betsy-china

Visitors

2009-09-07T22:27:00.000-07:00

A few days after the swine flu closed our school a few days early in early July, Aaron's parents and two of his siblings, Caleb and Emily, arrived in Beijing for a two week visit. They came partly to visit us, and partly to visit Jing Wei--the exchange student from Beijing who spent a year living with their family and going to high school in Gladstone, Michigan--and Jing Wei's parents. Jing Wei and Mr. and Mrs. Wu were incredibly welcoming, hosting dinner after dinner, taking us all on a trip to Tian Jin, arranging a hotel for the Whitmers to stay at, and the list goes on. It was a very busy and fun time. Here are some photos of the highlights.

dinner at the hotel run by Mrs. Wu

A meal in Tian Jin, a city of 10 million near Beijing

preparing the fish

Caleb surveys the 4 star hotel they put us up in in Tian Jin (the nicest hotel I think any of us had ever stayed in...)

never again will i visit the forbidden city at high tourist season... (and note the umbrellas, not for rain but for protection from the sun)

Emily surveys her kingdom

the night market. everything you never really wanted to eat on a stick.

(silkworms, sea horses, starfish, sheep testicles, etc.)

beijing duck

Gary makes a friend

rooftop cafe in the seaside town of Qingdao we visited for a couple days. The city is pretty; winding streets and German architecture from the late 1800s when the Germans controlled parts of the city.

ah, Chinese beaches.

late night street

worker at the Qingdao brewery; we toured the factory.

bottling area

dinner at the Wu's apartment. In chinese culture inviting someone to have dinner in your home is not a common occurance, so we felt honored to be invited to the Wu's home for a delicious meal.

the 'squirrel fish'

a lot of jiao zi (dumplings)

more food than we could ever possibly finish

i forgot

2009-07-18T01:01:00.000-07:00

i forgot to mention that i recently posted an entry with lots of photos about our may holiday, but because i'd started it before it's saved under May. the title is "May Holiday-Trip to Yujiacun" if you'd like to read it.

swine flu, end of school

2009-07-08T20:30:00.000-07:00

end of the year dinner with our coworkers--upscale hotpot

lots of giggling...

Alice, one of my first graders

bobby, 3rd grade. i feel like this picture captures his personality pretty well.

Spring (Chun Tian/ 春天), 3rd grade

(I never learned most of my students' real names which is kind of a shame, but they only went by their English names in my class. This was an easy one though since chun tian actually means spring.)

Leela, one of my favorite 3rd graders

Last week we went into teach our usual half day on Friday and were told when we got there that school was canceled. The children were in their dorms and waiting for their parents to come pick them up. We were still supposed to have 4 more days the next week to do all the end-of-the-year stuff... some contests, a party, a movie, etc. not to mention just having a chance to say goodbye to the kids. I guess a case of the swine flu broke out in a school on the other side of Beijing and 8 kids were infected, so they closed most of the schools in the city. I was able to go find the kids in their dormitory and tell them goodbye quickly there, but it was a strange ending to the school year. I'll post a few photos of our students.

aaron's first grade

saying goodbye to our empty office

eating habits

2009-07-08T00:17:00.000-07:00

well, first of all, we figured out from from friends how to bypass the firewall here, so i'm able to access this website again and can start writing more often.... hopefully people haven't given up checking in on it now and then.

I've been wanting to write a bit about some interesting perceptions of what westerners (namely Americans) eat, which can at times be kind of funny.

In general, people are curious and i notice while i'm shopping at the grocery store in our neighborhood people like to look into my basket as they walk by or at the checkout. Of course westerners have the (pretty well-founded) stereotype here of eating a lot of dairy products. Milk has really caught on in China recently (thanks in part to the commercials of tall children drinking milk and then being the tallest kid on the basketball team and making baskets while the short, non-milk drinking child stands by on the sidelines). The whole milk scandal here put some people off milk for awhile i think but now there are also commercials of pristine milk factories complete with large car-wash type scrubby wheels that scrub the sides of the white happy seeming-cows and lots of smiling scientists testing the milk with pleased and impressed- looking westerners observing. Cheese hasn't really caught on much though and and all in all i do eat a lot more dairy products than the average Chinese person. So in the grocery store while they are adding jars of fish paste, tasteless rice snacks, and plastic bags of bloody meat to their carts, i feel i must be confirming their suspicions as i pass with my basket of bread, milk, and yoghurt.

we get our vegetables at the large semi-outdoor vegetable market down the street. a lot of migrant workers from the country side sell good fresh fruit and vegetables there (I've heard the main fertilizer is human waste, but i guess it's not that big of a deal really... right?) Anyway, there or back at our building waiting for the elevator people often look at my bag and then at me and ask if i know how to cook. I tell them yes, my husband and i both like to cook. Then they usually ask if we cook chinese food and i say no i don't really know how and then they ask what we cook and i try to summarize my cooking habits in a few floors worth of elevator ride.

maybe the strangest assumption about American eating habits was a couple months ago when aaron was across the hall at our neighbors. He's been helping their son and their son's friend with English and trying to get some Chinese practice in too. He was sitting in the living room with the two little boys (who were hanging out in their underwear-it was a hot day) and the mother kept coming in the room refilling aaron's little cup of beer she'd given him. But as it was only 3 o'clock in the afternoon and he was pretty thirsty, he asked her if he could just have a glass of water. She said, Oh! You drink water? I thought Americans only drank beer. She seemed surprised to see Aaron drink down the glass of water she brought him. She's been very generous though and often sends aaron home with a gift of some sort: 8 bottles of pepsi, crisco-y tasting cookie snacks, weird icecream, and once a watermelon, but this particular day she brought him a plastic bag from the kitchen with a duck in it. head, beak, feet, body, it was all there, though it had been hacked into many pieces. Try the neck! she cheerfully instructed aaron who was trying to decide what to do. Aaron dutifully retrieved a neck-looking piece from the bag tried it--it's suposed to be the best part of the duck. He thanked her but tried to explain that since his wife didn't eat meat he couldn't finish the whole duck himself, so maybe he could just take half of it. Trying to explain vegetarianism to someone in a culture of not so distant famine and hardship, where meat is a sign of health, wealth, etc, is never easy. She said, yes, but has your wife ever tried this?, indicating the duck. Aaron said no but she really hasn't eaten any meat for 15 years; i don't think she'll want to try it. Finally the mother seemed to understand: Oh, She's a buddhist! Aaron tried to explain again but sort of gave up, so now i guess i'm the Buddhist neighbor. when aaron came home and deposited the bag on my chest where i was reading a book on the couch i had a moment of cultural defensiveness. wait--she thinks we're weird? she gave us a hacked up duck in a plastic bag! i could put it back together like a puzzle.

finally, the other conversation that seems to fit into this entry about food and assumptions took place last week in our office. One of the Chinese teachers who's only been there the last couple months asked us if we liked chinese food. we said yes we like it a lot. she asked if we cook at home of just go out. I find this question sort of weird. Considering we've been living in Beijing in an apartment for nearly a year would you really think we only eat out? we said no, we usually cook but sometimes go out. she asked if we really cook though, because didn't we mostly eat cold foods? i asked her what she meant. she said she thought americans mostly eat salads and uncooked foods. (this was a new one--other people seem to think we only eat hotdogs, hamburgers, and pizza.) I said, well, i do like salad, but we definitely also eat a lot of cooked foods too. This is the same teacher who asked us if American high school is really like Gossip Girl and if American culture is like Desperate Housewives.

