Gansu Travels: Part I

Traveling in China, like living in China, is proving to be a mix of adventure, frustrations, unexpected surprises and unexpected difficulties, but magnified a bit. I'll be gone five weeks so it's dawned on me that more than the most time I've traveled at once it will be the most time I've gone without seeing anyone I know. It's definitely manageable, and cheaper than expected, but I couldn't imagine doing this when I first arrived in China. After being regularly taken advantage of in Thailand and especially Cambodia and my day in Beijing, it's satisfying to travel as an insider who knows the prices and some of the language. I'll give a day-by-day breakdown of the trip as I go along.

Day 1 (Thursday, the 20th) - Xiahe

I arrived around 7am in the provincial capital of Lanzhou on an overnight sleeper train. Lanzhou isn't of any interest but this is where I needed to catch the 5-hour bus to Xiahe, a small town in the east of this province that was my first destination. I was quick to judge the middle-aged men in the surrounding sleeper bunks of the train as "typical" Chinese men, pudgy men in suits smoking and talking loudly into the night, but then they spent a good 5 or 10 minutes finding out where I needed to catch my bus without my even asking. It seems my guidebook was wrong in the first place, so the first adventure was busing across Lanzhou to two different bus stations before finally getting on a bus to Xiahe just after 9am. I was the last one on and didn't have a true seat, rather a fold-out stool in the aisle with my enormous travel bag on my lap for the trip. I was surrounded by 8 traveling Lithuanians, who reminded me just how good Europeans are at learning English. I was indignant at being overcharged at the lunch stop, which has never happened in Zhangye. I knew it was worth about 3.5 kuai but he dishonestly charged for tea and asked for 10, but it turned out the Lithuanians, who speak no Chinese, were charged 15 each.

Xiahe is a village of around 40,000 people in a remote mountain area, which is of interest because of the Labrang Monastery and the fact that outside of Tibet, it's one of the most important sites of Tibetan Buddhism. It has a beautiful mountain backdrop and more character than any ethnically Chinese city I've yet seen, and is absolutely packed with monks in robes and Tibetans who are local or on pilgrimage, wearing cowboy-style hats and very bright clothes vaguely reminiscent of Southwest Native Americans. There were also more Westerners than I've seen anywhere in China yet; during the guided tour of the monastery there were about three times as many foreigners as live in Zhangye. While I wandered through the Tibetan part of town, three young excitable children followed me and sheltered from the rain with an umbrella. As I suspected they did ask for money, but were very passive about it and perfectly happy with the equivalent of about a dime. For my accomodation I stayed in a simple hostel, which was quite cheap (roughly $3). When I checked into my room there was a Chinese girl in another of the four beds, who then quickly packed up and left. The tall Swede I shared the room with said when she walked in and saw him earlier, she froze and said "Oh my God!" in English and walked out. She probably didn't know what a hostel was like, and knowing China I'm not surprised that it freaked her out.

Day 2

I woke up early to explore to the monastery area, partly because the guidebooks claim that the monks sometimes make friends with travelers and invite them into their homes. I had no such luck, though it was wonderfully peaceful and the sound of monks chanting could be heard periodically (I particularly enjoyed the sound of child monks chanting). With some time before the English tour at 10:15am I climbed a nearby hill, which gave an incredible view over the entire city. The monk who lead the tour spoke only very basic English, and there was a moment about five minutes in when he actually said "My English isn't very good; is there anyone here who would can give some more explanation about this?". There was a long, awkward pause before he continued.

For lunch I treated myself to the common Chinese dish of tudousi chaorou, meat with shredded potato, with the Tibetan twist of Yak meat. A beggar passed by and had the audacity to hit up a monk at the next table for money, which he did give with obvious irritation. After spending just a bit more time hanging around the streets, I caught a 2pm bus back to Lanzhou, which was highlighted by good scenery and helpful English signs like "Don't drive tireply" and "Forbidden to chuck jetsam". Xiahe was an exciting city to visit, but seeing as it's a center of religious devotion, I had to wonder how the Tibetans feel about us making it into a tourist attraction. There were photogenic moments everywhere, but most were very inappropriate to actually take pictures of, such as Tibetans prostrating themselves in prayer. It would have been nice to understand more of Tibetan Buddhism, such as the meaning of prayer wheels (long rows of revolving cylinders they spin as the circle them clockwise).

