Tracy Update -> tracyupdate.tumblr.com

Hello everyone.

Tracy Update is now on Tumblr

Due to an inordinate amount of computer and internet difficulty, including a fried hard drive and more about mac boot commands than I ever hoped to know …I clearly haven’t posted anything in a long time.

However, I recently discovered that Tumblr blogging is conveniently accessible from here, so at least for the time being, I will be trying to send updates to the
Tracy Update on Tumblr.
(Yes, WordPress has email posting, but right now WordPress is a little more hassle than I want)

I’ve only got about a month left here, made to seem all the shorter by skyrocketing plane ticket prices. I do plan to continue posting pictures and writing about my experiences here (or on Tumblr..) even after I leave, since there is so so so so so much that I haven’t written!

Anyway,
I’ll be sad to go, but happy to arrive as well.
I’ll be seeing some of you again before I know it 🙂

Better Chinese through Mathematics

I had been thinking I could improve my Chinese in order to be able to talk about math, but today it went the other way around!
We have some new student teachers at the school, and one of taught me the following Chinese, using the following Maths:

The word “curse” was from a previous joke/conversation. The word “excited” was from how I tried describe how I felt after the math lesson 🙂

平江路 – Peace River Road

I recently went to 平江路 – Pingjiang Lu – Peace River Road – a historic road in Suzhou.

I wrote a post about it in Derivations, my dark blue mind cave. I’ll still get some pictures and descriptions up on this blog sometime, but for now – for interested family and friends – Click here to see the Derivations Peace River Road post

 

额 – forehead

A real quick post because I HAD to let you know… my favorite responses to chatting with Chinese people online are the following onomatopoeias:

嗯 － en1, this word is pronounced the same as that positive-sounding grunt that you might make to show people you agree.

额 － e2, this word literally means “forehead”. It’s perfect. It means ‘forehead’, and it sounds like that ‘ugh’ groan that you might make if you do something that actually causes your hand to hit your forehead.

Ok, that’s all for now. This was just really important 😉

****
edit: ＊额＊
when I first wrote this, I accidentally typed (《恩》- gratefulness) instead of 嗯 － the onomatopoeia. oops. Thanks for the correction! The 口 kou3 (mouth) radical on the left indicates that the word is a sound.

Baby Food (and fun with words)

Do you remember this ‘mystery soup’ from the International Women’s Day post?

dessert plate, including a mystery soup

When we walked around the courtyard before Women’s Day dinner, Wang老师 had commented on the bamboo shoots. I said I had eaten some with my friend Pan in Nanjing. They’re very good, and I told her about a funny incident I’d had the previous weekend regarding bamboo shoots: I had asked Pan what they were called. “Baby Bamboo!” she and her friend decided to translate it into English (similar to Baby Spinach). “婴儿竹子 (ying1erzhu2zi)” I replied, combining the Chinese words for ‘baby’ and ‘bamboo’. Pan stopped with her spoon halfway to her mouth, looked at me, and said, “Now, that’s just creepy.”

During Women’s Day dinner, I went up to the buffet to gather my dessert-plate. I added to it a small amount of a strange, but sweet-smelling soup. The soup seemed to have Zaozi, little “Chinese dates” that are like tiny, softer apples, in addition to some thin, wrinkly, yellow-white things. I wondered if it was jellyfish, but the texture wasn’t like jellyfish…
“Oh, what soup is that?” Wang老师 asked when I returned to the table. “I have no idea!” I replied. “Is this Zaozi?”, I asked, pointing to the date-like fruit. She said yes. Ok, one down…

“Oh,” she said, indicating the suspected non-jellyfish, “These are 银耳. 白木耳, Like 木耳, but they’re white.” 木耳 mu4er3 (tree ear) is the name of a mushroom commonly used in Chinese cooking, so called because it’s thin and folded, like an ear. The new food seemed to have two names: 白木耳 and 银耳. I understood the 白木耳, a white tree ear, but the 银耳 pronunciation, and therefore meaning, was just escaping me. I tried to repeat it, unsure if the first syllable was a 1st or 2nd tone: “ying2耳 还是 ying1耳?” I tried.

Wang老师 kind of froze with her cup in her hands.
“银！yin2!银色的银!” she corrected me. Oooh.. silver. The things were called “silver ears” even though I thought the color seemed more like soft yellow-white than silver. ‘Silver’ is yin2: ‘yin2耳’. I had said ‘ying1耳’.

