Happy Birthday To Me

So, today is my birthday. I've already talked about the present I got (and the amusing way in which it was bought) in yesterday's blog entry. Today I'll talk about the birthday itself. I'll be updating this entry as the day progresses so stay tuned.

My day opens up with the best present possible: waking up next to the beautiful girl who was somehow sufficiently brain-damaged to become my wife. After that a printer is next to nothing.

I woke up long before Joan did, so I spent much of the morning watching her and listening to her snore lightly. I also experimented with moving around and watching her move after me (although this had the side effect of continually shrinking the space available to me on the bed). Finally she woke up and wished me a happy birthday. We then got up.

Joan's mother had been busy. When we got up, we were faced with the traditional birthday...

...noodles. Yes. You read that right. Birthday noodles. You were expecting cake?! Which country do you think I live in again?

In China the birthday tradition is to make a bowl of "long life noodles" -- basically a spicy noodle soup with slices of beef, vegetables, mushrooms and other things (this one had spicy sticky rice dumplings, for example)
-- and, to be strictly traditional, share it with family and neighbours. (We decided to keep it in the family, however. We're not that traditional. Our neighbours aren't Chinese and wouldn't understand the meaning of it anyway.)

That's it for the morning report. Stay tuned as I update my birthday report over the day.

Afternoon update:
Joan had to go to the dentist today to get her braces adjusted, so I was left pretty much alone all afternoon. I tinkered with my printer, mostly, figuring out how to make it do its tricks and such. I also, as an acid test, printed off an e-book I'd been wanting to get run off at a print shop for a while. The new printer is sweet: fast and yet with good quality output. This even though the Linux drivers don't support it fully.

Evening update:
My birthday dinner was delicious. Joan's mother bought some 夫妻肺片 (Lit. "Married Couple Lung Pieces" -- mysteriously named because as far as I know there's no lung pieces in it, nor any married couples), a dish consisting of sliced beef, sliced beef tripe, sliced beef blood vessels, peanuts -- all in a peppery, garlic oil sauce. Other dishes included 腐乳 (fermented "cream tofu"), a marinated tofu and pepper dish, some Chinese cabbage hearts, and fried, spicy fish.

After dinner my friend from SCUM dropped by with his girlfriend. Oh, and a new coffee maker as my birthday present, so now its time to find some decent coffee.

Night-time update:
So, I headed out for my night-time walk and fell into a mud puddle, coming home dripping wet. Fun, fun, fun. Still a decent birthday overall.

Shopping Shell Games

Today was spent buying my birthday present (a new HP Deskjet D2368 printer). I had spent yesterday looking at printers while Joan and her mother were out shopping for clothes (without, as usual, buying any) and then the evening figuring out which printer would work with my Linux system.

I always have fun watching Joan while shopping. Joan is a natural bargainer who, despite always being friendly and polite and nice, manages to cut throats like a pro assassin. She will bargain for almost anything -- I really do pity the poor fool of a car dealer that mistakenly believes that he can slide one past her when we come to Canada....

What I noticed, however, that is really alien to we westerners in China, is the culture of deceit that pervades everything here. Taxes are avoided as much as possible, but only if the buyer is willing to trust that the seller isn't going to screw them over on warranties or the like. Fake goods are everywhere and quick changes can happen when your back is turned. Even something as simple as price tags are not indicative of the price -- they are the starting point of negotiation. Anybody who pays the price tag on any sizable purchase is a fool. This is true whether or not the place you're buying from is a major chain or a small corner shop, incidentally.

Starting prices can vary significantly depending on a wide variety of circumstances including:

• the seller's guess as to what you can afford
• what kind of relationship the seller has with his supplier
• whether the seller is a woman or a man (men tend to be more push-overs)
• whether the goods are legit or not (fake goods -- of any kind! -- are epidemic-level)
• whether you want an "official receipt" (tax receipt), an "informal receipt" (proof of purchase, but otherwise under the table) or no receipt at all
• how willing you are to just leave and not buy
  
• how many other people sell the same thing
• what kind of store is selling the goods
• what your skin colour is (the Chinese can be insanely racist at times -- and foreigners get stiffed, always)

How wide can this vary? Well, the lowest initial price we got from a shop was 320元 and the highest was 495. And the final price for what I got was 300, with an official receipt. (Joan is very good at "salami tactic" brinksmanship.)

Of course Joan then found out that the expensive part of printers isn't the printer, it's the ink. (290元 for a black and a colour cartridge.)

