tomorrow!

These faces will be together! Can't wait. Weekend in Shanghai (luxuries, here I come! fried goat cheese, soup dumplings, and proper beer to name a few), special guests in class next week, and then overnight train to Beijing for more of that Great Wall and Mao worship.

It's all downhill from here.

(There's supposed to be a picture of me and KATHLEEN up there but I seem to be having technical difficulties.)

happy about this

The National's High Violet

"sports meeting"

Yesterday we had no class because of the "sports meeting," an event you may know as a track meet. We missed the "most wonderful part!" which was the opening ceremony, including a parade, dancing and singing, because it occurred at 7am. But we rode our bikes out to school a couple hours later in the first warmth and sunshine we've had here in months and spent the day reliving our youth as tracksters.
It was so typical that there was a teachers' race we weren't let in on (they knew we would win I guess), but we had a chuckle at the men's and women's 50 meter dash.

Above, Elvis (one of my fav freshmen) jumped so far and so fast that my camera totally missed him. But here he is after, with fellow fans and classmates, Rocket and Will.

journaling

March 20, after a tearful goodbye to Simon at Pudong airport I made my way back to the trashy bus station for my 7:30pm bus to Huai'an. This is from my journal that night...

From the Maglev I took Line 7 (new for the Expo, sleek, pretty quiet) to the Changshu stop to walk to Bistro Burger because a) eating a real hamburger was a priority on my Shanghai itinerary b) Simon unloaded some of his renminbi on me and c) I didn't have an appealing dinner alternative. The owner lady is very friendly and said "of course" I could get a burger to go. I had already browsed the menu so forgot to ask the next important question, how long will it take? It was already 6:40 by the time I got there. The tables outside were so enticing I headed straight to them to sit in the warm nearly-spring evening, wait and play with the wireless on my new *iPod!*

Let me back up and say that as soon as I got off at Changshu I knew I didn't have enough time. I thought, fleetingly, of getting whatever dumplings I found en route to the Bistro. Didn't see any.

The burger took 15 minutes. I didn't get the fries I thought accompanied it, but I did get a free vanilla milkshake they had made by mistake for someone else. My backpack and frantic disposition must've betrayed my poverty and desperation. Trying not to spill the shake or dismantle the burg, I trotted as quickly as I could in Danskos, too many layers, a pea coat and laden with my oversized backpack. I think I got to the Shanxi metro station at 7:05. My bus was at 7:30.

Everything unfolded without wrinkles: metro ticket, security check, train. Stand. Wait. Consume milkshake. Arrival at the railway station stop at 7:18. (The bus station is situated just north of the train station.) I ran. As fast as I could. Sweater, scarf, knee high socks, heavy backpack = overheated spectacle of a foreigner dashing through the train station's metro stop. I'm out of shape.

I had jammed 10RMB in my back pocket to take one of the scooters usually poaching the long passageway from metro to bus station. But no one was there. So I ran again. Tried, anyway. Thank heaven both the metro and bus stations were sparsely populated. I don't know how I didn't have A Dansko Incident, the frequent ankle twisting, balance toppling moments those shoes tend to give on uneven surfaces, while dashing through the construction rubble that must be what Kabul looks like.

Navigating the terrain and dodging the people in China is like you're inside a video game. If anyone else was playing, I was definitely winning.

The bus station guards waved me through the entrance. Barely breathing, sweating, I heaved my bag onto the security belt. I thought my ticket said the bus was leaving from the 2nd floor but I've never left from there before so I wasn't sure. Luckily the first floor was totally dark, so I just bounded up the stairs and bumbled down to gate #5. They were still calling out 7:30pm departures so at 7:28 I thought I was okay, but when I thrust my ticket in the gate agent's face, his eyes bulged, "Huai'an!??" and he pushed through the crowd at the door to chase down the bus. He looked back to make sure I was following. "Xièxiè!" I gasped, and he pounded on the window as the bus pulled out of its space.

The whole bus was quite surprised to see a panting weiguoren and I was quite surprised to see the whole bus consisted of three drivers and four passengers. I slumped across two seats, peeled off my layers, and as soon as I could think clearly and breathe at the same time, thanked my lucky starts at the good fortune of not only making the bus but having such a luxurious ride.

