Day 8: More Rain

No progress was made on the park today as it rained all day long. We taught English in the morning as usual, and Cherry and I continued reinforcing the food vocabulary that we have been teaching. We used a turn-based team style game to get the kids to list the vocabulary for different categories, such as meat and vegetables. At the end, the losing team had to come up with another skit to perform, again centered around ordering food in a restaurant.

This afternoon was relatively lazy when compared to our usual manual labor. We all took much-needed naps, and I read a fair bit. We ate dinner early. At dinner, we had some bai jiu (literally, white alcohol, but the Chinese use it to describe all liquor). It was a clear liquid, and it was 120 proof, or 60% alcohol (compared with standard American liquors like vodka, rum, and whiskey which are all 80 proof). The extra proof made a good bit of difference. We had to drink it very slowly, and eat more to compensate. On that front, I tried two new foods (well two new body parts) today: chicken neck and pig foot. Chicken neck is pretty bland (just like chicken foot), and also not very rewarding to eat, as it is mostly bone. Pig foot, on the other hand, is quite tasty, although as a general rule pork is my least favorite meat. One of our students, Feng Ji Chen, joined us for dinner, but as her English is still very much in the developmental phase, the conversation took place in Chinese. This brings me to another tidbit of Chinese culture: in China, and especially in rural China, most people leave their front doors open, and if someone wanders into your house during dinnertime, you are culturally obligated to feed them. This social idiosyncracy is not taken advantage of; I have only so far seen this student of ours and the principal come to the dinner table (on different evenings), and they both had reason to be there.

This next part concerns differences between Chinese and English and is a bit esoteric, so if that sort of thing does not interest you, feel free to skip this paragraph. Feng Ji Chen was offered a particular dish of food while we were eating, and her response was chi bu lai (chi means eat, bu means no, and lai means come, but all together it means I can't/won't eat it). I inquired as to why lai was used instead of liao; chi bu liao would mean I physically cannot eat any more. To my friends', and hosts', credit, they did not lose patience with me as I struggled to understand. By the end, my understanding has evolved to where I think that chi bu liao has a stricter definition (only physically unable to eat), while chi bu lai is slightly more flexible. It seems, however, that chi bu liao might have been acceptable in this instance. This has been part of a wider pattern that I have noticed, and it is one that has been pointed out to me by native speakers. Chinese is a language of much fewer and looser definitions than English. It is conventional wisdom that as one's English gets better, one begins to use more and more words to describe their actions, as they can become more and more specific. However, Chinese works slightly differently: as you learn more, you say less and more is implied by your speech. The language is not overly burdened with rigorous definitions, so phrases are not bound as tightly by the strictures of definitional nuance that often plague English, confusing foreigners. I don't think necessarily think that the Chinese way works better, although it has its conveniences; I merely think that perhaps both languages are a little extreme in their method at times.

Hopefully the weather will cooperate tomorrow, and we will be able to continue work. See you tomorrow night.