It is a university or is it a prison?

Picture from the Shanghai Art and Design Academy web pages

Jinlin is studying interior design in Shanghai Art and Design Academy ( 上海 工艺美术 职业 学院, Shàng hǎi  Gōng yì měi shù  Zhí yè  Xué yuàn ). It is located near the Shanghai suburb of Jiading, about 20 kilometers from Shanghai downtown. You can see the location in Google maps.

It seems like a modern "western style" university campus and they have nice comprehensive web pages open to the world at http://www.gymy.cn/ describing topics from beautiful sculpture works and nice Photoshop creations to stories of industry co-operation. But it turns out there are peculiar different aspects to the studies there, particularly related to freedom (or lack of) of students.

Already in the beginning of Jinlins studies I was surprised to find out that the university starts with one month of tough military training. Then when planning my trip to Shanghai, it become apparent that the school has lectures on all seven days of the week, no free Saturdays or Sundays. There is not a single day of holiday during the semester between 1.9.2012 and 31.1.2013. I had reserved my trip to include two weekends in attempt to maximize our time together but the school schedule meant that there was no difference in her ability to see me on weekends compared to weekdays.

Just few days before my travel even more weird limitations appeared. I had reserved a hotel for us for nine nights in the centre of Jiading, about 1.5 kilometres from her campus. She then told me she can't stay with me in the hotel overnight. I knew that she lives in the campus in a six-person dormitory with other students. But I only then learned that no student is allowed to stay overnight out from the campus. They must sleep every night in their dorms. If they go out from the campus, they must return latest 10 PM in the evening, no exceptions. Guards will walk around the dorms and check everyone is present. Lights will be turned off 11 PM. All students are adults but it does not seem to me that they are treated with the attitude of freedom and responsibility granted to adult university students in the west.

Final surprise come during the trip. I knew she was busy on classes on most days before 4 PM so I mostly did sightseeing or work on my own during that time. One day I though: I'll go and see around her campus! I did not hope to see her: just the campus area. It looks nice in the pictures, I like architectural photography and it seemed like a nice idea to see the actual buildings she is so closely tied in the current phase of her life. So on a nice day I walked to the Shanghai Art and Design College. I took some photos from the street approaching the campus entrance:

"Shanghai Art and Design Academy"

Well, it turns our those were the only pictures I got. You see, there is only one entrance to the fenced campus area. And it has guards. And the guards stop you when you try to walk in. And when you smile at them and ask "Wǒ  Kě yǐ  Pāi shè  Yī Xiē  Zhào piàn  Zhè lǐ  Ma?" (Can I take some pictures here?) they reply "Bù  Kě yǐ" (No, that is not okay). They don't allow you to enter at all. So I had to go away, no more seeing or pictures of the Shanghai Art and Design Academy.

Seriously, what's the point of being so strict? It's not that they would have some kind of super-valuable secrets compared to, say, Helsinki university and Harvard university that allow visitors to stroll freely on their campuses and even enter freely most buildings on the campus. It's not that there would be some kind of terrorist attacks going on in China and they would have to limit access for security reasons.

One student going out was observing my discussion with the guards and tried to explain to me with bad English and some Chinese that in order to enter the campus I would have to make appointment with some of the teaching staff. It seems that the default mode in Chinese public space is that things are forbidden and only allowed by special permission whereas in western public space things are usually allowed by default and only forbidden for specific reasons in specific cases. I prefer the western way.

By the way, did you know that Chinese are not allowed freely to move within their country? A person living in some town has a living permit, "Hukou" (户口) , to that town and cannot decide to move to another place on his own accord. He must apply for a permission to move from the officials and the application might be rejected. This has led to situation where millions of people move without permission and become "illegal immigrants" inside their own home country, losing many social rights and risking of being arrested and departed to their designated home area. It's a weird place.

