"In the spring time, the only pretty ring time, When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding; Sweet lovers love the spring."

The school semester has been flying by.  We recently have had some interesting cultural exchanges and things.  Here goes:Our Chinese language learning has hits and misses.  Sometimes we never remember what's in our book, and sometimes we remember a single esoteric word or something from the local dialect.  Our first language partner told us about a certain haircut that girls have when they arrive at college.  Soon thereafter, they realize it's "uncool," and promptly get a new haircut.  The name of the former?  妹妹头发 Mei mei tou fa, or "little sister hair."  We sat on this gem of a cultural artifact until the other day.  

Nick had gotten his lunch quickly, while I was waiting for mine across the cafeteria.  A student of his was sharing the table.  After I got my food, I went over and sat with them.  Nick and the student were communicating, best done in a mix of Chinese, English, and Chinglish (a pidgin unto itself).  Nick saw a girl with a particularly noticeable mullet and told his student: "That girl's hair is what we call a 'mullet.'  Short in the front and long in the back."  Then lightning struck, and we asked the student for the names of other hairstyles in Chinese:

刷刷 Shua shua - ponytail, lit. "brush"

烫发 Tang fa - permed hair

光头 Guang tou - bald, lit. "naked head"

平头 Ping tou - tight buzz, lit. "flat head"

帽存？Mao cun tou - hat hair! (what Nick was sporting at the time)

爆炸头发 Bao zha tou fa - afro, lit. "exploded hair"

Also yesterday we went to watch a movie on campus, in an effort to diversify our language learning.  We went expecting subtitles so that we could put the few spoken words we understand together with the few characters that we know, and hopefully learn something.  Well, no subtitles.  However, we stayed for the whole 2-and-a-half hour movie, which turned out to be sort of classic of Chinese realism from the "4th generation" filmmaker Wu Tian Ming.  

It details the life of a man from the Shaanxi Province countryside who, though he has a nice girlfriend, goes off to Nanjing to work as a reporter.  At the end, his hesitation and guanxi issues ("connections" within society) cause him to lose his job at the same time his girlfriend is forced to marry another man.  It's sad, but part of a generation of realistic films that show the hardships of modern Chinese life.  That was in the 1980s, so the definition of "modern Chinese life" has changed irrevocably, but some of the aspects of tradition vs. modernity still apply.  The film was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign language film.  

I just wish I could have understood more.  You can watch it here, if you like.

And, we are now posting from our very own laptop!  My Dad's previous Macintosh laptop has been graciously bestowed upon us, and we also should receive the laptop that previously died in the mail very soon (hopefully with hard drive memory preserved!).  3 months without proper technology is agony!  

The picture is a stack of NEW books for the English library.  So excited!  We are going shopping today for new curtains and furniture covers, as well as a DVD rack.  The dean told me yesterday that he plans to call the TV station when we're done with the renovations, to show us off.