According to the ECNU canteen, this is American food. It doesn't really resemble anything I actually ate in the US, but it isn't bad. If I had to describe an American dish it is most like it tastes kind of like those TGI Fridays Jack Daniel's dishes. It is nice to know that Americans-Chinese dishes are authentic as Chinese-American dishes.
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Todat is Simchat Torah, the Jewish holiday celebrating the ending and the restart of the Torah. If you were with me at Chabad of Pudong you could quickly tell that Simchat Torah is a very happy holiday. It started with a simple kiddush (a very basic series of Jewish blessings over wine) followed by a sushi and Israeli food dinner that proably could have served twice as meny people then were at the already packed Chabad Center. The sushi was largly salmon based and was suprisingly good for Kosher sushi made by Chinese people (or the Rabbi's wife, I am not sure). There was aldo the "L'Chaim Bar" stocked with a lot of high quality imported liquer like Gray Goose, Black Gouse, Wild Turky, and Havana Club. After dinner, the Rabbi led us in a toast and we started dancing with the Torah. Chabad's theological oddnesses really came out douring the dancing becaue men and women had to remain seperated for this portion of the night and only the men's side got Gray Goose (the Rabbi is wise) and the one Torah, little girls could cross to the men's side though to dance with their Dads' or on the back of the random dude they were put on. Seven dances and seven more toasts later the Rabbi's wife brought out chocolate crinkle cookies and the crowd started to make our way back home.
Yes, even your cheep American voice actors are being outsourced to China. Basically, myself and every othet American at ECNU was offered a voice actor positon by some lady on campus, some guy then invited me to a hotel for a recording session, I read a few things, and walked out with 200RMB. I believe most of what I read will be used as sort of computer's voice. It is nice to know that when the machines rise up to enslave humanity nuturianal ration machine shouting "declined" at you for useing your food rations outside of designated meal times will have my voicse. In reality, I believe most of my recordings will be usex by some cheap phone (a Coolpad 7733 perhaps): I mostly read weird names (like "Atlas" and "Bixbe"), greatings, and phone functions (like "check messages" or "play music"). I also read two kind of confusing passages about Americanisms and the US real estate market. They were both clearly written by a Chinese guy since they both lacked most puncuation, had strange grammer, and did not have any paragraph breaks. I think these will be used for a cheap "teach yourself English" CD. The whole process was a bot sketchy, but no more sketchy than China normally is. I never actually met the guy on WeChat who directed me to a hotel by low cost campus where the recordings were being done in a random room on the technician's ageing laptop with proably pirated software. The technician spoke about as much English as I did Chinese and clearly just memorized a few key phrases in English to tell the actors, I actually found it easier to talk to the guy in Chinese. All in all, I still have all of my organs and am 200RMB richer so I guess I could recomend becomming a low budget American voice actor.
So I got a job offer on WeChat to judge an English language speach contest for 300RMB that I later learned was at the Shanghai China Art Museum and was hosted by the local Communist Party and the Shanghai Foreign Language University. So of course I said yes and found my self holding a scoring divice, listening to the best English speakers of Shanghai's high schools, and scoring them from 0-20. I think the theme was something like "China: why is it great and what can we do to make it greater," the specific subjects of the speaches vairied but every speach was abiut China in some way. Another common theme was dreams (for individual Chinese, for the nation, and for the world) this makes sense because President Xi's big plan is called "A Dream for China" so I think some contestants were trying to score points with the expert judges. Since it was a Party backed event, the majority of the speaches towed the Party line; one girl talked about why China will never give up the South China Sea and two speaches were about the heroism of the Party's military wing, the People's Liberation Army (yes, the People's Liberation Army still works for the Party). Even with all the "Make China Great Again (which was a line a girl actually said)" most of the speaches were actually really interesting, I felt like I learned a lot about China and sometimes I even forgot I was technically working. Everyone's English was lightyears ahead of my Chinese, this made judgeing their English difficult so I tended to give more points then the average. Forntually we, the international college student judges, only controlled 20 iut of 100 points, the other 80 were given by about 8 expert judges who voted seperatly from us. You can really tell where each student learned English because many had distinctive British or American twists on their Chinese accients. Like any good contest there was heartbreak and upset victories, but in the end I agreed with the three big winners. I wish I got to spent a bit more time actually looming around the museum though. I am still owed 200RMB, but now I can say the Chinese Communist Party ows me money.
Interestingly enough, the Mao statue at ECNU now looks out over a haven of the ever expanding bourgeoisie capitalist system Chairman fought against all those years ago. I felt like this picture showed, quite visually, some of the conflicts of ideas present in modern China and the contradictions of a Communist Party & a People's Republic watching over, arguably, the capitalist system's greatest success, the lifting of millions of Chinese out of extreme poverty. Part of my Chinese homework is Chinese language tongue twisters. I believe they are mentioned to help with the tones mostly as many tongue twisters seem based around the fact that two words can sound the same but have different tones. This one, which I will call MamaMaMa is about a horse eating your Mom's herbs then your Mom beating the horse.
For my China's Macroeconomic Impact class I am requiered to partisipate in ECNU's all new Global Business Project. I believe in the end it will be a buisness case competition type thing, but along the way we will get aditional lectures, workshops, and field trips with both internation students and students from ECNU's College of Economics and Management. Today was the opening cermoney where we, the international students, were driven about 45 minutes away to ECNU's larger and newer Minhang campus (note that both the Zhongbai and Minghang campuses are in Shanghai) for the Projects formal Opening Cermoney. We were all given matching shirts and got to meet the Chinese students we would be working with for the rest of the semester. While the Global Business Project was a suprise requierment for the internationals, it is a big deal for the Chinese students who had to go through a several step application process to get in. While I am not a business major I am actually kind of looking foward to the project: firstly I am a dork who likes aditional lectures (and making the most of my tuition yuan at work), second I am happy to get more interaction with the domestic ECNU students (while I have Chinese friends from and at ECNU I can thank Juniata for them, not East China Normal), thirdly the Global Business Project might look good on a resume, and finally I am an egotistical creture of vanity and love fancy sheets of paper signed by people I think are important which is something I will get at the conclusion of the Project.
For my Issues in Modern Chinese Society class the professorbasked us to write an ethnography about a place in Shanghai. My group chose shopping areas, specifically Tianzifang (田子坊)
Normally I would put the Chinese name for food items I review, but I am not sure what this thing is called in Chinese; it was only introduced to me as a Shanghai egg pancake. What ever its name it is a fresh crepe with a scrambled egg and some herbs on top, folded up with a salty crunchy thing and a brown sauce added, befor finally being folded up again and served. You can also get add ons, so I normally order my egg pancake with a grilled chicken stick and cucumber.
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AuthorI am a junior at Juniata College spending a year studying abroad at East China Normal University. Please feel free to join my on my journey to China and beyond. Archives
November 2021
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