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> a very long day the run around northern capital since i'm bored 05/05/06 the power of the yuan cellar select fire flowers parrots exams gritty like grain untitled life in the middle of the world tiny little bones the day i think i arrived dear everyone |
2006-08-30 19:58:33 2006-07-27 21:05:13 2006-07-11 20:52:58 2006-06-28 23:57:45 2006-05-05 11:10:21 2006-04-25 05:48:29 2006-03-24 06:28:13 2006-03-15 19:24:09 2006-02-09 17:48:43 2005-12-28 01:36:33 2005-11-16 14:20:44 2005-11-02 00:26:42 2005-09-04 03:04:36 2005-08-26 12:43:02 2005-08-03 04:19:51 2005-08-01 12:54:43 |
2006-08-30 19:58:33 -----------------------------------
a very long day
the sun only rose twice, but it'd been four days since i'd had any amount of decent sleep.
during the first sunrise i said goodbye to texas. it was a saturday morning when i left, but my preparations and sleeplessness had started the morning before. as i boarded my flight to chicago i looked out the tiny airplane window across the tarmac. where i was going that moment of the day had already come and gone. but then and there it was the start of a new texas day, and for me a very long day indeed.
i found myself sitting next to a man with a very nice hat: a carribean sort, of light complextion, smallish, but well suited for the weather and not altogether out of place. i always admire people with hats, and i feel that one reason [of many] for society's current stagnation lies in the hat's woeful decline. there used to be a time when no respectable man would be caught without his hat, and womens' hats of this bygone era were veritable works of art. indeed, a fine hat belies an air of sofistication, the likes of which cannot be matched by the tie or even the 'livestrong bracelet' rubbish of today. surely our generation can do better.
my second flight of the morning of the day (still in the same time-zone, mind you) was the longest, and i was quite delighted to have procured an exit row window seat, them being the best for any and especially this sort of flight. i sat beside a woman from hong kong who introduced herself right off and was extremely pleasant company. the mother of two - cute little girls, both in the row behind ours - she proved sociable, entertaining, and educational, and without her i likely would have drank the entire flight alone. ms. law, if you're reading this, cheers.
our flight passed over the arctic circle, and i hope that my pictures turn out as well as i hope they do. unfortunatly, the internets at my home isn't working at the present, so you will all have to do without pictures for the time being. i shall work on the matter with haste.
i will say that i was 'up' for the entire time, becuase that is how i will define it; i am free to do so. purists among you may contend the issue. i, however, see being up as the opposite of being down, and down clearly implies total reclination. therefore, while i was able to catch the occasional catnap during my time in limbo, i was never completely 'down.' regardless, i was up friday night, up through my flights on saturday and sunday, and up on the train through monday - and even when i arrived i didn't get to go to sleep until that night.
that day i found myself in sunday. the trip from chicago to hong kong passed smoothly and with no delay. immediatly upon arrival i caught the next bus to take me away straight to the train station-ay: i had to cross from hong kong the island to shenzhen the mainland. contrary to popular belief, hong kong is not controlled by china. sure, it is now conveniently included on every chinese map; but hong kong is it's own little world of commerce, politics, travel, and society. moving freely from one place to the other is strictly prohibited. crossing the border i had to negotiate 4 security checkpoints. oddly, one was a land full of correct english (british) and strange chinese (cantonese pinyin and old style characters), and the other filled with deplorable english (chinglish) and somewhat more familiar chinese (standard pinyin and simplified characters). the difference was immediate. the distance only a few steps.
the next step on my journey was making it - alive - from shenzhen to xiangtan, a task i had underestimated. foolishly, i'd led myself to believe that being a few hours early and having money for the most expensive seat would, in fact, assure me said seat. this was not the case. every train departing from shenzhen to my province was full. not just seat-and-bed full, but standing room as well. i negotiated 2 other very long lines to learn that seats and beds would be available on trains leaving from guangzhou, so i jumped on the rails and found myself between italian and chinese business men returning from a weekend with their familys in shenzhen and hong kong to their factories for the work week ahead. this is where i met mr. lee, a multi-billion dollar project manager for one of china's leading air-conditioning manufacturers. he said he would help me buy my tickets in guangzhou, and even mentioned being my japanese translator should we ever find ourselves in japan. if you're reading this, mr. lee, xie xie.