I can't really blame people for having skewed perceptions of the U.S. if that's what hollywood is showing. (I think about what i knew about China 4 years ago before I came--very little.) But it can still be frustrating at times to feel misunderstood. Yes, you're right; I'm American and I'm not fat. No, I do not drive a fancy car, own a gun, live in a mansion, eat cold foods and drink only beer.

tian an men massacre anniversary

2009-06-27T19:15:00.000-07:00

hello to anyone out there who is still checking up on my blog. It's been a long time since i've posted a new entry because a lot of sites were blocked here in May. I'm not very computer savvy so it took me awhile to learn that i could get to this website by going through a proxy website. it took awhile to find one that worked.

As you probably knew, the 20th anniversary of the tian an men square massacre was earlier in June, and a lot of social networking sites stopped working around that time. i guess it's a possible place for people to meet and plan a demonstration, so they were all blocked-- i heard the official line was that June 5-7 is the annual date for website maintenance in china where a lot of sites are closed temporarily. (the anniversary is on the 6th.)

Aaron and i decided to go down to the square and see what the atmosphere was on the 6th. we heard from someone who tried to go earlier that they weren't letting foreigners in without a passport, so we stopped at home after school and got them. the police presence at the square was unbelievable. guards, armed police everywhere you looked. they had all but a couple entrances to the square blocked off. we put our bags through the usual metal detecters and then the workers searched them and asked us some questions.. why we were there, what we were doing in beijing, why we chose to come to the square that day, etc. they let us through and we walked back above ground into the huge cement square.

the weather was strange; sweltering hot and humid but overcast and you could feel a storm coming. the weather itself was enough to make the atmosphere thick and tense. there were plainclothes guards stationed throughout the square, each with an wire in their ear and an umbrella. if their goal was to blend in they didn't do a very good job. they just stood and watched people. we learned later that the umbrellas were to deter people from taking photos they shouldn't take or any video. if they saw someone doing so they would walk infront of the camera with the umbrella opened and block the view. we watched a video of a reporter trying to report (outside the square) who was constantly being blocked by umbrellas. the whole thing almost seemed comical--it would've been funny if the whole atmosphere hadn't seemed so heavy.

(the pictures included here are from the winter)

we wandered through the square, passed the tens of police vans sitting, waiting with their doors open, passed the scores of plainclothes police, passed the chinese people on a grassy area--not talking, just sitting quietly, passed the vans of young soldiers who stared at all the foreigners passing by and it seems likely that a lot of them weren't even from beijing but probably brought in from the country or other towns for the day.

The huge stone statues of Mao's proclaimed heros of china--the people, the workers, the peasants-- stood as always outside the mausoleum where his pickled body is still preserved and displayed. They are impressive stone statues in their size and stature, depictions of hearty peasants marching forward in a group, arms outstretched and eyes looking toward the horizon, toward the new and better age of communism, THEIR government, their time, their future. And the irony of it all seemed so immense that a largely peaceful student led demonstration 20 years ago ended with hundreds of innocent people gunned down by their government in the same square.

After leaving the square I was thinking how crazy it is that so many people outside of beijing don't even know what happened that day. The government swept it under the carpet and pretended it never happened. But with such a large police force there that day, anyone would know something important was going on. Which made me realize that it doesn't really matter if people know. Of course nothing would be reported in the newspapers, but even with all the people who were at the square and witnessed the government's enormous clamp down on any possible show of unrest, why does it matter if people see? For one thing, the many people who do know about the tian an men square massacre are vastly outnumbered by those who don't. China is enormous and beijing is such a small part of it. And secondly, it seems to have become less about a battle of truth (the massacre happened v.s the massacre didn't happen) and more about a battle of force (fine. you know it happened? just try doing something about it.) it's impossible to summarize this country. It's full of contradictions and surprises. I feel like I've been here for a long time, but still know very little.

2009-06-21T01:02:00.001-07:00

May 12 One year anniversary of the sichuan earthquake

2009-05-12T08:08:00.001-07:00

i thought i'd write a short post today as it's the one year anniversary of the Sichuan earthquake here in China. I hadn't really realized until recently just how much controversy is surrounding the government's handling of the situation. Directly after the earthquake authorities were praised somewhat for sending aid so quickly to the region, but have since aroused a lot of anger.

Many of the 69,000 people who were killed and 374,000 people injured in the quake were school children, and a disproportionate number of schools crumbled that day. Apparently, officials were receiving the building materials for new schools then selling off the steel reinforcement columns, and other materials etc. and pocketing the money. The buildings were constructed far below building codes and completely unsafe. The corruption was so widespread that literally hundreds of schools crumbled while other nearby buildings were far less damaged. Rather than calling out the people responsible for this, the media is quite silent on the issue due to pressure from the authorities.

wikipedia seems to have a good summary of the story. Here's a short excerpt:

In July 2008, local governments in the Sichuan Province coordinated a campaign to silence angry parents whose children died during the earthquake through monetary contracts. If the parents refused, officials threatened that they would receive nothing. Although Chinese officials have advocated a policy of openness in time before the Olympic Games, the pressure on parents to sign demonstrates that officials are determined to create an appearance of public harmony rather than investigate into the corruption or negligence of the construction of schools. The payment amounts vary by school but are roughly the same. In Hanwang, parents were offered a package valued at 8,800 USD in cash and a per-parent pension of nearly 5,600 USD. Many parents said they signed the contract, even if no real investigation ensues. Furthermore, officials have continued used traditional methods of silencing: riot police officers have broken up protests by parents; the authorities have set up cordons around the schools; and officials have ordered the Chinese news media to stop reporting on school collapses.^[21]

