Moving in the Right Direction

This doesn’t seem like good PR for China, but I guess in the post-Olympics world, they figure no one will really notice. According to the UK Mirror,

China has confirmed itself as the ’king of counterfeiters’ with the building of a new shopping centre dedicated to fake brands.

Some of the brand impostors at the mall in Nanjing, east of Shanghai, include a McDonalds look-a-like burger bar called McDnoald’s, a Starbucks-style coffee shop called Bucksstar Coffee, and a wannabe Pizza Hut called Pizza Huh. [go to the link for logo hilarity]

I’m pretty sure there are some terms of their acension into the WTO being violated here though.

If you’ve never been to China (go! get on a plane!), it’s not like this is anything new, but it seems a bit brazen nonetheless to have all this in one, seemingly sanctioned, place. Anyways, this is part of what makes China so great as a tourist. Here’s a picture I took in a little village in the 3 Gorges area of inner China. The authorities were properly notified.

Makes sense if you can't pronounce the R.

You can never escape Chinglish

Not even in Germany. I spotted this keeper on a mug of a Chinese girl my first day back at classes: “Dandelion freedom is comfortable covering with to float.”

I would take it as a political commentary on the fact that she has officially broken the grip of the ruling Chinese elite as she begins student life in Germany, but it is probably more a reflection that she knew it would take far too many renminbi to buy a new mug here in Euroland. Despite the Euro at 13-month lows against the dollar, I’m looking to cut corners, too. Even the Mcdonalds here seem fancy and expensive, and the KFC serves you on a real plate with silverware. What??

Anyways, I’m doing a Masters of International Business at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management. Sounds fancy, but I’m still looking to not wear a tie as much as possible. It’s a two year program, and has a focus on China-Euro relations, so I’m happy that it continues to tie into my interests, aka finding delicious Chinese food wherever I go. I don’t have a camera, so here is a photo from Flickr of the school’s logo.

Podiums are for fancy boys

It’s quite a pretty school though actually, with a courtyard, koi pond, and 24/7 library, which hopefully is not a sign of things to come. We have a visit scheduled to the European Central Bank already on Tuesday, so I will learn more about how Euros work, and how to get them into my bank account.

Anyways, that brings me to the financial crisis, and how it is helping me to get on TV. As I was walking by the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, one of the largest in Europe, with a friend last “Black Friday,” we were stopped by a reporter, wanting to know how it has been affecting us. Unfortunately she did not want an English answer, and I can barely order bretzels and bier at this point, so I don’t think I made the cut. Then, today, in further confirmation that I have a face made for radio, I was stopped with another German friend by some sort of radio DJ on the street, wanting to know about the last dreams we had. Again, no dice on the English answer. My German in 10 Minutes a Day book is fun, but really hasn’t progressed me to a highly intellectual level yet.

In other news, Germany is beautiful, is definitely not China, and I can breathe easy and run outside whenever I want without fear of developing lung cancer at age 24. The cars stop for pedestrians (knock on wood), churches abound (see you on Easter), and the wieners are delicious (and not made from actual dogs).

Here are a few more pictures of things I see daily here in Frankfurt. Thanks for all your well wishes, and let me know if anyone is in need of a European vacation and wants to visit!

I am not capable of taking such good pictures.

City Hall Plaza

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.

Those in Wine Often Make Gaffe

Chinglish is funny. Most of the time the translations are funny, but they don’t really affect your life other then to provide you with a little laugh as you’re walking down the street. It becomes less funny however, when you are given 20 minutes to answer 100 “psychological” questions in an online test and your work visa depends on it.

In their infinite wisdom, the Chinese government created an agency to screen anyone coming over to teach English, and I presume other jobs, who don’t have some sort of certificate with an official looking red stamp that proclaims you an expert in the subject. Because I was never formally trained in teaching, I had to go through the system to make sure I’m not a wacko or something. The first part consisted of an online test of two parts- psychological questions and informational. I can’t really do the test justice, other than to highlight some of my favorite questions I copied down.
These were in the “agree,” “no opinion,” “disagree” style.

#6) Facing with the every days work is the root of my pain and baldness
#47) Those in wine, often make gaffe
#33) As a game putting forwards person, it is difficult for me to motivate others’ enthusiasm
#34) If I considering with the self absorbtion, I cant give the heart to the thing which is totally not related to mine.

They were literally all that ridiculous. I mean, they’re making all of the English teachers who enter the country take this test, and they didn’t think to have just one of them look over the test and correct it?

Moving on to the informational questions, which were just about as bad, but not nearly as much fun… At one point I had to decide how to classify Asian people’s skin a)white b)black c)brown, or d)yellow. I really had no idea what they were looking for on that one. Most of it was simple enough though, like “where are the 2008 Olympics going to be held,” and “If it is now 2006, how many years ago did 9/11 happen,” and also “What is the smallest continent;” only all the answers were oceans.

The second part of the test involved a 3-on-1 interview which basically consisted of informal chatting, peppered with inquiries over how I felt about physically punishing the children, and my teaching styles. They were clearly trying to get information about the company that hired me as well, and there were questions asked about how they decided which age I would teach. As far as I could tell this process was absolutely random, so I made something up about how I told them I had experience volunteering with young children.

I’m really not sure how I fared, but hopefully I won’t be deported. Or executed for having this blog.