Week 7: Kunming

First of all, sorry for the lateness of this post, I had a three day weekend this weekend due to a Chinese holiday, and I was pretty intent on enjoying it. I'm afraid this post won't be very much fun, as it's been a real tiring week for me, and I've mostly just been studying. But as always, count on there being a lot of it.

The work has been getting really heavy lately; this last week was not too much fun and next week, until Friday, won't be too much fun either. The deal is that, in addition to our midterms, which cover a semester's worth of material back in the states, we're learning two new chapters this week, and have the same amount of quizzes and homework, which is a heck of a lot. Not to mention an oral exam, which requires us to prepare five minutes each on two topics. I'm kind of despairing about it, so I find it really hard to focus and work, but mostly this weekend I've just been sleeping late and studying. I'm kind of getting burnt out on it. As always, I like the end result of learning a language, but I take absolutely no joy in any part of the process: it's just plain work for me.

I do really love communicating though. For some reason, in our discussion class, OJ Simpson came up. We had to figure out how to explain that we all thought he was guilty because he wrote a book called "If I Did It" (Our translation, btw, was "Yaoshi wo zuo le"). My language partner is also too much damn fun. Our first topic this week was "one time use products". After we established that there was pretty much nothing to discuss on this topic, she went on to horrify me with a dozen or so stories about hygiene in China. Par for the course: she explained to me that sometimes, to get chopsticks white, they dunk them in sulfuric acid. Splendid. Our second topic that week was animals, and she explained to me how afraid she was of pretty much every animal there is, especially dogs, which is rather ironic, because she lives in one of the more biodiverse regions of China. After she described a dozen or so animals as "fierce/vicious", I asked her if there was any animal she thought wasn't fierce or vicious. Her answer? "Maybe little birds". She also related to me a couple of entertaining stories about her family eating a python when she was little, and according to her, the existence of an elephant graveyard in her region of Xishuangbanna. She also told me some horrifying stories about the prevalence of elephant poachers in the region, and the eating habits of some Chinese (taking a hot bowl to remove the skull of a monkey while it's still alive and then eating its brain; throwing rats live into a roaring fire). If I could magically learn Chinese and just talk to my language partner all day, I would. Is there a program that offers that?

On Friday, I went to the mosque again, with my culture professor in tow to do translations. People were amazingly welcoming, and actually encouraged me to come back a couple of times, so long as I wrote good things about religion in China. Before the service, I talked to the guy who is essentially the Communist official in charge of the Mosque, and then after the service, I spent a few hours talking to some alter kockers in the congregation. It wasn't easy - I just flat out missed some things that they said in their heavy Kunming accent - but it was really fascinating. It was funny to hear familiar Muslim doctrine in Chinese. "You're Jewish?", one of the guys said (I was unfortunately outed by my professor, but luckily it didn't hurt me any), "Well, that's fine. But you know, the Qu'ran came last, so it incorporates both Judaism and Christianity..." Some of these guys had even been on the Haij, to my amazement. As for more detailed observations, I'm writing a paper on it, so I'll spare you too much detail. Basically, what's interesting to me, and the crux of my paper, is how the state has essentially required the Hui to form a religious identity and a separate national identity, as opposed to the combined ethnic identity that say, American Jews possess. For the Hui, at least the official version, they are first Chinese and then Muslims, but there seems to be no idea to them of an inherent "Huiness" or Hui Culture that doesn't necessarily fit either category. Again, with my language skills being what they are, and my time in the culture being limited, there's a very clear limit to what I can conclude, but that's what it looks like to me.

On Saturday, I went back to the mosque to try and find the Imam so I could have a discussion with him, but I couldn't find him. So instead, I went to KFC, which was, after months of Chinese food, finger lickin' good. KFCs and McDonalds here have a different vibe, because they are more expensive and a little bit classier than the average street food. If you work at a McDonalds, it's actually a pretty good job. The clientele are mostly middle class folks on breaks from their shopping trips. For whatever reason, I've been killing myself for some fried chicken, so it was much appreciated.

This Saturday night, I returned to the KTV. Not much to report, basically the same insane deal it was last time. I liked how I said at the door that I had friends inside, and without a moment's doubt, they just led me to the only group of white people in the club, who were my classmates. In case you're interested, I led a rousing rendition of "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun", and closed the night out belting the lead to the ABBA classic "Winner Takes It All". After a hard night of KTV, I had some late night McDonalds. So I've been really doing the America thing lately.

Really, this weekend, I've mostly stayed inside and studied, both because I've had to, and because April means that the rainy season has come to Kunming, and it's been cold and rainy all weekend. The upside to that is that I've now finished the second season of BSG, which is just a plain masterpiece. The Pegasus episode is one of the best things I've ever seen on television, hands down; it's a seriously moving piece of work, which is all too rare for TV and especially sci-fi. It's also much better than the first season. The first season is too belabored with the Cylon plan and the prophecy, and the show is always better when it's humans causing problems for other humans, with nobody controlling things from above.

So I guess this post is actually kind of a short one. It hasn't been a thrilling week really, and I've been killing myself with work, but after Friday, it should be more fun, especially with my parents coming to Kunming on Thursday (which I am really looking forward to...at least it'll be an experience). Hopefully, things will turn up on all fronts, and in any case, we're leaving for Dali and Lijiang on the 17th, and after that, I've got another long stretch of traveling ahead. I'll post more pictures when I can.