Wo Shi Frogger

Traffic here is … special. Crossing the street is like a study in attrition, where the goal is to get out far enough into the street so that the oncoming car is forced to go around your back (a nice way of saying ‘swerve.’) Adding to the fun is the four-lane road that we cross several times daily, because it runs along the campus, in between it and anything else. Nothing says “Good morning” like dodging cars at 7:30 in the morning.

A favorite game is trying to find the ‘Perfect Cross.’ A Perfect Cross is one where you walk straight across the road at a constant speed without having to change direction or stop to avoid certain death. A Poor Cross gets you a silver medal, while a Failure to Cross is considered losing, but at that point you should probably pay attention to what the doctor is asking you rather than bemoan your failure.

Car rides are entertaining, but mostly when viewed from an American perspective. The fun gets taken away when you begin to share the Chinese casual disregard for the lines of the road. White, yellow, they’re mostly just suggestions. So it is not uncommon to find yourself speeding down the road, looking straight at the front of another car, as the distance between you shrinks from ‘acceptable,’ where there is a lot of open space between you, to ‘curious and thought-provoking,’ typified by uncomfortable memories of that video that they show you in Driver’s Ed, to ‘distressing,’ where all rational thought is superceded by the instinctual repetition of unsavory words. Then you tuck into a space that magically appears beside you, or the oncoming car swerves a bit, and the danger passes – at least until your taxi driver decides that the car in front of him is going too slow.

I think that may be one of the things I like best in China. It is a believer in natural consequences. There are no fines for jaywalking, but the penalty for walking across the street without looking might be getting squished. At least for a foreigner, it feels like there are fewer restrictions, but there is also less of a buffer if something goes wrong. It seems somehow … right. The problem with civilization is that we civilize ourselves right out of the world. Consequence gives meaning, and so a world without consequence is a world without meaning. Or a world where money is the consequence is also a world where money is the meaning. China is an opportunity to get away from that, to step out – at least for a short time –from under the expectant burden of my own wealth and comfortable civilization and live a little more simply.

Thoughts From An Icebox

I hate being cold. I spent about 10 minutes thinking of a witty way to open this up, and decided that nothing could convey the depth and sincerity of my hatred of inadequate warmth. It’s almost primal in its simplicity. There is no room for equivocation, there is no rationalization or “finding the silver lining.” I hate the cold like the cavemen hated the T-Rex. It is a simple emotion, but very, very fervent.

It’s not that Chongqing is so very cold, but that it is completely cold. There are many places much colder than here, but I think that most of those places either have heaters, or a distinct lack of life. Nothing is heated here, and so I spend my days bundled up in long underwear, sweatshirts, beanie, gloves, and three inches of down jacket. My night wardrobe consists of a long sleeve top, thick knit socks, and pants that inhabit the dubious region between sweatpants and long underwear. This, in combination with an electric heating pad, two hot water bottles, and five inches of assorted blankets serves to keep me warm enough through the night. Even still, I still wake up every morning to the sight of my breath hanging a few inches from my face like a tiny Charlie Brown cloud. I was watching a movie in my living room, huddled around my space heater, and realized that, as I exhaled, my breath would catch the light from the television and do funny things to it. While mildly amusing, the living room is no place to see one’s own breath.

I am probably less suited to the cold than most, and so my reaction has been slightly more extreme than my other counterparts. The one driving factor in my day is now to find some place of warmth. The only places that I have found heating is in the two tea houses that I have found. Bebei has been regrettably lacking in the tea house department. But these have heat, and so I can buy a glass of tea for 10 yuan (roughly $1.25, or one-and-a-half meals) and sit for a few hours in blessed warmth. Another highlight is the Chinese class that I had previously been skipping (too easy, and other things were more fun). Strangely enough, when I realized that there was free heating in the classroom, my interest in studying rudimentary Chinese grew exponentially.

The remarkable thing, though, is that I rarely hear complaints. This is not (as I might be apt to refer to it), an atrocity against humanity, but just the way things are. Rather than curse the cold, they bundle up, because there isn’t much else that can be done. That may be one of the biggest differences here. Things tend to be accepted rather than evaluated, whether due to cultural conditioning or lack of outside experience, I’m not sure. Probably a combination.

More on that later, because now it’s time to put tomorrow’s clothes under the blanket (one of my better ideas) and fire up the hot water bottle. Man, do I hate the cold.

Goodbyes

SPU left today, and Beibei was a different place. Things were colder, less vibrant, the sun was gone, and in its place there was nothing but rain. I’m actually not being poetic; weather took a significant turn for the worse that day. As Beibei cried for its loss, I scavenged through their leftovers, gathering power strips and endless amounts of laundry detergent, then closed each door for the last time. It seemed strangely appropriate that these final acts of practical frugality were so marbled with sentimentality.

The dark truth is that every ‘hello’ has a ‘goodbye’ lurking in its shadow. I have grown callous in the wake of my travels, and so I was surprised at how deeply the loss still cut. I realized that while I was used to the ‘goodbyes,’ I was always the one saying them and then moving on. This may be the first time that I have been left, and I was unprepared for the feeling of abandonment and jealousy as they went on to the ‘next big thing.’

The pain, though very real, is only important in its all-consuming immediacy. It is but temporary, and I am excited for the opportunities that will be revealed in its passing. I was at a talent show hosted by the foreign students dorm, and realized how little I am involved in Southwest, and – more surprisingly – how much I feel the lack. I very much enjoyed my time with SPU, but their presence has precluded my involvement with any SPU-independent part of Southwest.

In many ways, I am back to where I was three months ago, and the world seems full of opportunities. I hope to give a much more concerted effort to my language study, as well as spend significant amounts of time with my gymnastics and martial arts friends. Beyond that there is nothing but a big question mark, and my excitement is honed by the fear of the intangible unknown.

A Pleasantly Unmemorable Weekend.

Undying love for The Mix hostel. Anyone who charges ¥25 for a bed, maintains western toilets, and can maintain a friendly demeanor in the face of 30 loud American collegiates deserves sainthood. A few blocks from the city center, they have carved out a little piece of backpacker heaven resplendent with Tibetan tapestries and secluded by bamboo walls. I have no great stories from there, just a lot of gratitude.

Chengdu is … relaxing. Pleasantly flat and peppered with tea houses, it is a good place to kick back. While there I went to the Tibetan quarter, an oldtown Chinese tourist town, the panda reserve, a bamboo garden, an art market under a bridge, and had possibly the best burger in the world. The Tibetan quarter was blah, tourist town was a good use of an hour, the pandas were cute, the bamboo garden was peaceful, the art market productive, and the burger was … a religious experience. There. Now you know what I did in Chengdu. Mostly, I just hung out and had a good time.

I do, however, harbor great animosity towards the city’s taxis, or rather the dearth thereof. I spent a particularly unpleasant forty minutes alone on various street corners with my luggage, vainly looking for a taxi. Eventually I found what appeared to be a favorite taxi-driver bathroom and waited alongside a car as its driver was inside. When he came back I informed him that I would be riding in his taxi.

I’m really trying here, but am drawing a blank on any stories worth repeating. So, Chendgu: Great city, amazing hostels, far too few hostels. Done.

+3 Intellligence, Wussiness: -1

There are many busy days here in China, but today was not one of them. It was pleasant in its simplicity, though. The few days of sunshine had just come to an end, and we were bunkering down to weather the rain for however long it may choose to stay with us. Schedules were empty, and spirits were low.

Taking a mannequin, dressing it up in a Halloween costume, and hiding it in The Furor’s shower while she was at yoga only provided brief distraction. The results were satisfactorily amusing, but required patience, and delayed gratification has never been my thing.

