What to bring to China

I apologize for the lack of posts recently.  However, between cranking out final exams, moving into a beautiful Oxford condominium, and doing a whole lot of nothing in the raging megopolis of Kingwood, Texas, not too much China-related or post-worthy action has really taken place in the past couple of weeks.  I'm leaving for China at 7:25 a.m. this coming Wednesday- that's less than one week away.

Rather than dwell on the perplexities of international travel and culture shock or spend one more second studying Chinese characters, I'd rather devote this post to a topic so familiar to Americans: Shopping!  I sure have conducted many purely American-style shopping trips as of late, stocking up on personal hygiene items, power converters, and every other conceivable necessity that I couldn't go to China without.  Target, Wal-Mart, CVS and T.J.Maxx have all seen their fair share of this particular Ole Miss Chinese major.  As a result, the major occupier of my time this past week has been... drumroll please... packing!  Fitting all of my recent purchases into my beautiful, sturdy Samsonite carry-on has been quite the challenge, but the packing puzzle is coming together nicely. Here's a fuzzy look at my progress so far:

 

Where does it end?
A week's worth of clothing, sacks of granola bars (it helps to bring some packable American snacks to ease the transition to Chinese food three meals a day), three-blade razors, a pocket filled with Clean-and-Clear face wash, shampoos and conditioners, Off (for those pesky Qingdao mosquitos) and toothpaste, a pretty towel, my trusty travel 240-volt hairdryer purchased at the Qingdao Carrefour last summer, and a journal are just the start of it. Movies and books, running shoes and peanut butter, perfume and Q-tips have all found their places.

I've spent so much of my time and energy buying things, wrapping them in plastic, and squeezing them into this suitcase that I've almost lost sight of why I'm bothering to pack for China at all. At first glance, a repeat visitor to the Middle Kingdom ought not to bring anything. Why, you ask? Because everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, from combs and shampoo to suitcases of every "name brand" and size to women's clothing and every flavor of Pringles that probably never crossed your mind is so darn cheap in China. That's why my bag seems pretty small, and why so many times I think of an item to toss in and correct myself: wait, I can just buy this over there.

But there is a noticeable gap between what commonly shows up on American shopping lists and what actually stocks the shelves in Chinese grocery stores.  Herbal essences shampoo, Oreos, hair dryers and peaches are all easy enough to come by.  Going to China is not, by any means, like traveling to sub-Saharan Africa or the middle of the Amazon.  However, certain everyday items we take for granted aren't readily available in most of China.  Over-the-counter medicines like Tylenol, Benedryl and Pepto Bismal, TAMPONS (pads are all over the place, but still...), deodorant in any form, and any dairy products are simply not to be found.  Razors and shaving cream are tough to track down, too. 

Here's one last, loving look back on some of those items I'll surely miss this summer... sighs.

 

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google, most blogs and scores of other web sites are all blocked from the average Joe in China, thanks to the Great Fire Wall of China. At first, this knowledge was of great concern to me, especially regarding this blog- but, as it turns out, there are plenty of programs on the Internet that help expats, businesspeople and students like myself stay connected with Western social media. If all goes as planned (crossed fingers), I'll be blogging and facebooking daily throughout the summer.

Instead of taking you to amazing drugstores like the CVS mentioned above, looking for the cure for a cold or a headache might take you to a Chinese pharmacy, a fascinating but rather scary place filled with such lovely remedies as powered ginger root and various kinds of tea. We had the opportunity to visit one of these places in Qingdao last summer- no Tylenol there, for sure.

A sampling of 西药 (xi yao, or Eastern Medicine) at a "drugstore" in San Francisco's Chinatown :

There certainly is a distinctive foreignness, or 异国风味, in so many aspects of Chinese culture and life. However strongly I keep clinging to my hamburgers and private cars, Targets and suburbia, these last two weeks of America have readied me to plunge back into that Chinese-speaking world on the opposite side of the globe. I feel rested and recharged and ready for new adventures and new possibilities.  Here's hoping that more and more pictures and stories and memories will find their way onto this blog in the weeks to come.

The Chinese Lady Gaga

This is the Chinese pop star Jolin Tsai. See the resemblance?

So my Chinese final was this afternoon at 1:00 (eek!). While I was dutifully studying my soul out at the library this morning, I decided to change up my usual study soundtrack and search out some excellent Chinese tunes.  Listening to Chinese singers- and actually trying to understand them- really helps me get into a Chinese-speaking frame of mind, and it can be fun trying to piece together recognizable words.

