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littlemisswonton · 3 years

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How Shanghai is losing its mother tongue

In the past 20 years, Shanghai has surged to become an international commercial, cultural and transport hub with eye-opening speed. While gaining worldwide attention with its fast-growing economy and skyscrapers, the megacity is quickly - and silently - losing a precious part of its own: its mother tongue.

The Shanghai dialect is a part of an ancient language family, Wu Chinese, which originated in eastern China some 2,500 years ago and is spoken by roughly 80million people today.

Known for its soft and elegant sound, Wu Chinese is not mutually intelligible with Mandarin, which is based on the Beijing dialect. And because Wu Chinese has preserved some ancient pronunciations non-existent in Mandarin, classic Chinese literature from hundreds of years ago - such as popular poems from Tang and Ming dynasties - would sound more authentic and rhythmical when being read in it.

The Shanghai dialect, also known as Shanghainese, is a young but prominent member of Wu Chinese due to Shanghai’s prosperity as a colonial trading port between the mid 19th and 20th century. It was a fashionable tongue in the pre-Communist China and introduced many then-trendy Western items to Chinese people’s life through phonetic translation, for example “vez lin” for Vaseline, “fa le niong” for flannel and “kes mi” for cashmere.

It was associated with intellectual, entertainment and political icons, such as novelist Eileen Chang, singer Zhou Xuan and “the mother of modern China” Soong Ching-ling. It also spawned opera, comedy and entertainment productions enjoyed by generations of Shanghai dwellers.

But the distinct lingo, which could be heard in the city’s every nook and cranny up until three decades ago, is struggling to survive the rapid modernisation that has propelled Shanghai to its global status today.

(Soong Ching-ling, the wife of Sun Yat-Sen, was born in Shanghai and spoke the Shanghai dialect all her life. The above picture of her, via Wikimedia, was taken by British photographer Sir Cecil Beaton during the Second World War in China’s wartime capital, Chungking.)

A 2016 survey showed that only 30 per cent of Shanghai residents would use the Shanghai dialect in their daily conversation, while more than half of the locals preferred to speak Mandarin, China’s official language. Another study from 2017 found that nearly 80 per cent of local youngsters between the ages of six and 20 could not speak their mother tongue fluently, highlighting a sombre cultural crisis.

The dialect’s popularity was dealt with a sudden blow in 1992 when the central government launched a hard-hitting campaign to “promote Mandarin”. Aimed to establish a lingua franca for the country, the language movement, however, imposed heavy restrictions on the use of Shanghainese in Shanghai.

Among a list of mandatory rules, school children must receive lessons in Mandarin and were banned from speaking dialect in class and during breaks. Besides, public servants and service industry staff must stick to Mandarin at work. A few years later in 2001, Shanghainese programmes, beloved by the locals at the time, were pulled from TV and radio stations by a language law. Only a few opera and comedy shows were permitted to be run in dialect.

Propaganda slogans, such as “Learn Mandarin, be a civilised person” and “Speak Mandarin is the symbol of civilisation”, appeared ubiquitously in Shanghai during the 1990s and early 2000s, leaving many youngsters feeling ashamed of using dialect.

Some of those compulsory policies were in place for more than a decade, others still remain effective.

(The above photo, via Vmenkov/Wikimedia, shows a ‘Mandarin-promoting’ slogan outside a kindergarten in Shanghai. It reads: ‘Everybody, please speak Mandarin, and standardise the language and writing.)

Qian Nairong, a Chinese language professor at Shanghai University, views the school ban a major cause of the dialect’s decline. He notes that the city’s primary school pupils were prohibited from speaking the Shanghai dialect on campus from the 1990s for over 10 years. As a result, several generations of Shanghai children grew up unable to express themselves well in their mother tongue.

“The inheritance of Shanghainese has met a rift when it comes to people born after 1985,” lamented Prof Qian during an interview with China News.

The ardent Shanghainese promoter authored a comprehensive dictionary in 2007 in a bid to romanise the dialect and standardise its written form. Five years later, he penned a petition with 81 other scholars, calling authorities to set up systematic regulations to protect Shanghainese.

Unfortunately, these grass-rooted efforts are yet to yield substantial changes in the government’s directives. Moreover, they might have come a little too late to alter millennials’ communication style.

Wang Kanyu, a 30-year-old Shanghai author, admits that it is difficult for her to hold a conversation purely in the Shanghai dialect because she talks to her friends and colleagues mostly in Mandarin.

Born in 1990 to a local family, Ms Wang began her primary school education in 1997 and was strictly forbidden from speaking the dialect by her teachers.

“I remember we promoted the using of Mandarin in my primary school. We had rankings with stars for pupils in our class. If anyone spoke Shanghainese, they would have a star taken away from them,” Ms Wang explains slowly using the Shanghai dialect.

“In middle and high school, all of my classmates were from Shanghai, but few of them would talk to each other in Shanghainese because most had got used to using Mandarin.”

She says as she grew up, she rarely conversed in Shanghainese with anyone outside her family. “Therefore, I am not accustomed to speaking it now. Besides, I feel that I cannot speak it well,” adds Ms Wang.

(I was among the very last generation of Shanghai children to be taught predominantly in my mother tongue throughout my school years. Above is my kindergarten graduation photo taken in the summer of 1989. I am in the front row, the fifth to the left.)

Apart from the tough Mandarin mandate, Shanghai’s swiftly shifting demographics pose as a challenge.

The city’s population ballooned by a third between 1998 and 2018, largely due to an influx of migrants from around the nation in search for work and better life. In other words, more than eight million out of Shanghai’s current 24million citizens did not grow up speaking the Shanghai dialect and rely on Mandarin to communicate in their daily life.

Huang Peide, a 37-year-old native, considers this a primary factor that prevents many Shanghai locals from using dialect.

“It is not that Shanghai people don’t speak Shanghainese any more. The fact is they have fewer and fewer people to speak it with,” Mr Huang points out using a mixture of the Shanghai dialect and Mandarin.

He says: “Environment can change people. For example, for people born after the 1980s, many of their friends, colleagues and clients are not from Shanghai. If they talk in Shanghainese, the listeners can’t understand. So what can you do?”

Mr Huang and his wife, both born in Shanghai, are encouraging their eight-year-old son to communicate with them in Shanghainese at home, “but he sometimes uses it, sometimes doesn’t”.

The father notes that around a third of his son’s classmates are from non-Shanghai-native families, and some 30 per cent of the teachers are non-Shanghainese speakers. Therefore it would not be practical for his son to speak the tongue while in school.

“In daily life, I insist teaching him the dialect, but he doesn’t have the environment to use it outside our home,” Mr Huang admits.

(The Shanghai dialect, or Shanghainese, could be heard in every nook and cranny of the city up until three decades ago. This picture, circulating on social media and believed to be taken in the early 1990s, shows pedestrians and cyclists on Nanjing Xi Road near the Jing’an Temple.)

Prof Qian believes it has become “urgent” to protect Shanghainese and the “key” is to encourage Shanghai youngsters to converse in it.

“The inheritance of a language relies on people, especially children,” the 75-year-old urged in a recent column. “We must let Shanghai pupils bring Shanghainese, which they have spoken with their parents since infancy, to their schools freely and allow it (the dialect) to be used after class. This is the key to passing forward Shanghainese.”

The academic, who has also developed a Shanghainese input method for computer users, stresses that promotion of Shanghainese is not aimed at marginalising Mandarin, but to build a society where the two can co-exist in a “harmonious” way.

