OK, this is low. But I’d like to think we’re willing to post on almost anything, and not just the things about life in China that look good or neutral to foreigners. Really, why should foreigners opinions matter anyway, right?

No doubt you’re all dying to know: Do people in China really eat cats? The answer is: some people in certain places in China sometimes eat cat, and a lot of people in China think that’s gross, as the news article below demonstrates. There are many Chinas; much more cultural variety than you’d find in North America, even counting Quebec (though Jessica says they may eat cats there, too).

And for the record: We’ve seen hundreds of cats during our time in Taiwan and Tianjin – almost all of them were pets and none of them were food (as far as we could tell). Also for the record (not speaking for Jessica here): I’m not personally opposed to eating cat or dog, though I am opposed to eating certain specific cats (like Chou-chou and Fire Chicken). I’d eat Hello Kitty any day of the week if it meant there’d be less of them. Anyway, enough with the spineless sniveling disclaimers! On to the juicy local news scandal…

Melinda Liu, Newsweek’s Beijing bureau chief, wrote this article for Newsweek’s online edition, about people in Tianjin buying or stealing pet cats and selling them to Guangdong province (down south) as food. Apparently it almost started a riot, right here in our own little Tianjin this February!

…pets as food, which animal lovers apparently discovered earlier this year at a market in Tianjin. Many cats sold in the Hebei District pet market are bought by entrepreneurs who ship them to the southern province of Guangdong, where the felines wind up as restaurant fare. (Guangdong residents are notorious for eating “anything with four legs, except for the kitchen table,” as a proverb goes. One popular dish of sauteed snake and cat is called “the dragon battling the tiger.”)

So when pet cats belonging to Tianjin residents started going missing with unusual frequency, owners became suspicious. Earlier this year the discovery of fresh cat entrails near the gate of the pet market seemed to confirm their fears. Convinced their kitties had become cuisine, up to 100 cat owners gathered at the market gate on Feb. 11, hoping to rescue any remaining live felines. Their entry was blocked by dozens of security guards. Then, some 80 police showed up to prevent a fight between vendors and pet owners… (full article)

And of course, what cat eating post would be complete without that obnoxious song:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

It’s the weekend, and that means it’s time to launch a new weekly bit of fun around here. These red banners are plastered all over China, and Tianjin is no exception. Many are advertisements. Many others are propaganda. Well, not really propaganda - more like free advice, or moral exhortation, or polite, soft warnings. Often they’re put up by a neighbourhood committee (they’re apparently not directly political). Some are boring, some are interesting, some are pretty funny. We’ve collected a bunch already but only translated two so far; they don’t put pinyin on them and sometimes they can be really idiomatic, so it takes time to track down the translations. But they are in every neighbourhood and school, and I was getting tired of seeing them every day but not knowing what they say. We’ll try to post a new one every weekend.

yōu huà chéng qū huán jìng tí gāo shēng huó zhì liàng
“Beautify the city’s environment; raise the quality of life.”

Pronounced: bi?o y?
Means: slogan / poster

a) [insert vague reference to eternal peace and happiness here].
b) “… become the grass. And the antelope eat the grass. So we are all connected in the Great Circle of Life…”
c) become ghosts that help you get rich.

We’re grading English homework part-time over the internet for PEI in Taibei. One class is reading an abridged version of Les Miserables. I thought what one of the 14-year-old girls wrote about the soldiers was interesting:

…they are very great when they died I think they will be a kind of god and they will help manypoor people to getting rich.

This brought back so many images of Taiwan religious activity – the food offerings, incense, casting lots, candles – all of which is virtually non-existent here in Tianjin, by comparison. One of my old high school friends (whom I haven’t seen since high school but who’s now in China and has a blog that I happened to stumble upon this week) calls what many Chinese do with incense and candles “wishing” rather than “praying.” I think it’s both, but I do wonder which one it’s closer to, and if Westerners would perhaps have a better understanding of some common traditional Chinese religious practices if we thought “wishing” as well as “praying” when we saw people wave their incense and bow before the altars.

