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Home Alone!

Friday, April 10, 2009

photo-32

This weekend I’m running around China completely unsupervised for the longest time since I moved here (previous record was maybe, oh, six hours). I’m TOTALLY eating nothing but super expensive imported pop-tarts, raiding the grown ups’ liquor cabinet and re-upping the bottles with water so it’s not immediately obvious I’ve broken in, turning up the stereo too loud, rearranging furniture in the middle of the night, and having lengthy out loud conversations with imaginary best friends. I’m happy as a clam with my living situation, but three whole days all on my lonesome (and seriously - almost everyone I know is out of town) is taking me STRAIGHT back to those precious moments when I got the house to myself as a teenager. Chris is away at a weekend long bachelor party, and one of my former- students- turned-awesome friend sent me a blunt email - “Do you fear the strippers?” And no, honestly I don’t (and I should note that strippers are probably not involved for the sake of reading family members) but I’m much more worried about having completely forgotten how to take care of myself over the past year and a half. I keep reminding myself that I lived rather healthily and quite happily on my own for some time, but I can’t for the life of me remember HOW. Seriously, one of the problems with having a fantastic roommate like Chris is that I’ve cooked an actual meal ONCE since I moved here (not counting a few grilled cheese sandwiches and mac ‘n’ cheese, and perhaps a few other cheese-based microwavable heart attacks on plates). I’m not exaggerating the severity of the situation - I’ve already inadvertently started a fire. Granted, it was a small one, and my reflexes were good - I put it out immediately by grabbing the nearest wet substance, simultaneously extinguishing the flames, making a huge syrupy mess, and wasting nearly all of my weekend coca-cola stash.

And… since there is almost literally NO ONE for me to launch into hyperbolic ravings about the minutae of my day, guess what internet. It’s you and me, and you’ve got my undivided self-loving exhibitionist attention (which, having typed that sentence, isn’t nearly as exciting as it sounds, as we shall soon see).

I woke up this morning and saw Chris off, and decided to get a jump-start on Junk Food Private Dance Party Fest 2009 by shoving strawberry cream cheese danish pop-tarts into the oven (let’s go ahead and add that to the list of things that sound and are absolutely disgusting that I just can’t get enough of). But I forgot the special circumstances involving our uncleaned oven, and soon flames were licking around the edges. So I dumped a two litre of coke on/around it and let the apartment air out before spending a fair amount of time cleaning up after myself. Then I chased Scout around the apartment imitating her meowing until I made myself late for my paycheck pickup/voice recording appointment. I turned up my tunes and sprinted out of my apartment and to the Ministry building, grabbed a stack of cash* for my doctor class, and rode the elevator down and started running toward the voice recording studio. This was a twenty minute urban obstacle course as I dodged older couples looking in bemusement at the foreigner running down Beijing Xi Lu with headphones the size of ostrich eggs, ducked and skirted bird cages hanging on lamp posts and the games of mah-jongg being played by their owners, nimbly scampered up and around ankle-breaking uneven sidewalks, benches, ramps, crumbling steps, and bicycle ramps, greeting a notable number of co-workers out and about on a beautiful Friday afternoon and even a former student, all the while sending frantic text messages to my recording contact and trying not to get hit by a bus.*

I showed up at voice recording, which for me is a little island of sanity. The studio is warmly lit and there’s a steaming cup of hot water waiting for me (I’m starting to like the hot water, actually, especially during recording), as well as print outs of inane dialogues sitting on my table under my microphone, serving as absurd invitations to forget everything remotely complicated in my life and to submerge myself in barnyard animals and unlikely dining preferences (”Tweet Tweet! says the chick!” “I want hamburgers and ice cream. I don’t want cakes or bananas.”). Voice recording is also nice, because it’s a world away from teaching. There’s no preparation, no thinking on my feet, I get to sit down, and I can completely zone out and let my mouth move on autopilot while I work out whatever problem I’m having at the moment. And I get paid for it.

Today was fairly basic stuff for primary school and junior high (see previous parenthetical), but there have been some definite comic gems sprinkled throughout my “career.” Once my partner and I had to read the listening texts for the police academy’s English class, which took about twice as long as it should have, since we’d have to double over in laughter every two or three minutes. That particular script covered pretty much the full range of material - whoring, thieving, kidnapping, smuggling, public intox, murder, embezzlement, traffic violations - you name it, we read it. A lot of the dialogues came from the interrogation room, and they inevitably went along these lines:

Police: Did you kill Mr. Brown?

Suspect: No, I’m innocent!

Police: Did you tell a lie?

Suspect: I confess, I did it.

I mean, EVERY character cracked immediately under that kind of investigative pressure. It sort of made me want to be a cop, since I was enjoying my lady cop voice so much (then I started watching The Wire and that plan went straight out the window). Here was another choice dialogue from the same session:

Police: Who is she?

Suspect: She is my sister!

Police: Is it true?

Suspect: [pause] I confess. She is a whore.

