06-18-13 | Of Calligraphy, Cats, and Corpses

Apparently this broadband internet thing doesn't allow more than one computer to make a connection...Well, it's less than three days until PIB starts, so I had better start uploading pictures. Also I've never seen a keyboard with such a small return key. Anyway here's what happened yesterday.

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Walking to the barber on Shandong University's campus. Pollution is down after the rain.

I woke up to the blare of ringing phones and Skype video calls. After eating a bowl of soupy yogurt (酸奶 suan1 nai3, literally “sour milk”), I got a much-needed haircut at a local place. I was amazed at the service given it only cost 10yuan. “That’s actually quite expensive,” said my grandfather afterward. “The really famous places can charge over 20yuan ($4), though.” Services are cheap here, though the food is pricier (relatively*) and sketchier. Brand name clothes are also (somehow) more expensive here than in America. (A pair of Vans was going for about 500yuan at the nearby mall)

After lunch (food pics eventually) I began the eponymous events of the title, in reverse order. Fair warning about the next paragraph.

This Shandong University has a sizable collection of human anatomical samples (biao1 ben3 标本). My grandpa had set up a visit for early afternoon, but when we got there, our intended guide was busy. So we were left to wander the many cases of formaldehyde ourselves. I’ve seen cadavers before at the U. Maryland medical school and at the NIH, (though I’ve never been to the bodies exhibit in New York), but I still found this particular set of samples a tad chilling…perhaps because of the smell, the scarcely labeled scarcely identifiable specimens, or the cases only half-filled with preservative fluid.Some were donations, others, former criminals. One wonders about the rest: the slides, the skeletons, and bodies small enough to fit into jars.(for the really non-squeamish, here are some photos of a head in a jar, a skeleton, some slices of brain tissue, and some abdominal cavities)

The Scottish dude who founded the medical school

We left and wandered around campus. Shandong University was apparently founded by European missionaries. Go figure.

We stopped at one of the more historic teaching buildings. Some recent grads were taking pictures out in front.

The cats are more straightforward. There are a lot of stray cats in China, especially where my grandparents live. So it makes for a good number of sightings. I saw a few orange cats the last time I visited (and coincidentally wrote them into my college essay…), but the two cats I saw today looked pretty old, and one had a droopy eye. 

One cat

Two Cats

It didn’t really seem to give a care about me sticking my iPhone camera up to its face, though.

The calligraphy is pretty straightforward as well. I basically copied random words out of a book using brushes, ink, and paper my grandfather had lying around. The rice paper is first folded several times to create a grid of creases. The words are painted with mo4 (墨) in the grid, traditionally from right to left, top to bottom. Here’s what I came up with:

What are words

Also:

Just kidding my grandpa drew these

I also bought this thing that you can paint on with water. Once the water dries you can reuse it. It’s like one of these. Except magnificently overpriced. Watch me use it to study for my first test … Oh, and tomorrow I suppose I’ll be giving that PowerPoint presentation. Well, 先到这儿吧。

Cheers,

孔令鑫

06-17-13 | Qufu and Jinan - Visiting Family

Wow so it's 11:30PM, and I've finally gotten the internet to work. I'm using my grandpa's 7-year-old Dell laptop, since I couldn't get a connection on mine (who even still uses DSL anyway??). While I was futzing with it, my grandpa was like "don't students go to you to fix their computers at school?" (#STC)


Had to install the legacy VPN on this thing, since it's so old, but I finally have Blogger and Facebook. The saddest thing is, even though the original keyboard doesn't work and it's running on a 10+ year old OS, this laptop still works better than my Asus (which is duck-taped together and hangs every 10 minutes). Oh well. Hopefully this will bring forth somewhat regular posting from now on. --End computer rant.

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China's fastest trains come in modern packages. There are many types; this one's a "gao tie"

Today my yeye (爷爷, paternal grandfather) dropped me off at the Jinan train station after a day in Qufu, which is my father's hometown and incidentally also the hometown of Confucius (孔子), who is incidentally who I get my last name from.

A pretty standard street-side view

Qufu isn't the most modern of cities (though it contains three Confucius-related tourist sites, which even draw the occasional 老外 (lao wai, foreigner/white dude). My previous visit there wasn't all that comfortable, but this time was completely different, thanks to this past year of Chinese study. Being able to communicate with my grandparents and san gu (3rd aunt) was invaluable. (The Qufu accent is also interesting in that it switches a lot of tones around - mei3guo2 becomes mei4guo2
and so on - but that's beside the point).

Buying sesame seed paste at a small shop. Sanitation seems to be heat and cotton-cloth based.

Talking to my relatives and stumbling on interesting facts (that my cousin works for a video-game company whose game I used to play) as well as more serious things (how my san gu spends every weekend taking care of her parents and in laws) - it made me feel like I was meeting them for the first time.

Side Note: BIRDS

The day I was there, san gu took my dad and I to see Kongmiao (The Temple of Confucius) and Konglin (The cemetary of the aforementioned) - though, like Mozart, Confucius died poor and nobody knows where he's really buried. That and the fact that he was really ugly composed much of what I gleaned from our tour guide's rapid Chinese.(A few pics of these places to follow. So many, the tech problems). In the end, I missed out on the "Kong Family Mansion." (Though if it were me, I'd put the family mansion somewhere more convenient. Probably Short Hills, NJ or something.

A nice traditional meal at the end of the day. Afterward, a nice traditional quiz on the name of each dish

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A Chinese ink painting by 姥爷．It was hanging in my dorm room this year.

In Jinan, I haven't really done anything yet, but my lao ye (老爷，maternal grandfather) has some things planned: looking at some anatomical samples and talking with some seniors from the local Shandong University. Apparently they want me to give a presentation on Yale...so looking at iPhone photos it is. Though I Skype vid-chat them often (Jinan actually has internet hence this post), it was nice to hold a conversation with them in Chinese as well. My grandfather here is a doctor, former chairman of the public health school, and current artist so I'll be looking forward to more of that.

Also, above is a testament to how things haven't changed at all. That Hitmonlee has been there forever. Literally since the dawn of McDonalds happy meal toys.

It's quite later here, I'd rather not wake my hosts, and I don't really know what I'm even writing at this point, so I'll stop here. Hope you enjoyed the photos/words. Questions/comments welcome. Etc etc. 等等。

Cheers,

孔令鑫