Greek Might Be Easier Than Chinese

You know that phrase, "It is all Greek to me!" Currently, I feel like Greek might be easier than learning Chinese. I think people arleady know that Chinese is difficult but let me break it down for you as to why.

First, there is no alphabet in Chinese to equal phonetic sounds like in English (a=ah, b=buh). Instead, each character is equal to a word and there are over 50,000! Well, that includes ancient Chinese characters. In the common Chinese language there are about 3,500 characters (Saenz Garza, Jose de le Luz). When I first started learning Chinese I figured, "Why bother learning to read. It is too complicated anyway." So I only learned to speak and listen in Chinese. That does not get you far when you have a menu or a map in front of you. Needless to say, I am learning to read the characters now.
If you translate to Chinese characters you will get two options. The first option being Chinese Traditional and the second being Chinese Simplified. I use simplified and have not really come into any problems with it.

Second, you actually need two alphabets to write in Chinese. Have you ever looked at a keyboard and thought, "How do people who speak Asian languages type?" The answer is that they phonetically spell the words out using the English alphabet! So if I want to type the character for thank you in Chinese I have to type out how they are phonetically said in English on my keyboard xie xie.

Third, let us say you have all the characters down and you know how to type them in phonetically in your keyboard, you are probably all set right? NO. WRONG. Each vowel in Chinese has 8 different pronounciations. The perfect example is the word bei in Chinese.
Said with a flat e it means cup.
Said with a scooping sound it means 100.
Said with an upwards sound it means white.
Said with an open mouth sound means eight.
So if I say, "I would like a cup of water," it could also sound like, "I would like 8 water."
Usually native speakers can get your meaning by context.

Fourth, China is a big country which means many accents and dialects. The two foreign teachers I was hired with both are fluent in Chinese but when we came to Jaixing they were stumped. They found they could only understand 50% of what people were saying. The reason was that the dialect in the area was different than "standard" Chinese (AKA Beijing Chinese). So what a Jiaxing person says as street, versus what a Hong Kong person calls street, versus what a Tibet person calls street can be very different.
In China there are two different Chinese languages too. Mandarin and Cantonese. Cantonese is for southern speaking regions but everyone else uses Mandarin. And you thought British English and American English were different!

What I am doing to learn Chinese is first using the app Chinese Skill. I talked about it before but it is free and very useful. The second app I use is Duo Lingo which just came out with free Chinese. Duo Lingo has been teaching me how to read the characters. When I am around my bilingual friends I practice my Chinese and they correct me. It an be frustrating getting a 100 on my app and then being corrected by my friends but if it helps me speak, then that is fine.
I know there are schools that teach Chinese to foreigners in my area but I have been hesitant to sign up for a few reasons. First, I am afraid of being scammed. The second reason is that I would have to commute there which takes time and money. Third, I feel like learning on my own has been going okay. If it really comes down to it, I may sign up.

Chinese can be difficult but I found myself comparing it to English complexities as well. In English, we have long and short sounds for vowels, silent letters, and words that are borrowed from French, Scandanavian, and Greek. When I teach English to my adults they ask why ch changes from "chuh" like in chocolate to "kuh" like in choir and I tell them that we stole the word. When they asked the rule I felt bad for saying, "It is just kind of a know when it is a Greek word rule" and their faces fell. We have words that are different based on area too like Australia, Britain, and America and even in America we have the Georgia, Boston, and Californian accents. I tell them the standard accent is the Midwest accent because that is what news casters study and they seemed okay with that.

Learning any new language is hard but I think we can all agree, Spanish is pretty easy and French sucks. Honestly, French has so many silent letters it boggles my mind.

                  Saenz Garza, Jose de la Luz. How Many Chinese Characters Are There? 2018. 28 January 2018.

