The Centipede from Hell... and 哈利波特!!!

EEEEEEK!!! SCARRRRY IT'S SO TERRIFYING look at all those LEGS!! And the creepy red pincers on one end. Where did it come from?!  And why, WHY, was it in my BEDROOM!?!?

After photographing this Chinese demon bug this morning, I couldn't help but turn to some research to find out what exactly my shower shoe just smashed. It turns out, this sexy, 30-legged creature is nothing less than the Scutigera colcoptrata, or "house centipede."  According to the trusty Wikipedia, it's a fast bugger, known to run at speeds of up to 1.3 ft/s.  They're usually found in human homes, typically running along walls and lurking in sewer drains. Those red pincers on the left end are also mildly venomous. Lovely. As the designated bug-smasher of room 219, I have so far exterminated no fewer than four of the creatures just in my little dorm room. I'm sure it's not the end, just yet. They're everywhere.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scutigera_coleoptrata


On a much more cheerful note, the final installment of the Harry Potter movie franchise won't be in Chinese theaters until August 4th, so I would like to share with my friends and family what exactly I'm doing to sate my Potter cravings in the meantime. Allow me to introduce:

"Ha Li Bo Te" is the closest Chinese people can get to pronouncing HARRY POTTER. GAH IT'S IN CHINESE!!!

Isn't that awesome?! So far I've been able to understand most of the text, even if it's slightly slow going. I'm hoping that by reading J.K. Rowling's original masterpiece in Chinese for the next couple of days, I'll be fully prepared to rock the reading portion of the HSK (Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi, or Chinese Level Exam) coming up this Sunday, as well as (sob) deal with the lack of HP 7.2 in my Chinese life. Wish me luck!

FMCL

The following link, F*** My China Life, illustrates some wonderful aspects of Chinese culture and society. It's so perfect. If you've been in China, you'll understand... if not, watch and learn.

http://www.fmychinalife.com/

国画儿, Liang Fenr and an "intense and stimulating" snack choice

First off, I'd like to share the most entertaining bag of Lay's potato chips I think I've ever sampled:

 

 ANYWAYS, moving on.

I just moved back into my dorm at Qingdao University, and overall don't feel too awfully starved or scarred from my home stay. Actually, the family turned out to be sweet in a pleasantly Chinese way. The coolest part of the homestay definitely took place Friday afternoon. Guan Shushu knows a lot of professors and folk in the QU Art department, and so he took me and two classmates Erin and Ashleigh to observe a real Chinese painting (国画）artist at work

It was amazing how much detail this guy could add to a monochrome watercolor painting using just some water, black paint, and an assortment of brushes and techniques. A whole painting was done in less than 10 minutes! The greatest part about the excursion, however, came at the end of the painting demonstration. Motioning toward his collection of paintings hanging on the wall, Artist Duan told us to pick which one we wanted to take a picture with. We happily obliged.

Afterwards, the artist Duan let each of us American girls pick our favorite painting to take home as a gift. So amazing. I'm sure that these paintings are priceless by any other measure.

Friday evening also presented another wild Chinese food encounter. When I got back to my Chinese family's seaside apartment, Liu Ayi, my Chinese mom, was darting around the living room in a frenzy, excitedly sputtering:

"Liang fenr! Liang fenr! Zhou Peng made some liang fenr and he's giving it to us! He'll be here any second!"

I had no idea what liang fenr was or why it would make Liu Ayi so darn excited, but I figured it must be something either horridly bizarre or very tasty. Hoping for tasty, I asked:

Me: "Liu Ayi, what's liang fenr?"

Liu: "You don't have liang fenr in America?"

Me: "Well, I'm not sure. I don't know what liang fenr is or looks like."

Liu: "Ooh! Liang fenr is a Chinese specialty. It's very good. Zhou Peng made it himself!"

Not very useful. I didn't know what at all to expect when Liu Ayi answered a timid knock on the apartment door.