In July 25, 2008, Liu Shaokun (刘绍坤), a Sichuan school teacher, was detained for disseminating rumors and destroying social order. Liu’s family was later told that he was being investigated on suspicion of the crime of inciting subversion. Liu, a teacher at Guanghan Middle School, Deyang City, Sichuan Province (四川省德阳市广汉中学), traveled to heavily hit areas after the May 12 Sichuan earthquake, took photos of collapsed school buildings, and put them online. In a media interview, he expressed his anger at “the shoddy ‘tofu’ buildings.” Liu was detained on June 25, 2008 at his school. He was ordered to serve one year of re-education through labor (劳动教养) (RTL). Under RTL regulations, public security authorities may issue an order to anyone to serve up to four years of RTL without trial or formal charge. After being denied several visits, the family turned to international human rights organizations, who reported the case and urged the government to release him, which drew attention in the international community. On September 26, 2008, Liu was finally released to service his sentence outside of RTL.^[22]

The government also had refused to release the official death count of students for the whole past year. Finally just last Thursday they did. if you want to read more there's a lot of information on line. I was surprised it wasn't blocked for me here. it seems hit and miss what the government chooses to block. You tube, for example, has been blocked for a couple of months again now due to a video showing chinese police beating tibetans during the riots in tibet before the olympics last summer. Also it's impossible to look up anything on falun gong--the semi religious group (more of a philosophy i think than a religion) that has been so severely oppressed and abused by the government. It is strange at times to have the government so blatantly controlling information. I don't think the Chinese government is so different from ours in this respect, but they do go about it in different ways.

May holiday--trip to Yujiacun

2009-05-03T00:20:00.000-07:00

we had a four day weekend and decided to take a trip somewhere nearby Beijing for a night. we'd read about an old village still lived in where everything was made of stone. so we left early Friday morning. we took an express train to the capitol of the the province that surrounds Beijing; it took only two hours to get there. it was one of the nicest trains we've been on in china. our tickets were a bit pricey by Chinese standards, but were the only ones we were able to get so last minute.

at the train station--people waiting to get on another train...(each door was similarly crowded)

en route in our very comfortable seats

from the train window

every time i leave Beijing, china feels much more like china. it's easy to get comfortable here. we took a city bus to another part of the city and waited in a long line to buy bus tickets. then realized that the time printed on our tickets to depart wasn't for four more hours. as we stood there trying to decide what to do a woman quickly came up to us, looked at our tickets, and told us to hurry outside and get on a bus. the station was disorganized, no one else seemed to know where to go either, but we were herded onto a mini bus. we realized Beijing had made us used to schedules and organization, but things like that always happen when you travel around china. after an hour or so we arrived at the next town where we needed to catch one more bus to the village. it's interesting that even just a few hours from Beijing people are so unaccustomed to seeing foreigners. people stood and stared at us in the streets, friends whispered to each other to look when they noticed us, a few people called 'hello'! and laughed, two teenagers asked if they could take their photo with us, and all around us we heard the familiar words "laowai" or "waiguoren" (foreigners) on everyone's lips.

the next bus was crowded and hot. we sat in traffic a long time and then pulled off the road for another long wait for another bus to give them some of our passengers. but once we started moving the trip was fine. the area around Beijing is brown and dusty with only small small gnarled trees and scrub grass. much of the way was over dusty dirt roads. it had been awhile since I'd taken a minibus in china, and we were reminded of some of the things that makes them interesting. there's usually about 15 seats and an aisle for standing passengers. the ticket taker is the boss and often tells people where to sit. the woman on our bus was friendly, but also pretty intense as i guess you'd have to be. an argument broke out about the price of the ticket with one passenger and she wasn't someone I'd like to argue with. (she actually smacked him a few times at one point).

people wait along the road for a minibus to come by and it seems there's always room for more. on our trip back after the weekend, as aaron and i were sitting at the front of the bus over the engine, we counted 30 people though there were only 15 seats. soon after our bus slowed down by a small crowd along the road. i thought there's no possible way we can fit that many people in, but somehow we did, until we had 48 adults and a few children packed in. it's really impressive how unaffected people seem by it. no one seems annoyed, no one really complains.

another thing we were reminded of was the creative ways the bus operators get around the safety regulations. at one point when there were only a few standing passengers they told them to get down. they all squatted low on the floor and we drove by a police car stopped in the road. at a road check point our driver gave the checkpoint guy a cigarette and we drove on. i remembered how last time in china, traveling around Xi'an, the minibuses would often pull off to the side of the road, all the standing passengers would be hurried off the bus, and we would continue through the checkpoint without them. (the checkpoints were usually a guy at a desk along the side of the road who would stamp a paper and give it to the bus operator if they passed.) then we'd drive a little ways beyond the checkpoint, and stop to wait for the other passengers to catch up. sometimes they'd walk across, and sometimes a pack of motorcycle drivers would be waiting along the road to drive them across. then the bus driver would pay the motorcyclists and we'd go on our way.

anyway, we arrived in the village and spent the afternoon wandering around the narrow stone alleyways. there were some Chinese tourists but the whole place felt decidedly untouresty--no post card shops etc. it was a nice combination of being enough of a tourist site not to feel like we were intruding, but not being overrun.

these little boxes were once place on poles and used to carry a bride-to-be through town on her wedding day. i don't think this is an original one though...

most of the roads through the town looked like this. there were also roads wide enough for cars and motorcycles, but all the small lanes connecting everything were narrow and winding.

one of the main attractions in the town. This was a strange somewhat lopsided tower said to have been built about 500 years ago by a local eccentric. He was an amateur architect; the building has no foundation, is composed of all sizes and shapes of stones, and does not follow the traditional ideals of symmetry almost always found in classical Chinese architecture. The story goes that he wanted to build a tower tall enough to see Beijing from and built the entire thing himself refusing help of any kind, and built only by the light of the moon. Taking all that into account it was a pretty interesting building. Inside were lots of kitchy statues of Chinese gods which have been added more recently.

from below

scattered throughout the town were old opera stages once used for open air performances.

detail of the painting over the stage

a small shrine in a wall

eventually we started to look for a place to stay. our guidebook simply said some locals rent out rooms for a small fee, so we started to ask around. people in the town were really nice. most of the residents seemed to be elderly, and a couple of times when we looked into an open courtyard they'd see us and invite us in to look around. one woman up some steps in a tiny temple pointed out all the different gods to us and then stood and chatted with us for 20 minutes. the dialect in the town was very difficult to understand and i think we were only getting about 30 percent of what she was saying, but she didn't seem to mind. she was very lively and laughed easily and had kind eyes. we asked her if she had children and she said she'd had two boys and a girl but they had all died. her husband had also had an accident and was either paralyzed from the waist down or had lost his legs. he had had to pull himself around on a little cart with his hands. it was hard to imagine what this woman's life had been like, living in this tiny village since she was 18 and all the changes that had happened in that time. i thought it must sometimes be strange for her to have these people arriving from so far away who have had such different lives. that's the strange side to being a tourist. there's this lurking feeling of guilt that i just can't shake so much of the time. i wanted to give her a hug for some reason, but people don't really hug in china, so we just smiled.