Find a partner and see if you can do a dramatic reading of that without cracking up. And sometimes the dialogues for children are just surreal. One time Chris was reading with me and we’d been trading totally monotonous vocab sentences for a long time (”Color the TIGER GREEN. How many peaches? THREE peaches. What do you like to do? I like HOPPING., etc) when Chris busted out with “Can you put an EGG on your HEAD?” And of course there are the occasional difficult phrases rendered unutterable by my lack of any considerable maturity: “I have TWO BIG BALLS!” Also, on a cultural note, recording has taught me that in China, monkeys eat peaches and rats eat rice.

So that was nice, relaxing, and lucrative, and after that I walked home to begin Project Learn Chinese in Seventy-Two Hours While Making My Filthy Apartment Parent-Ready. Mom and Dad are coming in a few weeks (YAY!), and I figured this weekend would be a good time to clean the place up a little bit.

I’ve only been here a year and a half, and when I arrived, I was LOVING the feeling of having just enough stuff to fit into two suitcases. Crap just really stacks up, you know? I’ve already done our junk room, which contains things like my wedding dress, the Christmas animal hats, microscope paraphenalia, a cat skeleton Chris found in Gulin park, a trash bag full of stuffed alpacas, a grand total of THREE unused TV sets that came with the apartment, and oh my god unimaginable quantities of product. We have seven different brands of American deodorant, and multiple containers of each. And you would not believe how much hair stuff I’ve brought over… I know what my thought process was like: what if, when I’m in China, I decide that it’ll be the day that I do more with my hair than brush it? Never mind that that day hasn’t come once throughout my twenty-six years on this planet, if it comes in China, I want to be prepared. And I know that I must have been taking into account my total lack of styling product knowledge, and hence decided just to buy several bottles of each. I’ve been here a year and a half, and they’re all unopened. So I guess if you’re reading this in Nanjing, and you’d like some product, come on over, because I can’t just throw that kind of stuff out. And yet, at some point, I was willing to throw out the sunblock, which led to Chris and I absolutely roasting in the Philippines this winter. But not the mousse. Or the volumizing gel. Or the callus-removing foot cream (I had this after completely freaking out over the state of my feet pre-pedicure at Amy’s wedding, but I’ve since returned to the much happier state of just not thinking about what my feet look like, hence no need for pumice stones or callus scrubs). And then there’s the hand sanitizer. Both my mother and I have been operating under the reasonable assumption that there’s no such thing as too much hand sanitizer, and let’s face it, China’s filthy. However, at this point, I’ve got enough of the stuff to probably ward off a bird flu pandemic single-handedly. Which is all to say that the junk room was something of a project, and I’m not sure if I’ve got the strength to move into higher priority areas.

That’s really about it. I’m going to get back to my Chinese, and sorry for journalling at you like this.

*I love being paid in cash. My regular salary is deposited in my Unionpay bank account, but recording and extra stuff like the doctors comes to me as glorious Red Grandfathers (100 yuan bills). I paid for both my new compter and my freaking wedding dress with cash. DAMN it feels good to be a gangster.

*Not getting hit by a bus here is a fairly serious undertaking. If a bus doesn’t get you, a car, a taxi, a wheelbarrow, or a scooter with a family of five riding it might. When I walk to work in the morning, it honestly feels like a commute in which I have to stay focused enough to not get into a wreck. Walking.

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a fun game

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Ok, here’s the game. I’ll give you several statements*, and you guess whether they came from the 1954 American Comics Code or from the 2009 statement (released on 3/30 as a highly suspect gift to Chris upon his twenty-sixth birthday) from the Chinese State Administration of Radio, Film and TV. I’ll put the answers in the comments.

1. Profanity, obscenity, smut, vulgarity, or words or symbols which have acquired undesirable meanings are forbidden.

2. Deliberate displays in which private parts are only obscured by limbs or small coverings are forbidden.

3. Respect for parents, the moral code, and for honorable behavior shall be fostered. A sympathetic understanding of the problems of love is not a license for moral distortion.

4. Inclusion of stories dealing with evil shall be used or shall be published only where the intent is to illustrate a moral issue and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly nor so as to injure the sensibilities of the reader.

5.  Sexually suggestive or provocative content that leads to sexual thoughts is forbidden.

6. Disparaging or mocking depictions of leaders, heroes, important historical figures, and major domestic and foreign literary works and their main characters are forbidden.

7. All scenes of horror, excessive bloodshed, gory or gruesome crimes, depravity, lust, sadism, masochism shall not be permitted.

8. Intense scenes of murder, bloodshed, violence, suicide, kidnapping, drug use, gambling, and the occult shall not be permitted.

9. Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal, to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice, or to inspire others with a desire to imitate criminals.

*I changed up some of the grammar so the answers wouldn’t be immediately obvious.

For the full text of the Comics Code, go here.

For another piece in the puzzle of why youtube has disappeared in China and the source of all my pre-translated Chinese quotes, go here.

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losing battle?

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

During the last term of study for one of my classes, the students had to write 1,000 word essays on assigned topics. One of my students chose the poverty topic, and wanted to focus on Africa. We had a thirteen week long battle about Africa, revolving around the fact that it’s a continent, not a country. We started a new term last week, and I gave them their essay topics. One of them directed students to research the effects of colonisation on a country of their choosing. The student chose this topic, and today I asked him which country he’d be focusing on. He beamed and said, “South America!”

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Merry Chris-mas!

