Whatever You Do, Don't Click on the Penguins!

This is entry number eleven on today’s to-do list: get group computer set up. Looks small and innocent enough, doesn’t it? But oh, how deceptive small sentences can be.

Most of the teachers who work here own their own laptop computer. One (a Mac cultist) even went so far as to lug his humongous Apple desktop in his suitcase. We also have a wheezing, grimy old group computer that sits in the kitchen. Mostly, it gets used when someone’s personal computer is acting up, or when you just want to check your email really quick in between chopping the carrots and stirring the pasta. At least, we did have a group computer. One day last semester, it let out a monstrous groan and went dark.

A few moments later there was a tap at my door. One of my colleagues stood there, looking apologetic. “Hey, Dave. Something’s wrong with the computer . . . ?” I get this a lot. I love computers. I worked in IT for six months, and I’ve studied for (though not yet taken) my A+ certification exams. In the land of the blind, they say, the one-eyed man is king. So I’m happy to tinker with people’s equipment – always have been. It’s an opportunity to help out. But with seventeen teachers, the position of unofficial computer support person is sometimes rather time-consuming. Especially in China.

You might think that since all of the computer equipment you own (usually down to the component parts) is stamped with MADE IN CHINA, working on computers in the far east would be essentially the same as working on computers in North America. You’d be wrong. Today’s computer setup (the group computer replacement) was pretty standard – I worked on it for three hours, and it’s almost functional.

Sure, we have our normal issues here – slow connections, mysterious error messages, and spam emails. But we also have more unusual difficulties. In the interests of helping computer users who may find themselves here in the Middle Kingdom, I shall enumerate some common problems and my recommended solutions.

1. Dancing penguins. In our offices, these are known as the Penguins of Death. The frolicking little beasts, which merrily skip about your open web browsers, are feared and loathed as harbingers of doom. With appropriate prayers and repeated virus scans, the deadly arctic fowl may be driven away. If they appear on your desktop when no browser is open, you have been Infected and your computer will soon die. Other users will shun you. Should you attempt to use a USB flash drive in someone else’s computer after being Infected, that person is within her rights to physically attack you to prevent you from doing so. There is no known cure for the Penguins of Death. I recommend that you format your hard drive, then take it out and burn it.

2. Printers. Perhaps there is a printer on your desk which is not printing your documents. This is by design, to encourage you to improve your penmanship. There is no printer paper, anyway. Only one computer in the entire building can print, and it belongs to Annie. She accepts Visa and Mastercard. I recommend Mastercard.

3. Windows Validation Notifier. You may be perturbed by the messages that constantly appear in the corner of your screen, telling you in a concerned-aunt tone of voice that your copy of Windows XP may not be legitimate. The only way to make these disappear is to actually purchase a valid copy of Windows. Unfortunately, only two such copies are available in all of China, and they are currently held up in customs. I recommend that you treat the message as a little in-joke between you and Bill Gates. Imagine him reading it and winking.

4. Cables. Not all computer cables (network cables, power cables, and the like) are created equal. Functional ones are produced in China and exported to the rest of the world for sale. Factory rejects are bundled in brightly-colored packaging and sent to Chinese retail. Connecting your computer to anything – the wall, another computer, the network, your mouse – is an exciting process, since you never know what will happen. I recommend that you smuggle some extra cables in your luggage when you come over to China from somewhere else. And bring some for me, will you?

5. The Internet. The network here is likely to be a low-cost solution. That means that using the internet is kind of like a hundred people with straws all trying to drink from one can of Coke. There isn’t that much to go around (unless you wake up at three in the morning and drink a bunch of Coke while the other hundred people are sleeping. This is a valid strategy and I recommend it if you don’t mind being up at three in the morning). You may also find that the port in the wall may suddenly decide to stop connecting you to the network. This problem can only be resolved by the Computer Staff Member. Unfortunately, our school has no Computer Staff. One will be dispatched within the week. I recommend that you take up Ping-Pong or knitting while you wait.

Dave

Roman Candles in Shanghai

As I write this, I can hear the explosions. Some are close – just across the canal behind our school – and others farther away. Some are loud, booming reports that echo through the open spaces between buildings; others are fast strings of staccato pops, like the frenzied death knell of the world’s biggest roll of bubble wrap. It’s been going on since four thirty, and it will continue until midnight or so. If there’s one thing you can count on in a Chinese holiday, it’s fireworks.

