The Laborious Life of Learning the Language

Ni hao!

I would write a bunch of other stuff in Mandarin, but I think 95% of the people who read this (not that there are 95 people that read this blog) would not understand it and I would probably incorrectly spell 95% of the words. Nevertheless, I have taken to learning Chinese like a greedy child chasing Santa Claus around your local mall. My knee injury really put a hindrance on the learning curve of Matthew Scott Atkinson, and with the clock ticking on my stay I sometimes feel like that same angry child who didn't get his "Mighty Morphin Power Ranger" or whatever it is that the Generation XYZ Child of today is demanding. However, I have come to the conclusion that it is only I that is whom to blame, as I recently took a hard look at my Tsinghua Student Identification Card (taken around the same time as my knee injury occurred) and my face looks to be about the same size & shape of an overblown basketball (fortunately this is no longer true). I should have either come into the soccer season in better shape, or not played at all. Additionally, the fact that I made the team at all is a true miracle on Earth.

For the last five weeks I have taken 3-6 hours of Mandarin every day (yes even on weekends), and the only classes that I missed were during my infamous three-day excursion to Qingdao. I have learned to: ask/say my name (which is WU XIONG "Kung Fu Bear" in Chinese); tell time & dates; ask and give directions; talk about the weather; order food at a restaurant without being served something that you might see on "Fear Factor"; buy pirated goods from knock-off Prada purses to pirated DVDs, etc. My teacher Mrs. Wong, a bi-bespectacled sweet lady who has become a good friend, and I recently even gave her my bicycle which I of course cannot really ride anyways but it's the thought that counts right?!? I have gone from remedial learner to legitimate student, and I have to say I really do enjoy going to class. So much so that I have cashed in on the party lifestyle of Beijing so that I can be fresh and clear-headed the next day (with a couple of exceptions, but only a couple). It's been a real role-reversal for me as these last few weeks are the time where the majority of my closest compadres are off to travel: China, Southeast Asia, or head home for the holidays; however, this is the most serious I have been ironically the happiest.

That being said I can say for one that even knowing the small piece of the puzzle of the Chinese language that I hold in my hands really does make all the difference in the world. By sending text messages to Barbara/Mengjie I have been able to rekindle our friendship/romance and was even told today that my "Chinese is fabulouse"(not a typo this was her spelling, although I do admit that the particular text message she is commenting on was written by my teacher). It's a funny deal too because I I have learned more about Barbara in the last month than the previous four, and have Mandarin to thank for this.

The girl I met at the airport, whose name is "Ming Ming" I have gone out with a couple times over the last few weeks and as I speak almost no Chinese & she speaks almost no English, our conversations have not yet gone as far as "The Electoral College". For one of our dinner dates my teacher even wrote four pages of questions for me to ask her, after I finished the script in all of five minutes there was really not a lot for me to do. I can't tap-dance, do magic, or even juggle and it was looking pretty grim... that is until I pulled out the somewhat bad words that I recently picked up on the mean streets of Beijing, and out of nowhere I was right back in the derby. Since these are not really, really bad words I will write them down here: "Er Bai Uh", "Shen Jing Bing", "Bian Tai"(if you want to know their meaning feel free to say them to the next Chinese person you see who is not carrying a loaded weapon). All of the sudden I was a smash hit, and as I acted like the dumb foreigner (I do know what these words mean and Ming Ming Ming was in on the joke), and in dead-pan seriousness asked the waiter/other staff at the of the restaurant the meaning of these taboo phrases my dinner date was laughing so hysterically that I thought she may have been possessed by the devil. Soon afterward she was tugging on my arm and took me to a place which is so incredibly metrosexual; so incredibly generic; yet so incredibly awesome.

Ming Ming took me to a Pool Hall filled with Alpha Male Chinese Metrosexuals, Pop/Rap Music not played in the US since 2004, and a cheesy female VJ with one of those old-school Madonna microphones from the "Vogue" days. Jaws dropped as I walked into an exclusively non-foreigner mingling point, but I am used to this sort of thing and played it cool as a fiddle until that is it was time to shoot some pool. Not only was every Chinese metrosexual the modern Chinese man's "Minnesota Fats", but my dinner date Ming Ming smashed me to smithereens in front of the hipster crowd full of males sporting skin-tight jeans and shaggy blond haircuts. Even though it was just as humiliating as it seams (and yes it was humiliating as everyone in the damn place was laughing at me), it was still one of the most memorable good times of my stay in the Orient.

