Last week I was talking with my teacher about some of the differences between our culture and the Chinese culture, in particular women and marriage. In China when a couple get married the woman will keep her old Family Name where as in the UK generally the woman will change to be the same as the man.
When I was explaining this she looked at me with a degree of confusion on her face, and was deeply surprised when I said that Jenna did this when we got married. She then started asking me about an operation in a clinic and I got the idea we were talking about a different thing.
In the end we had to resort to speaking English to try and figure out what was wrong. It turns out that the word for "Family Name" and "Sex" are pronounced exactly the same and even the characters are very similar.
So I had been telling her that Jenna had a sex change when we got married! There is a different word for "change" that I hadn't learnt yet, which would have been suitable for name change.
I'm glad I was talking to a teacher who could understand what I was saying, and not one of my friends who don't really understand English language and culture. Otherwise I could have given out a very wrong impression!
Name Change or Sex Change
Introducing Pippa
A few months we wrote about a young orphan girl who had seen a lot of rejection (her actual name is Pippa, and she lives nearby). Well Jenna and I decided that we are going to start fostering her one weekend a month, so that she can get out of the orphanage and have a small portion of "normal" life. Last weekend was our first weekend. We had a great time and think that she did too, here are a few pictures you can see the full set here:
Making Your Point
Last week there was a big crowd gathered by one of the entrances to an apartment complex just down the road from us. There were fireworks and banners hanging from the gates. It seemed like some kind of big protest.
As we were walking past, a huge dumper truck full of dirt came along and after an argument with a man, the driver unloaded the dirt in the vehicle into entrance of the complex. A few minutes later and 3 more trucks came along and unloaded huge piles of dirt in the other entrances causing chaos on the roads.
After asking about a bit we managed to figure out that the farmers who originally owned the land were angry that they didn't get a fair price when they sold to the property developers and wanted some more.
Although it was obviously a very serious issue to those involved it was really amusing watching the traffic pile up on the roads, and when we went back a few hours later they still hadn't managed to unblock the entrances. When I asked one of my friends about it he said it was a (literal translation) Chinese tradition. I think his meaning was more that it is a very Chinese way of making your point heard.
Hello Again
This blog is in need of some love. It has been ages since I have written anything....sorry.
We had a really good time in Tianjin and Weihai with our brothers. It was so good to be able to get out of our own city and explore a bit. Tianjin has advanced so much since we were last there, it was incredible. So many place we just didn't recognize because of the fast change. Weihai is apparently China's cleanest city, and certainly by the standard of cities we have been to this holds true. The air is totally clear and add that to the beautiful landscape and blue sea, it is hard to believe that you are in fact in the same country as Xi'an.
There was one bad point however. Unfortunately, although China is an extremely diverse place some things are the same wherever you go. One of them is the obsession with white skinned babies. So especially in Weihai, we were just pestered wherever we were by people stopping in front of us and staring, shouting hello at us, picking Tabitha up out of her pram without even acknowledging me or Jenna, and asking us for photos.
When we first arrived in China we tried to be as polite as we could to these people, as we know that they are kind hearted and don't mean us any harm. However after a year of this, and especially seeing that we are on our holiday where we want to relax it was just too much. So we decided to play the part of rude foreigners and just told people to go away. We came to the realization that anywhere we go for a holiday in China is going to have the same problem.
Now we are back in Xi'an. I have been studying hard at my accountancy studies and we have both been going to the gym most days. I am slowly getting my desire to study the language more after feeling pretty burnt out at the end of last term. We go back to school in just over a week and a half.
In the meanwhile a good friend of ours from Tianjin is coming to visit us. It will be great for her to see how we live here and also to spend some more time with her.
I have some interesting ideas for blog articles, so hopefully you should see a bit more on here soon, although some of them depend on getting the video camera that we are trying to save up for, so they may be a little while yet:-)
In the meanwhile here's a couple of pictures from Weihai.
Summer Holidays
I'm sorry I haven't written much on here over that past month or two. In all honesty there has not been a lot going on. Since everything has settled down from the earthquake we have been simply plodding on with the final part of our first year of language study.
Tomorrow is my last day(Jenna finished last week). It is nice that we have finished the first part of our Chinese studies. There has been such a big improvement over the last year, starting from only being able to speak about 50-100 words, to now being able to speak to a Chinese person for a few hours without too many problems.
Progress is definitely a lot slower now, I do still have to fill out my vocabulary a lot, but most of all I need to work on refining my grammar. At the moment even though I am able to communicate what I want to say, it probably sounds pretty horrible to a Native Chinese speaker.
On Saturday we are heading off to Tianjin to see Kriss, Jenna's younger brother and then after about a week down to Weihai to see my younger brother Josh. We are really looking forward to the break, we feel like we need it.
We probably won't be online much over the next 2 weeks but I will have my phone on me and so can send/receive Twitters.
Rejected Orphan
Last week I heard a really sad story about a young orphan in another province.
As I'm sure you already know, there is a one child policy that applies to many families in China. One of the results there are a great many girls and children with disabilities abandoned, and left to live in orphanages. The Chinese government has been making some efforts to encourage Chinese parents to adopt, however this is something that is not really a big part of Chinese culture and so the uptake is quite small.
This leads into the story about an 8 year old girl, Penny. A family visiting her orphanage fell in love with her and decided they wanted to adopt her. The orphanage advised rather than adopt straight away they should take her home and foster her for a few months. This was wonderful for Penny who had been in the orphanage since she was less than one year old.
Roll forward a few months and the told the orphanage that there are a some problems with Penny and that they no longer wish to adopt her. There actually really only was one problem......that her grades at school aren't good enough.
The Chinese education system is absolutely crazy, not only do the teaching methods stifle creativity but the children are expected to study for 12 hours a day in classes of 50+ students and can start taking exams as young a 5. It is extremely difficult to get into a good university and so parents are always pushing their children really hard to get good grades. Parents can be very disappointed with their children if they don't get high exam marks.
Penny recently scored 78% on a maths paper, which was deemed not good enough.
She now has to look forward to the prospect of returning to the orphanage, she will have spent her whole life looking forward to leaving.
It would be really good if you could remember this poor young girl her in your thoughts and prayers, especially that a family who could give her true, proper love would come along.
Back to Normal
It finally seems like things are getting back to normal. I am back at school and trying to catch up on all of the vocabulary that I should have learned these last 2 weeks. Jenna is feeling a lot better now although she still does have a few moments when she thinks the house is moving. In fact there was another big tremor on Sunday afternoon, which apparently rocked our apartment building quite a bit, but fortunately we were out shopping and didn't even feel it.
So there is 6 weeks left of this school year. I feel that I have made a lot of progress, but some days still wonder if I am ever going to get anywhere near the level I want to be.
Thanks to The Man Upstairs, we have received a gift and are going to be able to go on a holiday this summer and so we are going to see my brother Josh in WeiHai and the to see Jenna's brother Kriss in Tiajin. We are really looking forward to this time especially as Kriss has not yet met Tabitha.
