Slurping... to do or not to do?

I read this article on the Guardian website about how the Chinese government issued a 64-page guide to Chinese tourists about how they should behave when they are travelling abroad (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/03/china-advice-travel-tourism-guide?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487). This came after reports that Chinese tourists were giving China a bad image, due to their behaviour. In China and other parts of Asia, 'keeping face' is very important. People do not wish to look bad in front of others - which is actually a pretty universal human desire.

The guidebook features advice from avoiding teeth and nose-picking in public to not leaving footprints on toilet seats, after some tourists apparently try to re-create the squatting toilet with standard Western seated ones (I'll leave your imagination to paint the rest of the picture). But the guide also features quite bizarre pieces of advice like the fact that if women do not wear earrings in Spain they will be laughed at as if she were undressed in public. Where did they get that from?

But now lets turn our attention to one of the most pertinent cultural differences that I noticed when I first came to China, and one that the guidebook also mentions. That is the issue of slurping. 'When travelling abroad Chinese citizens should refrain from slurping their noodles loudly'.

I must say, when I first landed in this fine land, slurping bothered the hell out of me. Ask any one of my close family members and they will tell you how I would lose my temper faster than they could blink their eyes, if I heard even a little noise coming from their mouth when they ate. 'YOU'RE EATING IN MY EARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR', I would roar as my face puffed red and the vein on the side of my neck would swell to monstrous proportions.

But no noise my family ever made could compare to the slurping and open-mouthed eating that tormented me during my first few days in China. I wanted so badly to rip my ears off my head and throw them at the slurping-fiends. On failing that I just pulled at my hair and smacked my forehead numerous times.

But here's the good news. I'm over it. In fact, if you could hear how I was going at my bubble tea tapioca pearls today, you'd think I would make an excellent contestant at the World Slurping Championships.

I've come to see slurping and other things people do here like spitting on the street, kids peeing wherever they see fit etc. etc. as actually quite liberating. Yes I have spat in streets a few times and some of you may be shocked that I'm letting my Western standards slip, but I say to hell with standards.

'Better out than in', seems to be the running concept here. People here are more relaxed, more natural. They don't pretend to be divine beings that never burp, slurp or kurp (I couldn't think of anything else that rhymed with burp and slurp so I'll leave it to you to decide the meaning of 'kurp'). No, they acknowledge the fact that they are human and as such have bodily functions that need to be addressed.

Cooking in my kitchen

Chopsticks time... or not?

I usually eat/cook the same sort of food, and it was what I ate through University as well. It involves rice or potatoes stir-fried with an assortment of whatever vegetables happen to occupy my fridge, and some sort of protein, usually egg, but occasionally fish or chicken. The chicken is usually pre-cooked and the tuna usually comes in tins.

The basic idea is that it should be healthy, filling and quick. Today I had rice, eggs, aubergine, tomatoes, green peppers and a new root vegetable that I've never had before (I think it was turnip??). Oh, I nearly forgot the most important ingredient - soy sauce! Once upon a time I might have fried a little garlic and added that to the magic, but I'm afraid I have been put off eating garlic for the foreseeable future.

Also I would like to make a confession. The picture above clearly shows two chopsticks resting on the plate of food, as if they are to be subsequently used in the act of eating the contents of the plate. I'm afraid I have duped you terribly. No self-respecting Egyptian can handle chopstick-related eating for long periods of time. Although I try to use them occasionally so that I can train myself in the art, I am and always will be a 'get-a-spoon-and-shovel-the-food-down-your-mouth' girl. We Egyptians pride ourselves on the speed with which we consume food as well as the complete lack of elegance we do it with.

This is what my cooking area looks like:

I'm blue da ba dee da ba da da ba dee da....

Lunch in 10 minutes

I have two hobs but most of the time I only need one. There's also a really scary knife that has been the cause of many-a-nightmare that I've had in China. I'm trying to train myself only to use it when my full attention is on the beastly blade, otherwise I am certain I can bid a few of my fingers adios.

The Monster Knife

Carrying on this mini-tour of excitement (have you found yourself on the edge of your seat yet?), I would like to show you the balcony/conservatory area, the part with the washing machine and where I hang my clothes to dry.

Wash, wash, wash your clothes...

I like it a night. I stand and look at the flickering lights coming from the other apartments across from me, and do some very important observations into Chinese family life. During the day it gets as hot as a furnace so it's no fun to be in. As for the washing machine itself, I would like to rename it 'rip clothes and splutter mud and other unidentifiable pieces of debris on them' machine. I put my washing in for an hour and when I take it out it feels very dry, smells kind of clean, and for some reason is covered with bits of dirt that were not there at the beginning!

