Little Chinese tidbits.

I'm bored right now, so I'll create my own thread of Chinese tidbits, which I might add to now and then.

Please feel free to add your Canadian comparisons.

I have a question. I pretty much deal with e-mails where I work all day and I find that 99% of Chinese people use hotmail. Has anyone else noticed that?

I'm usually shocked when I get the odd one that has a wogers account or ahoo.




-BINGO! I rest my case, the call that interrupted me was anudder hotmail for a nice chinese lady.

So for the first one:

The best haircut I'd ever had!

Haircuts in China are not quite the same as they are in Canada, so I'll have to tell you the story of my first haircut in China. They've mostly all been the same after that, but the first one was the one which surprized me of course.

So this is a few years ago, about three months after comming to China, and my hair, well, was starting to look a little "hippyish". So I walked into a hair salon (they look pretty much the same as in Canada, except that the real estate appears a little poorer as can be expected, and there is the potential of a language barrier, especially if you didn't know how to say hello in the language just three months earlier!) and motionned with my fingers in a cutting scissor fashion to my hair to the hair stylist, and she nodded in understanding.

So I sat in the chair (just as I would in Canada) and let her do her job. First she took out the shampoo bottle, and then poored some shampoo on my head without water, while I was still sitting in the chair. I thought that was unusual, but decided just to go with the flow. Next, she started massaging my skalp for a good ten minutes. Now I'd never been much of a fan of massages before, 'cause I'd rather be, uhm, posting in internet forums, or riding a bike, or studying or whatever else, rather than sitting in a chair getting a boring massage for an hour. But then, what did I know, I'd never gotten a massage before, and have no idea still how much they'd even cost in Canada.

So anyway, I'd never realized a skalp massage could feel so good. I'm even surprised I hadn't fallen asleep considering how good it felt. And then she had to make me stand up to go to the sink to rinse my hair. That was terrible. I felt so comfortably dozy in the chair that I really didn't want to get up. Well, after the hair rinse, I went back to the chair, thinking that the hair cut was about to follow. Was I wrong! She then proceded to massage my forehead and face. At this stage I was getting worried about the cost for this haircut! But heck, I had money, so I figured, whatever the cost, I'll pay it. I was also wondering about how long this thing was goin' to last too, but I wasn't worried 'cause I had no work plans for that day anyways, so it's not like I be anywhere soon.

So in the end, the massage lasted about an hour, including the head, face, neck, arms, hands and fingers. And then it stopped. Finally the haircut in less than twenty minutes, and it was time to pay. So here I was expecting to pay maybe a hundred kuai (colloquial for RMB, or Chinese yuan) (a hundred kuai is about 20 dollars roughly) or somethin'. Man was I surprised when the total amounted to a mere fifteen kuai (About three dollars Canadian).

Needless to say, I couldn't wait for my hair to grow long after that. Now I make sure I get a hair cut at least every three months without fail. But as I'd learnt more recently about nine monnths ago, is that there are in fact hair salons that don't give the massage, and do they ever give me a deal. They charge five kuai only (about one dollar Canadian), but then that's just the basic hair wash and hair cut that's so common in Canada. But it's much faster though, just like in Canada. Here however, that's rare, with most massages being included with the haircut as a 'package deal', usually at about fifteen kuai. I have to admit though, that after awhile the massage just gets boring, so now I go to the non-massage one (Canadian habit, I suppose?) and same myself a whole ten kuai! So I'll think of a topic for teh next post.

The battle over Drinks!

Then there's teh stoy in Jina a few years ago. As some might know, relaitonships are important in Chinese Culture, and the best sign of trust is to get drunk in on another's presence. Problem? I don't drink!

