A Simple Interaction

I had the slightest interaction with someone on the MTR a few days ago in Hong Kong. She half-stood up, and at her tiny stature, strained to see above everyone’s heads to find out what station we had just arrived at. She must have just not been mentally present or aware, as they’d just announced it over the loudspeaker in three languages, all of which she likely speaks—her 2 designer bags (LeSport Sac, Coach) and double ‘C’ Coco Chanel rind indicated that she was well-off and educated. Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean that she doesn’t give in to daydreaming to exit the boring present of the MTR commute like all of us generic-brand wearing public transit patrons. Thus, there was a flicker of panic in her eyes as she tries to decide whether or not it was to push her way through the crowd and out of the open doors of the metro car.

Witnessing all of this in the span of 2.3 seconds, I leaned over and stated, “Jordan.” She locked eyes with my own, and with a sigh of relief, gratefully replied, “Aaah—I’m going to Tsim Sha Tsui.” We rode together without interaction for just one more stop, until she stirred as the train slowed, and looked and me and stated, “Have a seat.” My painfully sore, heeled leather boot-clad feet were very thankful as I watched her escape through the automatic doors, never to be seen in my life again.

It was such a beautiful and simple example of how humans are eager to repay any act of kindness with something of their own. It also shows the benefit of being aware of our surroundings—interactions like these contribute to a brand of happiness that only exists when you help others, however slightly. Making a habit out of gestures like these really can restore faith in fellow man, whether it’s reciprocated like mine was, or only a notion appreciated on the receiving end.

Chinese Vocab for the Shower

Sometimes it's a bit funny the situations that you never thought you'd get into while having to speak a foreign language. You don't usually learn in class how to yell at a restaurant manager when you wait for 40 minutes for your food before someone finally tells you they've run out of what you ordered. Your Chinese teacher won't teach you the necessary vocabulary to set right an uncivilized person who cuts in front of a line, spits at your feet, or pushes onto the crowded subway while you're trying to alight. Similarly, looking back on a situation that I had last week, it makes the memory even more hilarious that it was Chinese rather than my native language that spewed out of my mouth.

I've found a new hobby that I've luckily been able to spread to a few friends of mine as well: Squash. It took me 20 years of living before I'd even heard of squash, when a cute boy I met on a Spring Break trip to Acapulco played it at his college. The sport became nothing but an inside joke between my travel companions (who had both taken interest instead in athletes of the rather more manly sport of ice hockey), and we laughed it off. As it turns out, squash is actually one of the more fun sports I've ever played, and I wish I'd let it spark my interest a bit more back then.

Last week, three friends and I went to a local squash court at a hotel here, where we'd played a few times before. I like the place. The prices are decent, the courts are nice, the facilities are good, and it's simple to make a reservation. Each person pays 40 RMB for an hour of play, which is about US$7. Squash: it's fun, social, and amazing exercise. The only problem is, it's played in a tiny enclosed court with barely any ventilation, and I live in a very tropical climate. Thus, by the end of an hour, the walls themselves are sweating, let alone your own exhausted body. Luckily, the locker rooms have some amazing showers, so we always enjoyed a quick rinse before heading off for a celebratory pint.

On this particular day, however, my friend had gotten out of the shower before me, when I heard some sort of struggled argument between her and a gym worker. (She is a beginner in Chinese; the worker spoke very broken English.) I could tell something was wrong, so naked in my shower with the water still running, I stuck my head out of the curtain and asked the woman in Chinese what the problem was. She angrily exclaimed that we hadn't paid for the showers, and that we each had to pay a whopping 40 RMB for them.

Side note: when I say we were yelling at each other, in American terms I do mean it. But in China, it wasn't really an angry conversation, as those of you who have visited or lived here know that sometimes even conversations that aren't heated occur at a loud volume.

"40 RMB for a shower!" I exclaimed from my shower cubicle in Mandarin. "No way! No one told us you have to pay for showers! Every time we come here we take showers and no one has ever told us this."
"You must pay! It's our policy!" She retorted. "You owe an extra 160 RMB!" (Keep in mind we'd paid that amount for the entire hour of play.)

