In my attempts to find English novels, I already visited all bookstores and libraries in Nanning, but only found a small selection of English and American classics. No contemporary literature in the English language (original or translated) to be found anywhere. So I tried the web.
Amazon does not have a Hong Kong website (where I would expect a good offering of English books), but they do have a Chinese site. Of course this website is all in Chinese, but there is one link titled imported books and there I found some contemporary literature in English, but not a lot. Here too, the offerings are mostly 19th and 20th century classics. Nevertheless, I created an account with the help of a Chinese friend, and ordered two paperbacks and payed with my VISA card.
At the time of ordering (last Thursday), delivery was announced to be next Wednesday, with free shipping. Two days later I received an email with a shipment notification and an updated delivery date saying Tuesday. Today (Monday) my books arrived. After only two working days, although in China they probably counted four.
Another shipment is underway from Holland with an English novel and some quality chocolate (thanks again Martine!), so I will have plenty to read for the next few months. Very enjoyable!
Monday, February 28, 2011
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
The second semester
This week the second semester started for the bachelor students here at Guangxi University. Suddenly the campus is crowded again with thousands of students, all shops and canteens reopened, food stalls and other street vendors who rely on the student crowd getting back to business.
The Chinese language course will start at least a week later. Next Monday, Feb 28th, is registration day, when the foreign students are expected to pay the tuition fee for the next semester, unless they already paid for the whole year in September. I didn't, so I'm required to pay another 5250 RMB. However, I decided not to do so, partly because I simply don't have the money, partly because I don't feel confident enough to continue classes at the current level. Although my end-of-semester exams in January went reasonably well, I had great difficulty keeping up with the classes during the last two months of the first semester.
To continue would be a waste of time, in my opinion, since I can understand less than half of what my teacher is saying. I rather spend the next semester reviewing the material by myself, and continue with self-study at my own pace. Unlike almost all of my classmates, I don't have to finish the course before the summer, to be able to start a bachelor study taught in Chinese.
I'm also a bit tired of the daily regime of getting up early, having classes every morning, and doing homework in the afternoon. Maybe I'm lazy, but I'm doing this for fun, not for my career. I want to spend more time on social activities, like I have done the past weeks. Getting to know the city better, and practice the language in real life, outside class. I also would love to travel a bit, although my financial situation does not really allow this at the moment, especially going abroad. I should try to find some small jobs I can do online, paid in Euros. Offers welcome!
The Chinese language course will start at least a week later. Next Monday, Feb 28th, is registration day, when the foreign students are expected to pay the tuition fee for the next semester, unless they already paid for the whole year in September. I didn't, so I'm required to pay another 5250 RMB. However, I decided not to do so, partly because I simply don't have the money, partly because I don't feel confident enough to continue classes at the current level. Although my end-of-semester exams in January went reasonably well, I had great difficulty keeping up with the classes during the last two months of the first semester.
To continue would be a waste of time, in my opinion, since I can understand less than half of what my teacher is saying. I rather spend the next semester reviewing the material by myself, and continue with self-study at my own pace. Unlike almost all of my classmates, I don't have to finish the course before the summer, to be able to start a bachelor study taught in Chinese.
I'm also a bit tired of the daily regime of getting up early, having classes every morning, and doing homework in the afternoon. Maybe I'm lazy, but I'm doing this for fun, not for my career. I want to spend more time on social activities, like I have done the past weeks. Getting to know the city better, and practice the language in real life, outside class. I also would love to travel a bit, although my financial situation does not really allow this at the moment, especially going abroad. I should try to find some small jobs I can do online, paid in Euros. Offers welcome!
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Electrofishing
During my stay at Banguan village last week, I was invited to join some of the villagers to go and catch some fish. Together we set off on a 30 minute trek through the rice paddies and mandarine orchards to reach a small lake, the result of a dam blocking the flow of the stream which runs through the valley. One of the men was carrying two long bamboo poles, one of which had a fishing met attached to the end, the other a metal probe, and electrical wiring running along both. On his back he was carrying a jerrycan which was modified to make a backpack containing a motorcycle battery, some electromechanical parts and a lot of wires. On one of the poles a switch was mounted, which when pressed produced a humming sound from the backpack. I understood it was some kind of electrofishing kit. At the lake he started to search for fish by moving the net and probe slowly in the murky water, at about a meter distance from each other. Not much happened, it seems that there was not much life in the water.