“‘Bilingual people’ who can switch between Shanghainese and Mandarin can, for sure, have a more smooth, natural and free life in Shanghai. Furthermore, there are more and more occasions for [people to use] English. Therefore, Shanghai will certainly become a ‘multi-lingual’ society,” Prof Qian writes. “… In a diverse society, we need to build a harmonious, ‘multi-lingual’ life. Mandarin and Shanghainese can achieve a ‘win-win’ situation in Shanghai.”

Prof Qian’s comments echo the social stigma Shanghai locals face while talking to strangers in dialect. Out of fear that the addressees would not understand Shanghainese, and thus they would be regarded as “discriminating against migrants” - a sensitive topic in today’s Chinese society – many have now abandoned Shanghainese entirely in public and at work.

Mandy Chen, an analyst for a Fortune 500 firm in Shanghai, considers the discrimination topic “an interesting social discussion”.

“Normally, if we go to a less-fortunate place and hear the locals talk in their dialect, you won’t think they are discriminating against you. But if we go to a more developed area and hear the local use their dialect, you might feel that they are excluding you,” says the 36-year-old “new Shanghai citizen”, who can understand Shanghainese but has not actively learnt it.

(The Shanghai dialect spawned opera, comedy and entertainment productions enjoyed by generations of Shanghai dwellers. This picture shows Shanghainese stand-up comedy legends Yao Mushuang, right, and Zhou Baichun, left.)

Ms Chen grew up in northern China’s Inner Mongolia and has lived in Shanghai for 10 years on and off after moving to the city for university. She says she doesn’t mind - sometimes even prefers – her friends and colleagues speaking Shanghainese to her. But she acknowledges that some non-natives would, indeed, feel being looked down upon if spoken to in Shanghainese.

“This is more a psychological issue of the listener than a language issue. Often, the speaker doesn’t have any intention to show prejudice against the listener. It could be that they sound cold naturally,” she explains.

While the lingo-in-crisis is yet to be officially allowed in school or added into the curriculum, many of the city’s community schools have set up Shanghainese courses intended for “new Shanghai citizens” who moved to the city from other places.

“To pay more attention to teaching Shanghainese to new Shanghai citizens would be very beneficial to their children’s adoption of Shanghainese,” Prof Qian pens.

Ms Chen confesses that if she has a child in Shanghai, she would be happy to learn Shanghainese and the Shanghainese culture together with her son or daughter, so “my child can somehow relate to Shanghai as their hometown”.

She says that due to her family background, she grew up speaking only Mandarin. Still, she supports the idea of protecting Shanghainese because dialect is “a symbol of a region” and “a bridge between a person and their native culture”.

“I don’t wish to see Shanghai children unable to understand Shanghainese one day. It would be very unfortunate. For one thing, many cultural nuances and household gossips can only be expressed thoroughly through dialect,” Ms Chen points out in Mandarin. “In this regard, I am a sad example. If you ask me to talk, I can only use Mandarin.”

#shanghai dialect #shanghainese #mother tongue #mandarin #local culture

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littlemisswonton · 6 years

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The great generation gap of China: How “Mao’s generation” and their children are driving each other crazy

(A Chinese propaganda post to promote the one-child policy. Image from jschina.com)

China’s generation gap is so big you have to imagine Kim Jong-un fathering Donald Trump. Sort of.

What I’m talking about are two generations that each play a major role in the modern Chinese society: “the Mao’s generation” born in the decade following 1949 - the year when China officially became Communist - and their children, dubbed “the post-80 generation”, who were born after China’s economic reform in 1978.

“The Mao’s generation”, now in their 60s, are Communist through and through. They have many siblings (a result of Mao’s post-war family-planning policy); they recited Chairman Mao’s philosophy as a teenager; they worked one job in a state factory throughout their life; they believed the power of collectivism; and they want to be THE SAME as their peers, from what morning exercise they should do to when they should have a grandchild.

“The post-80 generation” are, in many way, very different. They are the only child in their family; they grew up watching Titanic and listening to Backstreet Boys; they study English not Russian, and compete to work for Fortune 500 companies; they learn to satisfy not sacrifice their own needs; and they don’t mind being different from the others - some of them even want to be outstanding.

No other country in the world is seeing two generations growing up under such different social backgrounds. “Mao’s generation” were told capitalism was the most “evil” thing in the universe; then they have to watch their children buy Gucci handbags, sing American hip hop and date Westerners.

Now here comes the problem. They are a family, and they have to get on with each other. “The Mao’s generation” are the parents. In the Chinese culture, it means they have absolute authority and should be obeyed with no exception. However, having grown up in a completely different social settings, “the post-80 generation” have their own expectation of life and moreover, they are the ones who have the financial power nowadays.

Thus, the great generation gap of China emerged.

(My mum, front left, and her dorm mates took a rare group photo during their spring festival break in 1972. They had been sent to rural Anhui from Shanghai to “learn about life from farmers” a year earlier aged 17.)

My mum and I are a typical example. My mum was born five years after Chairman Mao declared the founding of People’s Republic of China. She was the middle child of five siblings growing up under the brightly red “Five Stars” flag of China. Her most glowing childhood memory was to be selected to walk the National Day parade along the main thoroughfare of Shanghai to mark the country’s 20th birthday. She often says: “I was only 158cm, and the requirement for height was at least 160cm, but miraculously they let me in. Maybe because I stood really straight.”

My mum has never stepped out of line once in her life - something she is extremely proud of. For all of her life, she has followed the orders of the government - willingly and wholeheartedly. What is democracy? She is not sure. “Sometimes, it’s better to have just one say and one leader in one big family” - that’s what she thinks.

When her peers in the west were singing the Beatles, watching James Bond and chanting “make love not war”, she spent her most youthful years doing farm work in the middle of nowhere every day for eight years - after her country told her to. She never complained, because that was what her great leader ordered; and more important that was what everybody else was doing too.

She married her first boyfriend - my father - after meeting him on a blind date in a park through one of her comrades who she had done the farm work with. She had me when her elder brother and elder sister had their own child. It had never occurred to her that she should perhaps follow her heart and make her life differently.

She worked for a state-owned factory that manufactured valves for 30 years until the factory could no longer sustain itself in the market economy, so she retired. To my mum, she just wants to be like everybody else - it makes her feel secure and accepted.

(My mum, middle left, and her siblings, two nieces and parents, front row, are seen in this rare family portrait.)

I love my mum, and my mum loves me. But we cannot have a peaceful conversation for longer than 10 minutes. This is something I feel extremely sad about. I truly wish we could.

One major headache is Communist parents don’t have any concept of personal space or privacy because they themselves were never given any. For my mum, it is natural for her to enter my room without knocking, read my diary without permission and still hand-wash my knickers after I tell her not to. Because for her and her generation, they never had any privacy in their life, they were never given any chance to deal with their own life.

They had no say when they were sent to live on the farm - the living condition was so poor my mum and her comrades had to wash themselves in their tiny dorm room without any privacy curtains. They also had no choice when the government made the decision on behalf of them on how many children they were allowed to have. After China opened up its economy, they were also the first ones to lose their jobs because their state-run factory couldn’t survive competition. These major misfortunes in life were later reflected in a million small things here and there that cause difficulties between them and their child.

The other problem is that they faithfully believe that we should all be the same - just like how they wore the same clothes in the same material, same design and the same colour when they were young. We should all get married at 28, then have a child before 30, then give the child to them to raise - so they could have something to do after retirement.