The couple of times I have gone on for drinks with the boys haven't been at clubs or bars, but a much more magical place. "U-SPEED GO -KART" a place where you are allowed to ride Go-Karts at incredibly high speeds, sip on suds and munch on burgers, and crash into your fellow racers with reckless abandon and no warnings or reprimand. You also get to only race against your friends, so there really are no boundaries when it comes to putting a glove in a fellow Tsinghua student's face! In the six races I have competed in over the last few weeks I have finished: fifth, fifth, fifth, second, fourth, and fourth. This would be out of a talent pool of five drivers, so I have not been winning the Indy 500 of Go-Kart (or whatever my German sauerkraut eating adversaries say that the top Formula One Race is). BUT, I have gotten into more life-risking crashes than anybody at that track by a mile. In my fourth race I crashed into my friend Ralf's kart with such speed that it actually broke the cart, and even his seat belt snapped off. It really could have been an all-time great YouTube clip since his cart was stuck on the rail, and rather than just drive around him I decided to crash into him at top speed with such ferocious force that my kart actually popped into the air. He kept asking me, "Why would you do that...Why?" I never really had an answer for that one, but by the looks on the faces of all the startled Chinese watching our races from the upper-deck area he was not the only one who thought that way.

It was a magical moment and henceforth I got the street credibility that I always wished I had as an adolescent, and this was proven true by the legendary driver EBO (whose finishes are polar-opposites of mine) as he was stuck on a rail and saw my kart coming and yanked off of seat-belt and ran out of his kart like the German ferry-duster he is. I have to admit, my neck still hurts and my back is sore, but I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.

well that's all for now, this may be my last post in the Orient but I will put some pics up soon.

Love & Respect,
The King of Crash

Qingdao Express

Qingdao is a city by a beach, a beach where overweight Chinese men run on the sand in bright blue Speedo's on absolutely frigid days. I have never wanted to be blind, but during my walks on the Qingdao beaches I would have liked to trade places with Stevie Wonder. Nevertheless, I took off my shoes and dipped my toes in the water in order to say that I did, so I did my own stripping of sorts in order to acquiesce to the powers that be....and after I had done so, I vowed to never do it again.

I spent my Saturday touring the beautiful beaches and being bombarded by merchants, beggars, and well more merchants & beggars. I am way too nice when it comes to the homeless, and upon seeing a woman with a baby with gobs of dirt oh his face, I caved in like a Malibu landslide and and put $50 RMB in their basket (about eight US dollars). Within seconds a small army of women with babies were storming after me, and because I could not outrun them with my crippled knee, I had to give each pair some financial assistance in order to flee without being attacked by a mother and her small child. On a side note: I learned a few days ago from my Grinch of a physical therapist that many of these babies are "rented" from rural villages, and are not actually the children of the men/woman that use them to gain sympathy from tourists. Even worse than this is that the sludge on the face of the baby is not because of a poor standard of living, but it is carefully applied by the adult to the child in order to get bigger "donations". Additionally, many of the families who rent children are very wealthy in their respective native villages. This is not a made-up story and is a well-known swindle in the Orient. I got served!

After escaping the relentless beggars I spotted a carnival-type game where you throw a full-size basketball at seven bowling pins from about ten feet away, and the object is to knock them all over for great financial reward. Within a few minutes there was an audience of some fifty Chinese people (I was THE ONLY white person on the beach, so that alone made me quite the oddity) and my braggadocios boasting and crossover dribbles inspired a mob of Chinese revelers to cheers and jeer me like the village fool. Every time that I tossed the ball at the seven pins of pain I would seem to knock over all but one of the adversarial bowling pins. This made me both more more determined than a competitive eater at "The Coney Island Hot-Dog Eating Contest" and as angry as Star Jones in a planet where plastic surgery is outlawed. With each miss a fossil of a Chinese man with less teeth than I have ears would scream in my grill..."LIANG KUAI!!!" Meaning that I had just lost another two RMB. I was trying everything: rolling the ball, tossing it like a jump-shot, granny-style, overhand... all for more financial failure. As the crowd grew to a ruckus atmosphere, and teenage Chinese vixens made me feel like a pretty-boy karaoke king I became relentless on my assault of this impossible game. When it was all said and done I had not knocked over the seven pins a single time...and I was $300 RMB poorer (yes that is 150 misses!)