Monday, March 30, 2009





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feel-good moment from the doctors

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

I had a good class with the doctors last week. We did a unit on crime, and I made them solve a murder mystery that I wrote myself. I was sort of proud of it - mysteries aren’t easy to write, even when you’re not feeling even the slightest bit hindered by plausibility. I told them the victim’s name, time of death, and location of discovery, then gave them a list of six suspects, their possible motives, and the last time they’d been seen with the victim. They got to ask me five questions before breaking up into groups and discussing. After a few minutes, they had more questions, and gradually they built up their cases. They solved it, too, which sort of amazed me, given how absurd my storyline was. The key to it was the odd properties of the poison used and the fact that there was only one store in the country that sold chocolate. I may do a trial with them next week to see how their arrest holds up in court.

Anyway, I was underprepared and found myself with about twenty minutes to tap dance, and that ended in a free-wheeling discussion that landed on role models. They described a good role model as a “successful man.” I asked what that was, and they gave me the usual laundry list - money, happiness, family, good works, etc. Then one of the shyer guys raised his hand and said softly, “I think that if you can live in this world, you are successful.” So put that on repeat in your head if you’re ever worried that you’re going under.

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tastes of chicken

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Ok, so Benji left me a comment, which brought back memories of a happier, more productive bloggy existence, and in answering it, I had to look up the author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (Mary Roach). It’s a great book if you’re interested in such things, and I’ve been happily passing along stories of plastic surgeons practicing on severed heads, monkey head transplants, and the Crucifixion Experiments ever since I read it. I glanced at the amazon.com description of it, and saw the word “China.” And then “cannibalism.” And then “dumplings.” I did NOT remember that chapter, and it  reminded me instantly of a conversation I’d had with a Chinese friend who is hopefully rocking it with his band in Singapore even as I type. He told us that dumpling vendors had been arrested for having an arrangement with the local crematorium that pretty much resulted in a “JIAOZI IS PEOPLE!!” situation. Now, I don’t mean this as criticism of my highly esteemed friend, but I’m still not convinced about this story. I was trying to find out about that particular news item, but wound up getting sucked into all this Chinese-people-eat-babies hysteria. [Also, if anyone has a copy of Stiff, could you tell me what she found out about it? I seriously have NO memory of it, which is weird, because I thought I memorized that book]

First of all, Chinese people don’t eat babies. In Guangdong, they eat damned near anything, but it’s entirely unfair to relate Guangdong’s tendency to eat things we don’t eat in western countries to EATING BABIES. Ok, Guangdong diners get adventurous in ways that can be a little difficult for westerners to (literally) swallow. Guangdong cuisine is famous for its snake dishes, the granddaddy of them all being “Dragon and Tiger Locked in Combat,” which is made of cobras, wildcats, and at least twenty spices (source). “Drunken shrimp” also hail from this region (shrimp served while still alive and asphyxiating in liquor). Besides the snakes, monkeys, and cats, a lot of feet get thrown into the mix, along with organs, heads, etc. Now, I don’t condone the practice of cat roundups (strays and pets alike), but I also don’t condone the frequent foreign practice of viewing Chinese cuisine as evidence of a savage, uncivilized people because of their choice of meat. I really do believe that if you eat bacon, you’re just as amoral as people who eat dogs (I eat bacon), and while I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to select relatives of my domestic companions from the menu, I don’t think I have the right to condemn an entire culture simply because it’s chosen a different set of ideas about appropriate meats. Besides, tell me that this doesn’t sound tasty:

“Roasted snake with chrysanthemum blooms” is provided in autumn; the dish is creamy in color and garnished with beautiful petals of chrysanthemum, mushrooms, and various flavorings.  source

The location of the baby-eating ranged from Hong Kong to Taiwan to Guangdong, but I really got the impression that some writers were making the assumption that because of articles like this (warning: content is hard on animal lovers), it was perfectly reasonable to believe the Chinese capable of eating fetuses (I also saw a connection between eating placenta and eating fetuses, which is also highly unfair). Now, this is not to say that pretty much everything in that Shanghai Star article isn’t grounds for badly needed animal rights reform, along with shark fin soup, but you can’t turn around and use that as a basis for cannibalism. Here’s an article reprinted on Weird Asian News that I felt was making this totally xenophobic connection and then went into an attack on communism (”COMMIES EAT BABIES!!”). Just to warn you, there’s a really graphic youtube clip at the bottom that involves a dead baby.

And this absolutely infuriated me (there are pictures of a man eating what appears to be a dead baby at the bottom, just so you know). The excerpt (?) from the Eastern Express article was the one that started the whole thing in 1995. Really, “eating babies” plus “internet” is an infallible formula for a widespread rumor, and I couldn’t help but wonder whether or not the whole thing was written as a pro-life propaganda piece, with little basis in fact. The second article on the previously linked website makes it abundantly clear, and even ends with a completely xenophobic prayer for the Chinese, who know not what they do. Look, eating snakes and cats is not the same as eating fetuses. Snopes cleared the whole thing up nicely, and informed me about Zhu Yu, who presented an installment piece called “Eating People,” which provided the email attachments that later solidified the internet rumor that Chinese people were eating babies. So a thank you to rotten.com and the fact that we’re all woefully ignorant of Chinese modern art.