My mum is a typical reflection of the faceless millions of people in her generation. The one word you’d often hear she says is “the others”. For example, she frequently says to me: “How am I ever going to explain to THE OTHERS when they ask me why you’re divorced?” When I ask: “Who are THE OTHERS?” My mum never answers the question (as if she is guarding a state secret) - it could be a nosy neighbour, her siblings, friends or former colleagues. Here is the point: having been on the receiving end of hard-core Communist education in her formative years, the impact of peer pressure on my mum is 10 times greater than one could ever imagine. For her it’s absolutely essential to be able to answer the others and to be able to be like the others.

This is the one thing I find most difficult to deal with. It’s really an “asteroid hitting earth” moment every time I hear the word “the others”.

I would tell her: “Mum, I am not living my life for THE OTHERS? Just tell them it’s not their business.” But she would tell me I have been corrupt by Western culture and have forgotten that she is my mum - which means she is the one entitled to make decisions, not me.

Whenever that happens, I could see the gap between us is so wide even Yangtze River could flow through. I am feeling sad about this, but there is really nothing I could do about it.

My mum and I are by no means unique. Many of my friends and acquaintances around me face similar problems - their parents would pressure them to get married, instruct them what partner they should find (or find a partner for them at the marriage market), or “teach” them how to educate their own child.

(When my mum and I are having a “civilised” phone conversation.)

Despite the difference between my mum and me, I have a lot of respect and sympathy for her generation. They are the “lost generation” of China - who lost their their youth, their opportunity to study, their rights to have more than one child and their ability to see that life could really be decided by themselves. They sacrificed their own lives for the Chinese leaders to test a social model - the great collective economy - that later proved to be unfeasible.

My mum wouldn’t be able to see this post because she doesn’t read or speak English. And sadly I really couldn’t live my life the way she wishes just to make her happy.

I would try to say this to her next time when we are on the right side of each other, but for now let me just write here: mum, I am sorry I can’t be the daughter you have in mind, but I love you and will always do.

#generation gap #generation gap in china #communist china #chinese parents

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littlemisswonton · 8 years

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What swimming has taught me about life

I swim three times a week - a habit I have kept for six year; and a habit I feel fortunate to have formed.

I learned how to swim when I was 27, a relatively late age.

Before that, my most distinctive memory about the sport is going to a popular outdoor water park in Shanghai with my mum in the early 1990s - when I was about 10 years old.

(Swimming: not only a skill, but also an attitude, photo by freeimages.com)

The park, located next to Jiangwan Stadium in north-east Shanghai, had humongous water slides made with marble.

I remember my mum gave me a red Communist-style swimming suit to wear while she herself was wearing a purple-greenish one.

You don’t see these swimwears anymore in China.

They were made with a kind of non-elastic bubbly cotton and had two strings for you to fasten up around your neck.

They became quite heavy once wet. I remember mine kept sliding down and I had to repeatedly re-tie my strings.

(Jiangwan swimming park in 1990s, photo by Shanghai Old Villas)

My mum, who was in her late 30s at the time, liked swimming much. I remember she told me to wait at the foot of slides, then climbed up what seemed to me like 1,000 stairs to the top of the slides and excitingly glided down like a teenager.

I remember feeling lucky not having to go as the slides looked rock hard and uncomfortable.

But then, my mum grabbed me to a smaller slide leading to an adult pool, suddenly shoved me down and waited to see if I could learn to float. Terrible idea.

My attempt to tread water soon became a desperate struggle.

I remember water flooded into my mouth and nose and there was no way for me to gain balance. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t breathe, and the smell of chlorine stung my nose. I kept sinking before my mum finally intervened and pulled me out of water.

That memory stuck with me.

(London Fields Lido: my favourite place in London, photo by Wikimedia)

Nowadays, I go to a beautiful 50-metre-long outdoor pool in a park in East London three times a week; come rain or shine.

I would not change my routine to watch a film premier with my friend, or a few after-work pints with my colleagues, or a lazy night-in watching Netflix. They all have to wait. A hot date? Hmm… perhaps.

There are several reasons why I insist keeping the routine. There is the obvious health benefit; but what’s more important is that through swimming and learning to swim, I have picked up valuable life lessons.

They have helped me become a more positive, more appreciative, more trusting and more easy-going self whom I love.

1. Just relax

(Relax is the only way to stay afloat, photo by freeimages.com)

This is probably the most important rule I learned from swimming: the more relaxed I am, the easier it gets.

Although I have swum regularly for six years, there are still days when I couldn’t relax in the pool - be it stress or tiredness.

And water knows: it knows when I am nervous; it knows when my body is stiff; it knows when the little voice in my brain screams: ‘Oh my god, I’m going to drown.’

And I can tell you: water never has any intention to hang out with tense people; it doesn’t support them.

I could remember countless times when a random wave of panic suddenly strikes me while I am swimming in the deep end.

I could feel my mind become blurry, my muscles become rigid, my body become heavy. My legs would feel like they are treading through concrete and my neck couldn’t lift to breathe as if it’s supporting a tonne of bricks.

When I was learning to swim, one such panic attack almost caused me to drown because it had become so hard to stay afloat I simply gave up.

(Chill, let’s see what we can do now, photo by freeimages.com)

Throughout time, I have come to realise that the only way to tackle such attacks is to stop struggling and to relax completely.

All I need to do is to slow down, take a deep breath, and loosen my muscles. Miraculously, my body would float again in seconds, and I would regain my momentum in a graceful way.

Out of the pool, this has also become my rule of thumb for life.

It is transforming me from a quick-tempered person who wants absolute control of my life to a more mellow person who is willing to go with the flow.

I’m so happy I’m on my way to becoming the latter one.

Sometimes, life gives us a blow for no reason. Human instinct tells us to feel angry, to struggle and to put up a fight, believing this is the best way to get what we want.

(Just imagine this when you next stress, photo by freeimages.com)

About two and half years ago, I went through an extremely painful and difficult breakup. That was when I started to adopt the ‘relax to float’ mentality because it was swimming that accompanied me through that dark period.

Since then, I have stuck to the golden rule and never looked back.

When I come across a difficult situation in my life now, I would say to myself: ‘Don’t feel tense. Relax. Let’s see what we can do from here.’

I know this is the first step I must do in order to move on swimmingly.

With a little bit of patience and self-control, I would soon stay afloat on top of my frustration, despair and anxiety, and get back the vibrant self again.

2. Let go

(Let go to embrace something wonderful, photo by freeimages.com)

Learning to swim is almost a case of learning to let go of the edge of the pool and the ground. It’s about plunging into the unknown - most people don’t like it, I certainly didn’t.

For about 20 years, that was what held me back from truly floating.

I had tried to learn to swim on a couple of occasions, but I never had the guts to completely let go of the edge and let my body feel the buoyancy of water.

I finally decided to learn to swim in 2010. At the time, I was hoping to volunteer in Malaysia to save sea turtles and one of the requirements for volunteers was that they could swim.

Feeling determined, I hired a coach online to teach me.

My coach, Xie, was a lovely lady three years younger than me who had once been a professional free-style swimmer.

The first thing she taught me was how to let go.

(Trust water, it will support you, photo by freeimages.com)

I had brought with me a foam float and two arm rings. Xie looked at them and chucked them to the side of the pool.

She said: ‘You don’t need those.

‘All you need is relaxation as well as a sense of trust towards water.’

I spent my first lesson trying to bond with water and let it support my body - first with my hands holding onto the edge, then slowly moving on to the centre of the pool.

