the end.

Savored every word of this:

[pic]

and now it feels like my China life really is over. Peter Hessler has written three books on China: River Town, about his two years teaching English as a Peace Corps volunteer; Oracle Bones; and this one. Meegs and I read River Town in our first weeks in Huai'an and would process certain experiences with help from the book: "Well Pete says his students did that too..." or "Peter refused the medical exam's x-ray so we can too," and it was quite the moral support. Reading his other book while in China and some of his many articles, I acted like he was my personal friend, wandering through Beijing's hutongs and thinking, "Oh, Pete must have lived around here..."

You can always use an imaginary friend.

greatness

along our 4.5 hour hike from 金山岭 Jinshanling to 司马台 Simatai. Zip line at the end!

The Chicago visitors spent three full days in Shanghai, two days here in Huai'an and then five days in Beijing. My class could not contain their excitement about meeting three new Americans. It wasn't until a week later that I realized what an oddity it was to have five non-Chinese people standing in one little classroom in a nothing college in a nothing town in the great big country of China: an actual once-in-a-lifetime experience for most of those kids. But, a cool thing for the visitors, too, to be able to meet and talk and play basketball with a bunch of Chinese students on their whistle stop tour of the Middle Kingdom.

We had looked forward to having these visitors for so long that we didn't spend much time looking beyond their trip to our own rapidly approaching trips out of here. The good-byes have already started, which I can't believe. In just a few days we'll head to Shanghai and set off for Gansu Province, then be on homeward bound planes June 30.

You CAN do a-n-y-thing for ten months!

aha.

take that, cybercensors! We invested in a new toy that gets us around internet restrictions so now I can actually access this blog baby instead of emailing tidbits out into the ether. Pardon the delay while I figure out how to use all these gadgets; it may be ugly around here while I freshen up and get my face on.

hiatus

as Megan and Maria Carlota would say, "obviopo..." because clearly this on-again-off-again blog has been switched off lately.

The parents have blown through China and settled back in their spot of the world after whirling around it, and Megan and I are exploring the Southwest corner before school starts again in two weeks.

The nutshell: Beijing is as awesome as fabled, Xi'an is filthy, but the Warriors (and Muslim Quarter) are worth the trip, traveling around Spring Festival is chaotic, Shanghai is still super cool and Yunnan fare is best.

More to come when the dust settles in Huai'an, around the 27th.

"digital disobedience"

I'm trying to keep up with the Google vs. Communism battle that erupted last week. This NY Times article discusses the many ways people in China, in acts of "digital disobedience", penetrate the Great Firewall. If Megan and I had realized what a nuisance internet censorship was going to be, we would have followed Dad's advice and downloaded VPN software before we left home. (Cue Tech King's "Told you so.")

Honestly, I hardly thought about what would be blocked and how that would affect my cyber life. It's kind of nice to not have the Facebook temptation, and Youku has everything I've wanted to look for on YouTube -- and more because of its flagrant copyright violations. Fine, Hulu, you won't let me stream The Office because I don't have a US IP address? I'll just watch it with Chinese subtitles. Now that I've learned what and how the Chinese do, it's a lot easier to fulfill my internet needs, and for those sites that don't have Chinese substitutes, I've gotten used to living without them. (So Facebook, you can stop emailing me requests to return to your world. It ain't happenin' right now.)

The above picture (that hopefully shows up on this PRC blocked blog of mine) is what turns up if you attempt to access any of the restricted sites. For this particular result, I searched for "falun gong", and as Michael J. Horowitz says in the previously mentioned Times article, "China goes more nuclear at the mention of Falun Gong than any other two words in the whole dictionary." haha.. There's no way the "page is taking too long to respond" because this pops up immediately after hitting the 'Enter' key. Does anyone actually believe that or does everyone online here know what's going on?

I have my doubts that they do, given the facts that my students don't know what happened at Tian'an'men, or that most of the West has less than fond feelings for Mao, let alone why. Another Times article quotes a Peking University professor on what's happening with Google: "If this process goes on, more and more people are going to realize that their freedom of information is being infringed upon, and this could bring changes down the line."

I would say I'm happy to have ringside seats for this debate and the potential down-the-line-changes, but given that all of this is unfolding where it is, heavily shrouded, I'm more in the dark in the middle of it than out.

glasses for cool

At first I thought the Chinese just had poor eyesight. The majority of our students wear glasses, most of the cashiers at the supermarket, most of the people on the street, young and old: wearing glasses. With the younger people, the "nerd" variety is especially popular. Then Megan noticed many of these pairs of glasses did not have lenses. The next day in class I studied the kids with specs and realized that most of them were indeed lens-less. A fashion phenomenon!

A few weeks later Vence was sporting some (with lenses) and I asked if they were real. "No, they're just.." he took them off and turned them over, "they're just for cool."

We needed some.

The Shanghai People's Square metro station delivered. 

