Chengdu, 2014-11-14 01:31:06 +0800
Day 82 in China
After the number of days visible in the line above that I spent in China, I got accustomed to the life in Asia and developed a certain daily routine that I unwillingly follow. The bad thing about my lifestyle is that I never fall asleep before midnight and rarely before 2 a.m. There is nothing I would love more (except maybe a new Xperia Z2 or the Korean next door girl) than to go back to the healthy sleeping habits from the happy years in Poznań, when 1 a.m. was already very late for weekdays, but my body just refuses to do it. Going to sleep that late, I never have time to get proper breakfast before classes (if I manage to go to classes at all,) so I usually have to do with nothing, a fruit or a 餅子—spicy meat cake. This way the only things I can think of in class are hunger, drowsiness and piercing cold, as there is no warming anywhere in Chengdu.

Until recently, when my bicycle dissolved into thin air after 50 days I had the honor to spend happily with him, I would also cycle around for considerable distances. (Just to remind you: my last bike’s name was Red John or 紅色的約翰.) This was a good way to get some fresh air, get to know the geography of Chengdu better (進一步瞭解成都的地理) and burn some of my excessive abdominal fat. I also practise yoga, and it’s very good for more or less everything. And I spend shitloads of time in the library studying Korean. Over the last few years I’ve already become a sort of polyglot, but when someone asks me if there’s a genius or any secret behind my polyglossia, I always say: “The best way to become a polyglot is to learn many languages.”

The joy and satisfaction of making fast progress in a new language is something really hard to describe, but really, few things can compare. You can try to fall in love, but what if your crush doesn’t like you as much as you do? You can smoke pot, but it’s getting more and more expensive, and it can also complicate everyday life. You can practise Buddhism and it can give you happiness, but I do it anyway. But if you learn a new language, you get to feel exceedingly happy with every succesful conversation, especially if you only just started to learn the language. And what if you get bored? No problem, you just take on another language. Seriously, I really love studying languages.

Koreans put a lot of effort into making their language as complicated and illogical as possible, but this very fact makes it so satisfying to learn. When you meet a Korean person, they will always ask you about your name, where you come from, and your age. They need your name, because in Korean (just like Japanese) it’s very uncommon to use the word “you.” I once walked with a Japanese friend from the dorms, and we noticed another Japanese person.
”Blimey, I forgot his name,” she said.
“Can’t you just say anata (you)?” I asked.
“No, you can’t. In Japanese you always have to address a person by his or her full name.”

With age, it gets even more complicated. If you are younger than someone, they will say: “Oh, so I’m your 오빠 oppa (if you are female and the other person is male)/언니 onni (if you are both female)/누나 nuna (if you are male and the other person female)/형 hyeong (if you are both male.) If you are older than your interlocutor, you say the aforementioned phrase. If you are the same age, you are 친구 chingu (friend). The younger person then adopts the formal speech level, which in practice means mostly using different personal pronouns and adding the syllable 요 yo at the end of the sentence.

2014-11-15 11:01:17 +0800
Day 83 in China
Some time ago, I met two Korean girls from my dorms who have a most curious habit: they go to the university library every day around 1 p.m. and stay there until 8 p.m., studying Chinese even harder than I do Korean. They also have cool names: one is called Chen Protects Ideals and the other one Nan Pillar Courtyard (if you translate the Chinese characters for their names.) I haven’t seen such perseverance in any non-Chinese person before. I sometimes ask Protects Ideals to check my grammar, and I correct her Chinese characters if I see any mistakes. One day I wrote a message for her on a piece of paper: “저녁을 어디서 먹을 거야?” (Where are you going for dinner?) She wrote: “우리 저녁 싸왔어 — 고구마. 우리 다이어트 중 이야.” (We brought dinner with us, sweet potato. We’re on a diet.) I cast a glance at her. She’s 160-something cm tall and just as fat as most Asians (not at all.) “좋아. 나도 아주 뚱뚱해.” (OK. I’m very fat, too.) The girls also exercise every day. Stay in the library for 7 hours with just sweet potatoes and sometimes a hard-boiled egg! That really is something!

2014-11-16 23:38:29 +0800
Day 84 in China
Yesterday I went for that magical one beer to the 24/7 supermarket 7-Eleven with Adrian. We met two Japanese friends and drank some Kirin and Asahi—local Chinese beer is even worse than Lech Premium, and yes, there is something worse in the world than Lech Premium! After the first one I said “OK, guys, I’m going to Wow to find some Korean girl.” My competitive advantage over most of the boring Americans going to Wow is that they only want to get some free beers (half water, half soda) and then potentially some Happy Time with the ubiquitous Sichuanese beauties, and I only wanted to practise my spoken Korean. I soon went to Wow, even though Adrian insisted that I stay for one more. I sat next to a girl who looked familiar and tried talking to her in Korean, but it was very hard… at least for the first few minutes. She was sitting with a French girl I already knew, and it soon turned out that the French girl also spoke some Korean. When I finished my second Asahi (brought into the bar from 7-Eleven,) I relaxed a bit and bought the girls some Bailey’s. I was surprised at this sign of my generosity, considering that the bar I frequent most is actually 7-Eleven. The Korean girl first managed to cut her thumb really badly, and then she also broke a glass full of Bailey’s. She could hardly type her native language on my dumbphone, and her asymmetrically long fingernails didn’t make it any easier. I actually spoke Korean for most of the evening. The girl got a bit dizzy by 3 a.m. and still wanted to get some soju, but when we guided her to her room and her Thai roommate named Cookie helped her get inside, she didn’t want to drink any more.

Can I actually write about a routine if there is so much happening that my mind wants to explode? The main problem with the Korean girl is that she was a bit too hot, and I was thinking of her most of the day. My mind was a Koreanized mess when I rode my new bicycle to have dinner with Adrian, when I did yoga in the ping-pong room, and only cleared up a bit after a decent 8th Karmapa meditation.

I want to go to Korea so much, and yet Korea doesn’t seem to want be longing for me so much. The main reason I cannot go there for the 6 weeks of our winter holidays is money. No matter if I fly from Chengdu or from any other Chinese city, the whole journey will cost around 1500 RMB (one way,) and probably around 6000 RMB more for my stay in Korea. I could probably also go back to Poland. The ticket will of course be much more expensive, but I don’t think staying and going back and forth from one Polish city to another cannot be that expensive altogether.

2014-11-18 13:29:50 +0800
Day 86 in China
My first bicycle in China, called Red John, was stolen after 50 days of riding. But the one I got two days ago (a shiny silver Giant named 은색 바람 or Silver Wind, although I was also thinking of calling it 바람의 색, The Color of the Wind) was stolen yesterday, together with the unbreakable German lock by ABUS that cost more than most bicycles in this country, from the bicycle parking in front of our university library. My biggest fault was definitely that this bicycle just looked way too good. But then again, what’s the point of stealing a beautiful bicycle? Will people buy it if they know that it will be stolen again? I mean, Chinese people know best what it feels like to lose a bicycle to an uncaring thief. Actually, most people I met in China mentioned that they’ve had several bicycles stolen. Some people on the Web even say that some unauthorized resellers of the so-called “second-hand bikes” even go as far as to follow the unlucky buyer to steal the bicycle once again. Judging from what I’ve seen in China, I must admit this is by no means impossible.

But then again, all I wanted was just a good bicycle to cycle around on town, why cannot I just have a shiny and fast bicycle in a country full of shiny and fast Buicks, BMWs, Chevrolets and the like?