I stopped by the bike repair corner for lunch yesterday. I brought my own lunch, and figured I’d better bring something to share, since that’s usually how things work. Mandarin oranges — the kind we eat during Christmas in Vancouver — are really cheap right now, so I brought a bag.

Last time I tried to bring food to share with these guys I didn’t understand enough how to offer food to people in China, especially older people. Last time, no one touched the bowl of cherry tomatoes I’d brought, even though we played Chinese chess with a crowd for at least two hours. I talked it over with my teachers afterward, and it seems like I simply wasn’t forceful enough. You’re supposed to be really insistent and disregard their refusals to the point that they can take some without appearing greedy, or something like that. It’s supposed to look like they’re taking the food because they “have to,” at least that’s how the little daily social ritual goes. It’s hard for foreigners because we end up not knowing which refusals are genuine, and which ones are just for politeness sake.

All that to say, yesterday, with my bag of Mandarin oranges, I was determined to make them eat. Both Mr. Zhang and Mr. Lu were surprisingly resistant, but I didn’t care. And I wouldn’t let them eat just one, either. I think Mr. Zhang caved in first just to give me face, since I obviously wasn’t going to back down. I tossed him the second one so he had to take it. Once Mr. Zhang was stuck with one, he started telling Mr. Lu he ought to take one, which he did, but only ate half.

It was weird that they didn’t eat more; this time I definitely wasn’t too weak when offering. So as usual, I asked about it the next day in class. Turns out it has nothing to do with cultural differences blah blah blah. According to my teacher (and Mr. Lu, Mr. Zhang, and Mr. Guo, who I saw again this afternoon), there’s a melanine-sized national Mandarin orange scandal going on right now. “Everyone knows, except the foreigners,” says my teacher. No one could tell me the details, at least not in a way that I could understand, but apparently down south where they grow the oranges some sort of really tiny insect got into all the oranges and now people are afraid to eat them.

If I can’t see it, or can’t understand it because it’s in another language, it can’t hurt me, right?

Chinese is harder first thing in the morning.

It’s 8:30am on a holiday and we’re sleeping in. The phone rings. Nine times out of ten I’d just let it ring (my college roommate hated this), but this time for some reason I jump out of bed and answer it. It’s someone speaking Chinese. What are they saying? I can feel my heart rate thudding to compensate for my sudden leap-sprint out of the warm covers. I guess (correctly) that it’s one of our neighbour’s daughter-in-laws. She’s arranging a time to meet for something – I can’t tell what. Tuesday, 6pm? Right, got it. Ok. But all that other stuff she’s saying I don’t have a clue. I just woke up! My brain’s not in gear! I say ‘Ok, great, Tuesday, 6pm,’ just make sure I heard that part right, and we hang up. I assume it’s about going to the neighbour’s and making pizza and 饺子 because we’d all talked about that last time we were over there. So that’s what I tell Jessica the phone call was about. And that’s what we plan on.

Turns out it wasn’t at the neighbours’ or even with the neighbours. Their son’s family owns a DIY baking shop and because of our connection I’m writing a Thanksgiving article highlighting it for the local expat magazine’s November edition. They’d phoned to ask us out to dinner, I’d said yes, but Jessica and I were all set to show up at his parents’ place with pizza baking supplies.

The only reason we found out in time was because Jessica just happened to be taking some friends over to their store yesterday afternoon and mentioned looking forward to making pizza with them that night. The daughter-in-law made a confused face, and soon they were laughing about the mix up.

We went out last night to dinner at a cool restaurant called 1928, which recreates a Tianjin feel from that period, complete with traditional forms of entertainment popular in Tianjin. This of course meant me drinking with the boys at one end of the table; good thing there was tons of food and we were there for hours (maybe that’s part of the plan). It’s not a cheap place, and they bought us a gift as well. I’m relieved that so many of our foreign friends bought stuff at their store that afternoon, and that I’ve got the magazine article coming up, or I’d feel like we’re in some guanxi debt.

The phone was ringing as I unlocked the front door and stepped inside. It was ‘Aunty Wang,’ and she wasn’t in the mood to make baby-talk with the not-so-cute foreigner. Jessica had answered the phone, and Auntie Wang tried to discuss the rent hike with her, but Jessica again made her ‘talk’ to me.

