Aye, a bag. My 500mL bottle was running low and I could have replaced it for 7 yuan, but 350mL bags were available for 1. Milk is also purchased in bags... and I recently calculated that it's more economical to buy the smaller bags than the bigger ones. Does nothing make sense in this country?
In sadder news, I visited my beloved pool, and was dismayed on two fronts. First, it was twice the price I expected. Then while swimming it turns out that despite the presence of lane ropes and signs instructing otherwise, people still do swim around the perimeter. Later in the evening my opinion of the pool was heightened again somewhat when Phil and I were at the bar. A man approached us and started talking to me, after a short while asking if I knew why he had done so. No, I confessed, to which he explained that he'd seen me swimming earlier. (I refrained from asking if he was the tool I was forced to run into when he cut me off.) The redemption for the pool came in my learning from him that a thirty-use card is available for 330 yuan. (I'd paid 20 for one time.)
To catch up on mundane details for those not yet aware, Alison and I are now living in Hohhot, in the province of Inner Mongolia. It's a smaller city than Changchun, but seems to have a little more culture. All signs are in Mongolian as well as Chinese, so I'm bound to stay to some degree illiterate regardless of how much Chinese I learn. We live in a Muslim district, which was especially interesting during Ramadan when someone would wander about at 3:30 every morning banging pots and pans—or doing something else that sounded like it—the intent of which supposedly was to make sure everybody woke up and had a chance to eat something before sunrise imposed the beginning of the day's fasting. Boy, that guy... as religiously intolerant as it sounds, I wanted to throw rotten eggs at him. (In my defence, I had that reaction before I knew what the heck his reason was for making such a din. But my feelings weren't changed too much by learning it.)
Friday, November 9, 2007
Saturday, November 3, 2007
All Hallows Shindig
I've been asked whether Inner Mongolia has Hallowe'en. Well, not really. Nor does China in general, nor Asia, for that matter, I suspect. In any case, within our subcommunity, which includes Alison's English school and the Holiday Inn next door (which has a half-decent buffet and a Western bar1), it's a bit of a different matter.
The school has had lots of decorations up (mostly thanks to Alison) for the last week, and had a party for their students last night (two days after Hallowe'en). But the height of our Hallowe'en experience was Wednesday night (appropriately) when there was a special at the buffet (meaning for one that it included beer) and a party at the bar. We met a couple of new friends there—two French guys (Antoine and Matthieu), one of whom had joined Alison's "I Live in Hohhot" group on Facebook.
After dinner we made the short walk to the bar where some others were awaiting us. These were four girls who are students at Inner Mongolia University, where I'm studying Chinese. They were Tomoko and Akiko (possibly the only Japanese students at the university), Tomoko's Mongolian roommate (whose name I regrettably forget), and their Korean friend Mun Gen (probably misspelled, but merely a phonetic approximation anyway). None of them are actually in the same class as me, though; this connection was also made through the Facebook group! The collection of us at the bar made for an interesting mixture of languages. Chinese and English were predominant, in that everyone spoke both of those, with varying competence. But other languages with at least two more-or-less-fluent speakers among us were French, Japanese, Korean, and Mongolian.
Oh, but as for the "Hallowe'en" aspect: All the servers at the bar had some manner of costume. In our group, Alison had a pair of devil horns, after her "bat" idea (involving creating wings from a black umbrella) failed; I wore a pig head (which was a pig-faced pillow, minus the stuffing) and fuzzy pink mittens as hoofs2; and Tomoko and at least one of the other girls had a mask of some variety.
In conclusion, we played the "bad influence" card that night, with everyone staying out until after 3am, including the girls who live in the university dorm (which closes at 11). I think everyone had a good time, at the end perhaps excepting Wilson, the bar manager, who wanted to close up and go home well before we let him.
1"Western bar" meaning that the place has a number of imported beers and is an order of magnitude more expensive than other drinking establishments around.
2My costume was only worn on the ride (did I mention my bike is sweet?) to the hotel, and my entrances to the buffet and to the bar, as visibility was very poor and the mitts made me too warm. (Perhaps the visibility aspect made the bike ride mildly foolish? In any case I think it may have reduced the number of stares I got, as when costumed I cannot be identified as non-Chinese.)