Later that day I had my big dinner with the CEO of Asian Ops for a large company. He picked me up with his personal driver in an AUDI, and we were soon joking around like old friends. The car stopped at an Italian restaurant named "Napoli" and rather than order from the menu, Chris had them bring out his own sampling of all the best dishes. We polished off a bottle of red wine and in the hour conversation that came with the food & drink, I learned an immense amount of knowledge about the business climate in Qingdao; Chris the person and his rocket-launch to success both in the United States & in China; general tips about how to do business in China; and women, he loves to talk about women. Chris sold all of the American franchises that he owned in 2005 for huge financial reward, and was so high on the hog that he was about to retire in his early-forties. The CEO of the entire company coaxed Chris into doing the consulting for a move to China, and soon thereafter Chris decided to purchase the license rights for all franchises in China and there will soon be many. The dinner was pretty serious and I have to say I was a wallflower in the talks, as I had little to teach and much to learn...this was until dessert.

Instead of Mud Pie or Vanilla Ice Cream, the waitress brought out three bottles of Desertif alcohol and she sat down with us as did the entire female staff of the restaurant. In fact the restaurant basically stopped doing business as a whole, and only Chris, myself, and a slew of the female staff at our table were left in what at first seemed like a very packed place. A "drink yo' face off setting" came out of nowhere like a hurricane in Switzerland, and Chris morphed from serious business executive to John Daly on Spring Break right before my eyes. I had no idea this was coming, and reluctantly fired up shot after shot of God knows what. Thankfully, my friend J.P. from Korea had been training me for such an event, and within a half-hour it was Chris that was drunk as a skunk and my demeanor was still not seriously altered. I kept drinking glass after glass of water, and managed to keep my bearings about me during yet another incredibly strange exchange in The Orient. The "Gong Fu Xiong Mau" (Kung Fu Panda) Tsinghua student identification card was displayed soon thereafter and beautiful Chinese women were continuously greeting me with compliments I in no way deserved because of their love for the greatness of panda lore.

After the hurricane ended Chris demanded that I accompany him and his posse to "The New York Bar" where a rag-tag jazz/funk band belted out Kenny G hits. Our table was pillaged by other executives in the same never-never-land as Chris resided in: and owners of yachts, managers of restaurants & hotels, a C.O.O., and other prominent business figures were soon yucking it up with a gang of other expats and Chinese waitresses. I was being ordered "Scoobey-Doo" drinks which were incredibly sour and made me want to head for the hills, but to "save face" I kept up with the rest of the group. Speaking of saving face, one of the girls at "Napoli" told me she hated drinking with Chris, but had to "save face" for her manager and restaurant and therefore followed suit with everybody else. Since I am not yet adapted to the Chinese culture I decided that I wanted to "save my face" and took a taxi home so I could enjoy my last day in the city. Chris and his gang of lush executives were shocked & appalled that I would leave early, but I made up some ridiculous excuse about my knee acting up (when I really need an excuse to leave somewhere, this one never lets me down), and was soon back in bed and waking up with the incessant ring of my cell phone the following day.

The next day I realized something pretty quickly, I would never work for somebody like Chris. A heck of a nice guy, and a prominent businessman, but I am going to need to have a separation between the business & social side of things in my life. I believe that this is a major difference between the business world of the West & East, in that in the West my paradigm of work & social life is kept separate; however, in the Orient many times these two worlds are meshed into one. I believe this to be the most true in Korea, as my friend J.P. has lectured me many times on how the company you work for becomes your family, and your real family becomes secondary to your business family. I love Koreans and think they are beautiful and entertaining people, but I am certain that I could never want to work there. I feel confident that for a short-time I could handle a business project both in Korea or for a person like Chris, but for a long-term position there is just no way. Sometimes I just want to go home and watch a pirated DVD (saw the new James Bond last night on my DVD player, not bad).

I spent my last day doing more sight-seeing, even going to the Tsingtao Museum where sadly enough I was too tired from the previous evening to sip even a sprinkle of Tsingtao greatness. I also rented a cross between a taxi & a tricycle, and this three-wheeled specimen was about as powerful as a push-cart powered by overweight donkeys. I could not stop laughing the entire ride as I was still delirious from the previous day, and this inspired my taxi driver to laugh as well; thus, making me laugh harder and so on and so forth...a truly magical ride around town to say the least. I'm pretty sure I changed the destination three or four times so that he wouldn't stop touring me around by the beach, as I kept my window down and my head held higf. Upon making it to the airport, I received a frantic text message from Chris asking me to stay at his place for another week. That he had big plans and lots of huge dinners & parties for us to attend. Within seconds I received a phone call from him, I took a brief look at the Caller ID and then turned off my phone. Enough was enough and the towel was thrown like I was a battered boxer whose only chance for recovery was abandonment.

