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CSXPVDLAXSAT
arriving was a much easier affair this time, the second time from west to east i'd come back home.
well, certainly first in order is a big shout out to my buddies and pals still in .cn, many of whom made it to the friday night party extravaganza thrown before i had to get into the taxi to get on the plane to come back home.
it was good. we stayed up late drinking beers and enjoying ourselves with a bonfire in the street outside greg's bar. we cooked food over it, and even then from somewhere a vendor appeared who cooked us more. i don't even remember how many people had stayed out up to that point, but it was late enough that the chinese people who lived in the area, those who'd been out at bars themselves, came back home.
soon enough it was time for me to return, almost early enough for me to see the sun come up again. now i remember who was there, because i remember each goodbye i said for the last time. it's the goodbye you say when you turn around and walk away with the silence which hangs behind you and says, well, that's goodbye for now. it's the silence you wish you could keep with you because even that parting silence is a reminder of the space you shared with the other person between the quiet. it's the goodbye you say to friends you've made in a new place when you know that it's time for you to return back home.
i got in the taxi to get on that plane, which took me ten thousand kilometers across the sea. i don't remember much of it, except that things seemed to get exponentially more expensive as i went east. 3Y became 10Y on the other side of the taxi ride; 10Y became 50Y at the first airport, and 50Y became 15$ at the next. free peanuts in china? 5 dollars in america. the money whose worth i'd come to take for granted suddenly simultaneously gained and lost value going back home.
my parents picked me at the airport, i smelly and weary and still wearing a cowboy hat, wondering if i'd done the right thing. they met me with hugs and kisses, and a big sign in chinese saying welcome home. before i could even say ya'll we'd arrived at the mexican resaraunt, and as i tried to tell stories without too many chinese words we ordered margaritas. after dinner i dropped my bags in my old room and crashed on the bed where i'd crashed many times before, and i knew that i was back home.
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pretend i posted this last week
i'm finally leaving china! a decision that was not made easily, yet also not made entirely by me, i go with no ill will towards it and certainly maybe not for good; but it has come time to move forth a little bit, even if that means moving back.
i've become increasingly irritated with the administration of my school, though to be honest there were more factors than the simple 'that' which made me make up my mind. the largest problem has been my lack of legality, which my school has repeatedly refused to grant me. i knew coming into this whole affair that i would be doing so on the sly: things were great at first, and it appeared that they would stay like that for the duration of the year. but things were never as they seemed, and i found myself encountering the difficulties associated with evading the law. no, the chinese police never came after me - in fact, they knew all about me. but money transfers and visa runs and contract obligations, oh my, the school didn't seem to care that i technically didn't exist.
fast forward 9 months, and you find me today [last week -ed.]. my latest and last tourist visa expires next week, but i will not wait for it; i plan on voiding it myself. tickets have been secured, and the final stages of my escape plan slowly fall into place. the school won't know about it until it is too late. by 6am this saturday i will have walked out the door for the final time. i do feel the pains of regret for the 15% of my students who would be better off had i stayed. and though parting with my friends - chinese and foreigner alike - will bring such bitter sorrow, i hope that our paths will some day cross again.
so, to china, i bid you now farewell. be good, be nice, don't forget to eat your rice. remember me and remember my times, and i'll remember you and write some more lines. wherever you go, whatever you've seen, you'll always be in my heart, just like the benzine. =)
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this morning
this morning while i was eating my breakfast, i noticed that i had 2 half loaves of bread which had started to grow mold.
you know what would be great, i said to myself. to feed this bread to the ducks in the park, like i used to do in holland when i was a kid.
as i munched on my breakfast and mulled this idea in my head, i remembered reading somewhere that china has an average yearly income of about 7,000 us, though people here in xiangtan probably fall between 3 and 5,000.
then i realized that there are no ducks in the parks here, becuase if there were, people would have caught them and eaten them years ago.
and this made me sad.
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9am
i was woken up entirely too early by someone pounding on the door. the workers who were supposed to put burglar bars on my windows last week had finally decided to show up. although not a big problem, it was funny: the night before i'd had a party and my house was pretty well messed.
not broken, but garbaged. the floors in 4 out of my 5 rooms were literally covered in goo, my house having surprisingly survived the night with a bathroom unscathed. the mess was not entirely my doing, of course. i just happen to have friends who like to spit betel nuts and spill liquids while engaged in monkey-like activities. i like to too.
i didn't even remember that it was a st. patrick's day party until someone told me that morning ( - i'd randomly chosen a saturday. was this a sign of good luck?). i guess it could have been an anti-st pat's day, being on the other side of the world and not green colored and all. green is supposed to be an irish luck thing, though, so i wore green just to be sure.
(on that other side of the world note.. i haven't forgotten ya'll. sometimes i like to look down at my feet and sort of point to where i think america or europe or wherever might be. i find this amusing, though i'm assuming here that the earth isn't flat.)
so i woke up on my couch after a few hours of well earned sleep to let 6 workers into my house to do some drilling. i don't know if they were surprised or not, but i like to think that they all now think foreigners live strange lives like i do. in the process of putting pre-fabbed bar structures on my windows they covered pretty much everything that wasn't already dirty in about an inch of dust.