neither beds nor seats were available in guangzhou (despite repeaded assertions by ticket office people in shenzhen), but there were trains with standing room. i had never before traveled with 'standing room' tickets. rather than sleep in the train station for a hard seat on an early morning train, i took what i could get, which turned out to be exactly what it sounds like. the train to hunan was packed, though i found a hallway where my foreigner/celebrity status let me carve out a corner for myself. i also learned that my my large rolling duffle bag could miraculously transform from luggage to seat! true, there was liquid and glass and things breakable inside, but if that would have stopped me before, standing for 11 hours sure wasn't going to stop me then. (nothing broke anyway, so from now on i'm taking it wherever i go). i befriended the locals, handed out a few pennies, and rode out my ride. it wasn't half as bad as i'd thought it could be - certainly not as nice as having a bed, but i've had much worse with the seat-ticket option. while hard seats on these trains are notoriously uncomfortable, with a standing room ticket i was free to sit on my bag, stand, pace, squat, lean, or otherwise menuever into any number of yogatic-like positions. i befriended some college students who spoke english, which helped me pass the time. leaf, if you're out there, you have really cool shoes.
monday morning, at 6 am, i arrived in changsha, the capital city of hunan, and at this point only an hour away from xiangtan. i'd lived in this city for a month the summer before, and now i felt at ease in my element. i crossed the street to the bus terminal, bought a ticket without hassel, and boarded the bus. as we left the city, i looked out the window through the haze and watched as the sun begin to rise over the hills. the parallels were not lost, and i think a tear crept to the corner of my eye. the second sun rise marked my return to the china, and the begining of a new chinese day.
william is a time traveler, simultaneously exploring the past and the future where ever it is that they meet. this is his nexus.
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2006-07-27 21:05:13 -----------------------------------
the run-around
and so, faithful readers, i bring to you my next latest masterpiece: presenting a slice of life so fantastic, you ought not believe it...
summer adventure, 2006! part 2!
part 1, the vehement, and sometimes violent, exploration of beijing, left this intrepid traveler at a past point in time - in reverse!!! as he departed the middle kingdom, william in china could not help but think on his experiences but one year earlier, which, bearing absolutely no similarieties to his present circumstance, felt eerily similar. the backpack, the plane tickets, the airplane food and the english speakers - how could anyone NOT see the cycle ?? the wheel had made one full revolution, yet more turns were in store...
having successfully navigated the beijing airport, which is a big one indeed, our plane arrived in LAX about 30 minutes late. this dragged into an uncomfortable hour before actually getting off the plane and through customs, and another harrowing 20 minutes to claim luggage. i was cutting it close by anyone's standards, as i had booked my next ticket - to salt lake city - a mere 2 hours after my supposed states-side arrival. lucky for me, an attendant near the claim area directed me to the terminal where southwest would take me home.
"terminal 5, govna!" he quipped.
"what a nice young lad. it surely must be my lucky day!" i said to myself, as i headed on my way to terminal 5.
if i'd known then what i know now, however, the story here would change. i would have whipped that young lad into sufferage, and certainly not the good kind. my fury unfurled would have brought pain, so excruciatingly so that such that pain would only be a metaphore for every part of existance that that young lad felt, and such existance he would know as pain, and i would surely make him know it. this poor, vile, wretched lad had led me astray, and i! i did not even know it. you see, dear reader: southwest is not at terminal 5.
having arrived at terminal 2, and thinking my essential conection a terrible 3 terminals away, i raced. i ran. and i made it my life to run around that airport. how my body swat with perspire! i ran with my bags, across that filty airport, outside under the hazy sun of the los angeles heat. like an ox, shouldering the weight of his plow, but only knowing what it is that drives him. like a horse or a mule, the beast and his burden! oh, i ran, for i knew i had but precious minutes to my name. this connection, the last connection of the day, was my ticket to salvation.
at terminal 3 they showed me the path. at terminal 4 they told me i was near. but at terminal 5, they laughed.
"southwest ain't at this terminal, you crazy boy!' jeered the men.
"it's all the way over at numba 1!" called the women.
and "sorry," i claimed, but it was really for myself.
and that lad. that lad! he had led me astray! the burning i felt, it was really in my shoulders. it was in my legs. i FELT the burn. but in that instant, the burning wasn't for my bags or my wheezing or my feet in my shoes; it was for the lad. and i vowed that that lad would burn too.
i never did see that
i'll never find out what possessed the dark side to come out that day, but sure as sugar, out it was. i guess we just won't know why people are given easy jobs at which they are totally ineffective, but i can tell you this: you shouldn't try to catch the last plane out to salt lake after having just flown in from beijing, and you certainly shouldn't trust the people who work at the airport.
and so, the saga continues. hour after hour. day after day. no one often smells worse than william after he's been on an airplane for 20 hours ( - he chalks it up to allergies, but sometimes it can be stress related as well; the doctors are still out on the condition, so until then everyone who's got a medical opinion of their own would do jolly well to keep it to themselves). he did make it to salt lake that night, and he finally met up with his long lost parents. they hugged him and kissed him and promptly took him out for fast food. after showering and putting on clean socks and jocks, our hero settled into his comfy motel bed, wondering, just before nodding off, what might await him on this next part of his journey...
join us next time for a continuation of this installment's summer adventure, 2006! part 2!, where william finds himself lost in the grand teton mountain range, a guest at a traditional american wedding in wyoming, and stranded in the desert sands of utah. good night and adieu!