‘Aunty Wang’: “We still want you to pay 1200.”

That is totally not fair. Plus, she’s talking really fast, and I hadn’t had time to prepare. I’m scrambling.

Me: “Last time you said 1100.”

A.W.: “Oh, well-”[long string of fast Chinese that I can't catch involving babies and other people who love paying 1200, but the general gist of it all, after I remind her again that they'd already come down to 1100, was that they'll settle for 1100].

Me: “We discussed it while we were waiting for you to phone us, and we feel we can pay 1050.”

That is true. Prices are going up, and we feel 1050 was OK, with strings attached…

A.W.: [Something long and fast about forget 1050 and remember the babies that like to pay 1200 and perhaps might be ready to move in so we're talking about 1100.]

I tell her to hold on a second, and I quickly discuss the next move in English with Jessica.

Me: “OK. We have a list. Some problems. We can pay 1100 after those all get fixed.”

Aunty Wang doesn’t sound impressed.

A.W.: “What are the problems?”

(This is the part where we try to make them pay for raising our rent.)

Me: “The first problem, a stinky smell often comes up from the drain in the bathroom. When we have guests it’s really embarrassing. I tried to fix it my own way, but my way was no use.”

A.W.: “And?”

Me: “The kitchen yángtái (阳台 – North American apartments don’t really have these) windows are ok, but the other windows all leak air. They leak cold wind in the winter and hot wind in the summer…”

She laughs when I say “hot wind” – maybe “hot wind” (热风) means something I don’t know about.

“… and of course you already know the roof leaks. The kitchen has no hot water. The water pressure usually isn’t enough for the gas water heater. And we’re scared of it. And the water dispenser leaks.”

I forget to mention the broken mosquito nets. There’s other stuff I could mentioned, but we’re aiming to get a couple big ones fixed and just need the little ones as bargaining pieces to give up.

A.W.: [She rattles off a whole bunch of fast Chinese which I can't catch. But I'm pretty sure it involves us having the money ready when they come over with the contract this Saturday, and her saying they'll take a look at fix things.]

Me: “After everything is fixed, then we’re able to pay.”

A.W.: “Sure, we’ll fix everything and then you pay us.”

I’m pretty sure she actually said this – though it kind of surprises me. Maybe I’m hearing wrong. We’re only hoping to get one or two of the more important things fixed. I double check, and it sounds like she confirmed it, but I’m definitely not certain.

We arrange a time for them to come over. She says bye but as she’s hanging up I hear her start complaining to her husband, “Aì yà…!” (哎呀; [exclamation!]).

So they’ve forced us to our Plan B. This coming Saturday night will be Round 3, when they come over with the new contract. If I spoke really good Chinese instead of Chinglish, I would have tried to make it all nicer and smoother and leave the option open for them to not raise the rent and not fix stuff. But I speak Chinglish, and that’s just how it is.

Our landlords are trying to raise our monthly rent by 200元 ($28.50). I’m determined to prevent this. But how to negotiate when you’re really still speaking Chinglish?

Ｉ think we won Round One, but that’s probably owing to the element of surprise.

The landlord first phoned one of our Chinese friends who did the original negotiations a year ago. He told them to talk to us. They called Jessica and said, “We want to raise the rent to 1200. Do you agree?” Jessica refused to get into and said they should talk to me. The landlord phoned our Chinese friend again, and this time he told them off (you can do that a lot more in Chinese culture than you can in North America; being rude isn’t as rude here, depending on the relationship). Yesterday they called again when I was out. Jessica again refused to discuss it, and told them to phone back at 8:00pm when I’d be home (as per our plan).

So last night I was waiting for their call, and had everything I wanted to say looked up in the dictionary and written down. We have to try and find a way to say “No” that is nice enough but doesn’t give them anything to work with. It also helps that they can’t bust out their super-negotiation powers on us because we don’t understand most of what she says anyway. She phoned, and after patronizing me with a slower-than-toddler-speed greeting (“Haaave. Youuu. Eeea-ten. Yet?”; 你吃完了吗? – they know Jessica’s Chinese is better than mine, plus I think they sense that Jessica would be more likely to agree to a rent increase) it went something like this:

‘Aunty Wang’ the Chinese Landlord: “We want to raise the rent to 1200. Did you discuss it?”

