Ice

It's been snowing a lot in Xi'an - not enough to close the transport lines, like in some parts of China, but still a lot more than the city is used to. It looks like it has stopped for now, but it is still very cold. I get ice on my apartment windows every morning, but I don't mind that. It is very pretty; see for yourself:

Tea and Comedy

Last night I went with Alex and his girlfriend to what we thought was going to be a traditional Chinese bar. What it turned out to be was a traditional Chinese tea house, thus, the only thing served was tea. The lack of alcohol disappointed Alex, but the tea was very good. They gave each person a teapot, and a tiny terracotta cup - about half the size of a shot glass.

This was different from most Chinese tea houses in that there was no majiang (mahjong); instead, they had a stage and a series of stand-up comedy acts. Most stand-up comedy in China is done in pairs engaging in comedic dialogue, although there were some solo acts that night. I couldn't understand a word of it, but it was fairly entertaining anyway; and they must have been reasonably good, since everyone else was laughing. I'll have to go back one day when I know more Chinese.

I Has a Phone!

I finally got a Chinese sim card for my phone yesterday, thanks to Ariel, so I'm not quite so out of contact here anymore. Today I went with Yoyo to a couple of streets near South Gate - one has a whole bunch of art galleries along it, and the other has a bunch of stalls selling jade and brushes. We went in to one gallery, and I was impressed with the art inside - I think it might be possible to take art classes here, and if so, I will give that a try. Along the other street I bought something that looks like a Chinese ocarina. I just wanted something I could make noise with!

Thanks to everyone who's been commenting, but for the same reason that I can't get to livejournal often, I can't respond to comments either there or here. I can't respond to comments here because although China lets me get to the main blogger site, including the part I'm using to write this post, it doesn't let me look at my own blog. This is kinda silly, but what can I do about it?

Also, although Beijing has all the cool tourist stuff, it is even colder than here, as someone pointed out to me today. This means I will probably go to Shanghai for Spring break instead, because I really don't want to be colder.

Snow! Yay!

There was a little snow here two days before Christmas - not enough to stay on the ground, but enough for it to be a novelty. I've never lived in a city that gets snow before, although I have seen snow and been skiing.

The last couple of days, though, it had a proper snow, and left lots of it all over the place, and I discovered that snow makes me very happy - especially here. Xi'an is a very grey city, as I've said before, but when the snow covers everything suddenly there is brightness and contrast. There is white instead of grey, and the edges between the white snow and everything else are much more interesting than the indistinct boundaries between shades of grey.

In other words, it's very pretty.

Also, there are one or two spots on the way to work where the snow has been packed enough to become ice, and so I can skate across it in my shoes. I don't even care that it's cold, because it's so much fun.

The kids love the snow, not suprisingly, and even the grown-ups get infected with playfulness - the other day I walked out of my apartment building to go to work, and the gate guard had a big snowball in his hands and a big grin. The next day, I saw all the cars that were parked outside my building had pictures and words written in the snow on their windows - even some words in English.

English over here makes exactly the same sort of fashion statement as Chinese characters do in the West, by the way, right down to some people wearing things that they don't understand the meaning of.

Anyway, here are some snow photos!

Nothing New

I haven't been doing anything interesting lately. I've been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer a lot, since it turns out that one of the Chinese teachers, Ariel, is a fan of American TV series, and as a whole bunch of them on DVD (dodgy pirate versions, of course - real copies are out of the price range of the average Chinese person, and I'm not sure they even sell them here).

I'm currently trying to compile POV-Ray from the Unix source, since the Mac maintainer seems to have a grudge against OS X and the Intel Macs (the docs recommend running under OS 9 for speed reasons!), and the native Mac version does not have a universal binary, nor does the PPC binary work under Rosetta, nor does the Mac source compile easily with Xcode. At least it's open-source, and I have the option of compiling it myself.

Now that the gas is on I've been cooking real food, instead of eating instant noodles every night. I've also been swapping ideas with Alex's girlfriend; she cooks a lot when she's here. I'm gradually getting a feel for Chinese cooking, and I taught her and Alex how to make rice fritters.

Oh, Carp.

Today Alex and I bought fresh carp from the supermarket and fried it for lunch.