Bare Bones Buildings

When I first arrived in my apartment in Jiaxing, I thought it was cute and I really liked it. It had hard wood floors, an outdoor porch, and a guest bedroom. I felt pretty blessed compared to my last apartment that had no insulation, 70s carpet, and was on the side of a hill I had to climb during winter (don't get me wrong, it was nice but not brand new nice like my Chinese apartment).
Then I noticed things that were a little off about my apartment. The floor boards didn't meet the wall in some places, the dry wall flaked off very easily, and where my shower starts and the rest of the bathroom begins is not a thing. My shower drain is literally right beside the tiolet. My washer is also in the bathroom and hanging above that are drying racks for clothes. There are no such things as dryers in most countries besides the USA. In my living room, there was a giant hole in my wall that I plugged up with a yogurt cup. Not to mention that my co-workers, who lived in the same apartment complex, had completely different looking styles than me. One of my co-workers had a fully furnished kitchen with beautiful cabinets and I literally have one gas stove, one small fridge, and cabinets where the bottom of the cabinet was the same as the floor with the bonus of no shelves.

What is up with this weirdness? I learned that every apartment and house that you buy in China comes bare bones if it is new. You buy an apartment that is just concrete, dry wall, and places for plumbing and electricity. The buyer has to install everything from the floors, showers, tubs, and kitchen units. The reason why my apartment is drastically different from my co-worker's place is because they were built by two different families with very different budgets. My boards didn't meet my walls because the last people to own my apartment built them badly and they probably couldn't afford to make a nice renovations while her family was rich and could afford to make her apartment nice.

It turns out that A/C and heat is not built into apartments and houses here. You install them as seperate units so the holes in the walls are meant for the exhaust tubes. My apartment has a heater and A/C unit combined in one device and is installed in both bedrooms but nowhere else in the house. My living room gets freezing cold so I bought a space heater for it.

Many bathrooms in China are squat tiolets and not western tiolets (which I love dearly). The squat tiolet serves as a drain for the shower so many bathrooms in China are like mine, where the shower and tiolet are side by side. However, my western tiolet can't serve as drain so it is right beside a drain.

My furniture came with my apartment and it is not too bad. In fact, I got the best couch out of my co-workers and I have a TV which one of my co-workers does not have. I was glad I didn't have to go through buying furniture in a new country as well. My only complaint is that my bed is  rock hard and the springs can 100% be felt. I thought I could get used to it over time but I really can't. I just ordered a foam mattress padding to help me out. When I asked if everyone's mattress was like mine, it turns out they are. The reason is that people literally sleep on the floor here. THE FLOOR. I knew that in Japan they had a mat they roll out and slept on and they were chill with it but the Chinese are even more hard core. The Chinese roll out bamboo leaves to sleep on the ground if it is hot but mostly it is just them lying on the cold hard ground (cue Taylor Swift). Mattresses are seen as a western invention and if people even do have a mattress, it will be as firm as the ground you walk on. 
Hotel mattresses are very comfy compared to the apartment mattresses, probably because hotels have guests from countries where sleeping is actually nice to do. I know I sound very bitter about this but it is because in six months I have not grown accustomed to my mattress and in fact last night I was so achy from my bed that I considered going to sleep on the ground because it might be more comfortable.

Even in restaurants, hotels, or stores I notice that they have little issuess. There is exposed wire, floors don't meet the wall, or the windows have cracks so air blows in. In China, I have seen apartment buildings go up in a matter of months which is incredibly fast but I have a pretty good guess that they are not super well made.
It is a little sad but a few people have asked me if the houses in America are really "that" big, have front yards, and can last for years. When I told them that my dad's house had a basement, five bedrooms, and a front and back yard they were amazed. To me, these are things that are just standard with getting a house but in China, for many middle class people, what I have always lived in is a luxury. I guess you never know what you have, until you compare it with someone else.

Fast Food

When I first arrived in China I noticed that the chain restaurants in the USA were also here and I was fully against them. I refused to go inside any McDonald's, Starbucks, or KFC as I wanted to immerse myself in the culture and saw these restaurants as annoying reminders of American consumerism.
Then I got hecka lost in Hong Kong. My phone was not working in Hong Kong and I was starving. I suddenly remembered that every McDonald's ever has wifi. I also knew that their menus had pictures and numbers and thankfully I knew my numbers in Chinese so I could order food.
When I got inside they actually had kiosks that people were ordering from and the customer could choose Chinese or English as their language! I paid with my WeChat account through a bar code scanner and got a reciept with a number on it. Then I waited for a screen at the counter to show my number and  recieved my food. I sat down at a large banquet table with other people, logged into the wifi, found my hotel, and was saved.