Zhou Peng's homemade specialty, it turns out, was a plastic shopping bag filled to the brim with a  brown, transparent, gelatin-like substance called liang fenr.  Come dinnertime, Liu Ayi proceeded to completely fill a small rice bowl with the stuff and place it squarely in front of me. "Eat more! This is liang fenr, very good!"

Liang fenr has the flavor of salted gasoline and the consistency of pickled Jell-O. I did eat a reasonable amount in attempts to be polite, which resulted in Guan Shushu happily re-filling my little bowl.  Sad, sad day. All the while, I couldn't help but miss America and solid, yummy Southern food.

OK, A Piece of Cake!!

Two weeks have gone by and I've climbed the Great Wall, walked through a GuanYin temple and moved in with a Chinese family last Friday! We rode a high-speed train from Qingdao to Beijing last week, and the four days there were some of the most amazing ones I've spent in China. Such a cool place. I would write several posts just about my Beijing stay, but my shijian bu gou- there just isn't enough time. Instead, the self-explanatory pictures below should suffice for the time being:

What I really want to talk about is my new Chinese family. The parents, Guan Shushu (Uncle Guan) and Liu Ayi (Aunt Liu) have a sixteen-year-old daughter named Guan Xin, which means dawn. A happy family picture:

Guan Xin is sixteen and incredibly smart. She goes to the best high school in Shandong province, Qingdao Er Zhong, and she's in the process of studying for her TOEFL exam- the Test of English as a Foreign Language examination that will allow her to attend college in the United States. Who knows, we might have another Ole Miss Rebel in the making with this one.

At first, my family liked speaking in English a little too much, even though the parents' English was pretty terrible and I couldn't even understand everything they tried to get across.  But, gradually they've switched to Chinese as they've discovered that I can, in fact, communicate in their native tongue.  Mr. Guan still likes to drop some of his favorite English phrases into everyday conversation. At the end of every sentence I say, English or Chinese, he always responds with an over-enthusiastic "OK!!" And my personal favorite is his use of the phrase "a piece of cake." Some poor English teacher at some point in Mr. Guan's life must have told him that "a piece of cake" means "no problem" or "correct," not "something is easy to do."

Sample conversation:
(in Chinese, English in italics)

Guan: "Xiaxin, will you study English with my daughter, OK?"
Me: "Sure, just a bit. Would 30 minutes a day be alright?"
Guan: "OK, OK! A piece of cake!"


Mr. Guan works for Qingdao University's office of development, and he has traveled to America a few times- specifically, San Jose, California. Why there? To use his English explanation, "Ok ok ok. A piece of cake!"


So a typical breakfast-table conversation might go like this:

(in Chinese, English words in italics)

Me (pointing at a plate of chunky, red-colored meat that came out of a can): "Guan Shushu, what kind of meat is that?"
Guan: "OK! Ok. Hmm, how would you say it?"
Me: "Is it beef?"
Guan: "OK! No, no, not beef."
Me: "Pork then? Or some kind of bird?"
Guan: "Ok, no, not pork, not a bird. It's like a horse."
Me: "HORSEMEAT?! You eat horses here in Qingdao?"
Guan: "OK!! No, of course we don't eat horse. It's like a horse, but smaller."
Me: "Oh... is it gray?"
Guan: "OK!!"
Me: "Oh. So that would be donkey."
Guan: "Donkey, ok. A piece of cake!"

In addition to canned donkey, I've also been fed silk worm eggs mixed with vinegar and mustard, shark meat covered in watery ketchup, and "liang ban" jellyfish.  Jellyfish prepared this way has the consistency of crunchy rubber that has been left in the sun to rot and die. I'm going to lose twenty pounds living on this kind of food. Thank goodness for (in my dorm room) power bars, Oreos and white rice!

I'll try to be better about keeping y'all posted on my doings in the Middle Kingdom, though I don't have internet access at my home stay. Be prepared for many more posts once I move back into the dorm Saturday afternoon. OK!