韩海瑄 in 西安

in america, louie says, everything smells funny.

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 01:05:45 GMT

he's sitting on the window sill now, staring out at mom's trees, his little nose zestfully wriggling.

our adventure started on tuesday. i was up at 5am to take christian to the airport at to drop him (and my two packed bags) off at the airport. then i returned to the apt. to clean and get things sorted. around 4pm, i waved goodbye to XISU, hugged chris, john, and andrew, who gathered to walk me to fetch a taxi, and drove down chang'an lu. louie and i had our bus at 5:30. we got checked in at the bus station, no problem, and went out to see if we could board. we found the bus and straight away i had an argument with the driver about whether or not i could have the cat with me. he wanted to put louie in the cargo hold under the bus. "不是!" i yelled, "不是!" (bu shi = not to be/dont want). he relented and told us to come back at 5. so we hung out in the crowded parking lot, crouched in the shade. everyone stared. we climbed aboard a little after 5 and tried to get settled. the "seat" on a sleeper bus is akin to the backseat of a compact car sloped up like a chaise lounge. there is a cubby hole beneath one's head space for shoes (no shoes allowed on board), and a foot hold for personal items and, er, one's feet. it is not a spacious venue. i put my shoes, louie's water dish, and his quasi litter box (a tupperware box with snappable lid) in my cubby, my camera by my feet, and my knitting/cat supplies/food bag squashed next to my legs. louie's carrier was on my lap. and that's how we remained for 16 hours. we got into beijing around 8:20. louie was protesting for the majority of the trip. loudly. it was a hellish experience and i did not get much sleep at all. it was odd on the bus. unlike my yunnan sleeper experience, this time there were two women on the bus who spoke a little english. they were nice but sadly sitting next to me. early in the trip, one of the women said, "you cannot take your pet on the train so you have no choice. you must take the bus," and i agreed and apologized for the kitty. we made a brief pit stop around 8:30pm and the nice lady watched louie while i used the trough (bathroom). louie had been quietly protesting until then. he was clearly upset, but the night was young. on the bus, our entertainment was a horrible variety show followed by some karaoke videos and horrible action movies. i tried to tune them out but found it to be impossible. while i was sitting by the window, and could avoid looking to the center aisle where the screens were mounted, the image reflected perfectly on the glass. even if i tried to look outside, i saw the television. plus it was loud. as the night went on, louie's mrwwws continued, growing louder and angrier. he was even banging his body against the sides of his carrier looking for a weak spot or a way to break out. he stuck his little paws out the cage front and gave some furious tugs as if to break out. and all the while, he was giving me a Death Glare. i tried to reason with him, soothe him, pet him... but he wanted none of that. sometime in the night, a man decided to get out of his bed and sleep on the floor next to me. why? i'm guessing he wanted to be close to his friend. i have no idea. but he blocked my cubby. at one point, louie's howls became high pitched and urgent. i had to wake up the guy to get him to move so i could get into my cubby and get the litter. he wasnt happy about it, and there wasnt much room. but c'mon, fella, you decided to sleep on the floor. i mean... really. i got the tupperware into his box just in time. poor guy really had to go. i snapped back on the lid, which thankfully muffled the smell of cat poo, and put the box back in the cubby. louie calmed down a little, and i think i got some sleep at this point. but not for long. he finally ran out of steam around 7:30am and, while i was delighted to get off the bus, had a difficult time waking up. i had just settled into a beautiful sleep when we arrived at 8:20. i called christian and oliver and let them know we had arrived and hailed a taxi. he wanted to put louie in the trunk of the car. 不是! it was a long taxi ride and we got to oliver's house a little after 9. during our jaunt, the cat continued to announce his displeasure. this annoyed the taxi driver who was so happy to drop me off. we set the cat up in oliver's sun room and gave him wet food AND tuna. after scarfing down his culinary treats, he sulked and reminded me that he was Really Pissed Off. christian looked at me and i burst into tears. i had tried to hold off collapsing but i was a wreck. my body ached from having the carrier on my legs for so long, and i was completely worn out from trying to unsuccessfully assuage the cat. i slept for an hour and then the swede called. his work hours are strange so i had to wake up to visit with him because who knows when i'll have the chance to see him again. we visited him for a while, had lunch, and went back to oliver's place. another friend of oliver's was staying at the apt. as well so it kind of strange. the guy was not...really friendly. i tried to repack my bags. one of the bags was deemed overweight at the xi'an airport, so i crammed some heavier items into my backpack. i was hoping to avoid overweight charges. i hung out with the kitty, who finally decided to take a nap, and told him that i was sorry for the suckage but soon it would all be over. i was not looking forward to the flight. i was thinking if it was anything how the bus ride was, i was going to lose it. christian and i went out for a beer. we didnt necessarily want beer but we wanted to be out of the apt. or at least have some space. we sat outside and people watched until oliver joined us for dinner. the friend also joined us. i had tried to suggest to oliver to take him out to a nice dinner, since it was my last night in china (for now), but he was stressed about work and the message didnt get through. i guess he thought i was staying another night. i didnt have the energy to counter when he suggested we just stay at the street food place. some street food is the Best Ever. but my noodles were rather unsatisfying. and the conversation equally so. oliver has been having a rough go since he and lin broke up. and his apt. is falling to pieces too. no light in the bathroom, hot water is broken... there was no relaxing hot shower for me. and, while i wasnt expecting a parade, i didnt feel as though there was a great deal of warmth extended. i know oliver is stressed with work and such. but....

christian and i left. not too soon after, jason and oliver returned to the apt. as well and stayed up. they were loud. i didnt get much sleep. i was terribly sad. while i am done with china in many ways, at least for now, i still love the place. and i will miss it terribly.

the next morning, oliver asked how i was, and i replied "well, i'm breathing." oh, he replied, how melodramatic of you. i starting assembling my things and he acted surprised. "you leave today?!" yes, oliver, yes. "oh... wow, well i guess last night was not a great night for you... i'm sorry" i said it was fine and continued to get ready. oliver is not a cat fan. but he said that louie was awesome. and even held him in his lap! he left for work and christian and i left for the airport.

things went rather smoothly at the airport at first. i had to buy another carrier for louie, and then had to pay an extra fee to have his old one checked, plus i had to pay overweight charges on both bags (how? i know not. each bag was 2K over. we knew the bag i had rearranged was over in xi'an cuz i had to pay an overweight fee on tuesday morning. but the woman had checked the other one through so i thought it was ok. oliver didnt have a scale but we guesstimated and thought both bags were the same weight. so i can at least say our estimation skills were dead on).

christian and i parted and louie and i took the airport subway to our gate. poor lil guy almost got squashed by the people as they crammed into the car. "cat!" i called out in chinese. i was weighed down by my camera bag, laptop bag, backpack, cat supply bag, and cat carrier. louie and i waited in the immigration queue for ages. we finally got through and approached security. first thing, the security guy tried to put louie through the xray! machine. i screamed out and leapt for the bag. this is my CAT. he does NOT go through there. he is ALIVE. in my broken chinese this came out, "cat dead bad." i shoved louie past the metal detector and xray machine. the guy tried to grab him and i turned and gave him a solid look. he retracted. i got my pat down (in china, they pat down everyone though you dont have to take off your shoes like in the US), repacked my computer, and started to get my things arranged on my body. the guy who tried to put louie through the machine had my cat supply bag open. "what's this?" he asked and poked at the kitty litter. he asked me to eat it. i balked. i said, in chinese, "cat bathroom." he looked confused and asked me to eat it again. i then pantomimed cat bathroom behaviour. "oh," he said, "ok" and let me through. then we got led to the special pet heath inspection place. i got hung up there for quite some time. we were waiting for a guy to arrive and sign some papers. the people there were nice enough. i introduced them to louie and we made small talk. i asked how many cats go through. "well," said the lady, "today there have been 4!" it was then that i noticed what time it was. my flight started to board at 11:15. the flight was scheduled to leave at 12. it was nearing 11:35. i said something to one of the guys there. "um, my flight is leaving soon...?" don't worry, they said. when he gets here, he'll walk you and your cat to the gate. he arrived and signed the papers and told me to follow him. he took off and was way ahead of me. i also noticed he was not walking towards the gate. but, i thought, maybe louie and i have to go through some other thing...? maybe there's more to come...? we circled around and were back at the front of security. i called out to the guy. HEY. he turned and was shocked to see me. he said "i told you to go!" no, i said. you told me to follow you. and my flight is leaving. they made me go through security again. all the while i kept saying, "i already did this! he made me follow him! my flight is leaving! call someone, do something, please!" and then i burst into tears. the pat-down lady tried to calm me down but i was having a meltdown. the guy who told me to follow him grabbed louie and the kitty supply bag and ran to the gate. they let me through. i started down the ramp tube and there was another station set up for security. and they went through my things. again. i finally got on the plane. i was not there long when we started to taxi.

louie was amazing on the flight. he mrrowwed a little, but not much at all. the screaming baby was much louder. he slept most of the way. i like the zipper on his new carrier because it made it easier to scritch his head. it was also easier to give him water. the flight attendant gave me two cups of water--one for me and one for him. i wouldnt say louie was happy, but he was, thankfully, calm. i think he was too exhausted to protest. but still, i didnt really sleep on the flight. the lady next to me was nice. she had lived in china for a year and so we swapped some stories. she was an older woman, about 70. she thought louie was just beautiful. i kept talking with him and petting him. i was pleased with how he was and unpleased with how the morning went. and i was nervous about how things were going to go in san francisco. we landed, i got all my bags plus his old carrier (which someone had labeled NO CAT), and we headed towards customs. louie was wide awake at this point. the whole time we were waiting for my bags to appear, he was full of conversation. he's quite a chatty guy. i kept calling him my little immigrant. we got to the customs area and i had his papers ready. three big men approached and turned into squishy greeters as they bent down to louie and said "oh kittyKITTYkitty! oh!" and made funny squashy noises at him. it was hilarious. they let us through....

and i sighed a huge sigh and just started to laugh. i continued to talk with louie as we walked down the corridor. "my little immigrant! you've got a kitty green card!" i told him about the short car ride and that everything would be alright soon and that he was so good and we were almost there.

i was expecting my mom to fetch me and was shocked, SHOCKED! when the doors opened and instead of my mom was another face i knew very well. LAURA! she picked me up and swung me around and i just laughed and called her an asshole. she and my mom had been planning this for weeks. it was a delightful surprise. he was a good boy in laura's truck. i know she was so excited to see him as well. we got home and mom gave him some wet food and water and a shiny new cat box. PLUS a new scratcher toy. he is a happy guy.

and now things are great.

and holy wow. im in the US of A.

with a CAT.

yay home!

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 22:47:48 GMT

we're here and safe and full of stories.

the journey, so far

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 10:40:04 GMT

it's amzing how painfully long a simple 16 hour trip can be. but louie and i have succesfully arrived in beijing. so tired, we are. so tired. i had a long day before i even climbed on board the bus.

but we are here. got here this morning. and, after a few cups of coffee and a short nap, and a lovely lunch, and then more coffee, i feel almost human.

louie is Pissed Off.

but he got tuna and wet food. so really. he's going to america. realising the american dream.

lucky lil twirp.

he'll thank me someday.

i took photos along the way--in the taxi, in the bus. will take more tmorrow. will post them when we're in america. my flight leaves tmorrow at noon. i arrive tmorrow morning at 9am. oh, international date line, how you will mess with my head.

thankfully the flight is shorter than the bus ride. and maybe louie will realise there's no point in screaming and he might as well sleep. maybe.

im just glad we're safe. christian also arrived safe, and so did my luggage.

i think it's time for a beer.

