Blogging from Baoding

[Don]

I want to emphasis how interesting and helpful your blog is. I am learning more Chinese and my wife loves it. I have been very lax in this department. Plus, your descriptions of many things i have seen and partial understood really add to my understanding and knowledge.

 

Thanks, these are great.

Edited April 3, 2008 by Don (see edit history)

[david_dawei]

April 4:

As Don rightly pointed out in another thread, today is QingMingJie... I asked my wife why we performed the deceased tasks the other day and she said to beat the holiday crowd I guess pragmatism trumps tradition... It seems that Baoding workers and school kids get off three days, which she says never happened before... she's almost taken aback at how the government seems so intent on helping it's people observe and rest.

 

As a quick update we went to Yoga yesterday, which is a typical exercise for chinese ladies but not men... so it was with some incentive that my wife invited me to go and be in a room full of chinese ladies bending in all sorts of positions I kept asking her why I should go and she only said over and over, because there will be so many beautiful ladies well... it's a tough life I'm going to spare all the comments I could make and just say I wish that Dennis had been there too since we would of gone out afterwards and drinking Er Guo Tou to our hearts delight Yoga goes by 瑜伽 - Yu2 Jia1。

 

We took a break from our daily routine of electrocution massage for a bone doctor who has apparatus to stretch your neck and back... it seemed time go to Mideval anways with a stretching rack approach.

 

As follow-up to some previous comments; the chinese language is intriquing to say the least, and chinese poetry has always held me captive to his terse verse full of meaning. Having written poetry, I find it nothing less than fascinating to try and study. I certainly have my favorities but I'll simply post here two poet stories in line with the QingMingJie holiday:

 

Background:

China has traditionally divided the year into 24 seasons as a guide to farmers affairs and represented the springing forth of life from it's hibernated winter; spring cleaning would be fitting here. The Tang emperor in 732 made this a once a year official time to pay formal respects to the deceased, which coupled it with the embracing of spring.

 

Cai Hu lived in the mid-Tang and wrote an eduring poem which reflects the lover's feeling when they missed their true love:

去年今日此们中 - qu nian jin ri ci men zhong

人面桃花相映红 - ren mian tao hua xiang ying hong

人面不知何处去 - ren main bu zhi he chu qu

桃花依旧笑春风 - tao hua yi jiu xiao chun feng

 

Because meaning is more important than actually words, I'll get a generally meaning to the poem:

Last year on this day, a woman's face and the peach blossoms shined on each other; due to the absence of the girl's face, the peach blossoms (usually full of smiling spring wind) are alone.

 

The story goes that Cai went out on QingMingJie and stopped by a remote home to ask for water, which a girl provided to him; apparently they both had some small emotion stir inside but neither acted on it. Cai returned the next year to intentionally see her, but the house was locked up and in his sorrow he wrote the poem. He returned a few days later to find a man distraught over his daught who upon reading the letter fell into a coma like state and thought her dead; The father suddenly was seized with the thought that this was the man who wrote the poem (and thus killed her) and wailed; Cai went to her side and picked her up begging her to wake up, when at last she opened her eyes... and the father gave her to Cai to marry...

 

 

Here we have the poet Du Mu's poem simply titled: QingMing

 

清明时节雨纷纷 - qing ming shi jie yu fen fen

路上行人欲断魂 - lu shang xing ren yu duan hun

借问酒家何处有 - jie wen jiu jia he chu you

牧童遥指杏花村 - mu tong yao zhi xing hua cun

 

 

It is a QingMing season and raining quite hard and a forlorn traveler asks for an inn. A shephard boy points to the far distance to Xing Hua Village (village in Shaanxi province, famous among poets for its wine)

Edited April 4, 2008 by DavidZixuan (see edit history)

[david_dawei]

The other day, while talking about drinking, my wife told me a poem which goes as follows:

 

ÆÏÌÑÃÀ¾ÆÒ¹¹â±­£¬ pu2 tao5 mei3 jiu3 ye4 guang1 bei1

ÓûÒûÅýÅÃÂíÉÏ´ß¡£ yu4 yin3 pi2 pa5 ma3 shuang4 cui1

×íÎÔɳ³¡¾ýĪЦ£¬ zui4 wo4 sha1 chang3 jun1 mo4 xiao4

¹ÅÀ´Õ÷Õ½¼¸È˻ء£ gu3 lai2 zheng1 zhan4 ji3 ren2 hui2

 

beautiful grape wine in a sparkling cup

hurried desire for drink and music

laying intoxicated at the battlefield don¡¯t laugh [at me]

campaigns of old saw few people return

 

overall meaning: If you don't die from drinking, you will die from war¡­ ergo, drink now and enjoy with some music too.

Ironically, I found this poem in one of my books... typical of my wife to be able to recite whole passages of poems she read long ago and still get them correct.

