Shenzhen Part I

A month and a day in China. What’s going on?

I’ve traveled and have made it successfully to Shenzhen. After sleeping only an hour or so, and after having a thrilling late night conversation with Phebe on the balcony facing the mountains about Koreans, drinking, and life in general, I chugged some of Luke’s Pepto (I’ll owe him about 4 bottles by the time we get back to America), and stood outside and hailed a taxi to the Xiamen International Gaoqi Airport.

Sidenote: If you have to do extensive traveling, take care not to eat spicy Korean food the night before. While you may be able to stand the taste and don’t have problems getting it down in that regard, it’ll really impede your mobility for the next few hours/days. It’s a lesson learned, and Korea has officially smacked me in the face.

The more I travel and the more I get out and about the more I notice that China is a multi-lingual society. I mean, I always knew that China was multilingual and technically multiracial, yet on the surface most of the people look similar to each other in that they’re all Asian. The difference isn’t as stark as it is in the US. Moreover, when I was Beijing, since the standard language is also the city language (the standard language around China, also known as “Chinese”, is the language of the capitol), I didn’t really notice a difference between the language; furthermore, I didn’t know enough Chinese at the time to realize that people were speaking something besides what I learned in the classroom whenever they did speak a dialect—I just assumed they were speaking too fast.

At the airport there were three announcements in Standard Chinese, English, and Minnan (a language closely related to what the people in Taiwan speak when they don’t speak the Standard Language). I would listen to the language, and it sounded like “Chinese” in that it has tones, follows and similar structure, and has some words that are familiar to one another; however, I couldn’t understand it. Later, after I got on the plane, the languages were English, Minnan, and Standard Chinese until we got closer to Shenzhen, where the languages switched to English, Standard Chinese, and Cantonese.

People speak Cantonese here, and they only whip out the Standard Chinese when they are conversing with people from outside of the area including foreigners, tourists, people from other provinces, and strangers. I got an earful of it when I took the 1 hour, 150 kuai cab ride from the airport to my friend Diadra’s home. The driver would speak to me in Standard Chinese, but when he was talking to his superior to determine the route to this relatively unknown area of the city, he would switch to Cantonese when he didn’t want me to hear something. I have a special affinity for the language since it was in movies from this region (South China and Hong Kong) that first created in me a love of Chinese culture. If not for films, notably by Wong Kar-Wai 王家卫, and the themes presented that are unique to these locales, I would be well into my 6th year of Japanese and not be working for this Chinese major. Even though I’m not learning the language spoken here and the in the movies, Cantonese, because it’s a) impractical outside of this area and b) its not taught at UNC, I can still go to these areas because in Hong Kong they speak English (more or less) and Standard Chinese from school…just like Americans can speak Spanish…

So, I met up with Diadra and, after talking for a moment with her, went and took a nap on her full-sized, fairly soft bed (I sleep on a hard, twin-sized mattress at school). Five hours later when I woke up, I promptly locked her out of her home because of my super paranoid yet wise nature (a great way to greet an old friend). We at some KFC (fries since she’s a veggy-head), did a little shopping at this complex I’ve never heard of called Jia-hua 佳华, and came back and looked up places to go since she lives in the middle of no-where and there really isn’t much to see here. We went to dinner at a little Chinese restaurant near her apartment and were surrounded by cute annoying children. They said “hello” a lot. And “how are you.” And referred to me, in Chinese, as “Mr. America.” The kids were probably some of the ones who go to the school across the way, and while I enjoyed their love of English and innocent curiosity of me…I was freaking eating dinner with a friend. And they kept saying “bye-bye” with a wave of the hand and all that like they really were going to leave…but they didn’t. Damn.

Tomorrow we plan to hit up a zoo—excuse me—a wildlife refuge, and will see a Buddhist temple in order to go to their vegetarian restaurant.

Pictures…not many yet. When I’m lazy or anxious, I don’t take out my camera. I’ll make up for it tomorrow with pictures of giant pandas or something along those lines. Oddly enough, the lesson in the Chinese book is about giant pandas, and the refuge they mention in the textbook is photographed in my travel book. The name of the professor who conducted research of the panda’s has the character 石 in his name, which is also in the first part of Diadra’s address. So, the lesson here is that when I go to class, I learn shit.