Your Estimated Time of Arrival Is.

I generally make an effort not to dwell on transportation mishaps, as the best travel writers seldom bore their readers with the ins and outs of navigating a bus schedule (half of our time in Harbin was spent walking nowhere and riding the bus the wrong way to the outer extremities of a humongous city. Wanna hear about it? No?) However, I’ve decided it’s worth noting that our red-eye flight from Shanghai, forecasted to land in Delhi at 2:45 a.m., unceremoniously flew past and landed in Mumbai, it’s second destination, instead. My worst traveling fear, of falling asleep in transit and waking up in the wrong city, was realized.

Our company made the indefinite delay tolerable. We met Ramon, a button and zipper salesman (more exotic than it sounds) from Netherlands, a collection of Indian students who just finished medical school in Shanghai, and a lovely Chinese businesswoman who let me use her cell phone to inform our driver that we’d be indefinitely late. He took the eleven-hour delay as an opportunity to do absolutely nothing at the airport and then charge us for eleven hours of parking. When we finally arrived in Delhi, we heard an almost-thorough announcement that another flight would arrive late. At the end of the message, the announcer said, “The estimated time of arrival is.” Is. Is we have no idea so we’re not going to say anything. The Indians in line were stoic, unphased, while travel-weary and delirious Westerners doubled over laughing.

The Here and Now is Coming Round

When the year turned in China, I was sitting in my narrow living room with Jason, Becky and Sara, attempting to pop a huge bottle of champagne that essentially tastes like a drop of fruit juice mixed with bai jiu (Chinese liquor, or, the grossest thing ever deemed consumable.)

The four of us trolled through Billboard’s best of the decade lists, musing at the fact that this is the first turn of a decade we’ve been functionally conscious for, remembering who we were crushing on when “You Got it Bad” was big, considering the raunchy lyrics of R. Kelly’s “Remix to Ignition” that provided the background for some of high school’s greatest moments, applauding Justin Timberlake’s ability to stay afloat, nay improve, post N’Sync, and recalling which frat basement we were dancing in to “Gold Digger” this time four years ago. Also, noting that we haven’t even heard of some of the artists in the week’s top 40—we really have been gone awhile.

True, our New Year’s celebration was exceptionally tame. Our rowdy crew has dwindled in the past month, aided by an English buddy insinuating that some girls at a KTV were prostitutes and instigating a fight that landed a Chinese friend and a couple waiguoren at the police station, veritably guaranteeing that the rest of us won’t be permitted to remain in Chengde one second past the end of our teaching contract. We’re trying to keep a low profile.

In my first significant act of the decade, I went as close to Siberia as I ever hope to be. Sara, Becky and I ventured up to Harbin, where the current low is -23 F, and tomorrow’s forecasted low is -32 F, for their Ice and Snow Festival. I invested in some warm and amusing knock-off apparel for the occasion—I am the proud owner of a “Lumbia” coat, complete with the Columbia snowflake logo, and also a pair of rather legit-looking Ugg boots, which I really wish said “Gugg” like the ones I saw in Chengde last week.

The city of Harbin remains in a deep freeze until March, which entitles them to build an entire ice amusement park on an island, complete with a several-stories-tall bottle of Harbin beer, the local brew. In addition to ice buildings, snow sculptors create scaled replicas of monuments like the Egyptian Sphinx. I thought I was just going to freeze my tail off and get a few cool pictures, but the festival was more interactive than that—every other sculpture featured steps up and often-enormous ice slides to the bottom. The Hollywood Hill was sculpted in snow, and a line of children and adults waited to sled down it.

Harbin is unique in China because it has a history of Russian involvement, which is visible in some of its downtown architecture and restaurants. At a Russian café decorated like your grandmother’s living room—or a curious antiques museum, if your grandmother isn’t the type to pile old photos on the wall and keep curio cabinets full of old cameras or a cabinet devoted to delicious vodkas—I had borscht that I would almost accuse of being authentic, and some tiny Russian cookies that followed it perfectly. I assume the actual Russians dining there were paid for adding to the legitimacy of the place.

The park in the city center has a themed extension of the island festival. This year it was Disney themed—the On Ice variety, of course. All the princesses, and a row of villains, were sculpted in snow. When I get to India next week and am finally able to post pictures, I will throw up some Disney trivia, because I have a picture of a snow villain that I swear I’ve never seen before. Free postcard if you can tell me who it is. I have a picture in front of Ariel’s frozen ocean palace, which is enough for me to concede that it was worth wearing two layers of tights under my jeans for a couple days. I also experienced the pleasure of a sleeper train back from Harbin, which was tolerable except that I woke up in an absolute panic, thinking that I actually was heading to my freezing death in Siberia.

Perhaps it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, but at the beginning of November I thought to myself, “These next two months are going to be the hardest.” The daylight dwindled, and as the temperatures hung out below zero I spent as little time as possible outside the apartment. We all did our best to create ample holiday cheer while not thinking too hard about it being the holidays. Those months survived, I am incredibly excited for the next segment of my journey, which begins Thursday when Jason and I leave for six weeks in India. I’m excited about the whole trip but, notably for you, I’ll finally be able to post to my own blog and put up pictures from the last 5 months.

Happy New Year!

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, and all Through the Club…

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.

"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.

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.

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?”

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.