The day before I had seen a glass pot that looked interesting, and so I parted with my 34 yuan (4ish dollars). Perhaps the most interesting feature of the pot was that it was filled with baijou, a corn-based liquor that is essentially the Chinese equivalent of moonshine. And so as I carried my 4 dollar, 2.3 litre pot of 60% alcohol, I had little hope for the quality of the contents, and began musing on how best to dispose of it, should it prove to be less than delicious.

Upon the taste test, it was utterly disgusting. Baijou is a bit of an artform here, and China has its share of Michelangelos as well as a few Picassos, but unfortunately all too many Kinkaids. I actually enjoy the drink, but this particular specimen was unconscionable, an affront to alcohol, and even to the entire ‘beverage’ family. Suffice to say, it was not fit for consumption.

However, on a slow day, one might remember that any alcohol over 80 proof can be lit on fire. That same person’s gaze might then alight on a certain large and unwanted quantity of 120 proof liquor. One might then say that it lit one’s imagination. Har har. Sorry. We then spent more time than I would like to mention lighting shot glasses on fire, pouring them into the sink, lighting them on fire again, pouring them into the sink again, lighting them again, pouring them into the sink again, then using a spoon to pick up the liquid flame and light another shot of baijou on fire. It was a gratifying day. There were brief experimentations with painting on the countertop with baijou and then lighting that fire, but our first attempts were unsuccessful, and we decided that success would mean too much lit alcohol in too uncontrolled of an environment (IE between the toilet paper roll and a 6-week old copy of Time. Deduct one point for lack of balls, but score three for intelligence.

More Pictures for the Not-So-Facebookly-Inclined

The first week or so in Beibei
When the SPUers got here
Hainan

An Evening Visitor

Karma, sweet karma. A few days ago, one of the students found a huge spider in their room. As far as I was concerned, though, they were on the ground floor (I’m on the fourth) in another building, so it seemed pretty remote. Still, I had my fair share of laughs at other people’s expense as they squirmed at the thought of behemoth arachnids showing up in their bedroom. I didn’t stress about it.



And then tonight, I was woken up from 2 minutes (literally, I checked my clock) of sleep by some noises in my living room. I looked, and there were no robbers, which was a relief. Unless they were afraid of half-naked white guys, I think I might have found myself a bit unprepared for any sort of intimidation. I laid down for another minute, and then heard strange noises in my bathroom. All of a sudden, I was stressing about the spiders.

I turn on the light once more, look in the bathroom, and thought, possibly for the first time in my life, “Thank God, it’s a rat.” I tried to close the door, but the rat was faster. It streaked out, and into the little crevice between my bed and the wall. As far as my apartment furnishings go, the only possible instruments of death that I could think of for a rat this size would be my knives; I’m not about to sully my kitchen knife on rat, and the thought of me chasing a rat with a military-issue search and rescue knife seemed a bit absurd. And messy. So that was out. I had nothing to catch it with, and besides, it was raining outside and I didn’t want to take it all the way downstairs. So I moved my nightstand to block off his entrance. With him trapped, and the hour so late, I laid down and went back to sleep, lulled by the faint bumping noises coming from 8 inches below.

UPDATE:: I woke up this morning, and lifted my mattress to make sure the rat was still there. He wasn’t. However, three of my saltines were. The little bugger stole my crackers! Then on the way out, I saw that he gnawed his way through one of my hackey sacks. This means war, rat. This means war…

Echoes of the Past

Before we could get to the Terracotta warriors, perhaps the most famous testament to a man’s desire to fight until the end – and beyond, we had to do our own battle with the Xian traffic. Later on that day our bus would get into a honking battle with another bus, only to have the other bus violently cut us off and then stop so that their driver could walk back and yell at our driver. Despite our high hopes, there was no kung fu fighting. On that front, China has been a bit of a letdown.

But back to the morning. As we were clawing our way through the traffic, we were afforded an excellent view of Xian’s old city wall, the best preserved city wall in China, running 9 miles around the center of the city. It was old, it was beautiful. It only had four openings, one in each face of the wall. Our tour guide Cindy indulged in a rare moment of criticism, and informed us that while Xian traffic is normally very efficient, the wall tends to create bottlenecks and back the traffic up a bit.

I think her statement might have managed to sum up all of China. It is a place where the future’s greatest impediment is the past. And yet the quandary is, were they to give up the past in search of a better future, would they actually be gaining anything?

There are few things as outmoded and obsolete as city walls. Most old artifacts are still capable of performing their intended function. Old pots still hold water, old cotton gins can still do whatever it was that they originally did (1). This wall keeps people neither in nor out, but it does keep them in gridlock. Somehow I doubt that was part of the plan. It would be unthinkable to destroy it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if every single Xian citizen with a driver’s license hasn’t, at some point, wished that this particular national treasure were located a few miles outside of city limits.

China is China. It is almost a mantra that I have occasion to repeat daily. It is full of quirks and inefficiencies that have equal capacity to either enrage or endear. In the end, it boils down to being China. I don’t anger easily, but recently the quickest way to raise my ire has been to assume that the American way is normative without taking any time to consider the vast cultural and economic differences that make the two countries, in some ways, incomparable.

What angers me is that people come and refuse to take China on its own terms, ignoring its charms and crucifying its weaknesses. They see how it could be improved, but fail to see the cost to the national identity. And yet, where do we draw lines? Where must they sacrifice being Chinese in order to fit into the currently western-dominated business sphere? What is the price tag that we put on an identity? What should I give up of myself in order to go forward? What should I hold onto and allow to shape the way in which I advance?

Later I will get the opportunity to walk the wall. The day will be cold and eerily clammy, the sky misty and mysterious. The wall will fade into the fog about a hundred feet in either direction, and even though I know it is only 9 miles in circumference, at that time it will seem like it could stretch on forever, implacable and solid as the stones of which it is comprised. I will stand there on the wall that has stood against armies and traffic, the wall that has stood against time itself, and I will look down at the cars as they honk and scurry through the city, and I will wonder which I would prefer to be. Then I will turn and walk along the wall, through the fog, into the fog, trying to find the point where the mist touches the stone, because maybe at that point things will begin to make sense.


(1) Which, I have been told by a reliable sources, is not ‘make gin out of cotton.’ Sigh…

Eroticism

Chinese romance, like Batman, is a creature of the night. It is a thing of darkened alleys and forgotten corners; night falls and gives light to the passions of 80,000 students. It seems like every open space is filled with silent couples embracing, single shadows with four feet, barely talking and barely moving, content to just be there, on that patch of earth, together. They are doing nothing that an American third grader would balk at, and yet here, in this place, I think it might be more intensely erotic than the most debauched film that Hollywood could ever produce.

In a country without private spaces, these young lovers have created an aura of privacy by pure force of will. Despite what my eyes tell me, I am not seeing a field covered with hundreds of students, but a series of couples utterly alone in the dark that just happen to be three feet from the next couple that is utterly alone in the darkness.

Somehow the pressures of Big-Brother politics and cultural primness have pressed out a diamond. Walking through campus, I see couples just … sitting there …, and yet I think I want that for myself far more than any of the acts of conquest that poker table conversations have rendered mundane. Denied the anything-goes milieu born of American liberty as well as the private spaces that might allow for deviant acts, Chinese couples are restricted to secret unseen touches and whispers in the dark: acts of romance so small as to be insignificant if not for the repressed intensity with which they were committed.

It makes me wonder. Can we pursue a liberty, gaining the freedom to do something, without cheapening the thing that we have freed? When the kiss moved from the bedroom to the shopping mall, did it become something else? More importantly, did it become something less? Have we, in our great quest for sexual liberation, in our war against Puritanical prudishness, inadvertently cheapened romance into something that isn’t worth having? Have they, with their rules and morays, with their stipulations and restrictions, inadvertently enhanced the very thing that they were trying to repress? Have they nailed down a carpenter and created a Christ?


