Wo bu hui shuo guangdonghua.
It looks like China...
It smells like China...
It tastes like China...
But dammit, it doesn't sound like China. Knowing some Mandarin helps not at all when everyone speaks Cantonese. English speakers are easy enough to find, so I'm not going to get to practice at all.
Still, it's amazing. Part of today was a wander around markets day, and all of the photos I took were sneaky under the arm or camera-in-the-bag shots. So some turned out pretty good considering I wasn't framing them. One more, from an episode of clothes shopping. Interestingly nearly everywhere has a 'No Fitting' policy, meaning you can't try anything on. I'm wondering at the fact that most people are not wandering around in ill-fitting clothes.. They buy jeans at these places! Anyway, under the circumstances I wasn't willing to buy anything more expensive than the Marshalls-bought Roxy t-shirt I am wearing. The clothes where I was are allegedly leftovers or whatever from overseas brands - there's some that might really be that, but again, gotta beat Marshalls, and they didn't by much. So what I was after was the kind of quality I couldn't get at home - like this one (choice of shirt inspired by one regular reader).
Awesome. (Click on the pic to see it full size and read it.) Only thing is, all the ones I liked were one size fits all - all tiny Chinese women I suppose. No chance.
It smells like China...
It tastes like China...
But dammit, it doesn't sound like China. Knowing some Mandarin helps not at all when everyone speaks Cantonese. English speakers are easy enough to find, so I'm not going to get to practice at all.
Still, it's amazing. Part of today was a wander around markets day, and all of the photos I took were sneaky under the arm or camera-in-the-bag shots. So some turned out pretty good considering I wasn't framing them. One more, from an episode of clothes shopping. Interestingly nearly everywhere has a 'No Fitting' policy, meaning you can't try anything on. I'm wondering at the fact that most people are not wandering around in ill-fitting clothes.. They buy jeans at these places! Anyway, under the circumstances I wasn't willing to buy anything more expensive than the Marshalls-bought Roxy t-shirt I am wearing. The clothes where I was are allegedly leftovers or whatever from overseas brands - there's some that might really be that, but again, gotta beat Marshalls, and they didn't by much. So what I was after was the kind of quality I couldn't get at home - like this one (choice of shirt inspired by one regular reader).
Awesome. (Click on the pic to see it full size and read it.) Only thing is, all the ones I liked were one size fits all - all tiny Chinese women I suppose. No chance.
posted by Lori Bassman at 11:51 PM
1 Comments:
And then I got laryngitis and it hardly matters what language I want to speak.
People told me before I got here that many people do speak some Mandarin and I would be able to practice. But when I tried...well, imagine a native Spanish speaker, who also knows French but not English, coming to LA and trying to make his way around in French instead of just using the Spanish. Hard to practice Mandarin when they speak English too!
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