 10 don't know what year they were born in. However, when I asked them what zodiac sign they belonged to, they all knew immediately. "Dragon teacher!!! I'm a dragon!!" they all screamed. I think that's interesting, I would think that knowing what year one's born in would be easier to know than one's zodiac sign. I don't really remember, but when I was 5 I'm pretty sure I knew what year I was born in, but I definitely wouldn't know my astrological sign or any sort of equivalent thing. Though I guess the zodiac in China is a bigger deal than the astrological calender in America. On a side note though, people do follow our monthly astrological calender as well. In fact, people often ask me what sign I am. I've tried and repeatedly failed to remember the word for sagittarius, so I just mimic shooting a bow and arrow, and they understand.
But getting back to teaching, I have to say that there are lots of benefits to teaching little children, mainly that they are incredibly sweet. I often get little gifts of soggy cookie, lint-covered candies, an scraps of paper that say, "I like teacher" in Chinese with a picture of me in a pink dress and of course, copious amounts of flowing blonde hair. They are also very physically affectionate, and often run up and spontaneously hug me.

library

so, as i have already written about, every wednesday i go to the library to read chinese magazines. recently i have discovered this magazine called 'china,' which is basically like the newsweek of china. it's perfect reading, the articles are all about 1-3 pages, which is a good length, given my slow reading speed, and they are much much more interesting than the newspaper, which mainly has articles on things like traveling car shows. i read this really fascinating article called 'second child hopes,' which was all about the 1 child policy. the article identified about four major trends in chinese society. the article said that many people, generally the urban middle class, really only want one child. raising a child is expensive and time consuming, and most people feel they can't maintain their lifestyle and have more than one kid. of course, maybe it's kind of a chicken-and-egg phenomenon, because after all, having only one child meant parents (and grandparents) could lavish their kids with piano lessons and golf lessons and extra math tutors and english lessons and dance lessons and cell phones, etc. but now, it's kind of become a vicious cycle: if you want your child not to fall behind, you need to make sure that you provide lots of expensive extras to make sure your child becomes accomplished and successful. (dan has 7 and 8 year olds who are taking journalism lessons to give them poise). also, many people are concerned about china's overpopulation problems and many of the practical problems that resulted. as my friend said, for her, getting into college was a stressful overly competetive nightmare, and grad school is just as hard, given that there are too many qualified people for not enough spots.--she said that she would do anything to make sure her child's life will be easier, and that the best way of doing that was only having one child. that many people support the law for socially conscious reasons shouldn't be surprising, yet the way we talk about it in america, it's as though it's merely yet another form of oppression heaped upon a long suffering people. (when i told that to one of my students, she laughed, and said that americans were really different). of course, the article mentioned that many people want a second child, but they can't afford to pay the fine (about $1200) for having a second birth. in chinese, there's a saying "you er you nu cai suan hao ming" or, only when you have a boy and a girl do you have a good life. not having a birth certificate, aka having an illegal birth means that your child cannot get a residence permit or legally enroll in school, which pretty much guarantees that your child will be on the fringes of society. of course, the article pointed out that many people do have more than one child, mainly wealthy people for whom 1200 bucks is nothing, and people from small villages who often have extra children outside of the law. some people are allowed to have more kids, especially in the countryside. for example, if your first child is a girl, you are allowed to have another. though sometimes, the article said, it means there are single child families with one boy, and parents who desperately want a girl. of course, in the country there are also many families with two girls who really want a boy.
it's interesting, two questions i always ask people are "how many siblings do you have?" and/or "how many kids do you have?" many people answer, one, of course, there's a single child law. however, when i asked our security guard how many siblings he had, he said two, a younger brother and sister. i asked him how his family was able to have three kids, and he just gave me a puzzled look and said, why wouldn't my parents be able to have more than one kid? i was very confused.
this week i started an article on food safety in china, which i don't know if i really should talk about on the blog, i mean, i'm not sure if i really want to read about it myself. somehow finding out much of my food is produced in unsanitary conditions near open cesspits isn't exactly what i want to know, considering i don't really have the option of not eating. in this case, ignorance is bliss--though actually, the statistic in the article that every day, 500 people get food poisoning in china actually seems really low, considering--1) the hygienic standards at most restaurants i've seen, and b) that there are 1.3 billion people in china.