(Aside) I in no way am wanting to inadvertently insinuate that Christianity is solely a phenomenon resulting from a poorly handled political situation. I am only trying to relate my hypothesis to a historical series of ecclesial events, as seen through an objective and non-religious lens.

Dear Haixia Bay Resort, I Hope The Earth Opens Up And Swallows You Whole

It’s 2:30 AM. I am tired, hot, and grumpy as hell. I have no good will left, and so am stalking around the resort (1), a big white half-naked ball of smoldering fury, praying that someone challenges my presence. Not surprisingly, no one did. Matters were not improved when I finally emerged from the unnatural darkness and peered into the familiar glow of streetlights. I was right. It was only us.

The electricity went out at 11:00 last night, and hasn’t been back since. This means that we don’t have air conditioning in a climate where you can break a sweat while laying motionless on top of your covers. The secondary problem is that now I’m awake, and thirsty, the stores are closed, and I can’t use the electricity to boil myself some clean water. Thanks to my walk, I now knew that it wasn’t a regional blackout, but in fact very much the fault of our hotel. Ignorance may be bliss, but knowledge is a fiery inferno that keeps you company on a lonely night.

Generally speaking, I don’t consider myself a diva. I have been in much more discomfort than tonight, and in truth, my anger was not at a hotel that couldn’t keep its power on (2). My anger was at a hotel that has, over the past three days, gone out of its way to charge us for damages that we clearly did not incur, begrudgingly fed us sub-par food at inconvenient hours, closes its grocery store (our only access to water) during the “rest hours” of 9:30AM-6PM, and in general has tried to do its best to insure that we have as unpleasant an experience as possible. And now it has no power.

Allow me to widen the scope a bit.

In many ways, this vacation was a comedy of errors. Or perhaps a study in cultural contradictions. Mostly, though, I think it is just a big fatty monument to what an incompetent tool Mr. Dai is (3).

There is a great chasm that separates the Chinese and American perceptions of what a vacation should be. Americans want to “get away,” to barricade off a few days from their daily life and forget that there are such things as schedules and deadlines and bosses. Though the students have been having a lot of fun, they have spent a whirlwind three weeks blowing through the major cities and sites of China, and are ready for a little sedentary living.

Unfortunately, that is not the Chinese way. As best as I can tell, they go on vacation to get away from the routine of their days, to experience the excitement that can be found beyond the borders of their regular life. A Chinese vacation is a study in this-to-that-to-the other thing, trying to frantically squeeze it all in before the vacation ends and they board that last flight home. It might be because Chinese take fewer vacations, and so try to pack more into whatever time off they can get. It might just be a straight up inexplicable cultural thing. I don’t know. Either way, thanks to Mr. Dai’s maverick incompetence, we were saddled on a tour that we didn’t want, that wanted to keep us busy from 8AM-8PM with things that we didn’t want to see (coffee factories?), and kept us on a bus several hours a day. Thankfully we talked our way out of most of it, but every step was a struggle, every compromise the result of exhaustingly emphatic “discussion.”

It was an “all inclusive” tour, and so we couldn’t get away from the poor quality and money-grubbery that seemed indicative of every establishment that we patronized. I’m sure Hainan has delicious food, nice people, and passable accommodations, but we didn’t see any of them. We went to the tour hotels and ate the tour menus, where no one worried about what the customer wanted, because there was an endless string of tour groups still to come. Because everyone was getting kickbacks from everyone else, it was impossible to break the cycle and try to find something passable.

Which is why, at 2:30 in the morning, I was walking around the complex, livid. As a goodbye gift, the hotel tried to charge us for a toilet seat cover that someone didn’t notice was broken because they never tried to move the lid. Awesome.

(1) Ha. While technically, Haixia is, in fact, a resort, it is stretching the language to the limit. This refers strictly to the architectural layout of the facility, and is not meant in any way to infer the comfort, service, or general overall pleasantness usually associated with resorts.
(2) Or maybe who turned their power off to save energy. This was a hypothesis presented by a local, not the paranoid delusions of an over-entitled waiguoren.
(3) The Waiban representative who supervises the foreign students. In this case, he did not plan the vacation through Grins as he was asked, and did it himself. Much to our surprise and chagrin…

The Best Clark Kent That I Can Be

I am frequently asked, “So, how is teaching?”
I usually respond with, “Err…”

It’s not that I am uncertain about what I am doing and how I feel about it. It’s just that I would hesitate to call it “teaching.”

I teach 9 classes of 40-60 students, who I see for 90 minutes once a week. That comes out to 360 – 540 students, once a week. On top of that, I am teaching ‘conversation.’ Conversation is an interesting subject, and I think is actually closer to an art class than, say, history or math. I’m not speaking in any sort of qualitative measure, but in methodology, but in purpose. I am not so much imparting knowledge as I am developing (1) a skill. Unlike art, though, I have the only frame for what sounds right, and therefore must be personally involved in everything that happens in class. Doing the rough math, in 90 minutes I could hear each person speak for between a minute and a half and two minutes and fifteen seconds. Awesome.

There are days when the lesson plans go well, the students are engaged, they are asking good questions, and I get to hear some interesting opinions. Even on those days, though, am I actually teaching anything? Is anyone getting more conversant? How would I even know?

All of the real teachers out there will probably tell me how foolhardy this is, but I’ve come to realize that I teach out of pure force of personality. I am more a conductor than a professor, more a performer than educator. I project so much that I can hear my over-enunciated syllables bounce back at me; I fill the room with my voice. I am learning to dig deep trenches of silence to foul the steps of a wandering mind, then my words erupt again: first clipped and precise and then lower and drawn out, the percussion to arrest their attention and the flow to bring them in. I am becoming a good orator, I will give myself that (2). But are they learning?

I see their eyes locked on me as I present the material, and then watch them lower when I ask them to respond. I call names and they respond, their words stiff like a marionette, a puppet master still struggling with the strings. Rome was not built in a day, but was it built on two sentences a week (2)? Today I paired them up and gave parameters for a short conversation, asking that there be no Chinese spoken for 3 minutes.

They lasted 45 seconds. I timed it.

I think we are all in denial. I hear the teachers talk about the interesting topics brought up by this or that student, but know that they are just the over embellished pearl stolen from a gross, hairy hog’s snout of a day. I do it myself. I make dragons out of windmills, for fear that the truth might reveal that my fight against poor conversational skills is insignificant, empty, and foolish.

In the end, the students who want to learn will make the effort to speak in class and those who don’t will hide at the corners and bow their heads in silent shame when they are called on. I can’t make them try, and forced compliance only makes them look stupid and me feel like a jerk. Maybe I’m copping out. It doesn’t feel good to accept someone else’s lethargy, but it feels right. Most of the time. I guess that if I can’t be Superman, I might as well become the best Clark Kent that I can (4).

(1) Trying to develop… sigh.
(2) We discussed William Blake’s The Poison Tree, and at the end of class I read it as I thought it should be read. I got a standing ovation, a nice little ego stroke for the end of the day.
(3) That is, if you are one of the 10% of the students who get called on…
(4) Caveat time. I can’t accept this. Maybe I’m still too young and idealistic. There is truth in it, and now that I look at it again, it’s kindof a DC comics version of the Serenity Prayer (5). But I cannot accept that we don’t have within us the capacity to become more than mortal. Some small seed that may remain dormant for a lifetime, but also that may, under the right conditions, erupt with blinding fury, transforming us and all around us. A grain of sand, dreaming the dreams of stars...
(5) God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

The Sino-American War in Me

I just got sucker punched by Karma, and now I’ve been laid out for a day.

