I told my dad about our new hutong home. He said I could live even closer to the Forbidden City but I’d probably have to become a concubine.

Some of Stick’s students will be receiving their red scarves in a Children’s Day ceremony next week. I believe they’re called honglinjin (or is it honglinjian? Not entirely sure). You see them on Chinese schoolchildren all the time. These red scarves are a mark of distinction for high-achieving students of good moral character, and receiving one is a prerequisite for joining the Party as an adult. Although my colleagues tell me that the best students get the first honglinjin, but virtually every student in the class gets one eventually.

“You know what that means?” Stick asked.

“Um, some of your kids are right on track to join the communist party?”

“No! It’s almost Children’s Day! We have to get on WarCraft to run the Children’s Day seasonal quests!”

PayPal isn’t letting me withdraw any money since they’ve cleverly detected that I’m using the account in China. I still know my mother’s maiden name and my secret numbers, but the customer service guy says that’s not quite enough, and to prove that I’m really really me, I have to receive a phone call at my number on file. Which is in New Jersey, and I’m not.

Their security is so good that the only way I can get to my account is have my mom call and pretend to be me.

After Saturday night KTV with the CNReviews crew, on Sunday Stick andI met up with Heather and Will. They’ve been living in our complex since the fall, although we hadn’t met. We know some of the other teachers in their school, in fact my old TA was transferred away from me to Heather’s school.

But I actually met Heather via her blog, Heather’s Feel Good Revolution, which I’d been reading for a while, and trading comments and emails, until the other day when I made fun of Fengtai, and she mentioned that she also lives at the outskirts of the city, in a lovely little complex called Yihai. And people tell me nothing good comes from my sarcastic remarks! Ha!

Anyway, we met up on Sunday evening and they introduced us to a lovely cafe in Xidan, where Stick and I were delighted to find panini and smoothies. We’ve really been missing Andiamo’s, an awesome sandwich and gelato shop back in Amherst, so it was perfect. (I plan to return the favor by introducing them to Biteapitta.) It was great to talk with those two, they seem to be in a similar place along the China comfort continuum, from jet-lagged gap-year newbies to the long-term crowd, with their Mandarin and cultural fluency.

“This was a good weekend, Meg,” Stick said, once we were back home with a beer. “Can you get me some more friends off the internet?”

克莱夫, I just wanted to let you know that I do have a copy of a certain novel, whose heroine shares my name. I’ve got The Thorn Birds right here!

I’ve got Scarlett on the other side to keep my laptop in ideal typing position. Oddly enough, they’re exactly the same size.

Stick and I saw this car on Saturday when we were walking down to Houhai from our NEW APARTMENT.

“Wash me” in three languages. I love Beijing!

We kept walking down along the lake to the Starbucks. It was just a few months ago that we were ducking into that Starbucks because Stick couldn’t feel his feet… now we enjoyed the air conditioning and iced coffees. Inside, we ran into Carol/Yuyu, a math teacher at my school and an awesome officemate. Made me feel like a real resident, bumping into my coworker at the coffeeshop! We hung out with Carol for a while, and then continued on our adventures.

“Can we go back up to the dusty car?” I asked Stick, as we left the coffeeshop. “I remembered how to say ‘wash me’ in Spanish.”

David beat me to the punch on this one, but I wanted to make sure you didn’t forget your vade mecum. Whatever that is.

I’m exhausted after a few very full days, I’ll post properly tomorrow. I had dinner and KTV tonight with the awesome CNReviews team, Elliott Ng, Min Guo and David Feng, and talk turned to checking blog stats and search terms, so I can’t possibly go to sleep without checking my own info.

It turns out the top two searches on Simpson’s Paradox are “names for Voldemort” and “Bon Jovi’s home”.

Finally, my fashion sense is appreciated.

In Beijing, it’s hard to get away from the Olympic improvements. I think the changes are somewhere between using the good china for company, and completely reinventing your wardrobe, habits and personality to attract some guy from history class. (Not that I ever did that) I’m seeing more and more English around town, and English-language menus, maps and information are supposed to be readily available in Beijing before the Olympics. Unfortunately, I’m afraid these Chinglish attempts will cause more confusion.

There are a lot of factors leading to Chinglish disasters. First, in many cases, a literal translation just won’t do. Common signs like Take Care Knock Head and Already Broken still crack me up. But no longer thinking of a direct 1:1 ratio between English and Chinese words has really helped in my language learning.

The new English signs and menu are prone to other problems, like the typos of normal human error, rush-job spelling mistakes, confusion between similar letters and words, and so forth. At times, it’s literally easier for me to decipher the Chinese. (Which either means that I rock, or that I’ve memorized the collection of dishes we usually order. You decide.)

Not to mention the obscure English vocabulary brought back to life by electronic translators. Stick and I went to see an apartment recently because the landlady promised us a bathroom containing a lavabo and close stool. That’s a sink and a toilet to those of you without SCA membership. I don’t know if ad and pamphet translators agree with my students, and feel that the longest semi-synonym provided by the dictionary is the most impressive, and therefore the best choice. But you can easily imagine the humor of these BabelFish translations.

The plan is great. A few words of English — even broken English — have helped me out many times. But in practice, there is an East-meets-West problem.  The Chinese praise even the clumsiest attempts at Mandarin and will probably be expecting the same in reverse. They’ll be expecting thanks and praise for their English accommodations. They’re adding English to places they expect foreigners to visit, with the convenience of foreign visitors (or at least the tourists’ wallets) in mind.

But Western visitors of all sorts will be giggling and snapping pictures of Crap Salad or Bland Kitty, which are just too funny not to be shared with folks back home. The offended Chinese will wonder why Westerners have not only failed to thank them for their English translations, but are actually criticizing them, failing to respect the effort that went into creating an English-language menu just for foreigners (even if it was plugged into Babelfish and then printed off).

But I’m worried that this attempt at hospitality is doomed create more international bad blood. Negative comments in the Western press about any aspect of China, are often seen as proof that the Western media is biased against China. I’m sure this will be a general problem with all the foreign reporters and visitors at the Olympics, someone’s going to have something negative to say, but it’s especially rough in this situation. I’m worried that this will feed the Western stereotype of the Chinese producing worthless garbage, and the Chinese stereotype of rude, anti-Chinese foreigners.