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2006-07-11 20:52:58 -----------------------------------
northern capital
well, i have just almost completed a week in the beijing, capital city of the china. it was ok - i won't lie, i've had better. but it was an entertaining and unforgettable experience to say the least, and i am happy that now i can say i did it. i've certainly had my fun, and i've got more than a few stories to tell!
while in beijing, i..
- watched the sun set
- ate peking duck and got ripped off (i used the english menu)
- ate peking duck and got it really cheap (i used the chinese menu)
- ate vegetarian peking duck (i couldn't believe it was tofu!)
- had crazy dreams about peking duck
- had dinner with the assistant US ambassador to china
- watched belly dancers and smoked a hooka
- randomly encountered friends from hunan province no less than 5 times (on the street, at parks, on the metro, and in the hostel)
- saw the forbidden city, temple of heaven, great wall, lamasary, and tiananmen square
- saw an acrobat show
- was watched by a group of chinese men while i used a public bathroom
- avoided buying a single souvenier
- learned to read russian
- ate japanese, korean, arabic, american, guangdong, sichuan, hunan, and dongbei food
- was swarmed by dragon flies
- bailed water out of my hostel when it flooded (only the first time; it happened twice)
- made peace between a drunk australian picking a fight with a chinese guy
- watched early morning worldcup soccer
- met several crazy swedish guys (though we should not restrict nationalities; there were many, many more crazies)
- learned 3 new card/drinking games
- rode the beijing metro in a 40 minute circle just for fun
- took a plane, train, bus, metro line, cab, mini-bus, and rickshaw
- saw the sun rise
and now in less than an hour, i will leave for the airport to continue my great summer adventure 2006. part 2 of this amazing journey will take place in america, as i travel to salt lake city to meet up with a crazy couple (my parents) taking a roadtrip to wyoming to see an american wedding (my cousin's), camping and rafting along the way. so until next time, folks, cheers!
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2006-06-28 23:57:45 -----------------------------------
since i'm bored
being in a rather philosophical mood and not presently being able to think of anything else interesting to write, i will put down a few words that i scribbled on the back of an envelope the other day.
creation: meaning transformed into symbol
destruction: symbol transformed into meaning
first, let me get over the ever awkwardness of meaning. meaning is a personally implied value. an expression of ones experience. anyone who wants to get into a discussion about meaning ought realize that we, one and all, think, categorize, and feel different ways. so even where our definitions of 'red,' 'horse,' or 'yes' may overlap, we all perceive these in subtly different ways, which cannot be reconciled without a proper sword duel to the death. i believe in personal language, and i think that each person's language, however useful for communicating with others, is defined by and defines our personal experiences.
a symbol is a construct that we create together. "a sign or token by which one infers a thing," you might say. it is something someone can use to come to a certain conclusion through reasoning or deduction.
one can argue that certain aspects of our language are indeed just symbols, and you'd be right. but underneath it each symbol contains meanings NOT shared. tendrils of other experiences creep into the picture-shows that run in our mind, and when you daydream of one reality, i live in another. good thing we aren't all growing up exactly the same. a symbol can bring unity through the experience that people share to create it, and this is where meanings can come to overlap.
creation, then, is the meaning that is constructed for the benefit of more than one person to communicate a shared experience. think about creating art: da vinci had his reasons and you've surely got your own opinions, but the mona lisa has become the symbol of the louvre in paris. (many even call it a master piece, but there will be those who disagree. 'by common standards!' you may say, but by whose standards and where are they common? generalizations always sound more like opinions to me.)
destruction is taking that symbol and shattering it. meaning is once again individualized. destroy something which meant something. why was it destroyed? what does it mean? meaning is there, but how could it possibly be the same? one's trash is another's treasure, and even when the symbol no longer exists in the form it once did, it will mean something to someone. what did a few buildings in a big city ever mean to anyone - a pretty view, the symbol of a city? and now what does it mean, and to whom?
of course at the root they are the same. creation uses something that was once something else, and destruction is quite clearly creation in a different direction. any meaning is just a symbol assigned meaning as a sort of symbolism, and it works for the very reason that it doesn't. the dualism runs nicely along the lines of my favorite anthropology nature/culture dichotomy: distinct and ever dueling forces. it's an aweful lot like yin and yang.
