From Tomorrow 从明天起...

With 2013 fast approaching (or upon us, depending on when you read this), now is the time to reflect on the happenings of the past year and set your resolutions for the year ahead. A time to change. 

But, what is it about the changing of the date that makes us think that we can suddenly tackle our entrenched flaws? Some people feel a New Year is a new leaf, that it wipes out the misdeeds of the past and makes it easier to begin again. And everyone around is doing it too; ‘next year I will go to the gym’, ‘next year I will be punctual’, or my own personal foible, ‘next year I will not procrastinate’. And so on and so on. 

Such lists are full of aspirations to become the athletic, organised, and efficient self we feel we could be if we ever put in the effort. Yet, I also feel that setting a New Year’s Resolution gives you a few more days to wallow in justified indolence before the clock strikes midnight. It’s okay if you eat that entire left over chocolate cake now, because you’ll totally work it off when your New Year exercise workout begins. 

Rare is a person who notices their own shortcomings and decides to change it, right then and there. It’s far easier to say, in the New Year, or next week, or tomorrow. Tomorrow is a wonderful place where everything gets done, and of course, you’re also more toned with brighter complexion and a new willpower to avoid tiramisu. 

So before you make your resolutions, if you haven’t already, spare a moment and read this poem by Haizi 海子. A very simplistic poem, it too speaks of wanting to reform oneself, to not overcomplicate things, and to prioritise only what matters in life.

Facing the Sea, with Spring Blossoms

From tomorrow, I will be a happy person.

I will feed the horse, chop the wood, and travel around the world.

From tomorrow, I will care about food and vegetables.

I will have a house facing the sea, and in Spring’s warmth the blossoms will open. 

From tomorrow, I will write to every one of my family,

I will tell them I am happy.

As that carefree lightning bolt told me,

I will tell everyone.

I will give every river and every mountain a fond name.

Strangers, I also wish you happiness,

I wish you a glittering future,

I wish you wedded bliss with your sweetheart,

I wish that in this mortal life you obtain happiness.

I only wish to face the sea, where in Spring’s warmth the blossoms will open.

Perhaps the saddest element of this poem is that Haizi two months after penning it, he committed suicide by lying down on train tracks at the age of 25. As with many artists, recognition and fame was only achieved after his death. He is now regarded as one of the most important post cultural revolution poets. As I was given a compilation of Haizi’s prolific poetry for my birthday, one of my resolutions is to translate them for you.  

Beer's Virtue Benefit Liver 啤酒有益于肝脏 ?

Now, I'm no expert on alcohol, and luckily I wasn't relying on the Qingdao drinks industry to illuminate the depths of my ignorance. Especially after seeing 'beer's virtue benefits liver' on a sign in the Qingdao beer museum, I think I should probably disregard most information picked up on my travels. 

The first stop on my alcohol adventure was Chateau Huadong-Parry (华东百利酒庄), which the ticket boldly claims is 'China's no.1 European style wine chateau', founded in 1985 by Michael Parry. Commenting on the scenery in Winter would be a tad unfair, as the grapevines were bare it made for rather bleak viewing, but I can imagine in Summer the nearby hills would be covered in row upon row of endless green. But I can comment on the "chateau" itself. 

*Disclaimer: Huadong-Parry Chateau does not come with real sparkles.

Upon entering the chateau, there is a compulsory video watching session, 10 minutes of pure Chinese gold. Complete with its own tacky American voice-over and CGI Disney style story book structure, the video aims to introduce the history and integrity of the Huadong-Parry brand, taking on the mantle of European wine traditions, winning glory for China, etc, etc. The video is saturated with the gaudy, tasteless interior design that Chinese people associate with European grandeur. Unfortunately, you leave the video room and find the chateau was the setting for the filming, except probably quite a few years ago, as the garish grape covered wallpaper is already stained and peeling. 

The wine tasting room was another decorating debacle, as well as being unwelcomingly cold. Fair enough, they probably weren't expecting guests and so hadn't bothered with the heating. One commendable feature of this room were the large glass windows, that let you look out towards the swans swimming in the pond, or the out-of-place grecian statues, or perhaps the dominating bust of Michael Parry himself. 

For the Y50 ticket, I got to have a go at wine tasting. Yes, I sat there with a wine glass in my hand, swirling and sniffing a 2007 red like I actually had a clue about wines. Obviously, I didn't really have much opinion on this part. I can only relay the well-informed views of Will's father, who said they lacked distinction but would be perfectly acceptable as house wines, and definitely shouldn't cost over £15 a bottle. Which is quite amusing when considering the introductory video, which made it sound like none other than Jesus had created this wine, nay, miracle. 