Mine fit the "nerd" criteria but they're not right for my face, so I'm on the lookout for a replacement pair.

Side note: My little architect likes the design of this building because of its sleek, modern interpretation of the traditional pagoda. 

all aboard!

The journey begins! Mom and Pop Kelly left KC yesterday at 2pm and should be landing in London in about five hours. I hope the camera batteries are well charged so we can see every bit of their first hemisphere's offerings. They're taking two weeks to get to Beijing, and after this flight to London, it's trains the whole way! I'm highly envious. As this "let's visit the kids" trip turned into an anniversary celebration, Megan observed that their tour 'round the world is just like Dad buying Mom some commemorative bling. Mom said she thinks she'll prefer the train trip. I'm hoping their butts and morales hold out long enough to deliver them to the PRC in good spirits.

Dad has intricately planned out what to do at each stop along the way: coffee here, Belgian chocolates there (and maybe a gift box to go?), homestays in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and then back to Moscow to board the Trans Siberian. While crossing Russia (anyone else wonder what Siberia looks like in January?) the train has a Russian-style dining car, then for the couple days in Mongolia it gets switched out for a Mongolian dining car, and the last day through China will provide a chopsticks primer before they disembark at our rendezvous point.

Now that we're in our last days of class/exams, I'm getting really excited to see (the parents obviously, but also,) what the Chinese consider the center of the world: Beijing. True to form, I'm most excited about the food there. I recently learned that each province has an official restaurant and hotel for their government officials to stay at while oiling the bureaucratic wheels in the hub of the machine. The restaurants fly in staff and ingredients from their provinces and are open to anyone. I'm trying to figure out which provinces we won't physically get to, but whose cuisine we should try out. If our dining plans aren't as intricately plotted as the rest of the trip, Megan and I will get a big F- as research assistants. So far the list only consists of a couple of these province restaurants and a Xinjiang spot (the westernmost province/home of the Uighurs).

Simultaneously descending on Beijing is Loreta and her friend/student Casper, and the Valder party: Jeff and Claire, their two friends coming over from Nebraska, and our beloved Vence. No one's really looking forward to the January temperatures, but the company should keep us all preoccupied with more important things. Can't wait!

"maybe communism with chinese characteristics is just the nastiest form of capitalism you've ever seen in your life."

--- my astute traveling companion, standing outside a "holy" temple on a "holy" mountain, amid the cacophony of hawkers, noise-makers, hawkers hawking noise-makers and other frenzied sounds of oversupply and needless demand.

party in the usa

Since I have my freshmen class four times a week, I regularly play them English-language songs on Mondays, which I have cleverly dubbed "Music Monday". I play the song while they look at the lyrics, some of which I have blanked out so they have to listen for what the words are. Just this week I realized I could greatly enhance Music Monday by showing them music videos downloaded with some unnamed downloading client (because as of now, we shadily are not allowed internet access in the classrooms...). iTunes' top downloads list tells me that some song called "Party in the USA" is quite the hit back home, so I searched for it and downloaded a live performance.

And that's how I learned about this pole incident which looks to have been a real flurry in the media that I thankfully missed before we left.

Here I thought Miley Cyrus would be a nice window to American culture as a solid representation of current American pop music. What a tragedy that she really is a current icon of American pop! She is not such a nice window to American culture for these Chinese students. There's no way I could show this to my class of 20 year-olds: Megan and I drew out the lyrics for "The 12 Days of Christmas" and the boys couldn't even be mature about her stick figure drawing of 9 ladies dancing. Plus, I don't want to show it to them, which is really the sad thing, that what's "popular" in my country would embarrass me as a cultural ambassador to my students.

At least they now know who U2 is. Can you believe Bono was unknown in a corner of the world?

going to grandma's

What do Sheboygan, Thiensville and HuangJi all have in common? Grandmas!

Our new friend whose English name is Karvin took us to his hometown in the country, just 45 minutes outside Huai'an. We hopped on a bus that dumped us off on the side of the highway, we crossed over, walked down a dirt road and tucked behind a line of trees was this small village where he grew up. (His parents have since moved to the city nearby, but his grandparents still live in the house he grew up in.)

pic 1: tea
pics 2&3: grandma and grandpa putting on a dumpling show
pic 4: the road to the highway

I don't know how old Karvin's grandparents are but they are SPRY. Grandma was bustling around, hacking at weeds in the garden; Grandpa was raking the rice drying in the courtyard. Two endorsements for the Chinese wellness philosophy.

Shortly after we arrived, I went to the back to use the outhouse, passed the geese-looking things in one pen, and stomped up the path to scare the chickens away. I pushed on the door (marked with chalk as the "women"'s side) and through the hole at the bottom of the door at my feet comes bursting and flapping madly a big fat CHICKEN. I screamed of course, and had to fetch Megan to accompany me for the next attempt. Just when you think you can hack rustic your spoiled, city, bird-hating tendencies have to give you away.