I remember the moment when Xie told me to let go of the edge, I wouldn’t, I held even tighter. After a few fruitless trials, I eventually thought: ‘Fuck it, let’s do this. It’s about time.’

It was a nerve-racking experience, like jumping into a dark hole not knowing how deep it is. But I succeeded. The uncharted water wasn’t that bad at all.

From floating, to kicking, to stretching to breathing, I couldn’t believe I succeeded after six weeks. I learned breaststroke.

To be able to swim a length in one go was one of the most magical moments in my life.

For that, I owe a huge thank you to the me who was brave enough to release her hands from the tiles on that autumn night in Shanghai.

(Follow the sun and stay happy, photo by freeimages.com)

On the other hand, learning to let go has helped me deal with separations in life - whether it’s to let go of a person, a particular lifestyle or a place I’m used to.

Because of the way I was raised, I like forming habits, I like routines and I like using the same objects for as long as possible. I believe it’s a beautiful way of living, but in reality it makes it harder for me to deal with changes.

In fact, I’m going through a heartbreak as of writing this. I had to let go someone not because we don’t want to be with each other, but because life gets in the way. It makes it even harder to overcome the loss due to the way it ended.

I have been trying to tell myself to befriend with Mr. Unknown, to enjoy the ambiguity and to be more flexible.

Every time when I go swimming and when I let go of the edge, kick on the tiles to launch myself into the water, I make a mental note that I’m doing the same in life, and it’s going to be fine. I will actually like what’s coming up after I let go.

It’s hard. I’m still struggling. But I’m doing my best to propel myself forward.

Wish me good luck.

3. Enjoy loneliness

(Enjoy loneliness, enjoy your own company, photo by freeimages.com)

On my birthday this year, my friend Chi, a bubbly Vietnamese-American lady, gave me a palm-sized pictorial book called ‘Dating’.

This is the opening line: ‘Dating is a fun way of meeting someone who is as terrified of dying alone as you are.’

It cracked me up. It’s funny, but it’s so true. It’s in our instinct to want to pair up and bond.

However in reality, it’s actually a powerful thing to be able to enjoy loneliness. Two activities have taught me how to do so, one is travelling and the other is swimming.

Swimming is a lonely and silent sport.

Instead of connect with another person, you bond with the water. Plus you certainly don’t want to be the one who purposefully strikes up a conversation with that sexy lady in the pool. It leads to nothing but unlimited sleaziness.

Joke aside, I have truly come to love the loneliness of the sport. The word I would use to describe the feeling is mesmerising.

(It’s wonderful to stare at nothing but this, photo by freeimages.com)

Three times a week for 45 minutes, I get to listen to my breath and the dreamy sound of water rushing past my ears.

I get to feel the my lungs gradually running out of air when I glide underwater before it gets refilled with it again in a split second as I lift my shoulders and push down my arms to breathe.

I get to stare through a shield of blue towards the bottom of the pool and let my mind get hyponotised by the pattern of the tiles.

It’s an incredible feeling to be forced to think about nothing but the fundamental needs of my body; and to feel nothing but the texture of water.

It’s a luxury state of mind.

(Be proud of being able to enjoy loneliness, photo by freeimages.com)

I used to fear being alone. Dullness is one thing. The other is the resentment of being perceived as a ‘crazy person’ doing things on my own.

But swimming has made me feel comfortable about hanging out by myself. I have come to appreciate the time when I can focus on my own body and needs.

I’m not anti-social. On the contrary, I’m a very sociable person.

However, it gives me a lot of confidence to know that I have no problem spending time by myself and to enjoy life by myself.

For all of the above, I must thank swimming.

#swimming #relax #relationship #let go #break up #heartbreak #life lessons #hobby

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littlemisswonton · 11 years

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My Chinese identity 'crisis'

What is Chinese, who we really are and what defines one as being Chinese? These questions have long fascinated me.

I'm ethnically Han. Black hair. Dark pupils. I look like some 99 percent of the population in China. From as long as I remember I know I'm Chinese.

This morning I exchanged emails with a long-lost friend Parhat. He's ethnically Uighur. Slightly curly hair. Lighter pupils. Darker Skin. He looks more central Asian than Chinese and comes from Xinjiang, which is about 48 hours away from Shanghai by train. Mandarin is as foreign a language to him as English. He, is also Chinese, but belongs to that 1 percent visibly different group of citizens.

We've almost always communicated in English, which seems to be a more comfortable common language for us.

Parhat is the extreme opposite of me in terms of Chinese-ness. When he came to Shanghai in 2010 for a national university baseball tournament, the vendors at Shanghai's fake markets (markets selling knock-off clothes and accessories and are popular with expats and Western tourists) thought he was Caucasian and spoke to him in English and French. So by appearance, Chinese don't consider him one of them. But by the Communist law, he is.

For me and Parhat, we're enjoying a sort of cross-ethnicity, cross-lingual and cross-culture friendship. We like this surreal feeling of not considering who we are by the general definition and exchange thoughts in a third-culture language. Whether or not we consider us the same nationality never came up in our conversations.

My curiosity about the definition of Chinese started when I first came across the notion of “overseas Chinese” in middle school.

The very first one of them that I heard about was a singer called Coco Lee (李玟). That was 1997. I remember reading that Coco was born in Hong Kong but moved to the United States at a very young age. When her first album “Every time when I think of you” (每一次想你) was released, I was a grade two student in middle school solving algebraic equations some four hours a day in order to get into a good high school. She sang songs in Mandarin but spoke English in most interviews and her hair had this very pale blond dye. I marvelled, she spoke such good English and she grew up in America, that's so interesting, and amazing.

Then came another Chinese-American singer called Lee Hom (王力宏), who was born in Rochester, New York and won an entourage of female fans with his love songs. He just looked different to me than any Chinese I'd seen: athletic, six packs, very white-teethed, always smiling and speaking with a totally American accent. In around 2000, Lee Hom gained much fame in China by giving a reprise of a folk tune called “Descendants of Dragon” (龙的传人), which contained patriotic lyrics roughly translated as “I grew up under the feet of a giant dragon. After I grow up, I'm the descendant of dragon. Black eyes, black hair and yellow skin, I'm forever the descendant of dragon”. There was this obvious message whenever he appeared on media that he's Chinese and a real Chinese.

That's when my confusion kicked in. If he's real Chinese, what am I then?

After graduating from university in 2005, I began to meet some overseas Chinese in person. In Shanghai, there are lots of them. Most come from North America. They usually can't write Chinese characters, and only speak basic Mandarin or a Chinese dialect.

My former colleague Andrea is ethnically Hakka, if I remember it correctly, was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada and the United States. She once had four passports simultaneously and has two siblings. Her mother tongue was technically Cantonese but all the way she attended international schools (which Chinese children can't do on the mainland). She told me she's Chinese. I said no you're not, you're a Hong Konger at most. You can do so many things I couldn't imagine doing in my life (free travel, international schools, multiple nationalities, having siblings, etc). In addition, Hong Kongers enjoy the same privilege and rights as expats in Shanghai (if a mainlander marries a Hong Konger, they will go to register at the 'foreign-dealing' department). We ran into friendly debates a few times.

At this point in 2007, I started thinking about this topic seriously. What really defines me as Chinese? What really defines these overseas Chinese as Chinese? There are supposed to be 1.3 billion of us and more if we look abroad, but what does it really mean?

Chinese is not a language. There are numerous dialects here and the official language in the country, Mandarin, was only adopted in 1955 by the Communist Party and is based on northern dialects (mainly Beijing dialect). So from a language perspective, Chinese mean Northern China.