Said like that, it sounds so easy.

The supermarket wasn't any more of a trial than usual, except that when we got to the checkout they said their card scanners weren't working, so Alex's card wouldn't work, so we had to do a mad scramble for cash - we barely had enough between us, because I never carry more than I think I'm going to need, and Alex uses his debit card. In case you're wondering how I figured all this out, Alex knows a lot more Chinese than I do.

Freshwater fish here is quite cheap, but sea fish are expensive, because we're so far inland. The freshwater fish are presented to you in tanks - you pick the fish you want, and the butcher scoops it up, knocks it senseless, scales and guts it for you.

Cooking the fish was another matter entirely. For some reason, I thought I knew how to fillet a fish. I don't know where I got this misguided notion from, because when I started, I realised I had no idea, and had never done this before. There was a lot of mess. Once we got around to eating it, we discovered there were also a lot of tiny bones, making the eating difficult.

However, eventually I had the beast in two halves, and then I pan fried it in butter with garlic. We had it on a bed of rice, with some sautéed onions and beans, and a green chilli omelette that Alex made. It was very tasty!

Merry Christmas!

It's a shame I don't have photos for this post. Next time.

The last few days have been full of stuff. Saturday was midwinter's day, and in China it's traditional to eat dumplings, and as you're eating them you remind yourself to put on an extra layer of clothing. That's advice I should have heeded earlier - I have a cold right now. The dumplings were very tasty, though.

On Sunday the school had Christmas celebrations, and instead of regular classes the kids just played games all day. Alex dressed up as Chevady, the school's mascot, and I dressed up as Santa Claus - so I spent the day saying "ho ho ho, merry Christmas", and giving out candy to the kids. After the kids had left, all the teachers (except Ariel, because she was sick, and wasn't there) piled into a couple of taxis - four people in the back seat of each - and made our way to Mary's house (one of the admin staff at the school). I played Chinese checkers, and then we had barbecued chicken for starters, and hot pot for the main meal. Delicious!

On Monday, Yoyo (one of Ariel's friends) came over to teach me Chinese, and Ivy joined in too, so we're going to do it on a regular basis. After that I went with Yoyo to her university, we met up with Cao Yan, and I got to see the inside of the girl's dormitories at the university. They're very Spartan - there are four people to a room, and each person has a bunk, and a desk underneath the bunk.

Then we went into the city centre to meet Ariel, which turned out to be no mean feat. Although the Chinese don't officially celebrate Christmas, the streets were packed with people. We did find her eventually, but they cancelled the buses in and out of the city centre because of all the people - so we had to walk to the edge of the old city before we could catch a bus. On the way, we bought sugarcane from a street vendor, and munched on that until we found a bus.

All in all, it was a pretty good Christmas Eve. Hope yours went as well!

More Chinese TV

Things I have learned watching Chinese TV:

Even in China, the Chinese movies (especially kung fu movies) have poorly synched sound, so nobodies lips' move in time to the speech.

Keanu Reeves' acting is improved a great deal when subbed by a Chinese guy.

At least one of the channels here is a 24-hour Chinese Idol show.

Another channel looks like a sports channel, but the only sport ever on is table tennis.

Light and Sound

It can be very noisy here, 30 storeys above the city street. Right now, at about 1am, there is some sort of construction work going on. Half an hour ago there were fireworks going off - and that is one of the more heart-attack-inducing things that goes on regularly on the city streets; bundles of tiny firecrackers will be tied somewhere convenient on the pavement and set off. Very noisy, and very unfortunate if you're a foreigner not familiar with the practice who happens to be nearby when they're set off.

During the daylight hours today there was some sort of show going on down the street. I could hear the singing and the announcer from my apartment, as well as the occasional army drill-style shout. I could see them from here, too - some kind of song-and-dance on a stage that was a bit far away to make any useful details out.

About a week ago there was a procession a good deal closer to my apartment - just a block over, in fact. A marching band came up one of the streets, and I even took a couple of photos (if you peer closely you can see the guy with the bass drum):





I still don't have any trouble sleeping, though. In fact, I've been getting more sleep than is normal, since I don't have to get up very early.