we asked a nice family running a shop about a place to stay and they helped us find the home of an elderly woman who rented out rooms in the home she'd lived in her entire life. It was possibly the best place I've ever stayed in in China. We took some photos and i also took a video of our room which i've posted a video of below. The room looked like it hadn't been touched in 40 years, except for the newer t.v, the dates on the calendars, and the colored photographs. Everything else seemed to be from a bygone era. It was actually two connected rooms and each room had a 'kang' which is a large bed that takes up much of the room made of the same material as the walls. underneath it is an oven and serves as the room's heat source while heating the bed from below. In the past whole families would share the kang at night and also spend much of their time on it using it as a living space during the cold days. I'd always wanted to sleep on one. it's warm out so the oven wasn't lit but it was still fun. (though basically had no padding, so it was kind of like sleeping on the floor).

this was the smaller room and the smaller of the beds

parts of the town were newer. there was a new school and this huge stage next to it. above the stage was painted 1984--maybe the year it was built. It had such an old china look to it. I was imagining the communist productions that would have been put on on that stage at one point in a very different china than the one that exists today.

the stage

we ate dinner in a little restaurant. i snapped a photo of our view of the kitchen. we ordered some spicy shredded potato and jiaozi (dumplings). we'd never ordered them by weight before, only number, and ended up with enough for five people.... we ate until we felt sick but still couldn't finish them

After dinner we walked down the the only road in the town. It was dark now and we could hear singing down the road. Earlier in the day we had seen a group of people down the hill standing around an old phonograph, playing a swelling orchestral song over and over again. It was epic and dirge like and echoed through the town. It's solemnity was undercut only by its repetition. Now it was dark and the music was not from a phonograph. A group of musicians had gathered where the phonograph had been. There was a keyboardist, a man playing the Er-Hu, another playing a guitar looking instrument with four strings, a few men clapping blocks or wood together for percussion and a pair of singing ladies. The ladies took turns singing. Sometimes they sang back and forth to each other. Sometimes they were silent. They performed old songs: folk opera. The melodies were in turn sad and comical. Piped through bullhorn speakers attached to the roof of a roadside shop, the music was incredibly loud. It shot straight out of the speakers and crashed into the high stone wall on the opposite side of the narrow road and then bounced back out and across the entire village. Goats watched from the high stone wall, looking down at the musicians. Occasionally the music would stop and the musicians would pass around cigarettes and sip beer from green bottles. We learned later that someone had recently died in the village and that the musicians had been hired to play as part of the funeral. They played late into the night. As the music--either the phonograph dirge or the live music--played nearly the whole time we spent in the villiage, it brings back the memory of the feeling of the village when i hear it now. There is a video posted at the bottom, but it is better for the sound than for the visuals. I think this type of chinese opera music is strangely wonderful.

back in our room

the woman whose home it was made us noodles for breakfast. Her granddaughter said her noodles were famous locally. I've never been able to get used to noodles for breakfast, but they were actually quite good. we sat in the courtyard to eat.

the doorway to our bedroom

you could go up on the roof of the house. here's the view down into the courtyard.

the house next door

the granddaughter is coming to beijing for college next fall and wanted to keep in touch with us. then we all took a photo together.

the way home seemed longish, crowded most of the way back over the bumpy roads in the minibus. An older woman standing near me started talking to us (her dialect was also hard to understand) and i wasn't sure what she was saying when she grabbed my hand and inspected it and laughed. she was quite intrigued about my skin color or maybe my long fingers. i don't know. but though personal contact with a stranger still seems a little strange to me i liked that she wasn't inhibited. some people are so shy around us when we get out of the bigger cities and i appreciated that she was basically just like, wow- you're really weird!

after the two busses we got to the train station but if we wanted to leave soon there was only standing room. we bought a tiny stool and on the train sat on that and a newspaper we spread on the ground, which is what most people do with standing tickets. it wasn't bad if you don't mind moving periodically for the mop women who come around. (it seems more their goal to make the floor wet rather than clean...) . So after three hours on the train we were back in beijing.

a town we stopped at to change busses on the way back to beijing. the two cooling towers were the main skyline. we took this photo from a bridge over the 'river'. it was just a dry riverbed with crops planted in it.

February. back to the great wall

2009-04-29T03:53:00.000-07:00

Lest anyone think that our lives here are full of constant adventure, please keep in mind that all the recent posts and the next several to follow are from our month-long break in january and february when becca and susan came to visit us and we did some traveling. here are some photos of our day trip to the great wall. It was a perfect day to go, a rare almost warm day in early February, cool enough to hike comfortably and almost no one else there.

There are a lot of different sections of the wall you can get to from beijing. we got as far as we could by city bus and were let off at the side of the road. getting travelers to the wall is the way some people make their money, so anytime we've gone there are always people at key transfer points trying to hustle you into a waiting taxi or minivan. they will always tell you there is no public transport available and try to charge you exorbitant fees. A nice woman was talking to us on the bus but we started to see that she probably was working with some other people and trying to get us to go with them. It gets difficult when the people who actually do work on the bus are in with the scammers and you don't know if you're getting correct information. It's never a question of safety, just of being taken advantage of. So as usual our guard was up, and we were wary to trust anyone. After getting off the bus (the nice woman did in fact get off with us) there were several cab drivers along the road who tried to get us to go with them. One thing that i can't get used to about China is the pressure when you're trying to make a decision. When people are trying to make money it seems they won't listen to you, and can't understand why you would possibly need a few minutes to talk amongst yourselves first to decide. My favorite phrase for this situation is "Fang xin ba!" a nice enough way to tell someone to relax. Aaron's language skills came in very handy though-- after 15 minutes of talking, bargaining, and eventually joking with the drivers we had a reasonable price to take a cab the rest of the way. Things at times had seemed a bit tense, but when we were finally in the car our driver was a really nice guy and he had really taken to aaron. when we finally said goodbye he held aaron's hand for a little longer than you could get away with in the west, but in china is completely normal among friends.

susan arrives

2009-04-11T05:01:00.000-07:00

late January

2009-04-11T04:40:00.000-07:00

still trying to catch up...

here's a photo of the ground outside our apartment the day after new year's. The fireworks still continued for another week, but the actual night of the new year was the biggest.

the street cleaners had the city looking clean surprisingly fast, but for a few hours the next day virtually everywhere you looked the ground was covered with exploded fireworks, papers, and wrappers

becca at Xizhimen. the iconic three buildings mark what used to be the north west corner of the city wall.

a man selling ma huar (sweet fried twisted bread) from his bicycle.

one of the gates to the park of the temple of heaven. becca, aaron, and i walked around there for a while before picking up susan at the airport.

you see plenty of little round pagoda/gazebos in the parks, but i'd never seen a double one.

short videos

2009-03-23T03:35:00.000-07:00

The site has ironed out some kinks and i can post videos now, so here are some i've filmed this year.