Finally we move on to the bathroom. It took me a while to get used to operating the shower unit, and I still haven't got used to the song that it screams out at me:

The next winner of 'Britain's Got Talent' ladies and gentlemen.

You see what happens is I have to plug in an electrical cord into the wall opposite, which heats the water in the tank. I wait about 20-30 minutes then, when all is quiet, this shower unit lets out a loud, high-pitched scream, before moving onto some sort of Chinese melody. Everytime the song starts I have a mini-panic attack. Is there a better way to start the day? Nope, I didn't think so!

I met an interesting-looking girl today

I went to the gym after I battled once more with my Chinese learning. I decided to keep walking on the side of the road that I end up on anyway, instead of crossing early, because I reasoned I'd be less likely to be ploughed down by oncoming motorbikes on that side. This decision led me to meet a very interesting girl.

Not far from the gym there is a crossing. I stood waiting for the speeding vehicles to pass in front when I spotted the girl. She had beautiful long brown hip-length hair, wore a tight black dress and black heels. The conservative grandmother in me began hauling mental abuse at her for displaying her body in such a fashion, something the grandmother in me strictly agreed with herself that, should only be seen in nightclubs or other places of that ilk. The only odd thing I noticed about her was how she was wearing a white surgical mask. Surely someone as fashion-conscious as this lady would not compromise her look for her health?

Anyway, I hushed the grandmother for a little while and crossed the road.

'Thank you', I heard someone say. I turned around and it was the girl talking to me. Her English was very good and the next thing she said helped me understand why.

'I'm from Hong Kong'. She then began speaking very fast, jumbling her words. I wasn't sure what she wanted exactly.

'Where are you from?', she asked me. She told me she'd been in Jinan for a year and a half and that she was studying business. She was really very pretty but I couldn't shake the thought that had just entered into my mind that she worked as a prostitute. She couldn't have been much older than me.

I discovered why she was wearing a mask on her face. It was to hide the smell of alcohol that saturated her breath. As she spoke to me she let the mask slide slightly.

She wanted my number and a part of me wanted to give it to her, I felt she needed my help. But another art of me told me to stay out of it. 'You don't know what kind of things you may get yourself into', the voice of reason shouted at me.

I lied and told her I didn't have my phone and I didn't know my number. In another f her jumbled mumblings she said that someone in a night club yesterday had stolen the battery of her phone. That's it, just the battery. It was at this point that I noticed the grubby purple plastic bag she was carrying. That definitely does not fit her fashionable image, I thought.

She pulled out a worn out purple leopard skin purse. 'See, I'm from Hong Kong', she told me as she pulled out her passport that was in her purse. Then she took out the mobile phone which, as she had told me previously, did not have a battery.

As she was searching for her phone I noticed she had quite a bit of bruising on her arms and a small burn-type wound on her right hand.

She settled on typing in her email address into the Ipod I was holding in my hand and told me to send her my number as soon as I got home. I hated being two-faced. I hated being nice and kind to her face, then when I would leave her I knew that I wouldn't follow up on my kindness with the act of giving her my number. But, I reasoned, we are all two-faced. That's what society forces up to become. We all have at least one public and one private persona but in reality, we all 'play many parts' on the stage of life, as Mr William Shakespeare said himslef in 'As you like it'. I noticed her email address had the word 'men' in it twice. Maybe it's a nickname, I thought, trying to give her the benefit of the doubt.

After a safe distance I decided to erase the email address from my Ipod. But it would take much longer to erase the memory of that beautiful girl from Hong Kong, with her hidden secrets.

Learning Chinese - up and down and up....

Being in China is great for learning Chinese. I am motivated to find out what all the signs around me mean, not to mention trying to understand what people are saying and trying to speak to them myself. Today however, I hit a rough patch. This happens every now and then. I lose motivation, overwhelmed by the enormous challenge that is the Chinese language.

I don't have a Chinese teacher because I want to see how far I can get on my own. I believe this way is harder and will take me a longer time, but in the long-term it will be the most beneficial thing I can do. If I achieve it it means that I will have learnt how to teach myself a language from scratch, and I can then apply those skills to other languages, not to mention teaching other people languages from scratch. Of course I do use internet resources and I have some very useful apps on my Ipod (thank you mama for making me bring the Ipod even though I kept saying I didn't want to - you were right again!) which help me along the way. My favourite app was free. It's an English-Chinese, Chinese-English dictionary, where you can write Chinese characters in, and get the definition. Very very useful.