We’re overdue for Chinese names. Here are the suggestions that have come in so far for my name. Jessica is just going to ask one person, rather than do it this way. I’m sending an e-mail out to our Chinese friends to see what they think. Once I get some replies back, I’ll have to pick something. Or maybe narrow it down to a top three and send another e-mail! (how long can we drag this out?) Of course, all you 外国人 (wàiguórén / foreigners) can pick a favourite, too. Remember that the first character is the family name, and the second and third characters are the given name.

慕信义 (mù xìn yì) or 慕信毅 (mù xìn yì)
慕 means longing for, seeking, cherishing, also found in Chinese last names.
信 means faith, trusting, believing
义 means righteousness, Godly, faithfulness
毅 means endurance, perseverance.

陆义 (lù yì)
陆 is a good chinese family name, so I figure out a last first name for you as well: “义”。“义”means faithful. Ask your teacher to get more info :)

陆道明　(lù dào míng) – dao means moral; ming means bright, clear, honest.
陆道涵 (lù dào hán) – han means self-restrain, connotation.
陆卓恒　(lù zhuó héng) – zhuo means outstanding, long-sighted; heng means perpetual, lasting.

陸強 (lù qiáng)
先跟你說一個中文名字：陸強，因為跟你的Joel發音比較相近 (qiáng sounds similar to Joel).

陸禎達 (lù zhēn dá)
陸崇達 (lù chóng dá)

陸瑞民 (lù ruì mín) is a very Chinese name.
瑞 means auspicious, lucky
民 means civilian, the people

陸瑞言 (lù ruì yán)
言 means word, character, eternal

And in other news, we’ve been taking photos of all the propaganda banners. They’re not really propaganda; it’s more like free advice/moral exhortations/polite warnings, usually put up by neighbourhood committees. Some can be pretty interesting, and once we get them translated we’ll post one a week.

Pronounced: w? s?i!
Means: wow!

For our interpretive community. Lots of you are educated in literature and things relating to textual criticism. Surely with our powers combined we can find meaning in this.

Friend
-5′C
because you don’t
force yourself go fall,
you just fall.

Like there are many stars up in the sky, my words for you in this paper resemble tiny bits or seeds.

because you don’t
force yourself go fall,
you just fall.

Cherry! Cherry! Cherry!

My friends

Any and all interpretive attempts are welcome!

When I first began to think about living on another continent, far away from our families and friends, it did occur to me that we would probably miss out on a lot of things over the years. It wasn’t pleasant to think about, but seemed like it might be something we would just get used to and learn to accept. Last year, when we lived in Taiwan, our friend Brian got married and I realized then that this might just be (emotionally) one of the most difficult things about living half way around the world. The weight of missing his wedding impacted me far more than I had expected or prepared myself for.

I started to write this post then, but just couldn’t. I felt like I needed more time to process it…hoping, I guess, that I might be able to wrap my thoughts into a neat little package that explains how one goes about getting used to and accepting that we really are going to miss BIG things (and small, but still precious things) in the lives of those that we love from afar. Six months later, I’m no closer to having that neatly packaged explanation.

This past week I thought about it even more as a double-dose of emotional shock washed over me. First, with the birth of Miriam, Ryan and Tami’s daughter and the first grand-baby on Joel’s side of the family. And later in the week, with the wedding of my dear friend Alisha. These are the kind of events that we would never dream of missing. And yet we have.

