so somehow Aaron and i ended up in the far southwest of china (not counting Tibet) --just north of the border with Vietnam-- for a weekend. Aaron had been asked to speak at a high school and also teach some classes. He asked if i could come too and they agreed to fly me there as well, so we couldn't really turn down a free chance to see a completely different part of the country. we didn't completely know what we were getting ourselves into; most of the information we had was conveyed via text messages, and we didn't really know the guy who approached us about the job in the first place, but he taught at our school last year and seemed like a nice guy. His English is good, but the language and cultural barrier seem extreme here at times. (Aaron asked him over the phone how he should dress. The guy didn't seem to understand, so Aaron asked, is it formal? the guy answered, yes, it's pretty formal. Aaron replied he didn't have a suit or tie, was that going to be a problem? and he answered no that was fine, he could wear a t-shirt...)
the landscape was so strange; it's hard to tell from the photo, but we flew over a large expanse of land that was very flat with these weird little hills popping up everywhere.
anyway, the three of us--aaron, I, and the chinese guy who asked aaron to take the job--ended up flying down there together, and it was beautiful to leave the cold dirty air of Beijing and find ourselves several hours later in--well in the cold night time air of Kunming, but the next day in the 70 degree, clear sky, subtropical weather there. we were greeted at the airport by the two English teachers from the school who would be at our side for the next 2 1/2 days. I was surprised by how excited everyone seemed to meet us. we went to a semi formal lunch with the headmaster of the school and a couple other people who worked there. they treated us so well and were really welcoming. as the day unraveled i began to piece together the details we'd never been able to figure out ahead of time. at lunch, over local dishes (such as a large dish of fried baby hornets) they told us that the school was 94 years old, and had approximately 4,000 students (sophomore, junior and senior). they said they and the students were very excited to have us visit; we were the first foreigners to ever visit their school. Later in the weekend they would take a photo of us with the headmaster, some teachers, and some students on the front steps of the school to go in the local newspaper.
near the end of lunch they asked aaron if he was ready to play basketball. the week before when aaron was first leaning about the details of the job, the guy who we were talking to about it i guess mentioned something about a basketball game to aaron, then didn't mention it again. while aaron was packing he threw in his basketball clothes as an after thought just incase. as it turned out, they were basically expecting him to play in the game--staff vs. students. we got to the school, a large campus up on a hill with a beautiful view of the surrounding rolling hills. the court was outside and the afternoon was warm. after a little while the students started to arrive and soon filled the stands and surrounded the court. as the game progressed there were probably 5 or 600 students watching and of course aaron was the center of attention. anything he did-good or bad-got a response from the crowed. if he made a basket everyone cheered, if he messed up, everyone laughed. at one point i stood up to go find the bathroom, and as i walked across the sidelines with zoey, the chinese english teacher, there was a simultaneous sort of gasp from the crowed. i could understand enough to know people were talking about how tall i am. it was just really weird to be stared at so intently by so many people when i was just walking along a basketball court. (Sometimes i don't mind being the center of attention, but for the most part i'd rather not and the weekend was difficult in that way. i felt like i couldn't do anything without a reaction...)
aaron in the mean time was getting pretty tired as he hadn't brought his actual basket ball shoes, hadn't exercised much over the past month, and was playing full court basketball at a high altitude against high schoolers. they were subbing people out and i was wondering why aaron wasn't being subbed out for a break. After the game he told me he'd told the coach or ref or whoever that he needed to take a break and instead of subbing him out for a while the ref stopped the entire game for a few minutes and then motioned for aaron to play again. apparantly everyone except aaron was allowed to take a break. so as it turned out aaron played the full game somehow. in the end the teachers lost after leading most of the game, but they couldn't compete with the high schoolers' energy.
aaron and some of the students after the game.
the teachers' team (with a few students)
part of the crowd during the game.
