Tyhoon

The view from my bedroom window of approaching typhoon-influenced weather. Why we only ever seem to get hit by typhoons at the weekends is another problem...

Marco Polo

I'm now doing a little bit of volunteer translation for this site (Marco Polo Project), which basically collects new and interesting pieces of writing coming out of China, be they literature, comment, or whatever else, and then translates them into French, Spanish and English. They appear to have a knack for finding really unusual pieces, and I definitely recommend it. Its a bit of a challenge for me, translation wise, but I am thoroughly enjoying it. Besides which, the name Marco Polo is just so redolent of adventure, and the deserts of the Silk Road...

Settling In

So I am, after all, starting to feel settled in my new flat, despite a few teething problems when moving in. Most of the problems were the cockroaches. However, they are dead now. All of them. I hope.

My flatmates are quiet, to the extent that I hardly ever seen them. They are all Taiwanese, and mostly, I think, somewhat older than I am. They were certainly shocked to find a young female foreigner had moved into the spare room. There are, respectively, internet man, military man, and singing fruit man, who sings loudly along to his tv. Yesterday he came into my room to adjust a cable and handed me two giant oriental grapefruit, before vanishing again. I have managed some communication with them - me and internet man have made common cause against the cockroaches, whilst singing fruit man frequently exhorts me not to leave my keys in the lock and tells me off for the untidiness of my room. The phrase 亂七八糟 (everything in disorder) came up, and suddenly it was as though my ayi stood before me once again... Sadly, as they all mostly speak Taiwanese (actually a different language from Mandarin. I had thought I was just being stupid and misunderstanding people, until I realised my university has entire courses teaching it), conversation is... painstaking.

Courses have started, and after a class change, I have been placed in a class on Taiwanese/mainland history, where everyone speaks better Chinese than I do. It is stimulating: a history course delivered in Chinese, to a group of students who happen to be non-native speakers, and so who require the occasional word/grammar point explained. My Chinese is also definitely less good than the rest of the class (most of whom are Japanese, and thus write beautiful characters), so I'm learning pretty fast.

I've even settled in enough to actually begin seeing a little of Taiwan - beaches, mountains and karaoke buses. It's been an entertaining few days and hopefully, I'll even get some pictures up soon.

Mosquitoes

Sadly, I am living up to the name of my blog, and am now covered in mosquito bites.

Taiwanese mosquitoes are nearly as evil as the cockroaches. Unlike the standard variety which at least have the decency to both be visible and buzz incessantly, which gives you a fair chance of hunting them down, Taiwan's appear to be silent and near invisible. I never catch them biting me - only find the bites when they come up as huge red lumps shortly afterwards. Damn them. The gecko who lives behind my dictionary has definitely been slacking off on eating them recently.

Tales of Old Shanghai

If anyone has time/inclination, these are hilarious. I've been reading my way through them for about a week: http://www.earnshaw.com/shanghai-ed-india/tales/library/griffin/t-griffin.htm

Dingxi, Again

I'm back!

Sort of.

I arrived last week, jetlagged and in fear of typhoon. Please pilots, never tell nervous fliers to expect turbulence, especially when said nervous flier just succeeded in deciphering the headline news of her Chinese newspaper (Typhoon Approaches Taipei: Arrival Expected in 24 Hours). But I landed safely, and without undue turbulence into Taipei, and have spent most of the intervening 5 days shocked that I am in fact not in Beijing.

You would have thought this would have been obvious: the tropical climate, the flight of parrots which took off as we drove from the airport into town, the traditional characters, the weird local dialects... And yet, small, subtle clues keep reinforcing the message that this is not China. People queue, spontaneously. They like queueing, even. The metro is not overcrowded. I can access facebook with ease. Traffic obeys some streetsigns. The patented Chinese roadcrossing 'walk of death' whereby you walk blindly hoping that the other side will be reached by some miracle is rendered obsolete by pedestrian crossings that work. There are rules, everywhere. And yet, it still feels oddly familiar, as the scent of stinky tofu drifts through the tropical air.