 

Since I'm on a poet theme today, I'll update this poem:

It is titled "Liang Zhou Song" (Á¹ÖÝ´Ê) which is a location of the present WuWei city, GangSu Province in the northwest, and where grape wine seems to have originated; the emperor's transplanted this grape eastward as they took over the western lands.

 

This is referred to as a "border poem" and breaks from the traditional depictions by the use of 'grapes', 'sparkling cups' and the 'pipa on horseback'... (I didn't mention horse in my original comments although the character is there; it seems the addition of the horse character was a nod to it's invention of allowing the princess to play while on a journey [on horse]). Of course, such trips speaks of the famous silk roads.

 

According to my book, the ending is a sardonic effect of 'kill or be killed'... I took the drinking as a kind of ruthless word play on the idea that the drinking may as well kill you, which one probably wishes since nobody wants to go to war [to kill or be killed].

[Joanne]

What I can see is that you worship anything connected to your wife! Your writing is infective.

 

Life is great!

Edited April 4, 2008 by Joanne (see edit history)

[david_dawei]

What I can see is that you worship anything connected to your wife! Your writing is infective.

 

Life is great!

maybe it's just the donkey meat everyday for breakfast mixed with electrostatic shock massage Love can be blind

[IllinoisDave]

For all the horn blowing going on, it really seems little more than, “I’m coming; be careful; don’t come into my path”. Rarely do I see drivers blow their horn in a reactive way; it is usually proactive and therein lies the intent… the desire to keep moving… like water…

Yes! This struck me from my very first trip,which was primarily Shanghai, a traffic watcher's Valhalla. While the sound of horns was constant, they never seemed to be in reaction to what someone else had done or wasn't doing. In fact whenever someone did something that in the States would've surely drawn at least a honk and/or an extended digit, never a sound was made. Just one of the things about traffic in China that constantly amazed me.

 

Thanks again David for the blog. Each one seems to take me back to China in one way or another.

[pkfops]

My wife is starting to read your posts.

 

I'm in for an education.

[Dennis143]

 

Thanks again David for the blog. Each one seems to take me back to China in one way or another.

Me too.

[IllinoisDave]

David? I need my fix...

[david_dawei]

April 7:

I was lost for a few days in drinking bai jiu and eating dog meat

 

This toxic fuel is finally sweet to my taste buds and here is when the danger of the sucker punch can be delivered upon drinking too much of it... So far, no embarrassing stories to share though...

 

The last few days were quite eventful as I rode a bike for the first time, which is truly thrusting oneselfy deeper into the syncronized game of chicken. I am teaching two 14 year olds english (one boy and one girl) and I went to play ping pong with the boy and I rode his bike and he rode his father's bike. At one stop, I asked if I could ride his fathers bike since it would have a higher seat but he said that bike had no breaks, so he should ride it! I had a good laugh since his bike I was riding I would not consider as having breaks either they are so worn out they simply slow you down and barely at that.

 

I had previously seen in all trips that the female style bike was preferred even for men and I assumed it was for quickly dismounting, and now I truly can experience the need when the bike has basically no breaks. Nonetheless, it is a step up in the experience of navigating traffic and becoming a part of the continous movement, and the need to keep going is expected as cars don't expect you to really stop but seem to anticipate your movement and where you are expected to be by the time their arrive at your spot; if you stop there will be a chain reaction of stopping by various cars, bikes, etc... so the idea of traffic 'flow' really take on an important role; keep moving in some direction, meandering to any point which permits flow, like water.

 

We went to play ping pong at a high school which had concrete tables outside next to basketball courts. Quite interesting to play on such surface, but his play was surprisingly good but he could not play a psychological game as I can and so I handled him without too much problem, despite I haven't played in almost two years. I think I'll try to take him to an indoor place even though we'll have to pay to use a real table... Walking around the other night with my wife, we saw a sign for a ping poing place nearby which we did not know of.. went downstairs to see the place and it was quite nice and well light; I mention that since the place I frequent is a little dirty and dark but the players are tremendous. This well light place was full of younger people, some of which appeared to be probably playing on teams as they were practicing in rhythmic returns.

 

In our walk we came across a hugh buddhist temple where in the back masses were burning incense; when my wife asked the occasion she then explained that this was a ceremonial event to offer incense and prayers to buddha.... so we did our part...

 

And I just got a call to come to a restuarant for jiao zi.. got to do my part now

[IllinoisDave]

April 7:

I was lost for a few days in drinking bai jiu and eating dog meat

 

This toxic fuel is finally sweet to my taste buds and here is when the danger of the sucker punch can be delivered upon drinking too much of it... So far, no embarrassing stories to share though...

