Time for a Real Update!

It has been too long. The business of life as of late, the stress of studying and preparing for classes everyday, the frustration of not learning what I want to learn, and the desire to get off campus and do things in the city have kept me from writing for quite a while. Also, I am motivated to write about novel and interesting things. When I first arrived in China, almost everything was amazing and new, but I have adapted, and crossing the street in heavy traffic, spitting on the sidewalk, and the public transit system here all feel normal now, so it is rather unusual that so many blog-worthy things have happened lately. It feels good to have a bit of this motivation back.

What can I owe it too? A small amount is to the benefit of communicating in relationships. I mean relationships of any kind between people, but in my personal situation I am indeed talking about the connotation that the word usually has in English (a meaning which it lacks in Chinese), namely romantic relationships. More so, however, I believe that I owe it to John Lennon. It wasn't just listening to old Beatles songs that made my mood better. I am just now discovering what a damn cool guy John Lennon was. I am currently a little less than halfway through the film "U.S. vs John Lennon", and I have to admit: I had no idea he was this politically active. How inspiring. Especially due to how I have been in China these past several months, mostly disconnected from political happenings in the U.S., disconnected from people who would help to motivate me, and just disconnected from conversations about politics (conversations about politics are usually just conversations about people's opinions about politics. In China, most individuals have no effect on the political system. Having a strong opinion has no benefit or advantage, and often has large disadvantages, so why bother?), politics has mostly left my mind. Certainly, every now and then I will read a news article in the New York Times or the Christian Science Monitor(recommended by Noam Chomsky!), and when I feel particularly receptive to liberal or radical news I even wait for the daily Democracy Now! show to load, but in day to day life I am usually more concerned with eating, studying, sleeping, studying, and finding fun things to do when I am done studying. Due to this gap between my current mindset and all of the political and radical things that I have been interested in for the past few years, watching this documentary about John Lennon is like a blast from the past; a little drop of amnesia elixir, reminding me that the world is big and Beijing is actually not the center of it.

Now that I have explained my motivation for writing, I suppose I might as well go ahead and tell you what life has been like recently. Well, I went to a Chinese school dance the other night, and I noticed some cultural differences. One thing is that the "DJ" (With my experience behind the DJ table, I find it difficult and a little painful to use that term to refer the OBVIOUSLY unskilled person controlling the music) clearly had no objection to playing the same song as many as three or four times throughout the night, and variety of songs available (of which I think there were six or seven) all sounded similar enough that they could conceivably just be techno remixes of each other. I was actually surprised at how quickly kids got out on the dance floor one the fast music started. Just like in the U.S., nobody wants to be the first out there, but I expected critical mass to accumulate much slower here. It seemed about the same as any high school dance in America (granted, these were Chinese graduate students). Another factor about this dance, first a bunch of fast songs were played, then a bunch of slow songs, and then the same bunch of fast songs. Aside from what I already commented about the songs all sounding suspiciously similar, the only slow songs played were waltzes. I could understand this as a cultural thing, except for the fact that hardly any of the students knew how to walks. One couple was doing some excellent salsa moves, but they were completely ignoring the rhythm of the music and just doing there own thing. I ended up teaching four or five people the basic box step waltz, and I was treated like such a hero for doing so (mostly because I was white and could speak decent Chinese. If I was a Chinese guy teaching the waltz it would be a lot more normal.) The last special observation I have to share is about the time frame. It went like this: The dance started at 7:30, and it ended at around 9:30. For those of you who may have trouble remembering being in your early twenties, I will paint a clearer picture. Most American youth have not even begun to prepare to dance by 9:30. Out the door at 10pm would seem early to many of the people that I know form college in America. This was a night where I really wish that I had my DJ equipment, and I would just rock that floor.

Dancing is not all that I have been doing of late, however. Looking has been a primary activity for the past week or so. For what, one may ask? When decided to live in a city (as I have done), it is usually convenient to have a home. As a young foreigner without much savings, a cheap apartment is exactly what I am looking for. I found one today that I like quite a bit. It is in the Jiao dao kou (交道口） area of Beijing, which is pretty centrally located, near the subway, near convenient bus stations, and a neighbor hood that is kind of hip, not to mention my favorite theater in town, home to both the Beijing Actors Workshop and Beijing Improv. It has two bedrooms, and is going for 4000 RMB per month. Or perhaps I should say it went for 4000 RMB per month, as I just payed the deposit today. Not gonna lie: I am a little worried about two things. First, I don't have a roommate yet. I have two possibilities, but neither has given me a definite yes. The other, I was only able to meet with the agent not the landlord, so I haven't actually signed the contract. Hmmmm. I didn't think about this until Meng Lili told me that I was stupid, but now I am a little worried that I just got scammed big time. I didn't get any vibes or anything, and everything seemed pretty legit, but worrying won't do any good until Monday when I give 'housing agent lady' a call to see whether or not she pick up her phone. If not, then I just learned an expensive (and painful) lesson.