The room I stayed in in Lanzhou was at least a one-person room, though the bathrooms were shared and like almost all Chinese public bathrooms, left something to be desired. As I approached the men's shower room on the floor below I had a bad feeling I was about to see some full-frontal nudity. I hate being right. The showers were separated by low cement walls, but they felt no need to include doors and there wasn't the least bit of privacy. Chinese people get enough amusement from my long eyelashes and hairy arms, so the two other men showering probably had a story to tell after seeing a foreigner in all his glory. But after five months in China, I think being naked in front of strangers didn't bother me as much as it normally would. And I just really needed a shower.

Day 3 - Tianshui

This morning was spent on a 5 1/2 hour train ride from Lanzhou to Tianshui, another city in Gansu Province. Throughout the ride I noticed what looked very much like man-made cave openings in the mountains, and was reminded of stories I've heard of people in Gansu living in caves in the very recent past (as in, the 1980's). I know my colleague Gary has met someone that told him he lives in a cave (it must be fascinating to talk to people with a high level of Chinese). The point of going to Tianshui is to see a nearby mountain with Buddhist art, so when I arrived in the afternoon it was too late to do anything but wander the city and eat cake in a rare Chinese sweet shop (it was "just so-so" to use a tired Chinglish phrase, and the milk was room-temperature). Oh, and fail to buy a train ticket and wonder if and when I can leave this city. When I tried to buy a ticket to the next city for two days later I was told "no tickets" by the grumpy woman behind the counter, so I tried saying "next ticket to Liuyuan" and was quickly told again "no tickets". Train tickets in China work on an amazingly inconvenient system in which you have to have physically buy tickets at the station in the actual city the train leaves from, no more than a few days early, so during busy times (ie. the whole summer) you have to plan to buy onward tickets as soon as you arrive and hope you don't get screwed. So far here I'm screwed, so I'll try to find someway to get a train ticket or else get a ticket to Lanzhou again and then take a horrible-sounding 22-hour bus. I know of desperate travelers who have stood in the aisles with just a few inches of space around them for overnight trips halfway across the country. Ah, the joys and agonies of traveling in China.

The Token Foreigner

Tomorrow I will finally hand in my grades and hopefully take off traveling, some weeks after many foreign teachers have gone home. With classes over people have been coming out of the woodwork to invite me to their school/English function/whatever, which can make you feel like the token foreigner after a while. I've turned down summer jobs from both students and random people in the street I don't know. On Wednesday, I got a phone call in Chinese that I finally realized was a woman from the guzheng school asking if I could come then for a lesson. Usually the lesson is on Thursday and I just practice whenever I feel like it, and I had this strange feeling I was going to be videotaped or photographed at this lesson. Obviously I'm getting a sense for China, because sure enough they filmed a short promotional film of Teacher Zhang giving me a lesson as soon as I arrived. Which was fine, but it was a little irritating that she didn't have time to give me an actual lesson and handed me off to one of her students.

On Friday I was invited by two of my students to visit a private school in a nearby town called Gaotai. They will work at the school over the summer, and the headmaster asked them if I could come to talk to the students, who were about 8-11 years old. After hearing some stories from other foreign teachers about vaguely worded invitations that actually involve giving lessons or an hour-long speech I was hesitant, but decided to give it a chance. We took a "one-hour" bus (over two hours) to Gaotai, and the first seat I tried was so small that more than being uncomfortable, there was physically not enough room for my legs. When the bus stopped in Gaotai, someone threw a bag from the roof of the bus, which landed with a heavy thud; it was full of parts of animals, with a few legs sticking out. Upon arrival, I met the extremely young headmaster of the English school (who speaks no English) and the teachers, all hilariously dressed in matching zebra-like outfits. As it turned out very little was required of me - I went from classroom to classroom greeting groups of students and answering questions they had prepared, such as "what is your favorite color?" and "can you sing us a Chinese song?" (for better or worse I know the chorus of one of the pop songs now). More than one student stood up and said only, "you are cool!". I would actually have been happy to do more, and I spent no more than 20 minutes in the classroom that day. And of course, there were a few rounds of pictures to be taken at the end. I only told my students that I would definitely come late the night before, but they were obviously expecting me; there was one of the ubiquitous red banners set up, this one saying something like "Welcome foreign teacher, who has come to our school to communicate with the students".

