Saying it all

On Thursday I had a number of conversations with people at work and teaching candidates overseas that had me thinking about the way people explain things to one another. A China spring windburst that almost knocked me off my bike on the way home seemed to jostle something loose: the more I try to explain a project or position completely and fully to someone, the more questions that seem to arise. How could providing details only beget request for more details? By including more details of my selection, I take the person I'm talking to down a more and more specific path that gets people wondering about the choices that have led us to that place. This can be particularly complicated in the context of a sale or negotiation, whether its in business or social life. It's not just in these situations: when recollecting an anecdote, or giving driving directions, at some point there are diminishing marginal returns on increasing information. There's the decreasing value that you're adding with additional details, but why can't more be more? As one tries to approach perfect description, or perfect directions, or the perfect pitch, the further and further you get away from these things. For talkers, there seems to be a kind of pride involved in thinking that you can approach with language all the complexities of any situation, when in fact, conversations are much more complicated and more fun because the other person needs space to discover some elements without your interference. The other implication is that language has expressive powers beyond what we appreciate, that words have valences and innuendos and contexts that we need to let breathe.

Costs of Home

...has just hit $3,500 USD. I have not seen my family together as a unit for more than a day or two at a time for more than a year and a half. so we're gonna pay what needs to get paid to get back home. But considering the most we've yet paid for tickets home was about $1,800, this seems exorbitant. What keeps airlines from jacking prices up infinitely? At what price would I be willing to forgo a trip to see family and to get home? Actually, I know: $5,255.50.

Chinese voice input

I don't know what's cooler--that someone out there (probably a team of someones) has managed to take the tonal language of Mandarin Chinese and digitize it into software that recognizes spoken words, that the software comes built into the new Android Jelly Bean update, or that I can speak putonghua putongish enough to have it understood by my phone. After many small leaps and endless plateaux with this godforsaken language, this is a moment that is surprising me in it's ability to make me feel as if I've arrived.

Costner: Water pot

Nothing purchased in this place seems to last, excepting one possession I've kept since arriving here almost 5 years ago. I did not expect a hot water heating can bought from the corner grocery to make it through, alas here it is accompanying me with my coffee each morning. It is interesting, in the face of the loneliness we sometimes feel on the frontier, how things can take on the qualities of people--things you trust, things that make you take a moment and smile, a consistent friend. If I am to ever leave this place, I think I must take it with me, for there is no chance anyone else would want it.

Frazzled

A teaching candidate came into the office the other day looking like they were about to throw up. A young energetic woman with a degree in elementary education, she was trying out what was meant to become her new class. Actually, she had not even taught a single lesson yet, she was observing another teacher handle the class. With what seemed like a mixture of fright, surprise, and disgust, she declared that this was not for her. The students are 3 year olds who have just joined an organized school for the first time in their lives. When she walked into the classroom, her blond hair and blue eyes seemed to induce the children to became hysterical as they started to assault her, hitting her on her thighs and back. Even the admonishments in from the local teacher in Chinese couldn't get them to stop, apparently. The children, in essence, were feral. The scene was like something out of Lord of the Flies.

We talked about it for a little bit, going over how she had never seen kids this crazy. We talked about why and how they had gotten this way. My thinking was something like: why would they be any other way? They're 3! They're each an only child, coddled constantly from the moment they've been born, torn away from parents not 3 weeks ago to spend all day long with a stranger. And now we had the gall to introduce a foreign stranger into their lives... With time, however, I believed they would adapt.

It's amazing to think about the way an education forms a person--not just in the knowledge they amass, but in the more simple and more complex ways in which they speak to one another, act in groups, follow leaders, and strike out on their own. When our teachers with the youngest age groups get some of our 2 and 3 year olds, that first week is an amazing challenge. Then you set up routines... for everything. For every moment of their lives. And the kids start to enjoy this repetition, and can control themselves. You can even start giving the little guys minor responsibilities, and let them teacher one another as much as you're teaching them anything.

Unfortunately for the candidate--who, I am almost certain, would eventually come to do an excellent job with the class if she stuck around--I was able to see in her frightened eyes that feeling I once had standing in front of a room of young people, bouncing off the walls, with no safe harbor of common language to run to. After seeing kids at that early stage, what miracles there are that teachers can turn surly mobs of young ruffians into functional citizens over any period of time, much less just a few years.

Hustle and bustle

Every Sunday morning cars pile up along curbs in front of the farmer's market around the corner from our apartment. Despite having 2 malls right next to the Taiyanggong subway shop, tons of people choose instead to buy their weekly groceries outdoors, at the old-fashioned, dirty and disheveled stalls and carts, even in the cold of late wintertime. Throngs of people bouncing off one another, not apologizing but just accepting the bounces, with leafy tops of spring onions sticking out of canvas bags. People are smiling, today they were enjoying the sunshine and what the local gov't refers to as a "blue sky day."

A friend returning to Beijing from studying over in the Bay Area mentioned over dinner how one of the biggest things he missed was Chinese restaurants--not for the food, which he missed, but more for the "busy atmosphere." People having overloud conversations with one another, glasses clinking, chaunr sticks all over the ground, fuwuyuan hurrying between crowded tables, barking orders to one another--in other words, a chaotic mess. The locals, as well as out-of-towners who spend more than just a 60-day tourist visa's worth of time in Beijing, know this scene. At first, you might like the city despite it, but eventually those who stick around, or tourists who want to come back, like China because of the mess.

32!

Lowest recorded pm2.5 reading that I've seen in several months! One downside is that the temperature has dropped almost 25 degrees F in the past 2 days. At least we get the nice view that a 21st-floor apartment is supposed to afford for a day.

CONTRADICTION: Manners

Confucian codes or morals and behavior are stringent on the way one is supposed to treat foreigners. I was part of Beijing-based event recently whose motto, "不亦乐乎," is based on the Confucian phrase, "有朋子远方来，不亦乐乎" translating as something like, "isn't it a pleasure when friends visit from afar." As I see it, this is interpreted by most Chinese as seriously rolling out the red carpet when they have visitors: whether it's a foreigner from outside China, or a distant family member or traveler passing through, it's not uncommon to see someone give up their own bed and sleep on the floor while you get to crash in the most comfy place available. Once you've entered into a relationship with someone--be it in business as a client, as a guest, as a friend--there are these very intricate, highly developed rituals of how you're supposed to defer to, give way to, and help out one another.

Lacking any kind of relationship with someone, however, seems to make these rituals and cultural prescriptions moot. On sidewalks, on subways, in other public places, some people display what appears to a foreigner as a frightening lack of consideration for strangers. As Hilary Spurling quotes of Pearl S. Buck, "the Chinese can appear to be thoughtful in big ways, but not as thoughtful in smaller ways." People spit while walking in front of you, jostle you sometimes necessarily sometimes not necessarily in getting on and off the subway, parents sometimes let infant children crap and pee right on the sidewalk, or even inside public areas. I emphasize some people, as increasingly cosmopolitan Beijingers are starting to scoff more and more at this stuff, but it's still pervasive enough that it will be one of the most striking things most notice about China as new arrivals. I couldn't believe, in trying to get on the elevator a moment ago, an elderly man made eye contact with me as I was inputting the door code in the lobby, then as I was coming through the door the elevator was already closed and going up. At the end of the day, none of these little annoyances are a big deal individually, but they compile to produce an everything-stinks "China day" every once in a while.