SPU got here on Sunday, and as soon as they arrived, my lazy afternoons turned into frantic translation-fests. It’s really good to be busy. Sunday was a blur of room assignments and welcome-to-the-campus pomp and pageantry. On Monday I went on a long hike that, at five hours and 2,000 feet of elevation gain via uneven stone steps, was a bit more than I was planning on. Monday evening involved a bar, and I had a good time because I was enjoying getting to know everyone. Tuesday I left the apartment at 7:30, and did not get back until 11:30. The day was pretty mundane: trips to the market, trips to the grocery store, trips to the bakery, where my job was to roam around and speak Chinese whenever someone pulled my string (or that’s how it felt). When we sat down at a snack shop at about 3:30, I realized that I had skipped lunch and that this was the first time I had sat down all day long. Tuesday night also involved a bar.

So, come Wednesday, I found my legs stiff with overexertion, my head sore with exhaustion, and my voice nonexistent from overuse. I was doing my best to act responsibly, even sleeping about 7 hours a night, but my body had become accustomed to its Chinese lifestyle and was resenting this intrusion of American ideology.

A meal in China is the building block upon which relationships are built. To know someone is to share a meal with them. It seems that every “Business in China” book makes particular mention of the “business banquet,” where people are weighed and measured, deals are struck or destroyed, and the eating, if not an afterthought, is more a medium than an end in itself. This ethos is not restricted to official gatherings, but tends to be scaled down according to context, all the way down to the humble fare of which our daily routine now consists. As such, they tend to be languid affairs. The food takes a long time to come, it is eaten slowly, and it is not uncommon for half an hour to pass between the last morsel eaten and when the check is finally called for.

Not so now. Lunches are now eating with purpose, the food is consumed, the tables soon vacated. I must confess that up until this week, I tended to be the pointedly check his watch or clear his throat and ask what everyone’s plan for the day was. But one day I was left at the table, solitarily picking at the last peanuts out of the Kung Pao Chicken as everyone else rushed off to their mid day naps. Seriously. I was filled with a strange anti-patriotic regret that Chinese food is often relegated to the sub-strata of take-out. If everything someone eats reminds her or him of Panda Express, how can you blame that person for eating it quickly? Maybe I should commend them learning the names of things instead of trying to order the “Special For Two With Extra Spring Rolls.”

I have also grown to love my xioxi (rest) time. Xioxi time extends from noon until 2:30, where very little is open, and even if it is open, then the shopkeeper is probably asleep on a stool. This may be due to the Chinese habit of eating a light breakfast and then a heavy lunch. It seems reasonable that a mornings activity, fueled only by a piece of bread, then followed by a large, greasy meal could knock your system to its knees for a few hours. Bottom line is, I don’t know why we xioxi, but I like it. And, apparently, have come to depend on it.

Many of the SPU’ers, tired from their travels, have adopted the xioxi, unwittingly paying homage to their new cultural host. However, with 33 of them, someone is always doing something at any given time. And those things tend to involve translating. A moment of silence for my dearly departed xioxi time.

I think the coup-de-gras to my system was actually the bars. Now I’m going to cut you off before anyone starts waving blue and white flags or picketing… whatever it is you might feel the urge to picket. (That means you, God-squaders) This has nothing to do with alcohol, dancing, or any other of the devil’s delights. This has simply to do with loud music. (Crap. Rock n’ Roll. Fine. Only one of the devil’s delights) I’m a talker. It’s my own fault, really, but I enjoy talking, no matter how loud, and at the end of the night, my throat is pretty torn up. Factor in a mountain hike in the pollution two days ago, throw in a karaoke song or two (It’s China, I get amnesty. Especially when I’m singing Sinatra) and should I even be surprised that I can’t talk?

Part of me is detached and curious. Which lifestyle will emerge dominant? I have lamented the solitude of the last month, and wistfully remembered my American days of unending motion. Now, though, I am not so sure. Apparently being busy means I don’t have time to read or write. Being busy means that I am running around, translating for one mundane task or another, while doing nothing of consequence for myself. I’m a little curious to see which way the pendulum swings for these next three months.

Curiosity or no, the fact of the matter is that I am sitting here in between my peanut butter crackers and my empty bowl of instant noodles (closest thing to chicken noodle), sipping hot water like it’s going out of style. I guess in the end, it’s not really karma, but causality that that has been my downfall. Stupid consequences…

PS There is a cricket on my living room floor. How did it get to the fourth floor? And now, as I watch the tiny cricket hopping around the bare expanse of my living room, I can't help but sing to myself, "I'm a big, big girl, in a big, big world..."  

Pure Awesomeness

Sometimes there are moments that I wish I was being filmed. There are isolated moments where every splash of color looks as if it were off of a palate, where every progressive movement builds on itself as if conducted by an invisible maestro. Every detail complements the whole, and that whole can be described as nothing other than pure, condensed, unadulterated awesomeness.

The wind whistled through my hair, the motorcycle gasped and sputtered underneath me. I tried to ignore the fact that I was riding behind a man (1). As we honked and zipped our way in between a bus and a dump truck, I took a sip of my coffee. That’s right, coffee. I hadn’t finished my coffee this morning, and, loathe to waste such a precious commodity, I just brought my mug (2) along.

Mother, it might be best to stop reading here.

The cars ahead of us slowed down, and then stopped (3). There was a traffic jam. Mae yo wen ti! (No problems!) We just crossed into the oncoming traffic. So, a quick recap: I am sitting (with my bag in my lap) on the back of a motorcycle, not wearing a helmet, drinking coffee out of a glass mug, as we go head to head with the traffic, trusting the horn and everyone else’s sense of self-preservation. Best morning ever.

(1) We would never say, “straddle,” even though if you were to draw out a description based on a dictionary’s definition, it would probably look a lot like what I was doing. Aware of this, I put my bag in between the driver and I to placate my lingering sense of homophobia.
(2) This was no convenient, practical, spillproof mug, either. It was heavy, glass, and open mouthed. The kind you wrapped your hands around on a cold day and then buried your face in the steam. Also the kind that shatters on impact and often results in five stitches. That kind of mug.
(3) Actually, that is an inaccurate description. Functionally speaking, cars were only “ahead” of us for a second or two until they whizzed backwards past us to become “behind us.” When I say that they “slowed down,” I really mean that, as we were keeping the same speed, we started to pass them even faster. High five to physics.

Betrayed by the Ground Upon Which They Stood

To be honest, I hadn’t thought about the May 12th earthquake for quite some time. We hear the news, we lament the tragedy, we might even pray, but when the buildings stop falling, the cameras stop rolling, and the tragedy of millions is eclipsed by the hopes of two presidential candidates. Yet, as we drove further out of the city, the earthquake slowly and incrementally took form in my mind.

All around Chengdu was the shadow of a memory; a cracked wall, a half-built house whose builders suddenly had more important things to build, small things that all hinted at … something … and yet the city ground on. Even now I sit at a restaurant with a painting of a cowboy on the wall, listening to salsa music as I wait for my biscuits and gravy. What earthquake?

We left the highways for cracked asphalt roads, and the memory no longer seemed so distant. We passed temporary houses for those whose lives had been just as rent and broken as the landscape upon which they lived, and the memory now became a present reality. The earth stopped shaking long ago. When would they?

Finally, when we arrived at our destination, the earthquake gained a face. It gained a hundred faces.