...and now the real adventure begins

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 01:46:36 GMT

im taking a moment with a cup of coffee and some swiss chocolate before i become a whirlwind and spin for the next few days. i was supposed to leave yesterday. didnt happen--louie's paperwork wasnt processed like it should have been. in theory, i should have had it over a week ago. but i didnt. and due to cultural nuances. for example, kat, the woman who was helping me with the cat was supposed to pick up the papers for me when the gov't people called. they didnt call. and she didnt try and contact them. i called her when we got back from shanghai and asked if the papers had come in. no, she replied. well, i said, what did they say when you called? oh, i didnt call them. err... i mean, ususally when one is expecting an important phone call and said party doesnt call, shouldnt one call them? she said, i will call them first thing on monday. i knew right then i would be postponed. and i was trying to think of solutions of what to do with louie just in case. i said to her, i am going to beijing on monday. she said "and when are you coming back from beijing? uuuh... im leaving the country on thursday? the whole reason why im having to do all this cat business? *forehead smack*

christian and i had already arranged his flight to arrive tuesday morning, coordinating with the arrival of my bus. so he's off to beijing already this morning. me, well, i'm leaving this late afternoon and will arrive in beijing tmorrow morning. he is staying with my friend oliver and i'll catch up with them in about 24 hours. im thankful we left a time cushion. things went smoothly for christian at the airport. we didnt have to pay for the extra bag! however, we did have to pay for excess weight for one of the bags. oops. it wasnt too bad. 500Y. could be worse.

yesterday was a hellava day which is why im so tired. i crashed hard last night, and pretty early too, but all this added stress has made for anxiety dreams which means i dont get the rest i need.

the morning went fine. i cleaned the apt. and made sure things here were in order. i have some misc. stuff to deliver to christian's apartment, like my linens and towels and things, but am otherwise pretty well squared away. we met with chris and john for lunch, stopped by homeclub for some last minute items (treats for the cat, spices for me, a tupperware box to serve as a mock litter box during the journey). kat called and said the paperwork was finished but, because this is china, we had to wait until 2 to take care of it. she texted me the address of the place and we got a taxi and set out. but the taxi didnt take us to the front of the place so i didnt recognize area. i thought we were in the wrong spot and was quite confused. we got anotehr taxi, called a friend, and got driven around the block. pathetic. when i expressed to the first taxi guy, hey, is this it? why didnt he say, sure thing lady, just walk down past this building and you'll see your destination. bah. then we had to find the cat-lady. no problem. they gave us the papers and a smile and i relaxed a little. next stop was the long-distance bus station. well, one of them. xian has three. we went to the one by the train station which we thought was The Place to Go. it took us a while to find it too. we knew it was "across" from the train station. so after some wandering around, we found it. it seemed like a small station and we didnt see a ticket kiosk. we found some men in a room so we asked them and were told there is no bus to beijing from xian. i know this is not true. in china, it's better to give some sort of excuse rather than just admit you dont know something. more wandering. i called my friend tony. he popped on-line and found the information i had desperately tried to find (in english) with ease (in chinese). while on the phone with tony, i had a lovely view of a young kid shitting into a plastic bag on the street. my thoughts? well, at least he was using a plastic bag. tony was able to tell me when the bus left and everything. so i was confident.

it was taxi shift change time. why do all the taxi's have to run on the same shift cycle? so frustrating. it was a struggle and we finally got a cab. we had just settled ito the seat and relaxed, thinking, yes, finally, all is good... when the driver pointed. the other bus station was just across the freeway. again, why dindt someone just tell us that?! we could have walked.

we found the ticket kiosk, and got my ticket. no problems. i said, i'll have a cat with me, and the lady smiled and laughed. i hope that means, sure! ok! no problem!

we went to find a taxi home and, because it was shift change time, had a hard time. sometimes they dont put up the shift change sign so you pop into a taxi only to be chased out. we flopped into a car and the driver shooed us out. i stepped out of the cab and was hit by another. he got me on the hip. not bad though. but now i can say i was hit by a taxi. im not hurt. it was just scary. it was more like a gentle nudge. but the sound scared christian. it did make a lovely THWUAMP sound.

we got home and met with andrew to move my washer into his place. then we had dinner. and then collapsed.

the day before, it rained. but yesterday was hot. the rain was a bit bothersome, although it felt wonderful, because that was the day i took my boxes to the post office. i had planned on going the day before but also encountered a bit of a problem. they had sold me the wrong boxes. only certain boxes can go abroad--the white boxes--and they had sold me a brown domestic box. so new boxes had to be purchased and everything had to be repacked. woke up ready to march down to the post and it was raining. blargh. it took a while, but all was taken care of. 2000Y to send 5 boxes on the slow boat. not bad.

and now i should continue to clean and make sure everything is organized. i also need to give my little immigrant some hugs. he's wondering what the hell is happening to the world around him. im wondering if he's remembering what happened last time his human started moving things....

but this time, he wont be abandoned.

oh, xi'an, i'll miss you.

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 02:02:23 GMT

we're back from shanghai! and we almost got to see the eclipse too as our flight was delayed for 5 hours. hahaha... we got home at 4:30am. were supposed to be home by 11.

they tried to make us happy be feeding us pineapple cakes and water:

it was cold and they had no blankets. we finally got to board the plane around 11, i think.

and then, once on the plane, they fed us snacks straight away. one knows one is in trouble when they do that.

we entertained ourselves in the airport by watching a "rap" on the pig flu. for hours.

...and these last few days, i've been SERIOUS about packing. almost done. small snaffoos, but all is well now.

and monday night, louie and i shall take the night bus to beijing...

我不是蠢货

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 02:54:46 GMT

a few nights after the riots, i went to my favourite xinjiang restaurant.

ive been hanging out here in my apt. for a few days trying to get things done. one corner of the living room is stacked with Things i am Not Taking with Me (there's a please-dont-reinvent-the-wheel box for the new humboldt college writing teacher, who has yet to write me back [though i have written him several times. you'd think he would want to know what i have to say...? i did help design the pgram], and lots of random stuff for the 3 new humboldt teachers who are coming) and another corner is stacked with boxes and suitcases and stuff that Needs To Go Home. save the kitchen and the bathroom, both stocked with things not coming with me (mostly; i am keeping a few of my coffee mugs and some of my toiletries are returning with me), im more or less sorted. now comes the deciding what to ship and what to take with part. obviously, the cat is coming with. har har har. he's been watching me pack with keen interest. when he's not sleeping.

we went to the vet last week. i LOVE how pissed he is at me (i hate you so hard):

he was SO GOOD. and he was fine in his carrier too. he loves his carrier.

before kat and i had met up, we had a funny email exchange that left me smacking my forehead and laughing. we made arrangements to meet to take the cat to the vet. a few hours later, she emailed me again to say P.S. please bring the cat OH! i thought THE CAT! yes, yes, tht's very important. *lesigh*

a few days later i met kat, brit's chinese friend who is helping me out, and we went to the gov't place to get the rest of louie's paperwork sorted. im so thankful i had a native speaker. SO thankful. the building set up was confusing. kat had to ask all around to find out where to go. meanwhile, louie was staring out his carrier being So Good. he gets annoyed when he's sitting still but doesnt seem to mind motion. he had a good time walking around in kat's car. she insisted that i let him roam around. in the gov't building, he got to go on an elevator ride, and then a lady checked him over. she asked me to let him out of the carrier, onto their table, and then he wandered around. she wtched him, poked him, and that was that. kat had to chase him a little while i was filling out paperwork because he hopped down and ambled over to someone's cubicle: O HAI! sniffy sniffy sniff. the most curious bit of the form was the section tht read "use"... i asked kat, does this mean "pet?" we assumed so. if i wasnt so paranoid about getting the forms Just Right, it might have been fun to write random things in that box. louie could have been my butler, or my entertainment, or the like. i just wrote "pet/companion"

then we left one building to go to another building where more paperwork was filled out and copies were made. everyone in the office was staring at louie because, at this point, he was wanting to bust out of his cage and was telling me so. i pet him through the wires and he calmed down. i think he just wanted to go sniff and check things out.

his paperwork is going to take a few weeks to process which makes me nervous. but apparently, there's a 14 day window. if his paperwork goes through before that time, i'll have to do the whole process again. the gov't lady was going to hold on my stuff and put it through at the appropriate time. kat is going to pick it up for me, since i'll be in shanghai, and then i'll take her out to coffee or dinner or some such to say thanks for her help. she's a crack up. she stayed up til 3am to watch the michael jackson memorial. her cat, who looks like louie but doesnt have blue eyes, also a street cat, is named Money. she jokes, "that's because i just tell people i picked up some money on the street!" she asked if i had children, what would i do with the cat? i quizzically looked at her and asked, "what do you mean?" well, she said, in china, when one has a baby, one cant have a pet. it's because they think the pet will somehow spread disease or hurt the newborn. *boggle* i explained, we always take our animals to the vet so they are very healthy. children and pets grow up together. kat thought this was strange. i think the disposable pet idea is rather strange.

i had a china-day last week too. those happen. usually, it's just people being obliviously ignorant. but it's always annoying.

i met up with humboldtians from round 1 who seem to forget that 1) i am capable and 2) the last few years, i continued to live in xi'an. the kids wanted to take me out to a celebratory lunch. so where do they pick? a buffet. i said to them, "do you remember the last time you took me to a buffet? there was nothing for me to eat." oh, they said i continued, "i think it's sweet that you want to take me out, so let's pick a place where we can all enjoy the food!" and then i suggested the indian restaurant that i love so much (and will miss!). we climbed into the taxi and the driver ignored me (this happens when one is with native speakers. ALL the time). the kids didnt know where to go, so i gave the address, like i have a zillion and a half times, and the kids translated my chinese into chinese. then one of the kids asks another, in chinese, are you sure she knows where we are going? are we going to the right place? and i turned to him and gave him a verbal smack. "yes i DO know where we are going. i have lived in this city for almost three years. i am not an idiot. i understood what you were saying just then. it's not nice." he was stunned. "you understood me?" i just looked at him. he settled back into his seat. there was a friend of one of the kids with us. he started to guide the driver the wrong way. i said, in chinese, "where are you taking us? he turns right at the next corner. we go down the block and the restaurant is at the end of the street on the left hand side of the road." the kids were boggled. at the restaurant, the friend of the kid asked me the most annoying questions ever. "do you like china?" no, i hate it here. that's why i made the choice to stay for 2.5 years. "do you like chinese food?" no, cant stand the stuff. it's just terrible. "have you been to the temple?" this question made me pause for a moment--i had never been asked this one before. which temple, i asked, and smiled. "the buddhist one." OH! the BUDDHIST one. that ONE buddhist temple in china, you mean? yeh, i've been there. i started naming off all the cities ive been to in china. i think i blew his mind. but while the conversation sucked, the food was good and it was nice of the kids to want to take me out. i just wish they used their heads. it's so insulting.

christian's family came through xi'an so i got to meet the family (and family friend, the adopted "uncle") and help christian play tour guide. we took them to the vegetarian restaurant (by the pagoda and! by the afore mentioned indian restaurant. i mean, really, i consider that area my neighborhood.) and to the big wild good pagoda (dayanta). there we saw this awesome monk:

we also took them to the water show at the pagoda where a young child nearly pissed on christian's parents. nice. YAY CHINA.

the watershow happens in the day too. this is what it looks like from the pagoda:

we did lots of people watching in the park and around xi'an as well.

i love how sunflower seeds are sold here:

christian's family also treated us all to a "beauty massage." the men folk got a foot massage. taht's what we thought we were getting too but surprise! not quite. it started with a shower and went on from there. christian's collegue frm the french dept. set up the whole thing. the water cooler cozy at the place was brilliant:

later we had dinner at the collegue's house. her husband treated us to an outdoor feast.

christian and family left to continue their whirlwind tour of china and i'll catch up with them on friday in shanghai!

today im going to see:

and remember kids, there's no such thing as a free lunch, but there is free luggage!:

prints

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:41:35 GMT

ive narrowed down thousands of pictures to a hundred pictures to 20 pictures.

im going to make some print to frame.

some of these i want to be large, even poster sized.

and maybe when i get home, i can commission to have prints done for a show at art's alive or something...?

where's the muslim quarter?!

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 12:07:30 GMT

i havent been to the muslim quarter in a while... but it's one of my favourite places in the city. i took christian there today only to discover that... it wasn't there. i mean, it's THERE, but it wasn't there. why? construction. we arrived and went to turn down the usual ally way leading into the shops and met a funny sign instead:

so we walked down the main road and turned down the other side street. that half was there. although my usual snack people were gone. this was not cool because i was hungry. there were still lots of other snack people, but i like my snack people. who have my favourite snacks. sad! one of my favourite muslim quarter snacks is a fried bread thingy stuffed with greens and egg. so greasily good. there's another snack that tastes just like the inside of a butterfinger. my tea lady was still there, thankfully, and we kept walking down the street. we turned into the other usual allyway and things were fine. things were under construction, but still... still. we got to the great mosque and, where there are usually shops, nothing. this is what we saw:

my usual shops are all on the half of the allys that arent there. i was so disappointed. we had made the trip mostly to buy some art from my favourite guy, professor ding. i had told christian all about him, and was so excited to show him professor ding's shop. professor ding does amazing wood block prints. it's different than the standard ubiquitous chinese art.

i was so distraught i didnt even want to purchase any schlock (you can get almost anything at the muslim quarter.). i was there for art. and my usual people--the people i have bought treasures from over the years--were just gone. i'll go again. i promised josh a mao watch, after all. and at least next time, i'll be prepared. china is like this. things happen so fast. restaurants change all the time. one can never expect something to be there. but the muslim quarter!?

ive got my last month nearly arranged. christian is leaving soon for traveling with his family. they'll come through xi'an for a few days, so i'll probably go out to see the terra cotta doods one last time. i hear they have some new ones, recently unearthed.

i'll spend some time packing up my beloved apartment. Chris and John and Oliver will all be stopping by xi'an and i'll have a chance to see them one last time on our old stomping ground.

i'll then fly to meet christian in shanghai. there i hope to meet with Humboldtian 1.0 Claire, freshly graduated from HSU. christian would love to see hangzhou, and since it's close to shanghai, i'm returning there with him for a day or two. then we're off to Xiamen. we'll return to xi'an and i'll cover the city with kisses and then louie and i will take a sleeper bus to beijing. christian is a kind person and is flying to beijing with my bags so i dont have to try and wrestle with too much on the bus journey. we'll meet up and stay with oliver, harass the swede, and the next thing i know, i'll be on my way to california.

last night we met up with tony mu, the panda pimp. we watched him play some basketball and then went to the Good Dofu Place for dinner.

louie, thankfully, likes his pet carrier. he's been playing in it on his own volition. i still need to get him shots and certification.

im concerned about how he will be during our travels. i cant exactly go down to Fin and Feather (or < enter name of favourite local pet shop here >) and fetch him some kitty happy pills, so i just hope that things work out. if anyone has any tips about how to sedate a cat, it would be appreciated. vets here can be sketchy. one of my friends tried to get a sedative for her cat* but the dose was too much and her cat almost died. scary.

this week i give finals. and then... FIN!

right now im going to finish writing a final and bake some banana bread.

