Visiting Friends

It's always nice to visit friends we haven't seen in a little while...to see how they are doing and compare notes. The last time we were here it was more than 100 degrees outside and we were swimming in a pool that was like bath water. This time it was a crisp day here at the end of October (only in the 70s) and we were celebrating the visit of this friend's relatives.

The other little girl in the photo is actually quite tall for her age of 3, but her parents are tall. Her mother is a translator and her father is an engineer. He really likes China, and seemed to enjoy Qing Dao 青 島 , but his wife really likes Europe. This is a common issue with cross-cultural couples where each one really likes the other's home culture and also with those nomads who have adjusted to other cultures 四 海 為 家

A conversation before dinner.



From ages 2 to 82.


The master at work on the piano. 鋼 琴 家

Photos

For those of you who are saying to yourselves, "Enough of this idiot! I just want to see photos." I have the solution for you. In the links section I have just posted a link to a site that has links to our photo gallery.

Hoagies Expatriate Style

Those of you from Philadelphia will know what I am talking about. They look like a submarine sandwich. They taste like a submarine sandwich. In fact they are submarine sandwiches, but if it is made in Philadelphia it just has that special taste...maybe its the grease.

Well, my parents tonight made submarine sandwiches for us to try. They bought the materials and we constructed them. It was good tasting, I don't have the opportunity to eat traditional American faire, but it was just a little too healthy and good quality ingredients to be real. Two of our children enjoyed it but our baby slept through it all.

We discussed backgrounds and discovered that we may have common ancestry after all. Supposedly one of my great grand relatives of some sort had what the Europeans referred to as Tatar or Mongol ancestry. That means that one of my distant ancestors may have had contact with my wife's ancestors, even if it was through conquest, looting and pillaging.

Halloween

Tonight, we introduced the practice and origin of American Halloween to recently arrived internationals. There is a lot of interesting mishmash of pagan and Catholic history behind that childhood fun of trick or treating (bread in return for prayer for the dead) and apple bobbing (Roman practice related to the Goddess of Pomona).

Then we talked about some very real and interesting spiritual realities introduced by a missionary on furlough from overseas. In one story, he related that 95% of people in the part of the world where he was stationed have had the experience at some point in their lives of having a 'dark man' come in and hold them down and try to smother them. Some people from close to that area (not Christians) agreed that they had this experience as well.

The Chinese equivalent 鬼 節 or 'ghost holiday' is not exactly the same as American Halloween, though some do make the comparison. It's in summertime and it's not supposed to be scary. It is supposed to be for ghosts supposedly visiting here for a bit.

As for our family, we often paa the evening in traditional American style with live catfish hotpot and lobster sashimi while giving out candies -dentists no doubt love this holiday- and storytelling to visiting trick or treaters. This year we will go to our church which has a wonderful harvest festival of games, candy, real food and music.

And now...oh no! There's a giant baby attacking out there. Well, look for yourself.

Learning Written Chinese Language

Today's lesson boys and girls is about why I think Chinese written language is easier than English after the 1st 2000 or so characters. Once someone has gotten to this level, most words are the combination of one or more of these basic characters. They are very easy to learn and remember.

Take the terms for flowers. Now, ask me the term for a flower in English and I probably won't know, but I know quite a few in Chinese simply because they are easy to remember. What is easier to stick in those neural pathways: 'mountain,' 'tea' and 'flower' / or 'Rhodadendran'?

My Chinese friends ask me about flower names all the time, assuming I know much more than I do. (Shhh, let's not tell anyone.) My great aunt knew lots of them, she planted flowers everywhere. Somehow I did not inherit her green thumb, which is why I stick to planting fruit trees with automatic watering...but I digress.

For any of you out there who know at least basic Chinese, or maybe Japanese also write it this way, this is another good example. Once you know the definition of this word, accordian, it is easy to remember.

Don't miss my new links section. I'll be updating it soon.

Learning Chinese Language

This is a photo of a part of a page from my daughter's Chinese textbook. She is really learning the language well, probably because I learned from all of my mistakes how to learn another language. Make it fun and use it, use it, use it.