But of course, nothing is as it seems.

Approximately seven minutes later the bus putt-putted to a stop along the road, two of the drivers got off, and three minutes later, we five passengers were ushered off and on to a new bus that had pulled up behind us.

I was slow to gather my heap of belongings but all the drivers showed me the way and I stepped up into the new bus, which, I made sure, bore the characters of Huai'an as its destination.

Ahhh, yes. Now this is what a night bus to the sticks should look like, I thought, peering down the columns of weather-worn brown faces craning their necks, peering back at me. Packed to the gills. The ticket I had purchased proved I paid for a seat, and seat #1 at that, but I had lost possession of it between the worried gate agent and curious bus drivers #1, 2 and 3. I just stood at the front trying to spot an opening anywhere.

A hard-working man in the front row was nudged and forced to a seat (I hope a seat and not a stool in the aisle) somewhere in the back, outraged that he was booted for a laowei, though I didn't catch much of the exchange besides that word. I took the seat and we finally set out. The men in the seats nearby poked their heads around to get a good look at me and my belongings. I didn't pack in an old rice sack.

Shortly after, an argument breaks out in the back of the bus between one of the new drivers and who I assume is my seat martyr. All I gathered was the entire bus was now engaged in debate over the fairness of me getting the man's seat. I just contemplated my pathetic, well-traveled burger, not having to try hard to look clueless, and hoped everyone would calm down.

Eventually, they did. Before hitting the main expressway we stopped two or three times to pick up even more passengers, though I don't know where they were put and I didn't want to turn around.

All of this wasn't even the reason I got out my journal in the first place: As we pulled through a busy toll a woman approached the driver and he stopped beside a semi. The woman and another man got off the bus. Did they really only need a ride this far? We didn't continue driving after they left. Looking out the window between the passing trucks I saw the couple popping squats in the triangle bounded by the guard rails of the on ramp and toll exit. Their hunched figures intermittently were spotlighted by passing headlights. After a few minutes the woman returned and we continued to wait. Some of the drivers chuckled. Eventually the man finished his shit. He trotted back and we carried on.

My seat neighbor is dozing into my personal space. Thankfully the driver is going the 100 km/hr limit. I'll be happy to see my pillow.

someday

I MUST experience this: home cooked Italian meals with the "Cesarine" chefs themselves, right in their dining rooms.

"...Home Food, an Italian organization dedicated to, as its promotional literature states, 'the protection and increase of the value of typical Italian gastronomic and culinary legacy.' That is, it’s all about preserving and showcasing the cooking of individual Italian families. ... Home Food seeks out exceptional home chefs, puts them through a training course and dubs them Cesarinas — little Caesars, emperors of the kitchen. Then, a few times a month, the Cesarinas host dinner parties at which they open their homes to strangers." [The New York Times]

Sign. me. UP.

And then tell me why no one else has copied this genius idea. Where are the 小皇帝 [xiǎo huángdì] in this gastronomic dreamland?

Oh wait -- that's right -- just down the street at the four tops connected to their bedrooms.

[I'll refrain from a google image search to illustrate because I should really have my own picture of this... consider it forthcoming.]

she posts

Please see what she gleaned from our Saturday evening dinner guest because I cannot compose a more illuminating recap.

All I can add is that we cooked a box of our Shanghai purchased pasta, of which Lin Qiang ate 5.5 bites since he was so busy talking. "I am very excited!" he explained. Had we not subjected ourselves to the hell of Club Seven the night before we probably would've been more excited too. As it was, he was thoroughly enjoyable and educational company, one of the most vivacious Chinese I've met. The majority of Chinese have a somewhat irritating habit of modesty: "You know my English is very poor," "No, no I am not very beautiful," etc. Lin Qiang is refreshingly very candid: "See?! I am a good teacher!"

