Inexpensive Services

One of the really nice things about living here is that some things are very inexpensive – including some personal services – such as haircuts, massages, etc. For example, yesterday, Scott got a haircut, a 10 minute head and neck massage, and 20 minute shoulder massage for equivalent of $8 total. Annie regularly gets a foot or Chinese body massage and it’s similarly inexpensive.

The only issue with massages is there are a number of places around town that don’t necessarily appear to be on the “up and up” if you know what we mean. Many of the ads in the paper (there is a full page of massage advertisements) seem to confirm our suspicions. A few of the more questionable names of these establishments, pulled out of Saturday’s paper, include:

“Pink Fling”
“Sweet Evita”
“Cloud 9”
“A Go Go”
“Happy Angel”
“Eye Candy”
And the ever-so subtle “Paradise 69”

Odd Items in Large Quantities

Life is certainly different here in China – here are a few of the odder things we see a lot.

Multiple People on Mopeds – This is one of the more unsafe things we see around town. It is not uncommon to see two people riding on a small moped, which you might see in the U.S. as well. However, it is also not uncommon to see a family of four cruising down the highway on the same size moped. We have seen this with 3 different configurations. One – mom on the back while dad drives with two toddler to 4 year olds standing between dad’s legs. Two – mom on the back holding one child while dad drives with another child standing between dad’s legs. Three – mom on the back holding two children while dad drives. Whichever way you cut it, a VW Santana looks better and better by the minute.

Styrofoam - One of the really strange things we’ve noticed here in China is the shear abundance of Styrofoam. Every day you see at least one or two guys on a bicycle with a MOUNTAIN of Styrofoam stacked and adeptly roped on the back. The height on said Styrofoam pile typically ranges between 8 and 12 feet above the bike, and the width is between 5 and 8 feet. He takes up the ENTIRE bicycle lane and he must keep a keen eye out for low hanging tree branches.

Fires – This is a more recent development as we’ve see two fires in the last week. The first was a fire in a building under construction near Scott’s office. This building will be the tallest (or second tallest) building in the world when completed. Since the majority of the building is glassed in already (except for the very top), it resembled the tallest chimney in the world as all the smoke was billowing out the top even though the fire started on the 30th floor. The second fire was a few days later when, on our way to school, Juliet shouted “FIRE” – we looked ahead and there was a semi-large flame occurring right on the side of the road – we passed and felt the intense heat inside the car as a pile of shrubbery was ablaze.

Mr. Chen Running – Mr. Chen runs a lot – he runs to help us with groceries. He runs to get the car started when he sees us coming. He works very hard for us and we are lucky to have him. However, the most recent running episode was a little scary. On Saturday, we were leaving to run errands. As we were walking outside, Mr. Chen was backing the car down the street (our street is narrow and only one car can fit down it – thus he often will back down to our house). When he got close to the house, he put it in park and hopped out quickly to open the door for Annie and Juliet. However, he didn’t put the car in park – instead he accidentally put it in drive. Thus we had a runaway car rolling down the street as Mr. Chen was running to catch it. Luckily he was able to jump into the driver seat and pull up the emergency break before running into anyone or anything.

She just can't say no

For those of you who know Annie well, you know she has a difficult time saying NO to volunteer opportunities. For example:

• In Texas, she accepted a position as the District Communications Officer for United Methodist Women even though it required a four-year term (Scott is convinced the only positions in the U.S. that require such a commitment are the President of the United States and UMW district officers.)
• About a year ago, the President of UMW at our church stepped down unexpectedly. Annie was serving as the VP at the time and wondered if they might ask her to take over. She swore for 30 minutes one night at dinner that she would not take the position if offered. Right at the end of the meal, the phone rang. Within 8 seconds of answering the phone, the words “I would love to” oozed from her mouth and Scott began to weep.

For the past few months, Annie has been adamant that she wasn’t going to take a leadership position here in China. She just wanted to “ease into things” and just be a "regular member" for a while. So this morning she had a PSO (PTA for those of you in America) meeting at the school. There was also a children’s ministry meeting at the church, but she wasn’t going to be able to attend. (Note: She had never been to a meeting at either the school or the church and only knows a handful of people at each place.) The following conversation occurred at dinner:

ANNIE: “Well I accomplished a life goal today.”
SCOTT: “Did you run a marathon.”
ANNIE: “No, that’s lunacy … you are looking at the Head Room Mother for Juliet’s class.”
SCOTT: “I bet there was a lot of competition for that one.”
ANNIE: “I was the only volunteer.”

