The power’s out, so our private room is lit by a collection of tall candles, held in place by the beer bottles we’ve already emptied. The feast isn’t traditional Christmas Eve fare, but it’s certainly one of the best meals we’ve had in awhile. Fish, deer, noodles of questionable origin—“It’s made from a plant,” my friend Daisy translates imprecisely—vegetables, cold and hot.
A small Christmas miracle, our set menu includes shrimp and some meat supposedly gleaned from a cow—delicacies that stand in for my mom’s “surf and turf” Christmas Eve spread. A bigger Christmas miracle, there’s a downpour of snow blanketing the streets, which is beautiful for the ten minutes before it gets covered in perpetual pollution dust. Perhaps not miraculous, but simply amazing: Some guy is moonwalking in the street when we rush to the window to watch the snow fall.
Sara, another teacher from Drake, celebrates her birthday on December 24, and her university’s kitchen made her a fantastically huge cake to share with eleven people. As we ate, I played Christmas carols from my cell phone. The students we invited were wide-eyed with entertainment (or fear?) as we bounded cheerfully through “Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!” and turned momentarily somber when “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” came on.
I thought by now I’d seen all of Chengde’s seedy corners—there aren’t many corners at all, and few of them are exceptionally seedy—but Sara’s desire to dance lead us to the “KoKo Love,” Chengde’s only dance club. The building looks like an old bank or something similarly stately. I fell walking up the fake-marble staircase. Twice. Once when we unknowingly tried to go up without a ticket, and again after we purchased them. So, let that stand in for the inevitable slipping on the icy ramp that would have happened at St. John’s in Houghton on Christmas Eve. That’s probably the last parallel I can make between this experience and the other twenty-two Christmas Eves in my life.
The marquis behind the DJ flashed “Merry Christmas!” every few moments, as slightly chubby Chinese men threw their weight back and forth on the dance floor. A floor which, like many things around here, felt like it was about to snap and drop us into a sweaty, dusty pile on the first floor. Thankfully the men were less forward than American guys at a bar—no groping, grinding, etc—they just stood nearby and rocked their chubby bodies while smiling creepily at us. “These Chinese guys, they’re really just too much sometimes. Really, honestly, Too Much,” was Richard’s expert analysis of the situation. He, as the only foreign guy with four foreign ladies, may have made this comment after some gangster tried to buy the four of us from him. But I can’t be sure.
Sometime shortly before midnight, I covertly stole a basket of popcorn from a nearby table where a couple was making out. Cate promptly spilled the basket all over the floor, and Becky followed it up by accidentally dashing her half-full bottle of beer on top of it. Yes, at the stroke of midnight Christmas day, I was dancing in a pile of soggy popcorn, beer and broken glass while Lady Gaga was remixed China-style in a smoky club. Happy Birthday, Jesus.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
"Tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth. -Liz Gilbert"
A month's worth of novel-ing left me less committed to verbatim honesty and more interested in entertaining myself with my writing. Early feedback on my most recent post suggests that a disclaimer is necessary.
While I did my best to elaborate upon my understanding of economics for Mr. Lei, I did so with humility and assured him that I am by no means qualified to break down a nation’s economic policies. He’s an incredibly smart individual and I know I’m not his primary source for information.
Although it would have entertained me greatly, I did not tell Mr. Zhang that all republicans think humans had pet dinosaurs back in the day. And I certainly didn’t bring up sexuality. But I could have.
When my students ask me, “What’s good?” I do tell them what I think is good, or, if I’ve gotten to know them well, I can better consider what they might think is good. While an entertainment critic could be inclined to disagree, I feel there’s nothing more subjective than one’s choice of media diversion. My students are bright. I think they get this.
My intention in the post was to convey the absurdity I feel when constantly responding to inquiries as though I’m a lifetime Gallup employee. Although I often feel like it is expected of me, I don’t presume to represent 304,059,724 Americans with my every whimsical statement.
While I did my best to elaborate upon my understanding of economics for Mr. Lei, I did so with humility and assured him that I am by no means qualified to break down a nation’s economic policies. He’s an incredibly smart individual and I know I’m not his primary source for information.
Although it would have entertained me greatly, I did not tell Mr. Zhang that all republicans think humans had pet dinosaurs back in the day. And I certainly didn’t bring up sexuality. But I could have.
When my students ask me, “What’s good?” I do tell them what I think is good, or, if I’ve gotten to know them well, I can better consider what they might think is good. While an entertainment critic could be inclined to disagree, I feel there’s nothing more subjective than one’s choice of media diversion. My students are bright. I think they get this.
My intention in the post was to convey the absurdity I feel when constantly responding to inquiries as though I’m a lifetime Gallup employee. Although I often feel like it is expected of me, I don’t presume to represent 304,059,724 Americans with my every whimsical statement.
Monday, December 14, 2009
The Perks of Being a Foreign Expert
“America is a very powerful nation. It seems to me, you are very strong and wealthy. So, can you tell me why the economic collapse?”
“Well, um, there were many reasons…”
“Yes, but I don’t know any. Please explain it to me.”
Mr. Lei summarizes the American conundrum in three almost-grammatically-correct sentences. You’re very powerful. You’re strong, and you’re wealthy. How could you let things go to shit like this? I’m not an economist. And the degree I hold didn’t automatically make me a journalist, so I can’t even claim that. I’m just an English teacher, but here I go.
“Well, there’s this thing called predatory lending… and there were all these bad mortgages that led to foreclosed homes…why don’t we have jobs? Well, sir, they’re all here… Yes, did you know we owe you, with your charade of being a poor, underdeveloped nation, billions of dollars?”
It took several days and one invasive, uncomfortable medical examination, but shortly after arriving in China I was presented with a miniature passport, sealed by the P.R.C.’s State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs. I am, by government decree, an expert on all things foreign. Mr. Lei is only one of the university professors who expects me to spell out America’s problems in black and white, to defend with clarity the confusing mess that is my homeland.
“I think democracy is great, don’t you? Our situation sucks, we are not allowed to represent ourselves, only one party, one group to make decisions… power corrupts. Absolute power, corrupts absolutely. So we are very corrupt, and can’t do anything about it.”
Mr. Zhang, an English teacher his students have dubbed “Mr. Right” because he is so opinionated, is expressing all of this to me on a crowded city bus. Curious about how much China has changed since the age of Mao? Mr. Zhang is the perfect caricature of a newer, more outspoken minority, though certainly not representative of the unwaveringly patriotic majority. Jason was so uncomfortable, he alternately answered questions and then pretended to have fallen asleep—on a 15-minute bus ride—to avoid going too deeply into the topic of democracy in public.
“If you are in a political party, which do you choose?”
“Democratic.”
“So you support Obama? Why?... How can you be so sure?... What is wrong with the other party?”
“The other party represents some views that I agree with, but I believe it’s been co-opted by religious fanatics who think humans had pet dinosaurs 4,000 years ago, and that religious figures who have spent their entire lives suppressing their sexuality are authorized to tell me what to do with mine…”
As you can see, there is ample room for me to indoctrinate on my own terms, and I simply can’t help it. When you’re asked these questions around the clock, giving P.C. answers becomes exhausting. Foreign expert-dom allows me to pass off all sorts of personal beliefs as legitimately, quintessentially American, and therefore trendy and desirable.
Among the students, I abuse the privilege by recommending my favorite movies and musicians when they ask for suggestions about what’s popular with American college students. I honestly have no idea, and rarely had any idea when I was in college. You want action movies? Watch the Borne trilogy. You want a musical? Try Across the Universe. Two of my sophomores are three seasons deep in Grey’s Anatomy. Because it helps them learn medical vocabulary, of course.
This week Jason & I taught Christmas carols. I’m sure the students would prefer the N’Sync Christmas album, but we’re going all classic—heavy on the Gene Autry, a touch of Judy Garland, and Nat King Cole. Some classes just look confused—this isn’t what pop music sounds like on the Internet—but a few choice students look like they might understand what it means to rock around the Christmas tree with Brenda Lee.
“Well, um, there were many reasons…”
“Yes, but I don’t know any. Please explain it to me.”
Mr. Lei summarizes the American conundrum in three almost-grammatically-correct sentences. You’re very powerful. You’re strong, and you’re wealthy. How could you let things go to shit like this? I’m not an economist. And the degree I hold didn’t automatically make me a journalist, so I can’t even claim that. I’m just an English teacher, but here I go.
“Well, there’s this thing called predatory lending… and there were all these bad mortgages that led to foreclosed homes…why don’t we have jobs? Well, sir, they’re all here… Yes, did you know we owe you, with your charade of being a poor, underdeveloped nation, billions of dollars?”
It took several days and one invasive, uncomfortable medical examination, but shortly after arriving in China I was presented with a miniature passport, sealed by the P.R.C.’s State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs. I am, by government decree, an expert on all things foreign. Mr. Lei is only one of the university professors who expects me to spell out America’s problems in black and white, to defend with clarity the confusing mess that is my homeland.
“I think democracy is great, don’t you? Our situation sucks, we are not allowed to represent ourselves, only one party, one group to make decisions… power corrupts. Absolute power, corrupts absolutely. So we are very corrupt, and can’t do anything about it.”
Mr. Zhang, an English teacher his students have dubbed “Mr. Right” because he is so opinionated, is expressing all of this to me on a crowded city bus. Curious about how much China has changed since the age of Mao? Mr. Zhang is the perfect caricature of a newer, more outspoken minority, though certainly not representative of the unwaveringly patriotic majority. Jason was so uncomfortable, he alternately answered questions and then pretended to have fallen asleep—on a 15-minute bus ride—to avoid going too deeply into the topic of democracy in public.
“If you are in a political party, which do you choose?”
“Democratic.”
“So you support Obama? Why?... How can you be so sure?... What is wrong with the other party?”
“The other party represents some views that I agree with, but I believe it’s been co-opted by religious fanatics who think humans had pet dinosaurs 4,000 years ago, and that religious figures who have spent their entire lives suppressing their sexuality are authorized to tell me what to do with mine…”
As you can see, there is ample room for me to indoctrinate on my own terms, and I simply can’t help it. When you’re asked these questions around the clock, giving P.C. answers becomes exhausting. Foreign expert-dom allows me to pass off all sorts of personal beliefs as legitimately, quintessentially American, and therefore trendy and desirable.
Among the students, I abuse the privilege by recommending my favorite movies and musicians when they ask for suggestions about what’s popular with American college students. I honestly have no idea, and rarely had any idea when I was in college. You want action movies? Watch the Borne trilogy. You want a musical? Try Across the Universe. Two of my sophomores are three seasons deep in Grey’s Anatomy. Because it helps them learn medical vocabulary, of course.
This week Jason & I taught Christmas carols. I’m sure the students would prefer the N’Sync Christmas album, but we’re going all classic—heavy on the Gene Autry, a touch of Judy Garland, and Nat King Cole. Some classes just look confused—this isn’t what pop music sounds like on the Internet—but a few choice students look like they might understand what it means to rock around the Christmas tree with Brenda Lee.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Farewell, November!
I have officially completed my largest single document thus far! I hesitate to call it a novel, because it becomes rather tangential in spots, droops into personal musings more than often than not, and because variations of, “How in the heck am I going to get this dooone!?” account for at least 100-200 words in the final product. One night last week, I was pouring through www.quotegarden.com, trying to see if anyone has ever said anything inspiring about writing that might inspire me to write 10,000 more words. I came across this gem:
“Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.” So, essentially, I’ve just had an enlightening month-long conversation with myself. I would like to think I’m better because of it, although honestly the exercise has left me feeling a bit schizophrenic. Lesson: Don’t model characters after yourself unless you really want to see what you would say—to yourself—in a variety of situations. You might be confused or appalled at your own audacity. At least pretend to model characters after someone else, so when they say really stupid things you can pretend it wasn’t you. That said, occasionally I found myself to be rather witty.
The quote belongs to a French guy, Jules Renard, who wrote many things and whose Wikipedia page tells me we would have gotten along great, had he not perished in 1910. Some other quotes I like:
“The only man who is really free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse.”
“Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.” (Hooray!)
“I am never bored anywhere; being bored is an insult to oneself.”
“If I were to begin life again, I should want it as it was. I would only open my eyes a little more.”
Seems like a cool guy.
What have I been doing other than typing frantically for the past 30 days? In addition to teaching at the university, I now have two tutoring jobs, which keep my both busy and entertained. First, Ms. Chen: Ms. Chen, I’m told, is one of the wealthiest women in Chengde. Her plush apartment with such amenities as dark hardwood floors, a piano, and a bathtub (!) supports this hypothesis. Ms. Chen wants to learn English because she hopes to send her adolescent son to an American boarding school sometime soon. My understanding is that she wants to go to the States with him and potentially work in business. She’s in her forties and has not studied English since college, which means her conversational English is for all practical purposes nonexistent. Often, we stare at each other and try to communicate telepathically until one of us cracks. Thankfully, we have textbooks to aide our conversations.
I am also tutoring a girl my own age who is preparing to take the international English examination next month. She goes by Daisy, and while I love spending time with her, I feel a bit uneasy about my own role in her life. Daisy’s story is not unlike most modern Chinese students’. She took a standardized state test before she went to college, and that test decided that she should study psychology. She also managed to study Chinese, a subject she seems to love dearly. However, as any English major in the United States would understand, her passion for Chinese does not lend itself to career trajectories her lawyer-father considers practical. As an English major in the United States might not understand, this essentially means she is not allowed to pursue her passion.