Not every Chinese hit resonates well with the Western palate, and most Chinese singers don't have much name recognition outside of the Chinese-speaking world of mainland China, Taiwan, and Malaysia.  Regardless, I'll share some of my findings:




1. S.H.E.
Super Star
This song, by a Taiwanese girl group reminiscent of Destiny's Child, is my guilty pleasure.  I even have it as a ringtone on my phone- I'm just that cool :) A cute trend among the most popular Chinese songs is a tendency to insert "trendy" and "hip" English words into the chorus or background, and needless to say, my favorite part of this song is when the girls shout "you are my super star!" in during the chorus. It's so fun. Here's a video with (not quite perfect) English subtitles:

2. Jolin Tsai
Most Chinese female singers sing airy, slow-paced love songs with sappy, lovesick music videos. Jolin certainly sings plenty of those, but her more recent hits, at least the ones I came across, definitely show some serious Western influence. I think this girl is trying to be a Chinese Lady Gaga.  How well does she pull it off?

Stressing finals, being cozy, and adding oil to the flames

Meet my new boyfriend! (Sorry, John). Isn't he irresistible? Just check out that fiery yellow-to-orange gradient spanning the left side.  And the simple, stately Chinese and English text scattering the right in bursts of black on white.  There’s a ruggedness in its those tasteful postmarks of a “used” book, all those subtle stains and tears, scars from the battles of exam preparation. I might cry just looking at it. I cannot bear to look away from such a sexy beast.  

Or maybe I’m just finally losing my mind in Chineseland.  My Chinese 312 final exam is tomorrow at 1:00 p.m., and preparation for it involves the rote memorization of every single vocabulary word I’ve learned this entire semester, in addition to writing a 2500-3000-character essay about morality and economic development.   
It really strikes me just how obsessed the Chinese are with their country’s “economic development” or “jingji fazhan”. If you’re not Chinese, going to China, and want to sound like you have half a brain once you arrive, then there is one phrase that you must understand: 经济发展(jing1ji4 fa4zhan3).  Economic development is the underlying theme of Chinese textbooks, the topic of dinner table conversation in Chinese families, and the single-minded goal of the Chinese government.  It’s what worries Western policymakers and thrills Chinese businesspeople.  Skylines in China are dotted with what the Chinese call a “forest” of construction cranes, even in the countryside.  

But that’s the stuff of my homework, not my blog.  Because finals happen to be this coming week, this weekend I have spent more time than completely necessary studying at the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College (with occasional change-of-scenery trips to the beautiful Ole Miss library). I'm such a wild college kid.  My "last Saturday night in Oxford" for this school year consisted of washing and folding t-shirts at the sorority house with my nose buried in James J. Sheehan's "The Transformation of Modern Europe" and Wu Suo Bu Tan, my boyfriend of a battered- no, rugged- Chinese 312 textbook.  Yippee skippy!

Right now, I’m definitely not in China.  I am seated in a comfortable office chair in a spacious (not crowded) room, enjoying the pleasantly unnatural chill of central air conditioning, a warm cappuccino from Micky D’s, and the opportunity to visit a Western-style women’s restroom just down the hall.  Just these tiny details remind me of just how far removed Oxford, Mississippi is from Qingdao, China.  By glancing out the window of the honors college's third-floor study room where I've been camped out all morning, I can make out the outlines of magnolia trees, partly-cloudy blue skies, and the pillared, red-brick outline of the Ole Miss Inn.  I appreciate these Western pleasantries so much more now that I know how students live in China.

Studying for finals like I am right now, I don’t know how I could handle eight-student dorm rooms the size of those in Crosby, with a single bathroom stall down the hallway and air-drying laundry speckling the porches outside.  Or studying in library study rooms so crowded that most college students sit against the wall or squat on the floor and use other textbooks as writing desks. Or the excellent bed I slept on during my ten-day home stay: a metal bed frame, with a piece of pressboard constituting a “mattress.”  My “sister” placed newspapers over the pressboard so that I wouldn’t get splinters while I slept, and she graciously gave me a blanket to sleep under. It was really cozy.  When I asked if I might have a sheet or second blanket to sleep on, my Chinese family softly muttered about the “greedy” and “bizarre” foreigner living in their home.

 

This leads us to a NEW! Chinese word of the day: 温馨 (wen1 xin1). It means "cozy", like "Wow, your apartment is so wen xin!" or “my study set-up at the Honors College is pretty wen xin” or even “gee, this sleeping arrangement isn’t wen xin at all.” That crazy-looking xin to the right of wen xin is part of my name.  It turns out that there are many, many characters that are all pronounced “xin” in Chinese.  The Chinese language only has a set number of pronounced syllables, but thousands of characters to apply these sounds to, so 新(meaning “new”), 心 (meaning “heart”) and 信 (meaning “letter”) are all pronounced xin (sheen).  So, when Chinese people meet each other, they identify themselves by giving each character in their name a context. I might say, “Hi, my name is Xia Xin. It’s the xia from summertime, and the xin from cozy.”

It seems that I have spent a good portion of my study time today writing this blog post.  Procrastination takes many forms.  But it’s intensely studying the Chinese language that encouraged me to write this post, and through my studying I’ve reflected on how far I’ve come in the last year.  I guess I have mixed feelings about going back to China this summer.  Last summer, my experience was mixed: while my language skills improved immensely and I gained a profound understanding of many of the intricacies of Chinese culture, I was simultaneously plagued with homesickness, culture shock and relationship troubles.  At least this year I know what to expect and can mentally prepare for the weeks to come.

