Shanghai - 2/6/2008

I want to tell you about my job a bit. During our training in Shanghai, we were unequivocally (with threat of dismissal) instructed to never discuss the three T's with our students; namely, tai-to-the-wan, titibebet, and tian'banananmen square. I have recently found some websites that allow you to circumvent the restricted access that many places on the internet here have (bbc, wikipedia, blogspots, etc...), but even with these my internet often gets abruptly and conveniently disconnected, depending on what I do on the computer [hence the funky spelling of the T's]. As I've learned thus far, for the most part, foreigners in china limit themselves to discussing these matters with each other.

After heeding the initial warnings, and becoming ever more intrigued by the lack of available info, I finally put it to the test and asked my girlfriend about T-Sq (not risking it on my students quite yet). She did in fact acknowledge that terrible things had happened there, so, hungry for more, I quickly asked her to elaborate: the protesters were all very painfully 'hosed down' by the police. Enough said. I didn't have the heart to fuck with her ideologies, so she'll simply have to wait until the Great Firewall of China (according to the Feb. 4 NYT article) is eventually cracked by rebel hackers.

This brings me to Chinese traditional medicine. they have heaps of herbs (one of the other foreign teachers at our school studied in England and he pronounces that with the 'h' like it's short for his friend Herbert. anyway, his name is 'Corny', which is not exactly helping my cause to setting an example for students like Fast Race Car and Brad Pitt), which have countless uses. Some genuinely help (like the chrysanthemum tea i drank that did wonders for my sore throat and I know religiously carry to all my open classes). Most others, though, must rely entirely on a person's susceptibility to the placebo effect. At least i think so, because the '8 Treasures Tea' didn't do shit for my stomach after eating those 'Thousand-Year Eggs' which had been previously buried for about 100 days in a dry place after being soaked in a very dark tea with other things that will attack your stomach for 100 hours and what was I thinking helping myself to seconds.

moreover, some have odd side effects, like crazy dreams (ranging from defending my home from guerrilla fighters to--most recently--I gave birth to a baby WTF...a beautiful babyboy, definitively the oddest dream I've ever had)... or, also related: the eucalyptus-flavored toothpaste I just got surrounds me with old fat sweaty men in a sauna because that’s what I feel like every time I brush my teeth. Speaking of finding yourself in unexpected scenes, about a month ago one of my students invited me to come and sing 'hey Jude' with her at a small and informal end-of-the-year presentation she was having in her university. I’ve never sung in front of more than a couple of people, and limit my loud singing to the Colombian anthem before a football match.

...but it's an easy song, and after traveling enough, you eventually learn to say 'yes' to everything and then bitch about what you've done on your next email. so everything was fine, and I was even excited when they introduced me as 'the American' and I walked on-stage to face about a thousand Chinese people all cheering as hell because they must have thought I was some sort of small time celebrity. It was the archetypal bad dream you can't wake up from. As such, I forgot the words to a song I’ve sang (quietly in the bathroom) for about a decade now. The girl (by the way) had an amazing voice, and I’m sure she expected to win first place with me as her wild card... but, hey, we got a solid 3rd place (they must have felt bad for me), and will probably be in the next batch of soon-to-be archived annals of the Chinese University of Mining for years to come, as Zhang Yun and 'the American'.

Anyway, I wish you all a very dear Happy Chinese New Year (Xin Nian Hao!), and hope this email finds you in the best of health.

Saudades demais,

Santiago