Although she found psychology both difficult and boring, she is now studying to earn a higher score on the IELTS so she can move to a foreign country and earn a master’s degree in the subject. Specifically, my job is to help her increase her speaking fluency and her English writing skills, because she scored too low on these portions of the test the first time she took it. I’ve also taken it upon myself to scour the worldwide web and introduce her to psychology programs that might genuinely spark her interest. I’m operating within this system of subjugation that she faces, helping her do what a group of superior men decided she should do, “for her own good,” but I’m trying to assuage my guilt by helping her find something to be genuinely passionate about within her circumstances. I wonder what my feminist professors would say.
Daisy said something that broke my heart the first time we met. We were talking about what we studied in college, and in response to my journalism degree she sighed and said, “I thought about studying journalism a long time ago. But then I thought, if I’m not allowed to tell the truth, what’s the point?”
“Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.” So, essentially, I’ve just had an enlightening month-long conversation with myself. I would like to think I’m better because of it, although honestly the exercise has left me feeling a bit schizophrenic. Lesson: Don’t model characters after yourself unless you really want to see what you would say—to yourself—in a variety of situations. You might be confused or appalled at your own audacity. At least pretend to model characters after someone else, so when they say really stupid things you can pretend it wasn’t you. That said, occasionally I found myself to be rather witty.
The quote belongs to a French guy, Jules Renard, who wrote many things and whose Wikipedia page tells me we would have gotten along great, had he not perished in 1910. Some other quotes I like:
“The only man who is really free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse.”
“Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.” (Hooray!)
“I am never bored anywhere; being bored is an insult to oneself.”
“If I were to begin life again, I should want it as it was. I would only open my eyes a little more.”
Seems like a cool guy.
What have I been doing other than typing frantically for the past 30 days? In addition to teaching at the university, I now have two tutoring jobs, which keep my both busy and entertained. First, Ms. Chen: Ms. Chen, I’m told, is one of the wealthiest women in Chengde. Her plush apartment with such amenities as dark hardwood floors, a piano, and a bathtub (!) supports this hypothesis. Ms. Chen wants to learn English because she hopes to send her adolescent son to an American boarding school sometime soon. My understanding is that she wants to go to the States with him and potentially work in business. She’s in her forties and has not studied English since college, which means her conversational English is for all practical purposes nonexistent. Often, we stare at each other and try to communicate telepathically until one of us cracks. Thankfully, we have textbooks to aide our conversations.
I am also tutoring a girl my own age who is preparing to take the international English examination next month. She goes by Daisy, and while I love spending time with her, I feel a bit uneasy about my own role in her life. Daisy’s story is not unlike most modern Chinese students’. She took a standardized state test before she went to college, and that test decided that she should study psychology. She also managed to study Chinese, a subject she seems to love dearly. However, as any English major in the United States would understand, her passion for Chinese does not lend itself to career trajectories her lawyer-father considers practical. As an English major in the United States might not understand, this essentially means she is not allowed to pursue her passion.
Although she found psychology both difficult and boring, she is now studying to earn a higher score on the IELTS so she can move to a foreign country and earn a master’s degree in the subject. Specifically, my job is to help her increase her speaking fluency and her English writing skills, because she scored too low on these portions of the test the first time she took it. I’ve also taken it upon myself to scour the worldwide web and introduce her to psychology programs that might genuinely spark her interest. I’m operating within this system of subjugation that she faces, helping her do what a group of superior men decided she should do, “for her own good,” but I’m trying to assuage my guilt by helping her find something to be genuinely passionate about within her circumstances. I wonder what my feminist professors would say.
Daisy said something that broke my heart the first time we met. We were talking about what we studied in college, and in response to my journalism degree she sighed and said, “I thought about studying journalism a long time ago. But then I thought, if I’m not allowed to tell the truth, what’s the point?”
Monday, November 9, 2009
Halloween in China
Walking across campus toward CDMU’s massive lecture hall, I hear Backstreet Boys’ “I Want it That Way” booming from a glowing classroom three floors up. I cringe, I smile, I know that must be the room I’m headed for, where the university’s English Club meets. Ask any student what their favorite kind of music is, they’ll respond, “gentle.” Jason and I gave a riveting performance about the joys of Halloween in the United States. Perhaps the only thing that stuck was trick-or-treating, but that’s the most important part, anyway.
After nearly two weeks of Halloween-oriented lesson plans and side gigs like our Backstreet Boys-infused night with the English Club, I have this to say about Americans who celebrate Halloween. What the heck is wrong with you? Seriously. Try explaining a holiday that glorifies gory murder, or why we scare children by telling them the bogeyman is hiding under their bed, or in their closet, or whatever. Explain to someone why you craft fake spider webs out of cotton balls to decorate your front porch. Define the words “slime,” “corpse,” “monster,” “vampire,” and “skull.” Do this upwards of ten times with a group of students who prefer the gentle croon of Nick Carter over any other musician ever, and you will start to feel like Satan himself, will begin to wonder how your culture became so twisted. I’m just happy we showed them The Nightmare Before Christmas instead of a more age-appropriate Halloween flick, like Saw or Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They squealed and averted their eyes when the animated bogeyman died.
Halloween night, we found a KTV (karaoke bar) that was actually decorated for Halloween—the workers had great costumes and kept coming into our room to take pictures with us. I dressed as Mother Nature. Easily assembled with a flower-print dress and some leaves from the streets, it was neither the best nor the worst costume I’ve produced. It did become the most ironic costume I’ve worn, because on Halloween night the Chinese Weather Manipulation Gods created a massive snowstorm that dumped 16 million tons of snow on Beijing. A few flurries from the snow massacre drifted this way. Mother Nature was not involved, unless her weeping added to the poundage.
On an unrelated note, just in case you’re worried that I might be morphing into some sort of responsible adult now that I’ve been a college graduate for six months, take heart: This week I was locked out of my apartment for 24 hours due to a series of events that involved my own irresponsibility, Jason’s keys mysteriously disappearing days before, and our foreign affairs officer handing me a pile of six keys on an interesting mix of key chains that ranged from a shoestring to “I Love Minnesota,” none of which ended up being for my apartment. The saga culminated with someone making a run to campus, 30 minutes outside the city, around 10:00 p.m., and finally giving the correct spare key to a teacher who lives in my building.
My novel is up to 10,342 rambling words.
After nearly two weeks of Halloween-oriented lesson plans and side gigs like our Backstreet Boys-infused night with the English Club, I have this to say about Americans who celebrate Halloween. What the heck is wrong with you? Seriously. Try explaining a holiday that glorifies gory murder, or why we scare children by telling them the bogeyman is hiding under their bed, or in their closet, or whatever. Explain to someone why you craft fake spider webs out of cotton balls to decorate your front porch. Define the words “slime,” “corpse,” “monster,” “vampire,” and “skull.” Do this upwards of ten times with a group of students who prefer the gentle croon of Nick Carter over any other musician ever, and you will start to feel like Satan himself, will begin to wonder how your culture became so twisted. I’m just happy we showed them The Nightmare Before Christmas instead of a more age-appropriate Halloween flick, like Saw or Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They squealed and averted their eyes when the animated bogeyman died.
Halloween night, we found a KTV (karaoke bar) that was actually decorated for Halloween—the workers had great costumes and kept coming into our room to take pictures with us. I dressed as Mother Nature. Easily assembled with a flower-print dress and some leaves from the streets, it was neither the best nor the worst costume I’ve produced. It did become the most ironic costume I’ve worn, because on Halloween night the Chinese Weather Manipulation Gods created a massive snowstorm that dumped 16 million tons of snow on Beijing. A few flurries from the snow massacre drifted this way. Mother Nature was not involved, unless her weeping added to the poundage.
On an unrelated note, just in case you’re worried that I might be morphing into some sort of responsible adult now that I’ve been a college graduate for six months, take heart: This week I was locked out of my apartment for 24 hours due to a series of events that involved my own irresponsibility, Jason’s keys mysteriously disappearing days before, and our foreign affairs officer handing me a pile of six keys on an interesting mix of key chains that ranged from a shoestring to “I Love Minnesota,” none of which ended up being for my apartment. The saga culminated with someone making a run to campus, 30 minutes outside the city, around 10:00 p.m., and finally giving the correct spare key to a teacher who lives in my building.
My novel is up to 10,342 rambling words.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
National Novel Writing Month
Sometime last summer, I turned to Jason and said, “I wonder what you would look like with a beard.” “Terrible,” He promised. Somehow this conversation led to the decision that both of us would take part in that timeless college tradition, No Shave November. My participation was mostly for solidarity reasons—I’m lazy enough to know what my legs look like when I don’t shave for a while.
November ended tragically, with Jason assuming the role his scruffy red beard suggested, drinking beer in bed in a worn-out undershirt. Pictures are on Facebook, if you’re brave enough to find them.
Last year’s curiosity satiated, I stumbled upon a new challenge for us to undertake this November. It’s a little less passive, and a bigger challenge than kissing an extremely itchy face (gross.)
Between November 1st and 30th, we’re each going to attempt to write a 50,000-word novel as part of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), a tradition in its eleventh year that I just stumbled upon last week in an email newsletter.
It works like this: You spend your days and nights writing, and at the end of the month you upload your work to the NaNoWriMo website. If you’ve reached 50,000 words, you can download a PDF certificate stating that you “won.” The novels don’t go anywhere, and aren’t necessarily read by anyone, although some projects started during this month have been published—one was a #1 New York Times bestseller.
At this point I can’t tell you much about either novel, except that Jason’s writing satire and my novel is set entirely in a kitchen. This may be all I’ll ever tell you, so use your imagination!
If it seems crazy to you, you’re probably right. But we’re significantly under-employed and we love to write. As the NaNoWriMo folks declare on their FAQ page, “Writing a novel in a month is both exhilarating and stupid, and we would all do well to invite a little more spontaneous stupidity into our lives.”
November ended tragically, with Jason assuming the role his scruffy red beard suggested, drinking beer in bed in a worn-out undershirt. Pictures are on Facebook, if you’re brave enough to find them.
Last year’s curiosity satiated, I stumbled upon a new challenge for us to undertake this November. It’s a little less passive, and a bigger challenge than kissing an extremely itchy face (gross.)
Between November 1st and 30th, we’re each going to attempt to write a 50,000-word novel as part of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), a tradition in its eleventh year that I just stumbled upon last week in an email newsletter.
It works like this: You spend your days and nights writing, and at the end of the month you upload your work to the NaNoWriMo website. If you’ve reached 50,000 words, you can download a PDF certificate stating that you “won.” The novels don’t go anywhere, and aren’t necessarily read by anyone, although some projects started during this month have been published—one was a #1 New York Times bestseller.
At this point I can’t tell you much about either novel, except that Jason’s writing satire and my novel is set entirely in a kitchen. This may be all I’ll ever tell you, so use your imagination!
If it seems crazy to you, you’re probably right. But we’re significantly under-employed and we love to write. As the NaNoWriMo folks declare on their FAQ page, “Writing a novel in a month is both exhilarating and stupid, and we would all do well to invite a little more spontaneous stupidity into our lives.”
Thursday, October 22, 2009
This Morning
The weight of my blankets pressures me to stay in bed. I know the tiled floor is frigid, so I drop my hand to scoop up socks before moving another muscle. The steam from my water boiler fogs up the kitchen windows, trying to escape to the deceptively warm-looking sun.
My cell phone reveals the millionth message from David, our persistent, needy high school friend. “Hi Whitney. Weather is turning colder and colder. You must take care.” Maybe it’s all the Hollywood movies, but the Chinese refuse to believe that I’ve experienced cold before. I’m met with looks of pitying disbelief when I tell people that my home in Iowa is, in fact, colder than here. At least it was. Now it’s warmer. Tomorrow it will probably be colder again. Chengde’s weather is on some sort of steady axis I’ve never experienced. Once a warm temperature drops away, it won’t be reached again. If anything, it’s easier to deal with.
After breakfast I layer on the sweats and venture outside. The path inside the apartment wall is lined with the vegetable of the day, harvested from some hidden garden—last week it was leeks, this week it’s arugula. The wall, the windows, the stairs—everywhere, arugula.
I’ve never lived in a city that I didn’t prefer in the morning. I walk past the school, where parents and grandparents mill outside the gate, watching their kids meet up with friends or form rigid, green-uniformed lines to listen to the morning’s announcements. I laugh out loud at a small dog strolling by in a leopard-print suit with rhinestones.
On the corner of a busy intersection, men have an impromptu birds-and-cards gathering. They come out early in the morning carrying two wooden birdcages, connected by a board slung over their shoulders. Six or eight birds are lined up in their cages by the street, while the men play mahjong, chess or cards on a cardboard box. I don’t know why this is the meeting spot. Maybe it used to be something else—everything here was something else just a few short years ago—maybe the busy intersection was a park, and old men don’t care for change. When I walk past in an hour, they’ll be gone. The noise of the high-rise going up behind their post replaces the birds.
I’m pretty great at crossing the street now. The trick is, as I’ve suspected all along, to understand that your life is not as important as getting to your destination quickly. I step into traffic, preferably sandwiching myself between old people or small children, because drivers really don’t want to hit them. I shrug at horns and sing aloud whatever my iPod releases into my ears.
Across the street, fortunetellers on small stools line the sidewalk, the yin-yang that was emblematic of friendship necklaces in my childhood printed carefully on the posters in front of them, holding untold secrets. I don’t know if there’s a reason they congregate in front of the city hospital, but from my ear-plugged and ignorant American viewpoint, it sure does look like preying on the vulnerable. Occasionally I see them working, an elderly man squatting in front of a stool and extending a wrinkled palm to be deciphered.