Tonight is the Lantern Festival. I haven’t been in any Chinese homes today, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that there are lanterns aplenty. In our school (nadir of eastern values that it apparently is), there’s nary a one. I didn’t even realize that it was today until a student sent me a text message with holiday wishes. Really, though, the pretense doesn’t matter. People here just like to set off fireworks.

It was a little nerve-wracking for the first week or so of my time here in China. I kept thinking that I heard gunshots, and since there didn’t seem to be anything near our school to hunt (seeing as it’s all semi-suburban), I chalked it up to some kind of sporadic military exercise . . . or something. The first time I saw fireworks at night over the city, I poked my head out into the hall to alert my colleagues. “Hey, guys – there’re fireworks out there! What holiday is it?” My experienced co-workers shrugged indifferently. “Who knows?” said one. “Probably just a wedding or something.” “They shoot off fireworks for weddings?” I asked, somewhat incredulously. She laughed. “They shoot off fireworks for everything.”

It’s true. I hardly notice them now. There’s an old commune-style housing center directly across from our school. It’s surrounded by tiny patches of crops and inhabited by maybe ten families of farmers. But those ten families are shooting off firecrackers – and sometimes full-fledged rockets – at least a couple of times a month.

As you probably know, fireworks (a development of gunpowder) originated in China some 700 years ago. Since ancient times, they’ve been an expression of celebration and a symbol of good luck. The people here use them to celebrate weddings, birthdays, the arrival of a new child, the opening of a business, the completion of a building, and any number of other positive developments that fall along the same lines. And of course, for holidays.

In Canada, land of my youth, fireworks are a controlled substance, like industrial dynamite or nuclear warheads (OK, maybe not exactly like nuclear warheads). I remember as a child going with my parents to a hill overlooking Calgary and watching the feeble four-minute display of fireworks that City Hall put on to commemorate Canada Day.

In China, by contrast, I’m told that the fireworks are constant throughout the week-long New Year’s festival (the main event in the Chinese calendar). I told a friend last year that Des and I hadn’t been able to be in China for a New Year’s festival yet. “Lucky you,” he said, only half-joking. “At least you got some sleep.” “Was the partying that noisy?” I asked. “No,” he said, “it’s the fireworks. They never stop, and the noise keeps me up. I’m a mess at New Year’s.”

Of course people get hurt every year. In a city with sixteen million people, most of whom are interested in at least lighting a sparkler or two, simple math leads you to the conclusion that there will be some casualties. But even though I’ve mentioned that I’m not a fan of the lassiez-faire approach that the Chinese take toward safety, I think my homeland could learn a thing or two from them. Standing on my balcony with the wind in my face, with my wife snuggled up against me for warmth (and the occasional kiss), watching the lights blossom and shimmer on the dark horizon and listening to the all-percussion ensemble, it’s hard not to love it.

Dave

Don't Brust To Me. I'm Serious.

I have four days left. In four days, a horde of students is going to descend upon my classrooms, filled with all the joie de vivre and enthusiasm for knowledge that you might expect from a post-holiday student, or possibly from a floor lamp. I have anticipated this difficulty, and I'm trying to get ready for them by making English IV as exciting as possible.

But before I can do that, I need to organize what I left behind in a hurry at the end of English III. As I'm poking through dangerously precarious stacks of student writing, I'm finding some good stuff.

As usual, a lot of it comes from students wrestling with slang. I taught them one slang phrase in each class: knock it off, what's up?, give me a break, chill out, take it easy, and the like. Students' brains, however, are often a bit like blenders: what you put in isn't exactly destroyed, it just doesn't come out in the same configuration.

That's why, when I asked them to write a sentence using the slang phrases above, I got answers like these, from the close . . .

I am working hard, so please give me a bread.
Just break me off!
You are bothering me. Cut it off.

. . . to the not-so-close.
I hope you will fed it out soon.
Don't brust to me.

Even specific questions didn't always pan out. Those irregular verbs are tough!
36. Write a sentence using the word 'dude.'
Answer: She dude the test carefully.

We spent some time last week visiting my parents in Canda. While we were there, my father picked up a bar of dark chocolate that was 99% cocoa. Inside the wrapper was a foil insert labelled "Tasting Guide," which purported to tell you how to enjoy chocolate that's 99% cocoa (short version: you'll probably hate it the first few times; just keep eating it until you like it). In the same vein, I offer you a reading guide to the final slang screw-up: for best results, imagine one of my students actually attempting to greet an English-speaking person using these words.