Me: “Yes, we discussed it. We really like living in this apartment and the neighbourhood is really great. Even though our neighbours all say 1000 per month is too much for this apartment, we think 1000 a month is OK.” (Take that, Landlord!)

This surprises her, and she laughs, I think similar to the way grown-ups laugh at primary school kids when they try to act grown-up. Then she says something about rent going up all over the city, and some other stuff I don’t catch.

Me: “But that has to do with the Olympics, doesn’t it?”

A.W.T.C.L.L.: “It has no relation to the Olympics.”

I deliberately leave some awkward dead air, forcing her to say something and wonder if I understand her. She repeats their intention to raise the rent.

Me: “We aren’t able to pay more. We are still in school and don’t have jobs.”

She repeats what I’ve been saying to her husband. It takes me few seconds to realize she’s not talking to me.

A.W.T.C.L.L.: “How about 1100?”

Me: “We still aren’t able to pay more. We are still in school and don’t have jobs.”

A.W.T.C.L.L.: “How about you two discuss it and then give us call?”

Me: “We already discussed it.”

A.W.T.C.L.L.: “But how about you two discuss it and then give us call?”

Me: “We already discussed it. Our situation is the same as before. We’re still in school and don’t have jobs.”

She says something about someone discussing and then someone giving someone a phone call. but I’m not sure who’s waiting for whom to call.

Me: “So, you’ll discuss it and then give us a call?” She confirms. “OK, I’ll wait for your call.”

I have no doubt that “Auntie Wang”’s negotiation skills exceed my own; she’s been haggling prices longer than I’ve been alive. But if they manage to wrestle us into actually discussing the price of an increase, I have a list of major and minor repairs to the apartment to unload on them, half of which I hope to eventually stick them with before we pay any increase. But I’m hoping we never have to go there. Haha… we’ll see.

P.S. – I should mention that the dialogue above would be more accurate if I riddled my sentences with grammar mistakes. We ‘know’ how to say all that stuff, but pulling stuff out of your head in the middle of a discussion isn’t the same as writing it on paper in your homework. We can say that stuff accurately on a good day, and I can still mess some of it pretty good on a bad day.

My dad told me once how he went to dinner at a family’s home in Vancouver who were recent immigrants from Africa or Albania (I forget). For dessert, they served up dishes of frozen juice mix – the kind that comes frozen in the cardboard can that you’re supposed to mix with water – like it was ice cream. I can’t remember if my dad said anything or not. He may have just eaten it like everything was normal.

Just this week a fellow language student couple told me how they did the same thing when they had some of the teachers over for dinner recently. For dessert, they served a plate of uncooked 汤圆 (“soup spheres,” also called 元宵), not knowing that you’re supposed to boil them. They’re little sweet dumplings made out of glutinous rice flour, which, when they’re cooked, are gooey white doughy balls with sweet stuff inside, usually red bean paste. Uncooked usually means frozen. One of the teachers got a big surprise when she bit down, but then she told them and they cooked them and a good time was had by all.

We were planning to eat some tonight, which is what made me think to write about it, and I was going to show you a picture of what they look like cooked, except I cooked them wrong, the insides all fell out, and we ended up with a rice-flavoured blob of slime.

Just a simple anecdote of how easy it is to ‘not get it’ when you live elsewhere. Makes me have a lot more sympathy for the real immigrants back in Vancouver!

The first days back in class after a break are always a little rough. Mr. Lù and Mr. Sòng made it a little more interesting on what they probably didn’t realize was Boxing Day by placing the still bleeding head of an as-yet-unidentified former animal on the electrical utilities box near the entrance to our complex. The rest of the just-barely-dead carcass was in a plastic shopping bag on the back of Mr. Lù’s bike.

