A couple days ago, I was leaving campus to go get dinner at a restaurant two blocks away. Since coming here I’ve gotten used to seeing carts in alleys or on corners selling all sorts of local foods, but China never ceases to surprise me. Most of you will be familiar with the fact that there are tons of bicycles around. What the US has in cars, China seems to have double that number in bicycles. A very common variety is one with a sort of trailer on the back, though its more like a pickup truck tricycle if that makes any sense. While I was bobbing and weaving around parents and students along a crowded sidewalk, I spotted one of the aforementioned pickup tricycles with some sort of grill on the back. A man was selling skewers of meat that he was cooking on what I think was an electric grill. Naturally, I was a little leery of the quality and cleanliness of it, especially since I didn’t see anyone buying anything when I walked past. On my way back he was nowhere to be seen.
I was on my way to the same restaurant yesterday when I spotted the same cart. This time there were two students buying some of the tricycle meat skewers and I resolved myself to try one. It turned out that I got some noodles for dinner, and though they were called beef noodles, there were only a few tiny pieces of meat in the dish. So, I was hankering for some meat on my way back. The man was still there on my return trip, so I stopped and attempted to ask how much for one of the skewers while pointing. Though my Mandarin is virtually nonexistent, I was able to understand that he was asking if i wanted just the one. I nodded and he held up 3 fingers, and that I most definitely understood. I handed him the money and was now the proud owner of a skewer of chicken from the the Tricycle Meat Salesman. It was quite delicious.
I told the Foreign Affairs Office about my cache of beer bottles. They were certainly surprised and definitely embarrassed. I assured them that it was more funny than anything and was told to just put them outside my door for the trash collectors. It is quite a nice system, I put the bag of trash outside my door at night and by 10 am or so it’s gone. The vagabond bottles will soon meet the same fate. Sorry, vagabonds, but I don’t think you were coming back for those bottles anyways.
I observed two more classes today, the first one with a teacher who was described as “young and energetic,” the other with the head of the foreign languages department for Junior 1 (6th grade). The first teacher was definitely energetic and fun while getting the students involved. She split the class in half and had a running competition between the two sides for the whole class. She would explain a certain phonetic sound and then ask for students to give her English words that used that specific sound, rewarding a correct word with a star on the board.
Then there were the tongue twister competitions where she would ask for a volunteer and had that volunteer choose an opponent from the other volunteers. When no one volunteered to go against one particular student, the teacher asked if any of the observing teachers (of which there were 5, plus me) would like to give it a try. Then she offered that I could do it as well. At that suggestion the poor kid seemed to grow pale, but the class loved the idea. The student didn’t want to face me, which I certainly understand, I wouldn’t want to face any native Mandarin speaker on their home turf either. I’m not sure why, but nobody else volunteered, so I looked at the student, smiled and nodded. I was certainly caught up in the energy of the class and I didn’t want to leave him hanging. So, he mustered up the courage and agreed to face me. The class reveled in it. We both started at the same time, the last one speaking lost. I forget the exact tongue twister, but it was something about cooks and cookies. I do remember that I thought the phrase “how much cookies” was incorrect because a cookie is a countable noun and much is used with uncountable nouns, but I have peculiar tastes. At the teachers countdown we began. The poor kid didn’t stand a chance, but he was a great sport. The teacher was smart in saying that maybe later he could challenge me to a Mandarin competition, which would be even worse for me than what the student had to endure with the English.
The second class was much less interesting, though the teacher covered more information. At one point she was writing out “consonants” on the board. Naturally, she made the all too familiar single letter wrong which then leads one down a path of misspelling after missppelling after mispelling. After a couple of tries, the other observing teachers started shouting out letters, this only compounded the problem. She eventually asked me how to spell it, but the other teachers continued with their suggestions so she had 2 or 3 people telling her different letters at one time. It was a mess. I finally wrote it down on a piece of paper and walked it over to her. After she wrote it, I had the worst anxiety that I spelled it incorrectly. I spent the rest of the lesson worrying that I had corrected a teacher incorrectly, a great precedent that would set for the students. I can imagine a story like that would spread to all 1500 Junior 1 students in a matter of hours, even though they are divided between 2 buildings and stay in their classrooms (the teachers move rooms, not the students). As soon as I reached my room I looked up the spelling. Thankfully my first glaring mistake has not happened yet. I anticipate it will come when I learn a bit more Mandarin and finally attempt to employ it. I only hope i don’t somehow insult someone’s mother. That’s the type of mistake from which you don’t recover.
That’s all for now. Thank you, everyone, for reading, and especially for the comments. Zai jian for now!
The below picture is also unrelated to the post. I find it funny that downtown Beijing has creepy bronze statues just like Maxwell Street in Chicago does. I'm glad to know that unsettling bronze figures transcend nationalities. What a cosmopolitan world we live in.