*this is my friend, sati, who was a teacher here last year. she happened to return to china for a visit and helped me get louie his carrier. we tried to get his shots organized at that time, but encountered a great deal of hassle (ma fan) instead. she was kind and wrote out how to say things like, "im taking my cat to america. i need the following things..." i really appreciate her taking time out of her vacation to help me out. im lucky she happened to stop by xi'an. two students from humboldt 1.0 and humboldt 2.0 have offered to help too, so i think things will work out just fine.

雷锋助人为乐的精神将永存我们心中！

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 13:59:43 GMT

it was wonderful to see my old friends, chris and john! chris and john, expats from australia and the US respectively, had returned to australia last winter (er, summer as it were, since they were down under) but struggled to find work what with the economy being what it is and all. so, they decided to return to china, but not xi'an--wild and crazy kids!--because they wanted to try something different. john first came to china 15 years ago, and chris is no stranger to the middle country either, so it seemed a logical choice to return to their other home (australia and the US not withstanding), and to a new city just to be adventurous. they've been in changsha for about a month, so the city is still quite fresh to them. this being the case, divi, christian, and i got to help them explore their new turf. and thus we had a whirlwind of a weekend.

their new campus is situated on a mountain top, over the river and away from the city.

what's awesome about their campus is one has to pass a tomb to get to their apt. apparently, the woman buried in the tomb was Very Important during her reign but had long been forgotten. until the tomb was unearthed during campus construction. (stuff like this happens all the time here.)

we later saw a write-up about this tomb at the history museum.

Chris had to teach on friday so we had some lunch (featuring hunan's ever present Bucket O' Rice) at the fish hot pot place where we didnt get fish hot pot...

and then the fellas and I went to the lei feng museum. John was giggly about going to the museum because he knows a great deal about lei feng. once, while traveling, john got an instant discount at a local haunt where he had been eating a few days in a row. why did the price suddenly drop, john asked the shopkeep. well, he replied, "向雷鋒同志學習!" john was sporting his lei feng tshirt with the popular slogan, "learn from/be like lei feng." so who is this lei feng guy? a chinese person will tell you he's REAL. but some in the west doubt he really existed. this is why the museum is so brilliant. lei feng was a selfless and dedicated model communist. when he wasnt darning socks for his comrades, he was helping old ladies cross the street, or teaching the youth about the revered Chairman Mao. he wrote about all these activities in his journal, published posthumously, which is viewed as a companion piece for the little Red Book.

in this picture, you can see "him" writing in his journal. with his gun. oh, what a dedicated comrade!

the museum is awesome because all of the pictures of lei feng are not really lei feng! all of the photos of his deeds? re-creations. FANTASTIC! in small print, in chinese, it says this. and yet... just fantastic.

the museum even has a sock that he darned!

lei feng was killed while helping his fellow comrades fix their truck. john says there are two versions of the story. in one, the truck lurches forward and runs him over accidently, and in the other, the truck lurches forward, hits a pole, and the pole smashes lei feng, killing him instantly. john likes the pole story.

here's the statue that greets visitors:

outside the museum, we saw this guy:

and divi and christian decided to "have a rest" themselves. john said the grass was too prickly. and indeed it was.

we headed back to campus and had a tofu snack. this guy makes really spicey grilled tofu. john says he's never seen this kind of snack anywhere else in china. a shame i dindt know of its existance. it would make trying to explain a tofu-burger so much easier. im trying to spread the gospel of tofu-burgers. it doesnt always work. "wait, you grill the tofu?!" yes, instead of meat. "you grill the tofu?!" yes. you make everything the same. just with tofu instead. "you grill the tofu?!" *sigh*

walking home, christian and john showed what they had learned about being good communists and did some healthy exercise. exercise equipment is everywhere here. on the school campuses, in parks, in random town squares....

we met up with chris and went into town.

it's a bird... it's a plane...

we walked around for quite some time, checking things out and people watching.

before we picked a place to have dinner, we watched these bouncers get ready for their shifts. they started by standing in formation, then marching, and then doing pushups.

then we had dinner. yes, this meal looks remarkably similar to what we had for lunch. why's that? because in hunan, in most restaurants, there are a handful of vegetarian choices. and they seem to be the same choices no matter where ya go. however, they're good dishes. something funny about changsha: they dont do broccoli. john says he's gotten strange looks when he's tried to order broccoli. however, cauliflower is the Thing in changsha. sadly, even though we ordered it meatless for lunch, it came with huge chunks of fat, reminding us all that fat doesnt equal meat. it's different. LOTS of green beans in changsha too. tasty yummy goodness.

changsha is a rather happening city. it feels far more progressive than xi'an. the buses run 24 hours and the town center has a pulse. not that im a wild and crazy party girl, but i appreciated the youthful vibe. we stopped and watched a breakdancing performance.

and we laughed at how ironic china has become. just like the mao statue in chengdu, there was a happy communist guy (dang if i can remember his name!~oops!) AND mcdonalds. oh, juxtaposition!

we walked and walked and walked around. then we walked across the river. and saw a boat with a huge billboard.

i was also disturbed by this:

and this ad as well:

the above ad is the first ad for beer using a sexy lady i have seen in china. i dont like this.

next day, more adventures! because chris and john havent been in changsha too long, we got to go on bus field trips! where does this bus go? i dunno! let's find out! chris had her map, and that was quite helpful, but on this day we had to exit the bus at the end of the route in confusion. "i thought this bus went to orange island," chris said. well, not today! answered the driver. oh, china.

first thing we ran into? a nunchuck school/competition!

we were trying to find mao's school--where he was a student and also served as principal. my research interests lie in this particular area, so i was quite excited about it. mao was born and raised in this area, so it's quite a mao-happy place.

we walked past where we had been the night before. instead of breakdancing, sponsored by mountain dew (yes, mom, panther piss has made it to china!), it was a dance performance sponsored by a chinese energy drink.

we made a pit stop at the mall wherein i snuggled with a giant teddy bear and bought teenage mutant ninja turtle spock and teenage mutant ninja turtle kirk!

this was particularly amusing because later in the day, christian and i watched the new star trek on an imax screen in the cool, comfortable theatre. the other kids watched the new terminator.

then, after walking around a bit more, we realised, hey! we're near the city wall (what remains of it), so that's where we headed. we found a restaurant now dubbed the dragon den (there was a picture of a dragon lady in the window) and had a lovely meal. while the food was similar to what we ate the previous day (we did get a few different dishes), the waitstaff was excited! to! have! western! people! so they took lots of pictures of us eating. unlike xi'an, changsha doesnt have a ton of westerners. they gave us a special tea designed to cool one down on a hot day. and changsha is HOT. xi'an gets hot too, but changsha, being further south, is drippingly hot. melty hot. move two steps and you are drenched with sweat hot. poor john was forced to drink pepsi. as a south carolina native, this was very sad for him... so we, of course, had to tease him endlessly.

after lunch, we moseyed down to the city wall. it's in a lovely park and we happened upon a nest of mahjong (麻将) players. changsha is mao crazy, but even more mahjong crazy. to quote the phrase of the day, "that's what i'm talking about right here!"*

(please note, sign says "place for walkin' with caged birds" i love how it's walkin' and not walking.)

then we went for another walk to find mao's school. chris got out her map, and she found some cool streets. well, to be fair, she didnt know they were cool. she just saw that they would take us where we needed to go. my favourite was the ally of sin (30Y for two hours at a hotel!), filled with gambling houses and brothels.

nap time:

then we rounded the corner, and ta-da! mao's school.

MAOs SCHOOL

me, christian, and a bust of young mao:

guns at the school:

across from the school was some deconstruction:

there was, all around the school, garbage and destroyed buildings everywhere:

we flagged down a random bus and found our way back to the city core. from there, we ventured to find chris and john's new jaozi place (SO much more expensive than xi'an because it's in the south, so jaozi is "special" ... as seen by the bucket o' rice, southern china is rice country) just up the road from chris's new foot massage place. john didnt do a foot massage so he headed home and we got our feet rubbed which was lovely.

next morning we got up early to make our way to the provincial museum.

we waited in line for quite some time, and were entertained by a bunch of students, some of which thought christian looked just like Paul Gasol!!, then had our passports scanned AND went through a metal detector. but before we would go through, we had to wait.

the museum only lets people in a group at a time, so we had to hang out until our time was called. chris and i went looking for nice cream (it was HOT) and found instead, much to our surprise!, the barbie expo we had seen advertised at mao's school the day before.

too funny.

the BEST part was when a bunch of school girls were looking at the indian barbie display. their teacher was explaining, look, it's india, see the taj majal? how beautiful! divi happened to be right at this display at the same time. right when the teacher said something like, "indian people live in india," divi leaned in and said "I'm an indian!" (我印度人!) and the girls turned, saw him, shrieked! and ran off. pure comedy.

the whole barbie display was quite comedic as barbie was barbie--blonde and blue eyed--representing everything from chinese minority groups to indians. i loved how the indian barbies were modified.

the rooms following the two rooms of barbies were of other crafty things. and so i was quite pleased, being a crafty person myself. what a treat!

and then THEN! we got to go to the museum. there were lots of goodies.

textile geeks will appreciate the fine silk and embroidery work.

and! the Coup de grâce! we got to see the pickled lady. she is a very well preserved royal lady mummy, buried for over 2000 years.

following our museum adventure, we were starving but knew not where there was a restaurant save KFC which does NOT, in my book, qualify as an eating establishment. and so we had a snack of stinky tofu to calm the savage beast that was rumbling in our bellies. stinky tofu (臭豆腐, choudoufu) is, well, stinky. it's fermented and then fried. it really has a... unique smell. i like it. but maybe that's because i grew up in the country. hell, i find the smell of dairy farm comforting. the changsha variety has a crispier texture than the xi'an variety. smells the same but has a slightly different taste. a taste that's near impossible to describe.

a while later, we found a restaurant decorated with lots of mao pictures and happy communists. my favourite mao picture was the one with president nixon.

people watching (or as my students would say, the Daily Life):

up next? orange island, where mao used to read and hang out. i'm sure it looks just the same as how it looked when he was there... it was so bourgeois! we took the tram ride around and enjoyed seeing the city from a different perspective.

they are building a statue of mao on the island, which is what we wanted to see, but it's still under construction. we had a funny exchange with our tram driver.
said we, "can we see the mao statue?"
she replied, "you can't see mao, he's dead!"
we said, "..."

we returned to chris and john's and had time to pack, eat some nutty noodles (noodles with peanuts and pickled bits) and head off into the sunset...

*in the morning, as we had our brekie, we happened upon an american fishing competition. in a lull, that's what the fisherman said, and the day's theme was born. points were distributed for proper usage of the catchphrase. divi took it a step further, practicing his southern accent by saying "i'm gun' gut you like a fish, boy"

remember kids, if you see a pig, RUN!

we learned from this Public Service Announcement posted at Mao's school:

我真巴望我们再也不分开了

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:38:12 GMT

when you last met your hero, school had started. and laura was here with me.

you'll forgive me if this post is a little disjointed. that's what happens when one is trying to write about 4 months in one go ;)

i took her to the banana temple.

and made her eat pickled garlic.

and then, with graham, we went to chengdu.

in chengdu, we saw the biggest buddha in the world. and OMFG pandas.

i also tried eating snails. survey says? yuk.

but i liked watching the chefs in action in the open kitchen.

we had a good time in chengdu.

then laura and i went to beijing.

we promised not to blow up any cars.

we went to tsqaure

and we went to the great wall. where i became a man. again. laura got her knit on.

having laura around was wonderful. starting school again was stressful. my current students are the most apathetic creatures ever. yes, it's even worse than last year. last year we had superstars. we have some nice kids this year, it's true--they are nicer than last year's crew--but they are not self-directed or even inspired. doesnt seem to matter what i do... and, as always, i have a mandate to pass them all. some of them are getting a 60. the lowest score i can possible give that is still "passing." pisses me off. plagiarising, lazy sods. muttermuttermuttermutter. at least i know when they get to the US, they'll understand. and they'll finally GET it. i hear from my former students, the ones who have now graduated from HSU, and they said, "wow, we GET it now." i am no longer evil incarnate.

however, this is how the new kids see me:

crazy.
remember these kids? yeh. they've gradated from HSU and a great lot of them have returned to China. it's a trip seeing them. they've grown so much.... the US has changed them. One of last year 's students came into the classroom a few weeks ago to scare the bejesus out of the new batch we have. at lunch we asked him how he's readjusting to china and he said, and i think this is precious, "i had to learn how to cross the street again!"

but i digress.

laura went home. and i went spelunking.it was a lovely, crisp spring day. it was the day that laura had flown home, so when she called to let me know she was safe, i was in the caves.

only in china would there be neon and pan pipe music underground. it was china-riffic. and not cold at all. too much juice pumping through the caves. not a nice discovery for the foreigner who put on layers and layers expecting, er, cave coolness.

in the village where the caves are, in souther shaanxi, we saw some men painting a wall:

school continued and more adventures followed. andrew is an archeologist specializing in chinese stuff thus i thought he would be the perfect fella lead a tour at banpo, a neolothic village (he also gave us a tour of xi'an's hisotry museum where he also works part time as a guide).
andrew sniffing the flowers:

and, suddenly, spring surfaced. and it was april.

i went to see the cherry blossoms

tomb sweeping day, this year on april 5, is the chinese day of the dead. i did a ritual for my father. i wrote about that in what was going to be my new china journal (which has since been blocked).

and then it was easter:

and we had a toga party.

the school then took us on a trip to tianshui (heaven water). we spent the majority of the trip on the bus stuck in traffic. the road was more or less being built as we drove along.

there were lots of accidents. so there was lots of time to sit and talk and think. i doodled. and shared my ipod with christian. and looked at the scenery.