My friend (and Starbucks Angel), Meredith, recently posted the following on her blog. She has applied to join the Peace Corps for two years and was writing to a relative to explain how she feels about it at this point:

“…it does seem a little crazy to me at times that I would want to pick up and move to another country for not just one, but two whole years. To be completely honest, there have been times when I’ve considered calling the PC office and asking them to rip up my application. But I don’t think it’s because I’m really scared to go…I definitely have fears…what if I can’t learn the language, what if I commit every cultural taboo there is and turn everyone against me, what if I’m terrible at the job, what if I don’t know enough to even do the job, what if I don’t know enough about world events for the PC to even want me. But even more than fearing what will happen over there (where ever there turns about to be) I also fear what will happen here at home. More specifically, what will I be missing out on? What will my family and friends be doing that I won’t get to join in? Why would I want to leave them for two years?”

I made the following comment in response to her post. Complete, neat, and concise it isn’t (even though I DID edit it for length)…but maybe it will be at least a small window into the thoughts I’ve been trying to process:

Nice post, Meredith. And really poignant for me. Partially because I’ve had, still have, and am in the midst of most of the fears you mentioned …The whys and whats are never ending…and often difficult to quantify.

However some parts of the cost are much easier to count…especially in weeks like this, when Joel’s brother and his wife have just had their first baby and an amazing friend is getting married on Saturday. It’s not that I don’t want to be here…but some parts of me wish that things in the States would remain on hold for the 2, 10, 15, 25 or however many years I’m going to be here…and that I would never have to miss out on anything in the lives of those that I love.

And so I’m living in the midst of a bittersweet tension…joy at the thought of new life and a new marriage, and sadness because my participation in these events is limited to what I can type or say from a distance. And the realization that this is only the beginning and that there will probably be many more events about which I will feel this way.

Would I really want things to remain on hold? No. I guess not…after all, I want my friends and family to continue growing, maturing, journeying, flourishing. And even though much of me wishes I could see all of those things, I’m also starting to realize that had I stayed at home I would’ve never known some of the joys and struggles of life here (which I’m only beginning to know now). How many people’s journeys will I get to be a part of from here? What of their lives would I never see if I were elsewhere? And, what growth (in myself) would I miss out if I weren’t here? …Obviously those questions are impossible to answer.

I ended my comment by telling her that she wouldn’t regret the choice to go and said that “Even in the midst of this week’s fresh realizations about what I’m missing out on, I still don’t regret it.”

And that is true. I don’t regret the choice to come here, but I do wish that we could somehow be present for these important moments as well. Obviously, the birth of a child or a wedding are not about us, and not about our presence or absence. I’ve even wondered, is it just extremely self-centered to be thinking so much about how WE can’t be there? It’s not like our absence sucks all the joy out of the event by any means (for which I am VERY thankful!).

At this point, I think I have grown used to the idea that living here means that there are things elsewhere that we miss. However, I’m not entirely certain that I’ll ever really be used to or fully accept the way that it FEELS to miss out on these important moments in the lives of our family and friends. When it comes down to it…no matter how happy we are here, or how certain we are that this is where we should be…there’s really no substitute for being there. And even though I still don’t have a neatly tied package explaining how we’re supposed to handle this, I think I’m growing more comfortable with living in the midst of the bittersweet tension. Part of this is the realization that it would be far worse to be so used to it that we don’t miss anything or anyone, and don’t feel like we’re really missing out. And part of it is the realization that we really do miss people and that we really are, in some important ways, missing out.

Random conversation this weekend:

“They say your nose is big.”

“对。很大！” (Yes, very big!)

“Oh, no. They said: pointy.”

Oh good, thanks. I had almost forgotten. =)

I think this will become a recurring theme, if it hasn’t reached that stage already. See here and here for funny related experiences.

In other news, today was great. Had lunch with some friends, and then Jessica and I actually managed — on our own, in “Mandarin” (using the term loosely) — to ask a landlord about rental apartments and get him to show us one. Then we walked to the vegetable market and bought $3 worth of veggies all in Mandarin (that’s a lot of veggies). That’s getting easier and faster every time. Woohoo! We’re actually learning something. We have to acknowledge times like this when we feel something positive about our language learning, because most of the time we’re constantly reminded of how much we don’t know and can’t communicate.