After a lot of resting (they have a talent for this which I admire) and the "work" of the day, they didn't have to tell me what was coming next: the round-table banquet in a classy restaurant with all the teachers, with leftovers fit for a sumo wrestler. There was one mysterious dish I couldn't identity, until someone translated it: "pig's feet". It was.... worth trying once, I suppose. They wanted to know which dish was my favorite, and lo and behold another round of it came after about five minutes, which was totally unncessary. The afternoon was leisurely, including a visit to the park, fruit market, and most surprising, a Red Army memorial (some interesting Communist army artwork). I asked my student Jason to translate one of the propaganda sentences I noticed on a city wall (I've seen them in each city, in huge characters), which meant something like "The reason you're able to relax is because we're taking care of everything". The headmaster insisted we take a taxi back so it would be quicker, even though this was certainly more than ten times the cost of the bus. When we reached the gate of the university an unidentified woman got into the taxi, and when we reached my home the headmaster, the woman, and one of my students all followed me inside. The whole day they had been unusually generous and if this wasn't something arranged by my students I would have had a bad feeling they were about to strong-arm me into something terrible. But no, the woman introduced herself as the headmaster's brother (she could speak English) and explained that "I'm sorry to be so forward, but... we don't know how much to pay you for today". The thought hadn't really occurred to me that in addition to the pampering I should be paid, and I tried to refuse in light of all the money they had spent, but they would have none of it. I told them to just give me 20 yuan if they really had to, but they just laughed and insisted I take 100 yuan, an excessive amount for the actual work I did. I suspect that for foreign teachers who choose to work at a school that's never had a foreign teacher, the special treatment gets out of hand.

The next day was outrageously busy from 8am-11pm. Xiao Ma and his "guitar club" put on an extravagant all-day party, which involved bringing drums and a full band setup, a generator, banners, tents, stools, massive amounts of food, cooking supplies, and 60 people on a bus to the Black River. Xiao Ma made his most blatant "let's show off the foreigner" move yet, so I started off the day a little irritated. He had repeatedly encouraged me to bring friends, but when I showed up with three of my student friends he was visibly annoyed, and said "I thought you were going to bring foreign friends". They also hadn't joined the "M-Club" and contributed money like everyone else, so it was obvious they were not welcome, and they left to look for jobs. However, the day was generally fun and the idea of setting up a full-band performance in the middle of nowhere appealed to me, but without a single English-speaker in attendance there were long stretches of boredom for me. We were put into groups for some strange games, the most bizarre being a game that I would describe as "gather as much mud, stones, watermelon shells and whatever the hell else you can find and make something out of it, and do it better than the other groups". This quickly escalated into chaos as each group tried to destroy the other sculptures, and soon mud and water jugs were being tossed in every direction while they laughed hysterically. I stayed out of it, as much as I enjoy being covered in mud, but they had other ideas. A little later in the afternoon they grabbed a party-goer by each limb and threw him into the river. This was going on in the background and I didn't pay much attention until I heard them say laowai, which means "foreigner", and as I turned around I saw they were coming for me, and sure enough I also got my turn in the river. At the end of the afternoon I also made my public singing debut, performing The White Stripes' "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground", which was unspectacular. I didn't so much want to sing as to finally perform a song I enjoyed and wasn't completely boring to play. However, the keyboard player decided to spontaneously join me even though he's never heard the song, which sounded terrible, not to mention my poor singing voice in the first place.