Just a pre-warning here: Anyone not comfortable with reading about facts that are (or should be) obvious to everyone, and blunt and honest conversations about sex and private parts may want to skip the this paragraph. Warning over.Returning from meeting with the agent and paying the deposit is by far my most interesting conversation with a taxi driver to date. (although just the other day I had an encounter with an ethnic Manchu cabbie who told me that his ancestors were banner men in the Ming Dynasty. Kind cool!) It all started with that all too natural male impulse. As I got in his cab, I scratched my crotch and rearranged... well, I think everyone reading this is old enough to know what I was rearranging. I noticed something was funny when I noticed him eying my crotch. It started out innocently enough: he asked me if I wore underwear. I said no, and although it took a while for me to actually explain to him that I meant I did not find it comfortable, and I found no sufficiently convincing reason to wear it, I eventually made myself understood. He then asked how old I was and I replied that I was only 21, still a child. After having discussed our underwear habits for five minutes, he must of felt fairly comfortable, because the conversation kept expanding from there (get the pun? hehe). He started to ask me if I had sex, how big I was (I don't mean height in cm), how long it takes me to... well, finish, and similar questions all relating to sex and genitals. I found one of the more humorous questions to be when he asked "舒服吗？", which translates to "Comfortable?" (with the implied context being having sex. Chinese is big on implied things and context) Well, comfortable is not the first word I would use to describe the major motivation in life for young people with hormones around the world, but I eventually managed to portray the fact that although sex was enjoyable, in my opinion neither "fun" nor "comfortable" really described it very actually. He went on to ask if my girlfriend was a virgin, if my first time was with a virgin, and various other questions, all of which I am sure that I am the only student from CET who would understand (I think I am the only CET student whose Chinese vocabulary includes the ability to describe sexual organs, virginity, and sexual orgasm). In fact, I am getting a very humorous image in my head imagining some of my classmates in a similar situation, trying to guess from context what the word 处女 or 射 means. Arriving back home, I paid him his money and went on my way, wondering when the next time would be that I would have that open and relaxed a conversation about such private, personal, and intimate matters with a complete stranger (all I know about him is that he is a Beijing taxi driver, and he has been married for six or seven years).

Meng Lili and I got together for dinner tonight, and we went to a place of her choosing, a Mongolian restaurant near 民族大学, which might be translated at Ethnicity University. Most of the students there are ethnic minorities, and there are a lot od ethnic minority restaurants in the area. After dinner we walked around the 民族大学 campus, and we discovered some kind of community dance. According to Lili they were doing an Tibetan dance. I sort of wanted to join in and learn it, but my mood wasn't right, and jumping into it just seemed wrong. Lili and I ended up talking though, and it was a good thing we did. There are a lot of cultural differences between the U.S. and China, and to make this kind of a cross-cultural relationship work, communication skills have to be at a maximum. The things we say, how we say them, and the things we don't say are interpreted completely different ways from what we intend, just because we send out these messages from one cultural lens, but they are interpreted my a lens with different standards and norms. I need to display more appreciation for her (she feels like she is in second place compared to juggling, a complain I never thought I would hear), and all of her making fun of me and teasing about flirting with other with boys is apparently very common in Chinese couples. There were several times during the evening when if she was an American girl, I would have been sure we would be talking about breaking up within minutes, but I guess to Chinese girls complaining about how "you don't understand me" and "I need to look out for future prospects" don't have the same meaning they might have in an American couple. I gotta wonder: after working with this, what is it gonna be like dating an American girl again (something I do plan on doing again eventually)?

My summer plans are almost set. Apartment is almost secured, the visa situation is almost taken care of, the job situation is looking good, and my application to the acrobatics school is almost complete. It is, however, past midnight here in the Northern Capital, and I need to get up early tomorrow to buy munchies and drinks for the bike hike along the big wall. 晚安.