Another interesting ritual whenever buying anything major in China is the unpacking and verifying contents ritual. The printer I got was in an HP box with HP seals all over it and HP-branded packing tape covering every possible means of ingress or egress. Yet, before money changed hands, the seller brought out a carpet knife, deftly sliced the tape and seals, opened the box and showed us that it contained everything it was supposed to contain: printer, cables, manual, disk, trial cartridges, warranty card, etc.

I've been buying computer hardware all of my adult life in Canada and never felt the need to open up branded items to verify contents, but here it is necessary. If you don't do it, you will get ripped off someday. I know this because I know several foreigners who did get ripped off this way: "1GB" flash disks, for example, that turned out to be deftly switched for 256MB ones -- all sold without a receipt, of course, so no way to get what you were supposed to get. The seller has notoriously short memory when faced with a customer he's ripped off without a receipt....

(Just a friendly clue: never buy anything in China that's worth more than about 10元 without a receipt if there's any chance whatsoever that you may need to trade it in or get it repaired.)

So, anyway, fun observations at an end, my day ended well with a nice new printer and another blog entry about the weirdness that is my life in China.

Down The Rabbit Hole

Only it's not a rabbit hole this time. It's....

Let's back up a bit.

So, this afternoon Joan goes to the washroom. (We have a squat toilet here to Joan's delight and my eternal unhappiness.) As she prepares to go, the gold chain around her neck which has my father's old wedding band on it unlatches and slithers down her chest and into the toilet.

The wedding band, luckily, lands next to the toilet on the floor.

Still, the chain is down the "rabbit hole" -- about a one-meter drop down to the trap. (This, incidentally, is why I prefer western toilets. I mean another reason why. As disgusting as it would be, I could, in a western toilet, just reach my hand in and grab the chain.) Further, the way the plumbing is set up, to get to the trap and open it to gather the chain would require us to go to our neighbour downstairs. Who isn't at home, this being Spring Festival and all that. On top of that, we need a monkey wrench to open the trap, a tool I sadly do not have in my toolbox. Of course we could just hire a plumber but since this is Spring Festival season the for-hire workers we can usually not throw a brick for fear of hitting three or four on the head are nowhere to be seen.

So we've been using half-assed measures like snipped coat hangars tied to wooden poles trying to snag the chain from the toilet. As of 5:30PM today, about an hour after the incident happened, I managed to snag it to the point of it being visible once. Sadly it slipped off and plunged back down the hole then. Since then I've not been able to snag it again. Joan's trying it now.

I'll update this post with our progress for those who are sitting on the edge of their seats wanting to hear how it comes out.

Update #1
As of 6:30PM still no luck. Joan hasn't quite given up hope yet.

Update #2
We've given up as of 7:10PM. I can only think, "Thank God it wasn't me who dropped it -- I'd not hear the end of it for the next six months!"

In other news, it turns out we forgot a scheduled class with our four girls at the hospital today. I hate holidays.

Final (I GOD-DAMNED HOPE!) Update:
The chain has been found. It never actually fell down the toilet. It fell into Joan's clothing after a segment gave out. (The clasp is rock-solid.) She had me, her mother (and herself, but that's not important) fishing in a stinky, grotesque toilet for hours. She went out for a walk with the necklace hanging somewhere inside her clothing. Then, when getting ready for bed, it fell out on the bathroom floor.

How irritating.

I Use Jabber

I have a lot of Instant Messenger IDs, but the one I am slowly pushing people toward is Jabber (a.k.a. XMPP). The problem, you see, is that the various Instant Messenger networks don't play well with each other. MSN talks to MSN only -- and to a few others who do a lot of work to reverse-engineer MSN's protocols with unreliable results. AIM and ICQ use the same protocol, but as far as I can tell don't interoperate. AIM just licenses ICQ's technology but an ICQ number can't talk to an AIM user. (I may be wrong on this specific one.) Others? They're locked out again unless they've reverse-engineered the protocol, again with unreliable results. The same extends to Gadu-Gadu, QQ, YIM and the whole sorry pack.

Jabber/XMPP solves this problem by being an open standard. Anybody can run a Jabber server and Jabber servers can talk to other Jabber servers if so desired. This means that a company can own its own IM server for internal communications (without paying the horrendous licence fees some of the commercial properties demand) while still connecting to the outside world and other Jabber servers. Indeed there are even bridges that allow you to connect Jabber to MSN, AIM, ICQ, etc.

But that's not why I want to use Jabber.