Thus, the woman and I shouted at each other in this way for about 5 minutes before both of us looked down and realized something: we would never come to a conclusion while I had soapy hair, water gushing on my back, and my nudity was separated from the room by nothing but a thin sheet of plastic. Thus, she blushed after realizing the awkward position she'd put me in and looked at the tile floor and muttered, "Let's talk about this after..." I laughed and pulled my head back inside the curtain.

Luckily, I eventually persuaded them to allow us that day's showers for free, with a promise that we wouldn't take them after future squash games.

So, to all you textbook authors, I recommend you write a chapter for your next Chinese book called Vocabulary for Arguing About Showers While You're Naked in the Shower.

Jokes & Articles

The pluralization in the title is a deception. Here follows only one of each:

In an international class, the teacher poses a discussion question to the students:
"What is your opinion on food scarcity in other countries?"

The African student replies, "What is food?"
The European student says, "What is scarcity?"
The American student says, "What are other countries?"
and the Chinese student says, "What is my opinion?"

Absolutely love it.


Here's a link to the most recent article I've written for Global Times, about how I'm enthused about some Shanghai universities planning to upload their lectures to iTunes U for free download.
Online Lectures Offer Opportunity

Earth Ship

I accompanied my awesome friend Anders and his amazing girlfriend Bailing to help build the first ever Earth Ship in China. For those of you who don’t know, an Earth Ship is a completely self-sustained house that is made primarily of recycled and natural materials. Think re-used old tires, plastic bottles, and dirt from the very hillside into which it is built. It collects, stores, pumps, and re-filters its own water for use in the sinks, toilet, shower, and even watering the plants in the built-in greenhouse. Finally, as you might guess, all of the electronics in the house typically run on solar power generated by rooftop panels. While I can’t say that I would likely suck it up and live full time in a home made out of tires packed with dirt, I definitely advocate the message behind it of living our entire lives in a more sustainable way. Earth Ships were first designed by a man named Mike Reynolds in New Mexico way back in 1969, and the official ones are built by a company that you can find here: http://www.earthship.org/ I really think it’s great to see something like this going on in China. Even moreso, it was wonderful to meet locals who are passionately involved in the project and trying to spread the concept of environmental living around their home country.

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Throughout the day, I had quite a few inspirational conversations with my fellow volunteers. One notion that Anders and I discussed dealt with education systems. The project leader Damien mentioned that he had to calculate a right angle in order to build a certain part of the house just so for maximum strength. He said that while none of their young interns could remember that for this task they should use the Pythagorean Theorem, this exact 7th-grade geometric equation is what he utilized. Thus, we initially discussed how a practical, hands on education can be much more effective in teaching students useful application. Take the kids out into the field and have them volunteer and build a damn house, helping out the community while learning about applied geometry at the same time. (There’s a fine line between this and child labor, so please be careful when heeding this advice.)

Secondly, how many of these kids are actually going to be building a house or working in a field where they need to know how to calculate the hypotenuse of a right triangle? Minimal, at best. Most of the information that we learn is really only a means to a way of thinking and a basis for answering further questions through logic. Thus, I think it a major shame that teachers tend not to focus on this meta-education. Education about education. Learning about why you learn. Making the connection that will be what actually helps you in the future. I had one professor who explicitly did this in college, constantly telling us to write down the QUESTIONS instead of the ANSWERS that we learned. This is some of the most valid advice I ever received in my education, it’s just unfortunate that it came so late.

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Finally, I will leave you with what I look at as an amazing bit of wisdom from the man who is responsible for the Earth Ship project in China, Ian. While I mostly zoned out during an intense philosophical discussion far beyond my Chinese abilities, the conversation actually ended with a short bit of English. Ian looked each of us in the eyes, and said “You are the most important people in the world to me. But only right here, right now.” I project this to mean a vast volume of things, as I hope you can read into as well, and perhaps at a later date I’ll expand more into how it tremendously effects the way that life is lived.