Every street vendor or store assistant in the whole of Beijing thinks I look Korean. Sellers, peddlers, waitresses, waiters, helpers and candy-man, they all ask the same thing (if they speak to me at all): ni shi na guo ren? Ni shi Aodaliya ren!? Wo juede ni shi Hanguo ren!! [What country are you from? You’re Australian?! I thought you were Korean!!]

At this point, if there’s anyone with them, anyone selling alongside them or bloody anyone passing by the street who’s heard enough of the conversation, they’ll usually turn to that person and exclaim: Wo juede ta shi Hanguo ren!! HANGUO REN! Ta shi Aodaliya ren! AODALIYA! Juede Hanguo.. Hanguo..

Okay, so I get it: locals think I look Korean. Or probably more accurately, in the area of Beijing most filled with foreign students, and where a lot of Asian female foreign students are Korean, locals think I’m Korean.

Same old, same old.. until I went to lunch with my tutor. And was told this unusual comment from two 50-something, weathered old men: I speak Mandarin like a Korean. I SPEAK Mandarin like a Korean!? Definitely new.

For the record, after she told them I was Chinese but had grown up overseas, they modified their opinion to “that’s why her tones are good, she’s Chinese”. So it’s probably a good thing to speak Mandarin like a Korean. There are tons of Koreans learning Mandarin in Wudaokou and most of the ones I know at Tsinghua are in the upper levels. Plus of course, I’m not saying that being mistaken for a Korean is a bad thing; I’d just like Chinese people to think I’m Chinese.. because that’s what I am.

So now, new goal: go a week without anyone asking me where I’m from, or asking if I’m Korean.

.. okay, a week may be too ambitious. 3 days.

My tong xue and I have officially dubbed a particular group of characters The Bullshit Characters.

The Bullshit Characters are characters that remain the same visually, but take on different sounds when put between/in front of/behind other words. Examples are the yue in yin yue (music), which flippantly becomes the le in kuai le (joy/happiness), the xing in zi xing che (bicycle), which rampantly flouts logic later as the hang in yin hang (bank), and the pian in pian yi (cheap), which runs amok when it mysteriously and ridiculously morphs into bian in sui bian (as you please/casual/random).

It’s craziness, I tell you! I can understand if a sound, as opposed to a character, has different meanings which are accordingly attached to different characters. I suppose it’s a mental byproduct of English (where, for example, “wares” and “wears” sound the same, but the two are spelt differently to indicate a difference in meaning). But I think that even aside from that pre-training, it makes sense that a sound, as opposed to what is essentially a drawing, is the one with split meanings rather than the other way round.

After all, there are a finite number of ways the human being can twist its tongue within the linguistic constraints of Mandarin. There are only 18 initials and 13 finals. But there are practically no limitations to the shapes our hands can draw - there’s all sorts of crazy shit I can make up to put an end to these doubled-up characters, believe you me.

And I know, there’s a system to the drawing madness too. Most characters have a radical on the left hand side that often indicates the nature of the character; the right hand side often indicates how the word will sound. And I don’t really understand the rest, but I’m sure there’s a list of common shapes somewhere, because the same stuff always pops up, like the little twirly magic-carpet 3 with a dot on its head. Still, the examples I list above totally don’t conform to those rules - xing and hang sound nothing alike - so I refuse to believe there were absolutely no other characters appropriate to separate the instances.

Damn you, bullshit characters! You make no sense.

But secretly, it is easy to remember you when you appear because you are so bullshit. So in a way……. thank you.

In other progress news, I’ve been surprised to realize that somewhere along the way I actually stopped translating mentally from english to mandarin.. and now translate from english to cantonese to mandarin. It’s crazy, because it seems somewhat inefficient, but it could also be helping everything out - my cantonese improves as I understand more of what I intuitively say, and my mandarin improves as I use cantonese to help me figure out the right sentence structures. Canto: useful after all, even if really, really badly spoken.