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2006-05-05 11:10:21 -----------------------------------
05/05/06
hurray hurray, the 5th of may!
let us consider the date today. the 5th of may, a friday no less. as a child i looked forward to these days of double digits - they were always the easiest to remember.
making trips to european family throughout my childhood made me a little confused. the slight yet meaningful differences between american culture and its european counterpart left me asking questions many adults just glossed over. 24-hour time (6 o'clock is 6 o'clock, but 18:00 is dinner time), simple necessities (where's the WC? why don't bathrooms all have baths?), and things like this. i remember the dates being an especially difficult thing to understand being different. it's the same day, right? same number, same name. why put it in a different order? let's look at some examples from each culture:
april 20th. in america, this day is usually referred to as 4/20, with the month being first and the day second. the day is made an ordinal number, and it belongs to the month, which presumably belongs to the year: 4/20/06.
30 april. this holiday, queen's day in the netherlands, is stated with the day first and the month second (also seen in the '3 october' celebrations of the same region). the day is the marker of the event and the month tells of it's location within the final cyclical marker, the year: 30/4/06.
we can see that in america, the month comes first, the day second, and the year last. in europe, however, the people take a more logical approach to the entire measuring system, placing the smallest unit (day) first, the month second, and the year in the final position.
i have overcome my difficulties with these through age, but then i moved to china and it got all messed up again. here, they show homage to the logical steps of the europeans, but in a reverse order. i glanced at a newspaper yesterday, and was taken aback - nay, almost shocked with horror - when i thought it was the 6th of may 2005. or was it june 5th?
i may never understand these monkeys whom i call my fellow kin. today is pretty easy to remember, though. it's my birthday!
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2006-04-25 05:48:29 -----------------------------------
the power of the yuan
i went for a walk tonight.
i was hungry and decided to go out to clear my head. i had lunch with my liaison today and he restated the offer that my school has made me - they want me to stay another year. i must admit, they've made me a very good offer.
the air was humid. i looked down the street and wondered how things could look misty without actually being so. there was a rank, fetid odor. as i walked to my favorite noodle restaurant and back, i could feel the filth on the pavement beneath my shoes.
i've had a cough lately. a dry cough, caused by that little tickle in the back of your throat (it's probably not any sort of flu). sometimes i just relax and the cough is gone, but it always comes back. i was awake late last night - it's at its worst when you're frustrated with it. i took nap over lunch time and made it to my afternoon classes in the nick of time.
i could spend another year here, but i don't know that in the end i'd think it was all that great. i could be very happy keeping many of my friends, knowing my way around town, and speaking a little of the dialect, not to mention bypassing the hassle of moving and paperwork. but things which i dislike would not change: the same annoying people hounding after me, the same chinese yelling hello, the same pollution, the same problem kids, and the same job and the same situation.
as of late, i've been seeking jobs elsewhere, specifically hangzhou, a neighboring city of shanghai and by all accounts a nice city. the only offers i've received, though, have been well below my expectations, and time is running out on me to consider many new options. i am making plans to visit this area in the coming may holiday
could i do it? another year in xiangtan? or do i make with the moving and see what new things come my way?
maybe i'll just flip a coin.
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2006-03-24 06:28:13 -----------------------------------
cellar select
the chinese have a historical affinty to what i call the baijiu ['white alcohol,' a clear high powered grain alcohol]. in production for at least the last 500 years, the baijiu comes in many different varieties, priced from a few yuan per liter to 1000Y for a small bottle. as the alcohol of choice, it lines the shelves of every liquor store, supermarket, and cigarette stand, coming in simple plastic jugs or elaboratly wrapped gift boxes.
i have been known to actually drink the substance, but hardly on my own initiative. i was at one time a connessoir of fine beers, but my move to china changed that. i'm left with a selection of red wines, which is sorely lacking. the popularity of the baijiu has ensured that hongjiu ['red alcohol'] is one western influence that will take a bit longer to catch on.
observe the following bottles, not at all an exhaustive collection:
let us number them from left to right, #1-8.
numbers 1 and 3, tonhwa and shenzhen, are bottles jessica found at a store near her school and brought over. they were opened and enjoyed, but, as they tasted much like grape juice labeled at 10% alcohol content, nothing too special. suntime red wine, #2 is a recent find and my latest favorite: 5.90Y for a liter of stuff that actually tastes like wine, purchased at a local family run convenience store.
#4, matHilde, was a fun bottle. the label is a adorned with the type of crest and award medals you might see on a european bottle, except all fake ("Passion give rise to France: MatHilde X"), and with this on the back:
like sunshine.
wine is the
birthright of all.
he who aspires to be a hero
must drink wine.
after opening the bottle we discovered the wine tasted exactly like pineapple juice.
the great wall at #5 was a present from abby on christmas (or was it new years?), along with a box of dinner table-style candles. the idea was to make one of those cool drippy candle holder things, but i put the candles to use in a bigger, more stable bottle, identical to that of #8.