Bye bye baby

Jinlin in her new coat on Sunday

I returned to Finland on Monday and have been since then quite busy with work, dinners with friends and associations, meeting my boys and "enjoying" some jet-lag. Another party of 20 guests coming up here at my place tomorrow evening and then for the weekend to board-gaming event with my boys. Good to be busy now to avoid excessive feelings of emptiness and to match Jinlins busy study schedule. She told her school pressure is getting even worse now when the final month of the term ending at Chinese new year approaches. I can believe that since it's 2 AM in China at the moment and she was still doing some schoolwork :-(

It was a good visit. Very peculiar combination of love, work and sightseeing, but good. In the end she was able to spend time with me on five of my nine days in Shanghai, less than I had originally hoped when I bought the tickets but more than she had promised just before the trip. Mostly my moods were very good and I think hers were as well. There were few low points such as Tuesday evening when she had to return to her school and I knew there will be two whole days without seeing her again until Friday. And then of course the inevitable separation after our last hours together on Sunday. "Bye Bye Bù  Hǎo" (bye-bye not good) like we were talking before. But that's ok, that's how it's supposed to be. Like the Finnish Neon 2 love song "Kemiaa" tells: "Sen täytyy joskus satuttaa... Ei siitä muuten mitään tuliskaan" (It has to sometimes hurt... It would not otherwise work).

Bought her roses and lilies for farewell gift

This trip was setting a good precedent for a series of hopefully more frequent visits. The flights, hotel and visa cost only 800 euros and food is cheap so I can afford to travel there several times per year. Furthermore this visit did not consume almost any of my holiday days since I was able to work few hours every day when Jinlin was at her school. So we agreed I will go next time already at Chinese new year, in February 10 next year, when her first term has ended and she has some real holiday we can spend in Henan. That's only two months to wait compared to the five months between the last two visits.

Going for it

Most importantly, there was renewed commitment to the relationship. That will be needed, since her current degree studies will take still at least 1.5 years more and there is no much hope for getting to live together before that. I was telling in a chat yesterday about my occasional worries that time and distance would become a problem or she would find someone else in China. I greatly respect her courage:

Jinlin:   我 不 怕 时间 或者 距离 . 你 担心 ？
Wǒ  Bù  Pà  Shí jiān  Huò zhě  Jù lí  .  Nǐ  Dān xīn  ？
( I am not afraid of time or distance. Do you worry? ) 

Robert:  对 我 一点 担心 . 但是 我 开心 你 不 怕
Duì  Wǒ  Yī diǎn  Dān xīn  .  Dàn shì  Wǒ  Kāi xīn  Nǐ  Bù  Pà
( Yes, I worry a little. Although I am happy you are not afraid ) 

Jinlin:  是的 ， 我 理解 你的 心情
Shì de，  Wǒ  Lǐ jiě  Nǐ de  Xīn qíng
( Yes, I understand your feeling )

Robert: 我 尝试 很 忍耐
Wǒ  Cháng shì  Hěn  Rěn nài
( I try to be very patient )

Regarding my other worry, she was equally determined:

Robert:  但 有时 我 担心 你 找 别 人 在 中国 。
Dàn  Yǒu shí  Wǒ  Dān xīn  Nǐ  Zhǎo  Bié  Rén  Zài  Zhōng guó  。
( But sometimes I worry you find someone else in China ) 

Jinlin: 我 心理 有人， 放不下 别人， 所以 你 懂 ？
Wǒ  Xīn lǐ  Yǒu rén，Fàng bù xià  Bié rén，Suǒ yǐ  Nǐ  Dǒng  ？
( When my heart is on someone, there is no space for anyone else, do you understand? ) 

 Robert: 是的 . 谢谢
Shì de  .  Xiè xiè  :-)
( Yes, thank you! )

 What a great lady she is! Makes me proud of her and willing to strive for same level of resolution :-)

I've posted links to some pictures on the trip already earlier, but here's the full collection: Arrival, Sunday in Jiading, Qiuxia garden, Karaoke, Shanghai downtown, Shanghai Bund, Jade Buddha Temple, Buying clothes.

Jinlin and the smiley

Everybody knows this classic smiley "giggle" or "laughter character. Eyes almost closed as upward crescents and mouth covered with the hand. In the animated version of these, the head is also usually bobbing up and down a little to indicate laughter. This smiley is along the standard collection in most instant messaging programs and I have been definitely using it a lot even before meeting Jinlin.

But what's with the hand in front of the mouth? I never much understood that since that is almost never seen in Finland or rest of the western world. Perhaps in the 1930's but not in the present century. But in China (and elsewhere in Asia as well) it can still be considered rude to laugh with your mouth wide open, exposing your teeth. It's getting more rare but at least Jinlin, with her traditional upbringing outside of the large metropolises, has the habit of rising her hand in front of her mouth within one second of laughter setting in. 

