Yu Min Hong Lookalike

On more than a few occasions, different people in this city have told me that I look like this guy named Yu Min Hong (俞敏洪). A few of my teachers have said this, along with a good handful of Chinese college students here.

Finally, I did some searching around on the web to look this guy up. What do you think... resemblance?

Yu Min Hong is famous among the education circles in this country, particularly as it relates to learning English and studying abroad. He was formerly an English teacher at Peking University, and in the 90's started the Beijing New Oriental School, which does GRE, TOEFL, and SAT training. As the wikipedia article says, he is known as the Godfather of Study Abroad.

I believe that Yu Min Hong is around 15 years older than I am. So maybe this is what I will look like in 10 to 15 years. Although maybe I already kind of look like this now.

I watched a short video clip of Yu Min Hong giving a presentation at the Harvard Business School. I was relieved to discover that my English is better than his. But his Chinese is better than mine. I wonder if he and I could partner up as a single person, where he does the appearances that require Chinese while I do the appearances that require English. Or what would be really cool is if we did appearances together and translated for each other.

Kyrgyz Birthday Party

Our class has 5-6 students in it depending on the day. Two of the students are from Kyrgyzstan, and one of them was in our class last year. This week, one of the Kyrgyz guys celebrated his 20th birthday, and invited Alvin and me to his birthday party at a restaurant. It was a really interesting and fun cultural experience.

Our friend threw his own birthday party. He invited about 20 friends, about half were international students, and the other half were local friends. There were a couple culturally different things that happened during the party.
1) Our friend had assigned seats for all his guests. He wanted to have his international friends sitting next to his local friends.
2) Our friend ordered food for both tables. His one rule for the food was that both tables had to have different food. He really ordered well and it felt like a banquet.
3) Our friend and another Kyrgyz guy went around filling up everyone's plate with food, and then walked around filling up our drinks. I don't think he even ate.
4) The birthday boy also was the first to toast the guests, and then he made a diplomatic speech about being friends with all cultures.
5) At the party were Chinese friends, Kyrgyz friends, a Pakistani guy, a Japanese guy, a French guy, a Mexican guy, and Alvin and I represented the Americans. The most common language was Chinese, so almost all of the conversations were in Chinese, except for a few English phrases and a lot of charades.
6) Our birthday boy had a mix CD on his stereo system. This CD had quite a variety: some Bob Marley, Rihanna, "Eye of the Tiger," "Beat It," Romanian music, and my favorite was Madonna's "Like a Prayer." Some of the conversation during the night was about how weird Lady Gaga looks, and then one guy announced that Britney looks fat. Oh, I didn't notice.


Overall, I had a really fun time at the birthday party. I felt like culturally the party was different from a typical American birthday party, but I am not sure if all the different items were Kyrgyz culture or just this guy's preferences.

Puzzle Pasttime

The week before last, I was out with a cold for about 3 days. Was feeling pretty lethargic.

About a week before that, we happened upon an unopened 1000 piece puzzle. I think the two of us like doing puzzles - it's therapeutic, a fun challenge, and a good way to have good conversations while you're sorta doing something else.

Well, since I was just looking for a way to get some rest and pass the time, we decided to open the puzzle and give it a go. This puzzle features the Cracker Jack logo along with one of the brand's characters. It took us about 2 hours just to get the edges. And then, over the next few days, we spent time putting together the logo and the picture of Sailor Jack and Bingo.

That all ended last Sunday. The rest of the puzzle, we feel, is impossible. The rest of it is just... cracker jacks. Like, popcorn and peanuts. No other distinctive colors or patterns. Just... popcorn.

So the puzzle has just been sitting on our kitchen table, taking up half of the table, untouched for a week. We are paralyzed. There's got to be at least 400 pieces left to go. All look same. Maybe we'll just box it back up.

I Am Have Many Question

This announcement flyer posted right outside our building for international students learning Chinese. For an English-only flyer, I would put the grammar and word usage at about 95th percentile relative to everything else we've seen out here that's in English.



What's interesting to (besides the English) is that, you would think that - if there was anybody on campus who had an English operating system on their computers - it would be the foreign students. I don't understand why we are their market audience.

And also... in regards to operating systems, anti-virus software, or other software... who wants to make a bet that this is authentic non-pirated software?

Snake Oil

My friend who works at a butcher shop, noticed that my hands can get pretty dry. When I visit her, she will often touch my hands to test their dryness. This means that sometimes she will have just grabbed some beef and cut it up, and then, without washing her hands, will start touching my hands. I am not grossed out by this, but I do make sure I disinfect my hands when I leave her shop.

She said that my hands needed some lotion, so one days she gave me a lotion bottle: snake oil lotion. She, along with some of my other local friends, think snake oil will fix all my dry skin issues. I am allergic to many types of lotions, but surprisingly, I am not allergic to snake oil. I was very grateful for her gift, but when I told Alvin he started to laugh.

He told me that people use the phrase "snake oil" to identify fake medicines or placebos. I found a Wiki article that talked about the root of the expression; it involves Chinese immigrants to the states bringing in snake oil even though it may have been just a placebo for many joint ailments.

Hopefully the snake oil my friend bought me is effective and will make my skin less dry, not make be break out in eczema, and help me with all my joint ailments, even though I don't have any right now.

Seriously, It's Snowing

The weather has been slowly warming up, even to 70 degrees F last week. Yet this afternoon, even when the weather is in the 40s, it started snowing. I can't believe it is snowing at the end of April. I don't think it has snowed here since February.