If I brought 10 kuai with me, I could easily spend it on this 10-minute walk. Without splurging for an unintelligible palm reading, I could buy a whole, steamed-on-the-spot sweet potato or ear or corn, fruits both recognizable and exotic, toys dancing their way out of green plastic bags, socks, slippers and nail clippers laid out on strips of fabric. There are tiny caramel apples lined up on a stick, a fall delicacy, next to newspapers, magazines, and the omnipresent, vehement beggars—the same three every day.
No one else uses the gym in the morning. The gym is hilarious, and I love it. Every wall is adorned with cheap posters of (American) body builders, even though the only other patrons I’ve encountered are middle-aged women. When I walk down the stairs, a black man with bulging muscles grimaces at me. Upstairs, it’s Baywatch girls on steroids. Lots of steroids.
I run by natural light and the glow of the treadmill, pondering the billboard that hangs inside the retail building just across the alley. A grossly anglicized Chinese couple stands in sailing attire, ala Ralph Lauren or Tommy Hilfiger, and raises their eyes to the front of their yacht. Near the billboard, a Chinese flag whips in the wind. Above it all, some other community’s arugula is laid out on the roof.
My cell phone reveals the millionth message from David, our persistent, needy high school friend. “Hi Whitney. Weather is turning colder and colder. You must take care.” Maybe it’s all the Hollywood movies, but the Chinese refuse to believe that I’ve experienced cold before. I’m met with looks of pitying disbelief when I tell people that my home in Iowa is, in fact, colder than here. At least it was. Now it’s warmer. Tomorrow it will probably be colder again. Chengde’s weather is on some sort of steady axis I’ve never experienced. Once a warm temperature drops away, it won’t be reached again. If anything, it’s easier to deal with.
After breakfast I layer on the sweats and venture outside. The path inside the apartment wall is lined with the vegetable of the day, harvested from some hidden garden—last week it was leeks, this week it’s arugula. The wall, the windows, the stairs—everywhere, arugula.
I’ve never lived in a city that I didn’t prefer in the morning. I walk past the school, where parents and grandparents mill outside the gate, watching their kids meet up with friends or form rigid, green-uniformed lines to listen to the morning’s announcements. I laugh out loud at a small dog strolling by in a leopard-print suit with rhinestones.
On the corner of a busy intersection, men have an impromptu birds-and-cards gathering. They come out early in the morning carrying two wooden birdcages, connected by a board slung over their shoulders. Six or eight birds are lined up in their cages by the street, while the men play mahjong, chess or cards on a cardboard box. I don’t know why this is the meeting spot. Maybe it used to be something else—everything here was something else just a few short years ago—maybe the busy intersection was a park, and old men don’t care for change. When I walk past in an hour, they’ll be gone. The noise of the high-rise going up behind their post replaces the birds.
I’m pretty great at crossing the street now. The trick is, as I’ve suspected all along, to understand that your life is not as important as getting to your destination quickly. I step into traffic, preferably sandwiching myself between old people or small children, because drivers really don’t want to hit them. I shrug at horns and sing aloud whatever my iPod releases into my ears.
Across the street, fortunetellers on small stools line the sidewalk, the yin-yang that was emblematic of friendship necklaces in my childhood printed carefully on the posters in front of them, holding untold secrets. I don’t know if there’s a reason they congregate in front of the city hospital, but from my ear-plugged and ignorant American viewpoint, it sure does look like preying on the vulnerable. Occasionally I see them working, an elderly man squatting in front of a stool and extending a wrinkled palm to be deciphered.
If I brought 10 kuai with me, I could easily spend it on this 10-minute walk. Without splurging for an unintelligible palm reading, I could buy a whole, steamed-on-the-spot sweet potato or ear or corn, fruits both recognizable and exotic, toys dancing their way out of green plastic bags, socks, slippers and nail clippers laid out on strips of fabric. There are tiny caramel apples lined up on a stick, a fall delicacy, next to newspapers, magazines, and the omnipresent, vehement beggars—the same three every day.
No one else uses the gym in the morning. The gym is hilarious, and I love it. Every wall is adorned with cheap posters of (American) body builders, even though the only other patrons I’ve encountered are middle-aged women. When I walk down the stairs, a black man with bulging muscles grimaces at me. Upstairs, it’s Baywatch girls on steroids. Lots of steroids.
I run by natural light and the glow of the treadmill, pondering the billboard that hangs inside the retail building just across the alley. A grossly anglicized Chinese couple stands in sailing attire, ala Ralph Lauren or Tommy Hilfiger, and raises their eyes to the front of their yacht. Near the billboard, a Chinese flag whips in the wind. Above it all, some other community’s arugula is laid out on the roof.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
More Ups Than Downs
Some families claim closeness via metaphorical bodily references. “You’re in my heart,” “It runs in our blood,” or, “It’s in our bones.” A beautiful gift from our mother, my sisters* and I have something better, something tangible. It’s this lump in the back of our throats. You might have one too, although it’s unlikely that you’re as in touch with yours as we are. It takes practice. It takes a lot of crying. About everything, from the mildly frustrating to the truly elating, wherever it hits you—work, the grocery store, or, in the luckiest of situations, your own living room. Almost always unsuccessfully resisted, the lump wells up and burns in our throats, constricting and threatening to explode. One thing makes it burst every time: acknowledgement.
After a particularly challenging week, I should have seen it coming in my sister’s email. “Forgive me for noticing, but I could tell you were a bit... down.” Once acknowledged, it bursts, flooding the eyes and nose—often the saline just streams out of the pores at the eyebrows, the ducts too overwhelmed by the flood to direct everything properly. Of course she noticed. For those of you not connected to the express line to my emotions, I suppose full discloser is only fair: Sometimes, this is hard. Sometimes, I am down. Often, even when I am happiest, there is a lump in the back of my throat, daring challenge to present itself.
But so many things are not hard, and maybe I don’t give them enough attention. Everyone we meet, and even some we don’t meet, couldn’t be more excited to help us out. This week, Jason forgot his bag on the bus. The person who found it opened it, found a phone number for Jason’s student, and brought the bag to her at our campus the next morning so she could give it back to him. I know some places where this might have happened in America, but I’m also aware of many places where the story would’ve ended with Jason buying a new bag, not even bothering to hope for a kind stranger.
Genuine friendships are born daily, as we share lunch with students or as we walk into the street to get lunch (The street food vendors really want to talk to us now, and honestly I’m more motivated to learn the language because of this.) A student approached me in the hallway weeks ago to ask if I would help her practice English, and now we share meals almost daily. Her favorite exclamation, “Of course!” punctuates our Chinglish (heavy on the –glish) conversations.
The other foreigners in town know what it’s like to be parachuted into The Land That Keeps You On Your Toes. “I just feel like every day presents some simple task that I can’t accomplish,” I whined to an American friend who’s been here for years. I called her because I couldn’t find curry or oatmeal at the grocery store. “I still feel like that,” she replied honestly. It’s ok to feel like that. The day before, I enlisted her help filling out my gym membership forms because I couldn’t read them.
Every evening we finish teaching at 5:40 pm, just as the sun is setting behind the mountains that surround our campus. Darkness settles as the bus nears the city, and Chengde’s buildings glow with sporadically affixed neon lights that chase, blink, and sparkle—a display that is arguably a bit flashy for a town this small, but is at least aesthetically interesting. The building project under the river has progressed, and most nights there’s enough water in the formerly parched riverbed to reflect a neon glow from the bedazzled bridges.
My toilet works, my electricity is usually on, and even on the hardest days I couldn’t be happier.
*I don’t mean to exclude my brother from this profession of sibling camaraderie. He just has the good fortune of having inherited less estrogen.
After a particularly challenging week, I should have seen it coming in my sister’s email. “Forgive me for noticing, but I could tell you were a bit... down.” Once acknowledged, it bursts, flooding the eyes and nose—often the saline just streams out of the pores at the eyebrows, the ducts too overwhelmed by the flood to direct everything properly. Of course she noticed. For those of you not connected to the express line to my emotions, I suppose full discloser is only fair: Sometimes, this is hard. Sometimes, I am down. Often, even when I am happiest, there is a lump in the back of my throat, daring challenge to present itself.
But so many things are not hard, and maybe I don’t give them enough attention. Everyone we meet, and even some we don’t meet, couldn’t be more excited to help us out. This week, Jason forgot his bag on the bus. The person who found it opened it, found a phone number for Jason’s student, and brought the bag to her at our campus the next morning so she could give it back to him. I know some places where this might have happened in America, but I’m also aware of many places where the story would’ve ended with Jason buying a new bag, not even bothering to hope for a kind stranger.
Genuine friendships are born daily, as we share lunch with students or as we walk into the street to get lunch (The street food vendors really want to talk to us now, and honestly I’m more motivated to learn the language because of this.) A student approached me in the hallway weeks ago to ask if I would help her practice English, and now we share meals almost daily. Her favorite exclamation, “Of course!” punctuates our Chinglish (heavy on the –glish) conversations.
The other foreigners in town know what it’s like to be parachuted into The Land That Keeps You On Your Toes. “I just feel like every day presents some simple task that I can’t accomplish,” I whined to an American friend who’s been here for years. I called her because I couldn’t find curry or oatmeal at the grocery store. “I still feel like that,” she replied honestly. It’s ok to feel like that. The day before, I enlisted her help filling out my gym membership forms because I couldn’t read them.
Every evening we finish teaching at 5:40 pm, just as the sun is setting behind the mountains that surround our campus. Darkness settles as the bus nears the city, and Chengde’s buildings glow with sporadically affixed neon lights that chase, blink, and sparkle—a display that is arguably a bit flashy for a town this small, but is at least aesthetically interesting. The building project under the river has progressed, and most nights there’s enough water in the formerly parched riverbed to reflect a neon glow from the bedazzled bridges.
My toilet works, my electricity is usually on, and even on the hardest days I couldn’t be happier.
*I don’t mean to exclude my brother from this profession of sibling camaraderie. He just has the good fortune of having inherited less estrogen.
Am I in the Wrong Classroom?
I’m getting better at this. Some days, I even know which classroom to go to and which students will be there when I arrive. On the best of days, I walk away feeling like we all learned something.
Other days, professors approach me and try to remember their college English—which they haven’t used in years—while their students harass them from the hallway.
“Speak English, teacher!”
The professor stammers until I offer, “Am I in the wrong classroom?”
“Yes!”
So I leave, because he seems older and wiser than I am. His students file in, while mine begin to gather around me in the hallway, and we all stare in expectantly.
“Is there a problem?” the professor asks, finally.
“Yes, I’m pretty sure this is actually our classroom.”
“Oh, we’ll go somewhere else, then.”
He files out as his classroom full of boys snickers and trails behind.
It seems this one was on me. I should have asked someone, “Some of my classes haven’t met yet. Do you suppose someone else has been using our classroom in the interim?”
Still other days are like hide and seek, or lost and found. My students aren’t in classroom 4, because some kids are “having a meeting.” So I look first in 5, where we sometimes meet, and then in 2, where we met once. I find them in 3, where I’ve never been.
Someone could have mentioned that nothing is static; that your students will be in the general area of the fourth floor, wherever they can find space. Someone also could have mentioned that Friday is a special class, a blend of students from earlier classes who come for extra practice—a reality that involves planning a second lesson, or quick improv. Yes, someone could have mentioned it. But, more importantly, I should have asked.
I should have asked more questions from the very beginning. The questions are basic, and I can’t believe I’ve just caught on.
Number one: “How will my day be different than the schedule claimed it would be?”
Number two: “How will today be different from yesterday?”
Number three, if anyone can think this far ahead: “How will tomorrow be different from today?”
As the culture shock begins to fade away, the burden of personal accountability is increasingly clear. When I am walking down the street and I hear the ominous collecting of throat mucus behind me, it is not that guy’s responsibility to avoid spitting on me. It is my responsibility to stay out of his way if I don’t want to get spit on today. When I am walking toward a parent steadying her toddler so he can pee by the sidewalk, that parent has her hands full. It is up to me and only me to walk around the stream if I don’t want to get peed on today.
I expected—and still expect—to learn an enormous amount by living in a foreign environment. Somehow, I didn’t expect China to be a nation that would teach me so much about independence and personal accountability. The most exciting thing about residing in a different culture is anticipating the myriad of things I’ll eventually be wrong about.
Other days, professors approach me and try to remember their college English—which they haven’t used in years—while their students harass them from the hallway.
“Speak English, teacher!”
The professor stammers until I offer, “Am I in the wrong classroom?”
“Yes!”
So I leave, because he seems older and wiser than I am. His students file in, while mine begin to gather around me in the hallway, and we all stare in expectantly.
“Is there a problem?” the professor asks, finally.
“Yes, I’m pretty sure this is actually our classroom.”
“Oh, we’ll go somewhere else, then.”
He files out as his classroom full of boys snickers and trails behind.
It seems this one was on me. I should have asked someone, “Some of my classes haven’t met yet. Do you suppose someone else has been using our classroom in the interim?”
Still other days are like hide and seek, or lost and found. My students aren’t in classroom 4, because some kids are “having a meeting.” So I look first in 5, where we sometimes meet, and then in 2, where we met once. I find them in 3, where I’ve never been.
Someone could have mentioned that nothing is static; that your students will be in the general area of the fourth floor, wherever they can find space. Someone also could have mentioned that Friday is a special class, a blend of students from earlier classes who come for extra practice—a reality that involves planning a second lesson, or quick improv. Yes, someone could have mentioned it. But, more importantly, I should have asked.