“Baby Ears!” Wang老师 cracked up, and so did the rest of the table when she translated the situation 🙂

Courtyard Lesson: Taihu Rocks, bridges, pagodas

middle of Bamboo Hotel courtyard

“There are 4 characteristics of the Taihu Rocks,” explained Wang老师: “瘦,漏,透,皱.”
I was amused by how they all rhyme. shou4, lou4, tou4, zhou4 (pronounced similar to “show, low, toe, Joe”).
(see some images here: Taihu Rocks in the Portland Chinese Garden)

亭子(pagoda) on 石山 (rockmountain)，太湖 (Taihu) rocks, and ... geese.

Wang老师 had wanted to walk around the hotel courtyard before we rejoined the rest of the faculty and dug in to the International Women’s Day buffet dinner. I enthusiastically agreed. As we walked, she gave me a mini-lesson in the landscaping and architectural features of the classic Suzhou-style courtyard. I was familiar with some of the features, having been through the LanSu Garden in Portland a few times. The tall blobby holes-in-them rocks come from Tai Lake （太湖 Tai4Hu2）. The LanSu garden has many, and there is even one just sitting in downtown Portland at the Terry Schrunk Plaza. It was a gift from Suzhou Mayor Zhang Xinsheng to Portland Mayor Vera Katz in honor of the sistercity-ship.

Taihu Rocks have been used in Suzhou gardens for centuries and are prized for 4 characteristics in particular:

瘦
– shou4 – “thin” – being tallish and thinnish as opposed to round or circular.

漏

– lou4 – having many holes (like swiss cheese!)

透
– tou4 – letting the light leak through. Yes, there is a word for that!

皱
– zhou4 – being “wrinkly”, the rock surface has an appearance like that of being folded or wrinkled.

blocked path to the 石山

The Taihu Rocks were surrounding a 石山 – shi2shan1 (rock mountain) – a landscaped mountain made of rocks. “Oh, when I was small, I loved to climb up the 石山 – let’s go over there,” But alas, when we walked around, we were blocked from entering the path up to the 石山 by a rope cord and a sign. “Oh no!” she said. “Well, this is China,” I joked, “so you can just go around, right?” I was glad that she laughed and said “I guess that’s a good reason!” as we continued on. Just as well, I suppose. The 石山 was on the other side, but so were the ornery-sounding white geese.

pagoda with honky geese

“Did you see the 九曲桥?” she asked.
“The what?”
She pointed to a bridge on the other side of the pond leading from the 石山. I hadn’t noticed from my perspective, but the bridge wasn’t straight – it kinked back and forth, making little zigzags between the 石山 and the pathway around the pond. I was familiar with the practice of not making straight paths. In many Chinese gardens, you cannot see or walk directly from one point to another. At LanSu Garden, I’d learned that this serves the double purpose of embedding intriguing shifts of visual perspective and framing within the garden, as well as preventing malicious spirits from having a straight shot from the beginning to the end of a path. In addition, many doorways have a little bump at the threshold which humans must step over, but bad spirits apparently cannot.

The bridge was called a 九曲桥 – Jiu3qu1 Qiao2 – 9-zigzags bridge.

left side of the courtyard, showing two 亭子 (pagodas) and 九曲桥 (9-zigzags bridge)

the right side of the courtyard, showing the 一半亭子 (one-half pagoda), half on water, half on land.

And then, just as we were re-entering the hotel to head back to the buffet, she pointed out the 3 different styles of pagodas – 亭子 (ting2zi) – in the courtyard. The first one on the far left, sitting atop the 石山 is the one I most recognized as a pagoda, but there were two more. The middle one had a different kind of roof and seemed to be sitting in the pool like a small island. The last one, jutting out from the hotel on the far right, was a classic “一半亭子” yiban4 Ting2zi – a “half pagoda”. Apparently, these are made to have one half on land, and the other half hovering on stilt-legs above the water.

“Thank you for explaining all these things!” I said as we returned to the dinner. “Oh, it’s my pleasure,” Wang老师 replied graciously. “It’s fun for me too, I get to see new things with you that I don’t notice otherwise, because its all normal for me!”