42. What is the slang phrase used to greet someone?
Answer: gerk
This is crossed out, and after a little space is written nerd.
This is again crossed out, followed by nut.
This is scratched out, and she finally decides on jerk, which she underlines for emphasis.

At any rate, I'd better get back to my piles of paper. I know I've been delinquent with this space, and I intend to improve it in the coming semester. Until then, give me a bread, OK? In fact, make it a whole sandwich. It's lunchtime over here.

Dave

All Grace

Shanghai is the business and industrial capitol of China, and it shows. There are certainly enough impressive office towers and walled-off factory compounds to go around – they loom on every corner, with bored guards lounging in shacks by the entrances. But driving down the street, you’re likely to see just a few basic kinds of establishments: restaurants (of every shape and kind), shops selling 80’s-style clothing in appropriately tiny sizes, shops selling mobile phones, street vendors selling counterfeit DVDs, shops and street vendors selling bottled drinks and snacks, and places offering massages.

I was a little suspicious of the latter when I first arrived here in China. I’d been raised to believe that “massage parlor” was just a polite way of saying “brothel” (although I knew that there were legitimate masseuses out there; there was something suspicious about the word “parlor,” apparently). But it didn’t take me long to realize that unlike back home, everyone got massages in China.

I don’t know enough to say why, although I’d guess it’s related to the deeply ingrained Asian folk culture of health and holistic medicine. Whatever the reason, massages are popular, and massage shops ubiquitous. For about fifty yuan (nine dollars), a masseuse will rub, pound, knead, and otherwise abuse your back, neck, head, and shoulders for half an hour or so. That’s just the beginning. Most of these establishments also offer foot massages, aromatic oil massages, Japanese massages, pedicures, manicures, and a host of other more ominous-sounding services with names like “hot earwax cleansing” or “traditional physiotherapy.” It’s inexpensive enough that everyone can afford to have a massage once a month or so without putting a serious dent in her pocketbook. You can get them even cheaper if you’re not too picky about how clean the place is.

I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t really notice storefronts offering massages. They’re just part of the landscape of our semi-urban Chinese lives. But for the past two days, I haven’t been living my normal semi-urban Chinese life. Since we’re expecting our first child sometime around the end of June (for those of you that I thought I told already, but didn’t – surprise!), Desiree and I thought we’d do one last weekend getaway, just the two of us, and explore a little bit of this gargantuan city that we live in. We booked a nice, relatively low-cost hotel just off the Bund, the old and glamorous riverfront drive that makes up the heart of Shanghai. We’ve spent the time looking at French colonial architecture, sneaking pictures of the birthplace of the Communist Party of China, and wandering around old streets.

We were walking back to our hotel Monday evening after snooping around some beautiful European Concession buildings on the waterfront and eating Japanese noodles for dinner. We wanted to get something to drink, so we made for the lights of a small convenience store about a block from our hotel. Having purchased a few suitable beverages, we strolled back down the street through scattered Chinese commuters. I glanced idly up at the lighted storefronts as we passed them: a collection of dirty shops selling socks, phone cards, or battered tools arranged in plastic trays, each with a bundled-up shopkeeper staring vacantly into a tiny television on the counter. A massage shop caught my eye for professional reasons: three-foot letters along the top of the window read MGSAGGE, accompanied by a string of Chinese characters. I grinned and looked past the sign into the store. It was normal enough: a front desk, two low couches with a glass coffee table, a few sick-looking office plants in the corners, and a doorway leading into the back. Three remarkably attractive young ladies were perched on the couches, waiting for customers. They were laughing – one of them had apparently just made a joke. Another of the girls was bent over, wiping the glass coffee table with a rag, and I noticed intricate inked patterns swirling across her shoulders and upper arms. “Cool tattoos,” I commented to Desiree, nodding at the girl. “What makes them cool?” my wife shot back playfully. I was preparing a suitably witty reply when I glanced one final time into the shop and immediately looked away again. On the back wall was a huge poster that would have been more at home in the pages of Sports Illustrated: Swimsuit Edition, or worse.

I was momentarily puzzled as I stepped around an electrical pole and dodged an oncoming cyclist. Then everything clicked in my mind: the shocking poster, the massage shop in the middle of the hotel district, and three beautiful young women wearing skimpy summer clothes in January.

I’ve never seen a prostitute before, to my knowledge. I knew they existed, of course. I’ve seen suspicious pamphlets in Chinese hotel rooms marked “Spa – Men Only” with spa prices ten times the normal amounts. I’ve even heard stories from friends about getting phone calls in their rooms from strange women when they check in. But I’d never encountered one myself.