After 20 minutes of fruitless probing, there seemed to be a problem with one of the wires. After some fidgeting with the wires and electrical tape, and testing for voltage by sticking a finger in the water with the probe at some distance, the system seemed to be working again.
In the mean time, the other men had started to make an opening in the dam, apparently in an attempt to drain the lake. My first thought was that they did this in a desperate attempt to catch the fish without needing the help of the broken electrofishing equipment. I was quite stunned by this brute-force approach. Breaking the dam to drain the lake only to catch some fish seemed like a not very sustainable form of fishing, but then I realized that this could be a yearly routine. Each year the dam is rebuild, filling up the lake and giving the fish the space to grow, and at the end of the season, during the Spring Festival, the fish is harvested by draining the lake. The electrofishing equipment is just an extra tool to simplify catching all the fish.
Once the dam was broken, and the water started to flow out, it still took more than an hour before the first fish was caught, but with the water level slowly decreasing, it became more and more easy to locate the fish. The electrical current between the net and the probe stuns the fish, but does not kill it, so it can be easily scooped up with the net, and transferred to a large bamboo basket lined with a plastic bag and filled with water, where the fish slowly regain consciousness.
A couple of hours later all fish was caught, I estimate at least 20 kilos in total, with most fish of a good size, 30 to 40 cm long.
I returned home carrying one of the larger fish, skilfully hooked up by one of the men for easy carrying, using a stringy plant part through the gulls. In China, you don't kill the animal you selected for eating until the very last, just before cooking, so the poor fish had to endure the trip to the kitchen back home hanging on a wire, before being released into a large aluminum bowl filled with water to stay alive while awaiting its final destiny.
In the mean time, the other men had started to make an opening in the dam, apparently in an attempt to drain the lake. My first thought was that they did this in a desperate attempt to catch the fish without needing the help of the broken electrofishing equipment. I was quite stunned by this brute-force approach. Breaking the dam to drain the lake only to catch some fish seemed like a not very sustainable form of fishing, but then I realized that this could be a yearly routine. Each year the dam is rebuild, filling up the lake and giving the fish the space to grow, and at the end of the season, during the Spring Festival, the fish is harvested by draining the lake. The electrofishing equipment is just an extra tool to simplify catching all the fish.
A couple of hours later all fish was caught, I estimate at least 20 kilos in total, with most fish of a good size, 30 to 40 cm long.
I returned home carrying one of the larger fish, skilfully hooked up by one of the men for easy carrying, using a stringy plant part through the gulls. In China, you don't kill the animal you selected for eating until the very last, just before cooking, so the poor fish had to endure the trip to the kitchen back home hanging on a wire, before being released into a large aluminum bowl filled with water to stay alive while awaiting its final destiny.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Happy New Year of the Rabbit!
Last night I returned to my Nanning home from a 10-day visit to Yanyan's village, like last year. The year of the Rabbit is now officially opened! In the countryside the Spring Festival is taken very seriously. The protocol includes visits to as many relatives as possible, exchanging well wishes, handing out red envelopes with money (crisp new bills obtained from the bank), and of course a lot of eating and drinking.
This year was not much different from last year's visit. Tradition requires a yearly repetition of the essential rituals that make up a good Spring Festival, including cleaning the house and decorating the doorways with red banners with calligraphed texts, either home-made, or bought at one the many New Year's markets.
Most time is spent on cooking. Each family has their own way of making the traditional dishes, such as Zongzi （粽子）, Kourou （扣肉 - alternate slices of cooked pork belly and fried taro), and many variations on duck, chicken, and fish.
When visiting friends or relatives during the Spring Festival, it is customary to bring gifts. In these regions, the most ubiquitous gift is a live chicken, bound by the feet, and carried casually upside-down, often hanging from one of the handles while riding a motorbike, or just tossed in the trunk of the car. People here bring a live chicken like we bring a bottle of wine. The handling of animals remains a touchy subject in China. Not so much for the Chinese themselves, but for me to watch. I still feel rather uncomfortable when I see how many live chickens, ducks, or piglets can be squeezed into a bamboo crate for a long ride on the back of a motorbike or stacked with many others in a truck.
