Kindly Remove Your Fatty Liver

Within the first week of arriving in this blessed nation of 1.3 billion, I was trucked off to an undisclosed location, promptly disrobed, probed, poked, and examined. Alright, so maybe it sounds better without all the mundane details, but it was still quite the surreal experience, only further enhanced by the confusion and language barriers.

Apparently, if you plan on staying in the country and working for more than six months, you must surrender to an extensive health examination to make sure you aren’t bringing in anything that China officially doesn’t have- you know like bird flu, HIV, and hepatitis.

Anyways, we took the company van out to the suburbs to a nice looking hospital which served as the infected foreigner removal center. In fact, I think it said something like that on the sign. Maybe.

First stop was the relentless forms which the Chinese love so much. Then came the red stamps, which they love even more than paperwork. And rice. Combined. Then we paid our fees, got a picture taken and were told to go to room 1 down a dark and ominous hallway. There, a diminutive lady gave me a key, a robe, and pointed in the direction of a changing room. Then comes the age-old question of how much should I really be taking off? This comes up a lot in China, especially in massage parlours (I swear I go to legit ones), so this time I decided to be safe and keep the undies on. You just never know when a brisk wind could come up.

So with papers in head, I set out down a different corridor to acquire all the red stamps I needed to be able to leave. Awkward, robe-induced conversation with people from all over the world is incited, and goes something like this:

“So, where you from?”

“Sweden.”

“Cool.”

First stop was X-ray. Seriously, I don’t know, just full body x-rays. You don’t question the Chinese government and their methods, you just don’t. Then I proceeded down the hall to the height and weight station (yay! I’m average here). I distinctively remember being in the 98th percentile in a height test in the States at some point. Next, I was hooked up to an EKG machine, moved along to the blood sample room, and ended up at the vision test.

The vision test never goes well for the Long family, at least the ones like me that inherited the Koerner side of the genes, like me. I can see fine now, thanks to the glasses that cure me from somewhere near total and utter darkness, but the color blindness gets me every time. However, this time I remembered a trick that my uncle told me last time I saw him in California. On that special visit he decided to take out his tiny, but awesome, 2 seat plane, and pick me up from my grandparents’ house outside of San Diego, and fly me back to L.A. to meet up with some friends. As we are flying back at dusk, we are approaching the runway, and Uncle Mike points out the two sets of smallish lights on either side of the runway. He explains hurriedly that they are some sort of approach warning, so that you can guide yourself in at the right level, letting you know if you are going to over or under-shoot the runway. As co-pilot, and inheritor of the color-blindness to a much lessor extent, it was my job to tell him if it was green for good job, yellow for a bit too low, or red, your ass is gonna end up in the grass. How he flies alone still mystifies me.

Anyways, he said that to get and renew his pilot license, which he has had to do several times, you must pass the color test, but that he manages to use the nurses to his advantage. After they show him the little mosaics with barely different colors, and he is expected to point out the figure 8 in red or whatever, he looks a little helpless. The nurse then prods, asking does he see the eight? After a further lingering, but not too pregnant of a pause, the nurse will invariably say, right here, this eight right here? Can’t you see it? she will dubiously ask. At which point you proclaim, oh yes of course! There it is, I saw it all along, and trace the figure eight right where she has just shown you.

So I tried that with the nurse, and this time added the little twist of pretending to not really understand the question, and I ended up with just the marginally bad “Red green color weakness” stamp on my form. But there are worse stamps. Oh, much worse.

The next stop is the ultrasound, which I frankly thought where only given to pregnant women. I got all gooed-up, and got to experience maybe just a little bit what it may feel like to be having a baby. That’s really about as close as I’m hoping to get to the whole process. After all that, I see a few of my fellow compatriots who are having a good laugh out in the hall. Apparently one of the “heavier” teachers didn’t do so well in the ultrasound room. No, he wasn’t pregnant, but should maybe reconsider his lifestyle.

Although still cleared to teach, he received the Scarlet Letter of the stamps, the creme de la creme of all possible proclamations, “Fatty Liver.”

No explanations, no prescribed course of action, no reprimand, just the stamp to let him know that his liver wishes he’d stop drinking beer and eating at McDonalds.

All it took was a quick trip to China, where they have no qualms about telling it like it is, and stamping it out for the world to see.

Back At It

Today marked the start of another semester, and gasp! back to the “grind.” I put this in quotes, because people always seem to think my “grind” seems more leisurely than theirs, but dammit, working part time is enough in my book.

Quickly, here’s whats new before I go into further detail:

-We had a much needed month long break from teaching (read: being a white clown), while the students went of holiday for Chinese New Years. A friend of mine, and fellow teacher did a Google search “cheap flights from Shanghai,” came up with the Philippines for about $100, so that’s where we went. Much more on that later.

-Then the parents came, and we had a great 2 weeks traveling through the 3 Gorges Area and seeing the Shanghai sights.