We also got a tour of the wine cellar's collection of impressive oak barrels, and some other things too, I forget. Of course, the final stop was the wine shop. The only thing that seemed to affect the price of the wine was the decoration of the bottle and case. The more showy and ornate, the more you pay. You can visualise a Chinese businessman slowly presenting the beautiful case, delicately opening it, then withdrawing the prized embellished bottle from inside, to the oohs and aahs of all around the table. It's all an exercise to flaunt your wealth. The most expensive bottle we saw was over Y5000, a price that could buy you wine from some of Europe's best Chateaus. According to one of our teachers, most Chinese don't even like the taste of wine, and will add lemonade to la Fete. Well, I'd have to agree with them on that point, although I'd probably pass up a good wine for an orange juice so that it wouldn't be wasted on me.  

What kind of blog post about Qingdao's drinks industry would this be if I failed to mention the legend that is Tsingtao Beer. Internationally, Tsingtao is Qingdao's claim to fame, and it is affectionally known by the locals as Qingpi (as shortened form of 青岛啤酒 Qingdao Pijiu). So, a trip to the Qingdao Beer museum was in order. 

Today, Tsingtao beer production takes place in Laoshan, and in various sites all over China. Tsingtaos's original 1903 factory has been converted into what is now the Tsingtao Beer Museum. Despite its age, the museum site is still very large, as it was expanded with each new generation. Because Tsingtao is such a prominent brand in China and abroad, it attracts large groups of domestic tourists. Be warned. 

Thematic water feature - 干杯!

Apparently beer comes from outer space, from which it was bequeathed to Qingdao in China's Shandong province.   

There was a very interesting collection of advertising posters, which traced the history and ownership of the brewery, with some posters even featuring swastikas while the company had German ties in the 1930s. The above was my particular favourite. 
  

Something I think my father will be interested in.

All in all, the Museum provides information on much more than just Tsingtao beer with a huge range of exhibits, and opportunities to drink the beer itself. A highlight was the 'drunk simulator', where an entire room is set on a tilt, so you end up unable to stand and clinging to the wall in disorientation. Naturally, theres a camera, so those outside can watch you struggle to walk across the room in a straight line. Hilarious. 

PUNtonghua 文字游戏

Chinese is viewed as an inaccessible language by most people, as Scandinavia and The World explains:

Source: http://satwcomic.com/it-s-all-greek-to-me

Once you manage to overcome mandarin's tones, measure words, literary references, and tens of thousands of characters that reveal little about their pronunciation, you still have to face the truth that every province speaks a dialect that sounds as different from mandarin as English is to French. Luckily mandarin, called Putonghua (the common speech), can get you around most places well enough and is the standard language of China.

'Please speak Mandarin, then it's easier for all of us'

How do I face the formidable task of tackling this beast of a language? By finding the funnies. Or things that help me remember characters, for example, the word for 'monopolize' is 垄断 (longduan). The first character is 'dragon' on top of 'earth', which makes me think of Smaug, hoarding his piled up treasure. However, it's highly impractical to come up with a mnemonic for every character.

Here's some Chinese you might not even realise you speak. Next time you say the word 'manly', you may be saying 蛮力 (mán lì), which means 'brute force'. Is somebody you know staying up all night partying? Awww yeah, or in fact, 熬夜 (aó yè), which translates as 'to stay up all night'. If O2 is thinking of entering the Chinese market, it may want to consider rebranding itself, as 呕吐 (oŭ tù) means 'to vomit'.

If you've ever listened to Chinese people speaking, you might have thought you heard the infamous, racially exclusive 'N word' repeated several times. What is actually being said is 那个 (nei ge), meaning 'that'. People end up repeating it if they can't remember the name of the thing they are trying to say, the effect being 'nei ge nei ge nei ge'. You know you're learning Chinese properly if you end up saying this and don't feel uncomfortable.

