A girl named Mark
Looking out of my giant glass box where I spend my days, watching the sun move from the left side to the right [sometimes I can stare directly at the orange ball due to the thick pollution/fog], I look at our neighboring corners- to the left are three giant electric towers that are probably giving us cancer faster than the air pollution is coating my lungs in tar. Directly across the street is a mini bus station that appears to have a constantly burning fire [of leaves, plastic, rubber] and a mangy dog [we call him Big Yellow]. Neither corner meshes with our theme of ridiculous ostentatious ness.
Mercedes and Buicks filled with recently rich Chinese driving around the suburbs of Beijing trying to decide with $350,00 apartment to buy zoom past caravans of bumpkins on their horse-pulled carts. That’s my daily view. At least my office has great windows.
One thing I still don’t understand about is country is breakfast. There seems to be no differentiation of what is breakfast food and what is not. For instance, you don’t walk into a restaurant and ask, ‘are you still serving breakfast?’ because breakfast is mostly fried dough or bao zi [like dumplings, jiao zi, but bready-er]. One expired Angel [they all seem to quit so quickly, including the waitress named Mark], told me that she ate one of two things for breakfast:
1. cookies;
2. really spicy duck parts- head, neck, wings, and cold spicy lotus root;
3. a combination of the two.
In a real estate magazine, an ad for an Insinkerator [as in the garbage disposal brand] shows a white family and the drawing of what’s inside the garbage disposal shows bones. Can you put bones in an Insinkerator? I think not.
A word on names. Even the workers that are good friends with our manager, Shang Li, still call her ‘Manager Shang’. I find this too strange and only call her by her Chinese name. [Her English name is Sylvia but I’m not a fan of that name and she doesn’t respond to it anyway]. Other times, people are called solely by their title because Chinese names are too much of a pain to remember. For example, if one needs the Angels’ assistance, they just call out ‘Angel.’ I’ve watched my new Angels, two of whom are best friends [I call them the “Duo”], from ten feet away call each other and they don’t respond. Do they not have the innate reaction to turn your head to anything resembling their name? [like Blair, Air, chocolate Éclair for me]. No. Another example, before they learned to say my name in their two or three syllable pronunciation [Ke Lair] they just called me ‘Butler’ [in Chinese]. For example [this actually happened] if someone opens the bathroom stall door and I’m in there [cuz the lock was broken] they would exclaim, ‘oh! The butler!’
I got my business cards:
Claire Nelson
Butler
Shi Mao Olive Garden
They don’t get that the image this conjures up in 99% of American minds is Anthony Hopkins in a tux and tails eating breadsticks at the Italian chain restaurant the Olive Garden. Still, I’m happy I got the cards. Market research? Ha!
Sarcasm is not the Chinese sense of humor. I said with a smile on my face to the waitresses, ‘its really busy today’ and they said, ‘no, not one person has come in.’ And I said, that’s true, I was actually joking.
One woman just waked in with a Burberry scarf, a violently violet fur [possibly real] coat, riding pants and Molly Ringwald 1986 style brown boots that she wears with her pants tucked in and at least a three inch heal. I was talking with my friends last night that the word ‘cheesy’ doesn’t really translate.
My new Angel, Duoduo [not pronounced like the English word duo meaning two], who recently decided that her English name would be Ani [like Difranco] told me her favorite song is a remix of the theme song of Beverly Hills Cop the movie from the 80s. I told her this and she had heard of Eddie Murphy.
Duoduo and her best friend Kang Ying [whose English name is Cathy but you would think she’s saying Cassie] tell me of their evening ventures to play their favorite game called Killer. They go to a club that is specifically for Killer, and is only open 6 pm to the wee small hours, and they pay $1.25 an hour [they make $3.25 an hour] to play this game. They sit in a room with 15 other people and try to guess who are the killers, who are the police, and who are the common people. Everyone lies and tells stories and whoever wins gets promoted to the next level. It’s a mind/ logic game, like something we would play in middle school. No one drinks, as that would ‘affect your thinking’ Duoduo tells me. Sometimes they play multiple nights of the week until 1 am. When I ask her why masses of 20 somethings are flocking to play this wholesome game and Americans would never consider such a thing [outside of the religious freaks] she has a few answers:
1. The Chinese think ‘language is an art’ and therefore like speaking it;
2. When young kids are growing up, they think policemen are heroes, and want to be one. My limited interaction with policemen is that they are corrupt, surly, and power hungry fat men. But I could be wrong. Maybe they are heroes.
We grow up with movies like Crash, which I saw recently, where cops are mostly sexist racist pigs. Outside of Beverly Hills Cop, are there movies that make police look like heroes?
New Year is almost upon us, which means that it sounds like I am living in a war zone. This is the first year in a long time that people are allowed to set off fireworks in some parts of the city, and they have set up firework selling shacks and light them off late into the night for multiple nights in a row. New Year is like if you didn’t let a country of 5 billion people not work and have a holiday and not party for an entire year, and then suddenly BAM it explodes into this drunken loud craziness. Taking the subway means battling the brigade of people wheeling suitcases. Going out to eat means battling the lacking wait staff cuz most have gone home for to celebrate. All transportation is overly crowded. It’s really a fun time. I’m leaving for Vietnam January 29th.