Tomorrow, on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, there’s a China-wide, university-specific festival happening: Dan Shen Jie, which translates as Singles Festival. It’s held on that date because of all the ones (singles) in it - cute.

HOWEVER, something about Dan Shen Jie appears to be deeply uncool. And that’s that it’s totally sexist.. because it’s an unofficial national festival day for males only. Well, that’s what I’ve interpreted it as according to what my teachers told me - which is that on Dan Shen Jie, girls are supposed to get their single guy friends presents to wish them good luck in finding a girlfriend. And if you’re not single yourself, you’re supposed to get the guys even more presents to wish them even more luck.

Whatever boys.. you can keep your pity presents. That’s right, I went there!

Will update here tomorrow if there’s anything interesting going on the uni because of the occasion.

And in case you couldn’t guess from the fun I’m having joke-bitching around in my post, I’m totally not getting any male friends presents. One told me he was expecting one for being a “batchelor” and I told him that because he misspelt bachelor he deserved to be single for life. Dan Shen Jie totally would not work in Australia.

Hot on the heels of the very .. interesting experience I had at the Kanye West concert, my friends tell me that the latest Bond movie has been heavily censored in the cinemas. S-E-X - I didn’t think it was a dirty word here anymore? Anyway, apparently many of the love scenes were cut, and enough other scenes were left out for the ending to make hardly any sense. Pirated uncensored DVD, here I come!

And speaking of my interesting Kanye West experience, I never wrote about my first major Western concert here, so here we go - this was the front row of Mr West’s extravaganza, which was held in an O-shaped soccer arena with staggered seats around the sides and one rectangular block of seats down in the flat centre section:

Hardly a Kanye-style all-out set up, no? The venue was very subdued and small for a Kanye West concert, with only two rows of lights behind and in front of him on a very shallow stage, and a few laser effects but not that many. The acoustics were pretty bad, and the schedule surprised more than a few late-arriving Westerners who expected the first act to go on for at least an hour - the whole thing was scheduled to start at 7pm, and Kanye came on at 7:15(!).

Weirdest of all was all the dead space the homeland concert organizers required in front of and around the stage, space where army-green outfitted guards walked up and down indifferently. Anyone who tried to stand up in that rectangle of prime seats up there were told unceremoniously to sit back down, supposedly because they blocked the view of people behind them.

Meanwhile, people in the staggered seats around the sides of the bowl - me included - were able to walk all the way down to the 780RMB seats from the 480RMB seats with hardly any problem. Oh yeah, seats down in the centre space cost 2000RMB.

In the end, Kanye proved his awesomeness as a performer and managed to get the whole stadium on its feet for the finale - a feat that I think is the most impressive I’ve personally seen from an onstage singer, the venue was THAT much of a downer - but he really had no help at all from whoever organized the logistics.

I wonder if Asian concerts are similarly muffled of their vibrancy? And what if Asian sex scenes are okay?

/

Have lost my voice in what seems to be a yearly occurrence - every year I’ll either be recovering from a cold or about to get one, go out and talk too much, then lose my voice the next day. Secretly, I think of it as my voice breaking.

Nooo, first milk and milk-related products, now this.. apparently there’s a possibility that not only are Chinese milk products tainted with unsafe levels of melamine (a protein-substitute that causes kidney stones and renal failure in children), but so are eggs and animal feed! First milk, now eggs!? But my 3 soy-water-boiled eggs every morning from the egg-and-baozi man is a hallowed Beijing tradition for me, I don’t know what I’d do without its salty, salty goodness!

And that’s not all - the Sydney Morning Herald says:

“If eggs, milk and animal feed are tainted, a wider range of foods could come under scrutiny, including pork, chicken, bread, eggs, cakes, seafood and sweets.”

It is not incorrect to say that my mouth dropped open when I read that sentence. Bread.. eggs.. cakes.. sweets.. soon I will be reduced to a squirrel-like figure whose only culinary solace lies in the comforts of roasted chestnuts. Chestnuts.. my only friends..

Read the full article here.