I should have asked more questions from the very beginning. The questions are basic, and I can’t believe I’ve just caught on.
Number one: “How will my day be different than the schedule claimed it would be?”
Number two: “How will today be different from yesterday?”
Number three, if anyone can think this far ahead: “How will tomorrow be different from today?”
As the culture shock begins to fade away, the burden of personal accountability is increasingly clear. When I am walking down the street and I hear the ominous collecting of throat mucus behind me, it is not that guy’s responsibility to avoid spitting on me. It is my responsibility to stay out of his way if I don’t want to get spit on today. When I am walking toward a parent steadying her toddler so he can pee by the sidewalk, that parent has her hands full. It is up to me and only me to walk around the stream if I don’t want to get peed on today.
I expected—and still expect—to learn an enormous amount by living in a foreign environment. Somehow, I didn’t expect China to be a nation that would teach me so much about independence and personal accountability. The most exciting thing about residing in a different culture is anticipating the myriad of things I’ll eventually be wrong about.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Iowa Photography
While the government ‘round here continues to be utterly indifferent to my communication needs (like they have billions of people to govern or something), I would like to give due credit to a wonderful friend who is channeling my writing to you. The lovely Nicole Jobst, fellow Drake journalism grad and therefore sympathetic to the cause of uncensored communication, has offered to be my personal proxy.
In addition to being a superb friend and empathetic journalist, Niki is also an outstanding photographer. She recently opened a shop on etsy.com, iowaphotography.etsy.com, where nature- and Iowa-lovers can find one-of-a-kind shots of the home state I dearly miss. As a side note, I didn’t know about etsy.com at all until she opened this shop, and it’s a really great site for finding handcrafted goods from around the world. And maybe if you consider yourself crafty, there’s a business venture in it for you, too. Definitely worth a look.
Take-home message: Niki is pretty great for helping me out, and in turn I would like you to help her out by checking out her photo shop and sharing it with anyone you think might be interested in an attractive slice of Iowa’s backyard.
On the photography note, I’ve established a flickr account to share some of my photos. I can’t post too many because they are huge and there are monthly upload limits. I’ll try to establish some sort of rotation. For now, my ID is whitneyd2009. You can check out photos of Shijiazhuang, Chengde and my apartment.
Also, while I can’t sign in to blogger or facebook to respond to your comments, please keep posting them if you have them, and hopefully I will re-enter virtual society sometime soon.
Thanks for reading!
In addition to being a superb friend and empathetic journalist, Niki is also an outstanding photographer. She recently opened a shop on etsy.com, iowaphotography.etsy.com, where nature- and Iowa-lovers can find one-of-a-kind shots of the home state I dearly miss. As a side note, I didn’t know about etsy.com at all until she opened this shop, and it’s a really great site for finding handcrafted goods from around the world. And maybe if you consider yourself crafty, there’s a business venture in it for you, too. Definitely worth a look.
Take-home message: Niki is pretty great for helping me out, and in turn I would like you to help her out by checking out her photo shop and sharing it with anyone you think might be interested in an attractive slice of Iowa’s backyard.
On the photography note, I’ve established a flickr account to share some of my photos. I can’t post too many because they are huge and there are monthly upload limits. I’ll try to establish some sort of rotation. For now, my ID is whitneyd2009. You can check out photos of Shijiazhuang, Chengde and my apartment.
Also, while I can’t sign in to blogger or facebook to respond to your comments, please keep posting them if you have them, and hopefully I will re-enter virtual society sometime soon.
Thanks for reading!
The Great Wall
There is an athletic complex across the street from my apartment. The reasons why I did not know it was there until just a few days ago are complicated. China is complicated.
Today I found the hidden passageway that leads to its fence, only to realize there was no easily discernable way in. My Chinese sucks, so I approached a boy on the coveted inner portion of the barrier, pointed to a clearly locked gate, looked pleadingly at him and said, “Nar?” Where? “Wo pao ma?” Can I run? Or maybe it’s “Do I run?” Or even, “Where’s the nearest grocery store?” Like I said, my Chinese sucks.
He conveyed the obvious, “Not here,” then pointed to an inaccessible building across the track. I could draw the next hour into an excruciatingly long anecdote about me circling the entire Chengde city block and finding no way to access the building, inquiring after a million security guards in the interim—in increasingly whiney Chinese—Naaarrrr!? Wo pao maaaa??—but the important lesson for folks at home is that some days are exceedingly ridiculous. Sometimes I feel like I’m at the whims of China’s unique blend of perpetually changing fate. And sometimes I’m fairly certain I’m just an idiot.
October 2nd, for example. I passed my twenty-third birthday with wonderful friends who made me—and China!—delicious cakes, sang Karaoke past midnight, and then went to the bar until an hour embarrassingly and inconveniently close to the hour we were to depart for a day at the Great Wall with eleven freshmen (yeah.) and the school’s foreign affairs directors.
Now, around 4 a.m., when I for the second time began to suggest, “Guys, I have to climb the Great Wall in five hours, perhaps I should go home and aspire to be sober by 7,” I allowed an Englishman named Richard to tell me, “It’s only ten steps! You sit in the bus for an hour, walk up ten steps, and Bam! You’re on the great wall. Now have another beer!”
I appreciate citizens of the United Kingdom for this reason: You can get into the liveliest debates and, as long as no one’s mother is insulted, still be good friends in the morning. So I would like the record to reflect that when Richard sent a text message at 4 p.m. that read, “Just woke up, thanks for a great night guys! Good shit.”—after I had spent many breathtakingly beautiful but deliriously exhausted hours hiking on slippery stairs that at their most difficult require the climber to scramble on hands and knees—I was not angry. Not at all.
We visited the Jin Shan Ling portion of the wall. It’s not the wide, majestic corridor you see in pictures—that part is near Beijing, recently renovated and chronically teeming with tourists. Jin Shan Ling is less than an hour away from Chengde, and only the entrance is restored. The rest is full of the narrowest passageways and crumbling watchtowers.
The crowds thin out and then nearly fade away the further you walk from the entrance. Bright colors look so out of place against the majestic stone wall that I, in my old purple t-ball jersey with “Houghton” scrawled in bright pink across the chest, look photo-shopped into all of my pictures, an altogether unlikely addition.
The peak for me, despite the exhaustion (which, to be honest, was for most of the day overrun by the adrenaline rush that accompanies interacting with such an omnipresent historical icon), was in the moments before we turned around to hike back to the gate. I climbed up an especially lofty, steep incline to one final watchtower, then noticed one more set of stairs, piled inconspicuously behind a wall. Up those stairs, I found myself completely alone on a square roof, wall stretching endlessly to the east and west with mountains on every side.
Some days I think I could write a novel about China’s challenges, and others I’m certain I’m just a fool with no grasp on anything. But every now and then I’m lying on my own stretch of the Great Wall of China, and I realize I’m so fleeting here that it hardly matters one way or another.
Today I found the hidden passageway that leads to its fence, only to realize there was no easily discernable way in. My Chinese sucks, so I approached a boy on the coveted inner portion of the barrier, pointed to a clearly locked gate, looked pleadingly at him and said, “Nar?” Where? “Wo pao ma?” Can I run? Or maybe it’s “Do I run?” Or even, “Where’s the nearest grocery store?” Like I said, my Chinese sucks.
He conveyed the obvious, “Not here,” then pointed to an inaccessible building across the track. I could draw the next hour into an excruciatingly long anecdote about me circling the entire Chengde city block and finding no way to access the building, inquiring after a million security guards in the interim—in increasingly whiney Chinese—Naaarrrr!? Wo pao maaaa??—but the important lesson for folks at home is that some days are exceedingly ridiculous. Sometimes I feel like I’m at the whims of China’s unique blend of perpetually changing fate. And sometimes I’m fairly certain I’m just an idiot.
October 2nd, for example. I passed my twenty-third birthday with wonderful friends who made me—and China!—delicious cakes, sang Karaoke past midnight, and then went to the bar until an hour embarrassingly and inconveniently close to the hour we were to depart for a day at the Great Wall with eleven freshmen (yeah.) and the school’s foreign affairs directors.
Now, around 4 a.m., when I for the second time began to suggest, “Guys, I have to climb the Great Wall in five hours, perhaps I should go home and aspire to be sober by 7,” I allowed an Englishman named Richard to tell me, “It’s only ten steps! You sit in the bus for an hour, walk up ten steps, and Bam! You’re on the great wall. Now have another beer!”
I appreciate citizens of the United Kingdom for this reason: You can get into the liveliest debates and, as long as no one’s mother is insulted, still be good friends in the morning. So I would like the record to reflect that when Richard sent a text message at 4 p.m. that read, “Just woke up, thanks for a great night guys! Good shit.”—after I had spent many breathtakingly beautiful but deliriously exhausted hours hiking on slippery stairs that at their most difficult require the climber to scramble on hands and knees—I was not angry. Not at all.
We visited the Jin Shan Ling portion of the wall. It’s not the wide, majestic corridor you see in pictures—that part is near Beijing, recently renovated and chronically teeming with tourists. Jin Shan Ling is less than an hour away from Chengde, and only the entrance is restored. The rest is full of the narrowest passageways and crumbling watchtowers.
The crowds thin out and then nearly fade away the further you walk from the entrance. Bright colors look so out of place against the majestic stone wall that I, in my old purple t-ball jersey with “Houghton” scrawled in bright pink across the chest, look photo-shopped into all of my pictures, an altogether unlikely addition.
The peak for me, despite the exhaustion (which, to be honest, was for most of the day overrun by the adrenaline rush that accompanies interacting with such an omnipresent historical icon), was in the moments before we turned around to hike back to the gate. I climbed up an especially lofty, steep incline to one final watchtower, then noticed one more set of stairs, piled inconspicuously behind a wall. Up those stairs, I found myself completely alone on a square roof, wall stretching endlessly to the east and west with mountains on every side.
Some days I think I could write a novel about China’s challenges, and others I’m certain I’m just a fool with no grasp on anything. But every now and then I’m lying on my own stretch of the Great Wall of China, and I realize I’m so fleeting here that it hardly matters one way or another.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
It’s My Party and I’ll Be Tyrannical If I Want To.
I love birthdays. I shamelessly responded to many who asked why I was going to China: “Because my birthday is a national holiday there.” I share a birthday with the People’s Republic of China. Which is kind-of cool. Except for this.
I intend to spend my birthday celebrating with friends, going out to dinner and karaoke.
China intends to spend its birthday parading its threatening military through the streets of Beijing, with unfathomably heightened security—security so intense, residents who live along the parade route have been warned by authorities that if they step onto their balconies they risk being shot. Peasants have historically traveled to Beijing to petition the government for a redress of grievances, but this year they (and me, for that matter) are forbidden from the capital city. Security forces on October 1st in Beijing will not rival but will instead far surpass those deployed for the 2008 Olympics. (See Michael Sheridan’s Times article for these facts & more.)
Additionally, the government is cracking down on online services used to reach oft-banned sites like Facebook and Blogspot—homesickness-staving resources I’ve relied on—in order to create a “favorable online environment” for this week’s festivities (Owen Fletcher, PCWorld). Also, the website www.momswhothink.com, which I tried to visit in my quest for a list of baby names my students could choose English names from, is currently banned—presumably not to protect the “favorable online environment,” but because the censors have extended their reign to include any IP address even closely related to banned ones. The Thinking Mothers are one of many benign casualties.
Dubbed The Great Firewall by many who experience it, China’s expansive censorship effort has much in common with today’s Great Wall. Both are incomprehensibly massive, sprawling in scope and vision, presumed visible from space*, and eternally useless at achieving their intended task. Although Facebook and Blogspot are blocked, this post will reach you if I have to email it to a friend in America first. Getting around the Great Firewall is at most an inconvenience. As James Fallows reports in The Atlantic, “What the government cares about is making the quest for information just enough of a nuisance that people generally won’t bother.”
As our birthdays align this Thursday, my lifespan represents a mere 38% of the PRC’s 60 years. Subtract the years I wasn’t thinking about anything outside of Iowa, let alone the United States, and my international consciousness vs. the PR’s existence drops to an infinitesimal percentage. I have my own beliefs about what a human right looks like, but I cannot presume to offer advice to, or criticism of, the government of the most populous nation in the world. Perhaps they know what they’re doing—media reports like Fallows’ certainly suggest that residents don’t mind all that much—and who knows, maybe if I had my own sweet new fighter jets and futuristic ammunition I, too, would parade them in the streets on my birthday.
*Debunked by NASA itself.
I intend to spend my birthday celebrating with friends, going out to dinner and karaoke.
China intends to spend its birthday parading its threatening military through the streets of Beijing, with unfathomably heightened security—security so intense, residents who live along the parade route have been warned by authorities that if they step onto their balconies they risk being shot. Peasants have historically traveled to Beijing to petition the government for a redress of grievances, but this year they (and me, for that matter) are forbidden from the capital city. Security forces on October 1st in Beijing will not rival but will instead far surpass those deployed for the 2008 Olympics. (See Michael Sheridan’s Times article for these facts & more.)
Additionally, the government is cracking down on online services used to reach oft-banned sites like Facebook and Blogspot—homesickness-staving resources I’ve relied on—in order to create a “favorable online environment” for this week’s festivities (Owen Fletcher, PCWorld). Also, the website www.momswhothink.com, which I tried to visit in my quest for a list of baby names my students could choose English names from, is currently banned—presumably not to protect the “favorable online environment,” but because the censors have extended their reign to include any IP address even closely related to banned ones. The Thinking Mothers are one of many benign casualties.