As far as the rumor on my side of the Pacific goes, I’m feeling more like the culprit is Dumplings (2004), a Chinese horror movie about a woman eating fetuses to stay young. I’m wondering if the Zhu Yu email scandal had anything to do with the film’s conception (and I’m also wondering where I can find a copy).

So, my final judgment: I do not believe that the Chinese intentionally eat human fetuses for health/cosmetic purposes. I’m also not sure about the dumplings sellers and the crematorium. I think, for some reason, people just want to believe that somewhere, someone is eating babies. Seriously, there’s a term for it - blood libel. But in-house, it seems like everybody’s got a weird fascination with fringe cannibalism (the dumplings rumor, Sweeney Todd, Soylent Green, etc.). And I feel reasonably assured that I can eat jiaozi without having to worry about it.

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the chinese visa medical exam

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Last Friday, I finally had to go in for my health check - it’s technically a visa requirement, even though I dodged it the first time around. I’m relatively sure that the whole health check is mostly just an excuse for an AIDS test, but it also involves x-rays, an ultrasound, dental and vision checks, and an EKG. I was TERRIFIED of the entire thing - I’ve been avoiding doctors and dentists ever since I got here (and as a result of all the self-diagnosing I’ve been doing, I’m pretty sure that I could get some kind of license - I don’t mess with WebMD anymore, but have moved on to medical journals. If you’d like an update on the best treatment options and appropriate dosage for perocoronitis, I’m your woman [oh no, it's not complicated enough to fly to America, have a wedding, and scoot back to China in a few weeks - why not throw in some wisdom tooth extraction too! YES!]). This isn’t even because I’m afraid of substandard service, but more being intensely freaked out by the language barrier in a people-professionally-poking-me context. I don’t like being poked - or touched, for that matter - to a completely neurotic degree, and I require detailed explanations of where, why, and how said poke is going to occur, and even then I’ll be gripping the exam chair till my knuckles turn white, frantically trying to mentally remove myself from the situation. Surprisingly, I’m ok with needles, but throat cultures, glaucoma tests, palpation of any sort, heartbeat monitoring, fingers in my mouth, ear flashlights, tongue depressors, clamps of any ilk, etc. are all things that make me sweat, curse, beg, and throw tantrums. I’m pretty much the worst patient in the entire world. In English.

So I woke up Friday morning after a hellish week of grading, resits, and stressed students, and started searching the internet for a description of exactly what was going to happen at this thing, and I couldn’t find much. So here it is, for any other Nanjing-based expats wondering what they’re about to be subjected to.

It’s simply not that bad. We taxied over to the health clinic, and my coworker and I stood around awkwardly while our liaison filled out paperwork. Then we headed upstairs to the exam rooms. We had seven objectives - blood test, x-ray, ultrasound, vision, ear/nose/throat, dental, height and weight, and EKG. Did your elementary school have a Halloween carnival, where all of the different classrooms came up with a special activity, and then visitors roamed the halls darting in and out? That’s EXACTLY what this was like. The blood test came first, and was a little scary due to its brevity. We stood in line, then stuck our arm through a window, where it was summarily tied up, stuck, and cotton-balled, and then were shooed off so the next person could sit down (I checked to be sure about the needle disposal, I promise). After that, there was a lot of running around. I’d come out of one exam room, and my liaison would holler, “ANNE! HERE!”, and I’d scamper across the hall to try to beat out the other people competing for the room. Everybody was running around and giggling - it was a little bit like an obstacle course / scavenger hunt. Dental involved opening my mouth for a guy who glanced inside, grunted, “good,” and shooed me out the door. Vision was an eye test where I’m not sure she even wrote down my answers (later my friend Leif told me that during his eye test, the doctor helped him cheat). Ear/nose/throat involved having each of my nostrils lifted briefly before being gestured out. The EKG was a little freaky, since it involved approximately 1,000 sensors, most of which wound up in awkward positions in and around my cleavage, plus clamps on my wrists and legs. That whole thing made me feel a little bit like E.T. But it was over very quickly. On my way out, I asked the doctor if I was ok, and she seemed very surprised and flipped through the chart trying to find the answer (yes). The X-rays were a treat, although I didn’t get any of the standard China x-ray stories out of it (guy standing next to the machine pushing the button, smoking a cigarette). I walked in and put my nose to the wall, and then the guy sort of slammed me into it, which ignited some fight or flight instincts. The ultrasound was cool, except for the gooey stuff. I got to see the picture afterward, and was fairly freaked out by it. It showed a shriveled twisted little thing suspended in space, and I was really scared that it was my heart, and did NOT look at all like it was supposed to (later I found out that it was my liver, and that its comparatively small size was actually a good thing). Then I stood on a scale and got my blood pressure taken, and that was that. My blood pressure was astonishingly low, incidentally.

So there’s what happens at the medical exam, if you’re curious. It’s pretty survivable.

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chaotian palace

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Today was one of the first nice days of Real Spring (we had Fake Spring last month), and so we decided to get out on the scooter and go see something new after recovering from Saturday night, which was largely spent drowning in a bottle of whiskey. We were planning to head down to Mochou Lake, but along the way passed a Ming-y looking building with a lot of people outside. We decided to see what was going on there, and it wound up being maybe my favorite Nanjing attraction I’ve seen so far.