#6 was once the superfancy bottle-tube of a santa teresa rum, a delicious treat from venezuela that jessica brought me when she came to china. dark - not too dark - and sweet - not too sweet - to be savored. pick one up if you see it.
#7 is a bottle of "v.s. special fine brandy" which my friend dominic brought half-empty when he traveled through town on his 8-month china odyssey. it was taking up too much room in his luggage so we made sure it was finished.
and finally, #8 is dynasty, the good stuff - the best bottle i've had yet in china. [excepting a bordeaux we had at last thanksgiving, imported from france.] dynasty is a joint french and chinese company, and this may account for its advantage over competitors. a claret-type wine, it used to be 12Y for a liter. smooth and sweet, it was usually the cheapest on the shelf, and good every time (much better than some of the other pricey bottles of the same label). it disapeared for a few weeks, and has recently reoccured in 750mL bottles for 14Y. they got wise and went and ruined it all!
i learned today that the phoenecians were the sea-faring advancement of the caananites. these phoenecians invented the most wide-spread phonetic alphabet derivatives in use today. the greeks were soon to adapt it, as their original micean alphabet linear b didn't really work well for them (linear a, the micean language, continues to remain undecyphered). there existed a crude pictographic language that began in europe at about 4000bc. i would like to have a suit like saddam's.
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2006-03-15 19:24:09 -----------------------------------
fire flowers
a few weeks ago i saw the best fireworks display ive ever seen.
usually in america when you go to firework shows, it's one at a time for a duration of maybe 20 minutes, followed by a big finale where for a minute or so the sky is completely lit up.
hahahaha. weak.
if you like fire works come to china for the last day of the chinese new year holiday - the latern festival. let me tell you - this show was big. fireworks had been going on steadily since the early evening, and i hadnt thought anything of it during dinner or after (imagine being at that point in china - 'oh, more fireworks? let's go home'). the entire time it was almost too noisy to concentrate on the 'sopranos' episode i was watching, but finally iventured out for some ice cream.
the streets were packed with people as i walked along the sidewalk towards the icecream shop. i live a few blocks from one of the bigger parks in town, and it seemed that everyone had shown up in my neighboorhood to watch the display staged at the park. people lined the streets and balconies, setting off their own fireworks above the crowd from windows and rooftops. the sky was slightly overcast and as the explosions went off everything would light up. to boot, another show was happening at another other park in the opposite direction towards the river; depending on your spot in the crowd you could see 2 equally amazing shows.
i watched it for an hour or so before going back home.. it had been going all night, and still went on for another couple hours after we got back. what wonderful excess!
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2006-02-09 17:48:43 -----------------------------------
parrots
i had lunch at my favorite noodle resteraunt this afternoon.. looking forward to the meal i ordered, watched the chef pound the dough and stretch the noodles, and relished the smells of noodles, cilantro, and garlic as they were prepared fresh for my empty tummy. unfortunatly, at the moment i was served, in walked a group of greased back, black leather jacket, chain smoking chinese guys.
now, me being unusually tall in this land - and having an exceptionally 'tall' nose even for my own kind - i do stand out a bit. chinese people react to this the only way they know how: they whisper, shout, yell, and scream the one word that's been ingrained in them since the british first showed up hundreds of years ago; the word that should harken as a sign of peace, frienship, and warmth; the one word that sends a shudder down the spine of every semi-longterm foreigner in china: the word "hello."
curiously, if a 'hello' by a chinese is replied to with a 'ni hao' from a foreigner, there is no end to the surprise. 'ay ya!'
'this foreigner knows chinese!'
'how can this be!'
and even tho all kids are put through 6 years of required english in school, the unfortunate truth is that many of them only have a 'hello' to show for it.
you can't blame the xiangtanese. as big a city this is, it's still the 'backwaters' of china. with 3 million people, there're only about 50 foreigners in the whole mess; besides seeing me on the street, most of these people only see us round-eyes on the telly. it was annoying back in august when i first arrived, but i guess i learned to ignore it. traveling to guilin or yunnan was fine, as enough travelers passed through the areas to have sufficiently out-hello'd the native inhabitants. but now, oh no, now during my lunch i deserve twice the volume and frequency.
what started out as the obligatory 'hello' from the chinese guys as they sat down at a table near mine turned into somewhat blatant harassment. i ignored them. they persisted. in chinese, i asked if that was all they knew. it wasn't: the leader of the pack knew how to say 'let's go,' but didn't know what it meant. the rest of his buddies chimed in to help him. 'hello!' 'hello!' 'let's go!' 'hello!' 'HELLO'
it went from a beautifully satisfying meal to a cold shouldered walk out. i ignored them and whatever it was they were shouting at me on the way out. the chinese insults i have so carefully studied went unused; it was neither the time nor the place, and i didn't want to insult the shop owners, kind and talented people, with bad behavior.
that evening at dinner with my kung fu teacher and his daughter (visiting from university for the holiday), i asked for a way to deal with this in the future. 'when dealing with people like this, call them yingwu.'
parrots.