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non-places
the wooster collective
thieves jargon
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robbed
i sat on the window sill where just a few minutes earlier i had climbed. drunk from lunch, i looked out across the coutryard where the children rode their bicycles and played with their toy guns. it was this same balcony where the night before the robber had entered my house and taken his escape.
the view before me i'd seen from the inside of my house a hundred, nay, a thousand times. the same apartments facing me, the same windows, the same neigboors, the same light, the same plants, the same concrete. but from this point of view, everything was cast into a new light.
i'd decided to go out on the ledge on a drunken wim. it was 1 in the afternoon and i'd just gotten back from my friend the police chief's 50th birthday. at a fancy hotel i had bottom's'ed up all of his friends with the noxious chinese white wine that is so infamous among those who have had the opportunity to try it, and i'd had more than the usual glass. one cup is no problem, but two means i'd feel it the next morning. in the space of lunch i reckon that i'd had a bit more than that.
and so i had returned home with the robbery of the night before still fresh on my mind, and decided to climb out onto the balcony to see for myself first hand just what the thief had had in mind. i squated, looking down and up, across and into. from this ledge the robber would have had private access to exactly what i had hoped would be protected: my house.
in the dark of the night around 5am i'd woken up and i didn't know why, but the reason, as i quickly found out, was becuase there was someone moving in my room where there shouldn't have been anyone. i'd left the heater on that night, and maybe that was why the thief thought he could try his luck: the noise provided the cover needed, and he'd taken that chance by entering into the room where i slept, and, not 2 feet away from my face, brazenly taken my mobile phone.
when i woke up i didn't know what to think. my first thought was that it was perhaps some sort of prank being played on me by my liason, as i had classes early that day and i thought i'd slept in too late. but that didn't make sense - the room was pitch black, and when i called out all i heard were silent foot steps. when i gathered my senses enough to turn on the light, i saw the face of a shortish chinese man in my kitchen slowly backing into my bathroom, where a few moments later heard the window slide open, and then quiet.
the first thing i grabbed was my supersized can of deoderant. in the worst case it was blunt enough to beat somebody over the head with, or use as mace. would i have to aerosol his eyes? would he end up being a really good smelling thief? i had no idea what to expect. i stumbled into my bathroom in my underwear and tore my shower curtain aside expecting him to leap out - but he wasn't there.
i leaned out the open window and saw his figure jogging away carrying what looked like a 15 foot metal pipe, which he might have used as a brace for climbing. i shouted all the appropriate chinese curse words at his back, but i was glad he was gone.
my first action was to call my liason, but at 5am he was no use to me, drowsily translating my english into chinese in his mind, formulating a response, and then slowly reverse translating. he laughed and told me to go back to sleep. 'we will call the police in the morning,' he said. then i called marisa, the teacher next door. i wasn't sure if there were 2 thieves, or if she too had been woken up by a mid-morning intruder. she was fine, but upon inspection she found that her camera and a wad of cash were missing. this thief had pulled a double in the space of only a few minutes.
sitting on the ledge in the light, i could see how easily it would be for someone with a little patience and upper body strength to pull off such a feat. living on the second floor, both marisa and i had assumed that it was safe to leave our bathroom windows unlocked and even cracked open a little. this was all the thief would have had to see. using the frames of the windows on the floor below us, he first climbed up to marisa's ledge, entered, thieved, and then took a very large step from her sill to mine, where he repeated the process.
there is no easy resolution to this story, except that now i am less a phone, which is very inconvenient indeed. however, i think that it uncomplicates my life quite a bit, as it is one more thing i don't have to worry about being stolen as i sit on a bus. on the other hand, i now have no alarm clock, and i frequently find myself patting my pocket where the phone should be. but it's not the end of the world and in fact i'm glad that it wasn't worse.
i don't think he will be back - it would be risking too much on his part - and the school has promised to install bars on our windows. still, though, it is an important reminder that no matter how secure you feel there is always that crack where somebody can sneak in.
favoring the comfort of indoors to the windy and slightly dizzying ledge, i carefully climbed back into the safety of my house. on my couch in the middle of the day, i caught up on sleep that i should have had that morning.
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greatest single accomplishment ever
spring festival, the chinese holiday which i'd been enjoying for the past 5 weeks or so, is over. i started classes today.
i spent a good deal of the vacation in bed sleeping, and it was everything doing nothing should be. knowing me, i did have grandios plans of adventure and travel - western china, after all, still holds many secrets - but i just couldn't bring myself to go. there had been some visa nonsense that was easier(?) to take care of here in xiangtan, as well as extra work which i picked up and new places to explore here in town. a smattering of my friends stuck around while others came and went on their various vacations, and i had time to clean my apartment. click here to see a video of my living room
anyhow, classes resumed today, not after having been rescheduled unannounced. luckily i only had 2 periods. they were good classes, but it still reminded me of just why i have lost interest in teaching large groups of chinese children. give me a few days and i may get more into the swing of things, but waking up at 8 am to babysit 50 14 year olds isn't high on the list of things i enjoy right now. (on the other hand, iam giving lessons one on one to a university student, and she is awesome.)
well, the greatest single accomplishment ever may be my waking up tomorrow morning for my 8 am class of howling little ones. wish me luck.