Don’t get me wrong, Purple Mountain and Fuzi Miao are fun, and worth seeing, but Chaotian Palace was really, really cool. Outside the entrance gate there was a court yard where street vendors were selling baked sweet potatoes, old men were chatting with their bird cages and mah-jongg sets, and kids were playing on the ramps along the staircases, which were slick enough to function as slides. I really love the little pockets of old men who bring their pet birds in their little bamboo bird cages with china food pots out to enjoy the sunshine - the only people I ever see doing it are older and male, and there’s something really sweet about it.

Right outside the palace gate, though, there was an AWESOME antiques market. I really enjoy Fuzi Miao, which is a labryrinthine market of fantastically cheap and occasionally supremely awesome souvenirs, but this market was infinitely cooler, if smaller. There were stacks of calligraphy scrolls, dusty opium pipes, baskets of old coins, stamp books, assorted Mao memorabilia, antique clocks (including some really awesome and really old antique varieties that involved rolling ball bearings), chipped statues of people and monsters missing heads, claws, tails, or digits, jade pieces, and various mysterious objects. Chris said that it was definitely the place to go to buy a mogwai, and I’m sure we would have found one if we’d sifted through a little deeper. And the highlight of my day was probably when we passed a guy with a parrot who was chirping “ni hao!” over and over again. I mean, of COURSE a parrot in China says “ni hao,” but it was still funny and strange.

After we watched a man feed his pet birds attached to his bicycle handlebars by little pieces of string and bought some fantastic pseudo-comic book 1950s (I guess?) prints, we paid the twenty-five yuan admission fee for the palace complex itself, and wandered through. It houses the Nanjing City Museum, which is definitely worth seeing - there are various archeological artifacts (bear in mind that this city is OLD - 495 BCish), including pottery, art, story scrolls, weapons, tools, brushes, skulls, and replicas of kilns and transport, complete with diagrams. My favorite thing we saw was a little diarama of clay figures, including a dentist yanking out someone’s tooth, a carpenter with a cat twined around his legs playing with the wood shavings, a barber shaving a client’s head, a fat rich man being pulled by exhausted peasants in a rickshaw, a toy maker carving a wooden cat with wheels, a butcher slaughtering a chicken, and a bespectacled scholar going through his books. There were a lot of English signs and placards, too, which was nice - a lot of the time I get really overwhelmed at historical sites, just because I have absolutely no idea what I’m looking at, but this museum was relatively clear (plenty of WTF stuff, too, though).

We walked through two museum buildings, but didn’t make it to the art gallery in time. There was some incredibly important-looking building that was being renovated, and we wandered around its exterior, which like every outdoor Chinese tourist attraction I’ve seen was full of winding paths, stone stairs, dilapidated buildings with broken glass, concrete pools, and surprise gardens. It was a really, really, really nice place to spend an afternoon, and didn’t require half the energy you need for Purple Mountain or the thick skin that you need for Fuzi Miao. The antiques market, especially, was remarkably free of people tugging at us or shouting “HELLO!”

Finally, when we were leaving, a little black frog dog came up to say hello, and its owner followed, beaming at us. She wound up pushing Chris off his scooter so she could demonstrate how well-behaved the little guy was. As soon as she sat down and gestured, he hopped right up with her (I stayed on the back of the scooter, just in case this incredibly friendly lady was actually a scooter thief, leading to hilarious pictures).

*As usual, at least 50% of the photographic credit goes to Chris, who is sitting right next to me writing a blog post about exactly the same thing… If you haven’t already, go look at his new layout - looks NICE!

**And I’m sorry about the sloppy photo alignment - wordpress is being wonky, and I’m too tired to mess with it right now.

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weddings and funerals

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

So, an article from Slate popped up in my Google Reader - What’s the Greenest Way to Dispose of My Dead Body - which made a nice companion to the article I read a few days ago about Tibetan sky burials. From Slate, I wound up at the eHow article for How to Donate Your Body to Science, which led to some cursory internet investigation about how much control you have over how your mortal remains are used (answer: not much). I think I’m a pretty enlightened person when it comes such things, and overall I think it’s is an admirable and altruistic thing to do, but nevertheless, there are a few things that I’m admittedly squeamish about (check the section, “What is Alloderm?”). Still, though, overall, good things come from it, with a slight risk of ending up spending eternity in someone’s underpants. But moving in a general, meandering fashion toward my point - somehow all the clicking around landed me at a funeral planning website.

DISCLAIMER: Now, I’m about to draw some parallels that might give the wrong impression to family and friends. I want to compare INDUSTRIES, not suggest that I’m equating my upcoming wedding with a funeral. Also, Mom, the first site I stumbled into gave me the idea for this post, which was why I started scouring the internet for funeral planning advice - it’s not just something I like doing when I’ve got free time, I promise (a. sent me an email asking if I was becoming a scientologist after I found a lot of freaky new age nonsense sites in much the same way, and I’ve had to explain on more than one occasion that I don’t ACTUALLY go in for furry fetishes [not that there's anything wrong with that, which is something I'll defend until I start raising eyebrows, but that's more of an old-school Worst Kept Secrets topic from the time before my parents started reading my blog {which I LOVE and I don't mean that to sound snarky}]).