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2005-12-28 01:36:33 -----------------------------------
exams
they get to speak. junior 1 student George Mallory's final exam conversation went like this:
A: This is your ball?
B: It is my ball.
A: Here you are.
B: My name is Sam.
A: The pen is under the desk.
B: Thanks you.
A: Nice to meet you.
B: That is a dog.
good kid.
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2005-11-16 14:20:44 -----------------------------------
gritty like grain
last night i went to a secret place. actually, everyone calls it a tea house. and really, its no secret. mr liu called me and invited me to dinner.. i'd been there before, but it still always gives me a kick to go. it's a bit like in the movies when the hero makes his way to some backalley location to meet an informant. well.. thats exactly how this goes down.
i jump in the taxi and give the driver my phone to speak with mr liu. we ride a few blocks to a hospital, and then i tell the driver to go a block more. mr liu is waiting for me near a driveway on the side of the street. paying my 4Y, i hop out and follow mr liu. we walk up the drive way and turn into a VERY dark alley. in a woefully unlit stairwell we start to climb stairs.. up and up we go, using our phones to light the way. 6 floors up we choose the door on the left, and walk into a small converted apartment. people are sitting on the couch in the living room. plates of dinner are being served in the back dining room. the sounds of majong tiles are an ever present ambient. dinner is good - last time it was ok, but since they'd been told i was coming they have made some dishes just for me. sometimes i feel really special!
after dinner, huge mugs of green tea are passed around, and people head to the back rooms to play. mr liu's wife is a majong fiend and is intent on winning tonight. (as the place has frequent good business, they can afford a special japanese automated majong table; this is one of the coolest things ive ever seen.) in the next room over, mr liu's brother-in-law is playing cards for big money - 300Y a game. and mr liu is in yet another room playing cards, tho the stakes are much lower. the smell of betel nuts and baijiu permeate the smoke filled air. this isn't the kind of place that would take anyone's finger for not paying up, but a few of the patrons are already missing digits.
i stick around for a while and give english lessons to someone's kid. some people call up their kids or relatives who can speak a few words of english, and i'm obligated to coach them through a few sentences. that's how it usually goes. i take some photos - i'd had my camera on me from taking pictures before coming - and then i leave. and that's what happened at dinner last night.
mr liu and his brother in law, and mr liu's wife playing majong
the track from above, and a bus
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2005-11-02 00:26:42 -----------------------------------
sometimes i think the title of the post is more important than the rest of it. i often wonder if i can come up with a witty one-liner to put up there, and if i think of good ones during the day i tell myself i should write them down... i had a REALLY good one earlier but it's long gone. next time.
not much new going on in this hemisphere. i did a halloween lesson for all of my classes (with slight changes between the junior 1 and junior 2 versions). i'd gone out and bought close to 100Y of candy, and the kids loved it.
they literally go crazy for lollipops over here - much more so than over regular hard candy. i thought this was rather silly, since what are lollipops but hard candy on sticks? well, i think i figured it out: the chinese aren't 'all that' about sweet things like americans[/westerners?] are. a surprising amount of the treats the kids eat that are sweet have salty or bitter tastes mixed in. a few examples: in my office i offered one of the teachers some candy. she politely took a piece, and then offered me some pickled onions in return, a treat the other teachers were crowding around to get at. they've also offered me a very 'traditional' treat: a melange of sweet, salty, bitter, spicey, tangy, vegetable/berry/twig material, pressed and flattened into a square, and torn at with the teeth. this jerky-like material can only be described as 'nothing you would ever find outside of china.' the only time i've seen a sweet-and-sour dish eating out (the staple of ANY american-asia resteraunt), no one touched it.
i thought about it, and i realized that the kids must like the sweetness of the candy, but not the kind you must keep in your mouth. thus, they shun away from the constant assault of sweet provided by the hard candy, and go right for the sugar-on-a-stick which you can enjoy at your own pace - removing when it's too sweet, replacing when you need your fix
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2005-09-04 03:04:36 -----------------------------------
life in the middle of the world
the chinese refer to themselves as 'zhong guo ren' - middle country people. (china being zhongguo... obviously, the country in the middle of the world) shortly after arrival, i bought a chinese map of the world to put on my wall: this map has china nearer to the middle than any american map has america in the middle. regardless of actual placement on the map, it says something about politics and its subtle (no relation to below) influence on the maleable minds of those who trust. every map of china ive seen includes not only taiwan, officially disputed for the past 60 years or so, but also the spratly islands, those oil rich islands to the south of hong kong which have been in dispute for only the last 20 years. so it's not surprising that young chinese students have no idea what im talking about when i mention one of these hotbed issues. 'what do you mean? these are part of china. here, look at this map!' (insert quote here: "he who controls the history books..." )
i started teaching last friday. everyone told me that monday was going to be the day. i get a call from my liason as i lounge in bed that morning, having just been woken up by my mobile phone:
"Yes, hello. I think you will be teaching today."
