7 posts tagged “china”

Today was the Clear Brightness Festival, which is supposed to be for going outside and enjoying the spring greenery, which is exactly what I felt like doing today. Unfortunately.... the ancient Chinese didn't plan for the amount of coursework I would have, nor the wet weather we had today. Oh it's also for sweeping graves, and I didn't really feel like that.

That's not to say that I didn't enjoy the rain, because I always do. I mentioned this in our Common Room, and someone said "That's because you're a plant." Which is sort of true, in that I like rain because I know it means fertility and growth. "April showers bring May flowers", as they say.

Blah blah blah and I'll be inside for all tomorrow and Sunday thanks to job training.

I've been neglecting this.

I went home on the weekend which was fine. It snowed twice this week but goddamn itttt... it's basically warm now. It all melted really fast. Though there's still lots of old snow on the ground.

My philosophy paper was a huge piece of shit, and so is my Bioethics paper, but 133% as huge, since it is longer.

I haven't played majiang since the weekend, and I want to because I am getting quite sick of school. I am so so so far behind in everything.

Started playing Pokemon again. Nothing wrong with that.

I participated in a study today about this thing. Oh panopticon society.

A friend of mine has started bombarding me with Táng dynasty poetry to help me practise my wretched pīnyīn. This is my favourite, which I will render in pīnyīn because I don't have any software for hànzì. With tones because it's useless without it, damn it!

It's called Jìng Yè Sī (Quiet Night Thoughts) by Lǐ Bái.

Chuáng qián míng yuè guāng
Yí shì dì shàng shuāng.
Jǔ tóu wàng míng yuè,
Dī tóu sī gù xiāng.

I finally bought myself a májiàng set. $40, which is not bad... nice good-sized tiles I guess. So yeah got a lot of people playing last night, drinking soup, and having a good time until the small hours of the morning. It's surprisingly addictive, and easier than you expect to learn. And everyone seems to want to, though usually they think it's the same as on the computer, but that's mahjong solitaire. Whereas the actual game requires 4 people - which is one of the benefits, since it gets everyone together! I brought my set home for easter, and everyone in the family is pretty hooked.

Oh the one thing is that the box smells like formaldehyde, which is a little off-putting.

I got the science camp job. Which is good except that it takes up 2 complete weekends for training, and I really really can't afford that considering I'm already wading in backlogged homework. But I guess that just means lots of late nights at the libraryyyyy.

Ai...

Oh well. I have like.... 3 more weeks of school. Ho-ly! And then exams for a month....

For some reason, the DST change really messed me up. Circumstances didn't help.

I had an interview this morning at 9, so I figured I'd try to go to bed early. 11:30. Of course by ~12:45 I was still rolling around in bed practising my pronunciation of rudimentary Mandarin phrases, because this is what I do when I ought to be sleeping. Anyway, then my friends [using initials is getting lame, so we'll call them...] Bizarre and Pineapple knocked on my door to remind me that the time was changing. Which was very very helpful of them because I had no idea and would have missed the interview. But it was kind of unfortunate because there went another hour. Eventually I ended up getting about 4 hours, and I don't do well on low sleep.

Uh yeah and I didn't know that on Sundays our caf opens at 9 so.... breakfast was a Rice Krispie Square from last night. Classy.

Anyway the interview went fine, ended at like 11:20. And then I went and got lunch, played Wii with Bizarre for what I thought was an hour and then.... it was 4:30. And then I fell asleep. I felt jetlagged, to tell you the truth.

So I woke up at 6:30, had dinner, and then tried to do this online homework we get in Chem due Sunday night (hence doing it now). And this stuff is damn easy - everyone gets basically perfect. But I kept fucking up. Like... arithmetic. I was getting upset, and that wasn't helping. Anyway, so the point is, uhh the new DST schedule didn't go well for me. Damn you Yankees!

China has only one time zone when it ought to have 5. The ROC says it does have the 5, but the PRC puts everyone on Beijing time.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
That map is hella outdated, if anyone cares.

Some time mid-next week, I am going to be grossly behind on coursework. I'm just sort of teetering now. It'll work out.