I want to use Jabber because it doesn't tie me in to Unka Bill or his monopolist cronies. It allows me to use whichever client software I feel comfortable with on any platform I'm comfortable with (where MSN only legally allows you to use Microsoft's client software on Windows, for example) and it allows me to use whichever Jabber provider -- free or paid -- I choose to use. (Currently I choose GoogleTalk.)

So if you want to Instant Message me? Use one of the ones on the sidebar of my blog. But pay attention to that "preferred" option. Because slowly, but surely, that list is going to shrink. But a Jabber/XMPP account will always be there.

Edited to add:

If you want to make the switch to Jabber, it's pretty easy:

1. You need an account. The easiest way to get a reliable one is to sign up for GoogleTalk. If you're more adventurous, try out the various other public servers available.
2. You need client software. GoogleTalk allows you to use a web page for chat, but this is not convenient for most purposes. (It's a boon for people who travel, though!) Instead I recommend Pandion as an easy-to-use setup. Even my mother could install and use Pandion with only a little remote hand-holding on my end! If you don't run Windows or if you want to try something other than Pandion, there are a lot of clients to choose from. (This is one of the benefits of using open standards.)
   

OK, This Is Seriously Cool!

What can I say? Interested in where I live and what it looks like? Just follow the link and all will be shown! (Flash will be needed.) You can see where I work as well if you like. Joan works up here. Here's where we buy groceries most of the time. I spend most of my meagre allowance here. Joan spends all my money here. (I'm going to die for that crack!) And here is where the best thing happened in my life. (Mom, Andy, Marion, Misha and Jeff will remember that place well, I think.)

The "L"-Word

A question posed in a colleague's email today got me to thinking. The subject? The dreaded (by ignorant elements of the expat community) "L-Word": 老外 (laowai). It's the generic Chinese word for "foreigner" and is formed of the character for "old" and "outside". There is a persistent myth, spread in all sorts of places that "laowai" is a pejorative.

I'll just go on the record right away as saying this is bullshit.

I've always pretty much considered this view bullshit from a little bit of sleuthing (hint: look it up in the "word ocean" -- the Chinese language's equivalent of the OED and see if it's flagged as a pejorative or not) and because my two best friends in China (and the nicest married couple in the world) did not look embarrassed when others used it in my presence, but just to be certain I went to a source I trust: my wife.

Her answer was unequivocal. "What?!" was the first response. This was followed by "Of course not!" (That she herself has no problems using the word in my presence was another significant hint, BTW.) After my providing the context -- some foreigners feel it is an insulting term -- and a few moments' confusion she finally asked "Why would they think it was an insult?"

Her reactions were spontaneous, instantaneous and as honest as I've ever seen. That pretty much settles it for me.

The so-called evidence used to "prove" that the term is insulting includes this damning piece: "They never address you as 'laowai' so it must be an insult!" This is, to put not too fine a point on it, the most specious piece of bullshit reasoning I've ever heard. They don't call me "Jianadaren" (Canadian) to my face either. Am I to infer from that little fact that being called a Canadian is a pejorative too?

The primary reason they don't address foreigners as "laowai" is quite simple: unlike "laoshi" (teacher) or "laopo" (wife--affectionate) or "laogong" (husband--affectionate), "laowai" is not a term used to address people. It is not a title. It is a noun. I am not "Yan laowai" like I am "Yan laoshi". It has nothing to do with insults and everything to do with basic vocabulary!

Another piece of "evidence" is that they don't refer to you as "laowai" in formal circumstances. They use instead words like 外国人 ("waiguoren" -- lit. "outside nation person").

Well, duh. Welcome to the wild, wooly, wonderful world of "register" and "formality". "Waiguoren" is the formal register. It is used in circumstances where formality is expected and most interaction with strangers, unlike in the English-speaking world, is considered relatively formal in China. "Laowai", in contrast, is informal register more suited to banter in informal situations. Indeed it is "waiguoren" contracted and having the neutral "lao" put in front (in the same vein as "laohu" means "tiger" not "old tiger", "laoshu" means "mouse" not "old mouse" and so on) to distinguish it from other uses of "wai". The Chinese don't use "laowai" in interaction with us for the same reason we don't typically say "Hey Dude!" to the boss in a new job in place of "Hello, Sir/Ma'am".

You will find, if you Google on "laowai", a plethora of nonsense where people will insist, quite vociferously, that "laowai" is a pejorative (to to the bemusement of the locals). Why would this be if it really isn't an insult?

