Past, Present and Future

I didn't sleep well last night. My cold is incubating. I woke up this morning at 9 am with a very sore throat. I couldn't keep from coughing. That is dangerous because my throat is so dry I can choke if I am not careful. I made some hot water and sat on the edge of the bed and concentrated... After about 30 minutes I felt better and went back to sleep and slept all day. It's dark outside.  Time is exactly 7:00 pm.

Duo jiu? How long have you lived in Yiwu? zhe me jiu!
Duo jiu, How long will you {stay, live} in Yiwu?
Duo da le? zhe me da!

I am in Yiwu
I was in Taizhou, now I am in Yiwu.
I will be in Guangzhou, God willing.

Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.
I came; I saw; I conquered.

Quguo Beijing ma? Mom, have you ever been to Beijing? :-)
Chiguo le ma? Have you eaten? 'guo' is the perfective marker. 'le' is CRS, currently relevant state.

My books say Chinese has no tense but that's not true, every language has tense. Tense is an abstract, human experience. Better: Chinese has no formal abstraction for tense. What is 'tense?'

Time = {present, past, future}.
Aspect = {imperfective, perfective, perfect}.
Tense = time * aspect = {{present, present perfect}, {imperfect, simple past, past perfect}, future, future perfect..}.

Mood is not really part of tense. Mood is actually a compontent of future time, expressing things that have not happened yet. The moods are kinds of future time. Mood expresses fact or fiction, non-factual situations. Indicative means "no mood" and could be called "neuter" if there were only two of them.

What is 'mood' in Greek?

Sorry, I forgot.

mood = {indicative, subjunctive, imperative, conditional, optative (wishing), conjecture (guessing), deontic (obliging)...}

For a more thorough treatment of mood see http://modern-greek-verbs.tripod.com/clairbab/. The Great Firewall of China has been blocking this site.

So what about mood in Chinese?...

Wait, there is a knock at my door.

Who could it be? It is dark outside. Time is exactly 7:30 pm...

A lost neighbor? This has happened before. The knocking is loud and persistant. There seem to be two gentleman outside my door. Someone else is knocking on the other doors further down the hall. A lady has opened hers. They are talking. It sounds like he is asking her questions. She is doing the explaining. I do not understand.

Are they looking for someone?

A lost friend, especially if s/he is drunk will knock on everybody's door, persistantly too. Last summer, a girl knocked on my door for 15 minutes, shouted invectives at me through the locked door. I was lying there naked trying to sleep. The weather was sweltering this summer. She made sure that if I was in there I was not sleeping.

The girl was knocking on the neighbor's door too. He wasn't opening either. She was a young woman, twenty-something, black hair, smiling eyes, dressed fashionably. She went away finally. She came back an hour later, did the same thing to the same doors. Finally my neighbor opened his. They yelled. Actually, she did most of the yelling. He tried to reason with her: "Yeah, but... would you just..." They were having a lover's spat. The quarrel finally died down, the door closed and quiet returned. Then I could hear the bed creaking, the springs squeeking. She was screaming again, groaning and moaning.

But these guys are not drunk, they are just rude.

Could it be the authorities?

The authorities ocassionally check for illegal aliens. A couple ID police stationed themselves downstairs last spring at the apartment building entrance. They grabbed me when I came in the door. I am an illegal alien. My papers are not in order. It's a long story, but if you want to hear it I'll tell you. My US passport is still at Yiwu immigration. The ID police let me go after I showed them a scanned image of my passport on my computer. I spoke no Chinese and they understood no English.

I came to China on an F-type, a business visa which expired 10 months ago. We tried extending it, but the authorities would only give me a 30-day extension. Then they wanted 700 rmb, about $100. I said, "No, that's too much." I was told by Chris, my interpreter, a little girl who worked at the school where I was teaching, NDI, New Dynamic Institute, anybody heard of it? - that Americans have to pay more because our State department charges more for the same kind of visa in the United States. The Chinese are telling me, "It's all your fault." (I hear you, mom. "Since when do two wrongs make a right?") But, I say, the Americans charge everybody the same. The Chinese only charge the guys from Cameroon 166 rmb.

The clerk ordered me to pay the fee and sign on the dotted line. I said, "Don't tell me what to do!"

Chris seemed alarmed I was arguing with her. If the school wanted 'no questions asked' then they should have paid the fee, not me, but they didn't. In fact, my Chinese hosts were no help at all getting me the proper working documents. The only thing I regret is going through the process at all. I should have done nothing, not even made the application. I would still have my passport.

I came to China on September 1, 2007 with a physical examination form filled in by the US Department of Veterans Affairs. It was a clean bill of health. I have no contagions, no HIV, no venerial disease, low blood pressure, low cholesterol, low sugar, normal EKG.. just an old war injury I got jumping out of an airplane in Panama. I have never felt better in my life.

Yiwu immigration rejected the physical exam. They insinuated it was a forgery. They wanted me to go to Jinhua for another one, an all day affair. Cost? 350rmb, and the school wasn't offering to pay. They should have sent me with Nina, a cute Chinese English teacher but instead they wanted me to go with Colin and JP another foreign teacher - from Cameroon. I would have taken the physical again just to be with Nina. The authorities would have given me a Z type visa, a residence permit and a work permit. But the Chinese don't think like I do. I am stubborn. (I hear you, mom. "It's all your fault." :-) Under the circumstances I declined the visa. Immigration still has my passport. When I really need another I'll go to the embassy in Shanghai.

All quiet on the Eastern front?

No body knocking in the building. It's quiet out there. I'm getting hungry. It is exactly 8:45pm. I'm going out to eat. If they arrest me they can deport me. I'm not hiding from anyone.

Joe