Qingdao Express is now closed,

matthew

Holiday Nonsense in The Orient

The "Three Amigos of the Orient" (the dumb American Matt, the polite Norwegian Oystein, and the crazy Korean JK). This would be us laughing uncontrollably as the Chinese acted out scenes from "Titanic"...priceless!

Crazy Chinese acting out love scenes from "Titanic"

Santa demands satisfaction...love & respect from the Orient!

So a Norwegian & a dumb American go to a Danish Christmas party in Beijing...

Hello fellow turkey-lovers & for those of you who are vegetarian I guess tofu:

The worm has turned again for me in the Orient as the last few weeks have been nothing short of spectacular. For those of you who tried to convince me to come home and have my surgery under Uncle Sam's watchful arms, I have to say that you were about as wrong as a Chinese metrosexual dancing in a mosh pit at a punk rock concert (yes this does happen here on a regular basis, for those of you not possessing MTV Asia). My knee is healthy and I'm out and about every day all-day; the city is open and new friends are ever-present; and I've still got a month of being a full six inches taller than the average Chinese height (if only I could play basketball!). Long story short life is very good again, thanks to advice from my amigo Eric whom I met at Hooters a few weeks ago in Shanghai: if you learn the language in China everything opens up. Not that I have learned the language, but I'm now taking intensive one-on-one sessions every day, and am well on my way to winning back the heart of the former ex-gf as well as several other Chinese vixens before my inevitable departure back to the States. I'm back in the good graces of Barbara as I now send her text messages in the Pinyin version of Chinese (in which I get replies back in seconds, and will be spending many days with this former flame before I depart). The Pinyin Chinese language is a bridge for us gringos because it uses the American alphabet to form words. It is like the elementary version for the Chinese before they learn the characters, and it is stern...but fair. Nevertheless, I'm learning this stuff with more diligence than I can remember having for anything...well ever.

I now spend about six hours a day completely devoted to learning Chinese. I wish I could say my motivation was to do more business with in China, but in reality it is about 90% driven to meet women. But I guess any motive is a good motive, at least I keep telling myself that. I picked up a Chinese business-woman who looks like a ballerina as I waited for my flight from Beijing to Qingdao this morning. She was so far out of my league(maybe galaxy), and strangely enough it is was this mighty Aphrodite who waltzed over to me: while wearing an ensemble of Prada, Gucci, and other Paris Hilton propaganda with a dynamite pair of tight leopard-skin pants. She pounced on me as I methodically studied my "Chinese 101" book at the Beijing Airport. Soon thereafter I found myself missing my flight and having lunch with this Chinese She-Devil, and as I type this my cell phone is blowing up from this woman who demands satisfaction immediately (I dressed snappy at the airport so she probably didn't realize I am a social-loafer at heart....well actually am a social-loafer but at heart I detest the truth...LOL).

Am I an idiot for not immediately figuring out how important it is to learn Chinese...YES! But is there anything I can do about that now.....not so much. Plus I was granted the golden goose of excuses as a metal bottle-rocket was kindly inserted into my knee by a mad scientist of a Chinese doctor. I'm throwing around this excuse at family barbecues like Crocodile Dundee hitting that limousine driver with his boomerang in "Crocodile Dundee 2". But as they say in The Sopranos, New Jersey, and other unsavory places of the world..."now, it's all gravy."

So speaking of gravy let's now talk Chinese Turkey Day. It was easily the most surreal day of my many surreal days out here in a world that anyone in the Western hemisphere would classify as surreal, or just plain nuts (in a good way in my opinion). Remember we are talking about a place where pedestrians are moving targets and launching a spit-wad on the side of the street is about as normal as someone in the Unites States picking up a quarter off of the ground.

I embarked on my mission to the Tsinghua Thanksgiving Festivities with a few friends from the Exchange-MBA Program and we brought a multinational faction that would make the UN Proud: Norwegians, a Korean, a couple of Germans, and some other Euro or two in the mix whose national heritage I'm invariably forgetting. In terms of demographic scale of the actual Thanksgiving Party which was held at a medium-sized restaurant, I would say it was about 85% Chinese people, my eight or so foreign colleagues in our infamous outfit, and well that was about it.. Also, a few of the Euro crew I was holding court with were well above the six-foot club making them Jolley-Green Giants in a see of jockeys...so yes, we stuck out more than a little bit. Instead of grabbing individual beers like the rest of the Chinese faction, we just decided to pillage the pitchers that everyone else used to pour their drinks into. So out of the six or so pitchers at any one time that the whole party was using, at least one and probably two were residing at our table. We came, we saw, we pillaged.