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pig feet and pork fat
xin nian kuai le! saturday night china held a huge new years eve party to welcomed in the pig, and i hope everyone who celebrated had a great time.
in the chinese calendar the pig (or boar, as i prefer) only comes once every 12 years. 2 complete cycles ago the zhu (pig) happened to come when i was born, which makes ME a pig. what's your animal? tradition holds that when your year comes, it marks a pivotal time in your life when you either have extra luck or none, fluctuating wildely from one side of the spectrum to the other. they say that the only way to invoke the steady luck of the gods upon you is to wear red somewhere on your body every day for the year. it's day 2 now, and i'm still doing good.
pork products are pretty staple around these parts, but with this year's arrival there is only more reason to feast on the flesh of these foul beasts. a chinese dish of new years' fame around these parts is kou rou,that notorious dish consisting of pig fat fried in pig fat, on a bed of fried tea leaves soaking in.. you guessed it: pig fat. to first timers and the uninitiated, this dish is the complete opposite of anything we are taught to consume in the west, and upon inspection it does appears much worse for your body than i have just described it to you. but give it a few tries and you might start to enjoy it. it has been present at every dinner i've been invited to for the past week, and that's a lot! between kou rou and my other favorite fried fat dishes, though, i usually prefer hong shao rou, those lumps of fat with a tiny bit of meat, fried with soy sauce, and supposidely mao zedong's favorite dish. for my first meal of the new year, however, my friends and i kept things simple by heading to a street noodle stall for noodles (a symbol of longevity) with pork cracklins on top. mmmmm it was delicious.....
i had a pretty good night that night, staying up well past my bed time. i managed to make it to 4 parties: a dinner with teachers from my school, a ktv party at mr. liu's tea house, a fireworks party with the family of one of my students, and then late night beers with some foreigners.. observe:
the ktv bar: singers and gamblers
fireworks: what i bought (2 packs for 6Y/0.75$), compared to what my student's family bought
they give this stuff to kids too.
(i have a video of this same kid almost getting blown up)
fireworks! and beer!
this holiday receives my approval
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little pieces of paper
I
I sit in a coffee bar, exclusive for this city, on the 5th level of a building considered impressive for this part of china. The patrons file in. The richer and upper peoples of the city I now see out these windows. In any other larger city this place might be the joke, but here it's what people make a goal out of. The strange mix of western would-be decedence and eastern mass-produced class form an interesting social experiement. A shame, really, that I have been hired and am here to encourage this behavior instead of record it. I guess the free food should make me happy, but I know too much of what lies beneath.
II
A small girl in the rice shop looks like a little monkey, her hair sticking up in pigtails and her nostrils flairing widely. She reads the menu out loud - at 5 or 6 years, she knows all the characters. This is my second year, and I can only claim to know a handful. My Muslim friend walks by outside, his clean white hat seemingly glowing in the sun. I frequent his noodleshop more than this rice shop, but I had his noodles for dinner last night, so today's lunch should be fried rice. Cars wizz by honking, and men ride by on their bicycle carts lazily. The fuwuyuan brings me my soup and chopsticks. I note that this table is equipped with the essentials: vinegar, pickled vegetables, and peppers - the staples of any proper Chinese restaurant in Hunan.
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i get ready to go out. i am cold in my house with the heater off and all the windows open. i put on my knitted hat, and contemplate the gloves thrown on the couch. but i won't need the gloves today, just the hat - it was another late morning getting started for me, and my hair is a mess. no jacket. i suspect my sweater will keep me warm. what do i need to do... put money on my mobile and eat some lunch is all, i suppose. i don't actually have any other good reason to go out, but i am getting a bit anxious in my house. i have things to do, sure, but i'm not willing to do them just yet. i'm not THAT bored. i'm going out.
i met my friend at mcdonalds for lunch. it was the closest thing to a hamburger anywhere within about 50 miles, and i had a craving that demanded satisfaction. the only way to sate this hunger was with a big mac and a mcspicey chicken sandwich, topped off with fries covered in ketchup and a chocolate ice cream sundae. and it all cost me about 5 dollars. ahh, to live like a king in a 2nd world country.
anyhow, i had a nice lunch with my friend. i noticed with particular interest the way she switched to proper (as proper as guttural sounds can be) beijing dialect when she spoke with the attending staff, reflecting on her position as customer within the restaurant. the minute we left she came back down to her roots, muttering out several obscenities that only the locals would understand. indeed, she had directed her mutters to a local man selling caged birds on the street. 3 woven bamboo cages contained as many birds, except the cages were much to small for the medium sized birds held within. upon closer inspection, the birds were beautiful, with dark ocher feathers and white lines around their eyes. my friend asked how much. i am not in the business of supporting such wares, but my friend had to act. she could not stand idle - indeed, emerging from mcdonalds, itself a symbol of wealth in this place - while birds were subjected to treatment like this. after a minute of quick haggling, she purchased the birds for just under what i had paid for our lunch. but what is the price of life?
we took a taxi to a park, and in a small field (or, an empty patch of dirt with not too much rubbish and no people for about 10 meters) we released the birds. they were shaken, and did not go anywhere fast. my friend told me that they had probably been fed poisoned rice in order to be captured. the 3 birds hopped unsteadily towards a bush, where one of them perched on a branch. we sat there watching them for several minutes, and the birds were not afraid of us. they just closed their eyes and rested. we unwove the cages, and scattered the strips of bamboo. in effect my friend had purchased the cages, and we made sure that they would not be used again. caged birds in china are not as lucky as those in the west. i had personally cared for birds in my childhood, keeping one or two small parakeets at a time, letting them fly around the house on occasion, and keeping them well fed. birds here given to children do not often last long. children are cruel the world over, and parents in this country more often than not give such pets to their children as a temporary living play thing, which the child can poke and prod and listen to and observe for a few days before it dies of exhaustion or starvation. not to say that this is the rule - i have also heard stories of people in the country keeping vast arrays of cages, taming and training beautiful birds, or sometimes catching and releasing for sport. but i have also personally observed children slowly kill animals while their parents sit nearby, absentminded to the crime against nature their spawn involves itself in.