Enter speculation.

I think that the people who believe "laowai" is an insult are people who harbour in their own thoughts disdain and distaste for the locals. Whether this comes from the typical white arrogance you find in expats around the world (especially the British ones in my experience, but not exclusively them) or if it comes from a reaction to culture shock, the fact remains that a lot of expats everywhere in the world harbour concealed (or not-so-concealed) dislike for the locals around them. Enter the very Freudian notion of "projection" -- attributing undesired or shameful thoughts and attributes onto others. They feel dislike for the people around them but cannot, for a variety of reasons, admit this even to themselves. So they instead claim that it is the others who are intolerant and who have the hatred, not them.

And it doesn't hurt that most western countries, especially the USA (and to a lesser extent Canada), simply adore victims. Everybody wants to belong to a victim group, so if you're white and middle-class, why not just make one up to apply to you?

Playing With Words

I like words. I like words in particular that don't exist. One of my favourite episodes of Duckman, for example, involved a running gag surrounding the fictitious word "proxyglossoriasis" (spelling approximated) which is supposedly a disorder in which one replaces the word one intends to use with the next word in the dictionary. The effect is hysterectomy.

I also like using the word "spectabulous" -- coined by Greg Porter of BTRC, if memory serves -- which is defined as "being so good that you have to invent a new word to describe it". (It's a portmanteau of "spectacular" and "fabulous" you see.

In that vein, there is a word I use which I also coined. It is a portmanteau of "China" and "anaphylaxis": chinanaphylaxis. It means "having a psychological allergic reaction to living in China".

Today was a big chinanaphylaxis day.

I knew it was coming. It's Spring Festival time and this is when the Chinese are at their most Chinese. Today, in particular, was visiting the relatives who visited us yesterday (as previously blogged). The day was a disaster from the beginning onward. I'll gloss over the gory details of getting there and just let you imagine an unhappy rant about people who can't seem to communicate what they've got planned for you, where it will be, when it will be and how many places you're going to stop off at in between for indeterminate lengths of time. Because, apparently, actually telling people what is planned for a day is a State Secret whose revelation in advance is punishable by death. Or something.

Anyway, that set the tone for the rest of the evening. Which consisted, basically, of me sitting in the corner of an apartment and playing my Nintendo DS. (Thank GOD -- or at least Misha -- for that thing!) I would get called up to eat or to play the trained monkey for a while every so often, but mostly people around me were having a great time socialising, talking, reading, watching TV, etc. while I was bored out of my skull.

Insert here a long, unhappy rant about a culture for whom the word "no" means "he's just being polite, so let's force him".

And the worst thing about it all? Nobody was doing this to hurt me. Nobody at all was saying "what can I do today to piss Michael off the most". They were just doing what good Chinese hosts and families do. It just unfortunately was badly timed (c.f. above re: the horrific trip there) and badly executed ("culture clash" is the term bandied about most often). So not only was I aggravated most of the day, I had nobody to actually point fingers at as the malevolent source of the aggravation. This actually makes things worse.

The day wasn't a complete write-off. The food was good (although not as good as the food cooked by my mother-in-law). I lost track of all the dishes, but the best one was the tripe with mixed pepper. The stir-fried squid with mixed pepper was a damned close second. And my darling wife accidentally referred to "Andy" as "Candy" and then looked charmingly perplexed when I mentioned that I doubted Andy went to Mexico for that kind of operation....

Spring Festival

So today is the second day of the New Year (Chinese reckoning) and I've had my wife's aunts, uncles and cousins over for dinner. My mother-in-law did her usual excessive cooking routine and made assorted delicacies and specialities. If memory serves there were (in many cases the names are made-up to describe, not translated):

• homemade meatballs and fish balls with wood ears and some kind of mushroom;
• fried chicken drumsticks;
• lotus root and spare rib soup;
• stir-fried green beans with some kind of leafy vegetable I couldn't identify;
• battered lotus root with pork;
  
• some kind of vegetable that has no English name (菜苔 in Chinese, although I may have the characters wrong);
• pork and taro root cracked rice casserole;
• mutton and carrot hot pot;
• wormwood salad;
• stir-fried beef tripe and pepper;
• a mixed cold dish containing marinated beef, beef blood vessels, tripe, coriander and peanuts.

All of this was after the huge breakfast of homemade dumplings (Chinese dumplings are like Polish perogies) and the day full of snacks of various sorts.

And, yet, somehow I'm still losing weight over the holidays.