Dubbed The Great Firewall by many who experience it, China’s expansive censorship effort has much in common with today’s Great Wall. Both are incomprehensibly massive, sprawling in scope and vision, presumed visible from space*, and eternally useless at achieving their intended task. Although Facebook and Blogspot are blocked, this post will reach you if I have to email it to a friend in America first. Getting around the Great Firewall is at most an inconvenience. As James Fallows reports in The Atlantic, “What the government cares about is making the quest for information just enough of a nuisance that people generally won’t bother.”
As our birthdays align this Thursday, my lifespan represents a mere 38% of the PRC’s 60 years. Subtract the years I wasn’t thinking about anything outside of Iowa, let alone the United States, and my international consciousness vs. the PR’s existence drops to an infinitesimal percentage. I have my own beliefs about what a human right looks like, but I cannot presume to offer advice to, or criticism of, the government of the most populous nation in the world. Perhaps they know what they’re doing—media reports like Fallows’ certainly suggest that residents don’t mind all that much—and who knows, maybe if I had my own sweet new fighter jets and futuristic ammunition I, too, would parade them in the streets on my birthday.
*Debunked by NASA itself.
Monday, September 21, 2009
On Time and Toilets
Part 1: Do you have class today?
I showed up in the foreign affairs office at 9:30 this morning. Had I not angrily removed the top of my constantly-running toilet mere hours earlier, so violently lifting the mechanism that’s supposed to float that this time I finally just ripped it out, leaving me with a more rapidly running, overflowing-out-of-the-bowl-and-the-back toilet, I would not have visited the foreign affairs office at all.
“Do you have class today?” Maggie asked as I walked in the door. Yes, Mags, remember when you told me, last Thursday night, that I had to come back early from Beijing because the freshmen were starting class on Monday? (An arrangement I’m certain the university decided upon no earlier than Thursday afternoon.)
Maggie’s mouth twitched the way it always does when she is scanning for English words. Step one, she repeats a key word from my speech. “Freshmen?” The corners turn down as she runs through the Chinese version of her response in her head, then turn up a bit in a near smile as she prepares to form the English words, if she can.
“Oh.”
Oh?
“I’ll make sure your students know.”
I grab my book and settle in, knowing this will be a production. A few weeks ago, the sophomores were informed via text message that class was starting, as I walked toward the classroom to teach my first class. Maggie glides to the fax machine phone, the only phone is this three-person office, calls someone and has an impossibly long conversation that I imagine centers on the whereabouts of 40-some wayward freshmen who are just killing time until someone tells them it’s time to go to class NOW. Without a word to me, she hangs up and goes back to her desk.
A few minutes later, a man walks in and sits down next to Ms. Wang, Maggie’s slightly more fluent counterpart. “Whitney, do you have your schedule with you?” No. It’s in my head. Teach at 10:20 in Classroom 2. That’s it. Ms. Wang pulls up a document with my schedule on it. They discus it in detail, he points at some of the times and laughs, shaking his head. I’ve never seen him before. But I do know this schedule was completed about four weeks ago, and he could have pointed and laughed at it then if he felt so inclined. Now, I just need to know if I’m teaching in 20 minutes, in a building a million staircases away from here.
The man leaves. Maggie and Ms. Wang go back to their work. I wait a few minutes, out of politeness. “So, um, should I go?” Maggie twitches. “Just now, we inform the teacher they’re in class with now. When they are finished this class, he will send them to yours.” Maggie always says “just now” instead of conjugating verbs into the past tense. A pretty functional language trick, actually.
"Oh, by the way, my toilet is broken, do you think someone could come look at it today?"
Part 2: Do you understand “chair”?
There are a few students in the classroom when I get there. They look startled. More students gather around the doorway. I wonder if they’re my students, just nervous about coming in. They’re surveying the classroom. Suddenly, they swoop in, grab one chair each and march back out. The students who were in the room leave too, with their chairs. I watch it happen, knowing it will end in disaster for me in the near future, but powerless to stop it. After all, what if I manage to convey that I need those chairs, only to have none of my students show?
My students do show up, all 40 of them. We have 15 chairs. “You guys will have to check the other classrooms for chairs,” I say. They stare at me as though this is English 101 for them, even though I know they’ve been studying for six years minimum. “Chairs.” I point. This is a problem every class period. There simply aren’t enough chairs in this building, so whoever shows up on the floor first gets the chairs.
As my students are running wildly all over the building looking for something to sit on, the director of the English department strolls by, clad as always in a matching sweat-suit with high heels (exercise clothes are very expensive here, and therefore a status symbol rather than gym apparel. I can get behind this.) “Miss Yi, do you know where we can get more chairs?” She looks into the faces of the ring of freshmen surrounding me. She speaks directly to them. “Whitney is a very good teacher. You listen to her. You are young, you can stand. Go back to the classroom.” So that’s that.
She turns to me and, in classic Chengde manner, states, “I will call the Person in Charge of Chairs. She will bring some chairs, probably around noon.” 20 minutes after my class ends. I love that there is a Person in Charge of Chairs. There is a Person in Charge of Just About Everything, but somehow Nothing ever seems to be done. What does the Person in Charge of Chairs do with the rest of her day?
Part 3: No photos, please.
My students are in awe of my sheer American-ness. While I’m walking around listening to them present an exercise I assigned, I notice a cell phone pointed at my face. “Please, put your cell phone away.” I realize that in Chinese this command translates roughly into, “Each of you is only allowed 100 photos each.” I manage to ignore them and continue with the lesson, but occasionally a student trying to get a good angle will actually tap the shoulder of the person speaking directly to me, and ask her to move to the right so they can see my face. I think next week I’ll have a box for them to leave their cell phones in at the beginning of class.
Part 4: By the way, my toilet’s been overflowing this whole time.
The repairman came into our lives pretty early on, because Jason’s washing machine didn’t work when we arrived. Then, the repairman tinkered for hours, only to report (in Chinese and confusing hand motions) that the part we knew wasn’t working was, in fact, not working.
The toilet is a pretty simple machine, I think, and probably would have been easier to fix had I not completely beheaded it in my morning rage. Mr. Repairman showed up dressed in clothes not suitable for fixing toilets, like he had just come from his office job where he engineers toilets behind a huge mahogany desk. He walked in and flushed the toilet, solely to experience the wonderment of water gushing freely all over the damn place. Grasping the gravity of the situation, he left and reappeared in clothes more suitable for manual labor, with a bag of tools.
At one point he asked me if I had any wire. First I thought he was asking for a screwdriver. He altered his hand motion and I assumed he wanted string. I pulled out my sewing kit (what is he going to do with sewing string inside my toilet?) Finally, he held up another random wire—where did it come from?—and I shook my head. By then it was nearing 6 p.m., and I think he had finally realized that the part I broke was, in fact, broken.
He terminated his visit by walking me into the kitchen, and instructing me to turn over the (dirty) pot in my sink. He turned the water supply back on, gestured to encourage me to fill the pot with water, and then turned the supply off. “Don’t turn this back on. Use that water until tomorrow.” Amusingly, he included gestures for just about everything I might need to do with that water before tomorrow. Cook, bathe, brush my teeth… “But if you need to use the bathroom before tomorrow, you’ll just have to hold it.”
I showed up in the foreign affairs office at 9:30 this morning. Had I not angrily removed the top of my constantly-running toilet mere hours earlier, so violently lifting the mechanism that’s supposed to float that this time I finally just ripped it out, leaving me with a more rapidly running, overflowing-out-of-the-bowl-and-the-back toilet, I would not have visited the foreign affairs office at all.
“Do you have class today?” Maggie asked as I walked in the door. Yes, Mags, remember when you told me, last Thursday night, that I had to come back early from Beijing because the freshmen were starting class on Monday? (An arrangement I’m certain the university decided upon no earlier than Thursday afternoon.)
Maggie’s mouth twitched the way it always does when she is scanning for English words. Step one, she repeats a key word from my speech. “Freshmen?” The corners turn down as she runs through the Chinese version of her response in her head, then turn up a bit in a near smile as she prepares to form the English words, if she can.
“Oh.”
Oh?
“I’ll make sure your students know.”
I grab my book and settle in, knowing this will be a production. A few weeks ago, the sophomores were informed via text message that class was starting, as I walked toward the classroom to teach my first class. Maggie glides to the fax machine phone, the only phone is this three-person office, calls someone and has an impossibly long conversation that I imagine centers on the whereabouts of 40-some wayward freshmen who are just killing time until someone tells them it’s time to go to class NOW. Without a word to me, she hangs up and goes back to her desk.
A few minutes later, a man walks in and sits down next to Ms. Wang, Maggie’s slightly more fluent counterpart. “Whitney, do you have your schedule with you?” No. It’s in my head. Teach at 10:20 in Classroom 2. That’s it. Ms. Wang pulls up a document with my schedule on it. They discus it in detail, he points at some of the times and laughs, shaking his head. I’ve never seen him before. But I do know this schedule was completed about four weeks ago, and he could have pointed and laughed at it then if he felt so inclined. Now, I just need to know if I’m teaching in 20 minutes, in a building a million staircases away from here.
The man leaves. Maggie and Ms. Wang go back to their work. I wait a few minutes, out of politeness. “So, um, should I go?” Maggie twitches. “Just now, we inform the teacher they’re in class with now. When they are finished this class, he will send them to yours.” Maggie always says “just now” instead of conjugating verbs into the past tense. A pretty functional language trick, actually.
"Oh, by the way, my toilet is broken, do you think someone could come look at it today?"
Part 2: Do you understand “chair”?
There are a few students in the classroom when I get there. They look startled. More students gather around the doorway. I wonder if they’re my students, just nervous about coming in. They’re surveying the classroom. Suddenly, they swoop in, grab one chair each and march back out. The students who were in the room leave too, with their chairs. I watch it happen, knowing it will end in disaster for me in the near future, but powerless to stop it. After all, what if I manage to convey that I need those chairs, only to have none of my students show?
My students do show up, all 40 of them. We have 15 chairs. “You guys will have to check the other classrooms for chairs,” I say. They stare at me as though this is English 101 for them, even though I know they’ve been studying for six years minimum. “Chairs.” I point. This is a problem every class period. There simply aren’t enough chairs in this building, so whoever shows up on the floor first gets the chairs.
As my students are running wildly all over the building looking for something to sit on, the director of the English department strolls by, clad as always in a matching sweat-suit with high heels (exercise clothes are very expensive here, and therefore a status symbol rather than gym apparel. I can get behind this.) “Miss Yi, do you know where we can get more chairs?” She looks into the faces of the ring of freshmen surrounding me. She speaks directly to them. “Whitney is a very good teacher. You listen to her. You are young, you can stand. Go back to the classroom.” So that’s that.
She turns to me and, in classic Chengde manner, states, “I will call the Person in Charge of Chairs. She will bring some chairs, probably around noon.” 20 minutes after my class ends. I love that there is a Person in Charge of Chairs. There is a Person in Charge of Just About Everything, but somehow Nothing ever seems to be done. What does the Person in Charge of Chairs do with the rest of her day?
Part 3: No photos, please.
My students are in awe of my sheer American-ness. While I’m walking around listening to them present an exercise I assigned, I notice a cell phone pointed at my face. “Please, put your cell phone away.” I realize that in Chinese this command translates roughly into, “Each of you is only allowed 100 photos each.” I manage to ignore them and continue with the lesson, but occasionally a student trying to get a good angle will actually tap the shoulder of the person speaking directly to me, and ask her to move to the right so they can see my face. I think next week I’ll have a box for them to leave their cell phones in at the beginning of class.
Part 4: By the way, my toilet’s been overflowing this whole time.
The repairman came into our lives pretty early on, because Jason’s washing machine didn’t work when we arrived. Then, the repairman tinkered for hours, only to report (in Chinese and confusing hand motions) that the part we knew wasn’t working was, in fact, not working.
The toilet is a pretty simple machine, I think, and probably would have been easier to fix had I not completely beheaded it in my morning rage. Mr. Repairman showed up dressed in clothes not suitable for fixing toilets, like he had just come from his office job where he engineers toilets behind a huge mahogany desk. He walked in and flushed the toilet, solely to experience the wonderment of water gushing freely all over the damn place. Grasping the gravity of the situation, he left and reappeared in clothes more suitable for manual labor, with a bag of tools.
At one point he asked me if I had any wire. First I thought he was asking for a screwdriver. He altered his hand motion and I assumed he wanted string. I pulled out my sewing kit (what is he going to do with sewing string inside my toilet?) Finally, he held up another random wire—where did it come from?—and I shook my head. By then it was nearing 6 p.m., and I think he had finally realized that the part I broke was, in fact, broken.
He terminated his visit by walking me into the kitchen, and instructing me to turn over the (dirty) pot in my sink. He turned the water supply back on, gestured to encourage me to fill the pot with water, and then turned the supply off. “Don’t turn this back on. Use that water until tomorrow.” Amusingly, he included gestures for just about everything I might need to do with that water before tomorrow. Cook, bathe, brush my teeth… “But if you need to use the bathroom before tomorrow, you’ll just have to hold it.”
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Friends
“Waan…Twooo… Tree! Ah-ah-ah-ah.”
This guy reminds me of The Count from Sesame Street. With a Chinese accent.
“Ni meiguoren?”
Yeah, I’m American. I nod.
He works himself up again, and poises his finger to draw on the shop counter. “Yooo… Esss… Aaay! Ah-ah-ah.”