what was incredible about all the traffic was watching dozens of people try and figure out the situation. with china's copious amounts of critical thinking skills, this was rather amusing.

traffic jam number 2, wherein i took this photo as this truck came speeding towards my window, once he decided he could no longer wait, when we were straddled across the road. thankfully, he stopped.

traffic tourism:

maijishan was incredible. there are three main buddhist grottoes in china. i have now seen two.

mary bought an awesome talisman.
mao on one side...

and on the back....

and i got on a camel. because, in china, at tourist sites, there are always camels. always. so, i had to be dorky and acutally pose with the darn thing. it tried to bite me.

in tianshui, reto demonstrated to us the proper way to eat chicken feet, a common snack. and easily bought at a rest stop, as graham discovered.

reto:

graham and chicken feet:

while im talking about chicken, even though i dont eat it, it's interesting to see how it is served. the whole thing is chopped to bits. and, if you get the head, it's special (and, reto tells me, the feet are also tasty):

christian and i watched our fellow teachers (reto, germany; puii, india; jose, brazil) and our bus driver do tai chi at the Fuxi Temple, where tai chi was born.

i was entranced by these figures:

christian said they reminded him of Miyazaki's spirited away. we never got an explanation as to their significance/purpose.

we also visited the yang family home. the yangs were a wealthy family once upon a time.

it was a short trip and the majority of it we spent on the bus. but still. enjoyable. and lots of laughs were had.

on the way home, we got stopped again. more traffic. we were stopped for hours. i watched the beekeepers.

and once we got around to the scene, we knew why. a truck had gone into the river ravine the night before and there was a crane retrieving what was left. it was a somber scene, complete with the wailing wife of the driver. the bus was quiet after that.

for may day, i went to the botanical gardens with brit and andrew.

in the back, there's a photo set for brides and grooms. we snuck in and had some fun before running off as we saw the photo crew return from another shoot.

andrew is a kentucky native, and so we had a kentucky derby party, complete with mint juleps (a feat here!)

may was B U S Y.

the following weekend, christian and i went with his close friend, antoine (who was a teacher here for the last few years... and the reason why christian decided to take his sabbatical here), and antoine's girlfriend, charlene (who is moving to paris to study and be closer to antoine who has returned to switzerland), to qingdao. qingdao is where i got the HORRIBLE food poisoning 2 years ago. even though i was miserably sick there, i loved the city and was thrilled to go back. joining us was a pair of antoine's friends from home touring across asia for 6 months. it was a french-filled weekend for me. but that's ok. living here, ive gotten used to figuring out what's what when folks are not speaking my literal language.

we tried to follow the rules we saw posted on the public bus (and since antoine speaks chinese and his girlfriend is a native, we did just fine):

charlene really wanted to go to the aquarium, so that's where we started.

we saw polar bears. and penguins. and whales. and dolphins. and sea turtles.

oh. and santa claus.

then, we went to the seaside

had some sushi.

and then had some beer.

like some buildings in the US dont have a 13th floor, in china, some places dont have a 4th floor. because the word for 4 resembles the word for death. i took a photo in our hotel's elevator:

the next day, christian and i took the ferry out to huangdao (golden island) to hang out on the beach.

we returned to qingdao that evening and had more beer and did some people watching.

it was a beautiful night out.

a garbage truck came along and attempted to empty a can into the truck. and failed. a bunch of glass spilled out. the worker swept up some of the broken glass, but failed to pick it all up. so in the street was a huge mound of glass. then taxi's would speed through it. or try and avoid driving through one pile of glass only to hit another. it was a mad glass-crunching adventure. christian and i were discussing philosophy and life to the tunes of broken glass and drunken people on the street.

the next morning, we did some more sight seaing (sic) and then had a fabulous lunch. fish jaozi is quite possibly the best jaozi ive ever had.

it was wonderful to breath ocean air....

the next weekend, christian and i went to chengdu to see MOAR OMFG PANDAS.

red pandas too!

we also hung out at a lot of tea houses.

and christian is a total ham

chengdu was awesome for people watching.

this guy is, i think, having his chi realligned. with metal sticks poking out of his ear that the guy would hit and it would make a ring sound. chi-realligners were pretty popular at the tea houses but we never went for it.

at the tea houses, there were snacks set out for the birds:

kids:
note the american flag on the backpack. also, the red scarf worn around the boy's neck shows loyalty to the Party.

an outdoor barber shop at the market we wandered through:

people:

around the corner from one of the tea houses was an art market by the river

one could buy "old" communist propaganda posters, porn, and traditonal art.

before going to a taoist temple, to find a vegetarian restaurant on site, we walked through a public park...
this kid was getting a music lesson. note the lady in the background:

this woman was enthusiastically playing whack-a-mole:

badmitton:

and hung out with MAO! the best part about the mao statue was that he's waving at a mcdonalds and starbucks. AND the fact that there was a huge water fountain going off in front of him at regular intervals. how bourgeois!

here's mao with monks!

the next weekend, i just wanted to stay home. i was exhausted. but i relented when antoine called and said he wanted to go to the banana temple (seriously, half the school calls it thusly because of my mistake* three years ago...haha) as his final outing before he returned to switzerland, so christian and i joined him and a dozen of their french students.

as we approached the temple, we happened upon a scene that is the quintessential China:

in fact, we saw a LOT of cool things on our walk to the temple.

ive been snapping so many pictures lately because i want to make sure i get All The Photos From China I Could Ever Possibly Want.

there's a group of folks who gather on our campus to do traditional music (shaanxi opera). i finally had my camera with me when Christian and i stopped to listen on our way home from DimSum.

another week flew by, and POW! HOLIDAY!

for the dragon boat fesitival, graham, andrew, christian, and i went to nanjing. i was excited to see dragon boats. but there were snaffos and racing boats i saw none. still, a good time was had. we climbed a mountain, wandered around, and enjoyed our holiday weekend.

we went to a confucius temple. inside was this strange... well, i dont know what to call it. rooster house? you put in some coins and a rooster lay ping pong balls. for some reason, this tickled graham's fancy like nothing else and a smile of pure joy spread across his face.

also at the temple was this:

im sure there is a story. there must be a story. but i dont know the story.

and speaking of confucius, one of my students has written an interesting paper blaming confucius for all sexism in china. fascinating work. and speaking of my students, my friend steve has done an awesome project with my students. however, only folks across the pond can see. while i cannot show the finished project to my students, which was supposed to be an exercise in publication and making their writing "real," ya'll can enjoy: http://yerenbigfoot.blogspot.com/

at the temple, we saw the man himself:

and also some cool musicians, playing with bells.

...for a moment, we thought we were in canada, eh?

that evening, we saw boats. and pretty lights.

and the next day, we climbed a mountain! purple mountain, it's called. which made me have america the beautiful stuck in my head half the day. the other half it was "she'll be coming round the mountain" which christian started humming. he had it on a record when he was a kid but never really knew the words. i tried to get the boys to join in on a sing-along but no dice.

i loved being in the forest. even if the trees were really tiny.

the next day, christian and graham went to the nanjing massacre memorial. i went to a buddhist temple.

and i also checked out the city wall... where someone was doing their laundry

that night we hung out, drank beer, and watched hordes of people

and i enjoyed lanterns

before we left nanjing, we wanted to see the yangtze (sadly dolphin free). we asked andrew's friend about it. he said "why do you want to see that? it's a big, dirty, brown river." and we went anyway. it was a big, dirty, brown river.

from the bridge we could see lots of things.
kids playing in the clover, chasing butterflies:

people living their lives:

and i cant believe im leaving china in a few months. i knew once i got back, i'd be fine. and i am. i do love it here.

im taking louie back to the US.

this is going to be insane.

i dont know how he's going to be. and i havta take the public bus with him to beijing because there's no air for him on the plane (they told me he "might survive") and no pets are allowed on the trains. once he and i are in beijing, i can fly with him back to the states. once i'm home, there's so much to figure out. but i cannot imagine leaving the lil guy here to be passed from nomadic teacher to nomadic teacher. if it doesnt work out with me in the states, i feel better i knowing have other options for him (read: people who are permanent). and that by taking him to the US, i am providing him with a good home. which is what i really want for louiebird. andrew says he's the luckiest cat in the world, getting a free ride to the US.

it's funny--ive gotten used to the inconveniences that come free with living in china. everything here has gotten "normal." sure, i still notice oddities or differences in cultures, but ive just come to accept these things. It's How It Is. but sometimes, these inconveniences are more than just inconvenient. poor christian has had a heaping serving of this ma fan (trouble). we went to chengdu to see the pandas, sure, but really, it was because we had already planned on going on a trip to nanjing. he was invited to present a paper at a conference. they didnt tell him what topic they wanted him to present, so he spent a great lot of his week preparing two topics, just in case (this is typical china inconvenience. just like when you are invited somewhere and before you know it, you're giving an impromptu speech to a stadium of people [this happened to a guy i met]). i was going to go with him just to see nanjing again because i had enjoyed it last time, but had only seen a small section of the city and wanted to explore more. we were in the middle of arranging our plane tickets (non refundable tickets) when the organizer of the conference called. and cancelled. thankfully, we had not yet crossed the point of no return. so we changed our tickets, said screw it, let's go see pandas! and had an awesome weekend. the conference was rescheduled for the weekend of the dragon boat festival. andrew was already planning a trip to nanjing that weekend to visit a buddy of his who lives there, and it seemed just ducky. we could all go! graham too! and then i'd have someone to hang out and explore with while christian was off doing frenchy things at the conference. we bought the tickets, christian revisited his notes and prepped again..... and..... the night before we left, they cancelled because it was dragon boat festival weekend. how did a group of chinese folks not realise it was dragon boat festival?!? and then not cancel it until 9pm the night before departure?! and THEN they had the gall to expect christian to go to the conference on a different weekend. he told them he hadnt the money. they said they'd buy him his train tickets. he seriously considered it only because he was interested in keeping the doors open between nanjing university and his university in switzerland and didnt want to cause political waves, but how infuriating! he decided not to go. this week he's prepping his finals and is in the middle of dead week. he's also writing three different articles for publication. one of these articles is for a XISU review. he's been working on it a while but decided to just push through it last night. so he stayed up until 4am writing. this morning he got an email from one of his contacts here. "oh yeh," they said, "thanks for sending the article. sorry to be a bother but we cannot publish your article because it is written in French and we can only publish in Chinese. can you find someone to translate it for you?" *blink*...*blink*

this kind of thing happens all the time. it's ridiculous.

also ridiculous is what's happening on the main street outside our campus. they're building a subway, which will be awesome in a few years** when it's done, but is an absolute pain in the keyster right now. the planning, it seems, was not well thought out. first they had to widen the street. and now theyve sectioned off the middle bit of the street where the digging has begun. in theory not so bad. but. little things like closing off the only side streets that go to a certain locale, at the same time? not so smart. having a detour? HAHAHA. nope. once, on our way to school, we were stuck at a standstill for 20 minutes. it's a mess out there. and it takes forever to get anywhere. yesterday, our little road, shida lu, was finally opened to foot traffic. so what happened? the little gap was wide enough for small vehicles. and so people were driving their cars on the sidewalk. i just laughed and tried not to get run over as i walked home.

this was the same day i got punched by a waitress at the school cafeteria because i wasnt ordering quickly enough.

this is china. this is normal.

oh, china.

remember kids, make live, not war.

and, kids, no scribbling!

this weekend, we're traveling with divi to visit chris and john in changsha. they had a difficult time landing jobs in australia, so they came back to china. since my goodbye to them was rushed and not really what i wanted (i did, afterall, leave china in a hurry last time), i cannot wait to see these wonderful friends of mine.

*during the fall of 06, i was teaching on the new campus and spied a pagoda (it was a clear day!). the students did not believe me that there was a pagoda near the new campus, even after i pointed out the window and tried to show them where it was. i knew it was out there. so, adam and i went on our annual Thursday Adventure Day to the pagoda and it was fabulous. i returned to class and told the students where i had gone. and i said it wrong. i said xiāngjiāo (香蕉, banana), not xiāng jī (香积, not banana). henceforth, the banana temple was known as the Banana Temple. even the parents of that first batch of disbelieving students now call it thusly.
**the project keeps getting stalled because as they dig, they find cool relics from the past and have to call in the archeologists. andrew wishes he could get in on that action.

new things.

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 13:20:57 GMT

hey all...

because of access *cough*cough* ive moved the journal. it's here: http://xianmazing.blogspot.com/

snow day!!

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 02:29:18 GMT

the first week of school ended, for me, in a blanket of white:

and this evening, laura, graham, and i are off to chengdu. PANDAS OR BUST!

home sweet xi'an!

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 03:13:05 GMT

laura and i are here! we left mom's house at 3am on monday (USA time) and flopped into my apt. 12:40am on tuesday (china time). that's 30+ hours of travel. but we're here safe and sound and the worst part of the whole trip was my vegetarian "lunch" on the plane: two salads, two bread rolls, and fruit. thankfully i did get a real dinner. still, if that's the only thing to bitch about, that's pretty good, no? our last flight leg was delayed by about a half hour but we had both totally fallen asleep on the plane and didnt even notice we were still driving around. i woke up to hear a stewardess announce they were "sorry for the delay and we would be taking off soon..."

louie is SO happy to have his human back. he was gifted toys and he loves them so far. he's having a good time. right now he's hanging out with me in my lap.

laura's reaction to china thus far? "it's dingy but everything seems well kept!" a fair description...

amelie is meeting us in a little while and we're going to find food and watch laura react to the Outside World.... MU HA HA HA HA...

but we're here and we're safe.

so far away.