I left the party early, in time for another English event I was talked into, by an English teacher I've met at the guzheng school. This one wasn't nearly as rewarding, and involved reading out questions in English that the young students had memorized the answers to (pages and pages of them) and had to recite. When I was told it would be in the square I had a bad feeling it would be on the big stage in front of 1,000 people, but it was on a small stage setup with only a couple of hundred onlookers. The teacher, Shirley, would translate into Chinese, and she was almost as nervous as the students. They were going as fast as humanly possible in order to ensure that all the meaning of the sentences was definitely lost, so I tried to maintain a reasonable speaking voice, but was told several times I was going too slow. The questions were often quite random for beginning English learners, such as "Why do you want to study English?" "Because I want to join a joint-venture", or "Do you want some whiskey?" "Sure, I would also like some, thank you". There were also a few blatant mistakes in the script, such as "How fat is it?" instead of "far" and my favorite, a statement read by Shirley that went "Don't go out! Shut up!". This is how learning goes on in China, rote memorization, and I'm sure the audience was impressed with the "English level" of the students, though I doubt any of them were capable of holding any kind of real conversation. As an example, today a high school student walked up to me looking to practice her English, and the conversation went something like this:

Me: "So... do you live on this campus?"
Her: (blank stare)
Me: "Do you live at this university? Do your parents work here?"
Her: "Yes, my father is a teacher and my mother works at the library."
Me: "Oh, I have a question you could help me with. I had trouble buying a train ticket today, and they wrote this down. What does this sentence mean?"
Her: (blank stare)
Me (pointing again to a Chinese sentence): "What does this sentence mean?"
Her (after a long pause): "Have you ever been to Beijing?"
Me: "Um... yes, I was there for a day."
Her: "Is China better?"
Me: "Is China better than what?"
Her: "Thank you, goodbye."

Tonight was Round 2 of the English competition, and it must have been obvious how much I didn't feel like being there, because Shirley immediately said "oh, you look so serious!". During the inevitable pictures, I obviously wasn't smiling enough, because the photographer walked up to me and physically raised my mouth into a smile with his hand. Of course, the whole thing was also filmed. Shirley asked me, "so have you taken many pictures in China?", and I had to control my laughter. On the first day the announcer unexpectedly turned around and asked me a question in Chinese, which I didn't understand at first and completely stumbled over an answer for, but I fared slightly better tonight, coming up with such witty remarks as "Yes, I like studying guzheng" and "no, I can't play a song for you". The guzheng school made guest performances each night, and the announcer was obviously telling the audience about my studying there and asking the performers about how I was doing. Hopefully I don't do anything in China I want to keep a secret.

After so much over-exposure this week during my holiday I'm exhausted, and feeling particularly foreign. Friday night I watched Lost in Translation with Cynthia, and the movie carried a whole new meaning after having the experience. My travels will involve hours upon hours on the train and bus, but I'm rather looking forward to having nothing to do and no one being able to do a thing about it.

You Foreigners All Look the Same!

One of the most charming features of my new apartment is that it is absolutely infested with mosquitoes and flies, and it's been difficult to sleep an entire night without being woken. This morning I was awoken by a mosquito at 5am, and after it was obvious I wasn't getting back to sleep I decided to at least get up and see what Zhangye looked like at 6:30 in the morning. Of course in China the day was getting started by then, with students studying outside or walking across campus, and in town the old folks were getting their morning exercise throughout the streets. I was pretty sure I knew where the Tai Chi (Taijiquan) routines would be going on, and after proving myself right I was entertained for a while by a small group of elderly Chinese doing Tai Chi with the help of swords and a stereo. The Tai Chi was dignified but there were other scattered groups of the elderly doing exercises that were wonderfully ridiculous looking. I think China is the place to be when you get old - sit outside and plays cards, play with swords, write calligraphy on the ground, and get a bit of respect from the people around you. The open restaurants were packed with middle/high school students in their uniforms but I managed to have my first Chinese-style breakfast (been going strong on fruit and bread as I am very lazy), a warm broth with soggy bread. It grew on me by the end of the meal, I'll give it that much.

Speaking of restaurants and Chinese people doing odd things outdoors, a few times recently I've witnessed the phenomenon of restaurant staff training here. The big restaurants, which will have 3-5 waitresses more than necessary on staff at all times, will train their large staff by lining them up military style on the pavement, with boys standing on attention on one side and girls on the other. A manager will pace up and down the space between the ranks and lecture while the staff stand motionless and silent. Apparently restaurant staffs are often given daily pep talks in this manner as well, and Phillip showed me some photos of the identical-looking staff of an upscale restaurant in another city doing a choreographed dance ritual and practicing balancing bricks on serving trays.