"Ok, that's fine... what time?"
"Now."
i look at my clock and it's 10:10. i throw some teacher clothes on and race over to class, completely unprepared. the first class went well becuase i was so late. i briefly introduced myself (im keeping the cowboy hat for next lesson), and we did a small excercise. the second class was a bit more unruly, but maybe becuase i finished all my material in the first 20 minutes. i think this next week will be a lot better - i've got some lessons planned already, and i borrowed a book from another WT teacher on fun games and lessons. from now on, just call me Mr. C. :-)
etymology lesson for today: physics phys- : latin physica > greek physikos (natural science), physis (growth), phyein (to bring forth) > IE root bheue- (bring forth growth). -ics: greek 'ikos' (the study of)
related words: be, build, bind, booth, doubt, forbear, future, husband, neighbor, neophyte, superb.
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2005-08-26 12:43:02 -----------------------------------
tiny little bones
first, my two favorite quotes from the past 2 days:
'I love Chairman Mao more than my own parents.' - Mr. Liu, my liason with my school
'Remember, no matter what happens China is a good place.' - Tom, a chinese student
i would like to mention some delicious and interesting foods i've eaten lately:
frog legs and clotted pigs blood - my chinese class ate at the home of one of the chinese teachers, and we helped her mom prepare a huge feast. there were 13 of us and there were 14 dishes. we stuffed ourselves on deliciousness.
crawfish, with my bare hands - principal Guo of our orientation host school took everyone out for dinner on the river. i got to crack open the delicate carapices (sp?) of many of these little creatures, and suck out their sweet innards. good times, great food.
donkey jerky - our farewell banquet got moved up (to accomodate gov Xu), but we all ate at one of our favorite resteraunts.
100 year-old duck eggs, oysters, and other 5-star hotel food - we had dinner with governor Xu, governor of the Hunan province. yes, he's a bigshot. we all got nice and dressed up and ate wonderfully.
here i am in xiangtan. i can't even believe this place, so i know you cant - i'll take lots of pictures. i thought changsha was industrially gross, but this place takes the cake! i like my apartment, but its been 2 days of solid cleaning, and it'll take at least 2 more... a good (horrible?) example: the canadian who was in my apartment before me left the fridge fully stocked. over the summer. without electricity. i seriously almost threw up the first time i opened it, but now its clean. not clean clean, but clean enough. one really must lower ones standards to avoid becoming OCD in this place.
i think xiangtan is more raw than changsha. the smog is so thick you can't see the end of the street. the poor people begging on the corner are dirt-freaking-poor. there are lots of communists all around. megan says shes starting to feel the gender differences, and i agree. i don't know really how changsha would have been 'better' - maybe i was just hanging around a crowd of 60 westerners way too much - but i can feel xiangtan sink into me.
my apartment is nice, though. the rooms are different colors, i have plenty of furniture, this computer works (and is in decent shape), and the location is good - er zhong (#2 middle school) is smack in the middle of the city. the campus is nice, with some small gardens and a large pond in the middle. my classrooms are close (i'll be teaching junior 1's and 2's - 6th and 7th grade in the states), and the administration seems nice. our liason, mr. liu, is a friendly guy. he took us out to dinner last night when we arrived, lunch this afternoon, and karaoka-ing tonight. he claims that a full half of the city population are his friends. i'm starting to believe him. he likes to drink lots of baijiu (50%+ rice alcohol) for lunch, he chain smokes, he's hooked on betel nuts, and he's taken a liking to me.
megan is my new next door neighboor and partner in this crime. unfortunatly for china, she is not only a girl (with gender discrepancies becoming more evident as time continues), but also a non-fluent asian-american, a non-social drinker, AND a vegetarian. mr. liu has been very understanding. megan is fun - although she really cops out when it comes to singing 'my heart will go on,' (celene dion's best song, IMO) she can impersonate the flashdance dancer-lady. perfectly.
well, i find it is almost ludicrously late, so i shall go on my way; but i shall return.
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2005-08-03 04:19:51 -----------------------------------
the day i think i arrived:
time has no meaning to me
seriously. ive had about ~45 minutes of sleep in the past x. lets define 'x' as 'long time,' where 'long time' equals a human body (ie: me) in motion from east to west, starting monday the 1st at 11am to wednesday the 3rd at 1pm.
lets also say that said body (me) is really hungry, due to utilized modes of transportations (ie: airplanes and their silly monopoly of air transport) skimping on inflight meals. ARG IM SO HUNGRY RIGHT NOW.