 

The last few days were quite eventful as I rode a bike for the first time, which is truly thrusting oneselfy deeper into the syncronized game of chicken. I am teaching two 14 year olds english (one boy and one girl) and I went to play ping pong with the boy and I rode his bike and he rode his father's bike. At one stop, I asked if I could ride his fathers bike since it would have a higher seat but he said that bike had no breaks, so he should ride it! I had a good laugh since his bike I was riding I would not consider as having breaks either they are so worn out they simply slow you down and barely at that.

 

I had previously seen in all trips that the female style bike was preferred even for men and I assumed it was for quickly dismounting, and now I truly can experience the need when the bike has basically no breaks. Nonetheless, it is a step up in the experience of navigating traffic and becoming a part of the continous movement, and the need to keep going is expected as cars don't expect you to really stop but seem to anticipate your movement and where you are expected to be by the time their arrive at your spot; if you stop there will be a chain reaction of stopping by various cars, bikes, etc... so the idea of traffic 'flow' really take on an important role; keep moving in some direction, meandering to any point which permits flow, like water.

 

We went to play ping pong at a high school which had concrete tables outside next to basketball courts. Quite interesting to play on such surface, but his play was surprisingly good but he could not play a psychological game as I can and so I handled him without too much problem, despite I haven't played in almost two years. I think I'll try to take him to an indoor place even though we'll have to pay to use a real table... Walking around the other night with my wife, we saw a sign for a ping poing place nearby which we did not know of.. went downstairs to see the place and it was quite nice and well light; I mention that since the place I frequent is a little dirty and dark but the players are tremendous. This well light place was full of younger people, some of which appeared to be probably playing on teams as they were practicing in rhythmic returns.

 

In our walk we came across a hugh buddhist temple where in the back masses were burning incense; when my wife asked the occasion she then explained that this was a ceremonial event to offer incense and prayers to buddha.... so we did our part...

 

And I just got a call to come to a restuarant for jiao zi.. got to do my part now

You sure you didn't mean to say drinking bai jiu and FEELING LIKE dog meat?

[david_dawei]

I have yet to drink "too much"... once I do, I'll be in a gutter with the dogs licking me

 

Now... on to the dog meat...

 

I had pre-announced to one drinking friend here that when I was in Baoding, I wanted to go out and eat dog meat with him... well, seems that got trumped by family. Last night we went to eat with the family member which we eat the most with; this is my wife's older [deceased] brother's wife who has remarried... we call her Xiao Sou Zi (there is another elder brother's wife whom we call Da Sou Zi).

 

Sou Zi had a daughter (Xiao Xue) who looks alot like my wife... and the deceased brother was the one she grew up with; her sister and another brother were split off to the father... That the brother [she loved] died at a young age has left an very difficult memory for her; I often sense she visits the wife, and probably more so the daughter, to pay respect and keep hold of some connection to him. The new husband is a wonderful man with the most powerful hands I have ever encountered, despite he is shorter than me. The daughter is 16 and her english is really quite good and we talk at length whenever we visit.

 

The main event of the visit is always the meal, which the husband cooks and is nothing less than superb each time. Last night, we had his famous spicy fish which he serves each time, plus dog meat soup, pork elbow, chicken, do fu, tomatos... The dog meat was really an unexpected surprise since they didn't know I even wanted it and I have been longing to try it.. I'll just say that it was way beyond expectation and maybe the most tender and wonderful meat I have had. I understand the Koreans like to eat this and it is supposed to be a very strong "Yang" food, so as a winter dish would seem more appropriate. Anyway, I'll get to try it somewhere else and compare.

 

Also, the occasion with him comes with alot of drinking; he prepared beer, bai jiu, and two bottles of hong jiu (red wine). We first finished off the bai jiu in no time. I was told that he would like me to try the wine... so I felt obliged to... there was one problem which I was unaware of; they had no way to open the bottles of wine. Now may come an experience I'm sure I won't have repeated often in my life. First he started to use a large knife to pick away at the cork, then chop stick was shoved into the cork and I said to just push it down into the bottle, but they would not have anything to do with that. So he took the large knife and attempted to hack off the neck with very fast blows... I didn't doubt him since he is so powerful in his arms and hands but the knife broke. Then he pulled out a glass cutter and ran it around the neck; got out some pliers and then with one quick blow, snapped the neck in a diagonal with two long cracks running down the bottle... I was poured a tall glass and told to drink it careful in case of glass... I drank half the bottle and never encountered any glass.

 

I also had the please after lunch to go out to the street and help them sell and just chat with the daughter... we went on a long walk and it was dinner time for round two... basically everything again...

[david_dawei]

Traveler's Observation

I remember about 8 years ago joking with a friend that if I ever built a city it would be mostly concrete (ie: no money and time wasted on cutting small patches of grass) and no stop signs... I've found that city already built in Baoding.