My other experiences with the fast food here have not been so herioc as that McDonald's but I did learn something else. Even if there are chain restaurants here that are similar to the USA they do not always have the same menu items, so you still get to experience the food culture of that country.

Starbucks is here but it has way less options for drinks and snacks. However, they each sell mugs and coffee containers with the city or country they are selling from on the container. Every Starbucks in China that I have been to so far has these espresso cups with China and a dragon on the side. They had a mug for the October Festival, New Year's, and Christmas.

KFC sells moon cakes during the October Festival that are a big hit. They also sell rice bowls and "golden chicken" which looks like extra crispy chicken that I can tell. Not to mention milk tea is one of their big beverage sellers. They sell hashbrowns too but I think it is for their breakfast or lunch menu. I was unable to get it for supper.

Pizza Hut has calamari, durian, and pineapple as options for their toppings. They include noodles as a side dish and finger cakes for dessert.

McDonald's big seller is a bowl of corn as a side dish. They also sell rice bowls and for a limited time they sold buns that were black and marketed as "gourmet." Sadly, no all day breakfast like in the USA.
I noticed that the marketing for McDonald's is very different than the USA. The USA shows the restaurant as family friendly and even has playgrounds for kids at some locations (those places were awesome as a kid.) The ads show families eating together and having a wholesome time. In China, McDonald's is seen as a cool place for young people to hang out. Their ads consist of boys wearing leather jackets and spikey earrings eating a burger or a gourmet chef throwing spices and ingredients around to make a black bun burger.

Burger King is not too common here but it did save my butt once. I was in a train station and had about 15 minutes to eat and the person I was traveling with was a huge picky eater. They wanted noodles and I knew there was no way in this good green earth we were getting noodles to go in 15 minutes. I told her to find her noodle place and I would find something else. Burger King was my first stop and of course my language skills sucked to kingdom come. But, I knew Chinese numbers and that Burger King had a picture menu. The lady at the counter saw my plight and pulled out a smaller hand held menu for me and I pointed to what I wanted, paid, got it in a bag, ate half of it, got my partner, and ran to the train. My travel partner was able to eat 15% of her noodle meal, getting it to go was a hassle, and on the train it was a mess to eat. Meanwhile I got napkins to boot in my bag and it was easy to eat and clean up.

Last thing, there is an app here that should be EVERYWHERE. I call it the Kangaroo App because their logo is a kangaroo (IDK how to say it in English). You can order from any restaurant, anywhere, and the kangaroo people will get it for you and deliver it to your house. You may see these delivery people around China. They wear these huge boxes on their backs or carry it in their hands with a kangaroo on the side (the boxes are insulated for food warmth or coolness).
Here is how it works. I order food and pay for shipping through my phone. The Kangaroo Delivery Person (KDP from now on) who is close by my restaurant gets a notification on their phone and chooses to accept the mission. The restaurant has also recieved a notification and makes the food. The money is split among these people through the app. The KDP picks up the food by showing the verification code to the restaurant and then they head to my house. Through Kangaroo App I can see what time my food will come to my house and even where that person is on my map. They come to my house, I get my food, the KDP gets paid when they drop it off, and all is well with the world.

So to the fast food chains I would like to say sorry for thinking you were sucky and dumb because I only saw you as a way for American companies to make more money. You make ordering easy and you still sell items that the people want.
And to the inventor of the Kangaroo App, I love you. Please come to the states with this idea. You will make my and everyone else's life easier.

Western New Year's

I have a pen pal from Portugal and we found out that Americans have holidays almost once a month. January New Year's, February Valentine's Day, March St. Patrick's, April Fools or Easter, Mother's Day, you get the picture. While living in China I found they have a ton of holidays too including two New Year's. The first New Year celebration is the western one and the second is based on the lunar calender and falls usually in February or March. This year we got a three day weekend for western New Year's and I had co-workers invite me out. Here is what we did.