So here we were at a banquat, plenty of interesting platters on the table, and the waitress goin' around the table fillin' wine glasses and shooter glasses with wine alcohol 9stuff you can smell from across the talbe)! So I signal to her that I don't want any, to which she respondes by glancing at the host. He nods in her direction in indication that she ought to fill my glass. I gently remove the glss out of the way. The bottle follows chasing the glass wherever it goes. I get annoyed and so switch to a new strategy; I turn the glass upside down, as 'politely' as possible (I don't know how it's possible to turn the glass upside down without potential offence, but what to do?).

So anyway, the host gets offended, and starts shouting at me throught he interpreter, to which I explain it's religious. Then he finally nods, backs off, says we're friends, gets drunk with the others at the table, and gives a big speech about how they respect religion in China. Altogether, not a bad night with good food and drunkard s to poke fun at!

Here in China, they also have sina,.com, 163.com, xaonline.com, ah163.com, etc. etc. etc. But yes, I do come across many hotmail and Yahoo accounts too. They love chatting, and both hotmail and Yahoo have messenger, which might be part of the expanation. ICQ isn't so common, though present none-the-less, but they nearly all have QQ (a Chinese version of QQ). I've been assimilated in that respect (I have QQ too, as well as ICQ).

Those are awesome stories machjo. Really! Let me ask you this, have you seen the chinese art of xiansheng

Machjo, the better salons in Canada give a scalp, neck, and arm massage. And there is really no point in going to a salon that doesn't do this. It's my favourite thing about getting a hair cut and 1 of the things I hated the most about doing hair!

So...tell us some more stories. What is the weirdest (in your opinion) thing you've seen sold as food there? What do they think is the weirdest thing we have for food here?

:

?: Not a clue? I'll ask around.

Oh, and by the way, I apologise for the terrible English in the post above. I must confess I'm really lazy when it comes to posting in a forum; I type at 100 KM per hour, don't proofread, and that's that. Sorry.

Sorry, I forgot to mention back massage too. But moving on to your point, what do you mean we have that in Canada too? That means my mom always took me to the cheap ones in Canada, and so tought me to be cheap when it came to haircuts. So as a result, as an adult I always went to barber shops.

Well then thank God there are not many barber shops in China, otherwise I'd still be ignorant of this little tidbit about Canada and China. Lear something you every day.

Interesting stuff, Machjo. I'd like to hear about the FOOD <drools>.

Fr'instance. I've been told that ginger beef is not a traditional Chinese dish, but was invented here in good ole Canada (Calgary to be exact). Is this true?

Deep fried silkworm or cockroaches, anyone?

At another banquet with the same host as mentionned above (the avid drinker who took refusal to drink personally), he'd ordered deep fried silkworm and cockroaches as well. Well, seeing that he seemed to take personally any refusal to accept his kindness , I decided to forget about trying to be vegetarian for that evening (It seems I have become less vegetarian in China overall, but that's for another post) and maybe help myself to those, ehm, delicacies.

Well, lacking in confidence, I decided to take it slow and just try to psych myself up during the meal. Well, that was put abruptly to an end when I'd noticed the female guests (some beautiful ones at that) digging into these fine six-legged specimens, listening to them crunching away. Needless to say I couldn't let a women, never mind many women, beating me at such a daring feat. And add to that that the host was already tolerating my non-drinking habits. So I finally dug in.

So what do they taste like? Well, while I've never actually tasted deep fried saw dust in my life, I can take a guess as to what it might taste like. And that's about how I'd describe the flavour of deep fried insects. Pretty bland, if you ask me.

And what other food stories? Hmmm. Let' s see here...

I've had dog on the banquet table before, but have never eaten any to the best of my knowledge. I've been reassured, however, that dog is a little expensive, so if I've never had to order any expensive platter, then it probably wasn't dog. Thank God for that. In Jinan, I'd also seen live baby scorpions in the fresh food isle , squiggling vigourously in their little itsy bitsy plastic transparent containers. Now just how mouth-watering is that?

Well, I guess that's it for this thread. 'Til the next.

come across any ginger beer yet in China. That doesn't mean it's not around, but would seem to suggest that if there is, it's not common. But I really don't know the answer to your question. Sorry.