In the traditional Chinese way of thought, the girl should be graceful and elegant and people don't like young girl mouth open "so big like shark" showing their teeth. The true lady is not supposed to grin, but smile without show their teeth. In Chinese slang the term " 笑不露齿" (Xiào bù lù chǐ) is used, meaning literally "Laugh not revealing teeth". In the old days ladies had fans and could smile behind them. This habit comes down all the way from Confucianism, which teaches that public displays of emotion should be repressed. Especially for women, laughter was not considered feminine.

You can see Jinlins cute reaction to smiling in this short video from our metro trip to the Bund on tuesday:

Jinlin does this even when she is just in my company although I do not mind seeing her smiling mouth. In fact I like it - it is one of the great joys of relationship to make other one feel happy. And I think that emancipation of Asian women requires their liberation from requirements of what has been traditionally considered "feminine" and "unfeminine".  

Luckily I have a quick finger for my cameras shutter-button and sometimes I can catch the rare moment of beautiful big smile just before it's being covered ;-)  But I must say I consider her "giggle-character" kind of laugh very cute also. So whether she will move more towards the open western culture or stay within the Chinese tradition, good both ways. And the best point of course is that we can make each other smile and laugh often, an important aspect in a good relationship especially when common language is still not perfect.

Well eaten, warm and happy in Shanghai

Before this trip I wrote about Jinlin being Hungry, Cold, Broke and Desperate in Shanghai. Yesterday was a nice antithesis of these. We've had good food and happiness together on the earlier days as well, but now we also fulfilled our plan of buying her warm clothes for the increasingly chilling Shanghai winter. That will be needed: It's been still 12-15 C here in the past week but on some days next week the day temperatures will not rise above 5 C. We bought a coat, trousers, hat and shoes. It was nice to observe her combine practical aspects of the clothes with stylistics ones. Most women I know are very thoughtful about the appearance of their clothes and Jinlin with her art-student background is definitely no exception, to the contrary. She was extraordinary grateful and happy for my support (谢谢 你的 钱 , 我 很 开心, Xiè xiè  Nǐ de  Qián  , Wǒ  Hěn  Kāi xīn) and I was equally happy to able to use some money for something so useful when she was in need. 

I have been increasingly glad that I did in the end come to visit her this time. It is true that her studies have limited out time together and before the trip she was even hesitant whether she wants me to come now at all because of these limitations. But in the end this has not taken away much from the happiness together. It has been very nice to see how her mood here with me has seemed so much better than in some of our earlier pre-travel chats (or the days of silence that resulted from her being hesitant in chatting on bad mood)

The good food

Talking of being well eaten, the food is great here on the days we can go eating together with Jinlin. When I go to restaurants alone, I am still very limited in my possibilities. I can ask for a menu in Chinese, do the small-talk with the waiter and in the end ask for the bill and pay. But I can only read the simplest Hanyi so the menus are mostly useless to me and in the end I have to negotiate with the waiter something simple outside the menu with my "huge" food vocabulary of "meat", "noodles", "rice", "fried", "chicken", "beef", "vegetable" and "egg". Jiading is a suburb of Shanghai with few foreign tourists, so most restaurants do not have the kind of picture menus (or English menus) that can be found downtown.

Very tasty, very large lunch

But boy when we eat together! She quickly orders the table full of exquisite delicacies that explode taste-buds with delight! And here "table full" also refers to quantity: she tends to order so much food (in form of so many dishes) on one meal that 3-4 hungry people could be fed from that. In China it is considered polite to order more food than the people in table can possibly eat and Jinlin is no exception to this habit of showing how you are "generous" to your guests. If you are having the role of a "host" on a meal, you are supposed to take utmost care that your "guests" are not left hungry even if this care leads to lots of waste. Personally, I find this habit distressing, given that every year, the world wastes 1.3 billion tons of food, 33 percent of all food produced. Especially in China, with still real issues of getting its huge population fed and where dying of starvation was common in the 1950's, I feel it's sad to leave the table every time with piles of good food. There are attempts of recycling programs for the restaurant scraps but they are not working very well. So I've new tried to suggest to Jinlin in as polite and mild way as possible that we could perhaps sometimes order little bit less food. Let's see how that goes. Meanwhile I try to keep my conscience in check and enjoy :-)

Karaoke!