To be honest though, I’m still eating milk-related products - like chocolate and icecream and tea with milk - because the fact that the melamine doesn’t appear to affect adults makes me more able to eat without thinking about the consequences (S-M-R-T, I know. My stomach rules me). I think I’ll probably keep on buying eggs from the eggs-and-baozi man until more information surfaces. This is reassuring:

Asian food safety experts said the tainted eggs contained much lower concentrations of melamine than the powdered baby formula. Hong Kong food safety officials said a child would have to eat about two dozen of the eggs in a single day to become ill.

Bloody hell, what a mess.

My first Halloween party tomorrow night! For some reason I always seem to end up in plaits when I dress up.

There are no costume stores here, or at least none that the newbie foreign language students could find, so I had to laboriously browse the Korean and Wudaokou markets to piece together an outfit. After roughly 3.5 hours of trawling, my creation, it’s nearly alive:

Costume checklist

One poufy red and white plaid skirt: 60RMB

One fringed brown vest: 35RMB

One belt with a large gun as a belt buckle: 45RMB

One cowboy hat: borrowed

One pair of HIDEOUSLY GLITZY gold studded boots: 50RMB

One bottle of red nailpolish and one pair of fake eyelashes: 12RMB

1m of gold ribbon (for the ends of said plaits): 5RMB

Total: 207RMB (roughly $46AUD)

Not the cheapest, but I wanted to dress up for my first Halloween. And including shoes, that’s not bad. Hilarious to costume shop at the markets too, there’s some good stuff there. Unintentionally good, but good..

Some randomly Halloween-appropriate things we saw included a furry fake sheepskin vest with a hoodie that had ears on it, a furry beanie with a polar bear head at the top and two long bits at the sides that hung down to the hands and ended in polar bear hands (complete with pawprints on one side), and tons and tons and tons of animal print. Shit! I hate to say it, but sometimes I don’t know who buys the stuff at the markets for their serious, every day wardrobe. People going to clown college? No idea.

Happy Halloween!

My homework today was to write a paragraph on what Australians like doing and why.

“Australians like barbeques!” I said to my tutor. “I’m going to write we like kao rou ye can [roast meat done outside], dui ma? [Accurate?]”

“Keyi, dui [can, accurate].” she replied.

“Aodaliya ren xihuan kao rou ye can.. yinwei.. how do I say, because it’s often hot outside? Wai bian hen ri?”

She stared at me like I was speaking gibberish. “I.. don’t understand? Why are you talking about it being hot? How is that relevant?”

“Well, a barbeque is outside right? So, the weather needs to be nice for people to want to be outside cooking meat.”

“What? No! You’re eating hot meat! You want it to be cold so you can enjoy eating something hot while standing in the cold!”

“No! You’re outside, so you want the weather to be nice so you can relax, sit in the su and chat with friends!”

“No! You relax and chat with friends, but the weather should be cold so the hot food is more delicious!”

“But..”

“But..”

Round 1: draw.

At 7:55am this morning, I was mock-wailing down the phone: “This isn’t supposed to happen to me! I don’t GET bad luck!!”

Yes, what is allegedly inevitable in Beijing had happened to me, despite my optimism totally ignoring the possibility: my bike got stolen. Last time I saw it - I didn’t even give it a gender or a name! Poor little It - it was sitting down in the basement bike garage with the other tenants’ bikes, on the end of a row of them, the shiny red bike lock around its rear wheel. And this morning: nothing. Did I actually leave it up near the entrance like I sometimes do, but forgot? No. Did someone move it because it fell? No. Did someone move it.. just because? No. Is there any other place it could’ve been moved to? No. Fuck..

With an exam on today, I decided to stop searching for It and face reality. Someone had stolen my bike. Some ASSHOLE had stolen MY bike!! I ran out and hailed a cab, and in the subsequent traffic snare the taxi driver and I swore concurrently and (probably) beautifully in sync albeit in two different languages.