I hear so many people whine about how hard both spoken and written Chinese is. For example, this rant by Moser, an academic who should know better, is in my opinion absolute nonsense. I for one did not do well in French and never learned it, but I can communicate in spoken and written Chinese very well. I regularly read novels, newspapers and magazines in the language.

Many of the people who voice these opinions are the ones who when they were in China hung out with the other expats in the expat bar as much as they could in their spare time. They like Chinese as something esoteric to study but not as a living, breathing culture and people.

I saw these mostly Americans and Western Europeans when I was in Taiwan. About once a month I would go to the expat bar to blow off some steam with my classmates and hear about their wild exploits together. They went to this obscure corner of the island, surfing, dipping in mud springs, raving in the moonlight. It sounded like lots of fun. These people also did quite well in their Chinese classes. One such precocious classmate went from introductory to advanced Chinese in 8 months...but she couldn't communicate in the language. It was useless. Most of these people (there were some pinheads and goofoffs) knew how to study a language, but they didn't know how to learn it...especially one that was so different from their own.

Tune in to my next post to hear why I believe written Chinese is easier than written English to learn.

Mail Order Bride

They say rants get more traffic, after seeing yet another silly article on this topic, here is my blog rant. As a disclaimer before I begin let me just say that my wife and I did not meet this way. If you stick with this blog, I'll tell you the tale of how our romance began. (I need my wife's permission otherwise she'll understandably beat me senseless.)

The term 'mail order bride,' as it is used here in the United States today, seems to be applied to all marriages where American males marry a woman from another culture through some sort of introduction service. Guys who have had a bad experience(s) with American women hope to find women are more traditional in other cultures. Some self proclaimed progressives label these women submissive 'mail order brides' who are marrying losers, showing quite a bit of ignorance and cultural insensitivity. Needless to say, most of these couples I have met do not fit this stereotype. I have even met one or two guys who are happily married to 'mail order brides' older than themselves.

The term 'mail order bride' (I guess as different from a 'mail order husband') also implies something antiquated and ominous for the woman. The reality is dating and marriage by introduction is common in non-Western cultures, most of whom have much more stable marriages and lower divorce rates than we do. An Indian friend we know met his wife, who was living in another country at the time, this way and they have a great marriage. Marriage introduction is quite robust in even the most economically advanced non-Western cultures and is even making a comeback in the U.S.

Happy belated 78th birthday to my father! For us here it was celebrated relatively on time, October 7, but for those of you friends and relatives this is coming a little later. The first photo is the birthday candle, first things first. The second photo is of the seafood dinner we ate...sashimi, giant clams, toasted black cod prawns, steamed vegetables and noodles

Cultures that marginalize the elderly waste so much social capital. Kids naturally love being around the older generation (in part because they can be spoiled by them) and the older generation generally seems to love children. It also works as a system. Grandparents can share
their heritage with the little ones and feel a useful part of the next generation.

Worship

It's always refreshing worshipping on Sunday with the body of believers in Jesus Christ. It's nice to see how people of different races, backgrounds, come together as one group as a sort of family. Here in our area we see many more people of different races married together in the church (Indian husband/French wife, Japanese husband/Taiwanese wife, etc.) than in the society as a whole. If this keeps up, maybe we'll see the end of identity politics in the U.S. some day.

How different the world is. Near our church 1 or 2 neighbors on a street have suddenly started putting trashcans and lawn chairs outside on the street so people would not park in front of their house. I don't understand the fuss. It's nothing new, the church has been there for a while. It's just for 3 short hours and it's not as if the families are rowdy or are going to throw beer cans. The neighbors don't even use the parking spaces themselves. Ah...NIMBYism, but we should just be nice and bless those that curse us. The pastor has asked people to comply with their requests and I'm happy to do so. The only way is to make an enemy a friend.

Our smallest one was too well behaved at church today. He played nicely with the other children, offered food to one of them, and even picked up the toys and eagerly put them away as I directed him. It must be that flu going around.

Fall in the Subtropics

Well, it's here. Unusually large tropical fruit season has arrived at stores near us.

This jackfruit 波羅蜜 weighs more than 10 pounds -a tiny one- and is about $1.00 a pound. I think the taste is a little like a cross between a guava and banana. We'll chop it up, take out the meat and package it for friends. The inside has this resin that really sticks to the fingers so we like to do it in one sitting.

