Chengdu, 2014-11-21 02:07:11 +0800
Day 89 in China
I noticed a certain tendency in my social life in China. Whenever I meet a Korean girl (for some reason I don’t really talk to any Korean boys,) if the whole social interaction is only about language exchange or simple friendship, everything is OK. The girls are usually delighted at my Korean (even I have to admit it’s now better than some time ago, when even proclaiming my fondness for beer was a considerable effort; I can now talk about daily routines or say my friend wants to know if your roommate has a boyfriend, or not; still an awfully long way to go, though.) But when I meet a Korean girl and want to get somewhere further than just peaceful language practice, the girl just disappears without a trace. It already happened to the one next door; I haven’t seen her in like 10 days (presumably more, but I already stopped counting,) and when I sent her a message on WeiXin to ask about the reason, the only message I got in reply was I don’t want to talk to you, in almost proper Chinese. The one I met last Saturday is not very talkative, but I prefer to believe it has something to do with the fact that she’s immersed in a conflict with her future ex-boyfriend (ex-boyfriend to be?)

2014-11-25 09:07:58 +0800
Day 93 in China
Today I finally managed to get up anywhere earlier than 12:00. Contrary to common sense, I managed to do this in spite of several beers and clubbing last night. In fact, I think I only managed to do it because of all the beers and clubbing last night. Obviously, everything about clubbing and parties is different than in Poland. Beer, my fuel on many long trips, is very cheap in China, like 3 RMB a bottle. The problem is, it’s actually soda water with some orange food coloring. They’re all the same, 青島 Tsingtao, 哈爾濱 Harbin, 雪花 Snow and 燕京 Yanjing. You can drink this crap for one night after you come to China and pretend that you like it (or think that you like it because you drank so many of these the last time you came to China,) but then you realize it’s not even good enough for pig fodder and you have to find something else. In the beginning, I opted for the Japanese beer 朝日 Asahi, but it’s a bit watery, so after a few evenings with Japanese friends I slowly switched to 麒麟 Kirin. You can also get wheat beer of many sorts, but all of this is only available in 7-Eleven or fancy supermarkets in shiny new shopping malls like the IFS, Raffles City or the Global Centre, where an apple costs more than a kilogram of apples in Poland.

Secondly, clubbing is also significantly different. In Poland, clubbing usually means drinking a lot before going out (this is called a before party in Ponglish) and having to pay an awful lot of money just for entering the club. Any alcohol bought in club will be similar quality to Tsingtao, but also similar price to any other bar or pub. If I happen to meet any attractive representant of whatever sex, I might soon be asked to proceed to the dancefloor, which I never do, because dancing sucks. In China, going to a club means first drinking some Kirins in 7-Eleven, then going to the club called Only, talking loudly in English about the people around (many Asians wouldn’t understand English even if they walked into it accidentally in the street.) One small beer in a Chinese club costs about the same as a lunch in Poland, and contains a similar amount of alcohol. There are many comfy sofas all around, usually full of beautiful Chinese ladies playing their phones—they either came there with their friends and are bored, or came alone to find “customers”.

2014-11-27 01:08:58 +0800
Day 95 in China
On the train to Xi’An. I definitely cannot fall asleep. Every time I think of how much I cannot fall asleep, I remember the song by Travis called Why Does It Always Rain on Me. My Linux at the moment is so freshly installed I don’t even have the codecs for MP3, and thus cannot listen to music, which is a nuisance. But I remember a part of the lyrics quite well: “Why does it always rain on me / is it because I lied when I was seventeen?”

I’m pretty sure that my current state of mind is caused by my immoral conduct in the recent years. More precisely, by going to sleep awfully late so many times that my body just got used to it. I’ve been doing many things so terribly wrong. I went to sleep late. I didn’t study when I had to (although I don’t really regret this one; I’m actually quite proud of my bad grades in school.) I skipped classes, but rather seldom and not in school. Back in the days of my youth, I even enjoyed going to classes. The school was the only place in my little world so boring that it encouraged me to read books. I’ve read many books by Pratchett; many about Buddhism; many Scandinavian criminal novels, mostly in English; the whole Harry Potter series; some random fantasy stuff, some compulsory reading, and many more I cannot name now, but I remember I enjoyed reading. I’ve read many books before I sold my mind to the consumerist world. I’ve read many books made of dead trees before I switched to e-books in the last year of high school. And there was social life. I met many attractive people back then. Before the world went crazy.

I was selfish and treated my girlfriends badly. Not that I had many of them or spent a long time in relationships—on the contrary. But somehow, probably the first person I met in the dorms in Chengdu, a Korean girl studying Teaching Chinese to Foreigners, called me a playboy (she used the word 花花公子 hua1hua1 gong1zi, literally “flower-flower prince”) in my first week in China. What would she call the American guy who took a Chinese girl’s virginity during his first week in China? The same girl has been on my mind a lot over the last few days. Thanks to her boundless compassion and wisdom, I realized there is no future for me in the world of polyglots. Every time I meet her at the university (fortunately, she’s in my group, so it doesn’t happen very often,) she tells me my Chinese altogether is quite OK, but my pronunciation sucks, especially in terms of intonation. On Tuesday I happened to eat some noodles (I think it might have been 白菜牛肉拌面, with Chinese cabbage and beef) with the aforementioned girl and another groupmate, from Thailand. The Korean told the Thai: 他的中文還不錯，就是他的發音不太好 (his Chinese is OK, but his pronunciation is not so good.) After the meal, I headed to 電腦城 (Computer Castle? Computer City? Computer Plaza?) to get some more empty DVDs, and on my way back, I bumped into the Korean and the Thai. They were endorsed in a profound and interesting conversation about some restaurants in an unknown part of the world, probably somewhere in China. I didn’t know what they were talking about, so I said something totally irrelevant, which the Chinese took as a sign of not having a very good command of the Chinese language. I wasn’t planning to defend my Chinese, but the Korean friend did it for me. She kindly informed the Chinese that I could speak their language quite well… but my pronunciation was not very good, especially in terms of intonation.

I’ve been a bad person. I’ve been speaking bad Chinese. Somehow, my Chinese is getting worse and worse with every day in China. I’ve been mispronouncing so many words, not only in Chinese, but in other languages as well. For several years I pronounced the word coffee as KUH-fee, even though it’s actually KOH-fee. I have a thick Polish accent in all languages I speak, which must be particularly funny with Asian languages. But in the end, it doesn’t even matter. I still speak better Mandarin than many Chinese. I heard that even university professors in fields not related to languages tend to speak their dialects in the lectures. I don’t want to graduate and be a Sinologist with shitty pronunciation, but as long as Thai people understand my Chinese, Kazakhs my Russian and Mexicans my Mexican, I probably don’t have to look for a new major.

I could maybe try to study Chinese a bit harder than not at all. Then what I’m doing in China wouldn’t be a lost year. I can find excuses for many things, but I don’t want to find excuses for wasting my time.