One of the things that had been bothering me a lot is self-sufficiency. I can cook for myself well enough, but ordering food was a problem. Since my first day here when I felt like I was all alone and might starve, food has become a more important topic for me. In some ways, I always took for granted that food would always be available. Now I find myself planning my entire day around how next to secure a meal. For much of the first week, this wasn't a problem. My students took me out and paid for every meal except breakfast, and I was eating bananas for breakfast every morning.
During the second week though, I found my students were taking care of me a little less. They were (and still are) taking me out to meals left and right, but after the first week, I'd say the number of times I've had to feed myself balances the number of times my meals have been paid for. When I cook at home, that's perfectly fine. I can cook simple meals for myself easily. If I want to go out by myself, that's a slightly different story.
I managed to order food for myself for the first time on December 10th, after sitting for a while at my desk munching on the snacks that Joyce had bought for me that preceding weekend. They have some unusual junk foods here, by the way. I had the familiar roasted, salted pistachios, but I also had salted, dried bean husks, chips of malted, dessicated cookie with sesame seeds on it, some kind of salted ham (which I had thought would be beef jerky, but was actually more like cold cuts in a sausage-like stick), salty and sweet blueberry-flavoured cream puffs and strange flavours of Lays potato chips. The most familiar flavour of chips was BBQ, but I also had "classic", which tasted nothing like the "original" or "classic" flavours of North America, and more exotic flavours like cucumber and blueberry. BBQ and cucumber tasted the best.
I was getting sick of the junk food, so I decided to try my luck at a little noodle stall around the corner from my building. A fellow Canadian teacher from Alberta lives in the apartment below me and he recommended I try this place. After having a beer with him and realizing his Chinese was not as good as mine, I figured that if he could do it regularly, I would have no problems. Besides, I had already eaten at this restaurant once with a friend, so I knew the name of the food I wanted to order.
I walked through the plastic drapes that Chinese businesses use instead of doors and walked up to the cash. I proudly stated my order: "鸡蛋炒面！" (ji dan chao mian; egg-fried noodles). The cashier took my cash and yelled to her cook in the back "一个炒面！" (yi ge chao mian; one fried noodles). I felt slightly foolish as I sat down to eat. I had made up my mind that ordering food would be hard, but it turned out to be really easy that first time. Since then it has been mostly smooth sailing as well, with a few small exceptions.
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On the twelfth, I was met with an overwhelmingly large coincidence in the form of my neighbours across the hall. The couple who lives there are Australian. He's a visiting research professor at the university who does occasional guest lectures to PhD students and teaches a course which helps Chinese grad students publish in English. She tags along because they are married and she likes to shop for cheap Chinese goods.
They were very warm and welcoming and immediately invited me to dinner for later that same night. I accepted gratefully, as it would be my first chance to have an extended conversation in good English since I'd arrived in China. Yan Yi Shu, Vincent, Felix and Xu Xin all have pretty good English, but it's not quite the same. And though I had chatted with Bissah (the guy from Ghana) for a while, we hadn't really sat around at night to shoot the breeze over dinner.
While waiting for the appointed time, I couldn't help but feel a nagging familiarity about the Australian professor. Then it hit me; I was sure I had seen his photos of Chinese life as part of the research I did before coming here. When they came to pick me up at dinner time, one of the first things I asked him was whether or not he had a blog. He said no, but I was still convinced I had seen his photos.
We went downstairs and I went over to unlock my bike. He and his wife disappeared briefly behind the apartment building and came back on a dark red electric scooter. I was a little envious.
We rode together through the crazy Zhengzhou evening rush hour traffic and made it to the restaurant some 5 minutes ride to the west of the school. I'm not sure what the name was in Chinese, but in English it was quite imaginatively called: "Tasty Food Place".
Once inside, I was really pleased to note that my Chinese was extremely useful for communicating with the waitress. I told the waitress what kind of dishes we were looking for, asked for some recommendations and, at the couple's request, I told her that we didn't want anything hot and spicy (or 辣的 la de). It's always kind of bothered me that we don't have a precise word in English to mean hot and spicy, as hot has two meanings and spicy also has two meanings. I hereby propose that we adopt the Chinese word "la de" to mean "hot and spicy". In English this would be pronounced somewhat similarly to the 'lada' in 'enchilada'.
Anyway, after sorting through the menu, we ordered 4 dishes and some bowls of rice and then settled down to conversation. We talked about many subjects, including their children (who are my age) and their lives in China. As he described his life, I knew at once that I had seen his photos before. I asked him about photos (instead of a blog) and he lit up at once, talking about the huge photosets he has on Flickr. We then confirmed that it was indeed his photos that I had seen, and I discussed a few of the more memorable photos with him. He was really surprised to meet someone who already knew him online.