Fresh durian fruit 榴蓮 and papayas are also getting cheaper. I like durian fruit. It's the smelliest but best tasting fruit in the world. It also looks interesting both inside and outside. One of our friends compared dissecting durian to brain surgery. I still remember taking a fresh one to an international bible study and seeing the reactions of friends from different parts of the world. Those that were used to it were really excited to give it a try. Those that were from more northern nations thought a skunk had walked by...but liked it anyway once they tried a bite.

I wanted to plant a durian tree in our backyard. A complete tropical, it would survive in this climate with a little TLC in the wintertime, but my wife grew up with durian trees. She is afraid someone will be killed by falling fruit.

There are some tropicals from other places that we don't have here yet. Taiwan's wax apple 蓮霧, red dragon fruit 火 龍 果 (I don't know what the real name is in English) and others are not here yet.

On bargains:

I wanted to buy a book on a particular topic. In the morning I found an English-language paperback at an upscale bookstore for more than $17.00. Then I checked out the Chinese-language bookstore I wrote about in the last post and found a more well-written book -a new book- on the same exact topic for 80 cents!

Bargains

I love to bargain shop. We were driving around this area some distance away and found a Chinese bookstore, which was a huge selection of books and soap opera DVDs at an unbelievably low price. It was almost like a book department store, a chain store from Shanghai, which has opened up several stores here. I picked up 6 packs of character practice writing paper for my daughter for 50 cents. My wife enjoys reading there and I have even picked up a few titles.

There is something about shopping in these stores and especially in outdoor markets that is fun. We have a very busy wholesale/retail area nearby and of course we like to stroll around the busy streets of the area looking for bargains. 熱鬧 99 cent stores can be fun, but it just isn't the same.

We went to an Indian area with my parents today. There is an area here where the streets are lined with Indian stores of all types from all over the subcontinent. I have spent most of my time overseas over in East Asia or in Western Europe but the sights, sounds and smells of this place are almost enough to make me want to visit the subcontinent.


We were walking down the streets checking out various grocery stores for Ayurvetic medicines for my some one. One was a type of vitamin and another was a toothpaste. These types of medicines look interesting, but I know absolutely nothing about them. I have learned to respect Chinese medicine over the years. There are quite a few remedies that work and so I am sure there are probably gems to be found in the Indian Ayurvetic tradition as well.

I do know that I like Indian food. My father really liked the buffet restaurant we went to but he likes a lot of different types of food. My mother, who likes traditional American food, did not hate it and so that was a good sign.

Korean Soap Operas

We are just another group of Chinese-speaking Americans watching a Korean soap opera dubbed into Chinese.

South Korea is nice, not as immediately interesting as Japan or the Chinese world in my opinion, but one thing that the Koreans do very well is the television drama. They are interesting and something that the whole family can watch, which is why they are very popular among Chinese and Japanese speakers. There is romance, drama, beautiful scenery and a very good plot line but none of the violence or casual promiscuity that might be found in the West or Japan. The stories sometimes have sad endings, with the hero or heroine dying at the end. Some of the directors are Christians, which shows through in the plot lines. I can remember one such drama where the boyfriend sacrifices his life running in front of a truck to save the life of his evil girlfriend (sometimes the guy is evil too). She later turns her life around by...well maybe I shouldn't spoil the plot for anyone who would watch this.

I'm just going to do it. No more procrastinating. This blog will have regular updates. We have done lots of things over the last few weeks since the last post.

In late September, we went out with friends for dinner at a Chinese restaurant near our house. It was given a good review by our local urban newspaper which is not a good sign, but it is surprisingly a real bridge between cultures. The food has the fancy atmosphere, fancy table settings, small portions and high prices that Anglos expect out of a fine restaurant. On the other hand, the quality of the food is not dimished too much like most Chinese restaurants that appeal to Westerners whom they know do not care than much about the actual food itself (ie. the ubiquitous P.F. Changs that seem to appear ad nauseum at every fancy new 'development').

Their family is in some ways a mirror image of us. They are raising their son in Japan and bring him to the United States every summer for a bit of American culture. We are raising our children here and bring them over to the Chinese speaking world every summer for exposure to Chinese culture.