BUT, on the vary obvious bright side, i'm in china! i wouldnt say that 'everything went well,' but went it did, and i wont have to worry about another wenting for about a year.
and in fact, since my arrival in changsha things have been going awesome. worldteach put us up in a nice hotel in the middle of town.. we'll be here for 3 weeks training, and then ship off to our respective city-town-ships. for some volunteers, the ride to their hometown could be 8 or 10 or 12 hours by bus or train (i don't think anyone will have to take a truck). luckily mine is only an hour away.
i cant even think right now, but i think things are going to be ok.
-- a little bit later --
wow - once you get some food and some rest this place is pretty cool (except when it feelsstinkingly, drippingly hot). everything is rediculously cheap - we went out last night for a huge dinner, and they just kept bringing out plate after plate heaping with veggies and meat and fish and soup and rice and noodles and meat and fish and tofu and veggies and fruit and sweetbreads and FOOD and MORE FOOD. we stuffed ourselves silly, and it came out to about 15rmb each.... under 2 dollers per person. then before i passed out from sheer exhaustion, i could see a random firework display on the other side of the city out my hi-rise hotel window. it was framed perfectly over the buildings.
we'll all (58 of us) be here for 3 weeks for orientation. we had 'class' this morning and afternoon, but we just met each other and had some lecture on what we'll be doing - orientation for the orientation. basically we'll be taking some chinese language, TEFL, and chinese history classes. lunch and breakfast will be provided by the school (#1 middle school here in changsha - where chairman mao himself attended - is our host), and it is interestingly new (rice for every meal? an assorted selection of vegetables. and steamed buns!).
'mamahuhu' is my new favorite chinese word. it sounds as silly as you think it does - possibly more so - and it means 'so-so.'
we've all got maps and bus cards, so i think next week we'll do some serious exploring of the city. there isnt much old stuff in the city, despite it being over 3,000 years old (literally)... the chinese just keep building new stuff, so all the culture zoo sights are out in the country. but there are lots of those back-alley-shanty-town places to explore, and the student assistants in our group promised to take us swimming.
the streets are fun places to walk, but you have to constantly 'love your life' and watch our for cars. the drivers are crazy here! busses dont stop for anything, though the cars will occasionally stop for red lights. if i lived here i think i'd get a motorcycle - they zoom in and around anywhere. i took a taxi ride it was a lot like a rollercoaster.. the guy was weaving in and out of traffic like he was runing a roadcourse or something.
also, the streets, while dirty, radioactive, smelly, and unhygenic in every conceivable way, are kept quite litter free - considering that people just throw their trash into heaps sort of almost around public trash cans. there are armies of people whos sole job it is to go around and sweep. yesterday i watched a woman sweep caked dirt off of the pavement for about 10 minutes. she meant serious business.
ok so the computer lab is shutting down. i shall post again soon-ish. i'm out to scavange for food before dinner time with 'the group.' zia jian!
ps - hahaha, i'm in china, and you're still stuck in _____!!!!
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2005-08-01 12:54:43 -----------------------------------
dear everyone,
hi! i just wanted to write and let ya'll know that today, monday the 1st, i am moving to china! i'll be going to xiangtan city, hunan, china, and i will be teaching conversational english to middle school kids for a year. i imagine it will be quite an adventure! this has been an exciting whirlwind of a summer, and at the moment it's still a little strange to think of where i'll be and what i'll be doing 24 hours from now (let alone next week, next month, and or even this time next summer).
if you dont already know, you should join in with everyone else on the latest craze on the intarweb: www.williamfromtexas.com! its my personal webspace where i keep an active blog, some tidbits of information about me, and a photo gallery of what i'm up to. i've been promised internet access from china, and i will be keeping my page updated with stories, happenings, and pictures from the big red C.
i've also got lots of addresses in my notebook, but if you dont get a postcard, send me an email and i'll PERSONALLY send one out to you. conversly, mail is always appreciated! =D if you'd like to write, i can be reached at:
William
Foreign Teachers' Mailbox
Xiangtan Number Two Middle School
Xiangtan, Hunan 411100
People's Republic of China
my city - 'only' a few million people - is located semi-accessably to hong kong (30$ and 11 hours by train, which isnt bad considering that china is HUGE). if any of ya'll are ever in the area, come visit!
well, i guess this is it for now. i've still got a lot to do, and only a few short hours to do it in. i hope this letter finds everyone well and happy on the other side of internet world. i'm going to miss all of you terribly! write me back and let me know what's up! take care, have fun, and i'll talk to ya'll later....
william
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