We'll be having him over again.

you know you live in china...

when a toddler at the campus track is toting nunchucks.

lucky

heh, to counter the bitter supermarket cultural misunderstandings, here's another supermarket episode that's a bit sweeter:

On a recent evening trip to the store across the street I picked out a bunch of bananas, and took it over to our smiley fruit weigher friend. (You bring your bag of fruits and veggies to the respective weigh station and have it priced and sealed up.) She printed the sticker, clamped the bag and then showed it to the darling old man standing next to me. All I could understand of his commentary was "pretty" and he looked up at me, said something, and I had to reply with a hopeless smile, "听不懂," [loosely translated: I know you're talking to me but I have no clue what you're saying!] which is my automatic response to almost any Mandarin tossed my way.

I heard the fruit lady say something about "three" but I definitely had more than three bananas. I just shrugged apologies for being in their country and not speaking their lengua, took the bananas and left them smiling and chuckling.

It wasn't until I got back to the apartment and unpacked everything that I realized the bananas cost 8.88RMB, and the lady was showing the man the price tag with the three eights. In China people pay extra money for phone numbers or license plates with 8s because they're "auspicious" (their favorite word). The Mandarin for "eight" is "bā" which sounds like the word for "prosperity", "fā." So they believe eights are blessings of fortune. How lucky were my bananas! The Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony began at 8:08pm on the eighth day of the eighth month, in the year 2008.

I'm bummed I didn't try a little harder to figure out the circumstances at the fruit stand. But I guess it's called a language barrier for a reason... Too bad I couldn't have hurdled this one with a display of gratitude at my great fortune. They must have thought I was a terrible waste of 8s!

beware

A wild animal is on the loose here in Huai'an. It's abnormally tall with odd coloration. It wears clothes that are made in China but do not look Chinese. It sometimes responds to calls in its language. If you see it at the supermarket inspecting tofu with the provided tongs, you should clap and squawk in its face and remove the tongs from its hand, because wild animals certainly do not know how to handle tofu. Plus, there are obvious codes of conduct around here, evidenced by the hundreds of pounds of meat laying in open air being picked and prodded at by all passersby, and this creature does not understand public health measures or human etiquette.

Additionally, if it attempts to add money to its cell phone, you should look at it in repulsion, take the phone and press all the buttons, and then ignore the Chinese message that plays when you try to make a call and informs you the account is out of money. Just look at the other customers and hope they will remove the beast from your service counter. If it refuses to go away, wave in its face and turn your back. It will eventually get the message that it's not welcome.

Maybe the creature needs an attitude adjustment, but it just wasn't in the mood.

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.

resuscitation

finals, visitors, travels, visitor, start of semester, excuses, excuses.

We're already a quarter of the way into second semester. My freshman class has shaken the dust off their atrophied English skills since vacation and my 9 sophomores have solidified their hatred of the language. I have one writing class with them, which I really enjoy thanks to the writing textbook Jeff & Claire left behind for me to use, and my other five classes are all Listening & Speaking, four times per week with the freshmen and once with the sophs. (I should have two writing classes with the sophomores but they hate it, and usually me, and I don't love them, so I dropped one and am waiting to see how long it'll be until someone "important" confronts my liberties with the schedule.)

Everyone came back to school with new shoes, new coats and freshly sculpted anime hair: curled, swooped, frizzed, straightened, black, purple, or "blonde," which, properly translated, is "orange." The magic of having a foreign teacher has worn off for most of the students, except the ones who aren't actually in my classes, and only see me in the dingy hallway of the writing class building, grabbing their friends' attention to stare and giggle or call out, "Hallooo! Nice-tew-mete-yooh!"

Spring is at winter's back door with fickle temperatures and mostly gray skies sagging with showers, but Megan was lucky to get 68 degrees on her birthday a couple weeks ago. Simon and I came to her class to play shark pit and "the circle game" (that's what I'm calling it anyway) outside, which was a lot more fun than when we repeated the event the following week with my class, who, true to form, cheated. The freshmen boys are bedazzled by my new and awesome iPod; Jack pointed and said, "How much," and Martin held out his hand and demanded, "Give to me." Jack had the same question-as-statement last semester of my running shoes that I brought in for show and tell (hard to believe, but I do teach college and not kindergarten) which was followed by Martin's charming show of his pack of cigarettes, and tell, "I like smoking. That's all." Boys.