The ironic thing was that another friend who’d left Beijing had left me his bike lock - a much better and more expensive one than my plastic/metal thing, his parting words being “yeah, take this. Yours is shit. Someone’s gonna steal it”. And yes, for the past 2 weeks I’d left that very same awesome bike lock just sitting in my apartment.. just because. It was heavy. I’m lazy. I don’t know!

I got to uni still seething. Sat down. Then suddenly my mood began to change - I felt equal parts annoyed and amused. I’d been through a quintessential Beijing rite of passage - I know people who’ve had THREE bikes stolen from them, so it’s not actually that bad - I can almost pretend I’m a real Beijinger!

And then, just as I’d gotten used to the funny side of the bad luck, the good stuff kicked back in. After hearing about the situation, a classmate leaving Beijing tomorrow insisted I take his bike, which he didn’t have time to sell anyway. His electric bike. His AWESOME electric bike, only 2 months old. And he said he’d feel bad selling it to me, so I bought him lunch.. and took his bike.

So now as a result of having my regular bike stolen, I have a sweet new electric bike (woohoo! best lose/win EVER!). Her name is Sheila. She’s big-boned with shiny silver and black metal bits, and has a big padded butt for a second person to sit on comfortably and unobtrusively. She makes a pleasant whirring noise when she speeds up, and has a funny duckish honk to part the crowds. Sheila also has two hardcore locks on her, which is reassuring. I take out the electric engine too when I leave her, so hopefully no one will ever part us.

Sheila and I - yeah yeah! Watch out, pedestrians, lest I swerve politely around you! And also - told you I was lucky. (KNOCK ON WOOD, KNOCK ON WOOD!!)

//

And on request..

Sheila in the complex; the mudflap advertisement for her store

Left handle buttons for the headlight and the BEEP BEEP; right handle lights indicating battery power (note right handle also known as the “revving handle” - pull it backwards and feel her go!); the detachable battery under the seat; the two bike locks I’m using in an attempt to trace-buster-bust

The hot pot I have back home was like this: a home. A hot pot. A hot pot full of water sprinkled with a tiny bit of flavouring, but never more than a tad. A set table for four or so. Vegies, meats and seafoods in styrofoam packages set on a table, ready to be cooked in the gentle water. A cost of at least $10 for all the ingredients.

The hot pot I have here is like this: a street side barely 1m away from the honking road. A trough (or two). A trough or two full of hot water punched through with so many peppers and so much spicy MSG that it swills around dark red under the white street lights. Stools are arranged around the trough, supplemented by dirty tables and chairs arranged at random. No cutlery, only plates covered with plastic bags. Sticks of vegies, meats, balls of undetermined origin (but they taste kind of fishy), noodles and testicles (they have lamb AND cow) boil away in the troughs, with more put in by the owner every 10 minutes or so. After you’ve taken and eaten enough sticks to satisfy your stomach, the owner comes and counts them: at the cost of never more than 1RMB per stick (about 22 cents), the cost is rarely more than a couple of bucks. Sweet.

Alternatively, there are mini hotpot stands too for the busy buyer who wants to eat standing before heading off. Imagine a newspaper counter, or a hole in the wall selling sweets of something - but instead of papers or candy, there’s a mini trough with piles of sticks stacked in. Same gist as the streetside restaurants. You take a plastic-covered plate from the stack on one side, eat to your heart’s desire then let them count the skewers on your plate.

After my first super spicy hot pot experience, I thought my insides were going to DIE - it was SO SPICY!! Never again, I vowed. Then, a week later - tonight - passing a mini hotpot counter, I suddenly craved it like nothing else. So I stood there a couple hours ago, eating stick after stick of hot-as-hell fishballs, noodles, vegies, seaweed and squid, and totally took it like a pro. And now I feel like more! Mmm.

1. Roasted chestnuts. 2. Toffee covered fruit skewers. 3. Hot pot. 4. Sweet popcorn. My top 4 street foods so far in Beijing!

//

Tonight, I also found Milan in Beijing.