1) The halloween tunnel aaron and i made at school for our contribution to the halloween party for the kids. They crawled through the claustrophobic tunnels on hands and knees.

2) A man making pulled noodles. (if you've ever wondered why ramen noodles are called ramen, it comes from the chinese, "la mien" which means pulled noodles.)

3) Chinese t.v. is endlessly entertaining. One day i turned it on to find a "learn at home" type show teaching how to sing traditional chinese opera. Feel free to sing along.

night out

2009-03-22T05:51:00.000-07:00

Last night aaron and i met up with some friends to bid our friend Heiner from Germany farewell, as he's leaving China this week. It turned out to be a pretty funny night. They made us a great dinner over at their apartment. There was a couple from France, a girl from Iran, a guy from Austria, a Greek/English guy, a Chinese girl, the German couple, and us. I found myself talking to the Chinese girl (who speaks German) in an odd mixture of German and Chinese and a little English. The somewhat odd combination of languages I've studied actually was the perfect fit for once. After dinner we went to a venue at the edge of the city by a drive in movie theater to see a Mongolian band play. It was an amazing show with a really positive, receptive audience. Their music was a sort of a modern take on traditional Mongolian folk music. The singer played a small cello-like instrument with two strings, there was a small guitar/banjo type folk instrument, drums, guitar, flute, mouth harp, and singing. Much of the time they sang using the traditional throat singing style of Mongolia. Low, eerie notes produced in the back of the throat and higher unearthly sounds which sounded like they couldn't possibly be coming out of a human mouth. It was the best music I've seen performed in a long time.

After the show we decided to go out together along with the Iranian girl's french and Italian friends we'd met up with. Our German friends Heiner and Mareen decided they needed to take us to a Russian club they'd been taken to once before by their Russian friends. A cab ride into the city later, and we were greeted by 4 Chinese doorman in tuxedos, one a dwarf, and decending an escalator sided by mirrored ceiling and plush red velvet walls into... Russia. There were Chinese people there to be sure, but the club did not feel Chinese. I realized just how many Russians must live in Beijing to have this one club with so many. Cocktail waiters in tuxes meanered among the guadily plush tables and chairs carrying elaborate fruit platters of melon, banana, and pinapple arranged in dramatic presentation, Russian dancers mingled among the tables in scanty sequined outfits and a lot of makeup. More dancers danced on the long bar (one fell off the 5 feet to the floor while we stood around nearby but seemed to be ok....) and in the middle, the dance floor flashed with lazor lights cutting through the smoke from the smoke machines and pulsated with the techno- remakes of Ace of Base and many Russian hits foreign to our ears.

I think most of us felt a bit out of place at first as we hadn't really dressed to come to a club, but we were also enjoying the bizarre surroundings and people-watching. The women's bathroom was something... i found myself waiting surrounded by the polished black walls hung with gaudy wall lamps and reproductions of 18th century Russian royalty portraits in guilded frames with about 8 women, all speaking Russian and wearing tight black miniskirts, leopard print dresses, high heels and glittery belts, long hair, eye shadow, eyeliner, lipstick, and cold expressions. In my vintage button-up dress (neither tight nor sparkly and in shades of brown--possibly the most un-clubby of colors) i found myself feeling like i had been transported off the set of little house on the prarie. The girl next to me looked me over and asked, in Russian, with no detectable friendliness in her voice, Are you Russian? I managed my most confident expression and replied using 1/5 of my russian vocabulary, "Nyet" and walked into the stall which had just opened in front of me.

Back in the club we met 2 guys from Uzbekistan who were really nice and we joined them at their table. I sat next to one of them communicating using almost entirely sign language as he spoke only Turkish and Uzbek. I had a moment when the strangeness of my situation struck me. I was with friends from all over the world, in China, in a Russian club (after watching a Mongolian band), trying to communicate with a guy from Uzbekistan. We ended up and dancing until almost 6 a.m.

Aaron and I finally ascended the mirrored escalators, back past more portraits of Russian royalty, were bid farewell by the tuxedoed doormen, and stepped out of the strange Russian dream in which we'd spent the last five hours and into the crisp early morning air and morning light of another day in beijing. Our cab sped us across the quiet highways, past the twinkling buildings extinguishing their lights as the sky opened up and became light behind them.

Chinese New Year

2009-03-16T02:12:00.000-07:00

I'm running behind: the Chinese New Year was back at the end of January, but I still want to write a little about it.

This year China welcomed in the year of the ox. In the three or four weeks leading up to the new year it became more and more apparent everywhere you went. Red is a lucky color in china, and it's the color for the new year, so many stores sold a lot of red things--especially clothes and underwear.

People also drink a lot of baijiu (the clear Chinese hard alcohol) so the bottles of it were displayed near the front of stores. it's customary to give other families gifts, commonly fruit or nuts or seeds or a nice bottle of baijiu. Also everywhere you went were cartoony posters of happy oxen, or some of the other customary images associated with the new year: fat babies riding goldfish, an old god with piles of money symbolizing wealth, and the long red strips of paper that most families hang on either side of their front door with traditional couplets written on them. Also hung on nearly every front door is the Chinese character fu, which means wealth. but everyone knows to hang it upside down as the word for upside down is a homonym for luck. thus hanging it this way is meant to bring luck and, with it, wealth to that home.

school children get one month off from school (--in theory; in reality most of their parents sign them up for extra classes and schools load them down with unbelievable amounts of homework to complete during the break.) Rather than presents children usually receive little red envelopes with money inside from adults. the whole country basically closes down for the couple days, but many shops stay closed for a week. Nearly everyone tries to get home for the holiday to be with family. So many people travel, in fact, that, so i've heard, the movement of the Chinese people over the new year is largest movement of humans on the planet each year. Add to that the growth in population, and each year becomes successively larger, which means that this was the largest migrations of humans in history. Which, needless to say, makes getting a train ticket tricky, or actually, nearly impossible. Train tickets go on sale 5 days before the date of scheduled departure and some ticket offices stay open 24 hours to sell them. Lines in the train stations are incredibly long and trains are packed (tickets are also sold for standing room, which makes getting up and down the aisles nearly impossible). The Chinese train system is actually really efficient and well run in my opinion--i can only wish that the U.S. would get it together and put together something even half as good--but it can't accommodatethe number of people trying to travel during these 2 weeks.