But I don't want to get proactive! I just want to knit and listen to music. Allll day. Foxfire Forest are having a renaissance for me.

The lasagna at the cafeteria today is horrendous.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that my circle of close friends ("close") is dictated by people who understand my sense of humour, which can sometimes be... esoteric? Did I mention that my closest friend told me that I have "an unlikeable personality". This caused self-esteem damage of approximately 20%, though it was positive in that it made me care much less about others' opinions of me.

My friend from Jilin told me that if I move to China I should live in Hainan. I don't know how much this appeals to me, as it is quite warm, though said friend reports Chongqing to be much worse. Guangdong province is nearby, and it seems nice, though they are Cantonese there. Hangzhou or Nanjing are the most likely candidates for now. We'll see how this eventually pans out.

Last night was "Fireball", this big dance or whatever that my college does to commemorate our building burning down in 1890. What I'm sure used to be quite a nice event now seems (by descriptions by friends) to have turned into a night of vomit-wading. Charming. Needless to say, I did not attend. Really not my cup of tea.

Instead, I saw a screening of "Up the Yangtze"! Dad texted me Saturday morning recommending it to me, and I'm glad I went. A friend and I headed up to Cumberland (the only place it was playing) through the slushy night for the 10 pm showing. The director was there! We arrived just as he finished his introduction.

The movie was good. Sad. As any story about the human impact of the Three Gorges will tend to be... But it was well shot, and managed to document a lot of angles on the story, showing even a lot of stuff I'm sure the government wouldn't have authorized. If they had known...

It showed Chinese life well, and the contrasts between cultures were apparent. Mainland people just seem so much more... mature, sensible. Even optimistic. Here, most of us have minor hardships, yet tend to be quite negative (myself included and especially). There, despite quite large levels of hardship, especially in the peasant family the story followed, optimism persists. People recognized that although they were personally suffering, and in fact being rather mistreated, it was for the country's greater good. As one man said, roughly, "We must sacrifice the little family for the big family". Even the youths showed maturity far beyond what I would even come to expect from adults here. Speaking of a girl new to the boat they were employed on, a group of late-teens girls said things like, "She must learn to be more humble in the kitchen - she needs to learn to ask for help when she needs it." and "She will change with time". Let me translate what this would be like here: "Yu Shui is so ugly. Did you see that shirt she was wearing? I don't want her around me."

The white tourists in the film looked the worst. Their constant, inane questions, poor and cheesy attempts to take in "local culture", and just... everything careless and stuck-up they said... it was embarassing. If I ever go to China, my greatest fear will to be a tourist like that. I don't want to be a tourist! I should have been born there instead.

Oh well... my life is good!

On another note, moss stitch is not going well. For some reason, I just can't seem to wrap my head around the coordination involved in the knit-purl transition and vice-versa. Even when I think I figure it out and a couple stitches turn out fine, I screw up others and it's a mess. And I really like the look of the [proper] stitch, so... I need to keep working at it.

Happy new year all! Congratulations and be prosperous!

Today was a good day. I was in charge of the New Year festivities for my house, and although I didn't get a whole lot together in terms of entertainment, everyone was together, which is the whole point.

I left the preparations until the last minute, of course, but I got pretty into it once I got to it. I even went to the trouble of wearing the only combination of clothes I could figure out that featured red (good luck) and no black or white (bad luck). A friend and I went down on Spadina to poke around the shops for stuff to decorate with, and for food. I always feel so much more... alive when I'm down there. More people, more colour, more smells! We went into this grocery store, and it was such a strong contrast with American grocery stores. People were bustling around, everything was vibrant, there was every sort of food imaginable (and lots of things I hadn't imagined). It was nothing like... giant stores, fluorescent lights, don't make eye contact with anyone you pass in the aisles, cereal now enriched with Vitamins A through P and with 23% less trans fat!, giant grocery stores now with photo-developing centres, clothing sections, roller coasters. No, this felt much more human. Humane. I try to avoid this kind of thinking, buy god damn, American culture really sucks the life out of you, doesn't it.

I'm glad there's still something left that's at least mostly untouched.

Anyway, it was a great experience, and the event went well. Lots of decorating, food. Friends. Which is most important.