I thought it was a dog, but they said no, it’s an animal we don’t have in America called a pāo zi (I’m 90% certain that’s what they said). I’ve asked around, and some Chinese friends came up with páo zi (狍子), which is some kind of deer, but since when are deer carnivores? (warning: the photo’s kind of gross). Mr. Lù bought the whole thing at the market around the corner for 50 kuài (about $6.75). He said he’s going to make stew. One person thought it might be a 黄鼠狼 (“yellow-rat-wolf” a.k.a. weasel?), but there was disagreement over whether or not you can eat those (the southerner stated matter-of-factly: “If it’s an animal, you can eat it”). Take a look at the photo and the links on the Chinese words (linked to google images) and tell us what you think it is/was.

It finally snowed this morning! We had a white Christmas, if you count a week of near-impenetrable fog. Now it’s after lunch, dry, and sunny, but the snow sucked a lot of the pollution out of the air (it made the sky a weird yellow colour for an hour or so today).

Jessica is sick, and has been for a while now. There’s this nasty bug going around that makes people cough all night for two weeks. One local said it’s just because it hasn’t snowed that everyone is getting sick (because the snow will clear the air of all the pollution). Jessica has medicine (both kinds!) and is getting better.

We just had two days off from class for of Christmas, which included a Boxing Day Christmas party with friends, and next week we get three for New Years, so we’re going to take it easy for a little while and have some fun. Maybe run around town for a bit. All these days off make coming back to class hard, because spending all this holiday time with foreigners in English takes your brain out of Chinese gear, and getting back into gear always takes a bit of effort.

Ugh. This post isn’t so much about (not) eating lunch as it is about the hazards of being illiterate, hungry, and having only limited oral language skills at your disposal.

I like variety. I like to try new things. On long road trips I keep my finger on the Seek button, stopping on whatever radio station is playing music I’ve never heard before (ha, Jessica hates this). It’s the same with cheap food. But today, it backfired.

Weekday lunches here are usually street food or the next closest thing. They cleared off all the street vendors near the library office where I study in the afternoons, but there are still plenty of hole-in-the-wall places where lunch will cost you less than a dollar. This week I’d already had a string of good luck, stumbling upon three new dishes worth adding into the regular lunch rotation. It helps that the longer we study, the more the street signs slowly come into focus and we can start to read parts of the menus.

Jessica, Chuck, and I hit the street at lunch time wondering what to eat. I noticed a doorway listing some kind of dish that had “roast” (烤) and “spicy” (辣) in the name, among other characters, and that was more than enough to warrant giving it a shot. So Chuck and Jessica headed up the road for bāo zi (包子) and má là miàn (麻辣面) while I ducked inside. They had a BBQ rack! These long (sometimes several feet) skinny BBQs have been in short supply the last few months, and they usually have some of the cheapest and best roasted-on-a-stick street food around. I talked to the couple inside: they had a table full of loaded skewers, and they mentioned “sheep soup” (羊汤). I ordered two chicken skewers and sheep soup, all of which came hot in plastic bags in about a minute.

The three of us returned to the office where lunch usually doubles as oral Chinese practice with the office staff (except for Chuck, who’s sort of an ABC). That’s when I discovered my lunch’s true identity. Now, it’s one thing when you’re served dinner as a guest and you eat whatever it is without any improper hesitation. It’s another thing when you’re buying your own lunch and what you thought was sheep meat turns out to be diced sheep digestive tract, and the chicken meat that you then thought would make your lunch not a total loss turns out to be chicken skin on a stick. No meat, just dimply fatty skin-on-a-stick. Fifteen minutes later I was back outside telling all this to the fried noodle lǎo bǎn (老板), explaining that most Westerners don’t go for stomach parts and skin, and he laughed and told the customers eating next to him while he took my order.

Moral of the story is what everyone at our lunch table, except me, already knew: “sheep soup” (羊汤) and “sheep meat soup” (羊肉汤) are not the same thing. That, and wherever you live, if you want to have a clue you have to learn the language!

Ha. Last night I accidentally bought a bag of MSG instead of sugar. It had weird looking sugar grains. We didn’t find out until Jessica put it in her coffee this morning. That’s what illiteracy will get you in China: MSG-flavoured coffee first thing in the morning.

Last night I went for an after-dinner walk with Mr. Song, and we found a sidewalk calligrapher. It was too dark and the video quality is horrible, but it’s still kind of cool. Now that I know where these guys go I’ll get better shots next time. The music in the background is from a ladies’ exercise group a few meters away.