Anyway, I looked at a lot of advice for someone trying to plan a funeral, and a lot of the language looked eerily familiar. Here are some excerpts from Funeral Planning 101:

Put Someone Objective in Charge of Funeral Home Arrangements

Someone who is responsible, and is not overwhelmed by the death, will be able to take the time to make sensible choices. Those in grief may be prone to bad judgment and could be easily overwhelmed by the influence of other people.

Shop Around and Ask Lots of Questions

You may find thousands of dollars in difference between funeral service providers, even within the same community. Some funeral homes have a family name and may seem privately owned (with all original family members on staff); but in fact, they may be owned by a funeral chain that has inflated prices. Choosing a funeral director is one of the most important decisions you’ll make, and you’ll want to be well prepared.

Funeral planning can be a trying time for any family. [CAN be?!?!]

source

Now, compare:

Shop around. Start by asking the venue’s wedding coordinator for a list of preferred florists, but also search Chamber of Commerce or visitors’ bureau websites. Study the online portfolios and make sure these are recent photos of actual clients rather than generic stock photos. Look for lots of testimonials. source

[Wedding vendors] want to make money and will pressure you into getting the more expensive option. Have a budget and stick to it. If you’re tempted by what they offer that is more expensive, say firmly, “That’s not in my budget, I’ll have to go home and see if I can move some things around and get back to you.” At home, it will be easier to decide if that extra option is really necessary or just an expensive add-on. source

There are many horror stories from brides who were taken advantage of when they were not aware of how to protect themselves (and their money) through [the process of wedding dress shopping]. source

Planning a wedding can be one of the most stressful events in a person’s life. source

Do you see my point? I thought I’d be able to easily find a few more quotes, but I swear that half of the sites I looked at could have been turned into wedding sites by changing a few key words. These are all from sites giving people advice on how to deal with two extremely important, and extremely opposite events, and they’re freakishly close to being identical. The similarities keep going if you start delving into vendor sites from both sides - you find out that in order to publicly declare a commitment / mourn the passing of a loved one, you’ve got to shell out all kinds of cash, otherwise you’re insincere or don’t understand the significance of the ceremony -  “There are certain occasions that override concerns about the economy. And a wedding is surely one of them.” (source) Of course, weddings and funerals both carry extremely significant emotional weight that shouldn’t be downplayed, but there’s not a right way to do either one, and whether or not the perfect designer dress/coffin is involved has no bearing on whether or not the intended celebration / closure / excitement / acceptance is achieved. I’m saying something pretty trite, I guess, but REALLY.

Let’s look at the wedding industry. I’d say about 70% of wedding sites I’ve looked at contain something about how girls (specifically, girls) dream about their weddings from childhood. Evidence:

The wedding dress is a symbol of their childhood dreams and hopes for a fairytale-like wedding. source

Many brides have had visions of wearing a sumptuous wedding gown since they were little girls. Whatever their vision - from a fairy princess to a sleek starlet - choosing the perfect wedding gown can be hard work. We will show you the steps involved to making your dream gown a reality. source

Words like “your day,” “dream wedding,” “most specialest thing EVAR” get strewn around like no one’s business, reinforcing a cultural stereotype that I’m not sure even exists anymore outside of this niche market. I have absolutely NOT dreamed about my wedding since childhood. Childhood was all about dreaming about being an astronaut, talking to dolphins, and bouncing back and forth between reality and my imaginary alterego SuperTiger (in one of those weird five-year old mind benders, SuperTiger was actually an anthropomorphic winged wolf, but that’s a story for another day). So this industry targets people in the middle of a mental rollercoaster, who are incredibly vulnerable to suggestions as to how to do things right - for me, and I’m guessing for other people, there’s a lot of internal pressure that has nothing to do with the relationship, family, or monogrammed napkin rings, to NOT MESS UP, and that’s ripe for someone to take advantage of.

And then there’s the funeral industry, which can be entirely sick. There, you’ve got emotionally overwhelmed and exhausted people dealing with the most difficult part of being human, who will sign a check without thinking about it, because they’ve got other, real things on their plate. This isn’t to say that there aren’t excellent funeral service providers out there (or wedding services, for that matter), but marking up a coffin by 350% is obscene. The average cost of an American funeral is $6,500 (not including cemetery costs), according to the National Directors Association, and it’s an eleven billion dollar industry. Of course, it’s much cheaper to die than get married, which carries an average price tag of $28,082, if that’s any consolation. I do understand the argument that funeral directors deserve some compensation for dealing with a line of work that most people prefer to sweep entirely under the carpet and spend their time helping people through some of the roughest moments in life, but isn’t there a line that’s been crossed? Of course, the internet is full of advice for how to plan a funeral for $800 or less, etc.