Madge I just woke up now I gotta run to the little room, blah! your a brave mama

I remember trying to cut my daughters' hair when she was little.....I couldn't reason why I'd pay somebody else to do what I was trained to do......

I learned that my daughter is unable to sit still for me. She'd wiggle around trying to tell me how she "almost" moved" and show me the "move" she almost made. Which defeats the entire "don't move' plan.

My daughter ended up with a very short.....assymentrical...bob. It was only suppose to be a trim of the ends with some layering to eliviate the weight her hair. She has the thickest blonde hair I have ever seen on a human being......

I have learned that no matter my skill my child WILL NOT sit still for me. she is incapable of sitting still for me.

She sits as still as a rock for the stylist I pay now....little brat! but there is no way I'm paying $50.00 to have her hair trimmed....

I don't know if it works this way in China but here in Canada women still get gouged for haircuts. We pay more to have the ends trimmed (easy easy. 5 minutes) then for a man to have a cut (half hour) It's stupid. and the only reason it's that way is because we women tolerate it!

Would insects be considered meat?

Chickens eat insects but we still consider them herbivores.......

My friends and I use to eat catapillors when we were little. tent catapillors. we didn't chew.....

How dare dare you speak Chinese in China!

After eight months in Jinan, I decided to visit Urumqi for a week. Now, after about eight months of not seeing many white faces, I was shocked at the number of 'tourists' crawling all over the city when I'd first arrived. Now that was suspicious, so I decided to investigate. First off, it seemed that except for downtown, you had the whites on one side of the city, and the yellows on the other. Well, Sinse downtown was the first place I came across, after getting off from a 50 hour train ride, I'd noticed whites and yellows sometimes intermixing, and so would listen into their conversations. What?!! They spoke Chinese as if they were, how can I put this, ehm, Chinese! Now what 'tourist' would go through the bother of learning Chinese to that level of fluency?

So I then decided to retire for the night, and do some more exploration the next day. That's when I'd discovered the little bit of segregation outside the city centre. Now the 'white' side was a little poorer than the yellow (understatement here), and the dress was quite diverse to say the least, especially among the women. Some wore hijab, others, the full burqa, with only the eyes showing, others, traditional Chinese, others North American jeans, and others still, European chique, or varying mixtures of these. The two funniest parts were when once I got checked out by a woman of whom I could see nothing but her eyes poking out of her all-black clothing, and the other was of a full burqa-clad woman sitting down and having another, wearing really sexy European style walking within two feet of her. Overall, the white side of downtown was most interesting with its bazars selling Persian rugs, prayer mats, and mutton kebabs, with Arab script everywhere accompanied by Chinese characters. If I hadn't known any better, I would have thought I was in Istanbul, except for the overwelming presence of yellows in the city centre, and the generally typically modern communist Chinese construction design for most buildings downtown, along with the Chinese Characters in most places.

So I decided to walk out of the city centre going deeper into the white side, where I was really starting to blend in, except for the fact that, while they were babbling away in Uighur (pretty much a dialect of Tukish), I couldn't undertand a word they'd say except for the odd one of Arabic origin!

So there I was, walking through a bazar and hungry, so decided to buy some dried fruit.
I asked the woman behind the table, in Chinese, "How much is this?" pointing to the dried fruit rolls.

To which she responded, in Perfect Chinese, "Why are you speaking Chinese; can't you speak Uighur?"

Hmmm. How to repond to that? Well, I suddenly tried to immagine myself in Montreal, started apologizing, in Chinese, for speaking Chinese, only to be blasted again (thank God I knew French before I'd gone to the province of Quebec; now I can understand how some monolingual anglos might feel in Montreal!).

So why was I was I blasted again, you might ask? Because I'd used the word 'Putonghua' (lierally, Common Langauge, i.e, Mandarin Chinese), instead of the prefered 'Hanyu' (i.e., the language of the Han, or Han language, the Han being the majority ethnic group in China.