As far as this week is concerned, the best I can do is gather my thoughts and concentrate my efforts on preparing for difficult exams.   One last vocabulary lesson: 加油 "jia1 you2" literally means "add oil," and figuratively has the meaning of "be stronger" or "you can do it" or "go team!"  If you want to encourage someone or even cheer on your home team, Jia you!! is the phrase to use. So for this week, Ole Miss jiayou! We can do it! Si se puede! And all that jazz.

My parents named me after a Japanese supermarket

你好！我的中文名字是夏馨。

Hello! My Chinese name is Xia Xin.

That brief sentence is enough to merit amazed smiles from any interested Chinese conversationalist.

"Your Chinese is so good!" they will exclaim with (usually unmerited) awe.  To Chinese people, you aren't really anybody until you have a Chinese name.  The process of selecting this name, however, is extremely complex.  Fortunately, two summers ago I was lucky enough to have Li Laoshi choose a "good" name for me while I was a clueless pre-freshman in summer school Chinese 101.

In order for a Chinese name to be "good," certain criteria must be met.  First off, my name had to sound something like Jessica Sewell, at least theoretically.  Of course, Chinese people don't always get the pronunciation quite right; Mandarin speakers have a particularly hard time pronouncing certain English syllables, including any one that ends in a consonant other than -n or -r.  The "ool" sound in my last name Sewell just wasn't going to work, so apparently my Chinese surname "xia4" 夏, meaning summer, is a good enough substitute for Sewell.

Given names in Chinese are one or two characters in length and need to give off some sort of positive vibe.  The crazy-looking character "xin1" 馨, my given name, is according to my professor Li, "a very good name! A girl's name! It means all the good smells together."  Xia Xin.  Summer and all the good smells.  Somehow just this name sums up my China experience and the whole complicated and confusing process of learning the Mandarin Chinese language in general.

夏馨

China- all the good smells?  Not quite. For starters, my previous summer in China didn't smell very good at all- at least, not to my untrained Western nose.  Between the distinctive and rancid flavor of the Chinese delicacy of "rotten tofu," the unavoidable layers of sun-blocking smog, the general Chinese neglect for such niceties as deodorant on city buses, and myriad other delightful odors permeating the crowded streets of Qingdao, China, the overall effect of inhaling Chinese air is an overwhelming sense of not so pleasant foreignness.  

But it's somehow more complicated than that. The "bad" smells of China are coupled with corresponding "good" smells: a whiff of scented tea; the tangy and succulent fragrance of Western Chinese "chuar," or Uyghur seasoned lamb-on-a-stick; the simultaneously conflicting and confusing conglomeration of smells associated with countless numbers of bustling Chinese people crowding onto buses, crowding into the Carrefour and Jusco (or Jasuko) grocery stores, crowding their way across busy streets without regard for crosswalks or streetlights, crowding anywhere and everywhere in crowds of crowds.  There is an almost tangible odor associated with this crowding and these crowds of people. It's overwhelming and chaotic and foreign and all over the place, just how traditional characters like my 馨 give off their own senses of vaguely controlled chaos.

Another curious thing about names in China is the Chinese people's fascination with English names. My Chinese roommate, my Chinese host family, even strangers on the street would approach this exotic-looking little blonde foreigner and after launching a curious conversation of pleasantries the question would occasionally arise: what is your English name? I know that "Jessica" is close to impossible for Chinese people to pronounce and I usually tried to avoid the question, but in one instance with my roommate Song Qing I let my English name slip.

 She seemed confused. "Jush-shi-ko?" she tried. "No, Jess-si-ka," I replied, slowly and with emphasis on each syllable. "Jushshekoh," she attempted again, with obvious effort and little improvement. "Not quite..." I began, only to see her face light up. "Oh! Ja-su-ko! Like the Jusco grocery store!" she exclaimed in Chinese. "But that's strange... Why did your parents name you after a Japanese supermarket?"

So what's in a name after all? According to Song Qing (or Sunny, her English name), before my birth my parents must have believed that the equivalent of a Japanese Target would make a good name for their daughter.  Not a word of protest on my part would change that perception- nor, for that matter, would a word on my part convince "Strong" or "Obama" (a couple of young Chinese men with misguided English names) that they might want to reconsider their "American" appellations.  Chinese names mean something; therefore, English names must also have a meaning. I can see how Sunny might see a name associated with the sun as bright, cheery, and full of life.  Strong or Obama, perhaps, see their names as powerful, manly, and important on the world stage.  Misguided, but truly well-intentioned attempts at names with meaning.

If names really pack that full of a punch, then I guess, in China, my name, like any name, has become a part of myself.  "All the good smells" is as much a part of me as my blonde hair, college education and family background. And it is "all the good smells" and everything that it implies that inspired me to begin this blog.  Here, I will reflect on my past and present experiences studying in the wonderful, chaotic, optimistic, and imperfect rising superpower of China.