The next day we caught the bus into the city of Hongze, near the "fourth-largest fresh water lake in China", where Karvin's parents and other relatives live. We had lunch at his grandpa's brother's house. This great-uncle was a captain in the People's Liberation Army ---- so, on October 1, China celebrated 60 years of the PRC, and this man helped bring it about. Pretty cool. And he's a great cook to boot.

the Eight-Day Holiday

Before the break I told my freshmen their homework was to write me a postcard about their holiday. Well, Megan and I now know that postcards don't seem to exist in China, so I got a smattering of "Happy Birthday" cards, notebook paper, and construction paper.

Most of the girls did the assignment but only one out of the 10 boys did. His humble notebook paper was the loveliest writing I've seen from any of my students in any of my classes:

This holiday I thought I would go to some beautiful places to tour. Such as Beijing, Hangzhou or Yangzhou. But to my surprise, my parents told me that I couldn't go to any place just the hometown. And I must go with them to see my grandma. This year, my grandma is 93 years old. My grandma said she missed me everyday. She want me to see her. So in Three October, this day is very special in China. This day is the Midautumn Festival. Every people out of home all want to come back to see their spouses.

On the bus, I was not happy, because I want to tour. I looked out from the windshield. Leaf and grass turn yellow. I want to cry. I understand that my grandma is too old and she want to see her son, daughter and everyone in this family. Every old people want to have a happy time at the last time in their lives.

Ten minutes late, we get down from the bus. There is nothing in the field. It's bleak and desolate. Then I saw my grandma was sitting under the tree. She saw us and stand up. She smiled very happy just like a child. She is older than I thought. I thought I haven't seen her in two years. Because I was busy with my study in the past. Now I have time to see her. But I want to tour instead of seeing her. I feeled ashamed now. I want to say "Grandma, I love you."

Tai Shan

What transpired after that first blog post from Tai'an could be its own entire blog site but I'll condense in order to avoid the pain of a total recap. ["shan" means mountain: the town is Tai'an and the mountain is Mount Tai = Tai Shan]

We proceeded up the mountain for our midnight "hike" which consisted of trudging up some 7,000 stone steps. 7,000 steep stone steps not made for size 9 American feet. No more than 3/4 of my foot could rest on each stair. We definitely underestimated the arduousness of climbing stairs straight up the side of what we thought was a puny mountain. We also had to navigate the horde of humans accompanying us on this midnight journey. For sharing space with an immense number of other bodies, the Chinese have barely a vague notion of crowd control. The "walk right" concept does not exist. So we're heaving our way up the stairs and people are spread all the way across the 20-foot wide stairway, stopping right in the middle of a chunk of steps without warning to catch their breath, or plopping down for a rest, or deciding it's too much and turning around and walking right down the middle into the stream of people still making their way up.

So not only were we sharing our hike with "a mountain of people, a sea of persons" as the Chinese expression goes, but none of these persons seemed to care that we were walking all over one of the "holiest" mountains in the country. There were vendors at regular intervals hawking flashlights, army overcoats, snacks, shoes, noisemakers, and anything else you needed or didn't. Some climbers broadcasted their cell phone MP3 files for motivation or shouted up and down at each other. A sign at the entrance reminded people: "Please don't fling rubbish everywhere," but no one seemed to have read it or cared if they did. Rubbish was indeed being flung everywhere.

When we made it to the top 4 hours later, sweaty but now freezing, we hunkered down in an overheated restaurant, after buying an overpriced cup of hot tea, to wait for the sun to come up. A little before five, everyone started bustling around and Megan and I took our long legs through the wandering mess and up more stairs to an eastern-facing rock. The summit was lined with cameras and their owners, who were more interested in capturing and talking about the moment than experiencing it.

Light slowly infiltrated the horizon and when the actual orb showed itself, the rim of people cheered and cameras snapped feverishly.

We started our descent, which was more painful on the legs than the ascent had been. We couldn't stop moving or else our legs shook uncontrollably.

Two hours later we made it to the bottom, not envious of all those just beginning their day in the now hot sun. We were desperate for good food and sound sleep and were looking forward to heading home. What happened with the rest of the day created one of the top five worst days of my life. All I'll say is we started our way back to Huai'an at 10am and we didn't actually leave that Tai'an hell hole until 6:30pm, arriving back at 12, making it the second midnight we had seen without any sleep in between.

trip to Nanjing

ka fei: YUM!

Nanjing is a very pretty city. It used to be the capital of China at
one point, and is also the capital of our province. In the late 20s
the Japanese attacked Nanjing and tortured and killed several hundred
thousand Chinese. The Chinese will not let anyone forget about this,
which of course continues to taint the average Chinese person's
opinions of Japan/ese 80 years later.

This third picture was taken at an enormous memorial site dedicated to
Communist martyrs.