Upon arrival it seemed more than a little odd that a laptop was set up in the front of the restaurant with a movie projector connected to it. This was the first sign of the strange times that were about to come. Not soon after it was time to dine and instead of turkey and pumpkin pie I was greeted with pasta, onion rings, a miserable salad, chicken wings that looked as if Colonel Sanders himself had spit on them, and more random decrepit food that we all inhaled. It was terrible, but we still ate and drank...well mostly drank. The Chinese are so f$%^% weird sometimes. Instead of football and turkey, we spent our time watching duets of random Chinese couples who performed scenes from "Titanic" & other American classics that I hope to never see again. Since I am the loudest laugher in the room about 99.9% of the time, and the Chinese elite performed some incredibly non Oscar-worthy performances right in front of our very table, I could not hold back from cackling like the Wicked Witch of the West during each and every one of these so fantastically miserable performances. This made the Chinese couples (they were picked out of a hat, when one of our crew members was chosen we ignored and gave mean looks) performing feel both uncomfortable, and so angry that they will never donate to an American charity. I managed to get my misfit outfit to follow suit, so as each Chinese couple performed another magical number where they hoped to have all of Tsinghua behind them...we pointed, laughed, and slammed brews like it was Oktoberfest. It was so damn sweet. Honestly, I can't think of a better Thanksgiving.

The best part is when when one of the random Germans in our crew turned to take a phone call, we volunteered him for this utterly-ridiculous game where you pass a miniature Hoola-Hoop across your neck from one team member to the next in a race. Well, this sausage-eater happened to be about Six-Foot-Six, and the Chinese on his team were not tall enough to be jockeys. Just priceless! They eventually brought out a turkey at the end of the night but by then my stomach was as full as a pregnant Canadian, so I had to call it a night.

A few nights later it was time to have a Christmas Party... Danish style! Since I've had my ego compromised so mightily that I now look both ways before crossing the street thrice, I decided to actually dress up as Santa Claus. The outfit was a huge hit at the party, and we got guapo loco. Only issue with the party was that the two girls who threw this Holiday Dash are both incredibly attractive, and every man in a 10 Km Radius came to the party. So I remember seeing a few girls, but I also remember meeting and greeting a love parade full of Germans. My bro Hans from Belgium who brings the pain like the Famous Grouse, decided we should venture out and about on the town. It was 2AM, I was dressed as Santa Claus, and I had completely drank my face off...so it was on!

We hit up Mic's (next to my olde stomping ground "Vics"), but had a mix up in the party posse and had to switch plans and go to "Blue Bar". We dined on some street food to get our mojo back, and we were off... I walked into the bar with full Santa appeal. I had become St. Nick at that point, and everytime someone would ask for a present, I would greet them with the, "You have been bad, and Santa knows. I suggest you clean up your act or you're going to get nothing but coal in your stocking for X-MAS!" Or something like that. Either way, it worked and after grabbing a seat at the bar, we hit the dance floor...And at about that time Santa realized that he is still gimped out and retreated back to the table. Where I was shocked to see two of our team members having a Pamela Anderson/Tommy Lee orgy on the couch. I looked around and there was nothing: there "was that guy" dancing like a maniac to the funky beats, the cheesy Brits pounding fists and looking for a fight (not me...I'm a cripple fellas), fat Americans, weird Chinese metrosexuals, I was about to go home and then... I got a tap on the back by these two Filipino lady-tigers who were smoking hot and seemed to have a thing for olde St. Nick. Soon thereafter I was shooting the breeze with these two Filipinos and actually managed to spit some game Christmas style and had these ladies laughing in stitches. I guess they figured anybody crazy enough to come to a club full of degenerate booze-hound maniacs with a Santa Claus costume outfit on has got some cajones (I guess I fooled them). I have dinner with the sexier of the duo on Wednesday who is easily an eight. Santa Claus demands satisfaction. I will mos def be wearing the outfit to the club at least a couple times before I go back to the States...I do not want to go home!!!
mackin & stackin in the Orient,
St. Nick