After basketball and dinner with the headmaster and others from the school we were driven back to the school for aaron to give his 2 1/2 hour speech/presentation that he really wasn't prepared for in that he wasn't able to really figure out ahead of time what he was supposed to talk about. All he was really told was that he should talk about the American educational system, or "maybe play some games", or "maybe just talk about American history, you know--Lincoln to Obama." Oh, and help promote a trip to the U.S. for the students which he knew nothing about. As it seemed that every time he tried to get it clarified things only got more confusing, he decided to do his best to have some loose plans and more or less wing it. During dinner and on our way there the teacher's cell phone kept ringing with calls from students telling her that there were no more seats in the auditorium --apparently some had come very early to get seats and now there was standing room only. By the time we arrived it was packed and students were standing along the back and leaning in the windows from outside. When we walked in there was a huge cheer and applause. it was so weird--we were being treated like super stars. then the students made a really big deal about me sitting down among them and all wanted to shake my hand. aaron did a good job with his talk especially considering the circumstances. During the segment in which he was supposed to promote the trip to america he fortunately just had to talk about the cities that the students would be visiting. this was funny though because all that would come up on the screen was one photo of a building from a university, some of which aaron recognized or understood enough of the characters to figure out, but not all of them. at one point aaron was pretty sure the guy was talking about stanford university, but the city was san francisco--which was confusing because Stanford isn't in San Francisco but aaron didn't want to make the guy look uninformed, so he just went with it and told them about San Francisco. During the last half hour aaron had a question and answer time in which a lot of students asked really thoughtful and intelligent questions. Some of them had really good English. Then one girl stood up and told aaron he had a very nice voice when he spoke, so it would probably be better if he sang. so would he and a wife please sing a song together? This is one of those chinese customs i find a little hard to get used to. People are always trying to get you to sing a song. It's something people grow up with here, and if chinese people ask other chinese people to sing a song, it's no big deal. They just stand up and sing a nice song. But it's not so easy for me, and especially not in front of 250 people when the requested song is 'Right here waiting for you' by richard marx. but then the whole crowd was cheering in unison, so there wasn't really a way out of singing without seeming unfriendly. we got out of the richard marx song by saying we didn't know the words, but then all we could think of on the spot was 'you are my sunshine' which is an english song that is pretty well known in china. so we sang that and i had a semi out of body experience on stage thinking what a strange situation i was in at that moment in the far west of china singing a cheesy song in my weak and faltering voice to a bunch of high schoolers who were eagerly singing along and cheering like we were famous when we finished.
aaron's speech was from 7:30-10 pm. after we hung around for awhile talking to students and giving them our emails we took this photo in the empty auditorium.
view up one of the streets in Wen Shan--the 'small town' of about 1 million people where the school was and where we stayed one night
another meal we had all together. the patties in the front are sticky rice and they had bowls of different kinds of spicy chili sauces to dip everything in.
they also had hot pot and a plate of whatever organs these are were dumped into the water first. mmmm.
so even though everyone was very hospitable and friendly, the weekend was really starting to wear on aaron and i by this point. i think it's safe to generalize about a certain chinese trait of liking to do things in groups. while i know this is not true at all across the board, there is a general lack of originality or straying from the norm here. for example, when aaron and i wanted to take a picture of the auditorium with us sitting in different parts of the room, they thought it was weird that we weren't sitting together and smiling. part of the chinese idea of hospitality is also planning everything out for your guest and arranging all the details for them. What to me feels a bit like being treated like a child is to them being hospitable. It's also completely usual and common for chinese friends to tell each other to hurry up, come here, go there, come this way, etc. and while i know not to take it personally, it's difficult for me to be in a group where people constantly tell me, "this way please" "you'd better put on your coat" "we will go here now", etc, etc, etc. the general american laid back quality isn't really found here. Even if there's no discernable reason to hurry, it seems like people here are always rushing you along and don't like to diverge from the plan. If i wandered 10 feet away to get a better look at something people would think i was mistakenly going the wrong way and would call me back. All of this combined with the fact that every minute of the weekend was planned and aaron and i literally didn't have 5 minutes to ourselves (except when we could finally go back to our room around 11 only to be told we needed to meet at 6:30 in the morning to have time to eat the local breakfast). another thing that made the weekend--how should i say, culturally challenging?--was that we didn't really have a clue what was happening next. we just kept getting shuffled from one place to the next. we tried to ask for details at times, but somehow the answers never seemed to clarify much.