The school has had lots of decorations up (mostly thanks to Alison) for the last week, and had a party for their students last night (two days after Hallowe'en). But the height of our Hallowe'en experience was Wednesday night (appropriately) when there was a special at the buffet (meaning for one that it included beer) and a party at the bar. We met a couple of new friends there—two French guys (Antoine and Matthieu), one of whom had joined Alison's "I Live in Hohhot" group on Facebook.
After dinner we made the short walk to the bar where some others were awaiting us. These were four girls who are students at Inner Mongolia University, where I'm studying Chinese. They were Tomoko and Akiko (possibly the only Japanese students at the university), Tomoko's Mongolian roommate (whose name I regrettably forget), and their Korean friend Mun Gen (probably misspelled, but merely a phonetic approximation anyway). None of them are actually in the same class as me, though; this connection was also made through the Facebook group! The collection of us at the bar made for an interesting mixture of languages. Chinese and English were predominant, in that everyone spoke both of those, with varying competence. But other languages with at least two more-or-less-fluent speakers among us were French, Japanese, Korean, and Mongolian.
Oh, but as for the "Hallowe'en" aspect: All the servers at the bar had some manner of costume. In our group, Alison had a pair of devil horns, after her "bat" idea (involving creating wings from a black umbrella) failed; I wore a pig head (which was a pig-faced pillow, minus the stuffing) and fuzzy pink mittens as hoofs2; and Tomoko and at least one of the other girls had a mask of some variety.
In conclusion, we played the "bad influence" card that night, with everyone staying out until after 3am, including the girls who live in the university dorm (which closes at 11). I think everyone had a good time, at the end perhaps excepting Wilson, the bar manager, who wanted to close up and go home well before we let him.
1"Western bar" meaning that the place has a number of imported beers and is an order of magnitude more expensive than other drinking establishments around.
2My costume was only worn on the ride (did I mention my bike is sweet?) to the hotel, and my entrances to the buffet and to the bar, as visibility was very poor and the mitts made me too warm. (Perhaps the visibility aspect made the bike ride mildly foolish? In any case I think it may have reduced the number of stares I got, as when costumed I cannot be identified as non-Chinese.)
Friday, November 2, 2007
I'm in love...
... with a swimming pool. Yup. A couple of Alison's (adult) students took us on Wednesday (Hallowe'en, that is) to try out a pool they frequent weekly or so. Those not familiar with what my expectations might be are referred to my previous post on swimming.
I was in awe.
The pool was a fifty-metre, eight-lane one. With lane ropes. And people swimming the length of the pool, keeping right, not going diagonally or around the perimeter! The icing on all this was that the price to use this pool is about half that of the one we used in Changchun.
And there were people there who could actually swim! Some were doing flip turns. And butterfly. As impressed as I was, I was also glad to find myself to be faster than them.
If my standards were not so low, I could have complaints: There is only one time clock (as opposed to one at each end of the pool) and it wasn't moving, there were no backstroke flags,1 and the pool's quite a bit farther from our home—about a twenty-minute bike ride, rather than a three minute walk.
I don't mind the greater distance though as it gives me more of a chance to ride my wicked cool bicycle.
1Or rather there was one set of flags, and they were way too far from the end of the pool to be of any (normal) use. And they were being used to hang a message, which Alison's students informed us described to people how not to swim like total idiots (à la Changchun swimmer). So I guess they did have a worthy enough purpose after all.
I was in awe.
The pool was a fifty-metre, eight-lane one. With lane ropes. And people swimming the length of the pool, keeping right, not going diagonally or around the perimeter! The icing on all this was that the price to use this pool is about half that of the one we used in Changchun.
And there were people there who could actually swim! Some were doing flip turns. And butterfly. As impressed as I was, I was also glad to find myself to be faster than them.
If my standards were not so low, I could have complaints: There is only one time clock (as opposed to one at each end of the pool) and it wasn't moving, there were no backstroke flags,1 and the pool's quite a bit farther from our home—about a twenty-minute bike ride, rather than a three minute walk.
I don't mind the greater distance though as it gives me more of a chance to ride my wicked cool bicycle.
1Or rather there was one set of flags, and they were way too far from the end of the pool to be of any (normal) use. And they were being used to hang a message, which Alison's students informed us described to people how not to swim like total idiots (à la Changchun swimmer). So I guess they did have a worthy enough purpose after all.
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