Lord, I really don't have much to report this week, and I'm just checking in to check in. Back to Kunming means back to the grindstone, and with final papers on the horizon, that goes double. I'm near the end of my rope now. The many difficult elements of living in China and being in this program are starting to add up and make life just suck. First and foremost, a busted computer that almost certainly won't be fixed until I return to the states means that I spent Saturday and Sunday in a smoky, hot webbar writing a paper next to a guy playing Starcraft, a paper which, although I haven't looked at the draft since I quit working on Sunday, is probably no good. I'm getting really tired of not having my own space. My roommate is nice (honestly, nicer and more considerate to me than I am to him), but I just hate having to negotiate space: for chrissakes, I'm not a freshman, I should get to have my own damn bedroom. Also, it seems that every day something new in the dorms breaks: the shower, the key, the outlet, the toilet. I'm pretty much completely out of gas when it comes to Chinese class. I've never really enjoyed Chinese class; I see it as a necessary evil. I'm damn sick of spending hours a day just on language, it's like a complete brain death. And the novelty of China has pretty much worn off. I don't really have time to travel, so it's the same old greasy food, same old KTV (this weekend included several Michael Jackson songs, Twist and Shout, and If You've Got The Money, Honey), same old hot pot. Bleh. And to top things off, this weekend, I somehow contracted a cold. So, great.
It was at least nice to see my language partner again. We chatted about my travels, and she gave me a whole bag of coffee candy, which is essentially what's keeping me alive at this point. She's also going to Canada as an exchange student, and she's going to try and get a tourist visa to the States, which means she might swing by NYC during Christmas time, which would be pretty sweet. This week, we discussed the Taiwan situation, which was less juicy than you might think. To my surprise, she readily conceded that Taiwan had not historically been a part of China and was functionally independent. Discussing the Taiwan situation with the Chinese is kind of funny, because it means tapping into the stock phrases of propoganda. Every Chinese person knows by heart the party line on Taiwan, that it is "an inseperable part of China", in those same exact words, no matter who you ask, every time. But then she made me explain, in a very convoluted way, that yes, America probably had no right to intervene to protect the Guomindang in Taiwan, and yes, they probably shouldn't have, but now that Taiwan is a democracy and they already intervened, they should probably still protect Taiwan. We also had a funny discussion of democracy where she said that China's congress was elected democratically too, and anyone can run, except that, of course, nobody knows anything about the people who run, and the party more or less selects them. But don't the American parties select their presidential candidates, she asked me. No, I said, and explained the primary system, to which she replied, oh, I guess that is more democratic. To soften the blow, I pointed out that America also has problems with democracy, like the fact that you need money to run for anything here. She's fascinated by the idea that American mayors don't get paid that much, and yet aren't that corrupt, which led us to a discussion of corruption, which led me to tell her about how William Jefferson had ten thousand dollars in his freezer. Good times.
I really don't have much to report, nothing that happened to me this week was new or particularly exciting. Maybe next week I'll have more to report. Hopefully, I'll be in a better mood. Check in later.
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