come to think of it, i once caught a student in my class - a boy - with a beautiful parakeet contained in a torn apart soda can. in class i had heard the frantic chirping, and when confronted the boy put on the cute face he undoubtedly uses every time he is caught doing something he mustn't. i took the can from him, and released the bird from the window. i wonder what possesses people to act the way they do towards the animals we share this space with.
i suspect the struggle against nature is a constant motive in these human hearts. the urge of the spirit to be apart from what it is we came from, while the body has no power but to be a part of it. from their attitude of trash - that any place can be a rubbish bin - to their views on electricity and large dams, or the small green areas around my home which i have seen cemented over for absolutely no good reason, there are people here who disregard nature, not because they hate it, but because they can. maybe they see that we are a part of the whole – that we are all in this together - and so their only obvious response is that of doing what they want because however destructive it may be, it's still all a part, right? i see responsibility disregarded in favor of immediate gratification; the future disregarded in favor of the now; it is a complex of a mind which has been damaged, or ill trained, or both.
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a poem?
one chinese morning before class, i managed to make it to my teaching building a little bit early. it being a fine winterish morning, i decided to forgoe the office experience - always an experience - in favor of something a little more poetical:
The calm before class.
(All the students already there).
The squak of a crazy old lady speaking gibberish to herself wandering by.
(They often let her do this).
Ladies, house wives, in the alleyway corner, their voices echoing off the walls.
Laundry and gossip.
A clear, clean sky this morning. The head maintenance worker greeting me on his way to a job.
Music in the distance, reverberating through the jungle of buildings of concrete.
The old man in his chair in the sun.
Knives diced peppers already in preparation for lunch.
A hawk and a spit.
A hammer doing home repairs
A sweeper sweeping the rubbish.
As the sun goes a little bit higher, The air gets a little bit warmer.
These people moving through their day, they've all been up for a while.
A motor rising to life.
China.
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=) hello!
i'm back!
some of you may have heard of the earthquake in taiwan that happened right before new years. conveniently, it severed "6 of the 7" main fiberoptic connections taiwan and china have with the western world, so for a while things were pretty disrupted. email works most of the time, and little by little we're getting the rest of the web back.
this coincided nicely with my trip to hong kong for new years. while the official line of 'needing a visa' still sticks, i mainly went to see what kind of party hong kong could serve up for an event like new years. i went with a xiangtanner friend of mine, who knew some people there. through him i met some cool foreigners in 'the kong,' (not so surprising, though, since hong kong is packed with them), and i also randomly met a lot of nice locals and travelers. it was fun!
< pictures of hong kong here >
< more stories here >
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from the archive, document 8-19.
living inside a country is like living in a house.
there are walls and curbs separating the yard from the street and the neighbors. additionally, there are things only available or done a certain way inside that house (and even from room to room, systems change or provide for different needs).
there is a head of the house, usually in the form of some co-operative (indeed, isn't all dominance coperative?), and there are rules that you are expected to obey no matter how much you disagree with them - or face penatlies like no allowance, time out, or a good spanking.
the ways of thinking are controlled in this house: it is decided which newspaper will be delivered, which channels are watched on tv, and the firewall on the computer. every observable movement is judged by the collective, although those with more influence will exert more control. on an unspoken yet defined spectrum, certain behaviors are considered proper or improper for a given situation, and other forms of expression might be labeled deviant.
darkness can possess the inside of the house even in the bright of day. if the inhabitants of this house are not able to acknowledge a larger social neighborhood - some can not, and some do not - the curtains and doors might remain shut for a long, long time.
everyone in the house came from somewhere, and the house was built by somebody. but to a newborn, the house just is.
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ouch. i think i slept funny last night - i've got this crick in my neck that just won't go away. i crashed on my couch last night doing some chinese homework; i think that may have something to do with it.
reading around on the wiki today i became saddened when i discovered that one of my favorite anthropologists, clifford geertz, died just this past october. i had been under the impression that the man was already dead, but i still had to shake my head in disapproval of such an act (dying on october 30th? like he just couldn't wait another day...). thick description, you will always be unattainable!
in related randomicity, i present to you some pictures of some of my students. these are the girls at the special school that i teach at down the road - they have been picked to become hosts, waitresses, stewardesses, models, singers, and dancers ( - if they are lucky, that is). they are in class all day, every day of the week, and have a day off once a month or so. being in such a school, the receive absolutely no education in math, science, health (besides dieting), history (besides Party history), economics, geography, social science, art, or creative thinking. they DO learn proper mandarin chinese, politics, dance, singing, home ec, and, of course, english. last week my lesson was on dating and love. they told me it was boring, and that they preferred reading out loud out of the book.