At that moment the whole table paused to admire Mae as she hoisted a whole lemon pepper chicken breast with her chopsticks. The conversation continued:

ANNIE: “I forgot to tell you that I was also chosen as the Administrator for Preschool and Kindergarten Children’s Chapel at church.”
SCOTT: “I didn’t think you went to that meeting.”
ANNIE: “I didn’t, but my friend asked me if I would do it.”
SCOTT: “So your friend volunteered you at the meeting.”
ANNIE: “No, she didn’t go to the meeting either.”
SCOTT: “So let me get this straight. You were elected as the administrator for something at a meeting where no one knew who you were?”
ANNIE: “Yea – pretty much. I was a bit concerned when my friend told another lady that I had accepted the job and her response was “praise the Lord.”
SCOTT: “Yes, I would see that as a red flag myself.”

A Different Way to Make Your Point

There is certainly a different style for non-native English speakers to get their point across. For example, we recently received this month’s newsletter from our community. Apparently, they are having a problem with pet waste around the compound. If this were happening in the U.S., the point might be something like this:

“Just a reminder to the pet owners, you are responsible for your animal when they are in the common areas. This includes collecting pet waste and keeping your animal on a leash at all times. This will keep the area around the complex beautiful and safe for all patrons.”

By contrast, our reminder here in China was:

“In order to keep a good environment of the compound and safety of the other residents, please dispose of your pet’s poo immediately and make sure they’re lashed while you walking your pets for the purpose of the prevention of any unexpected situations.”

The lashed versus leashed is an obvious typo, but the reference to “poo” was curious. We must admit, we did expect to hear the word “poo” this year, but we figured it would come home in Juliet’s new “kindergarten vocabulary” not in the compound newsletter.

The Trials of Learning Mandarin

All of us are now beginning to learn Mandarin – which is extremely challenging to say the least. The crux of Mandarin is to learn the “tones.” Instead of having as large a vocabulary as languages such as English, Mandarin instead has one-fourth of the words. One word then can mean four (or sometimes five) different things depending on the “tone” you use when pronouncing the word. This can cause problems – particularly in the following cases:

• Buy and sell are the same word
• 4 and die are the same word. Instead of saying 14 the other day, Scott said “Die Person!”
• Mother and horse are the same word – thus instead of saying “I love you mom” it could come out “I love you horse”

The other complicating factor is that the words can take on different meaning when combined. For example:

• “Bao” means bag and “mian” means flour, but “mian bao” does not mean flour bag, but rather, bread
• Ma means horse and hu means tiger, but “ma ma hu hu” means so-so not horse horse tiger tiger.

All in all, we are slowly picking up some key words and phrases, but mostly we just nod along and say “Hao de” (which means OK) a lot even though we have actually no clue what people are saying to us.

Military Time

One of the nice aspects of things here is that numbers are typically shown in both numeral form and in Chinese characters. This is nice because you can always find your flight or train number, pricing, time of day, etc. The only issue with the time is typically it is not shown in a.m. or p.m., but rather in military time. For Scott, this is not much of an issue, because, despite not having ever served his country, he did work for Safelite Auto Glass and Windshield Repair for a summer – and they used military time in their archaic computer system. For Annie, this has been a particularly difficult adjustment – prompting at least one call to Scott at work to find out what 15:00 meant.

We were quite puzzled though today at the pool when while reviewing the pool rules, we noticed the hours of operation: 13:00am – 19:00pm. Now, we are by no means military experts so we don’t know if we’re missing something here or what. It was our understanding that when using military time, one didn’t need am or pm because you aren’t repeating any of the times. Thus, if any of our veteran readers can shed some light on what time you think the pool actually opens, we’d welcome your comments. We’re pretty comfortable the pool closes at 7:00pm – however we’re a little perplexed as to what time it opens.

More School Info

Juliet is attending an international school here in Shanghai. It uses a U.S. curriculum with the addition of at least 30 minutes of Mandarin everyday. So far she is doing pretty well - except for the extreme exhaustion everyday. For those of you who know us well, you know that in Juliet's five years of life, she has rarely gone to sleep on the south side of 10:00pm. Even last year when she was in preschool, she typically didn't go to sleep until around 9:00pm or so. Last Thursday however, after two grueling days of kindergarten, she was asleep in bed at 6:50pm.