On saturday morning aaron was supposed to teach three hours of class at the high school (school is 6 days a week here). they asked him to teach a class on preparing for the TOEFL english exam, which worked out well since that was one of the classes he was teaching last year in chicago. However when he asked the organizer ahead of time if the students were working out of textbooks, or what in particular were they working on--it's an extensive exam with many parts-- he didn't really seem to know and seemed surprised that aaron would want to see a text book ahead of time.... So again, aaron was able to wing it, teaching a class to 40 students having no clear idea of their level, or any real details about the class.
the week before, after asking if i could also come along, aaron had gotten a text message from the organizer guy that said something to the effect of: "by the way could your wife give a talk on fashion?" aaron told me. i was wondering to who? how many people? what does that even mean, "give a talk on fashion?" but of course we couldn't really get any clearer details than that except that some of the women teachers at the school were excited to have a foreigner visit and wanted to learn about western fashion. but they were flying me down there for free after all so i said ok, having no idea what i was getting myself into. the morning while aaron was teaching the class, they said, ok, betsy, you can give your talk this morning in the park. i asked how many people were coming and they said they didn't really know, maybe 20 or 30. I said i really wasn't a very good speaker, maybe we could just make it more of a question and answer thing. they said, "don't worry! you must believe in yourself!" we got to the park, me in jeans, and the other women arriving in high heels, skirts, dresses, one woman with a fur wrap around her shoulders, parasols, etc. The english teacher leaned over and told me, "they have dressed up to show their respect to you!" Which of course was incredibly nice of them, but i felt bad that no one had told me this ahead of time. I was wearing jeans and tennis shoes, and felt really ridiculous giving a talk on fashion in the first place, but even more so since they were all much more fashion conscious than I, albeit in a different sort of way. How do you explain that your idea of fashion is finding an interesting old dress at a thrift store and sewing it to fit, to a group of women who would never dream of buying used clothing and the idea of the beauty or nostalgia of vintage clothing to a society of new wealth that hasn't had the time to grow tired of the limitations of the new to realize the beauty of the old? So I tried to turn the conversation to culture in general and a few people asked questions, though most of the (40 or so) women and students who showed up were too shy to actually talk to me or too embarassed to speak in English for fear they'd make mistakes. I spoke in Chinese a bit, but mostly English and one of the English teachers translated some of what i said. Things loosened up and the school's dance teacher taught me a couple traditional dances from one of the local minority groups while everyone gathered around and clapped for everything i did. All in all it was alright, but I wasn't in the most outgoing mood and it seemed like a long two hours. It was nice to talk to smaller groups of people as the larger group dispersed. Again, everyone was so kind and welcoming to me, but the situation as a whole was somewhat overwhelming.
Later that afternoon we had another big group lunch at which all the men drank Bai Jou--the national chinese hard alcohol. I felt like i was really getting a firsthand look into chinese culture at that meal. All, or at least the vast majority, of men here drink bai jou. it's considered manly, and the main way to show hospitality to guests or colleagues. everyone compliments each other a lot to give 'face', especially their superiors. there are a lot of toasts and more compliments and more toasts. it was an amiable lunch. talk tuned to politics and obama who had been elected earlier that week. aaron toasted to obama and everyone talked about how good obama was. One of the men had very good english, but it was hard not to laugh when he said, "yes. i am proud america has chosen the black child." after this talk for awhile, someone asked us who we'd voted for. we said obama. then they were like, really? and i wondered where we had all been for the last 10 minutes.
Mr. Good-English turned a little less amiable as the lunch wore on. he seemed intent on trying to get aaron drunk, which neither aaron or i wanted. when i politely tried to help aaron resist him pouring aaron another glass he obviously did not appreciate my interference which made me mad. After lunch we were to drive in two cars 2 1/2 hours to the border of Vietnam. in the parking lot deciding who would go where i wanted to ride with aaron. then mr. Good English came over and was like, Aaron, Aaron, come. we will ride together. Come with the men. it was half wanting to spend time with aaron since we hardly had all weekend and half just not wanted to let this guy--who was increasingly becoming a jerk--win. I said no I'd like to ride with aaron, and mr. GE was rolling his eyes like it was so lame that we wanted to be together. Aaron said he'd like to ride with his wife and we started for that car and mr GE started arguing again, telling the other men that we didn't want to separate in a mocking voice. I was still trying to keep it light and said taking aaron's arm, well, he's my best friend. i'd like to ride with him. mr GE then took aaron's other arm and said, no he is my best friend. The whole tone of the situation was making me pretty angry. I felt like suddenly this weird male bond was more important than any bond aaron and i had. The other guys didn't really seem to care as much, but mr. GE obviously didn't like the fact that a woman was arguing with him and probably couldn't understand why aaron was actually talking it over with his wife rather than just going. i'm sure he saw that as a sign of weakness in aaron. anyway it was the same at lunch when i tried to keep him from pouring more alcohol. he would just say in his obnoxiously loud voice, BETSY, DONT WORRY ABOUT IT and brush me aside.