My most poignant impression of the time surrounding the new year is the fireworks. They are the soundtrack to every memory. A certain air of excitement cloaked the country, a certain feeling of lawlessness and childlike adventure. Traditionally, the sound of the fireworks is meant to scare away the bad spirits so they don't enter the new year, but really, who doesn't just like setting them off for the fun of it? And at least a week before the new year, it already started. Every day outside you could hear the sound of fireworks in the distance, and at nightfall it intensified. I quickly realized that China doesn't have the same regulations about fireworks as the U.S. and i got the feeling that the regulations they do have are not really enforced. Around every neighborhood and along the side of the roads little firework stands set up selling everything from sparklers to huge heavy weighted boxes of what we would consider professional fireworks. Every night people would set them off all around the city including the courtyard of our apartment complex. Hours would pass punctuated by the sonic booms and flashes outside our 13th storey windows lasting well into the night. The sound of each explosion echoed multiple times off of the surrounding tall buildings creating a very intense sound. We felt like we were under siege. Outside it was the same. People lit fireworks off on the sidewalks, and in the middle of the street. One went off practically underneath a taxi i was in. Middle age men stood around the sidewalks drinking and igniting the wicks with their cigarettes. Fathers set them off with their children. Children wandered around lighting wicks and throwing them on the sidewalk. we watched a three-year-old holding a roman candle, squealing with delight as it went off repeatedly. (his father was there with him, but it still was frightening). anyway, i was able to get used to it and liked the excitement in the air so i didn't mind, but for anyone who does not enjoy being surprised by loud unexpected noises, the atmosphere would have been pretty unbearable i think.

the other thing that made the new year a strange time was how empty the city became. Since so many people move to the city from the country, when everyone goes home the city empties out. the usually-crowded subways felt empty by comparison and the streets felt emptier too.

on the eve of the new year we went out with some friends to a big lake in central Beijingsurrounded by restaurants, bars and cafes. we sat in a second story booth overlooking the lake and watching the culmination of two weeks worth of escalating fireworks. As midnight grew closer the view became incredible and we ran outside to be in it. the path surrounding the lake was obstructed by fireworks exploding in both directions so we ran out onto the frozen lake. other people had the same idea and we all ran around on the ice surrounded by a 360 degree view of the city exploding around us. the air of excitement was unbelievable and for over half an hour the intensity of the fireworks didn't die down at all. i don't think I've been that excited for such a sustained amount of time for a long time. it was a very memorable night. i have a little video footage which can give you an idea of it... hit the play button below.

temple fairs

2009-02-27T20:24:00.000-08:00

around the chinese new year, most of the ordinary parks and temples are transformed. paper lanters are hung from the trees, booths are set up selling food, handicrafts or trinkets, and there are lots of games. the fairs are basically what we'd call a fair or carnival, but everything is more decorated and a bit less predictable. there are also outdoor shows put on by actors covering a wide variety of topics...(reenactments of the first chinese space walk, human sacrifices, and old well-known folk tales to name a few) , musical performances, and ice sculptures. we really didn't know what to expect at the two we went to, and as is usual in china, you never really get what you expect anyway. ---cheesy karaoke in the huge outdoor square built for gatherings and human sacrifice hundreds of years ago, children going for rides on robot dinosaurs that lurch along the park paths, adults and children riding the equivalent of the little 25 cent horse rides outside of grocery stores, but instead of horses large dinosaurs, an old man singing into a microphone and playing drums and cymbal while selling viewers a look into the windows of his strange contraption brightly painted but very old-looking, the park's old tower which you could climb and ring the giant bell inside, and the list goes on.

the front gate

you could pay to be carried around by 8 festively-dressed men to music blasting from speakers at a volume that tested the limits of the human ear

a game: through the old coins at the giant coin--try to get them through the center. the prize? good luck for the new year.

the strange old contraption with little windows to look through

one of the games: roll the tire and try to have it land encircling one of the monetary amounts. it seemed easy, but i watched for awhile and no one could win...

at the temple: i'm not sure what these were for; i think you could pay to hang one on the fence. there were hundreds and hundreds of them.

one of the strange mythical turtle/lion creatures. i am a big fan of mythical chinese creatures, i was really wishing these particular ones were real.

the oldest inscribed stone tablet at this temple, kept behind glass. i don't know a lot of characters, but was still able to read some as the written chinese language hasn't changed a great deal over the last 2000 years or so. (besides being simplified by the communists when they came to power).

because i'm having trouble posting videos on this website, i've posted one on youtube. you can click the link below to see some of the footage from the temple fair:

temple fair video

this and that

2009-02-27T19:45:00.000-08:00

my favorite little earthenware pots of beijing yoghurt sold on the street

walking around with becca

at home

an old gate in beijing

we went looking for a market and our search took us on a long walk through a part of town we'd never been to. as with most places around the city, the old narrow streets were in the process of being demolished to make room for new apartments and up-scale planned communities. we walked along this street which felt very much like the old beijing. on the other side of the wall was the new, with highways and high-rises.

the view down the river in the same area.

the summer palace

2009-02-16T04:25:00.000-08:00

the marble boat

we finally went to the summer palace--one of beijing's main tourist destinations. we found ourselves there not only not in the summer, but on an unbelievably cold and windy day. the upside was that rather than being surrounded by other tourists we were almost completely alone which made the old park and it's various pavilions, pathways, and old buildings all the more beautiful. we took refuge in a little snack shop drinking tea and thawing our hands while the wind blew the weeping willow branches horizontal outide and the tore the heavy insulating strips of plastic off the door of the shop. we bent double in the wind back outside and fought our way along the lake pathway and through the endless ornately-painted open pavilion halls (pictured above and below.)

becca arrives

2009-02-12T23:57:00.000-08:00

becca arrived from Washington at the start of our month-long spring festival break from school. the much-needed break made getting only one day off for christmas a little easier to take. we spent the first week and a half in beijing (until our friend form chicago, susan, arrived to visit also.) naturally we did the most important things first-- like ice-biking.

we went ice biking at a larger lake than the first time. at this lake everyone shared the ice: skaters, sledders, bikers, battery-operated little cars, even the goat cart you could rent to pull you around.

you never know what you'll see....

becca, with the famous old drum tower in the distance

the sleds are basically a couple of old retired chairs from elementary school classrooms affixed to a metal sled bottom. then they give you two mini ski poles and send you on your way.

ice bike

one of the many country-wide exercise parks. people of all ages use them, and they're all over the city.

new year highlights

2009-01-16T19:32:00.000-08:00

The winter continues here, some days bright and sunny, some overcast and foggy, but always dry. there's been no precipitation for months--no rain, no snow.

here are some highlights from 2009 thus far:

--we have a month off from work for the Chinese New Year--(we're leaving the rat behind and ringing in the year of the ox)--and both becca smith and susan golland are traveling here to see us! all over the city chinese decorations are being sold in preparation. according to something becca read, the chinese new year results in the greatest movement of humans on the planet each year, which isn't so surprising when you think how big the population is, and that everyone returns home this one time each year to be with family.