Hopefully we'll have some committed spring temperatures by next weekend for Easter/Qingming Festival aka Tomb Sweeping Day (interesting coincidence) when we get Monday off (and don't have to make it up!). Some of us are thinking of getting a bus down to Hangzhou, the lovely city near Shanghai where Megan and I started our winter vacation travels. Loreta's stipulation is a church and Tim's is beer, and thanks to Google (.com.hk, mind you) we know Hangzhou has both. All I need to do is figure out exactly how much I overspent by on our travels -oops- and see if I have the funds to go.

mango melee

Last summer while visiting Renee and her homeland we went to the annual Mango Melee in celebration of this wondrous fruit. My love of the mango developed in Voi, where the Sisters plucked them off their trees and served them for dessert, and then my dear island roommate taught me how to properly peel and cut my own (Pick 'n' Save purchased) mahngoes (how Beth says it in Latin American hangover). Well, lucky for us, it is mango melee somewhere in this part of the world because the supermarket bins are bursting with them.

In the fall when we last had mangoes we attempted the oh-so-delectable Thai dessert of mango and sticky rice, but we never quite perfected it before winter settled in on the produce section. Now we have mangoes again, and between devouring them at every meal and snacktime, we've cooked up coconut sticky rice twice in the past week. Tonight, we perfected it, and let me tell you, it's a DIVINE trio. If you have the means, you must rush out to the nearest Thai restaurant and get some for yourself. Or buy your ticket, come over here, and I'll make it.

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?

new year's in shanghai

New Year's Eve isn't such a big deal here since the Chinese New Year is what everyone looks forward to (happening this year on Feb. 14, ushering in the year of the tiger), but we made it our own big deal by going to Shanghai with Jeff and Claire since we all had New Year's Day off of school. I moved my Thursday afternoon class to Wednesday so we could head out earlier, and made it to the hostel by 8pm. Jeff and Claire had gotten in earlier in the afternoon so we hopped on the metro and met them at People's Square, which was filled with thousands of, you might guess, people. And that's probably not an exaggeration since the population of the city is somewhere around 19million.

A friend of a friend of theirs, who is a Shanghai native but went to college in the U.S., met us all and took us over to the Bund, right next to the Huangpu River. My camera promptly announced it had no battery life left, so I'll have to get the pictures from Jeff before I can post any, but we had a great view of the Oriental Pearl Tower across the river. The lights on the Tower turned into a countdown, so Megan joined in with "shi! jiu! ba! qi!" and I tried to recall them but only chimed in at three/"san!" I forgot that no one else would be shouting "Hap-py New Year!" after we got to "one!" but did it anyway and smooched my date on the cheek. A spectacular fireworks show ensued and it felt really cool to be standing there at the start of 2010.

Surprisingly, the area wasn't so mobbed with people as I expected, but it got a little scary when everyone decided to turn around and head back down the street. They just move, which means plowing through with no concern for whatever other humans are in your path. A man wrapped his arms around his wife and propelled them through the crowd by using her as one of those log things people in medieval times used to knock down castle doors (what are those things called? logs?). It's very easy to see how it's not uncommon for people to die in stampedes in this country. (Schools have waves of dismissal times so there's not a horde of kids trampling each other while racing out to mommy's mo-ped.)

I asked my class who their New Year's kisses were going to be and the ones that understood gasped, blushed, and cried, "No one!" At 19 and 20, most of them still think the opposite sex has cooties I'm pretty sure. One girl said she would be in bed by midnight so I took that to mean they don't much care about seeing the clock change.

The rest of the weekend was sort of a bust: Megan had forgotten her passport here in Huai'an, the bank below the hostel started jack-hammering my eardrums at 7:30 ("We must finish for the Expo!"), and the Shanghai friend took us to the tallest building in the city, which also has the tallest prices of anything in China I've seen. It cost 150RMB (over $20) to go up to the top, and we were pretty cash strapped slash not that into it, so it was a futile, time-suck field trip. However, the bathrooms in the lobby of the tallest building had heated toilet seats, which somehow made it semi-worth the trek.

thank you, Shanghai's Swiss Chamber of Commerce, for the tiger picture: swisscham.org

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).