One of the things I enjoy here is how after dark, illegal vendors with dodgy wares swoop in on their magic carpets into certain strategic parts of the road and lay out their wares on said carpets, mounds and mounds of it. It’s so spontaneous, it’s hilarious. Slippers, socks and scarves seem to be the most popular items offered. The illegal street vendors often join the illegal wares vendors too, and it’s like a mini illegality festival - awesome.

Tonight, though, I saw something I’d never seen before: wagons of books. Books! I was super excited and browsing through the Engilsh titles for something to read when I realized something. These weren’t real books. These were copied books. They’d pirated books! Dang! What can’t the Chinese pirate!?

And then at the second wagon I came across, I saw something that really made me smile: The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, one of my favourite books of all time, nestled in there between some Dan Brown thriller and Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. The Unbearable Lightness in Beijing! What are the odds when the copies of it in most Australian bookstores are dusty with age and obviously never opened?

It was the uncharacteristic size of one of those Idiot’s Guide to [whatever]s, and when I flipped through it I realized why all the English books had a pink page in the middle of them: it was because that marked the point where the English in the book finished and the Chinese translation began, which was kind of cool.

I didn’t buy any books as a kind of protest against book piracy (but I don’t have any qualms about movie piracy. Bigger industry. I think. Let’s not get into it), but more so because I was afraid that the copying would be sub par and at a super tense moment I’d suddenly be knee deep in The Devil Wears Prada or something. But I wish now I’d bought Unbearable Lightness! Again, what are the odds book piraters would think there was a market for Kundera. Amongst all the thrillers and business books that seemed to be the rage, Milan said hello. Next time, if there is a next time, I shall take you home, Milan!

A regular week in the life of a foreign student (well, one of the nerdier ones) doing the intensive language course at Tsinghua:

Mon-Wed

6:45am: Wake up

7:30pm: Bike to school; pick up two boiled eggs for 1.5RMB (about 20c) on the way for breakfast

8am: ??! Start class. Snack continuously - and I MEAN continuously - until:

12pm: ??! End class. Mill around. Go to lunch at the Tsinghua canteen (MSG-loaded super cheap food - think about 80c for a plate of noodles) or bike over to the busy Wudaoku station area for something more Western. And lately: fulfil desire for handmade dumplings in restaurant in local alley.

1:30-2:30pm: either go home and review the day’s lesson if I’m feeling keen; hang out with friends or browse shops if not.

3-5pm: 1-on-1 tutoring at home.

5-7:30ish pm: study/review.

8pm: head out for dinner with people.

11pm: get back, hang out, have some awesome bumming around time (and if it’s Wednesday - which is ladies’ night in most of the bars/clubs in Beijing, and the day before which I have a bit of a sleep in - head out a bit), review if I found any characters reaaally hard

1ish pm: sleep.

Thu-Fri:

9am: wake up. Study Wednesday’s lesson/review old stuff.

11:30am: lunch with people.

1-5pm: class.

5:30-7pm: tutoring.

7:30ish pm: dinner with people.

After dinner: study/review.

Fri/Sat/Sun

Fri night: night out!

Sat: wake up late from night out, give self ENTIRE DAY OFF STUDYING WHOO (except when tests next week), hang out, night out!

Sun: review old stuff, study Friday’s lesson, hang out.

So in summary: lots of studying, but lots of meeting people too. I’m happy being busy though.

It’s funny, studying a Mandarin course is so different to when I was studying a course in my old uni degree/s. I think it’s a combination of the subject - a language as opposed to something drier and more academic - and actually being in the country of the language’s origin. It’s much more satisfying studying a language - the ways of use are so concrete and practical, even if the colloquialisms of the language change the very second you’re learning it. And being in the country, well, it just gives you one more motivation to keep up besides pure competitiveness or personal ambition. You want to be able to reply to the taxi drivers; talk back to the ass that just cut you off; get that object for the cheapest possible price.

Yeah, I actually like studying and learning here. It’s not a problem paying attention in class, I crazily enough like studying and am finding it easier and easier to pick apart and put together characters in my mind. Time passes by super quickly, and it’s good.