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 06:10:24 GMT

christmas 79
Originally uploaded by cornie

one of the most difficult decisions i have ever made was to move to china.
i didnt want to be so far away.
but i am.
so far away.

im thankful my dad got to see china.
im thankful i got to share my life here with him.

tomorrow i hop on a plane.
i need to be home.
i need to be with my family.

i'll return to china in february.

concerning november.

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 03:11:00 GMT

there are many issues with our program. the major one being recruitment. in order to aggregate numbers, we have accepted lower-leveled students. when i say lowered-leveled, i mean students who did not pass the college entrance exams--these kids bought their way into XISU (note: while i fundamentally oppose these exams as means of determining the rest of a student's life--i find them cruel and unfair--there is a definite discrepancy in the skill level of our students).

lately things have been stressful with the students. the Age of Cheating and Plagiarism is upon us. this year mary says we can kick someone out. finally. that sounds horrible of me, i know. i'd rather NOT see any of these kids go. but one of the many weaknesses of our program is the fact that the Powers that Be have been too timid. that first year, students plagiarised with full knowledge of wrong doing and yet rosamel let it go. "it's cultural!" he declared. and yes--at first--it is. and had i not worked tirelessly to teach them about plagiarism, i would have been content with his decision. but i had spent a full school year talking about it. it was not a new concept.

That first year, from the very beginning of the school year to the last days of the Spring term, we talked about plagiarism in class: what it was, how to avoid it, and why it’s considered “cheating.” It was quite a hurdle for the students to leap over. I speculated it’s simply because quoting without citations or even acknowledgement is just what writers in China do. Even newspapers will follow this type of format. In 1997, Scollon and Scollon studied how the same news story was presented in 11 different newspapers in China—some of the papers were written in English while the others were written in Chinese. The articles in English had quote attribution while the stories written in Chinese did not. In their words, “it is not obvious which portions of the text are attributed to whom. In contrast, the English papers present a face of clear unambiguous quotation” (Scollon qtd. Connor, “New directions” 501). At first, my students struggled with the idea of quoting. But as time passed, they became better at shaping their texts to include the ideas of others as well as a discussion of the quotation. We mostly focused on this type of activity during the second semester, when the students were completing their research projects, but we talked about it all year. We (my colleagues) and I emphasized to the students the necessity of citing and using quotation marks with the threat of fire and brimstone, emphasizing how American universities consider plagiarism to be stealing, and that they would find themselves, most likely, kicked out of the University if caught. And yet, we all, my colleagues and I, encountered plagiarism. I can attribute some of plagiarism to be cultural, early on, but I struggle with how the students could consciously continue to not quote or cite after being warned about it multiple times. It’s difficult, for one outside the culture, to truly grasp what is happening cognitively.

but i believe this: these students knew what they were doing.

maybe i'm too jaded as of late. im tired of the manipulation present in this school culture: the crocodile tears, the lying... i was so angry with rosamel for that decision, although i loved those students dearly, because he taught them that it's ok: it's ok to cheat. it's ok to manipulate. it's ok to lie to your teachers. i think all he was thinking was we need the numbers. because this program is helping to save HSU's bacon. students = $$.

this issue was in the forefront of my mind the second year. but i wasnt here for the fall as i headed back to the states for a semester. i returned to china that spring with enthusiasm and positivity. and with more lessons on plagiarism. because, with my hope restored, i thought i could make a difference. and again, we encountered the same issues. and again, those kids were allowed to go to the US. last spring was particularly rough on me, as the "strict" teacher. what, i'm strict because i dont put up with their shit? because i believe in the virtues of education? because i push them? because i make demands that they should actually learn? how dare i! what gall i have! awww, poor chinese students just didnt understand! it's bullshit. these kids are champion manipulators.

i have heard that the students in arcata now realize and appreciate what i had to offer. and yet.... i have heard through the grapevine that some students from both classes are cheating at HSU. a real slap in the face.

where does culture end and and common sense begin?

last week i caught one of our students cheating in class. using her electronic dictionary on a vocabulary quiz. i pulled her into the office and we had a chat. i approached the situation cautiously, using the "i care about you" approach. i want to give these kids the benefit of the doubt. the chin trembled, the eyes watered... the "i'm sorries" flowed. i asked her if she was cheating because she was overwhelmed or confused. i patiently explained that in the US, there is no shame in asking for help. and then i sternly warned the student not to cheat again.

she was back in the office this week. 为什么 (wèishénme[why])? she cheated on a quiz.

last year erika came up with a great way to get the students to practice note taking in class: immediately following a lecture, give them an open-note quiz! we already had one round of this, and that's usually all that is necessary in order to ~~terrify~~ get the students to understand the importance of taking notes in the USian classroom. and so i watched as our little darlings took or didnt take notes, knowing full well the end result: some would fail (this is another topic i should touch upon--the idea of failure and the damned do-whatever-you-want-and-you-get-a-B mentality present in our program, but i digress). some of the students who took notes carefully placed their notebooks on the desk so students sans notes could see. i walked around the classroom and took care of that, moving their notebooks, moving their seats. from my podium, i spied a student who i know didnt take notes reading something in her lap, and lo! if that page didnt match the size and colour of the paper of the notebook belonging to the student next to her... so i calmly walked back to her desk and snatched her quiz with great dramatic flair. "you're done!" says me.

i had both girls into the office this week. the young woman who i had called in previously had the nerve to question me about our previous discussion: "but i misunderstood! i thought you said we COULD use the dictionaries" ...really, it's the lying that bothers me. last week she clearly confessed and said what she did was wrong blah blah blah. and now she's using the "gee, im cute and i just didnt understand!" excuse. so annoying. i asked her to use her head. says me, "does it really make sense to use a dictionary on a vocabulary quiz?"

GAH!

i should also tell this story: when the cheating began (it occurred in all three of our classes--my class, mary's class, amar's class), i had a serious chat with our kids. i asked why. why is this happening? what's going on? are you ok? are you cheating because you're confused and desperate? or are you cheating because you're not studying? i got crickets for an answer so i had them do an anonymous quickwrite. i framed the discussion by simply saying, "im so disappointed with you." The following responses are the result of me asking about cheating on tests and quizzes, plagiarism in homework assignments, in addition to the general question of, "why aren't you doing your homework"

not cheating in exam is our common sense since we were told not to cheat everything as we were children. but our moral sense depends on individuals. people who are cheating maybe want to be superstar in the future. unluckily, they're in a wrong direction... we should show mercy on them. they're struggling.
i think everybody in this is class is trying the best. there are so many differences between China and the U.S. and we really have a lot of things to do, and to change.
i believe everyone who wants to go aboard (sic) in this classroom are all know one thing: even your cheat are working and you go aboard, finally people will found you are empty in your mind and they won't believe you any more. chinese children are all heard about so many fable stories and they know how shame to be a dishonest person. in this classroom, i know who we are and what we will do... if a person want to learn more things and want to be a better person, why do they cheat? is it necessary? ...if a person want to learn more knowledge, he/she won't choice cheat, cheating just can lie others, cannot lie himself/herself. we all look up to you. as you know, chinese always look up to teachers. we all good kids and sometimes we do something make you unhappy but we all have kind heart and will work harder in the future.
some don't listen to you carefully. instead, they do their things. too many bad things, i also don't want to see. but actually they happened. i feel so sorry to make you feel disappointed. I are trying to make you proud of us.
as a matter of fact, you maybe misunderstand us there were no cheating in this classroom, we all study so hard we have less than 6 hours to sleep, even some are less than 4 hours in order to do the work well.
I think this class is perfect. That is the best classmate I ever seen. I feel nothing. Numb. Cheating and plagiarism and unfinish* are the biggest problem. But everything need time to change one's mind. Just like the difference between West and East Country.
I'm also unhappy to see these happened. Because it makes both of us have a bad mood, we are also feel not good. Then we can't learn well and you can't have a good mood to teach well. There are several foreign teachers have taught me. But since I took part in the Humboldt College, Christa, you really give me shock. I never see a foreign teacher has such passion in the class. I never see a foreign teacher repeat the same but most important problem for several classes to our Chinese students. You treat us heart to heart and responsible. I never see a foreign teacher can have this feeling to Chinese student.
The plagiarism is a commen (sic) problem in Chinese school. It seems not so serious that the student would be sent out... But sometimes student's plagiarism is a bad idea. They... cheat teacher. To cheat teacher is a bad thing. Sometimes they're special reasons in cheating that should be forgiven. But a large part of time, it's caused by our forgetting. Forgetting the homework result in the plagiarism.
When you are disappointed, we are disappointed too. We are here to prepare go to go America. Not to be arrogant, all the people here are very excellent student, and as far as you know, students in China always obey what the teacher said, so, when the first time you, Mary, Amar talk about cheating, in our heart, it is forbidden that can't happen, everyone has own shining thoughts, we needn's to take anyone's work as ourselves. And to be honest, when we as different people from different country, we have honour towards our country, we won't go to do something that shamed to you, we don't want you feel bad about Chinese, so believe, no one here gunna (sic) cheat, never. For things happen, I think maybe there are some misunderstandings. You know that in China, we taught to think as the same way, so when we read some topic, we have same feelings which you don't think like that way, and our English is in same level, so you may seem that our thoughts are same... I promise, there is no cheating... We are working hard, I wish you could see it.
I know you really feel disappoint, but I want you to know when you feel disappoint, we feel sad and down. We don't want to make you unhappy, we want to make better let you proud of us... We will make better. We want to find solution to solve it.

the other thing we did this week was create an Academic Honesty Contract for the students to sign. Mary made it clear that they could be kicked out of the program for cheating and/or plagiarism. Because of the past, I've been hitting the plagiarism even harder this term. We've spent weeks on it! How they can be "confused" still is beyond me. I've shown them real student samples of plagiarism, we've talked about how to avoid it, they've done group activities with it. I feel like it's not writing class, it's plagiarism class. and yet... and yet....

when one gets an assignment wherein the subject/verb agreement is totally in check and the student has correctly used an adverb, it's pretty obvious what's what.

why do students think teachers are stupid?

and now for some positive! positive! positivity!

about a month ago, amar, mary, and i went on a field trip with some exchange students from HSU. we went to see a small village--a place known for its papercuts--and a temple.

peppers:

penguin:

underbite doggy friend:

day of the dead-like alter

glimpse inside temple:

artsy:

pretty mountains and BLUE sky

temple and monk:

fall:

me and corn:

and more corn:

woman doing papercut:

papercut how to (double happiness!):

we also had thanksgiving with our darlings. since amar and i are both vegetarians, I made stuffing and gravy so we could enjoy it too. my kitchen smelled like proper thanksgiving. it was glorious. my grammie would have been proud.

the weekend before thanksgiving, the school took us on a trip to Qianling Tomb and Famen Si, both near baoji.

exotic flavor of the foreigner.

the Qianling Tomb is the final resting place for Wu Zetian (武则天), China's only empress. her story is pretty outragious. reminds me of the complexity of british royality (henry VIII, i'm lookin at you!)

tomb doods

me being tomb dood

tomb:

it was a chilly day out

then we went to Famen Si, home of Shakyamuni's finger bone!

gratuitous incense burning photo:

amar looks at pagoda:

pagoda (looking up):

pagoda:

recycle! praying kneely things (LOVE these--look close!):

said the lady in chinese, please pose with my squirming child who really doesnt want to pose with you:

praying hands built to hold the finger (under construction)

close up:

what else is new?
louie is cute. oh wait. that's not new.

i got a new coat:

i love jiaozi. oh, that's not new either.

it's cold:

jupiter, venus, and the moon (my view):

and ive been doing yoga weekly with divi and a few other women from our apt. complex for about a month now.

im looking forward to a H O L I D A Y.

soon im traveling to beijing. my passport needs to be renewed. but that doesnt count as a holiday. school is out mid-january.

hope all is well with everyone.

*this student is referring to unfinished work. it's common to see the students scramble to finish an assignment in class.

works cited:
Connor, Ulla. “New directions in contrastive rhetoric.” TESOL Quarterly 36.4(2002): 493-510.

halloween 08!

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 01:48:50 GMT

Halloween was fun this year. i was a scary marionette:

mary had a flash of inspiration--she told me of a friend of hers who used to decorate pumpkins with sparkly things. and thus, the bling-a-riffic jack-o-lantern was born. mary wanted to avoid cutting open and gutting pumpkins, so we decided to go this route. i cleaned out the import store of pumpkins (nothing to see here people, just a white lady with 13 pumpkins in the cart, what?) and mary and i went to The World of Decorative Cloth to get things like sequins and straight pins and other doo-dads (buttons, snaps, googly eyes). we figured this would be a hit here in china, home of the shiny.
making jack-o-lanterns (BLINGARIFFIC)

pumpkin pride! clockwise from left: wei, beau, vera and jinna, panjie and yuting,

pumpkin pride! clockwise from left: mary, jinna, weiwei, donna

then we did bobbing for apples. to get enough water, we asked the students to bring in their hot water thermoses.

sword fighting witches:

i put on some halloween music--thriller, the monster mash.... and a good time was had by all. joining us that day were some new students! we're up to 15 now.

louie loves laundry: the search for the perfect cat toy

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 01:04:31 GMT

mosaic694745
Originally uploaded by cornie

adam is sending me a package--lots of goodies in there, including a number of surprises he didnt wish to reveal. he even put in presents for louie!! when louie was a baby, and lisa found him, that was during the glorious three weeks of our friendship when adam and i realised she was nuts but had yet to discover just how nuts she was an that it was not a good kind of crazy. she never named him. adam and i did. he was named for king louie, since we jokingly called ourselves the three musketeers. she always hated that name for him. we thought it was perfect. and it is. suits him very well.

adam sent the package to me via fedex so he could carefully track it. he already had mailed me a different package that somehow wound up in thailand. he didnt wish for that to happen again. following the tracking number, he discovered that it made it as far as beijing but was flagged as... d a n g e r o u s. he was going crazy trying to figure out what was so bad. was it the cranberry sauce? the olives? (amusing side bar, evil olive is one of my favourite palindromes) ...what was so scary, he thought. turns out, it was the CAT TOY he found for louie, decorated with a fleur de lys. quoth adam, "apparently when customs examined it, it went squeak squeak and vibrated. they were not amused" (adam left the batteries in). yes. they were frightened by the cat toy that squeaked. yes, i can see how that's scary at first... but... once the box was opened, clearly a cat toy. i mean really.

the good news is, the package has been sent domestically and i'll get the rest of the goodies.

oh, you wanted dis shirt?

