Assorted notes from the last month

I'm judging another speech contest this weekend. One student already asked for help; I read her speech (about how peace is good and how happy and lucky she is that she's from China, which is peaceful, and has none of those nasty struggles for 'religious things, territory, or sovereignty' and pointed to my map of China; in order, Tibet, the Kashmir, and Taiwan. Nope, no problems there.

From the "Notice of Speech Contest":

In addition, appropriate facial expression and body language are encouraged so as to reach a climatic strengthening of the speech.

The local consulate (in Guangzhou, an overnight trip away) sent out email that a tax expert would be in the office April 3 and 4 to answer questions, and that we could submit questions by email. So I did:

Dear Mr. Aufrecht: Unfortunately, the IRS Tax Assistor did not answer questions sent via email. If you still have tax-related questions, you may call (215) 516-2000 (6:00 am - 2:00 pm eastern time) or use www.irs.gov.

I hope that you find the above information helpful.

Sincerely,

Julia Yao Consular Assistant

I hope I don't get into actual trouble that might require genuine help. I can just imagine the letter:

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Aufrecht

Unfortunately, we did not provide any assistance to your son and he will spend the next fifty years in jail for spying. If you have questions, you may attempt to contact someone who cares.

I hope that you find this information helpful.

...

I got some books from the library. Shoeless Joe (the basis for Field of Dreams), which was good. Some Shakespeare. And a big fat microbiology textbook. I should have checked more carefully, because the authors are from Bergen Community College, North Dakota State University, and Skyline College. Now I'm not saying that they're dummies. I'm sure they know their microbiology just as well as the bigshots. In fact, some assert that the bigshots at the name schools don't even write their own textbooks. Well, maybe that's the problem. I'd much rather read a science textbook ghost-written by an underemployed journalist and fact-checked by the post-grads working for a big-name professor.

In addition to painfully dull and obtuse writing, this book also has lots and lots of pages on diseases, virii, bacteria, and all that other good stuff. Maybe it's just me, but whenever I turn a page and realize that I've been touching a picture of a gangrenous foot or genital warts I get a little creeped out. So I skimmed the Krebs cycle, looked at a crystalized virus, and then put the book aside and read Fast Food Nation, which was exceptionally good.

After having my passport for about three weeks, Zhang Ming finally handed it back with the comment, "Don't ask any questions." I opened it up and asked, "Why do I have a visa issued to Katz Adam Louis?"

For posterity, here is a complete list of every visa in my passport, which was brand new last summer. I now have two blank pages left. At this rate I'll probably spend the Mayday vacation going to the Consulate at Guangzhou to get more pages sewn in.

Katz Adam Louis, Z, 22 Mar 2002 - 02 Apr 2002 (Canceled) Aufrecht Joel S, L, 22 Mar 2002 - 18 Apr 2002 (Canceled) J. Aufrecht, L, 02.04.15, 30 days (Canceled) J. Aufrecht, L, 01.09.07, 30 days (Canceled) Aufrecht Joel S, Z, 03 Apr 2002 - 18 Apr 2002 Aufrecht Joel S, L, 10 Sep 2001 - 05 Oct 2001 (Canceled) Aufrecht Joel S, Z, 16 Aug 2001 - 05 Jan 2002 (Canceled) Aufrecht Joel S, Z, 26 Dec 2001 - 05 Jan 2002 (Canceled) Aufrecht Joel S, Z, 28 Dec 2001 - 28 Mar 2002 (Canceled)

Lu Dan bought a dog last week, the same day that her cell phone was stolen. The dog's name is BaErLingLiu, which means 8206. China has bred some incredibly small dogs, much smaller than even a chihuahua, and Baarlinliu (as his name becomes when spoken quickly) is cutely ugly and vanishingly small.

I was hanging out in the Foreign Affairs office when Li Xu delivered some news to the staff. He apologized to me, then launched into a long discourse in China. I tuned out, until at the very end he summarized with, "make muh-ney!" He then remembered I was there, realized what he had said, and turned to me with "sorry, sorry!" We then all cracked up together.

25 March 2002: Yangshuo Day 1

Yangshou is weird. Seriously weird. It's advertised as the place that Guilin used to be, and I've frequently been told that I should go there because there are a lot of foreigners. I went on a day boat trip to Yangshuo last semester, but had only an hour before we had to bustle back to Guilin.

So this semester, after a very bad week teaching (a power outage all morning Monday, plenty of no-shows for the lunchtime tutorials, and a crisis of faith in both my pedagical skill and the ultimate utility of the endeavor, and halfway losing my temper in front of a group of mostly innocent students), and with the weather abruptly turned pleasant, for, well, for perhaps the second time in my tenure in Guilin, I up and went to Yangshou.

The bus ride was not particularly auspicious. Following directions, I bounded into a nastily upholstered, tired, _empty_ minibus. Soon enough, though, we were half full and ready to go ... to the bathroom, for me at least. At the otherwise vacant urinal wall someone sidled right up to me, an event which always - well, I want to say makes me want to vomit but I'm usually already at this point because, as you may recall, I'm in a Chinese bathroom, which means that I'm walking through brown smears and inhaling enough evaporated uric salt that, were I to then consume a charcoal and sulfur sandwich, I could synthesize gunpowder internally.

Anyway, the bus almost pulled out while I was in the bathroom, and then took at least five minutes to leave the bus yard. Not because of traffic, just because the driver seemed reluctant to go forward. An ominous trait in a bus driver.

Once out of the station, we proceeded out of town at a brisk average speed of five miles per hour. Again, not a consequence of traffic, of which what little there was was passing us regurly, this including not just overloaded, gasping moto-trikes but also elderly gentlement hauling gargantual packages that can only, tentatively, be described as agricutural in nature.

Lest you think I'm exagerating the slowness of the bus for comic effect, let me assure you that I have charts and graphs, so doubt not my veracity.

That's actually not true - I haven't plotted a minibus time/distance graph in months. But I did spot a bus stop for a local route, forty-five minutes after we had left the "long-distance" bus station.

The primary cause for the delay, best as I could discern, was the entreprenurial spirit of the bus driver. We picked up many riders from the street just outside the station, and from the many detours from the main road. I suspect that little, if any, of their fare money actually goes back to the bus company.

Also disconcerting, though entirely my fault, or the fault of my girly bladder, was that had I lost my front seat when I returned to the departing bus. I settled in an empty seat at the back. Soon I was joined by several young gentlemen. This prompted the very nice guy in the front who had spoken to me earlier (half-and-half English and Chinese - I'm getting better, as long as we stick with simple topics like Where are you going? and Where's the bathroom) to shout back, in English, things like "Those are bad men," and "come up here" and "don't go to sleep." After a short conversation with the "bad men" I went determinedly back to my book.

I'm typing now from a restaurant on "Foreigner Street" in Yangshou, where there are, in a rare case of accuracy in Chinese nomenclature (the other one coming to mind being Walk Street in Guilin, which features lots of walking and no vehicles of any kind), lots of foreigners. It can be difficult to tell which ones are American and which are European (or Australian or British), but I'm developing a heuristic: the Europeans all smoke, and the Americans are old. But of course that makes sense because smoking kills.

I did overhear other restaurant patrons struggling to communicate in English with the waitstaff, a language native to neither, and I couldn't but smirk to myself, and congratulate myself for having the foresight to be born American.

Dinner: an appetizer of fried objects looking like short, fat cheesestick, deep fried, comprising corn, cheese, and potatoes. Delicious, with ketchup. Entree of macaroni with a weak tomato sauce, too much water, not enough cheese. Chocolate cake coming.

(End of Yangshuo Part 1)