That’s just the money end, though. Here’s another side by side comparison of the sort of advice given to people that’s not financial, just a little creepy:

This service is all about remembering the deceased. The best way to remember the deceased is to think of him as in life. If the person was fun, loved Hawaii, and abhorred all things depressing, you could request that funeral guests come in Hawaiian shirts and pass out leis. If your family is more traditional or conservative, a more subdued funeral with guests dressed in black may be more appropriate. Tailor the funeral to the deceased and it will always stand out in the minds of the guests.  source

The best, most memorable weddings reflect the personalities of the couple getting married. To make sure your wedding isn’t a cookie-cutter copy of all the rest, don’t be afraid to infuse the event with your interests, shared memories and personal style. source

The funeral program is a special keepsake because it summarizes and highlights a loved one’s life and it is often the number one keepsake people take home from the memorial service. Attendees look forward to receiving this program because it shares the life story, accomplishments, and special memories of the deceased. source

The more guests feel involved with your wedding, the more likely they’ll have a great time. Wedding programs are a wonderful way to help your friends and family follow the ceremony and understand the traditions you’re incorporating, plus they can take theirs home as a keepsake. The key to crafting a good wedding program? Think practically and creatively. source

The most touching and meaningful eulogies are written from the heart. A eulogy does not have to be perfect. Whatever you write and deliver will be appreciated by the people in attendance….Think about the deceased and the relationship you had with them. Where you met (if your not family), things you did together, humorous or touching memories, and what you will miss the most might be things you decide to share. source

To begin with, make some notes about stories and experiences that you’ve enjoyed with the bride, groom or couple…Your speech should be from the heart, people will appreciate your sincerity. source

Think of the deceased. What colors did they like? The types of wood available can vary. Think of what they would want, within reason, and select from those items. Was the deceased someone who didn’t bother with frills? Or was this someone who wanted only the very best? There are caskets in every price range, from the plainest to the most “decked out”–it all depends on your preferences and budget. source

Take a minute to close your eyes and envision yourself as a bride. What do you see? Are you wearing a full ballgown with your hair in romantic ringlets? Or are you outfitted in an ethereal, flowing dress and loose hair sprinkled with flowers? Write down six adjectives that best describe how you want to look and feel on your wedding day. Some examples: princess, sexy, sophisticated, over-the-top, classic, boho. source

The sites even LOOK the same - the same kinds of menus, the same amount of checklists, printable budgets, etc. I mean, this is one thing that the internet is great for - advice when you need it badly and quickly. But really, if the internet is telling you how to do some of this stuff at your wedding or your funeral, doesn’t that point to a whole different problem apart from companies cashing in on your happiness/grief? And, back to the original point I sort of made earlier, doesn’t it say something kind of nasty about our species that intense emotions like happiness/grief create a rush of people looking to cash in? Can’t we just feel HAPPY or SAD during the hugely meaningful milestones in life without having checklists and comparison shopping charts?

Erm, this was an idea that was much more interesting in my head than it turned out to be in written form, but still. I’ve spent too much time on it, so I’m going to stop, even though it’s occurred to me that I’m pretty much just complaining about retail in its entirety, and the chances of having either a wedding or a funeral without having to buy SOMETHING are slim. Regardless. Final thought: weddings and funerals. Sheesh.

Bonus link: I don’t know if you’ll think this is as funny as I did, but try reading it out loud. And I’ll be running it by Chris shortly. It IS the answer to all of my prayers!

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the doctors

Sunday, February 8, 2009

One of the nicest things about my job (other than the chance to work with some of the most awesome people ever - thank you thank you thank you coworkers for Friday night - I’ve almost recovered from the shock and the unspeakable mixed drinks) is the extra temp stuff that gets tossed our way every once in a while. I’ve been doing voice recording for a while, I’ve done a little bit of private tutoring, and right now I’m teaching a class of doctors.

When I got the doctors offer, I misunderstood what I was being told. I thought it was a bunch of medical students who were going to continue their education overseas. I thought it would be a good chance to hang out with some Chinese students my age, and accepted. You can imagine my surprise when I showed up to Jiangsu Provincial Number Two Hospital for Traditional Chinese Medicine to find about thirty middle-aged SURGEONS waiting for me. Well, not all of them are surgeons. I’ve pretty much got a full hospital crew - radiologists, anesthesiologists, acupuncturists, dentists, pediatricians, gynecologists, oncologists, etc. They’re heading off to Zanzibar to help build and staff hospitals there. It’s sort of a governmental exchange program - China sends a team over every two years to help out. I’m a little iffy on the details, but I asked my doctors if they’d volunteered for the position, and, well, they said no. I’m not sure if I’ve got this straight or not, but I really think that my guys’ number came up, and they’re getting shipped off to Zanzibar away from their families for a couple of years, which is a bit intense.

Anyway, I pretty much wanted to die on my first day as soon as I realized that here I was, a twenty-six year old jerk with an undergraduate degree, standing up in front of highly educated professionals, most of whom are my parents’ age, some of whom have children my age.

Before I get any farther with this, let me make a few things clear. I sound infantile at best, idiotic at worst when I have a conversation in Chinese. Here’s a translation of my standard taxi cab conversation:

Driver: How long have you been in China?

Anne: I live China 1 year. I love China!

Driver: Do you like the food?

Anne: I love Chinese food! Chinese people are so kind!

[pause]

Anne: How many cars there are! I have a cat!