The guy tried to get me to write something, which amused all the on-lookers. Put on the spot, I wrote, “我爱中国” (I love China), mostly because it’s easy and one of the first things that popped into my head with everyone waiting. It was funny because as I was writing I could hear them laughing about my stroke order, “He’s writing wrong!” I was under pressure, people! =) I’m gonna think up something funny to write next time, just in case.

I can only imagine what these guys must think sometimes.

We’ve been getting eaten alive by mosquitoes the last couple nights. Yesterday I noticed in the neighbourhood by the JHF office, which is also close to the canal, that everyone has big strings of garlic hanging in their windows. I wondered if it was to keep the mosquitoes away. Since I was heading home, I could ask the bike repairing–xiàng qí playing–bái jiǔ drinking–oral homework answering–lǎo wài mocking old men on the corner about it.

On the way in I stopped, said hi. There were about 8 of them sitting around watching one of them work, but not too hard. A toddler was playing with the xiàng qí pieces; I thought maybe I’d found an opponent that was in my own league. I asked them a question, which properly translated to English would sound something like this, not that I was aware at the time:

“Excuse me, can I ask a question? I see some people in their window have lots of curry. Why they have curry in the window?”

8 of them look up with various degrees of amusement and confusion on their faces. The 9th one, the real bike repair man, didn’t stop working; I think he’s given up trying to communicate until I finish the next text book.

“They have really long things of curry in the window. Really long. Many curry. In the window. Because have mosquitoes?”

At this point some of them nudge my xiàng qí opponent – who is also one of the oldest and most patient of the group – and he comes up to find out what I want as their elected emissary. We “talk,” and he figures out that I’m asking how to get rid of the mosquitoes and gives me the name of some sort of cheap electrical device you can put in your bedroom.

“So, this electric thing is better than curry?”

He assures me that this is way better than curry; I don’t need curry.

I say thanks and pedal off to the bike bunker. There’s a nagging ping in the black hole of my mind, as if I should be having doubts about something. Inside the bike bunker where they give you your ticket they have the same strings of garlic hanging. I ask what they’re called. “Suàn,” the lady says. ‘Well I know it’s garlic,’ I think, ‘I want to know what the mosquito-repellent strings are called.’ Wait. Garlic is suàn. If garlic is suàn, then why was I saying gā lí? Gā lí is curry! I ask her why everyone has garlic. She says it’s in season.

My ego crawls home, determined to spend even more time in the textbooks.
咖喱和蒜，不一样。

Come, share our ignorance.

Why was there no water in our apartment today? I’ll tell you:

tōng zhī

zǐ jīn nán lǐ (our apt. complex) [X] [X] give? water [X] dào [X] [X] [X] [X] [X] enter? [X] arrive? [X] internet??! [X] head [X] [X], [X] dìng [X] 2007-5-22 [X] 8 [X] [X] [X] 18 [X] [X] water [X] [X], [X] water [X] [X] ________. xiàn tōng zhī [X] [X] [X] first? [X] [X] [X] use water, [X] [X] residence middle? [X] person, yǐ [X] [X] [X] dào [X] [X] and [X] water xiàn elephant??! de [X] shēng.

Thank-you [X] zuò

huà [X] give water [X] [X] have [X] gōng [X]

That’s what the notice in the photo looks like to us.
If you can find meaning in our “translation,” then you would understand why there was no water in the apartment when we woke up this morning. Well, this particular notice has our address on it and says water a bunch of times… we’re assuming it’s the one. We found it around noon among the several pasted on our gate as we hauled our unshowered selves to class. We circled all the characters we recognize. Do NOT be fooled: there are way more words in English than characters in Chinese, but most Chinese words are combinations of two or three characters and context matters bigtime. Just because you can “read” most or all the characters in a sentence is no guarantee that you’ll have any clue what it’s about.

There are always signs like this posted around, telling us something we might want to know, and we can’t read any of them. So we just ignore them. But this morning, upon discovering our sans agua status, I looked out the window and saw workers digging holes beside the manholes outside our gate and the next gate over. That was our tip to go look at the notices. Not that they help much at this point. Ah well. The illiterate life!