Wine is in the middle

I had been thinking that an interesting business to get into in China could be wine importing
(maybe interesting for me to think about and for someone else to do…). Wine is becoming increasingly popular in China. However, I have had a few glasses of wine from some high-end people, and I couldn’t tell if it just wasn’t that great, or if it just really did not pair with the food it was being served with.

Since China seems especially open to European styles, I thought maybe this would lead to the eventual acceptance of cheeses and normal bread (not cake-bread…) as being important to pair with the wines.

Then I found out that food pairing isn’t really a concern for Chinese wine-drinkers.

At the Women’s Day dinner, we had gotten on the topic of raisins -> California -> wine, so I asked Wang老师 about wine in China, and how people paired food with wine (the Asian flavor palette strikes me as a little difficult to mix wines with).

“Wine is in the middle,” Wang老师 said, “Beer is too weak, and the 白酒 is too strong.” (白酒, bai2jiu3, white rice wine, famous for noxious potency – a good explanation: Baijiu, on Shards of China)

“Does anyone try to pair wine with food?” I asked.
“Oh no!” she replied in good humor, “It doesn’t matter!” (没关系！ -mei2guan1xi)

Two-buck Chuck could make a fortune here.

International Noodles

Gu老师 came back from the fancy hotel buffet to the table with a small plate of noodles. “Oh look,” Wang老师 pointed them out. I had been asking earlier how to say “popular” (I have forgotten again) so that I could say These noodles aren’t very popular. At the buffet, I had found a seemingly-untouched dish of 中式炒面 zhong1shi4 chao3mian4 – Chinese-style fried noodles (chow mein) in the midst of all the fancy foreign food – fruit, soups, sushi, etc. She’d laughed and told me the Chinese-style noodles were too normal, too common. Everyone wanted to come here to eat the fancy, exciting food!

Someone asked Kraytul once, “What do people eat for supper in the United States?” After thinking for a moment, he replied, “Foreign food!”
It seems the same is true in China!

Gu老师’s noodle plate actually contained some of the Chinese-style noodles as well as strands of spaghetti mixed in. “Ha!” she joked, “国际炒面！” International Noodles!

三八妇女节 – International Women’s Day (March 8th)

“Tomorrow is International Women’s Day,” Wang老师 informed me on Wednesday.

“Oh! I said, “I’m an international woman!”
(I was pleased when this ‘joke’ got repeated in Chinese at dinner later)

She laughed and asked, “How are you going to celebrate?” I shrugged. “I don’t know, I haven’t even gotten around to thinking about tomorrow!”

I didn’t even know there /was/ an International Women’s Day coming.
三八妇女节 – san1ba3fu4nü3 – Three Eight Women’s Holiday. The 3 refers to March, and the 8 refers to the date, representing the calendar date of IWD. I don’t recall celebrating such a thing in the States, and after noticing others talking about it more, I got the impression that it was kind of a big deal, especially when Wang老师 told me that all the faculty was going out to dinner together on Friday night to celebrate.

Suzhou's first 4-star hotel - the gate and walls are designed like bamboo

We went to the Bamboo Grove Hotel restaurant. The Bamboo Grove restaurant was established in 1989, and was Suzhou’s first 4-star hotel. The wall/fence around the place is designed like bamboo. Hotel restaurants seem to be ‘the place’ to go if you want a fancy dinner in China.

The international interior - yes! That is Marilyn Monroe and Elvis on the wall!

a courtyard with a pagoda, just beyond my silverware!

“你的三八妇女节怎么过?” I asked Wang老师 at the Friday dinner, referring to the previous day (Thursday). How did you celebrate Women’s Day?
All holidays are the same! she replied, Eat food, go shopping!. When I’d asked Ms. Xu, she’d laughed that although many stores have Women’s Day sales, she was unable to take advantage of them because she had night duty at the school. What about Taobao? I had asked, referring to the most popular online shopping (like Amazon) site. Yes, they had a few sales, but not on anything Ms. Xu wanted!

first plate - cream of pumpkin soup (eh) and some good vegetables

Wang老师 explained that many women with small children will spend some time doing something fun with their kid. “But not me,” she said, “Richard has papers to write this weekend, and a big test coming.” Her very tall son Richard is in his last year of middle school, and is trying very hard to be ready for the 中考 at the end of this school year since he wants to go to a 1st-tier high school — the same school that all the other bright kids are gunning for. Many people have heard of the 高考 Gao1Kao3 – the high school graduation test that determines peoples’ college options and future in general. The 中考 is a similar test to determine acceptance into High School. After reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, I am wondering if the distribution of students’ birthdays at good schools is shifted towards the late fall… “He has to fight for every point. Every point matters!” she emphasized.