As a student of Chinese, I end up reading scores of articles related to learning Chinese. In most of those articles, the only example people seem to provide to demonstrate tones is 'ma' - 妈 (mother, first tone), 马 (horse, third tone), 麻 (hemp, second tone). But to be honest, these are pretty hard to get confused; mother is always said as a compound 妈妈, and horse should have a measure word, e.g., 一匹马. And 麻 is pretty vague as a stand alone character, lending itself to compounds such as flax, anaesthetic, sesame, and even pins and needles. My personal favourite tonal confusions are 手机 (shŏu jī) and 首级 (shŏu jí), the first being 'mobile phone', and the latter 'severed head'. Another sinister mix-up is 迟到 (chí dào), meaning 'to be late', so imagine your teacher's surprise when you announce "对不起老师，我持刀(chí dāo)了" (I'm sorry, Sir, I'm wielding a knife). My classmate recommends caution when shopping for mirrors, as the reflective surface, 镜子 (jìng zi), may be accidentally spoken as sperm, 精子 (jīng zĭ).

Before I studied it, I tended to believe most of the interesting facts regarding Chinese that circulate around. I was disappointed to learn that many of these are simply misnomers borne from a lack of understanding. Take for example, a fact provided by Lisa Simpson, who claimed, "the Chinese word for 'crisis' is the same as 'opportunity'". It is a nice idea, but a quick trip to the dictionary reveals there is no such word, only two separate words 机会 (jihui opportunity) and 危机 (weiji crisis). My guess is that someone saw both words contain the character 机 and assumed they were the same word. The shared character 机 is a bit of a compound whore, and can be found in anything from 'airport' to 'mechanic' to my humble 'soy milk maker'.

Another thing that bothered me before learning Mandarin was what 'ching chang chong' actually meant. In fact, it's bothered me ever since primary school, when it was used as the standard response to telling someone I was mixed race. Even my sixth-form maths teacher greeted me with this phrase when I told her my degree choice. I could go off on a rant about how East Asian people put up with racism passed off as socially acceptable humour, but instead, I'm going to try to salvage this phrase that non-Chinese speakers seem to think encapsulates the Chinese language. In modern pinyin (today's prevalent form of Chinese romanisation) there is no such word as 'ching', the closest being 'qing'. So, mission 'translate qing chang chong' begins.

情场 (qingchang) affairs of the heart, 情场冲 a rush of affairs of the heart.
清唱 (qingchang) to sing opera, so 清唱虫 the opera singing worm.
清偿 (qingchang) to pay a debt in full, 清偿重 to pay off a debt again.
青长虫 green long worm (where 'long worm' is actually spoken phrase for 'snake'), green snake.

I think this is the best I can come up with without taking too many liberties. Although getting a Chinese person to understand the above phrases would still be difficult; they sound as ridiculous in Chinese as they do in English. Thus proving that 'ching chang chong' is the refrain of the culturally illiterate.

'Stinky' Chang?

And finally, I don't know how many people wondered what Cho Chang, of Harry Potter fame, means. I did. Let's take Chang to be 常, a common Chinese surname, rather than 娼 meaning prostitute. For a country of 1.3 billion people, it has surprisingly few surnames, so much so that the hoi polloi are referred to as 'the old one hundred surnames' (老百姓). So, Chang 常 it is. Leaving us with Cho as her first name, yet another sound that doesn't actually exist in pinyin, so it could be read as 'chou' ('ou' as in 'low'), 'chu' ('u' as in 'soon') or 'qu' ('u' as in... this isn't dipthong used in English, it's like 'ew' but with more 'oo'). It is usual for a Chinese person to have two characters comprising a first name, although there are plenty of famous Chinese with a one character name: Yao Ming, Liu Xiang, Ang Lee.

Chou would be quite an unfortunate name, as it could be any of the following; 仇, 愁, 丑, 臭: enemy, anxiety, hideous, and stinky, respectively. The best of the bunch is definitely 绸, meaning silk. The interpretations rise exponentially when you look up 'chu' and 'qu'. Perhaps the reason why I find Cho's name so distasteful is because it smacks of the 'ching chang chong' factor. That is to say, Rowling created a Chinese character for her books, and created a name that she thought sounded like Chinese, without consideration of traditional naming customs or sounds that actually exist in Chinese. Seeing that Harry Potter has a huge Chinese fan-base, it would be interesting to know what Cho Chang has been translated into, considering that her name is essentially a foreign construct. If I find out, I'll let you know.

Laoshan's Mountain Water 去崂山游山玩水

If the title of this post baffles you or you are worried about the degeneration of my English skills, fear not. 'Mountain water' is in fact a literal translation of the ever economical Chinese word for landscape, 山水 (pronounced 'shanshui'). Hence, landscape paintings are called 山水画, drawing of mountain and water. I also used a Chinese idiom, 游山玩水, which means to go on a scenic tour, and literally means 'to roam the mountains and play in the waters'. Not that I played in the water, as it was -2'C. Even so, it was a beautiful clear day, and we got to see some fantastic views. The landscape invokes images of traditional Chinese watercolour painting, and it's not hard to see where the old artists got their inspiration from. 