Chinese is not an ethnicity. I was taught to memorise at school that “China is a multi-ethnic country with 56 ethnicities and we all have our own culture.”

China is not even a definition of the land. If you look through the history, the territory of what we now call China started out from a small part in zhong yuan (central China). The most powerful time was the Yuan Dynasty where the concept of “China” covered from Hainan in the south to a large part of Russia in the north. And the Yuan rulers were Mongol. Would they call themselves zhong guo ren (the modern way to refer to a Chinese in Mandarin), I wonder. I wouldn't consider the Yuan Mongol Chinese at all.

So it must be the look then, the look that resembles Han and most other ethnicities in China, as Lee Hom sang in his song. But hang on a minute, I have been mistaken as Japanese, Korean, Singaporean, Vietnamese when I travel. All east Asians, to be honest, all look quite similar.

So what exactly is the mojo?

One day in late 2011, I met this girl called Clarissa Wei while working for CNN in Shanghai. Clarissa is a second-gen Chinese born in Los Angeles to her Taiwanese parents. She told me that she considered herself 100 percent American, not Chinese. She even refused to use the hyphenated term Chinese-American. That was so refreshing. That was the first time I'd heard any overseas Chinese saying that.

Then I commissioned her to write an opinion piece called “An American in disguise in rural China” for CNN. It remained one of my favourite articles. I couldn't agree more.

That still doesn't solve my puzzle of the definition of being Chinese, but it's one of the pieces.

Living in London makes me ponder on the topic a lot. I've moved from a highly homogeneous country to one of the most ethnically diverse city in the world. I've got used to hearing more than three different languages spoken on the tube simultaneously by people around me. Do they consider themselves British or they would rather be regarded as a part of their original countries? If the latter, would they really be accepted by the people who were born and bred and still live there?

I can already hear my mum's little voice in my head: “Silly girl, what are you talking about? Stop thinking, you're Chinese. ” (Although my mum's mother actually came from Indonesia, but that's another story for another day.) But for me, this is always something to think about wherever I am. Something about the real me.

Photo credit: Mart1n/Stock xchng

#chinese #chinese american #american chinese

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littlemisswonton · 11 years

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The days when Facebook wasn't blocked in Shanghai

Media today are all over mainland China's possible new decision of unblocking Facebook in the Shanghai Free-trade Zone, but what that reminds me of is the days when everybody could access the social media website across China.

Yeah, there was once this wonderful time when even a farmer in Yunnan could have used Facebook had he wished to.

I did a bit of digging this morning and found out: I created my Facebook account in Shanghai on September 1 in 2007 (That is the date when all schools in China started new semesters. My 16-year Communist schooling was impacting me -- September 1 always seems to be the date to start something new.)

The first ever Facebook message I received was from Noah Min Xu, a very dear friend of mine with whom I had been classmates in high school and who had, at that time, studied in the United States for almost two years. The second message came from a Chinese friend Jinyu Mao who speaks fluent English and French, on top of Mandarin and Shanghainese. The third came from my cousin Yiwei in Belgium, and the fourth a great Swedish comrade Lena from Stockholm.

So Facebook was and still is used by very international, well-educated and don't-really-care-what-the-government-says-or-does kind of young people in China. And that's why you might still be able to communicate with some of them after four years of ban. We just need a bit of fun. To read something that's not grand government propaganda or about food scandals. To gossip. To see some funny “I Has a Carot” pictures. And to say hi to our friends XYZ kilometres away. We are like everyone of you in the West.

Until one day in 2009 we couldn't do that any more. I kept getting “Server Not Found” on my screen. And that's it.

It didn't really bother me, the fact that I could not longer post on Facebook. I'm not a very social personal, digitally speaking. I never feel the need to share with my friends what I eat for breakfast unless it's (god forbid) a panda. What bothered me about the ban was that I was deprived my choice of what to do and what not to, where to go and where not to. I was told to do something (in this case not to) in the (seemingly) name of “protection”. Those evil Western demons. Honestly.

On the other hand, Facebook was never really banned in China. Many people know that magical key called VPN. And weirdly enough the city of Chengdu, which is the provincial capital of China and the “hometown” of giant pandas, has used this “politically sensitive vehicle”, as it's described by some media, to promote the city's tourism to English-speaking countries for about a year.

For me, I would occasionally go on Facebook with VPN to see what I had missed out in the virtual world, to see some pictures of friends' new born babies, and mostly importantly to just feel that I was connected to the outside world.

When I left China, I had about 180 friends on Facebook. Not too many. But it let me feel I live in this real world, and that I have a connection with the real world.

Yeah, right, about today's news.

I don't think it's going to affect the life of everyday Shanghainese, at all. This blue beam of digital freedom (28.78 square kilometres) is small than Shanghai Pudong International Airport (40 square kilometres) in size and is in the middle of nowhere.

For all my life in Shanghai for 30 years, I don't think I've ever been to Waigaoqiao, where this free-zone is located. Expats in Shanghai are already using Facebook for work or pleasure with VPN wherever they're. Local intellectuals too. And even some of them aren't doing it, they are not going to bring their lap tops, spend a couple of hours on public transport just to drop you a note and say hi, next to industrial containers. The rest of Shanghai, which is the majority, will carry on life as it is.

South China Morning Post calls it a “landmark decision”. International Business Times dubbs it “China Liberalisation”. Liberalisation? Really? From everybody to nobody (official) to a privileged body. That's what it is. Progress or throwback. Real news or a gimmick. I leave it to you to decide.

#facebook #facebook china #facebook shanghai #facebook unblocked #shanghai free-trade zone

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littlemisswonton · 11 years

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A Chinese view on graffiti and street art

“Nothing good to see. They're just random scribblings on the wall,” said one tall and bespectacled mainland Chinese lady in Mandarin with a Northern accent to two of her girlfriends. She just learned that the crowd in front of The Gallery on London's Redchurch Street was gathering for a street art walking tour.

I was one of the tourists waiting to embark. I looked at her. And she look at me. There was two seconds of awkwardness on whether or not I'd understood her comment, as well as some sense of rivalry on being the only Chinese on London's block of cool. The three of them then walked away, cameras and shopping bags in hands.

They might have sounded like they didn't consider street art “real” art, but the funny thing is, wherever we stopped on the tour, the three of them would magically emerge from nowhere just to snap photos of the graffiti or sculptures our guide pointed out.

They did give a damn after all. They just need a bit guidance. They need people to ensure them this is cool. A dozen photos of Buckingham Palace are a must to bring back home for showing off, but a picture or two of Shoreditch will make them feel they're different from the other 1.3 billion people. That seems to be the logic.

So do Chinese care about graffiti?

Do we? Of course, we do. We used to be masters of street art, just in a very different form. If you think about the Cultural Revolution, propaganda slogans and posters were street art at its most practical use, except that we were simply using art to kill, among others, the art industry. That's probably why it's taking a while for us to understand that big block letters on the wall can be positive, artful and cool.

Fastforward to today, major and westernised cities in China like Shanghai are starting to catch up on the Western street art. A score of local artistic create it; young, educated and English-speaking Shanghainese reckon or, at least, are told it's artistic; even my mum has heard of tu ya, the Mandarin of graffiti, and doesn't resent it as long as it's not on her wall. (She's been through those hard-core big-character propaganda era, think a few bubble letters will bother her? Just explain it's art, then she will be more than happy to flash her V sign for a photo opportunity.)

Having said that, outside of big cities, graffiti to Chinese is as alien and shocking as those meteor rocks to Russia in February.