So after apologizing for the use of the wrong choice of words for describing Chinese, while still speaking chinese of course, and the woman just getting even more irate, I had to explain that I was not a local! And that I had studied chinese (using the proper local terminology this time of course) in Jinan, to which she finally accepted to use Chinese for the sell. After that experience, I couldn't help but feel as if I was back in Montreal, where I'd witnessed a good share of language scraps there too. I guess we really are all the same, aren't we?

That's it for that one. We'll see what I type next.

Oh, please. I really don't need to get into details here. I did what I had to do to appease the host at least a little. The other foreigners at the table were absolutely refusing to eat the stuff, but at least were willing to get sloshed for the host. I wasn't drinking, so this would be the second offense for me!


So now tha it's don,e we don't need to dwell on it any more. I still get nightmares form my time in 'Nam... uh, I meant, the banquet!

That'll shut'em up!

One night from my hotel room in urumqi, I'd heard maybe half a douzen teenagers outside yelling various slogans. You know the usual stuff like 'Allah is Great', and aotehr stuff. I'm guessing one of them might have been something along the lines of 'Long live Islam' and another suggestin g another name for their 'province'. Not a good a good pastime in China.

Well, this had only lasted about a minute until I'd hear one whail of a police syren. Silence was all I'd heard after that, so I can only immagine those teenagers must have taken off there and then (Can't blame them; I'd do the same!).

Machjo. Sorry to have made you relive a terrible experience. there will be no more mention of......you know....from me.

No prob. My God, every time I reread my posts, the errors are incredible. Granted it's 1:36 am right now, so that certainly doesn't help. And then here in China I'm always using four different romanized writing systems (Pinyin, French, English and Esperanto). It's so shameful. I even spell 'the' as 'teh'. I'm embarrassed. But that particular one has more to do with fast typing.

Fascinating machjo !!!

Very interesting.

dear peapod,
i want to know if you talk about one chinese art.if yeah.it ought to be "xangsheng",two men perform it. maybe my understanding is mistake to your meaning, then i'm so sorry,i only want to know canadian and usa culture more, what you are interested in something to our country. i shall glad to communicate culture each other.
best wish!

Macloliu. Interesting. I must admit that even after all these years in China, I can't remember ever even hearing of xangsheng. Can you please let me know what it is. Thanks.

Machjo did you go into one of the little places with the pink lights? because you know.... those are not just hair stylists..... and they'll give you more than a massage too.

Twila, Chinese people that I know think that cheese is a really weird food. I've heard it's stinky, strong and tastes like soap. They eat it on pizza though....

there used to be a vietnamese deli here, and they'd make subs and they smelled terrible. like urine and rotting meat, they just did not smell good at all. But they were soooooooooooo tasty!!!!!! mmmm

Oh yeah, that's another story...

I'd already been in China for over eight months at the time, in Jinan to be exact, and while I always heard other foreigners warning me not to go here and not to go there 'cause it was a cover for prostitution, every one of those places turned out to be fine; so needless to say I just ended up branding them as paranoid, wondering where they'd gotten their paranoia from.

After all, the only place I'd ever come across prostitution up until that time was in Urumqi, in 'Islam Hotel', where my phone kept ringing off the hook all night. And sinse my Chinese wasn't that good yet, plus I'd never heard of prostitutes in hotels, I just couldn't figure out what the heck they wanted... until one of them got frustrated with my lack of Chinese and decided to come upstairs! Anyway, I'd gone to bed early that night, and so answered the door with nothing but a towel around me. She was dressed somewhat conservatively, but beautifully none-the-less, and was saying something I couldn't understand except for the 'do you want' part. So as I signalled her to wait at the door while I'd get my dictionary, she proceded to step in, to which I immediately responded by closing the door a little more narrowly while pointing to my towel to indicate I wasn't properly dressed. Well, it didn't ssem to bother her, so I repeated same again. Then when I turned to get the dictionary, and turned back to the door, she was gone.