Chinese "chow mein", fried rice, sushistuff, mussel with onions?verygood, chicken and a beet in the back.

Mostly, Women’s Day seems to be a day when Women can relax a bit and do something they enjoy, most often shopping, visiting with friends, going out for dinner, or spending some time with kids who have time. I decided to spend my Women’s Day on Friday morning, baking bread which everyone referred to as cake, but that should probably be its own post.

dessert plate, including a mystery soup

“Is there a Men’s Day?” I asked at the dinner. The principal was sitting next to her. He is hilarious in a very casual sort of way that often includes subtleties of Chinese linguistics (he is a Chinese teacher), and they got into a discussion about which days might count as Men’s Day – coming up with perhaps Fathers Day and Singles Day (11/11), or perhaps it should be August 3rd (8/3) since Women’s Day was March 8th (3/8).

Principle Zhan has the whole table in stitches

In answer to whether there was a Men’s Day: “No,” said Wang老师, “So we should thank them for celebrating with us! We need them!”

I think if I asked the same question in the States, I would get the response that, ‘every day is Men’s Day!’ so, that’s the response that I was half expecting, and almost ready to supply myself, but I like Wang老师’s answer better!

The Piano Lesson

After dinner yesterday, the kids all lined up to return to their classrooms.
They seemed particularly excited. “They want to see the library!” Ms. Wang (王老师) told me, “But I don’t have the key!”. “I want to see it too!” I said, “But, Lily told me it’s not open for another 30 days.” “No!” Ms. Wang replied, “It opens tomorrow!” Oh, exciting! We walked back towards the classrooms, taking an unusual detour. I chatted with one of the new student-teachers, the whole time hoping that Ms. Wang would magically produce or borrow a key to the library. Instead, she led the kids to the Music room. I hung around in the doorway to see what would happen next.

When the kids were all seated on the colored blocks that the Music room uses for chairs, she asked them in English, “What’s in this room?” The kids threw up a few guesses: lamps, a blackboard, even “Miss Mehoke!” when I was spotted in the doorway, but none were the answer. She asked again, “What is in this room that only this room has?” I was thinking the colored blocks, but the kids got it: “a piano!”. To their hushed dismay, Ms. Wang calmly lifted the sacred velvet curtain from the piano. “Lily,” she called a girl from the 2nd grade, “Come play something.” A number of other students tried to join her, but eventually Lily sat alone and seemed to not be able to recall any songs. “Who can play the piano?” Ms Wang asked. A few brave kids put up their hands, and several third graders approached the piano to either succumb to stage-fright memory-loss or plunk out short tunes like Mary had a Little Lamb and Are you sleeping, are you sleeping…

“Shall I play?,” she asked them, and received a loud cheer. She sat down and played the opening bars of Für Elise. We all applauded. “没想到！Mei2 xiang3 dao4!” (It never occurred to me!) I exclaimed, choosing the phrase used by 2nd grader David when he discovered I could play soccer. “How about you?,” she asked. I’d been secretly wanting to play, but also trying to remember if I still knew anything playable. I sat down and got through the right hand of the opening of Drei Stücklein (#3) by Schumann. In late highschool and college, I used to love pouring that music out of my fingers. Now I forget the left hand when other people look at me. At least the kids still liked it!

Did you like that? She asked the students. The rest was all in Chinese so I only got some of it, but effectively she was saying something like, Isn’t it nice how some people can play the piano very well? And what about drawing? Have you seen how Miss Mehoke draws? What about learning English? You gain these abilities by long and diligent practice. Do you want to have skills and talents someday? Do you want people to cheer for you? Then begin practicing now.

Of course, the actual speech as it was delivered was much more dramatic and motivating. Wang老师 is an excellent speaker. She had the kids spellbound and all individually vowing to themselves to practice and become stars at a skill of their choice. You could see their future stardom glittering in their eyes and transforming the idea of diligent practice into a sort of glory. She even got them walking out of the classroom just as the music signifying the end of a passing period began to play over the loudspeakers.

Wang老师 is one of those brilliant and seasoned educators who can conjure a solid and memorable educational moment out of thin air. It was a very good piano lesson.