The village leader was quick to smile, but it barely touched his eyes. There was genuine joy there, but it was not like the thin joy that I experience whenever I am able to forget my problems. It was a hard-won joy that must look out every day at the senseless destruction, and still say that there are things to be thankful for. The generosity of others. The buildings now being slowly and cautiously erected. Life. Sometimes it takes death to remind us that as long as there is life, there is always something to be thankful for.

~~~

I met three brothers: the eldest, confined to a wheelchair, and two twins born a few years later. When the world shook and the house fell, the family thought the eldest crushed by the rubble, but found him 16 hours later. 16 hours, without food and water, in a body that could not save itself, and the world thought him dead. Their father, the village secretary (government representative), had a subtly different look to his eyes. They too, were eyes that had seen much grief, but they were the eyes of a survivor. He didn’t smile as much, and the tough joy of the village leader was replaced by grim determination. Life had hit him hard more than once, but here he stood, and there was work to be done. There were houses to be built, mouths to feed; there was a village that needed his resilience.

~~~

We went up to the village for the Mid-Autumn Festival, and the children were out of school. Running up and down the street, dodging trucks laden with sand, the children darted in, around, and through the rubble that was their home – is their home. They were … children, but the earthquake had left its mark on them as indelibly as it had their elders. These were children who had seen the world – once thought stable and immutable – fall down around their ears, and then woken up the next morning to live in it. In many ways, they already know life in a way that I cannot. They know it to be beautiful, vibrant, precious, but fragile. So very fragile.

Life goes on. When everything – everything – is taken away, you are forced to readjust your framework for viewing life. To say that they have lost their houses and need new ones is to skip many important steps. They need water. They need food.

One lady, bent almost double with age, stepped outside of her tent to talk to us. Five months after the earthquake, she is still eating instant noodles. The extent of the devastation is such that one must provide not only for what we would consider the most basic of needs – shelter – but must first look to the foundational elements of those needs.

I do not mean to diminish the work that has been done. Much has been accomplished. There is a makeshift water pipe bringing water down from a mountain stream. The majority of people live in government-provided tents, but peppered among these are Black Diamond and REI hiking tents that have been donated. In between the blue government tents is now a long tarp that people can use as a communal gathering ground, as well as a place to prepare food in the rain. Houses are being erected. A month and a half ago there was only rubble, but now three houses are completed and occupied. Much has been accomplished, but there is still so far to go.

As we were leaving, we passed another old lady carrying vegetables across her back. She was a classic Chinese woman – the mountain life had hardened her, and her face was deeply wrinkled by the many days out in the sun. She gave a wordless smile and grabbed my father’s arm and motioned towards me. I was holding a camera, so I thought she wanted a picture. Then she left my father and came towards me and grabbed my arm as she had my father’s. I thought she had wanted something, but the only thing she wanted was to shake our hands, to express her gratitude for what little help we brought. Then she moved on to distribute her vegetables to those in the tent city behind us. There was work to be done.

I find myself looking for a way to summarize this experience, and am at a loss for words. How can one summarize something that is yet ongoing? We left, and my father and I had dinner at Zoe’s, an American Café in Chengdu. I ordered myself a chili cheese burger, but ate it somewhat guiltily, sobered by the knowledge that that the old lady up in the mountains was probably boiling water for her instant noodles.

Chengdu Bound

It had only been two hours, and I had to pee. I did not know if the bus would pause on its four-hour journey to Chendu, but I was becoming increasingly keen on finding out the answer. There was the possibility that the unmarked door hid a bathroom, but no one else had even stood up to stretch, and I felt bad waking up the person next to me. Option C involved the empty bottle lying at my feet. Option C was only barely an option, but it beat death by bladder infection (Option F). 

The thinking only made it worse, and I had to try the mystery door, fool or no. I stumbled over my neighbor, waking him up and knocking his soda bottle to the floor. In the silent bus, it sounded like dice in a tin cup. All eyes were on me as I went to the door and gingerly tried the handle. It was a bathroom. A small choir of angels burs into song. Take that, Option C.

Five minutes after I emerged from the smelly and faucetless bathroom, the bus stopped at a beautifully renovated rest area.

First Day of Teaching

Today was the first day of class, but it held more mysteries than known quantities. How much English would the students know? We were teaching the first period of the day at 8:00, would the rooms even be open? Would the classrooms have the audio / visual components that we were promised? How old would the students be? Would they respond to humor, or did they want something more serious? Were they willing to even try speaking English? My class sizes range between 40 and 60, but how many students would actually show up?

I found out the answer to that last question was 9. Of the five teachers, three of them had full classrooms, I had nine students, and Ash had none. His classroom wasn’t even open. Ash sat down in the teacher’s lounge (1) to bunker down until his 10:30 class, and I set to teaching the students that I had. The lesson plan that I had prepared for fifty-five students went much more quickly with nine. I had hoped to gauge their creativity by having them play a form of “Two Truths and a Lie.” I think the concept was lost on them, and I did not hear a single lie. On top of that, it’s hard to get lost in a crowd of nine, and the students were far too nervous to get any response other than silent, slightly quizzical stares. No voices, no laughter. I was alone with 9 furrowed brows.

At 8:30 there was a commotion in the hall. A river of students seemed to materialize and flow past my door, making it difficult to hear the already soft-spoken students. I stepped outside under the guise of quieting the commotion, but I think what I really wanted was to escape the mind-numbing monotony of my sabotaged lesson plan.

I step outside to see Mr. Wang, my boss, frantically moving through the students. Apparently there was a miscommunication, and Ash’s students finally arrived. I called him, and told him the good(ish) news, but not all of the hundred-or-so students could be his. I asked one student, and it turned out they were mine. I told him where to go, and when I stepped into my classroom for the second time that day, I saw many, many students. Then the bell rang for the mid-class break, and there was nothing I could do but put my head down on the podium. Then the students laughed.

Class was back in. My lesson shot to hell, I had nothing to do but repeat the information that I gave in the first class. This time the class was much more responsive, and it was a lot more fun. It would be futile to try to stick to the original plan, so I improvised with some free-form conversation, and got a few people to talk.

Left with too little time for my plan and too much time to fill by myself, I dismissed the class 10 minutes early. Nobody moved. I repeated myself, and again, barely a ripple. This was the strangest class I had ever been in. I decided I might as well wander around the room and see if I could get some individual conversations going. Apparently they had a class in the same room the next period. Well, at least they weren’t just freakishly studious, because that would be weird.

The next class period (Geology students) went much better. Everyone showed up, and apparently the lesson plan turned out to actually be pretty decent. Two Truths and a Lie was still a bust, though. Can’t win ‘em all, I guess.

(1) An empty room with wooden chairs. Still, better than a chairless room full of people, which China seems to be full of.

Strife

Life amongst the English teachers has smelled of a harmonious utopia, and I was getting sick of the bullshit. Tonight held its first touch of conflict. And it felt so good.

Monday was the day that we were handed our curriculum. Monday was the day that we found out that we had curriculum. For some, this was a weight off of their shoulders, but others felt shackled by the questionable vocabulary and farcical situations. Do grad students really want to learn how to navigate their way around a phone booth in English? When I first read through it, my first instinct involved lighter fluid and a match. It was so comprehensive and detailed (inanely restrictive) that I think a monkey could do a very good job teaching not very good English [sic]. I was chagrinned when Mr. Wang informed us that this book was the sole resource for the English competency exam.

Fast forward to today, when Grins and I were riding a turtle bus back towards our house. She was telling me how useless she thought the curriculum was. I agreed. She then told me how she would give a courtesy nod to the curriculum, but then teach something more interesting that would spark the students’ interest. I should have agreed. The nice thing would have been to agree. But I was sick of walking on eggshells.