During the the week at Yanyan's home, several chickens got their throat sliced, their blood dripping into a bowl for later boiling as a nutritious ingredient for the soup, the splatters leaving dark stains on the cement porch. It's a lot of work to remove all the feathers and prepare the chicken for cooking, but spending time on preparing a meal is always a time well spent. Yanyan's father especially is a great cook, and it's delightful to watch him skillfully prepare so many dishes in the dark and smokey kitchen, wood fires kept burning under the cast iron woks build into a large brick furnace. We were asked to bring a new chopping board from Nanning, so we bought a large circular board of 50 cm diameter (basically a slice of a hardwood tree), weighing a hefty 12.5 kg.
We visited Yanyan's grandmother who lives in another village not too far away, and went to Lipu (a small city which serves as marketplace and travel hub of the region) a couple of times, and also to a large party in yet another village, to celebrate the arrival of a new family member. In North-America such a party would probably be called a baby shower, but here the focus was on eating, instead of gifts. A crew of about 20 people were preparing food for at least 150 guests, outside, in the courtyard of the tofu-making farm run by the family. Towers of large steamers holding many pork, fish and other dishes, above roaring wood fires. A cook stir-frying meat and veggies in a giant wok. Once everybody was seated around rented tables, the food was served and after it all went down, the party was more or less over.
New Year's Day (Feb 3rd) was used by some female villagers for scooter or motorbike driving lessons by the owners of the vehicles or other volunteers, such as me. I had not driven any motorized two-wheeled vehicle since 1995 in Lombok, Indonesia, where I had rented a motorbike for a day from a local, but the scooter of Yanyan's younger brother was easy to handle. It's a 110 cc engine with four foot-operated gears and automatic clutch. Still, with a nervous Yanyan as my first-timer student, and the unpaved road leading into the village as testing ground, it was not a risk-free exercise. But she learned quickly, and could drive down the 2 km in second gear with me as a passenger after a couple of hours practice.
The most magical was the dramatic change in weather just a day into the year of the rabbit. The temperature jumped more than 10 degrees and the cold grey winter skies of the past 2 months were suddenly gone. Last year exactly the same thing happened. Today in Nanning it was 25 degrees, 15 degrees higher than on the day we left. Spring Festival, a name well chosen!
This year was not much different from last year's visit. Tradition requires a yearly repetition of the essential rituals that make up a good Spring Festival, including cleaning the house and decorating the doorways with red banners with calligraphed texts, either home-made, or bought at one the many New Year's markets.
When visiting friends or relatives during the Spring Festival, it is customary to bring gifts. In these regions, the most ubiquitous gift is a live chicken, bound by the feet, and carried casually upside-down, often hanging from one of the handles while riding a motorbike, or just tossed in the trunk of the car. People here bring a live chicken like we bring a bottle of wine. The handling of animals remains a touchy subject in China. Not so much for the Chinese themselves, but for me to watch. I still feel rather uncomfortable when I see how many live chickens, ducks, or piglets can be squeezed into a bamboo crate for a long ride on the back of a motorbike or stacked with many others in a truck.
During the the week at Yanyan's home, several chickens got their throat sliced, their blood dripping into a bowl for later boiling as a nutritious ingredient for the soup, the splatters leaving dark stains on the cement porch. It's a lot of work to remove all the feathers and prepare the chicken for cooking, but spending time on preparing a meal is always a time well spent. Yanyan's father especially is a great cook, and it's delightful to watch him skillfully prepare so many dishes in the dark and smokey kitchen, wood fires kept burning under the cast iron woks build into a large brick furnace. We were asked to bring a new chopping board from Nanning, so we bought a large circular board of 50 cm diameter (basically a slice of a hardwood tree), weighing a hefty 12.5 kg.
The most magical was the dramatic change in weather just a day into the year of the rabbit. The temperature jumped more than 10 degrees and the cold grey winter skies of the past 2 months were suddenly gone. Last year exactly the same thing happened. Today in Nanning it was 25 degrees, 15 degrees higher than on the day we left. Spring Festival, a name well chosen!
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