this is during a break in class, their dormitories, and preparation for a school dancing show:
so let's see, let's see... interesting tidbit about china for the day.. hrm.. well let's talk about haggeling for a minute. in china, if an object for sale lacks a tag, you can assume a negotiable price. this has its positive and negative sides, and after a year and a half in china i still cannot be sure if i like it.
you can leave a shop with a sense of accomplishment - they wanted 200Y, and you got them down to 50Y. that makes anyone ready to do some more shopping! but then you wonder: how much did you really just get taken for? this question you can live with had you shopped around and priced things first, but not if you stopped at the first place you saw. you can never really be sure how much anything costs, as everything always starts at different prices. but on the flip side, and much more pro-ily, things other than souveniers, such as taxi rides, can also be negotiated. taxi drivers can put some money directly into their pockets if they don't use the meter, and you can save some cash if you know what to say. the same with restaraunts (though i think my foreigner status puts an increase in the bill) and barbershops and electronics, too.
i tell my chinese ren (ren=people) that the US lacks such a system. i wonder if they think america is in chaos.
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i've been sick. not SICK sick. just annoyingly so. it seems to happen every month or so anyhow, but this time two illnesses hit me one right after the other. i don't even know how it all started. maybe it was the fried dumplings, seaweed, and cabbage - all of it fried, mind you - that i had for dinner one night last week. or maybe it has to do with the way food can sit around in restaurants - sometimes you just never know what you're about to eat. (if there's one thing that irks me, it's dead flies in my tea...)
one of my grubby little children could be the transmitting culprit. let me tell you about children: they are dirty creatures, and they will infect you of you give them the chance. during the course of my classes, i frequently come into contact with the 'unlearned ones' through snotty handshakes and sweaty back-pats, as well as the occasional unwashed-hair tussel or bloody fist fight. all sorts of festering things have the opportunity to breed on these munchkins. each and every time i wash my hands after i get back from having class, i swear the water coming off them is black.
perhaps it's the water. have you heard that chinese water is a hazard? completely non-recommendably potable. it's sort of like camping, except all the time. running through the center of xiangtan, the xiang river is the main source of my water. besides the benzine, a known carcinogen, the river is host to many other bacterial, viral, and parasitic organisms. the population in general is fairly warey of swimming in the river not becuase of the the swift currents or large boats, but becuase of the contamination risks posed by such a dip.
surprisingly, i didn't have any of the other usual symptoms of food poisoning: no shakes, no shivers, and no sweats - the sickness treated the rest of my body kindly. now, i've got some bowel stories that would make you cringe, but we'll stick to the other story instead. i ran a gamut (is that even a word??) of medications, starting with an REG1 anticoagulant aptamer to target the activated factor IXa, which then folded to block biologic activity leading to the generation of thrombin. that didn't work at all.
a young lad by the name of galvatron, a student at my school, suggested i try chinese medicine for my stomach problems. a few yuan later, i obtained 10 small glass vials of 'huo xiang zheng qi shui,' surely known to my western readers as nothing other than 'fire smelling straight concoction.' i don't really smell fire in it, but that's just a personal opinion. it does possess a rather sharp smell and taste, and produces a warm burn in your esophogus as it goes down. it sort of worked one day, actually, but i lost faith the next and took several shots of the pepto which teacher marissa had lent me for just this occasion. east-meets-west in my stomach did well, and just when i thought a sunday recovery could be attained, i lost my voice.
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a night out with chinese
no, i have not been uber lazy. i've been busy. that's why i APPEAR lazy, but i am not. YOU are lazy.
i had dinner with some chinese friends a few nights ago. at the girls school which i teach at, a group of young teachers eager to make the acquaintance of a real-life foreigner invited me to their house for a hotpot dinner. only my chinese english-teacher colleague could speak english well, but the rest of them knew more than enough to have a good time. of course i took the opportunity to practice my xiangtan dialect.
putting together the meal was an enjoyable task in itself. after a quick trip to the market with my friend to purchase such essentials as duck neck, white potato, fermented tofu, and various roots which the english speaking world has no name for, we returned to an apartment already in the throes of preparation. the air was thick with spice. it hurt my lungs with every breath i took; inhailing through my mouth i could taste the sting on my tounge. the feast constructing itself before my eyes promised fulfilling.
about 10 people came together to share 2 full sized steaming, boiling hotpots, along side several side dishes. to contribute my part, i hurried downstairs and back up with a case of qingdao beer - no small feat, as my friend lives on the 7th floor of her building.
feast we did, and it was good. even after all the food was gone and we had eaten our fill, we sat around for a long time picking through the hidden depths of the pots looking for the most tender and flavorful remnants. during the course of our meal it had become dark, and it was at that point announced that we would relocate to the banks of the xiang river (as the weather was still quite nice) for the purpose of night snacks. we hailed motorcycle taxis and soon found ourselves by the banks of the river enjoying pig skin, stinky tofu, peanuts... and more beer.
it was a good night, and i learned a few new chinese drinking games to bring back to america, though on second thought perhaps the fun would be lost in translation: instead of 'paper, rock, sissors,' think 'tiger, chicken, worm, stick.'