Also, last night, there was a sandstorm warning. In AZ I have seen sandstorms, but I have never seen anything like what happened at 11pm at night last night. The wind was going crazy, but what was most noticeable was this yellow haze in the air from all the dust. I could hardly make out the building across the street from our house. Cars on the streets were having a hard time driving; some of them just pulled over, and some of them were driving 5 miles an hour with their hazards on the whole time.

Here are some pictures of the snowing. It has snowed twice already today, for a time span about 10 minutes.

Buyer Beware

As I biked out of the campus gates on Wednesday after class, I approached three friends (foreigners like me) who were huddled around a bike cart vendor. From the look of the vendor and his cart, this was a man from a different region of the country, who was selling pieces from a special fruit and nut cake that is one of their cultural foods. (The picture to the left is of a cake similar to the one we saw). I rode up to my friends to see what they were up to.

Well, apparently, they were asking about how much a piece of the cake would cost and they asked the man to cut just a small small little piece for them to buy and then take home to try. This is right when I arrived... as the vendor had just cut a huge piece (about the size of tissue box). And I arrived right in time to hear him say (in a thick accent), "108 RMB."

Now, my language skills aren't super wonderful, but I am a bit farther along in the classes than my friends there. They were looking at me to make sure that they had heard correctly. 108 RMB? Seriously? 108 RMB can buy you about... 8 pounds of beef. And this piece of cake, of which they only wanted a small piece, was going to cost them 108 RMB?

The vendor was staring at them, continuing to demand the money while putting the piece of cake in a plastic bag. I told my friends, "Uhh, guys... you seriously need to walk away. Like, walk away... now." They said, "Bu yao. Zou le." (We don't want it. We're leaving.) And we all started to make our move.

This is when it got interesting.

The vendor began to pursue us, yelling at us. He grabbed my friend by his backpack shoulder strap and shoved the cake into my friend's chest, yelling, "I already cut it. You have to buy it." He just kept saying it over and over again, louder and louder. "I cut it for you. I'm selling it to you. 108 RMB. You told me to cut it. Now you have to buy it."

My friend kept looking at me, saying, "Tell him I didn't ask him to cut that big of a piece. There's no way we're going to buy this." I translated. And there began a nice loud argument between my friend and me and this vendor who would not listen to us (nor let go of my friend's backpack).

Finally, I said to him, "My friend just wanted a small piece. You cut us a small piece, and we'll buy a small piece. But not this." The vendor grumbled and we went back to the vendor's cart. Now... a small crowd of maybe 15 people has gathered around us.

The vendor cuts the cake piece into two, takes the bigger piece and begins to bag it up for my friend. My friend and I both know that this not how we want this to end. So I tell my friend again, "Look, just walk away. Go... quickly." And so he starts walking.

Seeing that my friend is walking away, the vendor grabs my bike and won't let go, and he puts the cut piece into my bike basket, and he yells at me, "If your friend doesn't buy it, then you have to buy it. I already cut it. You have to buy it."

I argue with him, "Why should I buy it? I was just passing by, and I saw my friend. He didn't understand what you were saying, so I was just translating for him. I don't want your cake." But he will not let go of my bike.

It's interesting to me how many things go through your mind when you're in a heated situation. Because the vendor was, by this time, super aggressive, I was thinking to myself, "Would this guy seriously take a swing at me? With all of these people gathered around us to see? He wouldn't... he would look really bad if he did. But what would I do if he did?"

My friend, seeing that the vendor would not let me leave, came back. By now, a few of the people around us tried to be of some help. A few of them asked me, "Why did you ask for such a big piece if you weren't going to buy it?" I answered, "You all know we didn't want a big piece. My friend wanted a small small piece, and this man cut it that size on purpose so that he could make money." As soon as I said that, they all understood immediately what was going on, that this guy in fact was trying to 宰 (zai3 = "slaughter") a few foreigners. This is not uncommon.

Finally, we pointed to the smaller of the two pieces and said, "We won't buy this bigger piece. How much is the smaller piece?" He replies, "42 RMB. You can give me 40 RMB."

At this point, a surprising thing happened. A few of the local people gathered around us said to me and my friend, "How about this... we'll all buy it together for 40 RMB. I'll buy a little, and my friend here will buy a little, and then you guys buy a little..." Besides the occasional vendor who wants to 宰 foreigners, I'm continually struck by how kind the people of this city are to its foreigners.

Realizing that we were not both going to be able to walk away without buying at least something from this guy, my friend agreed to pay him 40 RMB for a slice of fruit cake that I'm sure he didn't even want anymore. He handed over the money, and we walked away, probably both feeling a mixture of relief and anger.

I was, however, thankful for the out-of-the-ordinary language opportunity. It's funny to me how, for the next few hours following the encounter, I was fashioning and rehearsing in my mind different sentences that I wish I had tried out. Things like:

喂哥们儿,别抓住我的车。放手。 (Hey buddy, let go of my bike.)

废话! 你怎么这么对待我们啊?! (Nonsense! How can you treat us like this?)

滑稽不滑稽？你找打吗？ (Funny guy, eh? Are you looking to get a beating?)

Thanks, ChinesePod, for the last one, even though I probably won't ever have the guts to bust it out.

Last night, I found out that two other friends of ours, also foreigners, had passed by the fruit cake cart about an hour before we did. They didn't get the language and culture experience that we did. Instead, they quietly (and regretfully) paid 126 RMB for their piece of fruit cake.