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:45:43 GMT

oh, you wanted dis shirt?
Originally uploaded by cornie

wow, i have been busy....

and how in the world is it november?! and where did the time go...??

and OH was the election so strange to witness from afar. alas, i never got my ballot. sorry, california. i tried. damn prop. 8....

using the Overseas Vote Foundation, i was able to vote for president and senator. but nothing else.

i tried a new tailor and decided her first project was going to be a chinese-styled shirt. not the most flattering for my figure type, but how could i leave china without one of these? she did alright. i will next attempt to have her copy a shirt and we shall see...

and then some jeans...

louie is with me. im still working on finding him a home before next summer. meanwhile, i do enjoy his company. chris and john are headed back to australia at the end of the term and have told me that ned would like me to adopt him.

i have a lot of stories to share. the water vacation (entries 6-9), halloween, a trip to the countryside, and my most recent adventure, a jaunt to Empress Wu Zetian's tomb, and Fa Men Si (home of buddha's finger bone!!).

i have a huge pile of student papers to read, and more quizzes to grade, and a number of misc. assignments to record in my gradebook, so i will probably write in my journal soon to give myself a break.

haha.

all is well here. i mostly wanted to say hi.

CORN... jelly?!

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:01:50 GMT

CORN... jelly?!
Originally uploaded by cornie

terribly scary, a score in a market in lanzhuo. how could i resist?!

the good news is, school has settled in, we think. we now have 9 students and things are rolling along smoothly. good, good, good.

hopefully i'll catch up on some writing this weekend. we shall see....

sometime this next week, ruhi is having some of us over to see her new apt. im interested in seeing the elevator of her building because, im in it! yup! there's a tobest ad. in her lift! she called because she says she sees me every day... craaazy, eh? oh, china.

and that's the news. ive just returned from chris and john's where we had a lovely game of trivial pursuit. and now, bed time!

louie louie

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 11:35:14 GMT

...and now that i finally wrote about louie living with someone else...

he's coming back to me! but temporarily. i just got a call from tom. one of his friends, john, has been injured very badly and is in the hospital (it's a long story). tom and cindy are spending most of their time at the hospital with john soooo... i'm taking the lil bugger back :)

my poor plants!! they are just starting to recover... hahaha...

it has gotten very cold as of late. and it's getting dark earlier and earlier every day. i have a feeling winter will be here before we know it.

this about that.

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 07:12:31 GMT

i dont think i ever mentioned this--i am letting tom and cindy keep louie. he seems really happy to be with them, but what really allowed me to make that decision is the fact that they're not going anywhere. they are not just living in china temporarily like i am. and im happy to give louie some stability. the lil bugger is doing fine with them, so why not give him even more stability by letting him stay put.

the trip to qinghai was quite interesting and im glad i decided to go. i'll finish writing about the Great Water Vacation and then i'll share about Qinghai and Lanzhou. but that's when i have some time. school started this week. er, it was supposed to start, i should say...

as of sunday night, we knew nothing. no one from the school had bothered to return mary's calls, so we were totally in the dark. we planned to go to the classroom at 8am as a collective (mary, amar, and i) and go from there. we went to the old classroom and there were no students there, save one young woman who informed us that it was no longer the humboldt college classroom, but just another classroom for the translation dept. greeeeeat, we thought. now what? we went hunting for information. surprise surprise the chinese dean wasnt around. we finally found some folks who had an inkling of a clue as to what was doing on. "[your] classroom has been moved," they said. uuum, ok. so we're now on the 5th floor. we went up to check it out and was a disaster--it had obviously not been cleaned after last year: used tissues, random trash on the floor, other broken chairs... and no students. just to add to the effect, the podium and a broken chair were blocking the entry. a nice touch. we walked back down to the offices to try and figure out where the students were, and how many of them there were. we also were rather curious why the hell no one bothered to tell us we wouldnt have students on the first day. the answer to this was brilliantly chinese: "the students have had military training" ...Oh! Gee! Really?! So that's why all the other freshmen had successfully started school at 8am. Makes perfect sense. they couldnt tell us the real reason: dean li is an incompetent ass. recruitment happened last spring, supposedly, and we were told we had 40+ students. not quite. the 40 got whittled down quite a bit. what happened? hell if we know. were there really 40 enrolled to begin with? dunno. we were told we would meet with our students at 2:30. we thought it would be a hi-how-are-you-welcome-to-the-program meeting. but nope. dean li was there and it was really a meeting to attract students to the program. a handful raised their hands and said they were already enrolled. the other 9 students submitted they were "thinking about it." dean li conducted the entire meeting in chinese, and when mary kindly suggested he speak in English, he informed us that they were freshmen and simply wouldnt understand. the ONLY thing that dean li needs to do for humboldt college is recruit. our side does the rest (read: mary). and we saw the fruits of his labor before us. it was disheartening.

so today, i went up to our new classroom at 8am to get things rolling...

we have 7 students.

7.

that's it.

HSU has mentioned pulling the plug if enrollment was too low... so is 7 too low? we know not. so....

we're waiting to see what happens and meanwhile, pushing forward. there is a chance that somehow more students will miraculously appear.

i am all for small class sizes, but this is insane.

and here's a random thought: it's strange being off milk. i am quite used to drinking yogurt for breakfast, or eating oatmeal, and then in the evening, sometimes i'll have a yogurt bar. i hope i havent done any serious damage to myself, drinking chinese milk for a year and a half. of course it's in the candy too, and i have a fondness for milk candy. damn.

patience is a virtue!

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 07:47:38 GMT

i'm off for another brief adventure! i will conclude the water vacation entries when i can... (still to come: 杭州, 黄山, 桂林 and 阳朔)

tomorrow afternoon i leave for qinghai. and school starts on the 6th. busy! busy! mary has returned and we are faced with a number of challenges--do we have any students? when are their chinese classes? (we cannot schedule our classes until we know). how many of them are there? what is the skill level of the student? who is our secretary and where can we get our copies done? it's a lot to take in.

a week ago i wore a sundress. now i am wearing a scarf. the weather shift has been dramatic and sudden. the heat comes on october 15 (gov't regulation specifies that on 10.15 the heat comes on and on 3.15 the heat goes off. no matter what the temperature is like). meanwhile, it's crisp and cool and it's hard to believe that a few weeks ago i was drenched with sweat as i biked around the countryside.

[Pǔtúoshān] 普陀山/宁波 [níngbō]

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 10:07:44 GMT

On the train, off the train, no worries. To the wharf! i got to the harbor and was greeted by a nun. the first ferry left at 6am, so i was a bit tired as i didnt sleep well on the train. we had to go by bus for a little over an hour and then hop onto the boat.

there was a HUGE billboard proudly declaring, "Only development is the truth." the background of the sign included a smiling Important Looking Guy with lots of large imposing buildings. During the whole ride on the bus, it was rather obvious that we were in factory-land. factories factories everywhere. scary. i saw the end result of this truth in the ocean water. and it was heartbreaking. disgusting.

this was the only leg of the journey that filled me with apprehension. i had written down the name of the hotel but had no idea what to expect... there are lots of fancy hotels on putuoshan--way out of my price range--and no hostels. and not every hotel can legally house a foreigner. my fingers were crossed.

i got off the ferry and called the hotel. "i am here!" i said. we had a short-lived phone conversation and then i sat down to wait. everyone wanted me to stay with them. as i sat on the curb, folks with brochures and photos of their hotel danced around me. this is just china. i just kept repeating 不要! (dont want). 等待朋友! (wait for friend). not too much later, a man on a bike arrived holding a placard with the hotel name on it. that's me! i leapt up and ran over to him. he put my bag on the bike and the two of us walked to his house which was the hotel. it was like a bed and breakfast. and it was right on the ocean. when the woman asked on the phone if i wanted an ocean view, i assumed it was an "ocean view" but no, it really was an ocean view!

the woman turned out to be the wife, and she was kind and gentle. i liked her straight away too. i took my things upstairs to my room and the husband asked me if i wanted to freshen up and take a shower. HELL YES. so that's what i did. since i had had no hot water in suzhou, this was a true blessing. it was a spectacular shower. with chinese showers, one can never tell. after my shower i went downstairs. the house was full of beautiful wooden furniture--even a gorgeous wooden staircase! the husband had gone off to the ferry to pick up more guests and i sat on the couch with the wife. once we got past the initial small talk it became obvious that we couldnt communicate any more. she started grooming me--picking off random hairs that had removed themselves from my head. it could have been creepy but it wasnt. the husband came in with a couple and it was decided that food was in order. and so i was ushered off with this young couple from shanghai. she had on a green-checked-dress that i would have swooped on if i had found it in an american thrift shop. he had a quick smile and a calmness about him that i really enjoyed. the husband led us up the stairs away from the house and to a kiosk where we got tickets to one temple and then we scurried off to catch a minivan to a different temple where we would eat. the young could didnt speak English but i really enjoyed my time with them. they were both very insightful and taught me throughout the whole day. lunch was monkfood at a temple. i ate and ate and ate as much as i could. it was obviously a touristy place and packed with folks. people here eat so quickly. in group settings i always have to eat faster than i would like in order to get my fill. we were seated with 5 other folks and a set menu of dishes made their way to our table, plunked down by a monk. i am happy i was with native speakers who knew what to do to make that happen. it wasnt written about in my guidebook. then we set off for more temples. ms. green checked dress had a ton of incense with her and she seemed quite dedicated to burning the proper number of sticks at key locations. i was happy to follow where she led. it was a whirlwind of a day, ending at the huge golden statue of Guan Yin (goddess of mercy).

here, my green-checked companion is explaining to me how to correctly pet the dragon in the front of the temple. you have to gently caress his body without pausing:

putuoshan is a gorgeous place... as long as one doesnt look at the colour of the water. truly heartbreaking. and foul. ah, Progress!! (Only development is the truth)

the yellow of the buildings and temples popped.

it felt like we were going and going and going and going. even though we didnt share a language, i really had a great day with my friends. we laughed a lot. we returned to the hotel and i took a nap. i woke up and went for a walk. i returned in time for dinner. the next morning i awoke at my usual time (6ish am), sat up in bed to look out over the ocean, and just then a flurry of fireworks were set off of a ship in the bay (sorry for the photo quality. i made a blury-eyed lunge for the camera):

i took a video of it too and i'll see about posting that one of these days. if the internet cooperates.

i had some amazing rice porridge with pumpkin and moped about the rain. my plan was to climb the mountain and then take the last ferry to ningbo. but the rain was relentless and i decided to just return to the mainland. the daughter walked me to the ferry and i was off.... !

i found the youth hostel in ningbo quite easily. it was right across from the lake and within walking distance to a vegetarian restaurant. which was my first stop after throwing down my pack:

the tea at that restaurant was amazing. i have no idea what it was but WOW it was good tea.

the lake:

i went for a walk and got "lost" -- really, i just wandered aimlessly for a while. it started pouring around dinner time and i popped into a place that obviously was not frequented by foreigners.
i entered the place startled a child, he was maybe 5 or 6. his jaw dropped and he shouted out, "WHOA"
then i turned to the fuwuyuan and said, quite plainly, "一个" (one). she blankly stared at me and said, "bu dong" (i dont understand). oh, i thought, i'm in trouble if she cant even understand me saying "one, please." i repeated... "我... 一个... 吃饭, 吗?" (me, one, for dinner?) oh, she said, and moved to seat me.

then it was Stare at the White Lady while she Eats time. i got out of there as fast as i could.

the next morning i went for a walk in the park by the lake and saw lots of tai chi action:

then i went to the bus station, and i was off...! again! headed for hangzhou!