And suddenly it dawned on me. Months earlier, in Lonely Planet, I'd read about this, with women offering massages. So I looked up the word massage in the dictionary to see how it was pronounced. And sure enough, that's what she was saying. "Do you want a massage?".

Oh boy, now I was turned on. But too late. My lack of language ability had saved the day the first time around. But it would certainly not work the next time, now that I knew. So what would be the plan for the next few days? Unplug the phone, put a Don't disturb sing in the door, and that's that.

Well, it worked, and I've always used it sinse.

Now as for the red lighted parlours, the first time I'd ever come across those was in Shanghai.

"But prostitution is illegal in China" I thought to myself.

'And with the evil CCP in power, no one would ever dare prostitute themselves so openly out of fear of ending up in one of those re-educatin camps! So there's no way those are brothels" I thought to myself. "Of course it would have to be subtle, like it was in the hotel in Urumqi."

Anyway, I needed a haircut, I was new to Shanghai and didn't know the area well, and as it happenned, I worked not far from a red light district, in part of the newest and nicesest parts of Shanghai, as I was to find out later. Now my gut was still telling me those were brothels, but somehow I was still in denial. "It's just not possible" I thought to myself. So finally I decided to check it out and know for sure. So I openned the door to one, and at the door indicated I wanted a haircut. She shook her head from side to side, and waved me in. So I looked at a bunch of men sitting on the street in the corner shop next door, and asked them, partially in body language, partially in Chinese, where I could get a haircut. And they, laughing, pointed back to the parlour in which half my bady was standing already.

Hmmm... so I looked at the chairs and the shelf in front of them, and there were scissors anyway, glowing in the red light. "Nah, I'm just being paranoid" I thought to myself. So I walked in and sat in a chair. She loked at me baffled. So I thought, "OK, no more denying it." If a hair stylist is baffled at a customer sitting in a chair, then she's not a hair stylist."

So she waved me to the back. I went to the back, she opens the door, and there's a bed. "OK, I'm gone." I suddenly step back, thinking of all the creepy critters which might be crawling in that bed, but she's right behind me, so I accidently step on her toe. Anyway, she steps out of the way, and I'm out the door in a flash.

Next day, I ask a staff member what those places are, describing the red-lighted parlours, expecting the answer, "a brothel". Well, she wasn't that direct, and used a ong phrase to describe it, all couched in euphemisms, but sure enough, she was telling me it's a brothel, and then warning me not to go into those place, because "bad women" go there. Meanwhile, I was thinking, "Oh, and I bet 'bad men' go there too.

Well, that's just another story which happenend years ago. I would never want to go into such a place again.

But hey, at least those places are easy to avoid because they are so obviously brothels (except the first time because I just couln't believe my intuition on that, stupid as I was).

Oh China has got it's fair share too.

Again, the place is Shanghai a few years ago. I'd been in Jinan for well over eight months before that, but I guess they're just a more conservative city?

Anyway, I was walking along with my friend whenmy nose suddenly cought the odor of rotten, putrid something or other. I asked my friend what it was, and she pointed to the food stand at the corner across the two lane, but still fairly wide, street. It was stingky tofu. And man did it stink!

"Would you like to try some?"

"No thanks" I politely answered.

"I know it stinks, but it does taste good" she retorted, knowing what I must be thinking.

So I repeated my last answere, deciding to just take her word for it.

I have eaten stinky tofu sinse, but never in its pure form... Oh, sorry, I tried once and gagged.

But when mixed in with other foods, it's, uhm, might I just say palatable!

Oh, and on the food part...

I personally don't particularly like cheese either, but I can eat it to be polite.

I don't know.

hahahahah
Xiangsheng is like a talkshow program,a humor performance a lingual art and is popular in the North China.
Dashan, who is a Canadian, is a very famous xiangsheng artist,actor,writer in China.
And Now Xiangsheng which takes the audience much enjoyment is an absolutely necessary program in each performance.