Here are some pics from the first day of school (including one with Mr. Chen (our driver) and one with Mae (our housekeeper)).

First Day of School

Well, it’s a little hard for us to believe, but we have a kindergartner. Today was the first day of school and Juliet had a great day. We were wondering if she might be the child who cries on the first day, but no, she did great and was ready for us to leave her alone. (By the way, if you were “the crier” on the first day of kindergarten, all 30 kids in your class remember your name – and your face – to this day – even if you haven’t seen them in 25 years). All seemed to go well for Juliet on her first day, except for the hot lunch:

Annie: “So, were Goldfish OK for a snack?”
Juliet: “Yes, that was fine”
Annie: “Do I need to send a drink with your snack?”
Juliet: “Yes…..and you need to send a sack lunch because the food in that place …… not good”

Now, we will admit, we found it odd they were rolling out with entree choices Oyster Beef and Pork Filet with Mustard Sauce on the first day, but surely it was edible? We just don’t know why they didn’t go with Chicken Nuggets, Cheese Pizza, Hot Dog on a Bun, etc – heck even a Crispito would have been a better choice. The problem with sack lunches here is that sandwich bread is not so easy to come by, and it has a shelf life of approximately 17 hours before transforming into a fantastic science project titled “Mold in China – Colors Never Seen Before by the Naked Eye.”

Despite the lunch issues, Juliet deemed the day a success and is looking forward to tomorrow.

Delicacies

This week Scott traveled on business so he ate all Chinese food that was chosen for him in big Chinese-style dinners. Typically these dinners and lunches are served “family-style” with the dishes placed on a “lazy susan” in the middle of a round table. The food gets moved around the table for at least an hour and the dishes just keep coming and coming. It’s not uncommon to have 12-20 items served. All in all, the food was excellent, but Scott did get to try several items that were a bit “different.”

Beef Stomach – this was served cold and looked like thin onion rings. However it had a strong garlic flavor and a funny texture. It was not his favorite.

Pig's Ear – this one looked like garlic gloves. It was tough to chew and tasteless. Scott did not have a second nibble on this one.

Pig Stomach – this was served in a soup. It was similar to a cross between egg drop soup and corn chowder. Scott was very surprised as this one was very good.

Chicken Feet – this was Scott’s first rodeo with chicken feet. He thought the flavor was fine, but there was something disconcerting about his mouth right between the toes trying to pluck out the meat with his teeth.

Names

As many of you know, the Chinese often pick a “Western” name for work purposes because the given names are difficult for Westerners to pronounce. These names are typically close (in some way) to the given Chinese name but not always. Some of the common Western names we’ve heard include Jenny, Jason, Bobby, and Maria. Some of the not-so-common Western names include Rocky, Lotus, Ivy, Irene, Leon, Tulip, and our personal favorite – Kitty.

Another confusing name conundrum for us is the family name is said first. Instead of Annie Richardson, it would be Richardson Annie. So you might be asking, did we get to pick a Chinese name? The answer is no, but we were kind of given one. Scott has business cards that are in English on one side and Mandarin characters on the other. He asked a co-worker what the characters said his name was – keeping in mind that in Chinese r’s are pronounced like l’s and vice versa. The guy looked at the card and kind of chuckled. He said, your name is “Lee Chow Sun – I will call you Mr. Lee.”

Scott ran into a slight problem this week, however, when checking into his hotel for a conference. Instead of booking his room under his English name, they booked it under his Chinese name. So he was informed when he gave them his passport (which of course does not reference the family name Lee anywhere) they didn’t have a room for him. However, after 30 minutes of scurrying around, the problem was solved and Mr. Lee was able to check into his room.

Update

It’s been a while since we posted an update on some of things going on in our lives in China. So here’s a quick rundown:

We got both our air and sea shipments last week. It was like Christmas, Hanukah, Easter, and Graduation all rolled into one. The joy was immense. Juliet was so thrilled to get her toys. Annie was elated to get her things to turn the house into a home. Scott had never been so happy to see a case of Right Guard in his whole life. We also received the digital camera charger so we’ll start posting pictures soon.