苏州 [sūzhōu] suzhou

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 04:04:44 GMT

"Above is Heaven, Below are Suzhou and Hangzhou." (上有天堂，下有苏杭)

i left adam and enjoyed my busride, staring out the window. the houses were tiled and lovely. i was captivated by their colours--they were quite subdued. lots of houses were a seagreen and muted blue. they were the colours of blue and green glass, smooth and soft and worn from years in the sea. come to think of it, i have some glass i put in my camerabag pocket when i was on the beach in lianyungang! i totally forgot... i have some shells too.... i did not get any good photos of the houses, sadly. some of the tiling work was done with a rather complex pattern. some of the tiling patterns were more simple. it reminded me of europe.

i have joined a global network called couchsurfing. i first heard of this when i sang with the humboldt chorale a few years back in order to do carmina burana. one of the women in the group was a couch surfing member and she told stories of traveling across europe meeting interesting people and saving on costs. i'd forgotten about this until last year when chris and john and diego would sometimes have couchsurfers stay or join our tribe for dinner. my purpose in joining was to meet up with folks who could show me around or, at the very least, join me for dinner or a drink. there are not couch surfers everywhere, there are a number in suzhou and hangzhou. i met angelo* in suzhou.

of all the hostels in suzhou, i picked one that was close to where angelo lived because he had broken his leg and was on crutches. i figured, if this person was going to show me around and the like, i should be in close proximity. after i got checked in, i gave him a call and he met me for dinner. it was rather uneventful. then we had a few beers (real qingdao!) at a cafe/bar overlooking a canal. the place was near where i was staying so that became my spot for getting coffee each morning.

the next day, angelo and i grabbed some baozi, had breakfast at the city park next to the river (which acts almost as a moat), and i watched this guy do tai chi:

i also watched this lady knit:

angelo marked some places on my map and then headed off to work. we joked that i was a traveler and not a tourist.

my first stop was the garden adam's grandmother had recommended, the Humble Administrator's Garden (拙政园), built in 1513. it was massive and beautiful. quiet, serene, peaceful, romantic... i really didnt want to be there alone. but i was. so i enjoyed every moment and tried to soak up the good feelings this place had to offer.

i took a ton of photos of this boat. i was entranced by it somehow...

lotus! lotus! look closely and you can see the pagoda in the background:

artsy--lotus through stained glass:

there was a huge bonzai section too. and see those pandas?

...scandalous pandas!

and then there were the ducks!

i was in the garden for quite a long while.

then i went for a walk--i wanted to see the canals and find the opera museum that angelo (for piiiiiiiizza with pizzaaaazzz) recommended. i wound up taking one of the bicycle taxis to the museum. i had been circling and circling the streets and i knew i had to be close (turns out i was!) but i couldnt find the darn place. it took a few conversations with taxi riders before i found one who knew where the place was. he was really friendly and fair.

the museum was small and basically filled with set designs and the like. and this guy:

the best part of the whole place was the following sign:

there was also a small garden in the back. i dont think there was a place in suzhou without a garden in the back...

then i explored the canals. suzhou is the venice of china.

this guy was carving a sign. first he chisled away at the characters, then he sanded it down:

my youth hostel was...great for its location. but it wasnt exactly the best place (my room light went out and the attitude was, so? like it was too difficult to change a freaking light bulb. there was also no hot water for three days. three days). i stopped by the mingtown hostel to ask them where i could find some dinner. they were amazingly friendly. even though i wasnt staying with them, they carefully wrote down the name of two places to eat. one was a vegetarian restaurant which they knew was certainly open for lunch but they werent too sure about how late it was open... the other was for a place with "local favourites." i went to the local place and it was packed. PACKED. i had fried milk (for real!), pumpkin congee (which was excellent), and stir fried vegetables.

i i headed back to the hostel, dropped of my things, and went to the canal bar/cafe... ordered myself a gin and tonic... enjoyed the people watching. there are far more bikes in this area of china. xi'an is just not really bike friendly. the street over the bridge from the canal bustled with movement.

next morning i had a cup of coffee at the cafe/bar and watched the morning commute. then i headed off to find the vegetarian restaurant. it was a true adventure because all i had was the address from the woman at the hostel. i had no idea where i was going. NO idea. i figured what the hell--i could end up somewhere really cool, or i could end up somewhere with good food and then leave and go somewhere cool. either way was fine with me. i got to the restaurant and could see a temple peeking out from down the block. oh! i thought, Neat! i walked up the road towards the temple. there was a gate but this was obviously not the front entrance. the existence of incense sellers gave me hope though. i had found Something Interesting. i walked around the block, as much as i could, and i played follow-the-monk for a while, but didnt see the entrance. i wrote down the characters of the streets i was on (西园)--and i am very happy to report that i was able to read the characters as well (xi yuan, west garden)--and walked back to the restaurant. by this time it was nearing 11am. and as my belly recalls, it was clearly lunch time. the menu was all in chinese and there are no photos. i was the only one there so i couldnt spy on what other folks were eating. i tried asking about certain dishes and failed.
"do you have duck?"
we have no meat here.
"yes, but do you have duck?"
we have no meat.
here my chinese failed me. i knew not how to say "fake." i tried asking for soy or vegetable meat--i said, i am a vegetarian. i do not want meat. i want vegetable meat.
we have no meat.
oooookaaaaaay. so i did the ol' point at something. i was rather excited by this prospect--i never get to do that! i could point at anything, anything! and eat it without reservation! and thus i was disappointed when my pointing yielded me dishes that weren't all togehter new. they were, however, quite tasty.
sweet and sour fake meat, teriyaki eggplant (which was heavenly!), and some sort of fried dough thingies that had a rich buttery, broccoli taste.

i fwumped my map on the table to try and figure out where i was and what temple i was going to see

i ate as much as i could, bundled up my leftovers to give to a homeless/hungry person, and set off to walk in the other direction. i found the river, a bridge, and a temple. hurray!

the bell tower had a rather curious sign:

in most temples, people rip their incense sticks out of the packets and throw the packets away. at this place, everything was burned.

i spent many hours on the temple grounds. the majority of the time i was in the temple garden. i walked through the hobbit hole and found myself in a space that just felt peaceful:

i made more animal friends:

and watched the monks roam around:

and observed this woman doing tai chi as 5 kittens followed along:

i felt so obtrusive watching her. i really wanted to take more photos because it was so awesome. but i just couldnt. it's not the best photo, i understand. i was trying to be sly because i felt like i was interrupting something...

there were a number of small groups of men who came into the garden. some tried to engage with me, and some were just plain rude--waiting for the fish to approach and then stomping their feet or pretending to grab for the fish. it really ruined that moment for me. some of them mimed gutting and eating the fish. it really pissed me off. one shouldnt do that at a buddhist temple. have some respect.
i gave them my best, you-JERKS-stop-that-and-leave-the-fish-alone look and they did just that. one guy came back around later and was trying to get me to follow him. i was confused--your friend is a jerk, why would i want to follow you? but he was insistent. he wanted to show me the bigger fish

i hung out by the rocks for a while:

and then i wandered on....

i found myself at the twin pagodas:

i had a brief conversation with the gardener as he worked:

i also weaved around more canals...

and people watched. this is typical suzhou scooter fashion:

usually the cape thing is white.
the homes in this area looked european. throughout the trip i noticed how much wealthier some places seemed...

i met up with angelo (ooooooh everybody goes to angelooooos) and his friend brett and we had dinner at a place they love. had spicy tofu broccoli, and candied potato (!!) which reminded me of the banana/apple treat we have here in xi'an. the fellas also had a pork dish that featured dried banana:

then we went down by the river to look at the pretty lights:

and then we walked through the canals to have a beer and look at more pretty lights:

every morning while in suzhou i had the same routine. the coffee shop didnt open until at least 9:30 or 10. can you imagine?! one morning i got there spot on at 9:30 and the barista told me i was "too early" and would have to wait. at least she let me in... i would sit on the deck of the place and watch the canal traffic. before coffee time, i would grab a baozi from the woman down the street from the hostel. she got to know me. i'd walk up the stand and she'd say "素的!" (this means vegetarian, pronounced sue-duh [sùde]) and hand me two green bean baozi.

i spent a lot of time in suzhou people watching. there was a motorcycle cop who would set himself up by a bridge and wait for people to mess up. there was a rule about not turning right during certain hours. so during those posted hours, he was there. i watched some people bribe him, others shamefully take the ticket, and one man got into a huge shouting match with the cop. of course, a crowd gathered. the shouting man's friend was trying to hold him back because it looked like he was going to swing at the cop. the cop barked back at the man but was surprisingly calm otherwise. i couldnt fully understand what was happening and i dont know how but the situation suddenly dissipated. the cop walked away from the shouter in disgust, got on his bike, and rode off.

for lunch i had dim sum (and thought of libby)--steamed calimari, shrimp jaozi, and fried pumpkin.

then i headed off to see the city wall and pagoda. i wound up being treated to a short opera performance as well.

look at her SHOES:

i found myself surrounded by curious folks after the performance. they wanted to know all about me (how old was i, what did i do...). i faired pretty well but there were some questions i didnt understand. another member of the audience, a young college-aged guy, translated for me. they said my chinese was wonderful and i said i wasnt. then they complimented my chipped fingernail polish and said i was obviously "quite modern."

why i am so over the moon about these boats i know not:

i also hung out with more fish friends:

i stopped by the toilet on my way out of the park (i did as i was instructed):

i walked over to the river and spied a woman doing her laundry:

and a boat zipping by:

that evening i went on a boat cruise. angelo (with dough made fresh each day!) arranged it for me, meaning he called his friend and asked where i needed to be and at what time.

i grabbed a taxi and showed him the text message with the dock information. he looked confused. oh great, i thought. since i didnt know the words, i mimed a lot, pointed at the river, and made boat noises. he nodded and dropped me off. it was the wrong place. right idea though as their were indeed boats. but there was no activity save kids and their grandparents and people out for an evening walk. great. i saw a young woman looking out over the water and i approached her. "you speak english?" i asked in chinese. she smiled, a little..? and i said, good. i also speak a little chinese. i explained to her what had happened and what i was seeking and she brightened up and declared, "I shall help you!" we walked over to the boats, so obviously not prepping for an evening cruise. two men on board were eating their dinner. they laughed and said, "it's time to go home! we're not going on a cruise!" they explained i should be on the other side of the river. dang. obviously enjoying helping, the 16-year-old announced that she would make sure i got to where i needed to be. "we can walk!" she said, and linked arms with me. ...are you sure? do you need to be home? do your parents know where you are? "oh, i always go for a walk after dinner. let's go!" and so we set off. part of the way through i glanced at my watch... how long of a walk is this? "oh, we need to walk for at least another half an hour..." dang again. the first cruise was set to leave before that. i had wanted to be on the early cruise. well, in that case, i'd prefer to take a taxi. can you explain to the driver where i need to be? "better than that, i will go with you!" and that she did. she went so far as to walk me to the boat which left about 5 minutes after we arrived. sweet kid.

the night cruise was great! our boat was a bit smaller than the other boats we saw on the water, and our captain seemed less inclined to be a speed demon. the lights in our cabin were turned off allowing us to enjoy the pretty lights of the city. other boats we passed were crammed full of people, speeding, and with the lights on. meanwhile, on our boat, two musicians played traditional music and sang. it was the perfect soundtrack. the photos, of course, turned out horribly:

after the cruise, i returned to my temporary home and had some dinner:

lily with celery and aloe, an orange stuffed with crab and tofu, candied lotus (a local treat), greens, peanuts, and a beer.

my last day in suzhou, angelo (angeloooooooos) wanted to take me to an out-of-the-way tea house: the garden of cultivation. beautiful place. however, we had a bit of a ... run in with the bicycle taxi guy. how you deal with these guys is you set the price before you set off. we werent going very far and we had established the price at 5Y.

the taxis of suzhou:

we went winding through these narrow cobble-stoned ally-ways and wound up at the entrance of the tea house. we got out of the egg and i gave the guy a 10. i then waited for my change. he wasnt planning on giving it to me. we got into a huge shouting match--angelo, the taxi rider, locals... the taxi guy claimed he was charging us 5Y a person. that was not the deal. round and round and round and round we went. a huge crowd gathered. and i think angelo and i held our own pretty well for a while with our limited chinese. the taxi guy was screaming. he tried to take off but angelo and his broken leg** stood in front of the tires so he couldnt move. the woman from the tea garden moved in to help and she was calm and soothing. i was just annoyed and trying the broken record approach--you said 5Y total, not 5Y a person, give me my change, (jerk). the tea lady got the taxi guy to simmer down and he relented and gave me the 5Y. but it was quite heated. if it hadnt been for the locals, i would have been nervous. angelo was getting fired up and was threatening the guy. not good, not good. but it wound up ok. (we took a regular taxi on the return trip). everyone was speaking so fast... i couldnt get what they were saying. and what saved us? why were the locals on our side? was it the mummy cast? was it our attempt to communicate and use our broken chinese? i just dont know...

the garden was a welcome calm after the show down.

more boat obsession:

artsy:

angelo and i grabbed some lunch/dinner and i saw him off to work. i was taking the night train to ningbo where i would immediately turn around and take a ferry out to putuoshan. this was the leg of the trip i was a little nervous about. adam had helped me arrange a hotel, but the hotel folk didnt speak English... i was fine with all this until the hotel lady started asking questions: how will we meet? how will we communicate? i was like, it's fine, and i've always done ok. but her barrage of questions made me nervous. what if.... i had the name of a hostel in ningbo written down just in case. i figured if nothing else, i'd just take the last ferry back to ningbo if i had to...

i went to the train station...