Anyway, post a few days finding my feet thanks to the kindness of a few friends, failing to register, actually registering for class and running around madly in search of a flat, I have been successful. And it is in Dingxi, no less.

No, not the same Dingxi I lived in before. That was 定西. This one is 頂溪. See, entirely different. They just happen to sound kind of the same.There is one tone difference between them as well.

I do confess that I did fall for the neighbourhood. The coincidence of the name, followed by the realisation that it was easily the nicest Taipei area I'd seen sold it for me. However, my newly acquired landlord is a salesman and a half, whether he intends to be or not.

Having arrived at Dingxi MRT expecting very little, after three days of fruitless viewings, to find a tiny and very elderly Chinese man waiting for me instead of the usual busy ayi, I was a little surprised. Within moments of my arrival, he began to berate me for not answering my phone in the thickest Chinese accent I have had the pleasure to decipher in some time. I was one minute late, but in that minute, he'd tried calling 7 times... We hobbled off, gingerly, to go view this flat, and along the way, he regaled me with tales of his rather interesting life, his departure from mainland China, attempted to convert me to Catholicism, declared an undying love for Scotland, and then condemned it for wanting independence, and told me all about his Japanese wife. The flat was adequate - amazingly cheap, very basic, a little grubby - but I was sold by his enthusiasm, and persistence, and the fact that he didn't give me a chance to say no. He took me to dinner, gave me a scarf and lectured me on the horrors of mainland pronunciation for some time. Ironically, his accent was anything but standard, for either mainland or Taiwan.

I'm not sure how the flat is going to turn out - it'll certainly do for now - but he's going to be a lot of fun. I do wish he'd learn how to text though, as I really don't understand him down the phone.

Apology

As both my readers have now implored me to write something, here it is: I'm off travelling for the next three weeks, and hence shall probably only be able to update when I get back, but we'll see.

As for the recent silence, my apologies. I got out of the habit of blogging, and equally pertinently, lately the internet has been dreadful. I can no longer access my VPN from home, and hence this is posted from the safe haven of Starbucks. Without a VPN lately, it seems that almost every site not within China itself is subject to some interference. Getting into my gmail account has become a daily half hour battle, involving begging, pleading and screaming at my unfortunate laptop. Reading the news normally involves reloading the page three times every time I click a link. Getting through basic tasks, such as applying for a student loan, now occupy the majority of the time I spend on the internet.

Anyway, otherwise lately I have:

- laserquest battle in an old bunker once used in Russo-Japanese war near Lushun (Foreigners united 5, Chinese 0). Post laserquest, which was what most of us had come for, we were also treated to a tour of Lushun, and we got to hear all about how evil the Japanese were, again.

- walked 15 kilometres as part of a bizarre walking day event held in Dalian - just me, a Bermudan named Jeff, some of his friends and hundreds of thousands of Chinese.

- gained official sort of qualification in Chinese. I'll certainly need to take the HSK again sometime, but its a start.

- went dancing with my host sister, and discovered when the Chinese waltz, they start on the other foot. I started I as normally would, and promptly stood on the guy's toes. Ah well.

- successfully avoided falling out with my ayi, despite her cleanliness fetish resulting in a very loud bout of cleaning at 3am, thereby depriving me of sleep.

- travelled to Bingyugou, just outside Dalian, and went walking/horseriding, before being persuaded to dress up and have my photograph taken by a decidedly odd group of Chinese hikers from Harbin.

- read awesome collection of Chinese modern fairytales (lent to me courtesy of a friend) written by a guy who could give Lewis Carroll a run for his money (boy flies into sky on firecracker powered broomstick, accidentally discovers the clock which controls the world's time, speeds the clock up which caused the world to spin faster. on returning to earth he finds everyone asleep as the world is spinning too fast, and making them dizzy, and when he too falls asleep he finds everyone is now living through their dreams instead. He winds up fighting an epic battle against Major Strange and his evil minions Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-tea-do (Minister for Music), Bottomless Pit (Minister for Greed), and Not Yet Enough (Minister for Corruption). It was amazing. I miss reading children's books.)

There is undoubtedly much more. However, I need to go catch a train to Beijing now.