--in his efforts to avoid the easy route and go to a mcdonalds before a tutoring session in an area with limited food options, aaron took a side street, found a little hole in the wall restaurant and ate a mystery sandwich that turned out to be a donkey burger.

--we have spent a few cold nights and days in the apartment when we first ran out of gas and then later electricity, both which are needed for heat....

we yet again opted against the furry meat pastry.

night time snack shop. the sticks are kabobs of fruit glazed in suger. they're sold all over the city, either along the street in a case as above, or stuck out from a big piece of styrofoam and carried on the back of the seller's bike.

some kind of meat, rotating in a window

meat kabobs: like the fruit kabobs they're on sharp wooden sticks and sold all over the city. occasionally i wonder how many injuries occur each year as a result of crowds of people walking around with long, sharp sticks at face level, not to mention children running around with them.....

taking photos through a kaleidoscope

we buy our produce and eggs at a semi outdoor market not far from us. a lot of the people there come in from the country side to sell their produce. i like going there; everyone is always really friendly to us. it is unbelievably cheap; all of this was about 18 kuai, or $2.50.

last day of 2008 adventures

2009-01-01T00:02:00.001-08:00

as it was the last day of 2008, we thought we should have some adventures. we decided to take in a view of the city from the highest point: the old cctv tower and then see where the day led after that. we figured it would also be a good day to take pictures-- of the exciting as well as the mundane--to give you some idea of our daily life. starting with our toothpaste.

how could we possibly by Crest when this chinese brand was an option? we liked the snazzy face on it. Upon closer inspection when we got home, we realized the characters translate as "black man tooth paste"....

(I guess a lack of exposure often breeds prejudice; you don't often see people of african descent in china and consequently chinese people generally don't really seem to know what to make of black people. After obama was elected, people would say things like, "Yes, but he is black!")

aaron starts the day with a living room mime performance.

our metal apartment door... secure, but a little cell-like.

down our cement hallway. everything in china seems to be constructed out of cement.

waiting for the elevator. we're on the 13th floor. (there are 17)

as so many things in china seem to be, the emergency fire # to call is opposite too: 119.

the entrance to the apartment. in cold weather many buildings hang heavy blankets over the doors to keep out the cold. the little room you can see part of in this picture is where the apartment clothes mending girl lives. most apartments have a room like this where you can drop off your mending. behind the mending room is a room with a bed where they sleep and cook.

beijing did a lot to make the city more traveler friendly leading up to the olympics, translating a lot of signs, etc. into English. the bus system is an exception as it's all only in Chinese. without knowing some characters it would be pretty difficult to use.

one of the tens of thousands of electric bikes around the city. notice my favorite detail: the attached hand-warming mits on the handle bars that many of them have.

the old cctv tower in the distance. at night it's all lit up and looks like some sort of UFO/christmas ornament.

we passed a river boat along the way and one of the guards called out to us. he just wanted to chat and wish us a happy new year. then he asked if we could take a picture together.

the bridge we'd seen in the distance turned out to be under construction, but the river/canal was frozen several inches deep so we could cross over the ice.

nearing the tower!

we finally found our way to the base of the tower, bought a ticket, and went up. this sign was on one of the telescopes you could look out over beijing with to get a better view.

the sky was completely clear and we could pick our apartment out in the distance.

facing west toward the mountains, away from the city

facing north east

facing straight east toward the center of the city far in the distance. the sprawl of the city is incredible. using the telescope we could see the rooftops of the forbidden city which is in the very center of the city, miles away. just north of the forbidden city is a small hill, the highest land in the city. there is a pavilion on top and through the telescope i could just make out some people on the hill.

looking through the telescope down at the large lake just east of the tower we found people out on the ice riding... ice bicycles? we decided that obviously had to be our next destination. (i took this photo through the telescope)

below the outdoor observation deck was an indoor observation area. there were some machines along one side which we bought tokens for. they seemed like they'd probably been there for a long time...

we found the lake after we left the tower and rented an ice bicycle!

it was a pretty strange contraption. completely rickety and really, really fun. if you got going fast and then leaned to the side you could spin several times around as you slid across the ice before stopping.

on the next 'rink' over were little sleds with child-size folding chairs. they'd give you a sled and a couple mini poles to propel yourself along with. kids, adults, grandparents, everyone was out there on them.

there were only 5 or so people on ice bikes, which was probably good. i can't imagine riding around on them if it was crowded. in the background you can see the 40 or so more bikes available for rent.

i took a photo of this woman watching aaron. one of the many beijingers donning the face mask.

more chair sleds...

lunch break-- just a fast food noodle place in a mall.

on the subway, not rush hour so the crowds weren't too bad.

subway hall

typical squat toilet

city sights...

meat hanging outside of someone's window...

view of Xizhimen which used to be the west gate of the city wall before it was torn down. now it's marked by these three iconic buildings. it's also the nearest subway stop to us so we take a bus here almost every time we want to go anywhere.

china's favorite fast food. KFC. they're everywhere here and i realized one day that the colonel looks exactly like my father...

do you think so dad?

fancy baozi in a grocery store (little steamed bread rolls filled with meat and vegetables.)

it was almost midnight and we were wandering the frozen streets. aaron remembered seeing an irish pub somewhere in that neighborhood. we found it a couple minutes before midnight and stepped out of the cold into a room full of new year celebrators.

the problem with staying out late: our elevator is shut off at 12:30 a.m. so staying out late means 13 flights of stairs...

7th floor.

8th

9th

10th

11th

12th

13th!

winter walk

2008-12-27T02:14:00.002-08:00

aaron and i took a walk to a pagoda about a mile from our apartment that we always pass on the bus, but for some reason had never gone to see close up. It's crazy to me that something this well preserved and impressive isn't even in any of the tourist books or guides we've seen. A sign by it said it dates from the 1570s.

the stone has broken away over the years revealing the wooden armatures underneath. we thought they look like crazy stick people finally escaping the stone after hundreds of years...

typical neighborhood on the outskirts of the city

this was a huge bridge, much too big for a pedestrian bridge. we realized there must be plans to extend the road at either end which would mean razing the neighborhoods on either side.

typical tangle of electrical wires overhead.

typical shop selling housewares.

school stuff

2008-12-26T20:02:00.000-08:00

school awards ceremony... no one wanted to be santa claus so guess who finally volunteered...

tina claus

dancing at the christmas party

first graders' christmas party. they were all pretty excited to eat popcorn, cookies, and make christmas cards for their parents.

school hallway. they heat the classrooms and offices, but the hallways are unheated and they're always opening the windows for some reason- i guess to keep the air circulating, but the hallways are freeezing.

first graders at break time. they all started drawing meat skewers on the board which made me laugh. i had to take a few pictures.