Driver: Um, that’s nice.

Anne: I love China!

So, if it sounds like I’m mocking my doctors, I’m not - it’s really, really hard to have a conversation in a language you’re not comfortable with, and half the time you don’t expect what comes out of your mouth to make any sense anyway. You just sort of reach around for anything you know how to say and let ‘er rip. Remember the Eddie Izzard sketch about learning French? It’s really just like that, and of course it’s a two way street. So I don’t mean for things like my doctors giggling hysterically at the mention of the word “girlfriend” or not understanding what dental floss is to be a reflection of their education or maturity. It’s really not, and I know that. I get into so many hilarious discussions with them, but I’m not mocking them - the language barrier is the source of the funny, not the doctors themselves.

For example, one of my “students” is an acupuncturist. I was talking to him about his work. He told me that acupuncture has been proven to cure cancer. I don’t think he meant this - I think he meant it’s a form of treatment, and maybe it is. But he swore that the World Health Organization lists acupuncture as a cure for cancer. He could have confused treatment and cure, and he also might have confused cancer with another disease. Anyway, I told him I was too afraid to get acupuncture treatment, and he told me not to worry, it doesn’t hurt as long as you do it REALLY. FAST., punctuating his words by pantomiming an action that looked like John Travolta stabbing Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction. There are also a lot of really surreal moments, like when I’m teaching a class of doctors about the food pyramid (they said it looked about right) or dental floss. The dental floss confusion didn’t get resolved until I actually brought some in and flossed my teeth for them, which got the room-wide “ohhhhhhhh” of understanding (I got a Chinese doctor on the record saying, “no one really does this,” and supported my theory that the floss hegemony is a by-product of an ancient financial relationship between dental professionals and, I don’t know, string merchants or something).

Anyway, I have more fun with this bunch than I’ve ever had in a classroom. They’re not exactly there by choice (I don’t think), they’re considerably older and better educated than me, but they actually listen to what I say, ask questions, and seem to believe that I know what I’m talking about. I don’t feel like they’re sizing me up or anything. Of course, we’re just doing conversational English - I’m not trying to teach them how to write a western-style five page research paper or anything. But they’re a really, really nice, fun group of people, and I look forward to Thursday afternoons. So far, we’ve had classes based on polite language, sports and leisure, holidays and festivals, nutrition, and personal hygiene (apparently the fact that some western women shave their legs is RIOTOUSLY funny). This week, I did a music class on special request.

I HATE using music in the classroom, I really do. I’m not very good at it, and I’ve had horrible luck in the past. My regular students are always begging me to teach them about American music and music history, and they just hate it every time I do. I know that music can work extremely well in a Chinese classroom, but I can’t figure out how to do it - I either annoy them or just put them to sleep (except for “Turn! Turn! Turn!” by the Byrds - my classes LOVE that song, and it’s a great way to get into the concept of opposites - you can have a fun time waxing philosophical with them, too). Last year I spent several hours putting together a really brief, basic genre presentation, and it fell about as flat as I’ve ever had a class fall. I went to Doctor Class on Thursday with that presentation, kind of dreading it - if the hip young people were bored by it, I wasn’t holding a lot of hope for the middle-aged doctors.

Who proved me wrong like you would not believe - it’s rare that I can keep a three hour class going until after the end of the period, but they were so wonderful, open-minded, and interested in the whole thing. One of the best comments came after I played Miles Davis for them - “He puts his heart inside his trumpet so everyone can hear.” They were also completely hypnotized by “Long Black Veil” - everyone said this was their favourite song I played. We had to listen to it over and over again so they could hear the way that Johnny Cash told the story (which they thought was the saddest thing they’d ever heard). I have to bring them more story songs next week. I played some Nine Inch Nails for them and taught them all how to headbang (a moment which will probably never be topped as an instance where I wish someone had a video camera), and we talked about “Sittin’ On Top of the World.” After they listened once, they said, “it’s a sad song! His baby left!” Then I played it again, and after a while it sunk in, which made everyone laugh. They were all singing it as we took our break (”She’s gone and I don’t worry!”). They were fascinated by the Elliott Smith story (I played “Waltz #2 for them and told them about the stabbing thing). At the very end of class, I told them my news (I’m really trying not to be obnoxious about it, but I’ll be damned if I don’t want to run screaming down the street “I’M GETTIN’ HITCHED AND IT’S AWESOME!!!”), and my flirter moaned, “No! I will go to put a knife in my heart now!”. We also spent a little time on rap, and talked about its position in race relations. Usually I cannot teach a class that deals with race without getting a serious cringe moment (”but all the black people have guns!”), but the doctors were really interested and really cool and thoughtful about it. I wonder if that was because they aren’t on the steady diet of American television that my kids are, and thus aren’t bombarded with distorted images all the time. Overall, it was a really exciting and fun class to teach, and I was really impressed with them. We spent the last part of the class learning “We Are the Champions,” and they loved hearing about how Freddie Mercury was from Zanzibar (true - who knew? Also, is there anyone else out there who didn’t realize until recently that Zanzibar wasn’t a magical imaginary place, or am I publicly admitting to inexcusable ignorance?).

Weekends go so fast, you know?

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