As for me ...

I have a soft spot for street art. It's a professional to personal experience. My journalistic career began from assisting on a cover story about Shanghai's graffiti scene for Rodeo, an art and lifestyle magazine that was printed on newspaper, in March 2006. At that time, Moganshan Road near Nan Suzhouhe Road had a couple of walls full of dazzling spray paintings. There were also a few eerie squat industrial buildings. M50 art zone was only budding. That was one of the most surreal places I'd ever been to in Shanghai, and I loved every second I spent there.

Later on, that area would grow to be a landmark among art aficionados in Shanghai. And my job at Rodeo took me to meet a lot of cutting-edge artistic, designers and performers. But the fact is there were people loving it, making it, promoting it, but it's hard to actually see graffiti in China (the graffiti walls on Moganshan Road have been pulled down and the property-owner planned to build high-rises there, last time I heard) because there are very few places to paint on.

After I came to Europe, the convenience of seeing street art and the number of it excite me. Wherever I travel, I always end up taking a lot of pictures of them. And here are some I took during yesterday's street art tour around Shoreditch. My favourite is the minuscule chewing gun painting by London artist Ben Wilson (second to the last). One gotta wonder how on earth he made that?

#london street art #london graffiti #chinese graffiti #chinese street art #shoreditch

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littlemisswonton · 11 years

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Brits in Chinese eyes: Fun, bizarre and super-outdated stereotypes

What stereotypes do the everyday mainland Chinese hold for British people? In other words, what the Brits don't know that nearly 1/5 of the world population are thinking of them?

For the past three months, I've been chatting with friends and families in Britain on this topic, and it almost always guaranteed an engaging and often cracking-fun conversation.

So I decided it's time to bring the discussion to a broader platform.

The list is drawn up from my observations during my life in Shanghai and the decade-long muttering I've endured from my mum ever since I started dating a Brit. Many entries apply for Westerners in general but a few have special British characteristics.

It's by no means complete. China is so big, who knows what an elderly, non-Mandarin-speaking Muslim would feel in the far far western China? But it's a fair collection of the interesting thoughts prevailing in the mainstream Chinese culture.

Read it. They're great conversation starters for next time when you see your good old Mandarin-speaking friends. But at the same time, you might not feel the same about yourself again while standing in front of them.

They all smell of mutton

This sounds bad, I know. But the good news is to Chinese, Brits are not the only ones that stink, the supposedly lamby smell hangs around all Caucasians. Many in China believe that's why they like using perfume, deodorant and cologne – to cover their body odour.

The odour is usually called “foul sheep-like smell”, or yang sao chou (羊骚臭) in Mandarin. I've only seen people using the jargon to describe two things in China: cooked mutton or white people.

“They like eating mutton, that's why they have this whiff.” That's what my mum always says, who by the way grew up in the hardcore communist China and can still recite paragraphs from Chairman Mao's Little Red Book.

At one point, she pointed to my boyfriend's gloves and commented: “Even their gloves pong.” And apparently, she reckons I can no longer detect the odour because “you've got used to it but it's so obvious to me.”

Some people also think this aroma is caused by the protein-rich diet in the West.

They are all white

This is a persistent stereotype that still stands fast in today's China.

To the majority, a typical Brit should be sketched elegantly as a three-piece donning Caucasian gentleman with golden hair and blue eyes, or in short Prince William; and the mention of London is instantly linked with posh or trendy white-bread neighbourhoods like Kensington, Chelsea and Notting Hill, not ethnically diverse pockets such as Stratford and Hackney.

Except for internationally well-known personalities like Lewis Hamilton, Africans, Caribbeans, Indians and West Asians have little chance of being regarded as Brits.

They are all rich

In China and many countries in Asia, white skin basically equals to a cash-printing machine. They earn a lot of money, are generous and will probably cover the drinks or meals for their Chinese friends. And they are likely to tip the Chinese mate for just hanging around and being … Chinese.

Hmm...That actually sounds not too bad. I might just consider being a “normal” Chinese when I hang out with my British friends.

They eat bread for every meal

Another classic from my mum.

After my first trip to Britain in 2011 for about two weeks, my mum concluded before I could even start: “You must have eaten an awful lot of bread. They eat bread every meal. Come back and have some home cooking.”

Yes, bread is the face of British cuisine and is what all Brits eat to the knowledge of my mum and her generation.

So don't chat about British food with Chinese. They're likely to zone out. Talk about English high tea, they go gaga about it.

And if anyone by accident slips through some words on the yummy British staple Shepherd’s Pies, refer to entry no.1 about the consequences.

They all like football

“Where are you from?”

“I'm from Britain.”

“Oh, do you like Beckham then?”

This is the set conversation intro a male Brit usually finds himself facing while chatting with a new Chinese friend in China.

To be fair, there are indeed many footy fans in the UK, but obviously many also don't give a monkey's to it at all.

The Premier League is so popular in China that the young generations would think every man from the UK likes playing football and supports Arsenal, Chelsea or Manchester United.

As a compliment, they might say you look like Beckham (if they're blond and good-looking), Paul Scholes (if you're a red-head) or Ferguson (if you pass the big 60).

#british chinese #chinese british #cultural observation

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littlemisswonton · 11 years

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Visiting Hadrian’s Wall, the Great Wall’s European cousin

Besides a passion for tea and ruling Hong Kong, China and Britain have another thing in common: a wall, a long wall, a great stone wall built by a formidable emperor to stop the barbarians from the north.

Born and bred in China, I was educated to think that China’s Great Wall was so unique in the world until I arrived in Newcastle a week ago and found out that the Romans had done something quite similar in north Britain. I thought I just had to visit it.

Around 214BC, Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang started unifying different sections of the rock fortifications erected by other Warring Kingdoms near Mongolian grasslands and created the 120-kilometre Great Wall to repel the Huns.

Some 300 years later and 12,300 kilometres away, the Roman sovereign Hadrian commanded the construction of a 170-kilometre fortification to ward off the Scots.

Hadrian’s Wall is in the middle of nowhere, but that’s the best part of it. It took two hours to reach the Houseteads Roman Fort from Newcastle. And it was worth the journey.

Given another chance, I might give it a week -- to properly walk the remaining 84-mile wall from Bowness-on-Solway in the west to Wallsend to the east.

But for now, here are the highlights for my nine-hour whistle stop.

1. The bus

The bus ride itself is nothing spectacular -- but its name is so damn cool: AD122 (the year Hadrian started building the Wall).

The 30-seat-or-so carriage shuttles between Newcastle and Carlisle along the Roman trail every day to pick up and drop off modern invaders.

There is one service departing from Newcastle Central Station daily at 9:30am and it comes back at about 7pm. If you miss that (like I did), you can take a local bus No. 685 or X85 at Eldon Square Bus Station to Hexam, which has a regular AD122 service to all the forts.

A day ticket of AD122 is £9 which allows you to hop on and off all stops along the UNESCO-listed attraction.

And Roman roads are indeed really straight. They’re also really bumpy.

2. The town

Hexham is a nice little market town just south of the English-Scottish border and is worth a couple of hours from wall-hikers to stroll through.

The market in front of Hexham abbey is "meh" but the stone house-filled, ancient town has the oldest jail in the United Kingdom.

Built in 1330, the Old Gaol is now a museum (admission £3.50) and is a vivid and gruesome proof of the infamously troublesome border.

The gaol is a five-minute walk from the AD122 bus station in front of Hexham Tourism Information Office.