Instead, I questioned if she was departing from the curriculum for her sake, or because she didn’t want to get bored. I asked her what she thought her students needed, and told her that I thought what they needed was to pass the test. I said that, being grad students, they already had four years of education where they had the opportunity to learn English if they had so desired. I said that, as a matter of integrity, we had an obligation to the students to prepare them for what they needed to succeed, even if that was not the most interesting or efficient way of teaching English. I said that, though it is a formality, and though there is a good chance that the grade people get on the competency exam will make little real difference (who is going to give a brilliant chemist a hard time because his English isn’t perfect?), that we couldn’t act on the assumption of the University waiving its own standards of competency. I said that to do so would be to gamble with other people’s future, and that would not be fair.

I wanted to say that it would be ludicrous to claim any real passion for “teaching English,” because if we wanted to lay any claim to the sanctity of the language, that we would have studied ESL in school. But I had already said enough.

The conversation spurted and spluttered after that like the flames from an empty gas canister. Eventually it was just easier to let it fade away into the darkness. I wondered if I should have held my tongue, but I was tired of homogeny. There can be no harmony when everyone is playing the same note. No one has expressed any frustrations about anyone else in the group, and many minor offenses had already been allowed to fly under the radar. It was more complicated with Grins and I, though. As the only two Christians in an outspokenly anti-Christian group, there was an unspoken expectation of camaraderie, the thought that “we need to hold the line for Jesus.” We were two very different people, but since we both love Jesus, we should always agree, right?

I now had a greater appreciation for the plight of teaching in America. What do we do when the standards by which our students succeed or fail run counter to their education? At the same time, what good does it do the student to be properly educated if they cannot advance? When do our lesson plans and aspirations become less about the needs of the students and more about our desire to be an ‘interesting teacher?’ On one hand, I agree with Grins, and I think we could teach this better were we given a looser leash. On the other, I think we need to play the hand that we are dealt with the players that we have been given. Namely, that we will be teaching a group of nominally interested graduate students who have a heavy and specialized course load, but who need to pass a general ed competency course based solely on the curriculum provided. I will be thrilled to be proven wrong, but that’s what it sounds like from people who know better than I.

Home was still fifteen minutes away, and there were a few attempts at small talk, but conversation was strained. By voicing disagreement, I had broken a taboo, and neither of us were sure how to get around it. I want to think that I provoked some thoughtful introspection, but I wonder if I might have just established myself as a soapboxing asshole. We walked the last five minutes without speaking, the wind whistling through the trees, mocking our silence.

You Lie! You Can Read Characters!

“So would you like to buy a Chinese History movie? Your Chinese is good enough, you can definitely understand it!” Li Ningsheng is the owner of my preferred DVD shop, and this exchange is an old one.

“No, my Chinese is not yet good enough. I will just get lost in the old language. Maybe after I have had a few Chinese classes, then my Chinese will be good enough. I will stay with foreign movies for now.” Currently these consisted of Enchanted, Stardust, and Diehard 4. I’m a complicated person with complex tastes.

“Ah, yes, you may not understand the words or the sentences, but you will understand the meaning. In China, there are so many ways to say things that oftentimes, even I don’t understand a person’s words, but I understand the meaning. You shouldn’t get stuck on trying to understand what a person says. It is enough to know what they mean. You should rent a Chinese History movie.”

Great. Not even Chinese know what each other are saying. Awesome. He is being nice, and I doubt that he is as out of the lingual loop as he makes himself sound. This isn’t the only time I’ve heard something similar, and there is a certain amount of confusion as this “new China” has increased people’s mobility, bringing in different dialects and colloquialisms.

I enjoy talking with Le Ningsheng, mostly because he enjoys talking with me. As he says, “Talking with foreigners is a very enlightening experience!” He talks very quickly, and uses fairly complicated language, but I usually understand the meaning. Sigh. Sometimes, however, I notice a switch, and realize that he’s no longer talking to me, but to who he wants me to be.

It is actually pretty common. Though the city has become more jaded to foreigners over the past few years, I am still an aberration, an oddity. I am a white person with good Chinese skills, but whose skills have a definite and abrupt limit. The Chinese I know, I know well, and can speak fluidly with uncommonly good pronunciation. Unfortunately years of neglect have atrophied my Chinese, and it is not uncommon to quickly get beyond my depth, struggling just to keep my head on top of the conversation. There isn’t really a category to put me in, and so people tend to fall into one of two camps.

Some people, and thankfully an increasingly diminishing number, never get past that I am white. Everyone knows that waiguoren don’t speak Chinese, and so they don’t even bother trying to listen if I try to talk with them. Sometimes they will go so far as to tell me that they don’t speak English, which is not what you want to hear after an urgent inquiry as to the whereabouts of the nearest restroom.

More common are the people like Li Ningsheng, who, impressed by my Chinese, decide that it is near perfect, and any attempts on my part to claim ignorance are only false modesty. I was with a Chinese friend in one of the dorm buildings examining a large map of the campus. Wanting a good laugh, she asked me where her dorm was. Even though the map was in Chinese, I was easily able to trace the route and find her building. She was astonished, and asked about another building, and then another. It wasn’t a big map, and at the end, she came to the conclusion that I knew how to read characters, and had just been lying to her for the past two weeks. I hadn’t realized it until then, but she had still been struggling with how someone who spoke as well as I did could be so ignorant of the written language.

The same thing happened when I went with Shamrock to get assigned to a Chinese class. I hadn’t met these teachers before, and we handed them the slips from our boss that were supposed to get us placed in a class. The man in charge of the foreign students said the placement exam had been that morning, apparently it was our fault that we weren’t there. Even though we didn’t know. His subordinates were much more helpful, though, and were complimented me on my Chinese, then asked where we thought we should be put. I told them I spoke pretty well, but that I didn’t know any characters. They decided that I was being falsely modest, and gave handed me the placement exam to do on my own. It was two large sheets of characters. I couldn’t even read the instructions for what I was supposed to do. I smiled and handed it back to them. They say that I should just do it as best as I could. I told them I just had.

Apologies...

I got back from my run this morning to find Shamrock and Grins eating French Toast. Apparently I had been invited by text, but was already running and didn't get the message. They graciously made a few more, and we talked a little bit about Chi Running (something that has come highly recommended and I'm trying to get into so as to save my knees, which already hate me). Ash joined a little later, and the conversation turned towards the pop culture that we were becoming increasingly isolated from. By the way, check out Elton John's tiff with Lilly Allen at the GQ awards. You watch it and can't really believe that it was actually happening. We moved to Youtube, which led to a morning of Youtube.

I am going to alienate myself from a lot of people here, but I have to admit that I don't really like Youtube. Occasionally, though, things come across that just really must be shared, and 'Yatta' is one such thing. I think my life may have just taken a turn for the awesomer. Here it is. Hopefully I will never post another Youtube video again. I guess I should warn you that it involves men in their underwear, but I think it would be a stretch to call it 'sexually explicit.' You may disagree, and if so, I apologize.

Crotch-o-Centric

(August 27th 2008)

This was the day that we were expecting to meet Mr. Wang, our boss, and I was eager to figure out the details of my new job. There was a knock on the door. I was in my preferred outfit, athletic shorts and sandals, and thought that I might want to be wearing something a bit … more … for the sake of a good impression. I put on normal human clothes, washed my hands, and then felt a drip on my toes. I looked down and saw a very awkward-looking spot (1) on my pants, right where you REALLY don’t want an awkward looking spot. In a country that looks for auspicious beginnings, this was not one of them.

After that, the day was pretty non-descript, and a little disappointing. We had an orientation meeting, but since three quarters of us had already spent some time here, it was a bit redundant. We also found out that we don’t technically have schedules yet. Shamrock says that they are trying to get bids from the various schools within the college, pimping us out for the highest bidder. At least we’ll know that wherever we end up teaching really wants us there.