The maid (Mae) has been with us now for 3 weeks – working about 30-35 hours a week. We didn’t know how we would like having someone else in our house so much and worried that we wouldn’t like having a full time employee. That reluctancy was dashed in about 12 minutes – Mae has truly changed our lives. The house is always spotless, as she does a great job cleaning. Having all our clothes neatly folded and pressed is glorious (though Annie had a “Sleeping with the Enemy” moment the first time she opened her underwear drawer and each pair of panties was meticulously folded).

Mr. Chen (our driver) is rapidly learning English. So much so that we’re worried the world’s biggest backseat driver (Juliet) is going to make him quit. “Why are we going this way?” “Why is this taking so long?” “Does he know where he’s going?” There’s nothing like a five year old who’s lived here for a month questioning a man who’s been a driver in Shanghai for 20 years.

He’s Baaaaaack!

Our good buddy, the electrician/plumber was back yesterday morning for the first time in about three weeks. His return was necessitated by a slight electrical issue we were having. For 36 hours, the lights in the entire upstairs were not working. (While showering by moonlight was interesting, we were tired of mistakenly using Oil of Olay Daily Face Moisturizer as Shampoo.) After about 4 minutes, the electrician/plumber had fixed the problem.....and uncovered 3 more.

So what we thought might be a four minute job turned into a six hour ordeal. At one point while he was waiting on a part, Scott went out to the garage to offer him a cup of coffee. He responded that he would just rather sleep. However, a few minutes later, he sauntered into the house, and proceeded to start up some small talk with Scott. (He must be convinced that we’re on the “Learn Mandarin in 48 hours Program” because he has been to our house five times and every time we speak no Mandarin, but he continues to talk to us as if we know everything he’s saying.) Finally, after listening to about two minutes of his banter, Scott responded with “Sweet, dude” and left the room.

Unfortunately our talented handyman friend doesn’t have a clue how to shut doors either. After about the 30th time closing the front or garage door, Scott found himself franticly searching the translation book for the phrase “we don’t live in a barn,” but was unsuccessful.

Cell Phones Providing a Little Taste of Yesteryear

Personalized cell phone ring tones are popular in the U.S. but not something you hear everyday. Occasionally you’ll hear a catchy jingle that cost someone $15.95 per month, but by and large people go with the boring, mundane, pre-programmed tones. In China, that is not the case. We feel like the ONLY people in a country of 1+ billion that do not have a personalized ring tone. The interesting part is that 9 times out of 10 it is a popular American song from 10-20 years ago. It’s really hard not to giggle like school girls when you’re walking down a sweltering street with neon Chinese symbols all around and you hear Aaron Neville’s “Everybody Plays the Fool” on a cell phone ring.

You thought Huey Lewis was extinct? Think again – HUGE in ring tone circles here. Nothing like riding up 24 floors on the elevator and getting “Power of Love” stuck in your head for three days (consequently the Back to the Future movies are on every weekend here – if Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox made Back to the Future 4 – Return to the Qin Dynasty, it would break box office records).

Though Huey Lewis and Aaron Neville took us on a trip down memory lane, catching “We are the World” the other day on a ring tone in Carrefour was classic. Annie had not heard that song since getting a love tape in the fifth grade. The thought of Willie Nelson and Stevie Wonder singing within two minutes of each other, belting out those classic lyrics, brings tears to our eyes. We couldn’t remember, but didn’t Big Bird have a few lines in that song also? Or was that ALF?

The most surprising ring tone – particularly considering that we reside in a communist nation is the Star Spangled Banner – and we’ve heard it at least three times already. If we lived in America, we can understand it, but we’re not so sure it’s the smartest move here. And to think, just a few weeks ago, Scott was leery of wearing his American Flag swim trunks to the pool.

The other cell phone quirk here is that when you call someone, you usually do not hear a dial sound as it’s ringing. Instead, you hear music – like being on hold in the U.S. This music takes many different forms. Classical music (Bach, Beethoven, etc) is popular as is music that sounds very similar to what they play in the U.S. when you enter the “Orient” section of the zoo or Six Flags. However, the most popular choices are Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston, which is good because it’s recognizable and everyone knows it. There is a bad side though – it’s a tad bit embarrassing when someone answers the phone with you humming or singing. It’s REALLY embarrassing when someone catches you in full-on karaoke mode “And I……I will always Loooooooove youuuuuuuuu.”