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walking in the hutongs
walking through an alley way, in the shadows no one noticed me. i always like this way of walking, i feel like i fit in. i'm just another one of the monkeys. i've noticed that it takes more than just an avoidance to create not being noticed. it's about your presence. when i first wandered the streets of changsha, the alley ways and streets filled with people, i tried to develop my ability to not be noticed. in a way, i can admit that it is almost a sick, masochistic streak in me that persuades people to take notice of me in xiangtan. in hong kong, i was phsyically and mentally aware, at all times, that i was not the big fish in a little pond.
regardless, on this night, i wasn't looking for fame. i was looking for food. i shunned the usual dining establishments of old. noodles, jiaozi, or rice. no, i had to have street barbque. and i did, and it was good. and then i had noodles. and then i walked home through the alley ways.
three events caught my attention and stayed in my mind.
the first was a sign that i did not pass as invisibly as i thought. a young woman approached me walking the opposite direction, and i caught her eye. as i walked by, i smiled to myself, becuase i knew she saw what i was. i looked down at the side walk, her shadow thrown behind her but in front of me, and i watched her silohette turn to take in my receeding form. i've always known that people look at me as i walk by. the shadows gave me an interesting angle to prove it.
the second was a sign that i was not as phantasmic as i thought. the alley ways are narrow, and space is a precious commodity. the night sky above was blocked out by buildings, and many balconies and windows crowded above me. and as i walked, i heard a man hawk. hawking of wares is one thing, but hawking of phlem is another, and, unfortunatly, i heard the kind of the latter. foolish monkey as i am, when i heard the noise i looked up, and foolishly i realized after the action what the sound implied from above. i shut my eyes tight and hoped to heaven on high that nothing would come my way. and i was saved.
the third was a sign that i am, though not as i thought; i am and i am not, simultaneously, a part of the system that the alley way serves. i passed by an old couple. impossibly old. they were carrying their buckets of filth: a mixture of ash, organic matter, house hold trash, and more. they emptied these buckets at the designated trash heap corner, and were met by an old man of their same generation, hobbling towards the heap from the other way. they greeted each other in a way that only old old friends can do, in the language that only these people can understand. it made me wonder about how often these people leave these alley ways. how long had they lived in this maze, and what had they done in their lives over the years that they lived there? the paths to school, to work, to their friends and to their lovers. it was a humbling experience, yet reflective as well. here i was, using the paths as they were intended for from conception. a short cut from point a to b. to use them marks one with the unique knowledge of the locale. i've amazed chinese friends before leading them thought these very alley ways, which they never knew existed.
and so the alley ways exist, and remind us of our existance. as paths twisting and winding evermore around turns ahead of us, merging with new paths and following those of old, we can never be sure of where we will end up or what may happen to us along the way. we should seize the opportunities that we find ourselves presented with, choose the best option that we can, and walk along our path ready to see what's around the next corner.
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jeez. i am so predictable.
i've recently gotten my dvd player up and working, and i've had the chance to watch the godfather trilogy again. unfortunatly, this means that i haven't worked at getting my photogallery up at all. i have some ideas, but i still don't know exactly how it will go down. hand done html? newer gallery software? a patch up job to try to get the old stuff to work again? probably, it will be plagued by failures.
ponds are not streams
our lives are in our dreams
and we drift below the red cliffs
there is a little girl in one of my junior 1 classes, a cute kid and good student. she's got a red shirt that may be one of her favorites which she's worn to school several times. i usually don't pay attention to the 'engrish' on peoples' shirts anymore, becuase it's always horrendous and not always that funny. but this little girl's shirt takes the cake. it has in the middle a very large silohetted marijuana leaf, and written around it in cursive lettering "cannabis fun time." fun times indeed! the marijuana leaf and associated subcultural symbols - bob marley, 4/20, and rasta flag - are part of a fashion trend which the chinese consume without full knowledge of its meaning, just like clothes with english gibberish (have you seen this shirt of mine?) or the growing popularity of christmas.
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at a local hair salon, i saw advertised in a window a large box of 'hair manure.' finding this quite funny, i pointed it out to some of my students, who told me that manure is something which promotes growth. if you want your hair to grow, you should slather your head with manure. obviously! why am i such a stranger with my own native language?
i am pleasantly surprised from time to time. the other night i ran into an extremely old man. i see him often - a retired teacher at this school, he shuffles around by himself with his bent back and cane. he's a slow walker, and i've seen worms cover more distance in less time than this guy. but by golly, the old man can speak him some good english. i nearly swallowed my betel nut when, having offered in my stumbling chinese to help him up some steps, he replied in PERFECT english that he could handle himself. it turns out he was an english teacher for years, way back in the day. go figure.
i guess there's still a lot i could learn from china. did i ever think i knew it all? well, not really, but maybe there's a lot more around for me to see and explore which has been under my nose this whole time yet i still haven't seen. have YOU looked around lately?
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my favorite noodle shop is around the corner. i first went there because a foreigner friend of mine recommended it, based on the fact that it had an english menu. i went and, sure enough, some waiguoren of years past had translated the noodle options onto a menu sized card. what s/he *didn't* do was translate the rest of the menu, which i have since come to learn contains items such as pita bread, silk noodles, and roast lamb.
all of the noodles are exceptionally good, and every noodle is hand pulled when you order. the myth of a 'bowl of noodles,' however, is an optical illusion: these hand-pulled-style noodles are actually just one realllllllly long noodle, looped onto itself several times (usually 7 to 9 times, depending on the desired thickness of the noodle for the dish).
i don't know the name of the place, but it's clearly labeled in chinese and arabic on the sign out front. the owner (and his family?) come from lanzhou, a province in the north west near xinjiang, and are part of the uygher muslim population of that region. often there are other uygher patrons in the shop - foreigners in this town as well - and we have a good time trying to understand each other, they with their heavy accents, and me with my chinese speech impediment. the boss of the shop wears a small white skull cap as is customary for the people, and the other day i was having noodles for dinner when he pulled out a koran and started reading aloud in chant. it was pretty cool.
this is my dad there last april. not pictured are the boss of the shop or me.
the blog of some guy who lives in xinjiang.