 

My first impression of Baoding of one of a 'concrete city'... the power lines are likewise supported by concrete poles. The sidewalks are basically hugh tiles with a grooved strip for blind people to follow. The set back from the streets can vary from 15 - 30 yards. The practical aspect of that is the cars often park on the sidewalk and can even drive on them. The curbs often have a concrete runner which allows cars to get up the curb whereever a runner exists.

 

Despite the ubiquitous concrete appearance, the sheer amount of brick just laying around adds to the "land that time forget" landscape aspect to Baoding... It's as if someone shipped in a few million metric tons of bricks and then decided to spread it around the city, usually stacked but then unsed in large part... but the people have taken to using the brick for make-shift storage (walls of stacked brick with wood as filling holes and a lean-to put on top, finished off with a lock... If I really wanted what was inside, I'd just disassemble a wall, a brick at a time.

 

Those which have fallen over are just left in rubble and at times one gets the feeling of an airstrike like fallout had occurred. Mix this with the trash, dirt, and generally old structures in certain locations and you have an existence which persists despite it's surroundings.

 

That there are nice parts of town and newer buildings are certain. Many of her friends live in better areas and I recently visited a doctor's house (wife is a physic's teacher) and the development was nice with shared grounds built for kids but the interior still left a little to desire.

 

Certainly, we ask, "why would someone want to live like this"... and the question may betray the assumption that they can really do anything about it anyway; if there is nothing they can 'do', then there's no reason to think about such a thing. Work of 6-7 days is common; children are in school 6 days and sometimes not getting home till 6pm to do homework, help around the house, or put in a few hours at the parents shop. But Sou Zi's daughter, Xiao Xue, is still young enough to dream and speaks of not even leaving Baoding; not even to see the great capital of Beijing yet! Her eyes got so big talking of such a trip and I said we should take her and she was almost hopping up and down.

 

I wondered how long it would take for her dreams to extinguish or if how long they just hibernate. I consider that most chinese ladies that make the decision to leave china for a foreign husband to improve their life had found that childhood dream once again to get outside the 'city gate' and see this world. For some, the best they can expect is to go to another city in china and try their luck as migrant workers; probably most in Baoding will stay right here and the existence they have always known will continue to be their bedfellow...

[tsap seui]

Traveler's Observation

I wondered how long it would take for her dreams to extinguish or if how long they just hibernate. I consider that most chinese ladies that make the decision to leave china for a foreign husband to improve their life had found that childhood dream once again to get outside the 'city gate' and see this world. For some, the best they can expect is to go to another city in china and try their luck as migrant workers; probably most in Baoding will stay right here and the existence they have always known will continue to be their bedfellow...

 

David, that last paragraph sure hits home with me about something my fiancee says, "I young, I see photos of america and I have dream to see. I always no lose dream. Now american official give me big trouble with visa, maybe tell me, NO, you no gooda woman, you always no go america. But I no lose dream, I seeka I see america. I hair whitea maybe I see america."

 

Thanks for your writin', that young lady's dreams of seeing more of her country sure touched a place in my heart. And I really liked the "Lassie for lunch" story.

 

Have a great trip.

 

tsap seui

[david_dawei]

April 11

Of course I spoke too soon about not drinking too much... I had one night of outdrinking one chinese guy and I knew going home that this was simply the calm before the storm; the storm arrived the next night and was truly from the moment of seeing who was at this dinner party that I was destined for the alley;

 

it was the same guys whom I drank with about 3 years ago and one guy never left the restaurant, passed out in the bathroom, one guy ended up at the local clinic trying to get pumped full of IVs... and so I cast myself headlong into the night of drinking, setting out to cleverly put everyone away early so they would maybe want to stop drinking; I simply underestimated the one guy who is about 60 pounds more than me and can drink all night.

 

In the drinking circles I am with, the common drinking phrases are:

- xiao hu (small drink, sip)

- Yi kou (one mouth full), most common

- Yi ban er (pronounced as Yi Bir--means half of whatever you happen to have). This gets things rolling

- Gan Bei (bottoms up; you drink however much you have). This is of course the most respect shown when you want to drink an entire glass with another person..but of course it can be taken to excess.

 

A simply ploy is to use Yi ban and Gan bei on others when you have less than them; One of my tricks is to go around the room and Yi bir different people in succession so that each one of my drinks is only a half of what I have, and when you already below half a glass, each round is minimal to you; just pick people who have alot more than you.

 

I probably would of been ok if it had not been for the last round; we decided to have two more bottles of beer (we had finished off 2 bottles of bai jiu and four bottles of beer already) but instead they brought out 4 bottles of beer and two of the guys stopped drinking since they said they couldn't take anymore... Anyway, as is typical for myself when I drink, I often don't feel the full effect till many hours later; in fact, me and the guy who finished off the four bottles went out and played pool for about 1.5 hours... and it was after that when the dark clouds rolled in and I found a cool metal door in the alley to lay my head against...