Jinlin singing last night

Our mutual interest with Jinlin in singing and karaoke come apparent rather early in our relationship when we started to complement our video-chats and photo exchange by sending each other MP3-files of us singing to karaoke-backgrounds or on top of the original artists. You can listen to some of her songs to me from here, here and here and examples of my obviously less pretty singing in here and here :-) These songs have been nice gifts, one way of adding a dimension to the relationship, bridging the distance and keeping the feel of the other one during the long moments without live connection.

During our July trip to Yunnan we were occasionally searching for Karaoke places to sing "live" together but in the end our travel schedule limited our singing to some technically limited session in various hotel rooms. So when planning for activities here in Shanghai, karaoke was one of the top items.

Getting the act together

Long corridors and many rooms in "Shanghai Song City"

Last night we went to one of the larger karaoke-places in Jiading, 上海歌城 (Shànghǎi gē chéng), "Shanghai Song City". These places have very little to do with the typical Finnish "bar karaoke" where all customers in the bar share same venue and submit song-wishes to the DJ with pieces of paper. More true to the way karaoke is done in its home-country Japan, Shanghai Song City is like a hotel with many corridors and dozens of private rooms with good sound insulation. A group of people rents a room for one or more hours and they have a private karaoke-system to use. No more endless waiting in the bar for your turn to come. And whereas in Finnish karaoke bars high alcohol consumption is almost a prerequisite to get the folks on the stage (indeed the karaoke itself is free and the bars get their money from booze), here you pay for the real thing and no beverages are available. Well, there are also other places in China where you pay for pretty girls to come sing karaoke and drink with you but that is a different story...

Yeah, She's more sexy but I give 110% !

In the end we sang over 30 songs and had really good time. I must say the quality of the technical setup in the room was good and selection of English songs was surprisingly wide as well. Jinlin sang mostly Chinese songs, including versions of the songs above she had sent me earlier as files. I sang, among others, Michael Jacksons "Stranger in Moscow", Beatles "All you need is love" and "Yesterday", Seals "Killer", R. Kellys "Gotham City" and Coldplays "Speed of Sound" and "Lovers in Japan". And we also sang together Kelly Sweets "We Are One" (which we had practiced together in the summer). And as a very entertaining surprise bonus number we did together the all-known "Gangnam Style" by Psy :-) This entertainment value seems lasting with still today both occasionally shouting "Oppa Gangnam Style!" or "Sexy Lady!" to each other :-)

More pictures of the karaoke night here.

KaLaOK!

It is quite peculiar, how the word "Karaoke" has been adopted to Chinese language. As I have written before, many foreign words are adopted to Chinese via transliteration i.e. using Chinese characters whose pronunciation resembles (although does not quite match) that of the foreign word. For example Finland in Chinese is "Fēnlán" from the characters 芬 (Fēn) 兰 (Lán). Some other words, typically technical or rare foreign words, are simply written with western alphabet in middle of the Chinese characters. The treatment of word "Karaoke" takes a rare combination of these approaches. It is written as:

卡拉OK    

Or, with replacing Hanyi characters with Pinyin tones:

Kǎ Lā OK

So part of the word is transliterated with Hanyi characters and part with a western "OK"! I don't know of any other case like this.

Aaaand... It's good again

Jinlin and chocolate

Time together with Jinlin yesterday was truly good. We ate in a nice restaurant, we did sightseeing in the Huilongtan park and Confucian temple of Jiading (photos here). We listened to music and browsed together pictures in the Finnish interior design magazines I brought her. We planned together activities for our remaining days together in Shanghai (at leas visiting the "Bund" and singing karaoke). But most of all, it was surprisingly easy in the end to be happy and optimistic with her, to smile with her and live in the present moment without worrying about the great challenges in our relationship. Recognizable smiles and manners, small inside humor that developed during the our summer trip to compensate for the lack of words, speaking clumsy Chinese and English with lots of funny misunderstandings... all of it felt surprisingly familiar, natural and good.

In the Confucius temple

I have Jinlin as present two varieties of Finnish chocolate. Other one we opened and ate together, other box she decided to keep as a Christmas present from me and open at christmas (Chinese 圣诞节, Shèng dàn jié, literally "Holy Birth Festival"). I gave her six issues of different Finnish home design magazines such as "Kaunis Koti" and "Glorian Kodit" as she had been expressing interest in those for her interior design studies. She was very happy about them and we were looking at the pictures together. And I gave her money which she would not like to take but needs to survive until the end of term in end of January. She told she is hand-knitting me a scarf for Christmas present but it's not quite ready yet so she will send it to me in post when I am back in Finland. How nice!

