In my home culture, it is considered somewhat rude to give a
deep, vocal yawn in a public place. I
have become adept at yawning silently, keeping my lips closed as much as
possible, or at least covering my yawns. Over the past few weeks however, I
have observed that Beijing-ers do not seem to stifle their yawns in the least.
In fact, I have witnessed several people yawning with gusto, even throwing in a
satisfying stretch while they’re at it. So, on the way home one evening, we
tested my theory. While riding in a crowded subway car, R. gave voice to
several vigorous yawns while I positioned myself to watch the crowd’s reaction.
No one took notice. Even though the mega-yawns were coming from a tall
American, no one glanced up from their mobile devices for even a brief second.
So, studies have shown that public and vocal yawning in
Beijing is a perfectly acceptable practice!
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| A crowded bus-ride. |
And speaking of yawning, you might find the following
information worthy of a few good ones, but I thought some of you might be
curious about how we pay our bills.
Last night (Sunday
here) at around 7:30pm, someone rang our doorbell. When we opened it, a woman
walked right in, said something in Chinese, and proceeded to open
cupboards in our kitchen as though she were looking for something. She had a
little note pad, looked official, and so we let her go ahead with whatever she
was doing. I heard the word for water,
and so gathered that she wanted to read our water meter. We showed her where it
was, she rattled off some numbers to us, said some more things, smiled and left. As confusing as it was at first, this
interaction was pretty successful for us. She apparently got what she came for
and we had some idea what she was doing (this is not always the case!).
In the next few days we should get a slip on our door that tells us how
much we owe for water. We will take that slip down to the local post office
where there is a bill payment station. It is our understanding that we will pay
this bill quarterly.
It is a bit different for our electricity and gas bills. For
those we also go to the post office, but in this case we add money to a kind of
debit card that then slides into our gas and electric meters. When these debit
cards run out of money, off goes your power and gas until you re-charge the
card. You can charge these cards anytime, and that is something we need to do
this week just to be sure we have enough money in reserve to keep things
running around here.
Bruin basketball in China?
We had a great time last Friday meeting some of the UCLA
Bruins basketball players and coaching staff at a hotel near Tiananmen Square.
R. heard that they would be in China for a China/US goodwill sporting
exhibition, and we were able to attend a reception to get some free tickets to
the game in Beijing. We were able to get enough tickets to take the B’s along
to watch the Bruins play Tsinghua University on Saturday. (Bruins won 116-67). The
Chinese fans cheered for every basket made by both teams, and kept up their
enthusiasm for the entire game. We got a
kick out of the Tsinghua cheerleaders who had at least six costume changes
during the game. UCLA brought cheerleaders, too, and Joe Bruin was there to
make everyone laugh. Looks like the
Bruins have a great lineup this season!
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| Tyler Lamb jump shot |
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| R.with coach Ben Howland |
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| R. with player Josh Smith |
you can yawn as loud as you want and chew as loud as you want in china! try that experiment next time! :P
ReplyDeleteOh how funny! It is so fun to hear of the different customs. I am glad that you figured out what the water meter lady wanted.
ReplyDeletei love how Josh makes Rodney look short. :)
ReplyDeleteYes, and slender! :) We invited one of the freshman players to GOC!
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