Our Friend on The Corner, so named because his narrow booth is carved into a building on the corner of our street—and because we haven’t employed our burgeoning language skills to discover his real name—sells us juice for three kuai, beer for two, and ice cream bars for one. The cultural and linguistic exchange is free.
When he isn’t practicing his numbers in English (only up to 3, because nothing in his shop exceeds that amount) he and his wife perch on crates of warm beer and watch the small TV mounted in the corner above the Coca-Cola.
Our Friend on The Corner was my first street friend, but in a blatant snub of the United States Center for Disease Control, I’ve also stumbled upon street friends dealing in the culinary industry.
The Chinese use spices—cilantro, garlic, chives, green onion—the way I would use something more benign, like iceberg lettuce. My theory is that this habit evolved during hungrier times, when milder veggies didn’t thrive the way hearty seasonings did. But I could be way off. Maybe they’ve always enjoyed chewing up whole cloves of garlic.
Cilantro Sandwich Lady caters to this local palate. She camps in front of Our Friend on The Corner’s corner shop, expertly chopping equal parts cilantro, chicken, and chicken fat into pieces and tucking it into The Best Bread in China. I’ve embraced the omnipresence of cilantro. If I close my eyes and imagine the cheese and salsa, it almost resembles Mexican. Almost.
While the food and drink entrepreneurs of Chengde become our friends, the children continue to express their appreciation of our presence in different ways. Most impressively, a little girl stood in the aisle of the bus today, a mere 10 inches from Jason’s face, her mouth gaping at the sight of a clueless white boy listening to his ipod with his nose buried in Steven King. Doesn’t he know how funny he looks? her expression begged. She jabbed her friend in the seat in front of him. The friend turned around and peered curiously at him through the hole in the headrest.
Yesterday, a university student actually exclaimed “Bai!” (“White!”) when my dashing boyfriend walked by. I think they like him.
Finally, my absolute favorite Chinese friend thus far: Last Friday I wandered around the city with my incredibly conspicuous Canon XTi, taking photos of folks while they napped or played Mahjong in the midday heat. A man waved me over to join their table, and asked me the most wonderful series of questions, which I here translate:
"Do you speak Chinese?"
-"A little."
"I see that you're taking pictures. That's pretty cool."
- Whitney shrugs and smiles awkwardly.
-"You take pictures, are you writing a story? Do you write words?"
That's right, folks. I'm officially an internationally recognized journalist. Thank you, impressive-looking camera.
This guy reminds me of The Count from Sesame Street. With a Chinese accent.
“Ni meiguoren?”
Yeah, I’m American. I nod.
He works himself up again, and poises his finger to draw on the shop counter. “Yooo… Esss… Aaay! Ah-ah-ah.”
Our Friend on The Corner, so named because his narrow booth is carved into a building on the corner of our street—and because we haven’t employed our burgeoning language skills to discover his real name—sells us juice for three kuai, beer for two, and ice cream bars for one. The cultural and linguistic exchange is free.
When he isn’t practicing his numbers in English (only up to 3, because nothing in his shop exceeds that amount) he and his wife perch on crates of warm beer and watch the small TV mounted in the corner above the Coca-Cola.
Our Friend on The Corner was my first street friend, but in a blatant snub of the United States Center for Disease Control, I’ve also stumbled upon street friends dealing in the culinary industry.
The Chinese use spices—cilantro, garlic, chives, green onion—the way I would use something more benign, like iceberg lettuce. My theory is that this habit evolved during hungrier times, when milder veggies didn’t thrive the way hearty seasonings did. But I could be way off. Maybe they’ve always enjoyed chewing up whole cloves of garlic.
Cilantro Sandwich Lady caters to this local palate. She camps in front of Our Friend on The Corner’s corner shop, expertly chopping equal parts cilantro, chicken, and chicken fat into pieces and tucking it into The Best Bread in China. I’ve embraced the omnipresence of cilantro. If I close my eyes and imagine the cheese and salsa, it almost resembles Mexican. Almost.
While the food and drink entrepreneurs of Chengde become our friends, the children continue to express their appreciation of our presence in different ways. Most impressively, a little girl stood in the aisle of the bus today, a mere 10 inches from Jason’s face, her mouth gaping at the sight of a clueless white boy listening to his ipod with his nose buried in Steven King. Doesn’t he know how funny he looks? her expression begged. She jabbed her friend in the seat in front of him. The friend turned around and peered curiously at him through the hole in the headrest.
Yesterday, a university student actually exclaimed “Bai!” (“White!”) when my dashing boyfriend walked by. I think they like him.
Finally, my absolute favorite Chinese friend thus far: Last Friday I wandered around the city with my incredibly conspicuous Canon XTi, taking photos of folks while they napped or played Mahjong in the midday heat. A man waved me over to join their table, and asked me the most wonderful series of questions, which I here translate:
"Do you speak Chinese?"
-"A little."
"I see that you're taking pictures. That's pretty cool."
- Whitney shrugs and smiles awkwardly.
-"You take pictures, are you writing a story? Do you write words?"
That's right, folks. I'm officially an internationally recognized journalist. Thank you, impressive-looking camera.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Beat It.
Outside my apartment window, there are currently 50 middle-aged Chinese women line dancing to Michael Jackson's Beat It.
This fact deserves its own blog post.
This fact deserves its own blog post.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Chengde, Week 1
Dogs start barking at 6 a.m., but it’s only a minor nuisance. I’ve been up for an hour anyway, ever since some jerk laid on the horn for a full sixty seconds at 5 a.m. Why? Still, I stay in bed until 7. Cereal is the primary reason I get out of bed on any given day, and I don’t have any here. “Milk” comes in bags or juice boxes that aren’t refrigerated. What?
Outside, a girl sprints out of her family’s apartment, pops a squat, pulls up her pants and runs away. Moments later, a neighbor jogs out to retrieve his mail. In his haste, he drops a piece in the fresh urine. “It’s just ions,” Jason tells me, repeatedly, every time I see someone pee in the street. It’s just ions. Thankfully, the man doesn’t go back to pick up his ion-drenched mail.
We catch the number 10 to campus, and settle in for 30-50 minutes of bliss. There’s only one road to the university, and right now it isn’t a road. My anthropological/sociological education begs me to be culturally sensitive. But I know the American term for this road. “Mess.” I have a student whose chosen English name is Messy. I wonder if she knows.
I don’t know that China is developing as well as it could, but I can say it’s developing as fast as it can, with mixed results. Huge piles of rubble lay at the base of towering, blocky apartment buildings—eyesore status symbols where crowded brick huts festered last week. Progress.
Some Chinese cling to tradition in the face of all this change. During my home stay with a wonderfully hospitable family in Shijiajuang, the girls were continually pointing. “This is a traditional Chinese sofa.” “This is a traditional Chinese tea table.” Traditional is chic, attainable only because they already have mounted flat screens in spacious apartments. Add to that their flawless English, they’ve got nothing to prove re. their ability to Westernize. They’re allowed to be Chinese.
So, the road. Some days it’s available, others not. What was once one lane is becoming four, but China doesn’t do detours. We jump the asphalt onto whatever length was completed yesterday, jump off into a jumbled mess of four lane traffic on a Chinese noodle’s-width of dirt road when the blacktop ends. This isn’t the termination of blacktop Keith Urban croons about, I’m sure.
Teaching is respite, a reminder that I’m not here to ponder the logistics of loogie-haulking or stupid-fast national development that’s led to the tragic drying up of every riverbed I’ve seen. My students are almost all girls, small-voiced but funny. They want to learn English to land a good job. They want to visit France because it’s the country of romance. One boy, Antonio, writes me a private note asking if he can visit me in my office. “If you have time, I would like to hear you talk.” Oh, Yeah. I don’t have an office, he’ll have to settle for class time. At least I know he’ll show up.
My class claps for me when I answer their request about my Chinese proficiency with, “Yi dianr”—un poco, a little. In Chinese class, I receive less praise. The other foreigners—5 girls, 2 boys from Pakistan, 1 girl, 2 boys from Nigeria, 1 girl from U.A.E.—are ahead by five weeks, already reading simple character paragraphs. I’m like a kindergartener again, except I showed up the day after everyone learned the alphabet. I recognize random articles and a word or two, so I see “__ __ the __ __ of __ __ American __ __ river.” What?
My classmates are great. They write paragraphs in pinyin so we can actually follow along, and show us where to get lunch. And, critically, which hand gestures translate into the desired action on the part of the server. Zhe ge, zhe ge, zhe ge…
Every evening the local women gather to dance in the square just below my apartment. Jason and I boil dumplings—a step up from instant noodles, anyway—and watch their perfectly choreographed, expressionless moves. The men line up on the benches, smoking, nodding approvingly, spitting unceasingly.
Outside, a girl sprints out of her family’s apartment, pops a squat, pulls up her pants and runs away. Moments later, a neighbor jogs out to retrieve his mail. In his haste, he drops a piece in the fresh urine. “It’s just ions,” Jason tells me, repeatedly, every time I see someone pee in the street. It’s just ions. Thankfully, the man doesn’t go back to pick up his ion-drenched mail.
We catch the number 10 to campus, and settle in for 30-50 minutes of bliss. There’s only one road to the university, and right now it isn’t a road. My anthropological/sociological education begs me to be culturally sensitive. But I know the American term for this road. “Mess.” I have a student whose chosen English name is Messy. I wonder if she knows.
I don’t know that China is developing as well as it could, but I can say it’s developing as fast as it can, with mixed results. Huge piles of rubble lay at the base of towering, blocky apartment buildings—eyesore status symbols where crowded brick huts festered last week. Progress.
Some Chinese cling to tradition in the face of all this change. During my home stay with a wonderfully hospitable family in Shijiajuang, the girls were continually pointing. “This is a traditional Chinese sofa.” “This is a traditional Chinese tea table.” Traditional is chic, attainable only because they already have mounted flat screens in spacious apartments. Add to that their flawless English, they’ve got nothing to prove re. their ability to Westernize. They’re allowed to be Chinese.
So, the road. Some days it’s available, others not. What was once one lane is becoming four, but China doesn’t do detours. We jump the asphalt onto whatever length was completed yesterday, jump off into a jumbled mess of four lane traffic on a Chinese noodle’s-width of dirt road when the blacktop ends. This isn’t the termination of blacktop Keith Urban croons about, I’m sure.
Teaching is respite, a reminder that I’m not here to ponder the logistics of loogie-haulking or stupid-fast national development that’s led to the tragic drying up of every riverbed I’ve seen. My students are almost all girls, small-voiced but funny. They want to learn English to land a good job. They want to visit France because it’s the country of romance. One boy, Antonio, writes me a private note asking if he can visit me in my office. “If you have time, I would like to hear you talk.” Oh, Yeah. I don’t have an office, he’ll have to settle for class time. At least I know he’ll show up.
My class claps for me when I answer their request about my Chinese proficiency with, “Yi dianr”—un poco, a little. In Chinese class, I receive less praise. The other foreigners—5 girls, 2 boys from Pakistan, 1 girl, 2 boys from Nigeria, 1 girl from U.A.E.—are ahead by five weeks, already reading simple character paragraphs. I’m like a kindergartener again, except I showed up the day after everyone learned the alphabet. I recognize random articles and a word or two, so I see “__ __ the __ __ of __ __ American __ __ river.” What?
My classmates are great. They write paragraphs in pinyin so we can actually follow along, and show us where to get lunch. And, critically, which hand gestures translate into the desired action on the part of the server. Zhe ge, zhe ge, zhe ge…
Every evening the local women gather to dance in the square just below my apartment. Jason and I boil dumplings—a step up from instant noodles, anyway—and watch their perfectly choreographed, expressionless moves. The men line up on the benches, smoking, nodding approvingly, spitting unceasingly.
Friday, August 28, 2009
I Wonder if Mao Peed Here
As part of our language and cultural training in Shijiajuang, we took a field trip to nearby Xibaipo, where China’s modern government was drafted. The site is essentially a (dirty, dare I say boring) shrine to Chairman Mao. A guided tour consists of repeated “Mao sat here, Mao ate here, Mao wrote something down here,” and even a “Naked Mao was wrapped in a blanket and thrown into an air-raid shelter here” (pictures to come.)
Now, all props to Mao for Liberating the People and whatnot, but two days later as I stood in line after line after line (didn’t someone say they don’t queue in China?) for my foreign expert health exam, I wished the Great Chairman Mao had done a touch more to liberate goodwill ambassadors.
Line 1, which lasted a mere 45 minutes, culminated in me being called into a room to verify that I arrived on UA flight 501 from Chicago and to sign my name confirming the made-up body temperature that the doctor had surmised, presumably by noticing I looked cold.
Next, I slouched in a line for 10 minutes, only to be informed that the forms I was holding were not completely filled out, and I needed to get out of the line to do so. Unfortunately, five days of oral language training didn’t make me an expert character artist, so my waiban (foreign affairs officer from Chengde) had to fill it out for me anyway.
Line 3: Bloodletting. The scene: A hallway, two nurses sit behind what looks like a ticket booth, accepting veins through an opening in the glass. I watch two strangers get stabbed, then offer my arm (clean needles, no worries). I don’t get a bandage when it’s over, only a cotton ball I’m instructed to hold in place for five minutes.
Which proves impossible, because the next station involves hugging an x-ray machine for a chest x-ray. My open wound lines up conveniently with the spot where everyone in front of me has hugged the same un-sanitized machine post-bloodletting.