There was something deeply disquieting about seeing them there, clustered all together on the end of the couch, looking for all the world like a group of my fresh-faced nursing students giggling over some secret joke. I can see them now in my mind’s eye – just waiting for customers; ready to sell their attentions to the next out-of-town businessman who walks through the door. Ready to sell themselves.

What must it take, to press a hot iron onto your conscience night after night, to feel the disapproving glances of the grandmothers who hurry past your shop or to meet the gaze of little girls who peer curiously and innocently through the glass? What must it take to enter into employment in such a business – to walk into the shop for the first time, to meet the other girls, to check out the magazines, to have your outfit inspected as though it were a costume in a play?

I can answer that question. It takes humanity. It takes a fallen, cursed nature that rebels against the law written in our hearts. It’s the same human nature that it takes to enter such a place of business and to put your money down on the counter as though this woman were selling a haircut or a loaf of bread, and to push from your mind the fact that she has brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles; that she attended elementary school somewhere; that she frets over the price of makeup and has a beloved cat named MoMo; and that she is not simply a tool for temporary amusement.

I felt weary as we walked back into the hotel, and I cast sideways glances at everyone I met, suspecting them of the most heinous sins. Those girls disturbed me because I knew that I was not different. Deeply entrenched in my soul is the same deviant impulse that rips at the restraints of conscience and that calls out eagerly to temptations, “Yes! Take me with you!” That impulse is what it takes to beat down conscience, self-respect, and public morality for the sake of money or pleasure.

And even in the midst of those disturbing thoughts, I felt thankful. Not, God forbid, that I am not as other men, even as this prostitute, for I fast twice a week and give tithes of all that I get. But instead that He has been merciful to me even though I am like her. I am no less desperately wicked inside – inside, where it counts. And in spite of that, He loves me. He has rescued me from the enemy. One day, He will utterly liberate me of that wrongness and I will be free indeed.

And I hope – I ask – that He’ll do the same for them. Maybe one day I’ll meet that girl with the tattoos again at the foot of His throne, and I’ll give her a hug and we’ll talk about how it happened. I know it will have been grace – all grace.

Dave

The Awesomeness of Nonsense

Sure, it's not always awesome. I should know -- I read a lot of it. But sometimes, nonsense is really great.

Seen on a student's sweatshirt:
Sometimes I think your girlfriend is THE ONE.
(And frankly, imagining Keanu Reeves as anyone's girlfriend is kind of scary. Awesomely scary.)

On the side of a trendy-looking green and white tote bag:
Minutemen Meatpuppets Descendants Angst
(That is some awesomely post-modern poetry right there. Or possibly words chosen at random; it's hard to say.)

In a description of the movie Wuthering Heights:
This movie is full of agon-blessedness and crackdown.
(Not just agon-blessedness. That would be awesome enough. But crackdown! What more could a moviegoer ask for?)

Explaining the sentence "She didn't come, but it's not a big deal":
It means she didn't come, but it's not a brain sample.
(No, no, it's not. That would be too awesome for my test.)

Asked to use a slang word in a sentence:
I always play computer games, so my friends call me Chuck.
(There's a superficial resemblance between the name "Chuck" and the word "geek," so that may be what she was going for, but I prefer to think that "Chuck" is the new and awesome word for people who play computer games.)

Attempting to make a sentence with the word "awesome":
I want to awesome something.

Really, what more awesome use of language could you imagine than to turn awesome from an adjective (a superlatively useful one, admittedly) into a verb? That's some awesome nonsense.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to awesome these papers.

Dave

China Sidelights II: Food Too Cute to Eat

It's been a while since I wrote anything about our summer trip, and you may have forgotten about it entirely. Even I may have forgotten. But what better way to escape the bleakness of late fall than to relive the memories of an exciting summer trip? Our intrepid group of five world travellers had seen the Forbidden City, climbed the Great Wall, feasted on Beijing duck, gazed upon the Ming Tombs, and marvelled at the details of the Terra Cotta Army™. That kind of stuff works up an appetite.

So it was, then, that with the Terra Cotta Army™ behind us, we arrived back at our hotel, footsore and hungry. We showered, changed, and met our guide (the impossibly perky Tracy) out front for some traditional Xi’an cuisine.