His wife was more inclined to talk about shopping, particularly for clothes. Our conversation turned then to the subject of the best places and methods to buy clothes in China. I mentioned that I had hoped to find a tailor here to make me clothes. She waxed eloquent about the glories of Chinese tailoring and about how it was such a pity that this trade is now disappearing. It appears that only the older generations still use tailors. Everyone else in China just buys clothing straight from the factories of Guangzhou just like we North Americans do. She told me that on her last visit to China, she had managed to find a good tailor in Zhengzhou and that she would take me to meet him the following week. I asked if he was any good and for an answer, she showed me the really fashionable woolen Burberry-style coat she was wearing. "The lining is cashmere," she said. I was sold. They headed out of town for a week after our dinner, but they should be back fairly soon. I'm looking forward to meeting this tailor.
On the way home from the dinner, my bike broke down again. This time it wasn't the entire pedal and shaft that fell off, but just the pedal itself - this time from the right side of the bike. I glumly watched their oblivious backs retreating obliviously into the distance on the scooter as I trudged home with my bike.
For the next couple of days, I rode the bus to work instead of riding my bike, but I quickly got my bike repaired again within a couple of days. This time, the bike repair guy on campus grunted thoughtfully and said to my student: "I don't have the part needed to fix this and it costs 15 yuan. Alternatively, you can go solder it back on for 2 yuan." I opted for the soldering and it seems to have worked out quite well, which is a really good thing because, as you'll see in Part 3, I will be needing my bike for the next little while.
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I tried Chinese KFC for the first time a few days ago. There's a 24 hour drive-through at the corner of my street. It tasted great, but it was really oily and greasy, even compared with American KFC. The price was also ridiculously expensive at 7 yuan apiece compared to other Chinese food. I ate only two little pieces of chicken and then headed back out to buy some Chinese burgers at 2 yuan a piece (Chinese burgers are two thin pieces of pita bread wrapped around diced beef in a sauce with onions and hot peppers).
I think the deals for large amounts of chicken are proportionately less expensive, but I still don't plan to eat there often (if at all).
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The most surprising and disgusting display of poor manners I have seen here thusfar was a girl staring at me with great interest in the middle of a public street, then turning away to start calmly and methodically picking her nose as I looked on in horrified fascination. Then she hawked up a huge wad of phlegm and spat on the ground for good measure. Many people here spit like that, but the vigorous nose-picking was a little bit too much.
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Speaking of cleaning the pipes, the design of my bathroom and the plumbing here are both fairly awful. My toilet works fine, but none of my sinks have hot water. My shower has hot water at least, but it doesn't mix with the cold, so my showers are scorching. In addition, the shower curtain for my shower is hung outside the tub about two feet away. In order for me to keep the water from my shower from flooding the bathroom, I have to pull the shower curtain towards me and drape it over the edge of my tub. Water still manages to slip around the side. Why would they do that, you ask? because my bathroom window is at the back end of the tub and is too wide. The pole for the shower curtain is placed as close as possible to the tub without poking through the window glass. They didn't buy a curved pole for some reason. Anyway, I'm told I am one of the luckier ones. Not only do I have a real bathroom, unlike my students, but my plumbing is fairly functional. Water can be heard dripping in the walls at all times, and my fellow Canadian in the apartment below me says that when he sits on the toilet, water drips on his head.
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I finally managed to make it over to the museum in the company of three of my female students. The poor girls had a terrible time communicating with me, but they had a lot of fun laughing about it. Entrance into the museum is free, but you must show your identity before entering. I'm guessing this is a kind of security measure to prevent theft. At least I am hoping it is a security measure. It could be just another example of useless make-work jobs in China. In any case, the gate attendant just gave me a ticket and waved me through without even taking a look at my passport (I have to use my passport as my identity for everything, as I don't have much in the way of local id and tons of places in China ask for your id for some mysterious and probably useless reason).
The Henan Provincial Museum is the seventh most important museum in China, though just how the relative importance of each museum is defined is not really clear. Nevertheless, the museum grounds and the massive building itself are fairly impressive looking. The building is a large, four-floored pyramid-shaped affair with several wings branching off too the sides.
Once inside, there are several interesting exhibits. I was particularly interested in the Qing and Ming dynasty displays, which had some gorgeous porcelain and gold-work pieces. Unfortunately, the museum was really crowded and people were all jostling each other to see each exhibit. It was a little bit difficult to examine certain things closely. In addition, my students kept asking me why I was interested in reading the inscriptions of such boring displays. They wanted to keep things moving crisply rather than taking time to carefully see each exhibit. I came to learn their favourite words and started teasing them for saying it by also saying it myself. Now it's one of my favourite expressions too: "走吧！" (zou ba!; let's go!) They always say it with a slight tone of impatience, so it makes me laugh.
I was a little underwhelmed by the experience as a result of the fact that I couldn't examine things too closely, combined with many of the descriptions being only in Chinese (though many were also in English) and all the crowds. I also didn't get any pictures. I may go back again in future alone to get a more thorough experience. On the other hand, I've never been a big fan off museums anyway.
On my way out of the museum grounds, I went into a bookstore. Most of the books were between $10 and 20. My students said it was ridiculously expensive for mere books, but they had gorgeous hard cover books there with tons of illustrations. I'm thinking it's a pretty good gift shop. I might find a book for my grandmother there.
At the exit, a random girl tapped me on the shoulder from behind and said: "You're really handsome. Can I take a picture with you?" Of course I obliged...
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