Sinofication

I'm sorry it's been so long since my last post.
China takes so much more out of me than I ever could've anticipated. Part of it is the group of Taiwanese students that live in a row of rooms on the floor above mine...they like to stay up till at least three in the morning on any given night of the week and, apparently, use the time to practice singing, acrobatics, and rearranging furniture. No one in the building seems to be in charge of dealing with disturbances, so at this point I've resigned myself to picking a few nights a week to venture upstairs and ask them (sometimes politely, sometime firmly...it kind of depends on how many times I've had to do this that particular week) to quiet down past eleven thirty.

Anyway, on to the title of this post;

Sinofication isn't a word. But if it were, it would mean "to sinicize", which is a transitive verb meaning "to make Chinese in character or to change or modify by Chinese influence". This is one of the first aspects of Chinese culture I became aware of, way back when I first started studying Eastern religion and culture. China tends to adopt outside influences and subsequently tweak them here and there to fit in with "the Chinese way". It's happened with Communism, Christmas, multiple types of cuisine, and as I've learned quite well in my time here, Western fashion.

Chengdu dresses like the 80s and 90s had a very wealthy child. I'm going to leave it at that, because I want to take a few more pictures before I devote a post to it. 

But what I really wanted to talk about with regards to sinofication is...myself. I don't think it matters where you come from, whether you grow up in a city of the country side; we all have to adapt to our surroundings throughout our lives. I lived in Seattle for a little while a few years ago and had to adopt a "city walk" while there: squared shoulders, quick, deliberate pace, eyes straight forward. I figured that while living in Chengdu, which is a city that has a population to put Seattle to shame, I'd need to do pretty similar things. But, as with most other aspect about this wonderful country, I was wrong.

China requires fluidity. Flexibility, without too much compromising. You have to be ready to cut in line and push your way off the metro, but also to conform to the hundreds of carts and street bikes flowing both ways down the sidewalks. It's very Confucian, if you think about it. Doing just enough to guarantee safety/prosperity for yourself, but not too much  as to interrupt the balance of what's "normal". 

Some days, I do laundry and get to hang it up on the rooftop in the semi-sun. I really enjoy this. The small view of the campus from the top of my building is sort of beautiful (in a smog-ridden kind of way), I get to take my time clipping things up on the lines and think in peace, and it feels good to do my laundry in a more environmentally-friendly way. Other days, however, the workers who live in the building refuse to let me use the lines. They yell at me in Chinese, use "shooing" motions, and instead hang up their own clothing and bedsheets. There really isn't much I can do besides fashion an awkward clothesline in my dorm room and hang my stuff inside. It takes an extra day or so for things to dry...but the point is that, either way, the laundry gets done.

I've always been the sort of person to cling on to a schedule. I take the same routes to my classes everyday, regardless of their being another "more efficient" way. I need things to resemble some sort of day-in, day-out order. When something changes suddenly, I get distressed. But I'm finding this to gradually change. China is taking who I am and molding it to fit a little better with it's "way". I don't expect to be wholly cured of all my uptight tendencies...but at the moment, I'm liking this small-scale sinofication.

Sorry, no pictures today. But I just thought I'd give you a little update on my life:)
  
Zài jiàn!