shèng dàn kuài lè!

Merry Christmas!

Friday the 18th, Megan and I had a Christmas party for our students. Megan had to regulate which classes she invited since she has over 300 students (freshmen got denied) and I invited all three of my classes, knowing the one that hates me wouldn't show up :)   Luckily, the CET exams (China's national English test) were being given over that weekend so we lost a lot of attendance to test prep and had probably 70 students trickle through our tiny apartment. Let me amend that and say 70 girls showed up, because not a single male student came over. What-ever, boys!

We purchased Santa hats for the occasion (see picture) but over the course of the evening and following week, ended up with a total of 7, including one with white braids (a Mrs. Santa hat) as they were bestowed upon us with the Christmas wishes from various students.

This other picture is some of my freshmen (my favorite class).

"everything's cheap in china"

-- Loreta's observation upon hearing about this awesomely horrendous Chinglish

This sign is hanging above a row of lockers at Times Extra, the large supermarket in downtown Huai'an. You can't bring in other shopping bags or parcels, so lockers are provided to stow those items while you shop. These are the bilingual instructions for operating the locker system.

bus 22

I know I owe this thing some updates, but here's a snapshot of a bus ride home from school one night last week...

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I have my freshmen class from 4 until 5:40, the last period of the day. It gets dark midway through, and now that we're getting closer to winter, this class period is more and more miserable. (No heat in the classrooms, no heat on the buses, s-p-o-i-l-e-d American alert.) Last Monday was particularly miserable, with a steady assault of sleet pelting down on all of us waiting for the bus back into town. At least four #22 buses passed in the opposite direction, and three #23 buses passed going in my direction in the 40 minutes I had to stand waiting for the #22 to go home. When it FINALLY careened towards the shivering crowd, all much more patient/used to Chinese inconsistency than I, we clambered on to the tune of club music pumping throughout the bus. A group of men stood smoking near the front, shouting at the driver/d.j. to turn it up. A couple stops later, the smokers got off and were replaced by a man toting propane - wonderful. I had another spoiled American attack: is this legal? Are we going to explode? Should I get off and wait for the next one? and decided I'd just be Chinese about it and sit back and let it happen.

The sleet's still pelting, the music's still pumping, the bus gets fuller at every stop. Enter a glossy-eyed trio stinking of baijou, and this has turned into the strangest bus ride of my entire life. (Actually, just the strangest of my Chinese life, because the one in Milwaukee when the two guys started beating each other with umbrellas is still probably the strangest, and all the #30 rides with The Maniac were up there too.)

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.

downtown huai'an

Decked out for National Day. Can you spot Wal-Mart in the distance? Far left.

We had many discussions on the attractiveness of the Chinese lantern.
Some are charming and tasteful. Others, like these, look like
jellyfish. Not so charming.

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ditched

Megan's first piece that she left on the side of the road after the rust, the unidentified clunking noise and the flat tire got to be too much. What do you want for $14? This picture was taken a few days after she left it -- still standing there, all alone. It was so bad no one wanted to steal it.

It has since been replaced by a sleek, operable black number called "Feng Huang" -- phoenix.

freedom

having a bike makes life so wonderful

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a very good place to start

So let's start at the very beginning…

Megan and I left beloved KC and the very comfortable comforts of home on August 26, flew to O'Hare and got on our Asiana Airlines flight to Shanghai, via Seoul. Tylenol PM did its job and we both got a solid night's sleep on our way to the Far East.

The Seoul-Incheon airport is cool. Very sleek and schmancy with all the amenities you could ever want: beds, showers, massages. There's even a Caribou Coffee. In Korea!? Yay globalization?

After a short flight to Shanghai and an hour through customs (which now includes health questionnaires and some high tech temperature checks), we were met by Mr. Zheng, our school coordinator. When I saw the paper with our names on it that he was holding up, I gulped a big gulp and thought, yiiiiikes……We're really doing this! I am in CHINA.

Awkward-introductions made, Chinese cash obtained, we jammed our bags into the small Asian-person-sized car and attempted to stay awake as we drove north to the Jiangsu Province. The Shanghai traffic was(/I'm sure is always) nutso and the sky was(/I'm sure is always) a heavy polluted gray. After an eternity our driver Starskyed up against a curb and we were told we were stopping for lunch.

"Where are we?"

"[some town I don't remember the name of]"

"Oh."

"Just outside Shanghai."

(Our four-hour drive eventually turned into seven.)

I don't know what guide books I didn't read, but when Zheng passed over the picture menus and asked what we liked, I picked out a harmless looking dish and said, "I'll have that" – not realizing that all meals in China are served family style and that I was not ordering my own dish. He politely overlooked my ignorance. He couldn't, however, so easily overlook our ignorance when we said we'd just like water to drink. He made some noise of discomfort and finally said, "ehhhh…. Do you like beer?" (A lot of the tap water comes straight from the rivers, and most of what does is not treated. Blech.)

The driver was a kid probably younger than Megan, who kept stepping out for a smoke. He leaned over to Zheng at one point and rattled off something and Zheng said, "He say this is the first meal he have with foreigners… And he feels…very…excited!" The Chinese we've met who speak English do so with much caution in order to choose the right words and the faltering cadence is fun to imitate around the apartment.

We demonstrated our chopstick prowess, used our first real Chinese bathroom and squashed back into the hot car laden with warm Cokes from the restaurant. Six hours, scenes of marshy farmland and demos of Chinese highway driving later, we rolled into neon-lighted Huai'an at the perfect time for…showers? Bedtime? No, no – more food!

Bedraggled, stinky and in stale clothes, we were informed the Vice-President of the college was meeting us for dinner. Fantastic. We entered a large hotel and went up to the restaurant on the second floor where we were led to a private dining room. (I'm seeing that more, that the large restaurants have open seating on one floor or in one section, and little rooms on the second or in another section.)

Pre-VP-ness this lady was an English teacher but she was rather stingy on the English language convo. Her son, who's 18 and quite a fan of the USA, was with her and did a lot of the talking. His command of the language is achieved through Hollywood movie watching (illegally online of course).

We zombied our way through dinner and the short ride over to our new home, which is a subject for another time. But after six weeks, it is feeling like our home.

testing 1, 2, 3

Hello from the foot of Tai Shan, one of the "big five" Taoist mountains in China. Megan and I are in the midst of our 8-day holiday from school for National Day and the Mid-Autumn festival. We took a train from Huai'an north to Qingdao, in the Shandong Province, right on the Yellow Sea. After a few days of sharing the privileged expat life (peanut butter and cheese in the grocery stores, coffee shops with real coffee), we rode hard seat on the train west here to Tai'an.

 

Lonely Planet regained some respect (We've had a few bouts with misinformation.) after we easily hopped a bus to this dumpling spot where we devoured some sweet sweet potato mess, Cokes, tea, 20 mutton dumplings and 20 carrot dumplings -- we took the rest to go. We're waiting around til the clock strikes 12 to embark on our night hike up Tai Shan so we can make it up and watch the sun rise, which the Chinese believe is an integral part of hiking any mountain.

 

I don't know what this blog looks like or if this emailed post will actually show up since the blogs here are still inaccessible, so I'll just see if this works, and if it does, more to come!