Boy in vase
Some more pictures from last Saturday. One's of some high school students pouring out of a massive sports meeting in the university stadium:
This was among the stalls at a big roadside pottery market. I pointed a camera at some people - applause, please!
It's Friday and it's been a silly week. I let myself get so tired that I just want to crawl into a hole and sleep all winter, and then I try and blame external factors for it. Of course it's bloody hard living in China when Chinese is only your third-best language and you're a wilting sissy of an individual in the first place. Duh. I was feverishly thinking of moving into my own flat because I thought it would make me less tired than living with a family. I had second thoughts, though, because my family are so great. Now I'm just trying not to think of anything at all...
It's getting colder, so when the sun shines it's just right, and you can hurry without melting. On Monday Ever Basic suddenly decided to go off travelling. On Tuesday he said he was in 大同. Isn't that Jia Zhangke's hometown in Shanxi? Today he said he was travelling in Inner Mongolia. 总之, he could be anywhere. Class isn't the same without his intermittant "Oppa-ya!" ("I'm your older brother," i.e. here, let me do it for you because you're too girly to do it for yourself, and/or don't be cheeky). He seemed a tiny bit put out when I told him lately that despite the whole Korean "Oppa" system I don't feel like his little sister at all, and that Oppa sounds very like the German for "grandfather".
Speaking of German, a friend I met in Göttingen is in Dalian visiting his parents, and he took me out last night. It was interesting to talk to him. He seems somehow larger-than-life compared to when I met him in Germany. He said he thought East and West are like two different worlds, where West emphasizes the individual and East is about living as part of a larger group. I think studying in that world and coming from this one gives people an interesting advantage. As for the other direction, I don't know yet what effect China has on people who roughly fit my description (female, oversensitive, bigheaded, over-earnest). I'm quite happy though, not sure I want to undergo any amazing transformations.
We ate some goose and dumplings and then watched Jackie Chan doing his utmost to keep a very cute baby from an icy doom. I have to ask: was that baby not supposed to be Chinese? Was I just going crazy after a hardcore day of blathering, or was it a forrin baby?
I'd started blathering at 7 a.m. that morning and it was language till noon, then lunch in language with Korean and Japanese friends, then more language with the American couple (who don't speak English any more, and if they do they give me money). Then it was calligraphy class (more language, and I met a North Korean from Vladivostok) and then I was rung up by my Göttingen friend (untranslatable name), and that was the most language of all. He cuts me less slack than a lot of people do, and talks faster, and says more complicated things. By the end of it I was mangling Chinese in ways it's never been mangled before.
I got home at 11 p.m and my family had all gone to bed - they were all zonked because Clear Logic had had to get up at 4:30 that morning to go to a school sports meeting - I'm not making this up. His parents weren't too pleased, they reckon his normal starting time of 6:20 a.m. is early enough. (Any Irish kids reading this: say a few Hail Marys.)
Better go and brush my teeth with water from my invincible plastic bottle, since the entire length of road is being dug up and they appear to have bashed a pipe somewhere and the water's off. Solar power, showers with more buttons than my mobile phone, and all it takes is a guy with a spade. Adew,
LKQ x
This was among the stalls at a big roadside pottery market. I pointed a camera at some people - applause, please!
It's Friday and it's been a silly week. I let myself get so tired that I just want to crawl into a hole and sleep all winter, and then I try and blame external factors for it. Of course it's bloody hard living in China when Chinese is only your third-best language and you're a wilting sissy of an individual in the first place. Duh. I was feverishly thinking of moving into my own flat because I thought it would make me less tired than living with a family. I had second thoughts, though, because my family are so great. Now I'm just trying not to think of anything at all...
It's getting colder, so when the sun shines it's just right, and you can hurry without melting. On Monday Ever Basic suddenly decided to go off travelling. On Tuesday he said he was in 大同. Isn't that Jia Zhangke's hometown in Shanxi? Today he said he was travelling in Inner Mongolia. 总之, he could be anywhere. Class isn't the same without his intermittant "Oppa-ya!" ("I'm your older brother," i.e. here, let me do it for you because you're too girly to do it for yourself, and/or don't be cheeky). He seemed a tiny bit put out when I told him lately that despite the whole Korean "Oppa" system I don't feel like his little sister at all, and that Oppa sounds very like the German for "grandfather".
Speaking of German, a friend I met in Göttingen is in Dalian visiting his parents, and he took me out last night. It was interesting to talk to him. He seems somehow larger-than-life compared to when I met him in Germany. He said he thought East and West are like two different worlds, where West emphasizes the individual and East is about living as part of a larger group. I think studying in that world and coming from this one gives people an interesting advantage. As for the other direction, I don't know yet what effect China has on people who roughly fit my description (female, oversensitive, bigheaded, over-earnest). I'm quite happy though, not sure I want to undergo any amazing transformations.
We ate some goose and dumplings and then watched Jackie Chan doing his utmost to keep a very cute baby from an icy doom. I have to ask: was that baby not supposed to be Chinese? Was I just going crazy after a hardcore day of blathering, or was it a forrin baby?
I'd started blathering at 7 a.m. that morning and it was language till noon, then lunch in language with Korean and Japanese friends, then more language with the American couple (who don't speak English any more, and if they do they give me money). Then it was calligraphy class (more language, and I met a North Korean from Vladivostok) and then I was rung up by my Göttingen friend (untranslatable name), and that was the most language of all. He cuts me less slack than a lot of people do, and talks faster, and says more complicated things. By the end of it I was mangling Chinese in ways it's never been mangled before.
I got home at 11 p.m and my family had all gone to bed - they were all zonked because Clear Logic had had to get up at 4:30 that morning to go to a school sports meeting - I'm not making this up. His parents weren't too pleased, they reckon his normal starting time of 6:20 a.m. is early enough. (Any Irish kids reading this: say a few Hail Marys.)
Better go and brush my teeth with water from my invincible plastic bottle, since the entire length of road is being dug up and they appear to have bashed a pipe somewhere and the water's off. Solar power, showers with more buttons than my mobile phone, and all it takes is a guy with a spade. Adew,
LKQ x