Although they do this exam under the pretense of scanning for infectious diseases, the next stations I suffer through are 1) an ultrasound. You know, in case I’m carrying the contagious disease called pregnancy. And 2) An EKG, which involved being topless in a doorless room. A man actually came to the doorway while the nurse was hooking me up to the machine, which was straight out of 1960, so there was literally a curtain between half-naked, electrocution-prepped me and some strange man. I hope the nurse was saying, “Get out of here, perv, this isn’t a free show.”
So I’ve had a pretty serious cough since a few days before I arrived in China, and the filthy city of Shijiajuang did nothing to alleviate my symptoms. I went through half my store of Robitussin and Sudafed in my first week. Naturally, I was dreading my visit to the “EENT” office, where I felt sure they would look in my throat and notice the most-definitely contagious, infected lump in the back of my throat. Lucky for me (unlucky for China) they dropped the “ENT” portion of the test and only checked my eyes (you know, contagious glaucoma and whatnot.) This test consisted of the doctor asking me to take my glasses off, then laughing at me when I finally successfully conveyed that, “No, really, I cannot see anything on the opposite wall.”
Finally, the most dreaded portion of all physical exams, I had to pee in a cup. As I squatted over a hole in the floor, attempting to hold a teacup-sized receptacle under me without urinating on my hand or falling over, I recalled Jason’s glib comment as we departed Xibaipo. I wonder if Mao peed here.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Beware the Dangerous!
The first of many interestingly translated signs I saw when I arrived in
There are some things a traveler can prepare for pre-departure. Adequate clothing, comfortable shoes, a stockpile of medicine. Other things, while expected, cannot be fathomed until experienced. I understand that
1. DO NOT, under any circumstance, come to a complete stop.
2. Use your horn, use your horn, use your horn. There is no motor vehicle situation that cannot be resolved favorably by engaging the horn. A short honk is appropriate for announcing your intention to switch lanes in heavy traffic. A slightly longer honk may be necessary for announcing a left turn across several lanes. Finally, when passing large trucks on mountainous roads, do not release the horn, as it is of the utmost importance that you have only one functional hand on the wheel when another large truck comes careening in your direction.
3. Use your turn signal sporadically, preferably when it makes the least sense.
4. It is of utmost importance that you arrive at your destination as quickly as possible. Neither your life, nor the lives of your passengers, is worth the loss of face you will suffer if you follow cars at a reasonable distance, slow for pedestrians or cyclists, or choose not to drive into oncoming traffic whenever convenient. Do not embarrass yourself, and bring shame to your family name, for the sake of passenger safety and sanity.
5. Despite the numerous interstate signs commanding you to “buckle up,” seat belts are actually illegal. All vehicle owners are required to purchase seat covers which make seat belts inaccessible to passengers. Those who purchase seat covers with mistranslated English themes on them will receive reimbursement from the government. If you drive a taxi, wrap all seatbelts around headrests repeatedly until taut, so passengers understand that your ability to drive safely is unprecedented.
6. Where they happen to exist, lane markings are barely a suggestion. The expected behavior is to straddle them and engage your horn as specified above in order to announce your intention to move left, right, forward or back as is suitable.
7. In the event that you feel too important to stop at a red light, please press horn appropriately and accelerate into the cross-traffic. If you have installed flashing red and blue lights in your vehicle for personal use, this is an appropriate time to engage them.
8. Should you find yourself in the far right lane heading a direction you suddenly do not wish to go, begin U-turn by inching into opposing lanes and pressing the horn as prescribed for mountainside driving. DO NOT, under any circumstance, come to a complete stop.
9. Upon arrival at your destination, or if you feel compelled to drive on the pedestrian walkway for increased efficiency, you will need to cut through the bicycle/motor bike lane, usually 5-10 riders thick. Expect to be ignored, as bikers are busy text messaging with both hands, lighting or smoking cigarettes, balancing children and infants between their legs, etc., in addition pedaling. Simply engage the horn and proceed slowly. DO NOT, even for a family of four riding on one bike, come to a complete stop.
10. Simulation exercise: A bus meets a semi truck on a curve ascending a mountain. A car is passing the truck and there is no shoulder. No matter which driver you are, DO NOT slow down. Lay on your horn and increase your speed. If you are driving the bus or the semi, wish for good luck to save you from falling down the mountain as the car squeezes between you. If you are in the car, repeat this passing technique as frequently as necessary until you reach your destination.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
The Pain of Unrequited Love
I've always been infatuated with the United States Postal Service. Long before the interwebs brought widespread friends and family a click away, the USPS carried cards, pictures, and the occasional (and now nearly extinct) letter with respectable grammar. Not surprisingly, I've marveled at how they manage to keep paper so smooth on cross-country journeys. I do love a nice, flat piece of paper.
People have a tendency to distrust my long-time lover, the USPS, insisting upon things like package insurance and delivery confirmation. My post office never misplaced so much as a post card. I balked whenever someone suggested such outlandish acts of treachery. Insure a package? Nonsense. Love really is blind.
I recently entrusted my dear United States Postal Service with another inanimate, government-owned object I'm quite fond of, my United States Passport, which needed to travel to the Chinese embassy in Chicago to be adorned with an employment visa. I loved my passport just enough to do something I've never done - certify my mail. You know what they say, put a lover on a leash and he's bound to run away.
Instantly, my true and faithful servant fell off the loyal service train (or interstate). Ten days after I left my well-traveled passport at the Forest Ave PO in Des Moines, it still had not arrived at its destination. Like any neglected girl would do, I started making phone calls, complete with hopeless pleas and angry tyraids delivered to automated devices that had no capacity to respond appropriately. Like a typical dishonest partner, the USPS returned with vague messages like, "Your case is open, but I can't tell you more than that until the end of the day," and "Your package is at the post office." As opposed to what, the damn zoo? The automated answering service for the track and confirm branch of the postal service actually has a statement when you ask to speak to a real person that says something along the lines of, "Just so you know, the person you are about to talk to likely does not know a damn thing. Do you still want to talk to them?"
I poked and prodded for a full two days before receiving confirmation--via the online tracking system--that my item had been delivered. There is speculation as to whether it sat in the DSM or Chicago post office undetected all those days. Jerk didn't even have the balls to call and apologize.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Things, Odds, & Ends
So, I wrote this note the night I got home from Des Moines, after enjoying my friend Liz's wedding and the ever-thrilling West Point bar scene. Suffice it to say, I was not sober. I apparently did not succeed in publishing it after I wrote it, which is probably good because waking to find that I wrote and published an entire blog that I didn't remember creating might have embarassed me. But I just read it and decided it might be important to publish. If you require proof of my inebriation, I would like you to know that there is absolutely nothing wrong with my parents' space bar. Read on:
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It is approximately 2 a.m., I've had a crazy 72-ish hours, and the best way I could serve the general populus is by rendering myself unconscious. Unlucky for you, I'm just crazy enough to feel like writing. Even though my parents apparently have a janky, barely functioning space bar.
First things first, Things:
Yesterday, I moved out of my lovely apartment on Des Moines' finest street, Brattleboro Ave. 2920. It was a lovely place to spend year 4 at Drake, and I enjoyed 67% of my time there. My landlord was pretty chill, as far as slum lords go. Unfortunately yesterday I proved myself less than chill, as far as tenants go. But that's a story for the "Odds" chapter.
As far as Things go, I would like to let everyone know that:
a) The YWCA (7th and Grand) has a "Dress for Success" closet. I donated a box of travel-sized shaving cream, which now resides in said closet. If you are of the professional variety and have apparel to dispose of, I suggest taking it there, where ladies who really need jobs will be able to utilize your threads to score a respectable job.
b) The Animal Rescue League takes couch cushions. If you've given up on your pile of dust, covers, and dirty hand-me-down pillows, take them to the ARL. The animals love you.
Awkwardly, Odds:
I lied to our landlord about the couch on the dumpster belonging to us. I will claim that the devil made me do it. Although, actually, it was my mother. I guess I was worried that he would make me take it out or pay a bunch of money or something, but I doubt that would have happened (apparently it only costs $5 to have furniture picked up from the curb). I was uncomfortable enough, though, to call him in the morning and tell him the truth. He thought it was honorable.
-----------------------------------------
It is approximately 2 a.m., I've had a crazy 72-ish hours, and the best way I could serve the general populus is by rendering myself unconscious. Unlucky for you, I'm just crazy enough to feel like writing. Even though my parents apparently have a janky, barely functioning space bar.
First things first, Things:
Yesterday, I moved out of my lovely apartment on Des Moines' finest street, Brattleboro Ave. 2920. It was a lovely place to spend year 4 at Drake, and I enjoyed 67% of my time there. My landlord was pretty chill, as far as slum lords go. Unfortunately yesterday I proved myself less than chill, as far as tenants go. But that's a story for the "Odds" chapter.
As far as Things go, I would like to let everyone know that:
a) The YWCA (7th and Grand) has a "Dress for Success" closet. I donated a box of travel-sized shaving cream, which now resides in said closet. If you are of the professional variety and have apparel to dispose of, I suggest taking it there, where ladies who really need jobs will be able to utilize your threads to score a respectable job.
b) The Animal Rescue League takes couch cushions. If you've given up on your pile of dust, covers, and dirty hand-me-down pillows, take them to the ARL. The animals love you.
Awkwardly, Odds:
I lied to our landlord about the couch on the dumpster belonging to us. I will claim that the devil made me do it. Although, actually, it was my mother. I guess I was worried that he would make me take it out or pay a bunch of money or something, but I doubt that would have happened (apparently it only costs $5 to have furniture picked up from the curb). I was uncomfortable enough, though, to call him in the morning and tell him the truth. He thought it was honorable.
And, finally, Ends:
I really grew to think of Des Moines as my second home over the past 4 years, and it was impossibly difficult to leave the city and all of my friends who remain. As I bawled and told Nicole I didn't actually want to go to China anymore, she said, "Whitney, you will rock China. I wouldn't ordinarily tell a person that they would rock something as large as China, but it's you, and you will." While I don't know how true this is, I do appreciate the sentiment.
The Nadas wrote this song about their beloved DSM. I offer it to you all as a farewell:
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Too Wild for Comfort
Every spectator in Yellowstone hopes for comfortably close encounters with wildlife. Three bears, a fox, a heard of buffalo, some deer and countless chipmunks graced us with their presence during our day in the gorgeously preserved park. The fox was too quick for a photo op. and the grizzly bear was so far away that in pictures he looks remarkably similar to a ball of fluff masquerading as a bear. The deer would’ve remained unfazed if I stuck my lens in their ears. Maybe they’re not so wild, after all. The following morning I drove back into the park, intending to see more wildlife and to enjoy a long run through the wild backcountry (and to avoid the wailing that accompanies dressing a toddler each morning).
I chose a trail surrounded by gorgeous mountains on either side, which supposedly ran along a sparkling stream in a five-mile loop. I should’ve learned two days prior to be wary of supposed five-mile loops. I jogged jauntily down the side of the hill, barely aware of how far I was going, the Prius becoming invisible as I descended. The dew was still clinging to the grass, a mist not yet burned off the stream as I approached. Momentarily forgetting Yellowstone’s complimentary pamphlets about how wild animals are—duh—rather dangerous, and hikers hike at their own risk, my imagination ran wild. How cool would it be if I saw a bear or a buffalo down here?
Then I almost tripped. Over a pile of bones. I tried to convince myself that they probably washed up from the river, but they were pretty far up. Then I looked up and realized I couldn’t see outside the valley. I also swear I saw a coyote standing on a rock shelf 100 yards away, licking his lips and thanking his lucky stars that two meals stumbled upon his lair this morning. But maybe it was just a rock.
A long run had sounded so wonderful, I just couldn’t give it up. I jogged a few more paces into knee-high grass beside the water. Then Chris Farley’s voice came to me from a classic SNL skit, and I decided to turn around. No one’s going to care how many miles you ran when you’re a pile of BONES down by the RIVER.*
*If you’re too young, too old, or too boring to get this joke, watch the video here.
Is That Digital?
My body temperature hovers somewhere below ninety-eight degrees, at least a half-degree below the average human’s. My friends are used to it. My boyfriend dutifully, if grudgingly, holds my hands when they’re especially frigid. I’m cold, in the same way that I am 5’6” and Caucasian. It’s my natural state. Yet every time I go out, without fail, a man will saunter up to me and deliver his smoothest line from what I assume is an infinite reservoir of clever come-ons. “You look cold.” Thank you, I am cold. You look stupid.
On the boardwalk across from Old Faithful last week, I learned that technology is the key to averting this stating-the-obvious flirtation. Set a camera up on a tripod, look like you know what you’re doing, and men on either side of you, even the ones with 7-year-old daughters vying for their attention, want to talk about your camera. What kind of camera is that? How’s the image quality? Yes, honey, I know the geyser is erupting but I’m trying to talk to this girl about her Canon XSi. Don’t interrupt.
Two lessons to take away from this: Gold-digging ladies, get yourself a nice camera. Guys who inevitably will have nothing clever to say to the next interesting girl you see, “Is that digital?” trumps “You look cold.”
Thursday, July 16, 2009
In the Rodeo Capital of the World, Stupid Decisions are Contagious
Most people who know my brother and I would, I hope, describe us as generally responsible people. As we walked up a mountain at dusk with nothing but a Labrador, a camera, and Wall Drug’s finest walking stick, I had to concede that most people would be wrong. In our defense, our hotel’s front desk clerk said the trail was five miles up and back. He also gave us bad directions to the trail entrance, which should have been our first clue that, friendly as he was, he probably didn’t know much of anything.