Tracy led us across the square, through a street-crossing tunnel, and across another square to our destination. The restaurant owners weren’t shy about their capabilities: the sign (which took up nearly the entire front wall) proclaimed that The Legendary DeFa Chang Restaurant is Renowned for its Superior Delicious Dumplings.

That’s right – dumplings! Like Beijing, Xi'an also has a food specialty. Tracy informed us that at one point Xi’an was the home of an emperor who had a particular fondness for the little delicacies and whose staff satisfied his cravings by creating eight hundred varieties of them. I say “an emperor” because I have sadly been unable to trace this tradition any farther than our irrepressible guide. But historically accurate or not, the results are the same: the Xi’an Dumpling Feast. If Xi’an were a city in the United States, the welcome center would hand out literature proclaiming it to be the “Home of the Dumpling” and it would have a water tower in the shape of a two hundred foot tall pot-sticker.

Whether because that would be tacky in the imperial capitol or because the Chinese are just behind the times when it comes to water towers, the only evidence of the Xi’anese specialty are a profusion of restaurants, each attempting to out-boast the others in signage.

Tracy saw to it that we were comfortably seated, ordered the appropriate feast for us, and cheerfully bowed out, leaving five Westerners, two Chinese waitresses, and a vast array of steamed dumplings. They would bring two or three woven paper-lined serving dishes, each of which contained five of some particular variety of dumpling. When we had each consumed our assortment, the servers would whisk the dishes away and bring out a new set.

The servers spoke no real English, but they had a nice system: when a new dish was brought out, the younger girl would step forward and say “Excuse me!” Once she had gotten our attention, she would point to the various dishes and say things like “Chicken. Pork. Vegetable.” Then she would leave us to our food. Sometimes, even her identifications were unidentifiable. I feel quite sure that once she pointed to a plate of dumplings and said “Excuse me! Garbage.”

After a few rounds of this, Brian tried to strike up a conversation with her while she was going through her routine. “Hey, what’s your name?” he asked, just as she said “Excuse me!” She stared back, uncomprehending and clearly thrown off by the interruption. “Your name?” he repeated, slowly and clearly. “My name—“ (indicating himself) “—is Brian. What is your name?” She frowned, as though greatly irritated, and loudly replied “Excuse me! Tomato! Beef!” Then she whirled on her heel and strode off, leaving us to console Brian by laughing uproariously.

The dumplings, eighteen kinds in all, were exquisite both in form and taste. There were spinach dumplings, tomato-and-pepper dumplings, duck dumplings (shaped like little ducks), fish dumplings, and apparently garbage dumplings (which were fantastic). Our final course was lucky soup, which contained perhaps a dozen miniature dumplings about the size of blueberries, and which conferred good fortune based on how many dumplings you happened to ladle out into your dish – without looking, of course!

As we were leaving, Desiree stopped at the display table by the front door. “Oh, look!” she squealed. “Even more cute little dumplings! Oh, we didn’t get the ones shaped like fish . . . and look – frog dumplings! I want to take them home with me!” Since that was apparently not an option, she had to settle for taking pictures.

I close with a personal recommendation: the Beijing duck was good, and worth trying. But the dumplings were awesome. If you have the good fortune to live in the region of a Xi’an style dumpling restaurant, I urge you to go and order the dumpling feast. You shall not be disappointed.

And seriously, try those garbage ones. They’re great.

Dave

P.S. Either my connection or Blogger is being dumb right now . . . pictures coming soon.

P.P.S. OK, two days later I still can't add pictures. It says "your picture has been uploaded!" Except . . . it hasn't. I'll keep working on it. In the meantime, just imagine some really cute and delicious-looking food.

P.P.P.S. Finally! Hooray for Blogger!

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Blog . . .

I’m not really happy about using the blog for public service announcements, but here it is anyway. For our friends living in Greenville, this seemed the best way to tell you that we will not be in South Carolina again until August.

I know we had planned to do stuff – I know! And I apologize for canceling it. I especially apologize to those of you with whom we had already canceled. But we wouldn’t be doing things this was if we didn’t think it was important.

We have an opportunity that I can’t really get into here on the blog, and it requires that we go to Canada during our winter holiday. Since the holiday is only two weeks long, that doesn’t really leave time for much else. Actually, it doesn’t leave time for anything else. We’ll be flying more or less straight to Calgary, and we’ll stay there for the duration.

Suffice it to say that we love you all, and we’ll miss you very much. We look forward to seeing you all again at the end of this school year. Until then, there’s always Skype!

Dave