1. 9/5/16
a. Breakfast of delicious
$1 noodles. Very filling; spicy beef sauce with Sichuan numbing pepper is
amazing.
b. Walk through lovely park
with Xin and his dad featuring virtue propaganda—signs admonishing the viewer
to exercise, respect one’s family, etc. You don’t see these everywhere in China
but in this particular park there were many such signs.
c. Study electrical
engineering stuff with Xin. He’s got a PDF of some course notes. Though I don’t
know the subject, I know the math, and was able to help Xin with some plots
involving logs and complex functions.
d. Xin and I go on a bus
adventure to downtown! Incredible retail extravaganzas surround us from all
sides, glittering malls and neon. The sidewalks are packed with people hawking
snacks and random wares. The vendors aren’t intrusive—most sit by their
offerings and wait for customers—though along narrow sidewalks they are
frequent enough as to obstruct foot traffic.
e. We end up at a bookstore
and spend several hours perusing the textbook/exercise book section. Xin
reminisces about his middle-school studies in China. He wonders if perhaps he
should have attended high school in China, where the greater rigor and endless
practice might have prepared him better for UW. The sheer breadth and depth
which Chinese students are required to be familiar with is staggering—they must
solve difficult physics problems, learn details of electrical engineering,
memorize the English terms for chemical laboratory equipment, learn the
agricultural geography of their province. And they’re tested on all these
things, across disciplines, yearly. The engine of cultural commitment to
education might not produce more productive or happier people (who knows? Xin
argues that in Chinese mandatory education they at least actually make you
learn) but it certainly accomplishes unlikely feats of test performance. At the
end we’re just goofing off. Xin likes randomly wandering through bookstores,
examining all the things he might learn. I pick up an English book on “fuzzy
set theory” and “multiple-inversistic logic”; the second of which I’d never
heard of, and the first, I had but assumed to be a joke.
f. Madness getting back
from bookstore. Chongqing traffic is bad and the mountainous city can be
confusing. We end up going several stories down a parking lot, through some
mazelike alleys, through a very private-looking building’s outside staircase
(Xin asked some workers), and finally, climbing over a gate to get to a main
road.
g. Walk from our bus stop
directly to hot pot! This was a bit of a crazy experience. It’s me, Xin, a
Chinese high school student, a Chinese graduate student going for a PhD in
Finance who speaks decent English, plus Xin’s dad and a bunch of his police
officer friends.
h. The nub of the matter is
this: respect demands that you meet every (frequent) toast with a full (~8oz)
glass of beer, and that you drain your glass after each toast (or at least,
toasts concluded with the imperative “ganbei”. There are other interesting
rituals around this—for example, Xin and I must lower our glass below that of
an elder while touching glasses. They, in turn, are obligated to try and refuse
the honor, which leads to some entertaining monkey business. In a race to the
bottom, some will touch their glasses to the table. Others will use their free
hand to sabotage the respectful gesture of their fellow drinker, by pushing
their glass from below. @Grace: Analogy to competitive door-holding?
i. Anyway, having never
drunk more than a single bottle of beer in my life, the constant toasting began
to affect my state of mind (though the beer itself was delicious). I managed to
continue a discussion of economics with the finance student, but I could feel
the warm flush on my face, and noticed my eyes mildly unfocus themselves when I
didn’t attend to them.
j. Somehow—I’m not sure
quite how—I got challenged to arm wrestling with some of the cops. I think they
were wrestling among themselves, I looked over, and they were like “Hey!”. I
won the first match, whereupon I became nervous that I would offend my seniors.
I couldn’t quite figure out what to do. Xin was watching; I silently begged him
for input as the senior officers were chattering incomprehensibly at me /
slapping my shoulder / challenging me to another match. At one point I
capitulated in what I hoped would be seen as deference, though I didn’t make a
big show of trying to succeed and losing. But Xin finally advised me just to
play fairly. I was surprised to defeat all three competitors, with both hands.
I probably had three inches on them on average though (@Sisters:
#godOfUnfairAdvantages).
k. After that they brought
out some tea, then someone handed me a plum juice in a little jar. Everyone was
very drunk, except the finance guy, and maybe me, and Xin’s stepmom, who had just
arrived from work.
l. One of the senior
officers was still talking to me, with Xin translating in broken phrases. At
some point he offered me his hand and I shook it. There followed about 5
minutes of hand-shaking with this guy as we all made our way to the door, as he
continued to talk emphatically and lean on Xin and I. Xin translated: “I like
you”, “I don’t like Obama but I like Americans”, “China is a friendly country,
we like Americans”, “Welcome to Chongqing”, and so on. I nodded and smiled and
gauged when to shake his hand, which he periodically offered.
m. The fellow invites us to
his apartment, which is nicely furnished—turns out he’s a police commissioner,
would be Xin’s dad’s boss if they weren’t in different divisions. As a generous
and statusful gesture, he offers us all cans of 9-yuan ($1.50) water (Xin
narrates this in English, as I pay attention to The Dude).
n. Eventually, The Dude’s
wife manages to convince him to retire and shows us out. But, according to Xin,
not before he’s managed to invite me, and Xin’s whole family, to another dinner
(which Xin is skeptical he’ll actually organize).
o. Walk back to Xin’s apt.
and collapse in stupefied exhaustion.
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