Happy Year of the Dog!
Mercedes and Buicks filled with recently rich Chinese driving around the suburbs of Beijing trying to decide with $350,00 apartment to buy zoom past caravans of bumpkins on their horse-pulled carts. That’s my daily view. At least my office has great windows.
One thing I still don’t understand about is country is breakfast. There seems to be no differentiation of what is breakfast food and what is not. For instance, you don’t walk into a restaurant and ask, ‘are you still serving breakfast?’ because breakfast is mostly fried dough or bao zi [like dumplings, jiao zi, but bready-er]. One expired Angel [they all seem to quit so quickly, including the waitress named Mark], told me that she ate one of two things for breakfast:
1. cookies;
2. really spicy duck parts- head, neck, wings, and cold spicy lotus root;
3. a combination of the two.
In a real estate magazine, an ad for an Insinkerator [as in the garbage disposal brand] shows a white family and the drawing of what’s inside the garbage disposal shows bones. Can you put bones in an Insinkerator? I think not.
A word on names. Even the workers that are good friends with our manager, Shang Li, still call her ‘Manager Shang’. I find this too strange and only call her by her Chinese name. [Her English name is Sylvia but I’m not a fan of that name and she doesn’t respond to it anyway]. Other times, people are called solely by their title because Chinese names are too much of a pain to remember. For example, if one needs the Angels’ assistance, they just call out ‘Angel.’ I’ve watched my new Angels, two of whom are best friends [I call them the “Duo”], from ten feet away call each other and they don’t respond. Do they not have the innate reaction to turn your head to anything resembling their name? [like Blair, Air, chocolate Éclair for me]. No. Another example, before they learned to say my name in their two or three syllable pronunciation [Ke Lair] they just called me ‘Butler’ [in Chinese]. For example [this actually happened] if someone opens the bathroom stall door and I’m in there [cuz the lock was broken] they would exclaim, ‘oh! The butler!’
I got my business cards:
Claire Nelson
Butler
Shi Mao Olive Garden
They don’t get that the image this conjures up in 99% of American minds is Anthony Hopkins in a tux and tails eating breadsticks at the Italian chain restaurant the Olive Garden. Still, I’m happy I got the cards. Market research? Ha!
Sarcasm is not the Chinese sense of humor. I said with a smile on my face to the waitresses, ‘its really busy today’ and they said, ‘no, not one person has come in.’ And I said, that’s true, I was actually joking.
One woman just waked in with a Burberry scarf, a violently violet fur [possibly real] coat, riding pants and Molly Ringwald 1986 style brown boots that she wears with her pants tucked in and at least a three inch heal. I was talking with my friends last night that the word ‘cheesy’ doesn’t really translate.
My new Angel, Duoduo [not pronounced like the English word duo meaning two], who recently decided that her English name would be Ani [like Difranco] told me her favorite song is a remix of the theme song of Beverly Hills Cop the movie from the 80s. I told her this and she had heard of Eddie Murphy.
Duoduo and her best friend Kang Ying [whose English name is Cathy but you would think she’s saying Cassie] tell me of their evening ventures to play their favorite game called Killer. They go to a club that is specifically for Killer, and is only open 6 pm to the wee small hours, and they pay $1.25 an hour [they make $3.25 an hour] to play this game. They sit in a room with 15 other people and try to guess who are the killers, who are the police, and who are the common people. Everyone lies and tells stories and whoever wins gets promoted to the next level. It’s a mind/ logic game, like something we would play in middle school. No one drinks, as that would ‘affect your thinking’ Duoduo tells me. Sometimes they play multiple nights of the week until 1 am. When I ask her why masses of 20 somethings are flocking to play this wholesome game and Americans would never consider such a thing [outside of the religious freaks] she has a few answers:
1. The Chinese think ‘language is an art’ and therefore like speaking it;
2. When young kids are growing up, they think policemen are heroes, and want to be one. My limited interaction with policemen is that they are corrupt, surly, and power hungry fat men. But I could be wrong. Maybe they are heroes.
We grow up with movies like Crash, which I saw recently, where cops are mostly sexist racist pigs. Outside of Beverly Hills Cop, are there movies that make police look like heroes?
New Year is almost upon us, which means that it sounds like I am living in a war zone. This is the first year in a long time that people are allowed to set off fireworks in some parts of the city, and they have set up firework selling shacks and light them off late into the night for multiple nights in a row. New Year is like if you didn’t let a country of 5 billion people not work and have a holiday and not party for an entire year, and then suddenly BAM it explodes into this drunken loud craziness. Taking the subway means battling the brigade of people wheeling suitcases. Going out to eat means battling the lacking wait staff cuz most have gone home for to celebrate. All transportation is overly crowded. It’s really a fun time. I’m leaving for Vietnam January 29th.
Happy Year of the Dog!
posted by Claire at 1:47 AM
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