6.30. 我爱紫色和号 (boom de yada)

So, a comment on linguistic phenomena: let's take the word "okay."One would acknowledged that its shortened form "OK"is more or less universally understood as a form of expressing agreement. The word "okay" in English is more or less an iamb, with its two syllables being short-long, the stress on the 'kay' part. Thus, it is natural for the word "okay" in English to have evolved into forms such as "kay" and "K", thus leading to the occurence of "Kthxbai."

What has completely baffled me is the metamorphosis of "okay" into "Ou le" in Chinese. Whereas in English, we've taken the "kay" part of the word "okay" as an abbreviation, the "o" portion has been used in Chinese, with the particle "了" tacked on at the end. This particle is mostly used to signify finality, and the past tense, and is difficult to translate non-idiomatically into Chinese. They do use it in the same context... For example, negotiating what restaurant to take one's younger cousin to... (this following exchange is for entertainment purposes only and not to be taken seriously)

"你这个傻逼，怎能带我妹子去那个酒吧呢？" (You dumbass, how can we take my cousin to that bar?!)
"好好好，那就去你鸡巴提的那个地儿。"(All right, all right！ Then we'll go to the spot you fucking suggested.)
"就这样，七点去，啊？哦了。" (It's settled. Seven o'clock, all right? Ou le!)

So... on Saturday, my cousin had his soccer match, to which I brought Lucy and Sam. It was basically pretty awesome to see them again. UChicago'10 takes on the world! ... in the form of Beijing. My cousin had wanted to see if Sam would possibly play for their team, but he's a size 13 in America, which translates to a 46 in China, and my cousin's eyes just about jumped out of his head when he heard that. They'd have a hard enough time finding flip-flops that fit him, let alone cleats. And so Sam sat with us and gossiped about Princeton in Beijing. It was awesome. Afterwards, we got dinner at a place close to my cousin's girlfriend's store, and embarked on the summer-long search for a ridiculous Chinese shirt for Sam. It had to be... incredibly fobby, cheap, and preferably full of Engrish. We took a break from the exhausting search to have a drink at a bar - Lucy treated us to a Heinekin, a strawberry margarita, and she had a mai tai herself. It was exciting!

Yesterday, we got up early, and my cousin drove me to my paternal aunt's house. When I'm in China, I usually stay with my mother's side, who all live in Beijing. I was closer to them as a child, too, but my dad has the bigger family. He's the youngest and only boy in a family of five. Of his four older sisters, three are still living, but I probably, all combined, have about 10 cousins on my dad's side, and a lot of second cousins too. Because of the age difference, my oldest cousin happens to be about 3 years younger than my dad... and her daughter is about 25 and has to call me aunt. (lulz) This aunt is First Aunt, and she has three sons, two of whom I hung out with yesterday. Feifei, her youngest, is probably my favorite cousin: I remember him from when I was younger, but when I got here yesterday, I found an energetic 35-year old (yesterday was his birthday!), who still worked with computers, knew all about Linux and Dan Brown, and had read "Ender's Game." I don't deserve such awesome relatives, I really don't. He taught me mah-jong, which I played with my aunt and her second son and his wife. (They have an adorable seven-year old girl nicknamed Qingqing who studies English, and winked at me all through dinner.) We played for a really long time, during which I won twice - hooray - and then went to dinner. It was an extraordinarily fancy restaurant, but while eating a scallop, Qingqing found a piece of thread in it.

It was the opportunity of a lifetime. Literally. My cousin's wife called in the waiter, who called in the manager, and she put up the biggest but quiet and firm fuss about how this had been found. The manager tried to assuage her with a promise of a free entree, or several other things, but refused to give them more than a 12% discount. She drew out her claws, then. When the cowed manager promised to go talk to her boss, and slunk out of the room, my extended family all just about died laughing. My cousin's wife is a pretty petite woman, but she was persistent and shameless. It was the beginning of an epic evening. Throughout the rest of the night, my cousin's wife just stuck tight to her guns, and told her that they could take one of two choices: give them a 50% discount on the whole meal, or write up a guarantee, signed and stamped, that if anything happened to her daughter, they would undertake all responsibility. I was sitting in the corner, feeling very out of place, but Feifei assured me that I could simply regard it as a grand farce, a play. As well as a crash course in international relations, considering what my major was. The woman ended up coming back in, and trying to actually say that they'd sign such an agreement, but obviously, what my family wanted was a steeper discount on the meal. Both of my cousins joined the battle, and made it very clear that their mood had been completely ruined, because of the piece of thread, and the remote possibility that a child had come into danger thanks to their shoddy kitchen management. And laughed fit to kill when the woman left, and assured me that it wasn't about the money -Feifei's wife could get it reimbursed by her company- but more about the power struggle, and the right to strut out of there victorious. Though I felt mortified for the restaurant management, my cousins reassured me that there were no hard feelings on either side. It was all a part of the manager's job, to keep us happy. It was an eye-opener, that was for sure. When Feifei's wife finally walked back from getting the check, she informed us that they'd scored a 25% discount, and a $100 giftcard good for future visits for my cousin's wife. Cheers were had all around, and we enjoyed Feifei's birthday cake. I do have some crazy photos from when his wife smeared icing on his face. My relatives are too cool, seriously.

I was having such a good time here that I decided to spend the night, and had a great talk with Feifei. He gave me advice on networking in the future, especially if I intend to go into academia, and talked about how important it was to understand the library system at school. It held a lot more than books, that I could mine for helpful information. It was good to talk to someone other than my parents about my future, and what would be the next appropriate steps - Feifei also thinks I should try to go to graduate school in Europe, Germany specifically, because he studied in Heidelberg for a time, and broadening my international experiences would immensely benefit my future career. Before I went to bed, because I was sleeping in the same room as my aunt, we also had a brief talk about my dad - she's 70 and getting a little dotty, but it was nice to discuss how to deal with my dad's temper. (There were immense amounts of dirt and gossip thrown around at dinner about how my parents got together, which was vastly interesting because obviously, I'd never heard about it. But it was all hilarious.)

And now I'm waiting around until Feifei can drive me back to Wukesong, and my uncle's house, so I can do more work on my Tsinghua presentations - seriously, I gotta get cracking or... well, or die of embarrassment. Future plans for the next few days include visiting my maternal aunts, who have dogs and cats up the wazoo, and poking in on Peking University where Lucy has a connection with an econ professor. Holla at them guanxi, that's what I say.

All y'all back in the States, do leave me a note or two. I miss the Point, reading books in Harvard Square, hanging out with people and singing Andrew Bird... and everything in between. Beijing is awesome, but it's not home, so please send something my way to make me less homesick.