-I have a new part time gig freelance writing for a website called www.bizcult.com – Basically there are about 5 posts a day from me and the guy who started it, dealing with doing business in China, and how it is related with cultural and current affairs. It is quick, snappy writing, so even if you don’t personally have an interest in the business climate of China, you may find it interesting as well. Check it out!

-I’ll be teaching again just part time in the afternoons now, and also taking Chinese lessons every morning for about 3 hours. I have found that I must somehow subconsciously miss the structure that school provides, because I have been looking forward to this for a while now. Who knows, maybe the ARMY is next?

So that’s the basic gist of my life, not that it affects you in any way probably. Anyways, when I pulled out my old book of lesson plans this morning, I came across something that I had meant to post earlier.

On the last day of class last semester, I was told to give a written test to my 5th graders. No guidelines or anything, they just wanted me to assign some sort of letter grade to these kids who saw me I’d say on average 30 minutes every two weeks. Needless to say, I didn’t feel very vested in their actual progress, so I thought I’d at least try to entertain myself during the test.

Here are some of my favorite responses. And don’t take this as me mocking, well, belittling their abilities, because they are half my age, and speak English twice as well as I do Chinese. Really I just found them to be creative, if not downright crafty. Case in point:

Question 6) Define “reflection”

Jimmy: “‘Reflection’. This word is in our book”

Question 10) Write a few nice things about me.

Favorite responses: “Kyle Long is very handsome, he has golden hair.” Ok, shameless ego boost, but I’ll take it where I can get it.

Rudy went in a different direction with this one, and took it a little bit more literally. “Kyle Long lives in the USA. You eat breakfast everyday. You eat dinner everyday.” Cut to me bringing my red pen out for this one.

Question 9) What types of food are healthy for you? Cindy: “I like the fish. Eat the fish are comfortable. They are nice but I usually eat them.” GOD I love Chinglish.

Last Question) If you had all the money in the world, what would you do? Ralph started down on the right path, but probably should have used an eraser, as this is what he literally wrote: “I will give Kyle Long eighty fifty thirty percent. I will give my parents 40%. I will only give me 30%” Thanks Ralph, your grade is now an A, B, D.

Alright, more posts to follow shortly. Must go study for my Chinese placement exam tomorrow.

Opposites

I finally broke down the other day and asked how to say “opposite” in Chinese. I promptly forgot it, but that’s not that point. Something like fan mian I think. It just seems like every day there is something that strikes me as perfectly counterbalancing the way I am used to thinking about things. Some are simple- instead of calling “911,” you dial “119″ in China, or instead of saying “Emergency Exit Only,”saying “No Entry on Peacetime,” to more profound things like accepting herbs as a treatment as opposed to powdery white stuff. I find a simple question of “why” usually elicits an entertaining response when faced with an odd explanation. For example: I asked my host family why they don’t have an oven. They explained that they are not “healthy for the body.” I obviously couldn’t leave it at that, so I pushed further and found that they supposedly think that they should only have foods like that once per week, because too much hot food is not good for the health. I laughed, and explained that Americans tend to think that eating at least half of your food in fried form isn’t the picture of health, but then again, they are not a nation of morbidly obese people, so who am I to judge?

More differences if not opposites:

1) People will wait in line to eat at Pizza Hut (ok, I think that does actually qualify as an opposite

2) It’s acceptable for women well into their 30’s to have Hello Kitty or other cartoon-ish apparel.

3) Stumps vs. Holes. This is actually a term my mother coined when visiting Beijing, and wanting to know if she would be forced to squat over a porcelain hole in the bathroom, or if she could rest easy on a stump of a Western toilet.

4) Happy Hours are actually during times when people are out drinking anyways (like 6 pm-6 am). Nothing wrong with that.

5) Monkeys boxing on TV

Obviously I can’t think of anything since I’m trying to write them down now, but I will keep them coming.

And, in more entertaining Chinglish news, here is the new chant that I taught my 5th graders today. Normally, I would make an executive decision, and just skip certain things, but the authorities told me that the students will be tested on the material that we were given. And when you have to compete with a billion other students to get into college, I don’t really want to harm anyone’s future. It’s called the “Weekend song,” and I decided just not to explain it to them at all. Not that I could if I wanted to.

Monday morning is not Monday morning

‘Till Taylor has his coffee

Friday night is not Friday night

‘Till Jessie leaves the room sweaty

Tuesday morning is not Tuesday morning

“till Nick has his talk with his son

Thursday night is not Thursday night

‘Till Chris has played with his Bass

Come on to the weekend

’cause the weekend I’ll get high [seriously]

Hold off ’till the weekend

’cause there’s too much time to think

And there will be nice skies

I thought that was bad until I turned the page to find we’d be learning Scarborough Fair. Yes, let me look up the herbs that they don’t use in China for a really valuable lesson. And also figure out what a “cambric shirt” is. And also that they can’t actually say “Remember me to one who lives there,” because its a lyric in the song, and actual grammar doesn’t work like that.