How to Buy a Chinese Newspaper

Today I was wandering around the back alleys, which is one of the my favorite past times. Everything's so earthy and colorful. Some of my favorite Chinese friends live along the alleys. I love waving at them, and then we ask each other the standard greeting in a country that has seen its share of famines in the past: "Ni chi guo le ma?" (Have you eaten?) Content that the other person has indeed eaten, we merrily part ways.

And this evening I had a different stop along my route: the newsstand. I was curious to see if Joelle and I had ended up in any of the local newspapers after yesterday's banquet. So I meandered up to the square box of a newsstand. I hoped to see one paper for Nanchang that I could buy. But I was dismayed; there were literally dozens and dozens of different newspapers to choose from. Some of the papers looked like they were from 1951. They had black-and-white pictures of soldiers or officials, and everything looked really faded. There was only one newspaper that had a colored picture on it. Some even had pictures that were sketched, not photographed.

The owner just looked at me in half curiosity, half amusement. He was probably wondering what I was looking for in his neatly stacked rows of papers. I didn't exactly want to flip through all of them, and I didn't want to say the only thing I could think of in Chinese: "Wo zhao wo." (I'm looking for me). I would sound really vain and bizarre.

In the end, I gave up, especially because I couldn't understand much of the words. And the cold wind was lashing at me, giving me wind burn. It was bitterly cold. So contrary to the title of this blog, I walked away empty handed.

Oh, and today in class we talked about jobs. When I asked about my students' parents' jobs, they also just say, "They're workers!" "Worker" is an all-encompassing term for just about every job. After I encouraged them to be more specific, I discovered that their parents had a wide-array of jobs (which were usually dangerous or extremely low-paying):

-Coal miner
-Factory worker
-Rice farmer (most of their parents fell into this category).
-Taxi driver
-Truck driver

Hopefully most of them will grow up to be teachers or translators. But I told them that there is nothing wrong with being a farmer, because a lot of them seemed ashamed. I reminded them that farmers are very important, so that we have food to eat. I think that was my Kansas background coming out in me. I have undying support for farmers worldwide.