In addition to a late start and poor preparation, my brother glanced at a steep portion of mountain near the top and declared, “I think I’ll climb this part and meet you at the top.” Jazz thought it was a terrible idea, as evidenced by her unwillingness to follow me on the road while her owner risked his life on a hill, which was presumably fenced in for no trivial reason. When he emerged again on the road he described his climb something like this: “That was cool, but probably not the best decision I’ve ever made.” Apparently it involved sticking his hands into caves while plotting how he would use the WallStick to fend off any wild cats that emerged. I’m not sure if this makes Wall Drug’s merchandise more or less ridiculous. Neither is Jazz.
What happens next, Matt will call luck. I’d go with unfortunately convenient. We made it to the almost-top, where a couple had (conveniently) driven up to watch the sunset. We could hear the cats calling, it was after 10 p.m., and Matt was worried about losing his dog or his sister to the creatures of the night. He interrupted their romantic moment to inquire if we could perhaps hitch a ride—down a mountain, on steep, windy gravel—in the back of their truck. Not backseat. Back. With the spare tire. The man stuttered a, “Uh, well, it’s kinda bumpy but uh…” and we jumped in.
For the first 36 seconds I stared down at the spare tire and counted, reminding myself that it was only 5 miles (which is, I must point out, twice as much as 2.5. If you’re reading this, deceitful receptionist.) I did eventually look up, because riding backward and looking down are two sure causes of motion sickness for me. If I’m ever commissioned to write a travel book for Cody, Wyoming (The Rodeo Capital of the World!), I’ll certainly recommend watching the rodeo from the back of a pick-up on a mountain two miles away. You know, just to say you did it.
Later, as we’re cruising into town in the safety of a 5-star safety-rated Toyota mini van on a dangerously flat, 35 mph speed-limited, paved road, my brother says (quite seriously, lest you think he intended this to be funny), “Oh! I better buckle up!”
On Monuments
Anyone who has ever driven within 300 miles of Wall, SD on I-90 has seen a sign for Wall Drug. Free Ice Water. America’s Favorite Roadside Attraction. Animated Life Sized T-Rex. This-Sign-Is-A-Not-So-Subliminal-Message-Ordering-You-To-Stop-At-Wall-Drug-If-You-Call-Yourself-An-American. It’s nuts. And it honestly wasn’t even on our route at the beginning of the day. But somewhere between Matt setting my camera up on a tripod in the middle of the highway beside the entrance sign to the Badlands, and our wonderfully panoramic hikes within, mystical forces conspired to land us, starving and thirsty, in the shadeless town of Wall right at lunchtime.
Interestingly, every tourist at Wall Drug looked like they had suffered a similar fate. Every face—especially those of the women in line for the two-stall bathroom—read, “The signs told me to come, but I’m honestly not sure what I’m doing here, surrounded by South Dakota key chains and generic native art, trying to enjoy a buffalo burger before taking numerous photos of my child next to the large dinosaur and the six-foot-tall bunny out back. I guess I just wanted some free ice water.” (According to Wall Drug lore, the initial success of the place was due to a “free ice water” sign put up late in the Depression era, when tourists were beginning to accumulate on their way to see Yellowstone or the recently completed Mount Rushmore.)
Looking around at the mayhem, which our toddler certainly contributed to, I dubbed Wall Drug a “Monument to Ridiculousness.” Which is nice, I guess. Ridiculousness is one of the pillars of American civilization (reality TV, anyone?) and thus just as deserving of an adequate monument as anything or anyone else (veterans, presidents, natural beauty, long-suffering Native Americans, et cetera). Kelly almost modified my classification to “Monument to White Ridiculousness.” But just as we walked out the door, a lone, formally dressed black man came in. Somehow his attire made the whole scene even more ridiculous. But we did get a nice walking stick.
Our second monument of the day, Mt. Rushmore, was the site of a Greenpeace protest just hours after we left. The most exciting things that occurred during our visit:
1) We met another Coast Guard officer who was moving from Seattle to Virginia. This confirmed my growing suspicion that the U.S. Military’s policy of moving its employees every few years is actually an elaborate scheme established in conjunction with the U.S. Tourism Industry to ensure that the inherently patriotic must hit the road every summer.
2) One of the original drillers of the sculpture was in the gift shop signing books.
3) Matt squished George Washington’s head.
Where I've Been
On July 6, I set off with my brother Matt, his wife, Kelly, and their 17-month-old son, Jimmy, along with a lick-addicted Labrador and a skittish Italian Greyhound, on a six-day, seven-state drive from Des Moines to Seattle. As we cruised out of Iowa into the Black Hills of South Dakota Matt asked, “Does this landscape remind you a little bit of Ireland?” It did, somewhat, but that wasn’t the remarkable part of his inquiry. What’s remarkable, I mused, is that I’ve spent more of my days in places like Ireland and Germany than I have in states so closely bordering my own. I decided this trip was the perfect opportunity to experience more of my own country before I depart for another international tour. I present for you a short series on the things I learned along the way. If you’ve no time for anecdotal entertainment, here’s the summary: America is a beautiful, terrifying, ridiculous nation.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Perspective, or Things That Are More Important Than Iced Tea
Disclaimer: This is only loosely related to China, in that some of my days at the country club make me very excited that said days are numbered.
Tuesday, 6:45 a.m.: Ladies are set to show up for breakfast before a morning of golf. I made coffee, juice, and several other all-important breakfast buffet elements, and was just finishing up when—“Where’s the TEA?! Girls, I need that tea in fifteen minutes! What the hell have you been doing up here?!”
A word about brewing our particular brand of industrial kitchen tea: It takes five minutes. I did not major in math, but if elementary school taught me one thing, it’s that five is one-third of fifteen. That gives me time to finish brewing tea and pick my nose before these proper ladies show up.
My manager’s unwarranted panic, which he feeds off of to get through most of his shifts governing the all-important functioning of our Club For The Uncomfortably Wealthy, got me thinking about perspective. You know, that bygone concept of measuring seemingly challenging things against actually challenging things to assure yourself that the apocalypse will (likely) not be caused by the timing of tea production?
Sunday, 8:00 a.m.: A second incident solidifies my belief that something must be said. I’m working in the golf course concession stand, pouring too-strong bloody marys for guys who, doubtless, should be at home helping their wives get the family ready for church. This guy saunters up with two friends, shouts his order over their heads—I don’t hear it, an important detail—and then disappears to the bathroom. He reappears minutes later, looking annoyed. Where is his drink? He ordered a drink? I didn’t know. Thanks to this misunderstanding, I present for your enjoyment:
How To Have a Vodka-Water-Lemonade Made Without Telling the Server What She’s Doing, as told by Some Jerk
1) “Now, put some ice in a glass.”
2) “Good, ok, now get the Absolut out.”
3) “Now pour a shot.”
4) “That’s not enough. Pour a bigger shot.”
5) “Charge me for a goddamn quadruple shot if you have to, just put more vodka in there.”
6) “Now pour some water in there. No, like this.” (Forcibly remove water from server’s hands.)
7) “Aaand get out the lemonade.” (While server is retrieving lemonade from cooler, still baffled by why, exactly, this is happening, lay hands on bottle of Absolut and indiscriminately pour the amount of vodka you really wanted in that drink).
8) “Now pour the lemonade. Good. That’s how you make a vodka-water-lemonade. What’s your name? How long have you been working here? Did you have a late night? Yeah, I can tell you have no idea what you’re doing out here, Whitney.”
9) Disappear into a burning inferno. No one will miss you.
I was confused about what would make anyone behave this way, until my friend Erika cleared it up for me: “His penis is too small, he’s cheating on his wife, and he has so much money he doesn’t know what to do with it.” A-ha!
One can only assume, from their complete absorption in the drink-related details of their lives, that my manager and this friendly club member haven’t watched or read the news—golf scores don’t count—in the past week. Had they, they’d know that people are facing some rather formidable odds in places like North Korea, Iran, and Somalia (And elsewhere in Des Moines, for that matter.) They would understand why how drunk they get this morning is not my primary concern, and shouldn’t be theirs, either.
But I know we all do it. We all get caught up in the minute details of our own lives, and forget that expensive gas is a light burden to bear, being ten minutes late won’t end the world, and it actually doesn’t matter what the neighbors think of your infrequently-mowed yard. So, the next time you’re stressed about iced tea, or your professional or personal equivalent, be thankful you are not:
1) A journalist sentenced to twelve years of hard labor for attempting to expose human rights abuses: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8103006.stm
2) Living in a theocratic nation where a Supreme Leader trumps any charade of democracy:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8102406.stm
3) Attempting to operate a navy in an area where most income comes from criminal activity and there hasn’t been a functioning government for nearly 20 years:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8096137.stm
4) This guy: http://www.facepalm.org/images/03.jpg
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Airplanes, and other Thoughts on Space
According to the plane ticket I purchased last Monday—with half of my life savings, if you must know—I have exactly 67 days to accomplish all the things I planned to do before undertaking my Chinese adventure: Learn to operate chopsticks with grace, train my vocal apparatus to navigate Mandarin tones (also, with grace, or something that sounds like it.) And, in my most extravagant scheme, replenish my grossly-severed savings account.
So far, I’ve learned to count to ten and utter incredibly useful phrases such as, “I am not a man” and “That woman is fat.” (Presumably, I could construe my meager linguistic feats to also form sentences such as, “That woman is not a fat man.” China, here I come.)
In addition to the standard responses detailed in my first post, other sentiments expressed about my move to China include “You’re so brave!” and “Aren’t you worried about culture shock?” My pocket answer to these was, previously, “No, I do not think I’m incredibly brave, just terribly curious about the world. And I appreciate cultures for what they are, not how they compare to mine.” That was until one night not too long ago—and no, whether or not I was slightly inebriated is not a vital detail in this anecdote—I took to wondering what’s in a traditional Chinese breakfast dish. Google delivered me here. Brief, terrifying summary of ingredients:
3 tablespoons short or medium grain rice
1 litre/2 pints/4 cups water
Oh, and if you’re feeling especially ravenous, it’s common to stir in some white fish. Now, I’ve once or twice enjoyed salmon and cream cheese on a bagel for breakfast, but as a general rule I relegate seafood to after-breakfast pursuits. The other option my search yielded was just your basic, artery-clogging, morning ball of dough and grease. With a side of rice gruel, I presume.
Admittedly, it’s difficult to find a corner of the earth where the basic cereal/milk combo can’t be acquired. I’m sure I won’t be plugging my nose and drinking my breakfast (heh.) throughout the year. But I do think it’s important to immerse yourself in local traditions rather than scoping out the omnipresent American comforts abroad.
Speaking of comforts:
I’m out for a run today, and a man has a bucket and his garden hose camped out on the sidewalk. He sees me coming, drags his hose a good 3 feet away from the sidewalk, still looks up apologetically and offers a “Sorry!” as I jog by. This charming old man expressed remorse because his garden hose came within three feet of my personal space. Midwesterners enjoy approximately 100 feet of personal space each*, and, I’ve noticed, are incredibly apologetic if we invade this space without express permission (rock concerts, crowded bars, and the occasional food-related festival excluded.) I offered the man a smile and a, “You’re fine!”—although in running mode, it may have come off as a grimace and a “FINE.” But I meant well.
The incident reminded me of our first exercise during our week of teacher training. Twenty-six of us crammed into one of Drake’s cozier men’s restrooms (the first time, I assure you, that a urinal and its accompanying scents so severely violated my personal space). Starting with the poor soul in the back of the pack, we had to push our way through the unmoving crowd as they maintained eye contact with us but refused to move out of our path. The lesson: Men’s bathrooms are gross. Oh, and China is a crowded place where the “100 feet of personal space” rule does not apply.
This is not to say I’m conceding defeat and admitting fears of culture shock. Merely an observation that I may be hurdling quite a few Chinese garden hoses, and gardeners, unapologetically blocking my path.
*could be gross over- or under-estimation. What do you think I am, a journalist?
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Everyone's Staring
I have it on good authority (Wikipedia) that Americans are scarce in Chengde. It’s small by Chinese standards (3-400,000) and known primarily as a mountain resort for emperors in eras past. Quaint, not well known or inundated with tourists who look like me. Our program coordinator has been upfront: You will be an oddity. People will stare.
In addition to this, anecdotal evidence suggests that my Midwestern relatives and friends are, by and large, quite uneasy about me spending a year in China. This is a topic for another post, but to foreshadow a bit, I’ve been “warned” about facing such tribulations as squatting to use the toilet, eating nothing but rice, acquiring slanty eyes (I wish I was kidding) and being nuked by North Korea. My loved ones are staring—cheering me on, or at the very least hoping I manage to survive the trials and tribulations of, to quote a very well meaning old woman, “That bad place.”
Finally, I always listen to this song (pardon the TMNT) when faced with new situations. The refrain goes something like this: “Paloma you wonder if you’ll miss the thunder and everyone’s staring but no one is caring for you now.” I first heard the song as a freshman at Drake, when “no one is caring for you now” seemed an especially apt description of my newfound adult freedoms. While I was studying in Ireland, I listened to it over and over again while fretting about “missing the thunder” of Drake happenings while I was away.
Now, as I anticipate living in a “small” (hailing from a town of 90-some people, I choke every time I’m forced to describe a city of hundreds of thousands as “small”) Chinese city where eyes are literally on me every minute, and knowing that everyone back home is watching just as intently from afar, the “everyone’s staring” line couldn’t be more accurate.
So, that’s that. Everyone’s staring. I hope everyone’s reading!
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