We each went our separate ways for the afternoon, and then met back up for dinner at a hot pot restaurant. I think they wanted to impress us with how ‘foreign’ China is, and so they ordered the delicacies. We found ourselves dining on cow stomach (chewy) and duck intestines (non-descript). Oh yeah. And we also had cow …. er… bull … … man-parts. That’s right, I ate dong. Honestly, it wasn’t that bad. Chewy, but not bad.

Looking back, I apologize, a lot of this post seems to focus on the region between the knees and the navel, but seriously, this all happened in one day. That makes it OK, right?


(1) My sink hates me. Since it shares a faucet with the tub, it will oftentimes become the beneficiary of some shower water. Not to fear. It was apparently designed with this in mind, and there is a lip so the water doesn’t fall to the floor. Instead it sits on the rim of the sink, right at, you guessed it, crotch height. I almost wonder if some sadistic b-word found my information online and installed the sink so that it would be perfectly aligned with the area of my pants where I least want a water stain. If so, I would like to find him and kick him in his a-word. Oh yeah, I’m family-friendly.

On Names

A quick word on proper nouns. A lot of them will probably be made up. In some cases it might be a nod to privacy, in others it might be my way of telling a story rather than relating events. However, the overarching reason, and the one that will apply to all of my mis-namings is simply that it makes me smile. There you are, don’t get weirded out.

With that, I’m going to introduce you to my co-teachers. Briefly, and with the knowledge that they might one day read this.

Shamrock was named thus simply because he happened to be wearing a green shirt when I met him and looked like he would make a good, if oversized, leprechaun. Later on I found out that he actually was Irish, and felt a little guilty of racial profiling, but what the hey, it still is a funny name. He studied here two years ago, and then came back last year to teach, so this year will be his third year in China and his second year teaching. He is an affable character, and it seems that everywhere we go he is running into someone who he knows, or who at least knows him. I think that Shamrock’s day really starts the previous night in any of Beibei’s many bars, where he will then almost invariably make his plans with his friends for the next day. The amusing thing is that, since he spends most of his time on the streets, he speaks Chongqing Hua (the local dialect) very well, and though I can barely understand him, the locals can often understand him better than they can understand my putong hua (standardized Chinese). Humble pie never tasted so good.

Grins is a friend from Seattle, and she has the unfortunate distinction of being the only girl in our quartet. Kindof lame. She studied here for three months last year, and so has some rudimentary language skills and is well acquainted with where things are in the city. I tend to differ to these two, because though I have a better grasp of the language, they know the city much better than I do, and so I hang back until someone needs something translated.

Ash is perhaps the only true adventurer among us. Though being widely traveled in Europe, he has never been to Asia before, and so all things are new for him. The reason he is Ash is because he is tall and skinny like an ash tree. Oh, and he smokes. That may have something to do with it too. Anyone who is 6’4 and willing to light up when offered a cigarette is pretty much on the fast track to stardom here, so he’s set.

As for me, I think I’m calling myself Scout, not that I ever really refer to myself in the third person. But I’ll keep the name on the bench just in case.

Big White Babies

As I write this, Mrs Niu is cleaning my apartment, as she will do once a week for the rest of the year. I was not expecting her, and so was a little out of sorts, but tried to help as I could, tidying up and generally trying to be active. When she saw what I was doing, she shooshed me away with a Chinese smile that radiated warmth but a glint in her eyes that brooked no objection. I don’t know if that was Chinese or just motherly… I think it might be a lot of both. So I retreated to my chair in the corner to read and inhabit as little as possible of the space that I was less and less considering mine.

It is a strange thing to sit down while another is doing your work for you. It chaffs my sense of propriety and seems to say unpleasant things about intrinsic human worth. To sit idly by is to acknowledge that you are being served, and imply that it is somehow right, that you – no, I – am somehow deserving of another’s subservience. Moreover, it makes me feel like a child. No wonder they see us waiguoren (foreigners) as children, incapable of civilized speech, whose writing tends to be large and sloppy, constantly asking ridiculous questions, and apparently, who can’t be trusted to clean their own apartments. Perhaps large, white, and oftentimes hairy, but children nonetheless.

Then a shift occurred in my thinking. As I lifted my feet so that she could mop under them, I started to wonder – really wonder – what she must think of me? What would it be like to live beneath (1st floor) such unequal and undeserved wealth? We each individually inhabit an apartment that she and her family consider themselves fortunate to live in (er… different apartment, same dimensions), our net salary (after housing) is roughly twice the average total salary of a local, and we are allotted enough electricity to make liberal use of the air conditioners that many similar apartments would not have. We are not rich because we are successful or have developed any unique skills (honestly, probably quite the opposite), we are rich because we are waiguoren, and that is the beginning and the end of it. Oh, and we have a maid service: Her. What must she think of us, the spoiled princes inhabiting the castle whose gates she guards and whose floors she cleans?

What am I to do? The question is suspended in the air like my feet over her mop, it is reflecting off of the newly mopped floors, it hums in the air conditioning. What am I to do about it? Were I to turn the AC off forever or lock the door the next time she comes to clean, who would it serve? Contrary to what mothers say, the babies in Africa don’t give a crap about whether or not we clean our plates, because our excess or lack thereof never touches them. It would be like rich man camping, spending thousands of dollars to abstain from any sense of comfort. To deny my wealth would not be an act of solidarity, but perhaps the worst insult possible. It would be to say that I have so much that I can afford to go without.

I fear that this train of thought can only lead me higher up onto a soapbox, and I wish to avoid that. Sometimes there aren’t any pat answers, no way to make sense of the world in comfortable terms. There is only the next conversation, the next fiscal decision, the next … whatever. And so as I finally lowered my feet to the glistening floor, I gave Mrs. Niu a quiet smile of heartfelt thanks, trying to convey as much gratitude as is possible without being creepy. Maybe I’ll try to find an excuse to leave her some thank-you cookies. I think she’d like that.

K. Now I'm caught up on pictures.

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I Used To Have Religion, But Then I Had A Few Beers, And Then I Was OK

“I used to have religion but then I had a few beers, and it was OK.” Perhaps Zhang Ge (Older brother Zhang) summed up the evening the best, but we will get to him later. I think it would be best for me to preface with this: I did not get drunk. I say that for two reasons, the first of which is to set this story slightly apart from the story you might be expecting to hear. Second, to say that it was indeed a night in which such caveats are rare and hard won.

The night started as an afternoon coffee with Mr. Lee, a Korean teacher here at Southwest. We ended up sitting long past the point when the coffee pot emptied, because the coffee was not the point. We were getting to know each other, even if that often involved long and somewhat awkward silences as people felt around for common ground. Conversation was not the point. We were getting to know each other. And so we sat, coffee cups as dry as the conversation, getting to know each other. Getting to know each other is important to Mr. Lee.

The strange thing was that somewhere in the middle of the pregnant silence and the awkward shuffling of feet, we did get to know each other. Though we had little in common, certainly nothing that engendered anything approaching a lively conversation, by sitting in that living room we demonstrated that we wanted to get to know each other, and maybe that is enough. As I type this my Western mind is screaming profanities at my Eastern experience, because what is the point? To give legitimacy to the awkward silence is to deny the Western truism that we can only get along if we are alike; that, at least to start off, we can only appreciate in others what we already appreciate in ourselves. But here, that is not the case. Friendship demands only the desire for friendship, and the commonality can be built later.

That is neither here nor there, though. That was only an awkward two hours in a living room. We decided to all go and eat dinner together, at a type of restaurant known as “stick pot.” Stick pot is the commoner’s hot pot, where the ingredients are all on sticks that you then put into the hot pot in the middle, and at the end of the meal the cost is determined by the number of sticks. Without any fancy buildings or lavishly adorned servers, by not bothering to offer exotic ingredients or even fresh “pots” or spices (they tend to be used several times before being replaced), stick pot strips away the veneer of civility that has grown up around the hot pot so that it can be enjoyed by all in the fashion in which it was initially created: A bunch of people huddled around a steaming pot, fishing among the spices for the last hidden morsels of food. It is delicious, it is lively, and as of now, a day out, I am not sick, so it was a success.