another of their favorite subjects to draw: hearts.

or flowers.

all the rooms and offices have a water cooler since you can't drink the tap water. but also there is a plastic bucket/bowl in every room where people can dump excess water, tea leaves, etc. At least once a week a student accidently steps on it and spills it everywhere.

aaron takes a nap.

we share an office with two chinese teachers.

my desk--

lunch time. this is the cafeteria. all the chinese teachers have a red coat given to them by the school, so it's a crazy sea of red when they all get together. it was a sunny day the day i took this picture. i feel like the cafeteria always seem sort of damp and dingy, but that could just be because i'm not a big fan of the food or the damp foody smell in there. to the school's credit, they make everything there, and it's probably pretty healthy food: big tubs of rice and meat and vegetables. i can't get used to eating without having some water or somethingto drink though. the only beverage is a giant pot of warm, sometimes salty, broth which everyone ladles into a bowl and drinks with the meal.

mystery condiments on our table.

mini kitchen

2008-12-10T06:15:00.000-08:00

we feel tall here.

weekend trip to wenshan

2008-11-21T05:45:00.000-08:00

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.

halloween tunnel

2008-11-21T05:21:00.000-08:00

I meant to put these photos up earlier. They're from the Halloween party/carnival we had at our school. Each pair of teachers was supposed to make some kind of game for the kids to come to. Aaron and i relived one of his favorite childhood memories by making a giant cardboard box maze for the kids to crawl through. Unfortunately, the boxes were smaller than we'd first thought and it was incredibly claustrophobic, but at least the little kids could go through. here is a picture of the line down the hallway waiting to go in.

we had the door curtained off so all they could see was the entrance to the tunnel when the came up to the door. we'd recorded 'scary' music which was playing in the room as they crawled through. there was also a big rubber snake (which caused one little girl to cry and have to be evacuated through an emergency exit we'd incorporated.) and cardboard flaps we could reach our hands in to grab the kids legs as they crawled through.
i have a short video but for some reason couldn't upload it to the site. when the kids were crawling through, the whole tunnel came to life. i didn't think it would last more than a few minutes, but somehow it lasted the whole time (with some extra taping throughout).

a few of my first graders

my first graders coloring halloween pictures on halloween

hot pot

2008-11-10T02:02:00.001-08:00

aaron, marcus, linnea, and i at a hot pot restaurant. This one was a flat fee per person, so you could go through the line and choose as many of whatever raw foods you wanted. then you cook them in the pot of boiling water in the middle. One side of the pot is plain broth, one is spicy broth. very very spicy. they have almost every kind of meat and vegetable you could think of. then bowls of sesame sauce to dip your food in.

messy...

around the antique market

2008-11-10T01:15:00.000-08:00

First of all, thank you Linnea for all of her photos i've been borrowing recently. I tend to miss the best shots because I don't often carry my camera around and generally don't feel comfortable taking pictures of other people for whatever reason. So i give credit for many of the recent photos to her. Thanks Linnea! Enjoy the clear skies back in Sweden.

You can almost forget in certain neighborhoods of Beijing that China is a developing country. But it's hard to go a minute or two even in these places without a reminder that the majority of the population is quite different than the comparatively wealthy beijingers.

A common sight. Street cleaners and other people often wear face masks.-- probably not a bad idea with the pollution.

the amount people can carry on a three-wheeled cart or bicycle is impressive.

our puffy baked good selection. i would say there are things china does better than baked goods.

A first hand look at the fur trade in China. Much of the fur exported from China actually comes from dogs. Some of these pelts were most likely dog pelts dyed to look like cheeta etc, which is common practice here. If you ever want to know more about how awful this is, google PETA fur trade video. These men sell furs outside the antique market.

Inside the "antique" market. Much of the merchandise is actually just made to look old, but there are a lot of old things as well and i could spend days here without seeing everything: furniture, jewelry, Mao paraphenalia , old coins, books, paintings, posters, instruments, clothes, tapestries, dishes, ceramics, statues, toys....

eventually i'll try to take more pictures--this doesn't begin to show the variety.

fish market

2008-11-03T06:09:00.000-08:00

the beijing subway

one of the most intersting places i've found here is the fish market. --for pets, not eating. they also have turtles, birds, and a large assortment of other animals. eventually i'll add more pictures of this place, but here are a few for now.

grasshoppers

meal worms

autumn day

2008-11-02T02:32:00.000-08:00

aaron's brother marcus's friend Linnea from Sweeden is visiting us this week. yesterday we went to tian an' men square. there are always guards marching around.

we did lots of jumping.

we climbed a hill in the very center of the city. it has the best panoramic view of beijing.

aaron and linnea

down the hill

more jumping

exploring a side street.

we passed a large homing pigeon coop on top of one house and people cooking dinner in a public restroom. people cook everywhere. in shops, along side of the road. this was the first time i'd seen someone cooking in a restroom, but i think it was one of the cleaners, and if that's where you spend all your time, i guess it makes sense to cook and eat there too.

trying to warm up with gelatinous corn and egg soup. i was happier than i look.

though probably not this happy.

spicy red peppers! they're in many of the dishes; i've never found chinese food this spicy back home. mmm.

little fish with giant balloons for eyes. really.

misc.

2008-11-02T02:21:00.000-08:00

hallway of my apartment

on my street

noodles....again.

trip to the great wall

2008-10-23T20:02:00.000-07:00

although you can get a driver to take you straight to the wall for a pretty reasonable price, we opted to go by public transportation. it's more challenging and fun to do it independently, plus the whole round trip cost about $4. this is a public mini bus we took the last leg of the trip. a woman got on with a red plastic bag that i noticed was moving at her feet. awhile later it somehow came undone and a large catfish flapped onto the floor of the bus. for the next few minutes she and a helpful fellow passenger tried to catch it, but by the time they finally did the second fish had escaped.

this was an unrestored portion of the wall-- or at least not recently restored. sections were completely crumbled away, but we were able to walk a pretty long way before reaching that point. we didn't actually see this sign until we came back down-- people definitely climb this part of it though-- the locals set up little stools and make handmade tickets and charge you a few quai to pass the portion that runs through their land. (about 30 or 50 cents).

view from a watchtower

the woman in the background had the shrillest voice i've ever heard. she charged us 5 quai to pass and tried to sell us firecrackers to set off on the wall.

scenic view for the preying mantis

this portion was crumbling away and rediculously steep. i opted out, but aaron and marcus climbed down.

looking down the steep section

back off the wall. someone burning leaves along the road.

a very typical public restroom in the countryside. the door on the right shows the character for female. the toilet is just a hole in the floor that runs strait out onto the hill behind the hut and down to the river.

workers whitewashing the tree trunks on our walk back along the road waiting for a bus to come by.

bus to the next town