The place I went for New Year's was Mogan Shen. Shen means mountain so it is Mogan Mountain. The mountain is named after two families who were united from a marriage. (Cute) The families lived on the mountain and when the Chinese people were almost taken over by a neighboring kingdom Mo's family and Gan's family became the most kick butt army ever and wiped out the terrorizing kingdom (cute?).  They were excellent at sword making and fighting and have a reputation that lives on to this day. On the mountain you will see a statue of the couple, the wife carrying a sword for battle and her husband holding a hammer. (Relationship goals, am I right?)

We first arrived at our rented house. There were nine people on the trip so they thought to rent a three story house and it was super nice. The house seemed like it was just built and get this, every bedroom has a private bathroom. How great is that?!  It was freezing when we got there because the renters opened up all the windows for some reason, so that night for supper we actually ate in our winter coats. The neat thing about renting houses like this is that the land owners will ask you to bring groceries and then they make all the food and do all the dishes. It is great! We made hot pot that night and it was good. Items in our hot pot included meat balls, pork, lamb, beef lung, tofu, duck blood that is solidified into cubes (I skipped that), and puffy bread. My favorite was the puffy bread that you dip in the hot pot soup.
We closed all the windows and blasted the heat that night and from then on the house was cozy.

The next day we hiked up Mogan Shen which was lovely. Pictures are posted on my instagram for you to see. There is a cottage that Mao stayed at (the founder of Chinese communism) on top of the mountain along with a Korean restaurant (which is weird because the Koreans tried to conquer China a few times so not many people like them.) There are several ponds and little waterfalls along the trail which makes it like a fairy tale. There were a ton of vendors alongside the trail selling hard boiled eggs, pumpkin seeds, dessert rice bread (purple and delicious), and chips.

Final day we ate rice porridge and hard boiled eggs for breakfast and went bamboo shoot hunting. The land owners gave our group two picks to dig up the shoots with and showed us the trail they like to use for bamboo shoot hunting. They showed us berries we could pick and eat including wild strawberries, which they were all too small to eat since it is winter. We hiked up some narrow pathways into the bamboo forest. Never being in a bamboo forest before, this was neat. I learned that Mogan mountain even sends its bamboo to panda thriving areas since they have so much. Sadly, it was too cold for shoots to be growing so we found none. We headed back to the house and grilled and made hot pot for lunch. Items we grilled included pork, beef, lettuce, and squid. The squid was a bit chewy for me but everything else was yummy.
We drove back to Jiaxing after that. Someday, I hope to find a bamboo shoot in the forest. We will see.

Who You Calling Chicken Boy, You Limp Noodle!

Every language has idioms and slang that sound confusing to non-native speakers. Every language also has bad words in them so here are some idioms/slang that are insults that I have learned so far in Chinese. I found them hilarious and I hope you do too.

The first insult that I learned is calling someone a lotus. A lotus is a plant that has white and pink flower on it and lives in a pond. There are no real predators of the lotus and they are generally seen as beautiful in China and included in many paintings. If you were called a lotus you would probably think it was a compliment but it is not. If someone is a lotus it means that they complain about nothing and are seen as an annoying person. The fish in the pond have something to fear because they can be eaten at any time but the lotus sits on top of the water and is safe from any danger. So when someone appears to have it good and complain about their life, they are called lotus.

Green tea is a popular drink in China and there is even dessert restaurants that serve only green tea themed dishes. This is again something that you would think is a compliment since everyone loves matcha flavored items. Calling someone green tea in Chinese is the same as calling someone a b**ch in English. Unlike the lotus meaning, there is no story as why green tea is an insult, but it definitely is rude.

During the Christmas supper I was at with my friends I found out that chicken and duck are insults too. When people order chicken to a waitress or duck to a waiter they will try to say it in more hushed tones. When you call a woman "chicken" or a man "duck" in Chinese you are calling them, in the most PG way I can say, players. You know...playboy or playgirl kind of way. So remember in Mulan when Yao calles Mulan chicken boy? I am not sure if the writers intended it to be a way to call Mulan a mean word in Chinese but now it makes sense as why Mushu got so mad.
I also find it funny that calling someone chicken in English is also an insult but it means cowardly. So really that line in Mulan is insulting in two languages.

There you have it! Now you can insult people in Chinese or know when Chinese speakers make fun of you. Use your new knowledge wisely.