The point of bothering to write all that down was that i felt what a lot of Chinese women must feel. There's such a drinking culture here and it's almost completely a male activity. One of the Chinese English teachers was telling me about her husband on our long drive to vietnam. She sighed and said he liked drinking very much. he would sometimes go out with his friends until very late drinking and going to KTV (karoke)--sometimes not even coming home--and she didn't like to just sit at home and wait for him. I asked her if she ever went along and she said no, none of his friends brought their wives and he didn't want them to laugh at him. I suggested she could go out with her friends on those nights so they could both be having fun, and she said no, he didn't like her to do that. What century are we in? I wanted to yell at her, wake up! you don't have to take this! but while i'm sure there are exceptions, this general attitude seems pretty consistant with chinese men. Perhaps it's that baby boys have historically been--and generally still are--more highly valued than girls here; how can you have an equal society when you aren't even starting equal? i don't know, but it's frustrating.
driving to vietnam we passed through some villages of one of the local minority groups, the Miao people. Grace, the English teacher, pointed out the houses that the government built for them, but they stand empty as the Miao people have always lived on the sides of hills and prefer to stay that way. The government built the homes on the flat land.
Their main commodity is chili peppers. They grow well in this area and literally the side of every building we passed in the village was covered in peppers hung out to dry in the sun.
The women wear beautiful brightly-colored hand-sewn skirts. I thought they were wearing crazy patterned tights, but zoey explained they're actually long strips of colorful cloth they wrap around and around their legs. i wish i could've gotten a photograph of a girl in the most amazing crazy colorful outfit riding along side the car on her motorcycle wearing an old-fashioned leather motorcycle helmet.
we took boats out on the lake in the early evening. it wasn't as much a lake i guess as a maze of connecting marshy waterways around the foot of the hills. it was beautiful.
we arrived at a guest house run by a local family. we ate a meal there which was completely prepared by them and everything came from that area. the fish and shrimp were from the lake, the vegetables were grown down the road, they even made their own bai jou alcohol.
after dinner, someone suggested i wear some of the local clothes, which everyone seemed to think was a great idea...... so here i am taking part in 'dress up the foreigner'. i was getting the sense they don't get many westerners passing through that area.
breakfast the next morning. noodles again, but this time they tasted surprisingly good as i ate them looking out the open window at the surrounding marshlands.
i took this picture out the window while eating breakfast. an older man and woman rowed by in their boat.
another picture from the window while eating breakfast. the morning air was chilly foggy and fresh.
after breakfast we went to see cave nearby. it was closed though--we'd arrived too early.
it's the off season, so everything felt quiet and closed down. when the lotuses are in bloom on the marsh many people come, but they only bloom in august.
the marsh was still beautiful even with the dead lotus flowers. i liked that we were the only ones there also.
the road is built up winding over the marsh. the occasional water buffalo meandered by though i didn't get a picture.
a small forest i liked
the only snack shop that was open. skewers of meat and insects.
crabs in a bucket on the ground.
a photo i took out the window of the car. at first it seemed like a mistake, but i don't think so anymore.
driving back from the border back toward wenshan and the airport we got stuck in a village traffic jam. it was market day and the main street was packed with people and animals and vehicles of all kinds. As we inched our way along the road i was able to take some photos from the car without being seen as the windows were tinted.
chilis
these are piles of chili peppers!
a really beautiful cow along the road
chickens
i took this picture to show a typical gas station public restroom. the gas stations themselves look very similar to in the U.S. (at least the large chain gas stations, like china petrol, etc.) but the restrooms still seem pretty primitive. They're cement floors with holes in the ground in a line, and short cement divider walls between the holes if you're lucky. the public restrooms have an interesting social atmosphere sometimes. i went into one last night (back here in beijing) and everyone was all in a line--4 people--chatting and texting on their cell phones while squatting. the smell usually keeps me from wanting to hang out too long, but the one last night wasn't too bad.
view from the plain heading back to Kunming.