China: We don't censor the internets. Really!
ironically, this article is blocked in china.
some sites blocked in china:
BBC News
United Nations News
The Learning Channel
go ahead and block the news - no one believes it anymore anyways. but... the learning channel?
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on TV, in china
so! for lack of interesting or witty statements, i will share you this: i have been on TV, in china, two more times.
the last time was at a german business post-meeting party. some foreign teacher friends and i had been invited by the fancy '5 star' hotel it was at, becuase they wanted to increase the number of laowai (us) in proportion to chinese (them). it was actually a lot of fun, and the germans, who i gather make quite a profit from their industry, held nothing back. german beers, french wines, champagnes, food, paramilitary security guards, fireworks, and even bowling. there was a camera crew from xiangtan tv, and they shot footage and did interviews - though i have been told that my apperance on tv was cut short in favor of some longer shots of the foreigner girls.
the time before last, i was the featured top model at an international fashion show. no, really, it was just a xiangtan show. but it was pretty cool. i know a guy who knows another guy, who knows a lady, who happens to be the boss of a clothing company who wanted to promote their image. to do this, they decided to hire me for some photos in their catalogue and invite me to this show. in the end, i got a free suit out of it (the blue one), and, as before, a camera crew showed up at the show. i made a speech which has now been broadcast to hunan province in its entirety. these are the pictures they used in the catalogue:
(it makes you wonder if they are trying to help their company or run it into the ground..........)
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i hate being late
i really really hate being late. being late is one more reason why mornings are, in general, pretty dumb. the stupid thing about the whole affair is that i'd woken up several times in the 2 hours before class, only to put my alarm on snooze and curl into an even more comfy position. pulled from my bed by my beeping mobile phone, i realize that the time from 9:30 to 10:17 has passed rather quickly, and i am not wearing pants.
in 12 months of teaching i've only ever been late 3 times. twice really, since one of those times i didn't go, and you're not late if you never show up. i know, i know. "i should be on time," and "i'm a teacher-worker," yada yada responsibility yada yada. in my defense, i wasn't THAT late. i don't even mind being late a minute or few, and the students don't care either; it's just that when i get a call from one of the other teachers in my office, you know they're gonna start talking. the teachers in my office are a group of middle-aged chinese ladies who have been with the same co-workers in the same office at the same school FOR YEARS, and who often hold synchronized dance parties for lack of interesting after-school activities. don't get me wrong, they're a nice bunch of ladies. but when the foreigner is late for class, you'd better believe that they have something to talk about.
and while we're talking about sychronized dance parties, let me tell you about the ladies in the courtyard. (NOT my teacher office ladies, by the way). right in front of the foreigners' building is a big-ish courtyard where childrens play, ducks waddle, and people leave their trash. it was, and periodically is, a nice courtyard, and sometimes it's nice to look at the people from my window and wonder what it is they could be thinking. (surely they wonder the same thing when they look back up at me.) lately, however, the courtyard has been taken over by a scurroulous scourge. a group of older ladies, chinese, have started practicing their dance synchronization. they dance, and it would be very lovely to watch if you'd never seen them before. but i have. i see them every day. every afternoon from 5 to 6, specifically. this is right after i get out of class, and the only thing on my mind is getting as far inside my cement walls as i can. but these ladies... they penetrate my walls, and they warp my mind. they are perfecting their dance, supposidly, but perfection requires lots of practice, and they only have one dance. one dance, one song. the same song. over and over and over. for an hour. (sometimes more). the construction of the courtyard and surrounding buildings allows the music, which they play from a boombox at full volume, to verberate and reverberate, permeating every crevice, like acid rain on limestone.
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china music
i figured that i've really got a lot of bandwidth to spare, so i decided that i might as well share some chinese music. if you or any one else 'takes issue' with my public posting of these songs on the internet, you must first sue baidu.
wangfengflyhigh.mp3
中島美嘉 - 電影nana主題曲.mp3
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kong pics
see my hong kong gallery here!! woohoo.. thanks to people for helping me get my web stuff back on up.
i got back a few days ago from hong kong (see above and below). it was a blast. a special shout out to jouis for good sea food, jin jin for translating, and kevin koo for owning a nice guesthouse.
hong kong the city is spread on both sides of a smelly harbour ("hong kong" = "fragrent harbour"). i stayed on kowloon, the northern half, but did a fair amount of wandering on the hong kong island part as well. this trip was all about the city, but i have it in mind to visit some of the more remote locations, of which i hear there are many.
there were plenty of tall buildings and i even went up in a few of them. there is a lot to see everywhere. i was particularly amazed at how people get around. the subways were clean and effecient; there were trams, trollies, and busses; raised walking paths safely away from the traffic; and everything in between. there are some nice parks throughout the city for when you want to get away from all the hustle, and there's victoria peak too.