My technique up until this point has been to learn phrases and the associated Chinese characters. Fr one reason or another I have decided to switch tact. Now what I will do is learn 5 nouns a day and 1 verb including their characters. I like concrete nouns that I can touch (bed, pen, book), so they are what I will be starting with. Today's words were: bed, pen, hair, face and tap. The verb was 'to touch'. I've also organised a conversation exchange next week in which I hope to say all the words I've memorised to my study buddy and see whether he can decipher what I mean. Actually, even if I say all the words correctly (tones and all) he still may not understand. This is because as a language, Chinese has very few syllables compared to other languages. Context therefore is usually essential to understanding meaning.

National Day 2013

Sometimes I can been seen strolling through Jinan dressed as above. You see, apart from the pollution caused by the steel factories all around the city, there seems to be endless ongoing construction work which helpfully channels tiny dust particles into the lungs of passers by, making it relatively unpleasant to walk around. However, this mask I am sporting, was bought very cheaply from a local pharacy, so I doubt it actually does any good - it probably does me more harm so I don't wear it that much.

National Day in China is October the 1st, the day in 1949 when the People's Republic of China was formed by the Communist party, led by Mao Zedong.

On this day I did a little shopping, then ate an interesting noddle and quail-egg dish:

Later I met up with some English teachers and we went to the Muslim Quarter and ate barbecued meat on sticks. To be honest I was really disappointed with the fact that we were going to eat barbecue. We did it once before and what happens is that I pay a lot of money and eat almost nothing. I don't like eating the fatty part of the meat, and that's all they put on the stick. Then there's the waiting for the meat to be cooked which is a real pain. Not my favourite thing about Chinese cuisine I must say.

On my walk home from the meal, I passed by Quancheng Square, the main square in Jinan. It was more full than I'd ever seen it before and people were flying LED-lit kites, roller skating and listening to live music. At 8pm the most beautiful fountain display I've ever seen started. The music in the background was Ave Maria and the water from the fountain danced more beautifully than any dancer could. It was incredible how the water swirled and twirled in perfect time to the song.

Watch out for the massive hole in the road!

Doing some walking in Jinan

Today I decided to try to get to the Yellow River park, north of Jinan. I made it an admirable distance by getting on random bus numbers and getting off them when I felt that they were heading in the wrong direction - this technique got me surprisingly far! In the end however, I decided not to continue to the Yellow River because the roads were so heavily traffic jammed that I decided not to torture myself too much.

I ended up getting off near Jinan Zoo where I found a multitude of street vendors selling all types of food:

The second and fourth pictures show 'toffee apple sticks' which are delicious! I also found a man squeezing out fresh sugar cane juice, just like the juice we get in Egypt. But in China the sugar canes are black not green:

Continuing on my journey, I decided to get on another random bus. Which number do I like best? I thought to myself. A number 4 bus pulled up to the bus stop and it looked like there were quite a few empty seats on it, so I hopped on. It turned out to be the right decision because the bus took me to a a hustling and bustling part of the city that I'd never known about. I grabbed some food from a local street vendor (rice, sweet and sour chicken, tofu and some other stuff - the picture is below, maybe you can tell me what I ate?) then continues on my merry little way.

On my travels I saw a number of people selling pets of all kinds: snakes, hamsters, tortoises and little kittens:

On my way home I saw the cutest old man eating a banana very slowly. He was rather poor but if he'd asked me for money I think I would have given him the entire contents of my wallet.

Why I love bubble tea

Today I finally found a little stall that sells Bubble Tea like the ones I used to buy from Oxford - just Jasmine tea with bubbles. Usually the bubble teas I've bought in China (and especially the ones I bought in Bangkok) were way too sugary and they almost always had milk in the, which was way too rich for me.

So why am I crazy about bubble tea? For those of you who don't know what it is, bubble tea is the name given to any tea (and sometimes juice or smoothie) that has tapioca pearls in the bottom. If this description is blowing your mind, take a look at this picture:

Now, I must confess that I have a strange phobia/reaction to anything that has a lot of hole-type things- the picture opposite being an example, a sponge being another example - but I make an exception for bubble tea.

Now here is why I love it. Bubble tea is not just a drink. It's a challenge. So you think you've finished your drink? Think again. There is a high probability that you will find a tapioca pearl or two hiding in the bottom of your cup. You must, needless to say, find and eat every single one. That's another think, it's like drinking and eating all rolled into one. Tell me what other foodstuff/drink can top that? Not many. Not many at all.