Chinese culture is a toasting culture. Perhaps toasting creates the common ground that they do not require in initial friendships. Either way, Mr. Lee is a great one for toasts. He toasted the table, he toasted us as a group, and he toasted us individually. He encouraged us to toast each other. Barely five minutes would pass without hearing him say something like, “Come, come! You are from Seattle. We will toast to Seattle. I love you. Gan Be!”

Gan be is translated literally as 'dry glass,' and that is what it means. When you are toasted, you empty your glass or risk offending your toaster. The gan be ritual carries at its core the duality of the Chinese person. It is friendly and it is hospitable, but just beneath the surface beats a warrior’s heart. Gan be is one of many testaments to the China that every Kung Fu fan knows exists, where peace and tranquility lie only a very short distance away from the Dragon’s Five Fists of Flaming Death. There is “great face” in having a high alcohol tolerance, and there is greater face in drinking your friend under the table. And so each toast is made in the spirit of friendship, but drunk in the spirit of competition.

Luckily the beer is weak and the glasses small, barely bigger than two shot glasses. However, stick pot does not have glasses, or rather their “glasses” would be more aptly described as small metal bowls, slightly smaller than a rice bowl. The meal was long and the toasts were frequent; as soon as your bowl-glass was emptied someone else would promptly fill it, in part because it is good manners, but also in part so that you were ready for the next toast. At the end the floor was host to an impressive number of bottles and an even more impressive number of sticks.

We never found out how much we ate or how much it cost though, because that’s when the chief of police showed up. Somehow he was a friend of Mr. Lee’s, and wanted to eat dinner with us. The chief of police does not eat stick pot, so he showed up, paid our bill, and then we all went to another, far more fancy establishment, where the price of a single dish would probably rival our entire stick pot tab. The table was arranged carefully and precisely, the chief of police in the seat of honor, with the locals interspersed amongst us foreigners, with our Chinese student friends the furthest away from the chief. I was sitting next to his second-in-command, who went by the name of Zhang Ge, who I quoted at the beginning of this anecdote-turned-novel.

Thus began our second dinner, and our second round of toasting. Thankfully here the glasses were normal-sized, and held only a half to a third of what the bowl-glasses held. The food was exquisite, and served to provide as distraction while our group warmed to these new and powerful guests. Though I would have preferred to make the switch to tea at this point, it is hard to refuse a toast by the police chief. I was also harboring secret hopes of making sufficient connections so that, were I to apply for a motorcycle license, that it would pass quietly and uneventfully through the proper offices with the added weight of my newfound friend.

At this point I had to make a strategic decision. I was not going to get drunk, and so I needed to find the best way to stop drinking without causing any offense. This is where the competitive and sometimes predatory nature of gan be comes out. At the first sign of weakness, the table will turn as one to try and cull the herd. The key was to determine when all the important toasts were done, and then declare that I was done drinking while I was still in a good enough spot to weather the flurry of toasts that would surely come.

I briefly harbored hopes of being able to bow out on the grounds of religion, but you already heard how that turned out. Upon hearing my reasoning, his face lit up in possibly the biggest smile of the night. “Yes! Religion! I once had religion, but I had a few beers, and then I was OK. Let us drink to religion!” It was not the response I had hoped for.

Another key to avoiding toasts is remaining active. While intuition might lead one to try and fly under the radar, it is not an option left open to white folk in China. Quietly sitting back is another form of weakness, and can occasion a barrage of toasts, so should be avoided. Towards the end of the second dinner I started making tea toasts, ludicrous toasts whose purpose was simply to keep people off balance enough to not toast me. There were the standard toasts to Beibei, to the USA, to new friends, but there were also ridiculous toasts: “To Love!” “To World Peace!” And my personal favorite, “To Cute Chinese-American Babies!” Occasionally people would try to call my bluff and demand a beer toast, but faltered when I would steadily and quickly empty my glass without hesitation. I would not be an easy mark, and my goal was to show no weakness, only discipline. The toasts slowed and then eventually stopped, and I was able to leave without having to flat out refuse anyone anything, so I considered it a success. The perfect end came to the evening when we all squished into a police van to return to our apartment. I love China.

Pictures of my apartment

We're going to try something here.  I will be posting pictures on Facebook, and then I will post a link here for people who don't have Facebook.  So... Johanna Knudsen, that means you.  

On to pictures of my apartment

Beginnings

I arrived at Southwest University expecting… something. It represents the end of my prolonged unemployment; the beginning of the next phase, whatever that may be. And so, at 8:13 PM, I stepped out of the taxi into the dark and the rain. A solitary light lit the entrance and framed Mrs. Niu, who runs the Foreign Experts housing. Except for her initial mutterings of “ta jong wen hai ke yi,” we walked up the four narrow flights of steps in silence and darkness, the sound-activated lights turning on late and dim, really only highlighting the darkness that they briefly interrupted.

It has been a long time since I have ever walked up a flight of stairs without knowing my destination. Mrs. Niu didn’t offer, and I didn’t ask, choosing to savor yet another small mystery. Without knowledge of my destination, the steps seemed as if they could have stretched onto into the darkness forever, and I was content to blithely chase the dark, one step at a time, forever. The lights faced down the stairs, but were rarely triggered until I was right under them, with the effect that I would walk through the dark, and when the lights did turn on, they would illuminate barely more than my heels and the flight of stairs that I had just finished climbing. It seemed appropriate, strangely analogous to my recent history, walking blindly forward, clarity coming only infrequently and retroactively.

We did not climb forever; we only climbed to the fourth floor, into an amazing apartment, with hardwood floors and high ceilings, a double bed, and a fuzzy Bugs Bunny blanket, though I would not find that until later. Mrs. Niu let me into my new home and then she and her husband, Mr. Liu, set about connecting the appliances and turning on the water heater. I was left in the living room, the sparse furnishings only calling attention to my abundance of luggage in the middle of the room. I brought very little, and yet… I have too much crap. With promises to help me with any problems that I might have, they left me standing in the living room – my living room – feeling that I should be feeling more. Some excitement, maybe some fear, wonder, appreciation; even hunger would have at least been something to latch onto. But I just felt… right, maybe even satisfied. Alone, but satisfied.

This past year I have been forced to wring the meaning from every day, because there has been nothing external to do it for me. As opportunities did nothing but dry up, plans did nothing but die, the fertile landscape of my everyday life also dried up and died. There were no 5-year plans to cultivate, not office projects to nurture, and so I found myself in a wasteland with nothing to do but set fire to my expectations and revel in the unexpected, sometimes treacherous, freedom that twisted and curled out of the destruction. There was no slow-and-steady for me, I was either active or I was a lazy, unemployed bum. I think I came to depend on that fire, that burning resolve to keep myself from fading away into insignificance, and I would do it by pure force of personality if necessary.

So it was unsettling for me, so accustomed to fire and passion, to feel… I don’t know. Was it the grind of machinery? The sense that as I moved, something would move in response, that what I did now made a difference? That my next actions would have lasting consequence, if only for a year? And so I unpacked for the future, folding and stacking my clothes in the way that I would want them for the next year. Should the shirts go in a drawer or a shelf? The shelf was unorthodox, but did I really want to bend down every morning? And that was the thing. In the smallest of ways, I was preparing for the future. I have no doubt that a balance will eventually be struck, that the machinery and the fire will alternate and intermingle, enhancing and interrupting each other; they always do. But for now I am content to stand in the stillness, slowly folding and stacking clothes, sure in the knowledge that things are changing.