I felt that much of the pain and confusion from long silent days in separation was lifted.

And there has been definite improvement from the summer on how we can discuss things. No need to use mobile phone translation software any more. When I get a thought to my head I am in 90% of cases able to speak Chinese words that get the though across to Jinlin. I speak to her Chinese most of the time, resorting to some English words occasionally. She speaks bit more Chinese than English to me. I don't think her English ability is worse than my Chinese but she is perhaps bit more shy than me speaking clumsily. I suggested that tomorrow we might speak more English together so she gets more training as well. But I understand quite well her Chinese, so I understood nice things she said like "When you are in Finland, I miss you very much, you are inside my heart."

Surviving on my own in the no-english-land

In Shanghai metro

Ah, I've beaten the great internet firewall of China! :-) As I have written earlier, China has blocked access to Google, GMail, Youtube (a Google service), Blogspot (a Google service hosting this blog) and Facebook, among other useful internet services, for "security reasons" (read: censorship of free speech to aid the communist party stay in power). This is annoying for us western visitors since we are already used to these "dangerous" services and might want to use them during our trips.
    
On my last trip here I did not do any Facebook updates because of this (and because of our busy travel schedule with Jinlin). But now I am circumventing the blockage by taking a remote-desktop connection to my home server and then browsing the net from there. Bit clumsy, but works :-) This time there's also more possibilities and time for such updates since the hectic travel schedule in rural Yunnan has been changed to staying in single well-networked hotel in Shanghai and, due to Jinlins studies, I will be much of the time without her.

I arrived to Shanghai 10 AM Chinese time yesterday. My hotel is near Jinlins school in the Shanghai suburb of Jiading, quite on opposite side of the city from the airport. I took the Shanghai metro from end of the airport metro line to the end of line 11 to North Jiading station. The size of this metropolis is conveyed by the fact that this took more than 2 hours although the the metro had good speed and did not stop very often. Too bad I had not gotten any sleep on the previous night in the plane and there were no places to sit left :-) And too bad it means I have to wake up 5 AM on the day of leaving to make it to the plane :-( 

But despite the size, the metro is otherwise well arranged with clear signs, maps and indicators. Once during the metro trip there was a branching in the line and I could not determine from the information displays which way my train was going. I do not have mental barrier of speaking clumsy Chinese, but I unfortunately do have mental barrier of asking random people for directions in any language. But got over the barrier and asked a fellow passenger ( Qing wèn.  Zhè ge  Dì tiě  Qù  Shén me  Dì fāng ? "Excuse me, what place does this metro go to?" ) and also get an answer I understood and was helpful :-) 

In Jiading I pulled my luggage 500 m from the metro station to the location of my hotel. Or rather to the location where Google maps had been marking the address of my hotel. There was only a hospital there, no hotels. Too bad I did not have the Chinese name and address of the hotel on my printed infopaper and my laptop with the additional information was out of battery. Had to do 30 minutes of more walking and asking directions from two other hotels on the road. Lots of badly spoken and badly understood Chinese was involved in these other hotels as well, especially since I mistook the second one to be my hotel and a mass of misunderstandings followed.

Finally I was directed to the right hotel where I had reservation. It was about 1 km south from the point marked by Google maps. (Note to self: Don't rely on Google maps address locations in China in future.) Final challenge was to manage the check-in discussions with the helpful but once again no-word-of-anything-but-chinese staff. Had to use quite much my catch-all phrase  ( Duì bù qǐ  .  Wo bù  Míng bái, "Sorry, I do not understand") The mutual struggle with Chinese did fortunately seem to provide the staff amusement rather than frustration judging from their laughing together when in the end even the details of the deposit-payment were understood and all was clear :-)

More pictures from the way to Jiading here.

Now I have slept 14 hours, hopefully compensated for the lost night and in a few hours I will meet Jinlin. We will not have much time together during this trip due to her tough study schedule (7 days per week) and strict policies at her university (no sleeping away from campus and no visitors). I very much wish that we can both keep any disappointment from these limitations away from our minds for the time being so that we don't waste any of our short precious moments together to bitter thoughts but focus on the present and positive things.