3. The fort

There are about seven major Roman ruins along the Hadrian’s Wall trail. Housesteads, roughly a 30-minute drive from Hexham, has the best preserved remains for a fort and the Wall. Admission is £6.20 per head.

The full-scale Roman fort is said to have barracks, headquarters, commanders’ house, granaries, food storage and even a hospital. But now only the foundation stones of the structures remain, so you’ll need to be imaginative to truly appreciate the ancient military stronghold.

The wall around Housesteads is about 1.2 metres high. If you just want to see the wall; it’s free. Just walk along it.

4. The scenery

Northumberland has some of the prettiest countryside in Britain. Nothing that I'd find in China. (The nearest thing I can think of is probably Xinjiang, the Muslim part in the far west.)

The view from Housesteads fort is truly breathtaking: green grass, woolly sheep and blue sky, with nothing in between.

And sheep, yes, there are a lot of them. I went in the right season – cuddly lambs were lazing around just metres away.

The official website for Hadrian's Wall: www.visithadrianswall.co.uk

#hadrian's wall #new castle #great wall of china

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littlemisswonton · 11 years

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Travelling by Airbnb: 6 golden rules from a road warrior

For the past two months, my partner and I have put our life in the hands of Airbnb, a website that helps travellers find a bed in a local family at a low price.

Or in short, the “eBay” of temporary accommodation,

We hopped between different cities in Britain, and between different hosts within the same city. During the first month of our arrival in the country, we climbed into 10 different beds -- a lifestyle that shocked myself in retrospect.

But we loved it. For us, this is a great way to keep a nomadic lifestyle while still having a window to the real world. Although we did spend most of time in London, we avoided draining our savings in renting a flat of our own which requires a six-month deposit for newcomers to the city (my friends had to do it).

We also had our fair share of Airbnb “horror stories”, but what’s that old saying? Oh yes, no pain, no gain.

Here I’m boiling down our 73 days of tears, laughter and WTFs into six golden rules. If you’re contemplating an Airbnb adventure, ask yourself these questions before clicking that “confirm” button.

Let me tell you this upfront: it’s not a travel style for everybody.

1. Am I self-sufficient in a new environment?

This is the most important question and the answer has to be “yes”, loud and clear. Airbnb rooms are not hotel rooms. They are not even hostel rooms. It’s essentially to share a house with flatmates -- sometimes a couple; sometimes half a dozen.

You will need that proactive attitude to adapt into a very intimate environment with totally strangers within a short time.

Most of the hosts I’ve met were lax on house rules and were happy to give directions, but nobody would be waiting on the other end of the line to answer your questions on demand. You carry your own luggage, cook your own food and clean the kitchen and bathroom after every use.

2. Do I like surprises?

Our surprise No. 1: This happened to me and my partner in East London. We were about to knock on the door of our new “home” with an Indian family, then we saw this poster: “This house is covered in the blood of Jesus.” Okay … Mmmm … they didn’t say anything about this on their Airbnb page at all.

Our surprise No. 2: This time in South London. Our new host, a 20-something British lady, keeps a Ninja-like black cat, which is fine; we like animals. But what she didn’t tell us in advance was that her room door didn’t have a lock, not even a latch to secure it; and that she preferred not to lock up the cat at night.

So on our first night of stay, my partner woke up 3am in the morning with the black cat sitting on his chest. He screamed like a baby.

Yep. Nobody likes to advertise their “unique” lifestyle.

Life is full of surprises – my stay with Airbnb definitely hammered this message into my brain a lot deeper.

3. Do I have a tight itinerary?

Airbnb hosts are normal people like you and me. Most of them have full-time jobs. So small things like getting your enquiries answered, having your booking confirmed or meeting to get the key can take longer than you thought.

Plus most of the properties, at least in Britain, are in residential areas on the city outskirts, which means you also need to factor in the commute.

So if you have a packed schedule and are hoping to achieve everything on-the-dot, either coordinate with your host very well in advance, or a downtown hostel might do the trick better.

4. Can I handle last-minute changes?

It’s important for Airbnb bookers to have the flexibility and patience to deal with last-minute changes. There are no set rules on many things such as checking-in time. You need to settle with the host in the most realistic way.

Once in London, my partner and I were near Turnpike Station waiting for the Polish cleaning lady, who my host hired, to give us the key to the house. All of a sudden the tube broke down (which is common in London).

“She doesn’t know when she will get there,” my host texted me. So we basically had to keep waiting and amusing ourselves (me with my 10-kg backpack) until she turned up some 1.5 hours later. This also means we had to change our plan completely for the whole afternoon and days afterwards.

This is just one example, but it might give you an idea how adaptable you and your travel agenda need to be in order to use this service.

5. Do I have a good sense of direction?

Another minor issue, but it can get very frustrating. Unless your host is a celebrity, the chance of the house being marked on the local tourist map is next to zero. Oftentimes, tourist maps won’t even cover that area.

You won’t be able to pinpoint it by just mentioning the name to the Tourism Information lady or the taxi driver.

Make sure you do sufficient research before heading over or download a reliable offline street map to help navigate.

Ulmon Mobile City Guide is a nifty smartphone offline map app. It’s saved our arses so many times. A lite version is free of charge.

6. Do I care a lot about hygiene?

Hygiene is a very grey area on Airbnb. It varies from host to host.

Do lower your standards of hygiene when you decide to give the site a go. How low should it be? Worst case scenario, get prepared to see a kitchen piled with utensils still dripping ketchup or a bed with other people’s hair on it.

There was one time our host unexpectedly gave us her own room to sleep in (instead, she slept elsewhere). Then the bedding became something unaskable. “That woman just gave us her own room with all her personal belongs inside, should I demand her to change the sheet?” I thought.

We ended up just convincing ourselves the bedding was clean.

In addition, some people nowadays are making a living as full-time Airbnb hosts. This means they don’t live that house at all; instead they rent the entire house to a number of short-term tenants.

Normally, you won’t know how many people you’re sharing the house with until (or even after) you step in the building. It’s a dubious feeling, especially when you are using the kitchen and the bathroom.

I’m not a hygiene freak, but in these cases I always make sure I re-wash the plates and utensils before I use them.

#airbnb #airbnb booking #littlemisswonton #airbnb travel

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littlemisswonton · 11 years

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London Borough Market: The perfect reason to hate menus

The Borough Market in London is brilliant. Wicked. Awesome.

Just what a hungry Chinese needs in a foreign land: no-fuss and straightforward food talking.

Toddling around the buzzing open-air marketplace with my mouth full (at all time, for a couple of hours), I suddenly realised why I resent ordering food in the West: food should sell by smell, colour and presentation, not by flowery and exotic vocabulary.

Dish names such as “Petite prawns, Andouille sausage, mirepoix and Cajun cream sauce served over red rice” and “wild Fijian albacore sashimi with pea tendril salad, toasted hazelnuts, garlic chips, scallions and melon cilantro vinaigrette” look nothing but a bunch of gibberish when I’m hungry.

Honestly, what on earth do they want to say? I just want my dinner, simple.

I assume that’s one of the reasons why most Chinese tourists stick to Chinese food while travelling in the West: if an English-speaking person like me dreads ordering from a restaurant here, think about my mum.

The Borough market has food from all around the world, but I smell them (sometimes from metres away), look at them being boiled, grilled or pan-fried before I get a spoon of sample. If I like the taste, I can buy it; otherwise shuffle on to the next stall. How wonderful is that?