you really should go there some time. it is a little more expensive than, say, xiangtan, but not unreasonably so. it IS a big city.
so, back in the xiang
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i was hacked!
well, sorry for the long delay. and sorry that the page still sucks. that 'hackar' really did a simple job of everything, deleting index files and the like. to be honest the webserver people haven't been all that helpful either, though they did tell me it wasn't their fault. i guess i should have backed everything up, but then that would mean it was my fault; and clearly it couldn't be.
it's been an interesting past few days. since the rock bar closed down i now frequent the newest bar in town, near the university. it's a little far from me - in the boonies outside town, really - and a few late nights i've wondered just how i was going to get back home. once i started walking not really realizing that it would be a very, very long walk: it's about 20 minutes in a taxi with a driver who thinks he's in a racecar, so i imagine it's probably much longer on foot. i'm lucky enough to have caught a taxi that night, though my foreigner friends have spare couches if i'd ever need to use one. thus, excepting the chinese guys who cannot handle their beer, we always have a good time at the new bar.
i'm going to hong kong today! i'll leave this evening on a train and get there in the morning. i should only be there for a few days, but i think it's gonna be fun. i hear they have beaches! and clothes stores with normal sized clothes! and big buildings too!
i'm going to 'the kong,' becuase it's the national holiday in china this week. the people's republic of china was declared by mao ze dong on a radio address from beijing on the 1st of october, 1949. it's a bit like the 4th of july, except they get a week, and everyone gets the exact same week. this usually causes pandimonium as everyone tries to go on vacation, and trains planes and busses are packed to capacity. (i booked my ticket through a travel agency - i paid a little more, but it's a luxuery i can afford). the chinese are pretty strict about getting their week off. it's 7 days, no more no less. in america, when we get a 'week' holiday, it's actually 9 days - the 5 day work week, plus weekends on either end. in china we get 7 days and we have to work when there is no holiday: this past week i worked monday through saturday, the holiday started on sunday the 1st, and i'll have to work next sunday the 8th. i tell my coworkers that americans would revolt if they had to work on the weekends after holidays, but they don't find this as humerous as i do.
and so, i must leave now. i still have to put all my stuff in my bag for the trip, and i'll be going to changsha, my point of departure, a few hours early to have dinner with a friend who lives there. HOPEFULLY, my internets will be fixed after the break, but surely i shall find a way to share my experiences with the world. have fun and stay safe y'all....
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end of an era
the rock bar closed down the other night for good. it was the end of an era. yes, xiangtan's famous rock bar, which brought together so many patrons from around hunan, china, and the world, shut its doors last tuesday night.
the people's government of xiangtan deemed it necessary to demolish the bar along with the surrounding structures. as all land in china is owned by the government, it has the right to repossess any property it needs. the bar is in the middle of a well visited but poorly planned area near the number 2 bridge, and plans are to build a new commercial district between yu hu park and the xiang river. the new area will probably include a number of karaoke bars, restaurants, shops, and housing. in theory this project will be completed within 4 months, but skepticism abounds.
johnny, the boss of the bar, said he was aware of the plans but had not been told any definitive date until this past monday. he rents the space has had no say in the undertakings. also, he and his family, who help run the bar, will not be compensated for earnings or time on the pre-paid lease lost. the hope is for new space in the complex to be re-leased for the bar, though it will most likely not be on the same terms or costs as before.
this author was lucky enough to have been there to the end. it will be sorely missed.
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update from being back
hello again from deep within china!
things are china-ing along as they usually do, although this year it seems i can handle it a little better. i'm getting the hang of this lesson-planning thing, and it's not too bad. i've actually written out a 3 week lesson structure that i can apply to virtually any class, simply inserting the target sentence models of that given week. i think my students will respond to this better; it's a more chinese style of teaching: repetition repetition repetition!
i've also picked up a few extra hours at another school down the road. in addition to my junior 1's and 2's, i now also teach senior 2, at an all girls school! these girls are in a special program to become flight attendants, hostesses at restaurants, business reception ladies, and the like. their english book is rather silly, with phrases like 'may i help you with your luggage?' and 'today i recommend the lobster.'
soonish, i'll start putting up some tables comparing standard chinese to the xiangtan dialect, for no other reason than i think it's pretty neat; and all of you who speak chinese it might also think it interesting. shoot.. if i ever get the comment function back up than this could become a chinese dialect discussion center. or something.
and now it seems i have to go. i'm always going, but that's just how i like to live life. going to china, going to class, going to the wc. (by the way, my students STILL get a kick out of it when i tell them my initials are.... w.c.)
so i'll go, and i'll be back. and i hope to spend some quality time in the wang bar (intarweb cafe, for ya'll americans) this weekend.
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ode to a new yearbr>
i'm back in china, safe and sound, although someone sneezed on me very recently. i still have no interweb at my house, but at least my hot water is working again. classes have started, and once more i am mr. c. my new students are cute, mostly, except the ones who smell like betel nuts. i've been thrown right back in where i left off last semester; but it just doesn't feel the same.
no abby, no megan,
no wayne, no drew.
no cooking with jessica,
no evil new zealander spew.
some of these people
i'll never forget
those days in china
i'll never regret
i hope one day soon
we won't be very far
and maybe we'll drink
some beer at a bar
but until then
safe travels to you
you look like a monkey
and you smell like one too.
see ya'll next week!
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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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