The scenic area of Laoshan is just under one hour East of downtown Qingdao, and is China's tallest coastal mountain, at 1,132.7m. We were stopped from entering in our taxi, and had to buy tickets to then continue on in a minibus. The tickets weren't cheap either, ¥100 for a senior and ¥70 for a student. Laoshan is huge, being the major mountain range of the province, so I don't understand how they managed to seal off all roads to tourists and force them to take minibuses. 

As for tourism on the mountain itself, Laoshan boasts terraces, temples, a cable car, and the Laoshan springs. Our aim was to catch a leisurely ride on the cable car to glide over the tree tops. However, the wind was too strong so the cable car was forced to shut. We also managed to get a little lost, as none of the maps actually pinpoint their location, although through guesswork we muddled along just fine. We also caught a dodgy people carrier with a loose door back to the first carpark because we couldn't find the minibus drop-off point. 

  

Now I guess I'll leave you with a few mountain based chengyu;

青山绿水 (qing shan lü shui) green hills and clean waters.

湖光山色 (hu guang shan se) beautiful lake and mountain landscape.

依山傍水 (yi shan pang shui) mountains on one side, water on the other.

背山临水 (bei shan lin shui) with one's back to the mountain, facing the water. This is a very important principle in Chinese culture, and houses built in these locations will fetch much higher prices. I believe it's to do with the energy flow between them, and not just the nice scenery. 

Qingdao Travels 在青岛旅游

Last month in November, we were visited by some friends from Beijing. The great thing about showing people around somewhere you are already familiar with is that through their eyes you get to see it for the first time again, and whole discover new aspects that you'd completely overlooked. We we also lucky to catch the last throes of Autumn, enjoying a long weekend of crisp blue skies and pleasant temperatures.

Qingdao Train Station

A day of glorious sunshine and healthy air quality. Will and I were mobbed outside the station by a gang of map sellers while waiting for our friends to arrive. When it became apparent that we were not going to buy maps, they hung around anyway to ask Will his height and if he was a basketball player. Except all questions were directed to me and I became a spokesperson of sorts. Ah well, practice is practice.

Now these photographs might leave you feeling confused; I thought Holly was in China and it is Winter there? Correct and correct. Although the pictures may look warm and Australia-esque, it was still under 10'C. But ain't nothing gonna stop a man with determination and a pair of speedoes. Even in mid-November, men in just shorts saw fit to play a game of beach volleyball. Rather them than me.  

Discerning readers may recognise the pagoda at the end of the pier, and if you did, well done, because it looks like every other pagoda in China to me. Except that it's on the end of a pier. It is, in fact, the small pagoda icon that appears on every bottle of Tsingtao beer. Despite being a popular tourist attraction, it was thankfully lacking the herds of tourists complete with flag-waving megaphone-blaring tour guides. As it happens, our Beijing friends managed to escape from the Beijing hubbub and unwind listening to the sound of the waves lapping against the base of the pier.

Subverting the State? Me? Never. 

Next stop on our quick tour of Qingdao's old town was the Naval Museum. The map was extremely useful, revealing that currently over 80% of the site is under construction. The museum of artefacts was more an exhibition of mildew and rising damp, but that didn't stop intrepid explorers like us, oh no. Because outside was a collection of tanks, planes, fighter jets, a submarine, two warships and piles of unexploded missiles that I was reluctant to approach. To reach the warships, you had to cross over a rickety bridge of wooden planks that gave slightly underfoot, and through the gaps you could see the ocean swirling far below. It was like being in a Final Destination instalment. The ship itself was... shippy. When I learn know something intelligent about ships/naval warfare/the Chinese navy, I'll let you know. But for now that's the best description you're going to get. At least I know I won't be pursuing a job with the Royal Navy.

How do you relax after all this sea-based excitement? Head to Daxue lu (University Road), perhaps the most chilled street in Qingdao. Both sides of the road are lined with mature plane trees, and colonial architecture sits beside traditional Chinese buildings. My favourite feature has to be the charming coffee shops. One has to be entered through a tunnel of bamboo, and inside is decorated like a beach hut, with a pair of cats cuddling up to customers. Another boats a glass roof, which allows you to fully enjoy the towering plane trees that filter in dappled light onto the shop floor. The coffee is pretty good too.

Ice Mocha-licious