*yes, humboldt county super-stars, i did have the angelo's pizza jingle stuck in my head damn near the whole time i was in in suzhou
** we often made fun of his ghetto cast (he's really a mummy!):

Hongze (洪泽 Hóngzé)

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 03:50:54 GMT

Adam and I bussed first to huai'an, had a pit stop, and then climbed on a smaller bus to Hongze. once off the bus, i took my first of many bicycle taxi rides.

i had been a little concerned as to where i was going to stay during my time in hongze. as it is a "small" town (that's china small, not rest of the world small), i didnt know what to expect hotel-wise. it turns out, since i was the special guest of honor, adam's dad put me up in a really nice hotel. really nice hotel. adam and i took the bicycle taxi to the hotel and then met up with adam's best friend from home.

i joined adam and her friend for their traditional outing--a snack! it's like hot pot but better because with hot pot, there's a TON of food. hot pot is not economical if one is eating with a small group of folks. this, however, was like single-serving hot pot. and it was indeed spicey and tasty. i had some mushrooms and tofu. i didnt want to eat too much because i knew we were going to have dinner with adam's family. and if i had learned anything the day previous, it was that the Special Guest is Expected to Eat Until she Bursts. so i just grazed.

then the ladies took me on a walking tour of the city. adam's friend was embarrassed because of all the gaping stares.
"do you always get stared at like this?"
yup.
"how do you stand it??"
i guess i have just accepted it. that doesn't mean i like it.

i had the girls walk me back to the hotel so i could have a bit of a rest, but more importantly, to give them some time together. both of them were leaving for their universities in a few days and i wanted them to have some time with each other. i shoo'd them away and enjoyed a hot shower. a few hours later, adam came by, and then her parents arrived. we taxi'd out to the lake and went aboard a boat restaurant owned by adam's dad's friend. both adam's parents work at the hospital--dad is a neurologist and mom delivers babies. the owner gave me a tour of the boat and then we sat down to dinner. again i felt awkward about photos. and again dinner was amazing. adam's mom did an amazing job ordering way too much food. it would have been impossible for 4 people to devour what was placed in front of us, which included a lot of local favourites. the food in jiangsu province is distinctly more sweet than the food here. my favourite dishes were a corn dish, a sweet lotus dish, and a local bread that was kind of like a crepe and stuffed with pumpkin. adam's parents were surprised at how much chinese i knew. i made an amazing effort to communicate with them which i think they appreciated. adam was nervous about translating but she did a fine job. there were a few times over the course of the visit when they questioned whether or not her translations were "correct" and whether or not we were "tricking them." her dad even commented once that she and i had talked and talked but the translation was very simple. but there were times when the opposite happened of course.

as we left the restaurant, i snapped a photo. there were lots of docked restaurants with lights and it was quite beautiful.

adam's dad had this elaborate plan in mind about "activities" i should do but what i was really interested in was just seeing where adam grew up. i explained to him that after i left their company, i would be traveling for 2.5 more weeks and would be very busy seeing lots and lots of sites and the like and that i was perfectly content to have a few days of leisure. he had a difficult time accepting this, but because i was the Special Guest, i could do whatever the hell i wanted :)

the next morning, i met up with adam and she and i walked around a bit. we walked past the market...s

and then down a street where all the kids were taking music lessons:

the plan was to see her junior high, but we first stopped by her grandmother's home. what a treat for me!

we just stopped in on the poor woman and she was in her jammies watching television. startled, she threw on some clothes and adam took me of a tour of the house.
grannie then scurried to the kitchen and freaked out because she had no fruit! so even though i insisted please please please no everything is fine, she took off to the market to get some fruit to offer to me. After all, i was the Special Guest. while she was gone, adam showed me a few of the family photos that were sitting around. i am an avid collector of old photos. i love to use them in my art, i love to look at them... i just love old photos. i explained to adam about flea markets and estate sales and how i collect old photos. "of people you don't know?!" she was mortified. grandma returned with proper offerings for the Special Guest and adam told her how much i was enjoying looking at the family photos. she went and got her photo albums and i got to see the cutest photos of adam as a child. grandma asked me all sorts of questions and i enjoyed talking with her. i was nearly in tears just to be around a grandma, as i miss mine dearly, and i wish i could have asked her questions i've wanted to ask all sorts of chinese folks of her generation. but i know i cant. adam's grandma is just 5 years older than my dad but her life has been so categorically different than his, making her seem way older. she's seen so much... i enjoyed the time we spent at the family home tremendously. as adam and i were fixing to leave, she told me to take some photos with me. i refused. she insisted. i refused. and then i relented. i only took two photos. i had wanted to take so many more! but i felt strange enough as it was taking the two i did. they're staff photos from the 1980s (i couldnt take anything too personal, i just couldnt). but they look so much older... and when i think about where china was in the 1980's... everything in china feels old. even if it's new.

pretty mao suits all in a row:

one of the photos adam's grandmother showed me was of her in suzhou. she insisted that i go to a certain garden while i was there. it was the first place i went in suzhou.

adam's grandmother's family were wealthy landlords. she only survived because she married a worker (a commoner). when she was young, during the war, her family was running from the soldiers. her younger sister fell behind. they never saw her again. at one point, her grandmother stumbled but her cousin picked her up and carried her....

it's no wonder there is such a huge generation gap here. it's more like a generation chasm.

i wrapped the gifted photos in a plastic bag and adam and i continued our morning walk. adam said her mother had taken the day off so she could prepare a feast for us for lunch.

the next stop was adam's junior high.

Adam wanted to show me her junior high and not her senior high for a few reasons. first, she was a star student in junior high. second, her senior high was in the City (huai'an). she does not have pleasant memories of her time in senior high, mostly because all the emphasis is placed on test scores. adam did not rank as high as everyone had hoped (and demanded) on her exams. And since the scores mean E V E R Y T H I N G (they seriously determine one's whole life, no joke.) any other achievments meant nothing. so it didnt matter what she learned, or how she grew as a person, or what experiences she had.... all that mattered is that she didnt score high enough on the NMET to get into the best university china has to offer. and therefore, she is worthless (not my words!) and ashamed. In China, teachers are continuously prepping their students for exams and students are constantly taking exams. Each exam determines the next step taken as they walk towards their future. The final exam taken in their educational career before entering University, NMET (National Matriculation English Test), not only establishes where they shall go to school, but also what their major will be. Students write down their top choices for school and major, and then their score determines their future. It's a rather intense process that takes a bit of strategizing. The students have to anticipate how well they'll do, and then mark their choices for preferred school and major all while considering admission scores and the level of competition they may encounter. Depending on their score, they'll either get into the school they want, or be assigned elsewhere. Adam was one of the stars of her junior high. everyone had such high hopes for her... so much, in fact, that it was decided that she should attend the superior senior high in huai'an. so adam and her grandmother moved to the city together. when adam choked on the NMET, it was a Big Deal. and when i say choked, it's not like she did horribly--her score was still above average. it just wasn't superior. and the competition here is fierce... so her entire senior high experience is tainted because she didnt have "success." adam wound up at XISU, which is a very good university, but it's not The Best.

Still, she has had a remarkable opportunity. Although, sadly, it seems that humboldt college has done her a slight disservice. she started school while i was still traveling and when i texted her and asked how things were going, she said that she was struggling. why? because her "teachers don't appreciate my new skills; my ability to critically think and my desire to discuss." i guess we did a good job preparing her for a western classroom and now she has to re-adjust... she's really not happy. if there was any way to get adam to the US, i would. she's beyond the typical student here... she impressed and amazed me last semester with her research project. unlike anyone else in her class, she became entranced with what she was learning and took full advantage of the library access. she really got into it. she was so inspired by her research project that she took herself to tibet for the summer. she told me, "i just wanted to understand..."

adam's mom is Very No Nonsense. she called and wanted to know where we were! lunch was nearly ready...

we rushed back to the family apartment, a place that houses the staff of the hospital. i wanted to help! but my help was refused--i was chased out of the kitchen. lunch was 12 dishes. twelve.

adam's mom said she was nervous with me in the kitchen. because i was the Special Foreign Guest. she said she'd not be able to cook with me in there. After the kitchen table was set, i was seated with my back to her. So i couldnt watch her.

adam was practically sleep walking--she had stayed up waaaaay late packing for school since she was leaving the next day for xi'an. i let her take a nap and i did some journaling. then we went for a walk and happened upon a local fortune teller...

since i have been in china, i've wanted to see a fortune teller. because i find it intriguing. any fortune teller who shares a common language can fish for information. but what would happen if that wasn't possible.... i had to try. adam was a bit embarrassed, i think, but willing to translate for me. she was concerned about what People Would Think if they saw her with this guy--would it harm the reputation of her family? The fortune teller sits near her apartment complex, behind the hospital. he's a regular fixture in her neighborhood so the chances of someone seeing her with him were pretty high. but i told her she could blame it aaaaaaaaaaaall on me, that crazy white lady! and since i was the Special Guest, she had to help me out... (chinese custom dictates that What the Guest Wants, the Guest Shall Have). Adam laughed and got over her embarrassment in about two seconds. she was a bit nervous, as the fortune teller was from a different region in china so his dialect was different than hers, and he often times talked using old proverbs and poetry. he had very kind eyes--they were a lighter brown than the so-brown-they-are-nearly-black eyes so prevalent in this country. he was an older gentleman, though i wont venture to guess how old. (as i mentioned earlier, everything seems old in china. like the red carpet in my hallway that was replaced when i was in the US--it's only about a year old and it's already threadbare, peeling off the cement [causing one to trip--neat!], and stained. it looks like it's been around since the cultural revolution.) he asked me how old i was and i told him i was a dragon. "you have good eyes but i can't read you very well," he said. "your eyes are so different!" earlier in our walk, adam and i had passed him and he mentioned my eyes at that point. "blue!" he called out. he took my right hand and looked at my palm. apparently, my love line is a mess. but he also smiled and said i had good, thick hands--they "weren't thin like the hands of a chicken."

here is a summary of what he said:
i will make money next year and it'll be steady until the age of 46. i will be financially stable.
i need not worry as i will always be taken care of. if i am drowning, someone will come along and throw me a rope. there is always a helper for me. always.
i am kind and of the earth; i cannot lie, cheat, or take advantage of people.
my kindness will cause me to be hurt many times. i give too much. those to whom i give the most will hurt me the most.
some of my friends are backstabbers but i will never know who.
i was very sick as a young child but after the age of 10, all was well.
the last few years have been difficult.
i didnt find a suitable mate/love the first time around.
i will find love again. it is near and it is possible but i am neutral now; i am afraid of giving myself in either direction. i need to decide what i want.
my career line shows i have not gotten my dream job; i have not gotten what i really seek/want.
i will die at 82.

in the middle of the session, adam's mom called and demanded we return immediately. "we're... in the middle of something..." adam told her mom. but it didnt matter. we stayed with the fortune teller and we were late for supper (even though we didnt know when it was supper time!) my role as a guest with adam's family was strange. i am certainly not a contemporary of adam. adam's mom is the same age as a close friend of mine. but i didnt feel like a contemporary of hers either. it was rather strange. the only thing that saved us was that i was the Special Guest. although i could tell her mom was rather annoyed. supper was leftovers from lunch. adam was afraid i'd be disappointed. no way, no how! if anything, it made me feel more comfortable. because i didnt get treated to anything outlandish. i got leftovers just like a Real Person (as opposed to a Special Guest). adam didnt want to tell her parents we had seen the fortune teller because interacting with such a person is ... not readily embraced. but when adam's mom called and demanded we return home immediately, she heard him. so there was no way around it. adam was nervous--what were they going to think?? luckily they laughed it off and were amused by it all. adam was relieved. her mom eventually relaxed about us being a little late (again, i dont know how it's possible for us to be late when we hadnt been told when to return, but whatever.... her mom was also quite fussy about adam's hair. no wonder the kid was freaking out about her appearance! even adam's grandmother tsk'ed about adam's hair!). i remembered my chinese table manners--spitting on the table, eating loudly, and slurping my soup--and all was well.

adam's dad commented and said my body was of "good quality." that's his professional doctor opinion. i like her dad. i see a lot of adam in her father. he looks a lot like his mom too. apparently, his father was a real .. how did adam put it?... "cruel man." he is very critical of his daughter but i can see it in his eyes how much he loves her. she just sees the criticism. i can see how proud he is of her. and how much he wants her to be successful. i still dont understand why she was suddenly unable to go to the US, but i think that is something i'll never understand.

i returned to the hotel after dinner to give adam some time with her parents as she was leaving for xi'an the next day.

the next morning we went to see a special ox (if you follow the link, do a search on "ox" and you'll see what im talking about). the oxen served as protectors--they saved the people from floods and drought. there are two oxes in hongze. one was by the lake and the other was in town. we went to the lake first.

the floating village:

garbage men:

we couldnt find the ox! we asked and asked and asked. but each time we were told something different. the lake is huge so it's not like we could walk around the whole thing looking for the ox. we gave up because adam knew exactly where the ox in town was, so we headed to the park.

in the park is a commemorative structure declaring a friendship between china and japan. because the great massacre happened in nanjing, it's something of great importance to adam's province.

adam shared that when she was a child, she hated that structure. she was angry that china wanted to be friends with japan. after what they did! she's since grown to understand... but not everyone gets to that stage. there is a great deal of anti-japanese behaviour here. i once saw an SUV that had "FUCK JAPAN" boldly printed on its back window. i was curious to go to the massacre museum while adam and i were in nanjing but i didnt think i could stomach it. apparently there is a room dedicated to photos of some of the executions. when i was in germany, i went to dachau. i am not opposed to touring haunted grounds. but i just knew i shouldnt go.

adam and i were walking around, "OH!" she yelled out, "There's a big cock!"

i explained that in the US, the word cock is slang for penis and when she gets there, she shouldnt yell out such things. she laughed and laughed. i told her about teaching in the primary school this summer, and how when i asked the class to brainstorms words that start with C, i was not prepared for hearing the word cock screamed with such enthusiasm.

next to the rooster was the ox:

the park was lovely. here is a rare photo of adam smiling (to smile in a photo is not lady-like!, she insists). she demanded that i delete this photo but i refused:

we returned to the house where we had a hurried lunch and then rush rush rush! i was off to the bus station. adam was going to return to the house and then she was headed to the city to catch the night train to xi'an.

i was off to suzhuo!