Some Observations

Here's the post I wrote on the 14th. I'm able to post it because we found (with Bjorn's help, but more about him in a minute) a cafe with Wifi! And not just a cafe, but just about the cutest cafe I've ever seen. The latte they brought me was almost too pretty to drink. But, with no further ado:

Back to school for us study bugs, which explains the recent lack of posts. Not only have we been busy with school, but nothing interesting has happened lately. I'll see if I can scavenge up a few tidbits. Here are three observations:

1. A recent phenomenon: everybody is buying ridiculous amounts of Chinese cabbage (bai cai - you may know it as bok choy) and Chinese onion (looks like a green onion, but about ten times bigger) - and also potatoes and other root vegetables, though it seems to a lesser extent. Stranger still is that they line them up in neat rows and columns and leave them to dry? air out? sun? in the cool autumn air. The hall of our apartment was stacked with cabbages, and people tie the onions by their green stalks and hang them on strings out their windows.

We asked our teacher about this and she told us that because vegetables are so expensive in the winter, people buy and stockpile vegetables. In case you were wondering, you apparently can leave a cabbage on your patio for months at a time and find it nearly as fresh as the day you bought it. Crazy, I know. The other thing they do with these cabbages is make sour cabbage. Each family has a large wooden cask outside of their door, and I've spied a neighbor filling hers up with whole cabbages and water, so my powers of assumption tell me that the hallway will be very odorous this winter as the cabbage sours.

2. Even more interesting - our friend Kyla was going through all of my pictures from home and school. We ran across a picture of my stomach after the worst sunburn of my life - i was covered in blisters (hence why I took the picture). But she couldn't figure out what was wrong; she thought I was covered in pimples. I said, no, it's a bad sunburn. Sunburn? You know, when you're out in the sun for too long... But then I realized that Chinese people, especially women, go to such great lengths to stay pale - we're talking SPF 100, parasols, gloves, UV shades, skin bleaching cream, the works - that Kyla had no idea what a sunburn actually was. Incredible.

3. In the same vein, we ran across the word "kou yin" in our text. Literally translated, it means "mouth sound" - accent. But she was quick to tell us that it only meant a local accent. Taking the US for example, you could have a Southern "kou yin," a Boston "kou yin," a Michigan "kou yin" - but you couldn't have a Spanish "kou yin" or a Chinese "kou yin." So we asked her how we could say "I speak Chinese with an American accent." She thought, puzzled, for at least a full minute before answering, "Well, foreigners really never learned to speak Chinese before, so we don't have a way to say that." Crazy!

The best part was that, after giving us many complicated and specific ways of explaining that we were foreigners from our respective countries studying Chinese and that that's the reason why our pronunciation isn't standard (as if it isn't obvious by looking at us), she ended the whole discussion by saying, "Oh well. You guys just need to start saying that you have an American/Russian/Korean 'kou yin,' and then it will catch on. That's how language works!" She's so cute.

In other, less interesting news, we had another couch surfer come through this week, a Swedish guy named Bjorn. He's actually settling down here for a little while to study Chinese (on his own, never having studied it before - don't ask me how), and we invited him to move in with us, but he decided to rent a room in a guest house instead. I think he's crazy, but to each his own I suppose... Anyway, he was quite nice, and it will be good to have another "CSer" around town.

The heat still hasn't come on in our apartment. In an attempt to control pollution and ration fuel, the government decides who gets heat and when they get it. According to Jinpeng, it should turn on by the 20th. Our patio gets toasty warm during the day and heats our apartment - and we're on the 7th floor, which helps - but it has been getting cooler and cooler at night, so I'm anxious for the radiator next to my bed to start keeping me warm.

Anyway, that's the news for now. Your turn to return the favor and update us on life at home!