China has a strong wet-market culture, but nothing is on the scale and liveliness of the Borough. A near competitor I can think of is the Sunday Animal Market in Kashgar, China’s Islamic border town with Pakistan, where hundreds of sheep, goats, cows and donkeys are traded with a handshake. But the Borough smells a million times better than that.

I spent about three hours in the market and ended up sampling more food than actually buying. Here are some highlights.

German sausage, £4.50

This stall is near the entrance of the market from The Borough High Street next to Southwark Cathedral. They sell two types of sausages, pre-smoked Frankfurters (£3.90) and grilled-on-site Bratwürsts (£4.50).

The sausage came tightly packed in a soft bun (or a bread roll) and was topped with finely chopped sour cabbage (sauerkraut). I got the Bratwürst. Ah, nice, juicy and soft meat. (In China, sausages are wind-dried so they’re jerky.)

I really liked the sauerkraut too. It tasted a bit like Korean Kimchi but not as spicy and challenging.

Cashew Baklava, sell by weight, 90p for a small chunk

This Turkish pastry was very rich, quite sweet and didn’t taste very cashew-ish. But it was addictive.

For a dessert that dense, I’d expected a sticky and sour aftertaste in my mouth. Surprisingly, it didn’t come. So I had to keep munching.

This little baby was also pleasantly tender and not too crumbly.

Beef steak Empanada, £2.50

The Argentinean pasty looked similar to an oversized deep-fried Chinese dumpling, so I thought I’d give it a shot.

Compared to the Chinese equivalent, the steak, tomato and pepper filling was very juicy and well-seasoned. It was delightful.

The dough was not too thick so the whole pocket turned out very savoury.

Mango with coconut rice, £3.50

I only found two Oriental food stands in the Borough. One was Thai and the other Japanese.

I’d kill to have another bite of this Thai dish. There were so many layers of taste and texture in one bite: refreshing and fragrant mango, soft coconut-soaked sticky rice, a kick of salt (in the coconut milk) and crunchy bits of toasted sesame seeds.

Champion of the day.

Grilled scallops with bacon bits and vegetable salad, £5

A bit overpriced for only three chunks of the seafood but it tasted interesting with the contrast of scallop and bacon in texture.

British goat’s milk ice cream, £3 for one scoop, £4.50 for two

The nice ice cream man offered me a spoonful of freebie, so I decided to let loose and go for the craziest flavours in the cart: Raspberry Chilli; and Lemon, Lime and Basil.

Unlike what my Chinese brains had expected – goat’s milk would taste so lamby – it was just like moo juice.

These scoops were more like sorbet. The Raspberry chilli was creamier but I couldn’t really taste the spice.

Lemon, Lime and Basil was, how can I say, unique. It was very sour, a bit bitter but I actually chewed on real bits of basil leaves so it made me feel healthy.

And it was a generous portion. Half of my stomach went sub-zero.

Paella, £6

I didn’t end up having this sensational Spanish seafood rice -- my belly was overstuffed and went on strike.

I did regret it. I’m still regretting it. Damn, I couldn’t wipe it out of my mind.

I saw two Paella stalls in the market (there might be more). One is right by Southwark Cathedral (they charge £5.90) and this one is at the other side of the Borough market near the Stoney Street.

The Borough Market The Borough High Street, near Southwark Cathedral Nearest Tube station is the London Bridge on Jubilee Line and Northern Line Monday-Wednesday: 10am-3pm Thursday: 11am-5pm Friday: noon-6pm Saturday: 8am-5pm

#london borough market #littlemisswonton #london markets #food markets

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littlemisswonton · 11 years

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Why I left China

For the first time, I am leaving China indefinitely. I don’t feel sad at all.

I know what I’m leaving behind: an energy-charged city, a “land of opportunities” and most importantly my family. But moving away from the mainland will help me become a fuller person and lead me to a better life.

The obvious benefits are the excitement of travel, a less-polluted environment and censorship-free press. But for a born-and-bred Chinese like me, there are other more important goals I hope the big move will achieve. Here are the top three.

To live like a proper adult

I’m 30 and I should live like me, not my mother’s daughter, in an environment that encourages independence. But it’s hard to do so in China.

The one-child birth control policy has caused a strange side-effect: children don’t want to grow up and parents don’t want them to either.

Most of my married cousins still live with their parents in the same neighbourhood, if not the same flat, have little idea how to cook, clean or properly wash a sock and let the elderly look after their life.

They are not freaks. I’m the freak to dare to think otherwise. The overall culture in China prompts young people to pay back their emotional debt to parents as soon as they have income, and to do so, living with them and being obedient is the best way.

I yearn to live like a proper adult and be treated like one in a mature and sophisticated society. This is the whole point of growing up, isn’t it?

Of course, there will be setbacks, frustration and maybe tears, but it just feels great to wake up every day to the thought that I am me – not an attachment to my family -- and there is no guilt about it.

To learn a different meaning of ‘success’

The meaning of success is simple in China, almost a little bit too simple: material wealth and social status

People do understand the meaning and importance of spiritual happiness. In fact, there are many ancient poems and fictional characters that encourage such intangible pursuits. But when it comes down to real life, these historic values become “irrelevant and impractical”.

I am not a Renminbi-maniac, but being raised in a money-eager environment did narrow down my view point on a desirable lifestyle.

I once thought the only way to reach a “good life” was to work nine to five under a long-term, if not permanent, contract, with a glossy title such as Manager, Director or even better Chief Executive in a stable company. My partner tried to freelance and I became extremely anxious for three months, fearing that our life would be shattered completely.

Two years later, I’m considering a freelance career myself. I came to realise how stiff my life view used to be and I’m keen to explore the variety meanings of “success” and “a good life”.

Are popular buskers successful? How about a happy farmer living in the middle of nowhere? What’s the real meaning of success anyway? These are the questions I’ve been asking myself.

It might take me a while to come up with the answer I’m happy with, but at least I’m certain that “success” does not equal to owning a house (or several), a car and a closet full of big labels in your 20s.

Relax. Enjoy my life. Be as much to myself as you can. That sounds much better, innit?

To take pride in being different

I bought my lunch at Pret A Manger yesterday and my cashier was a four-foot tall dwarf standing on a stool. “How can I help you?” she said with a warm, kind and extremely confident demeanour.

I couldn’t help but gasp. Things like this would never even happen in China, not in a retail store, not in a million years.

The nearest thing there is a controversial “dwarf empire” in Yunnan Province, called Butterfly Ecological Park, where costume-clad little people gather from all over the country to sing, dance and amuse tourists.

Ok, this would sound extremely offensive to the West, but it’s perfectly acceptable to the Chinese culture. As a matter of fact, it’s probably one of the best jobs they could ever hope to find in the massive nation. Yep, it’s that bad.

The Chinese culture is a highly harmonious and homogenous one. As long as you’re a wee bit different, in looks, thought or lifestyle, you are subject to different rules -- sometimes a good different, more often bad. You’ll be immediately categorized as “not us” by the others – and being a part of “us” is important.

When I was living in Shanghai, I didn’t follow the social protocols. I rented my flat instead of buying; I enjoyed rubbing shoulders with grannies in the wet markets. To me, I did this because these were my choices and I enjoyed them. But to my friends, it was because I married a Brit, thus “I am different”.

Being stuck in my culture felt horrible. I used to feel lonely for being considered different in my native culture and among my long-term friends. But take a look at all the different faces that make up the city of London here, take a look at that little cashier. This is a great change for me. Brilliant. I can finally and whole-heartedly feel this: normal is dead, being different is the way to go.

#China lifestyle #China culture #littlemisswonton

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