Speaking of people looking identical, I was stopped in the street yesterday by a group of middle school teachers I've never seen before, who smiled and shouted "Gary!". I told them that in fact I was Dan, not Gary (who is in his 50's), but they didn't hear me and went on to talk about their day. After a few minutes one of them said, "oh, we are still waiting for the photos - you said you were going to e-mail them to us but you haven't done so". I panicked briefly that I had taken photos with these people and still had no idea who they were, but finally said "are you thinking of Gary? I'm not Gary, I'm Dan". They said "oh.... ah, actually Andrew, that's right, sorry. You look so much alike". Anyone who has seen Andrew in my photos will note that he is most definitely not me and is the only person in Zhangye with naturally blonde hair, but that doesn't stop people from asking if we are twins. I shouldn't feel bad when I forget or mix up the dozens/hundreds of Chinese people I meet when they can't get a handle on the three or four foreigners they've ever seen.

And in the continuing adventures of trying, and failing, to get something completely mundane and ordinary accomplished, I had to come to terms with the new washing machine I have before me. It looked simple enough to manage but I utterly failed on my own, and just left the clothes for future cleaning. Later that day Sarah and Fiona came over (by which I mean they stopped by unexpectedly without calling) and I enlisted their help. I couldn't understand the characters on the machine or most of what they were saying and they can neither speak English or use a washing machine in the first place, so we spent an absurd amount of time involving a few phone calls to get the thing working. A had a small insight into why Chinese students like taking pictures so much the other day: the first picture of Sarah was taken when she was four years old because her family never had any money.

My students took my final exam yesterday, and the grades seem to be good, mostly 80's, which is what I was aiming for. I asked for feedback from some students I passed and one told me that it was "not too difficult, but not too easy... it was much like autumn weather" - when I'm asked here "how are American students different from Chinese students?" I don't know where to begin. The other day I was taking issue with the fact that the students don't use notebooks, they only scribble things all over their textbook when I write something on the board, never to be found or probably thought about again. The student replied, "oh, we have notebooks, but we don't take them to class so we won't lose them". When Su from OWDC told me on my arrival that I would have to teach them how to take notes, I didn't really believe her at the time.

Finally, Mohamed (known as 'Saber' to the people of Zhangye) has returned to Egypt, where his parents hope to find him a job and a wife. There is talk of him continuing his contract sometime next year but I don't expect him to come back. He was very popular with the students and his farewell at the train station was sad and well-attended. Mohamed, Andrew, and I were the three young teachers and all had the same students this term so we were the subject of particular attention. I found him interesting as the first Muslim friend I've had, and he was generous to the point of putting my American manners to shame.

That Juice Is Also Not There

This week I was moved from my luxurious apartment into a smaller one, as I was warned about from the beginning. The new one is fine, but is smaller and older and built with the Chinese work ethic of "eh, good enough". The bathroom is a bit larger than a closet, and so thin that I hit the wall when I bend down to use the sink. The toilet seat is placed at a 45 degree angle, but there's still no room for the legs of anyone but an infant so you must sit at an uncomfortable angle that's actually perpendicular to the wall. But it's on the first floor with a (very) small backyard, and I have an automatic washing machine rather than the dreaded "twin-tub" time-consumer I had at first.

With classes over, several groups of students have taken me, Andrew, and Mohamed out to dinner or cooked us dinner (dumplings are the classic student dinner). Since Mohamed is leaving, it seems every time I step outside I have seen him taking photos with a different class. Chinese students are fond of digital cameras to say the least, so each dinner usually involves about 50 photos being taken, most of them almost exactly the same but with a different student posing with their teachers. Wednesday was Mohamed's birthday, so lunch and dinner were taken care of by two different groups of students. From experience I'm guessing it's a Chinese thing to get cake all over everyone's face at the end of a birthday meal. Like children, honestly.

On Saturday I saw 5 of my students on their first job, a single day of handing out advertisements in front of the opening of a store that sells mp3 players. For my own amusement I grabbed a few flyers and tried to help them hand them out to people passing by, with mixed results. I asked if they were getting well paid, and they replied "yes, 20 yuan [about $2.50]!". When I responded "oh, per hour? That's pretty good", they said "no, for the day!". They also cooked for me that evening, proving that even the guys here put me to shame in the kitchen. Spending time with students is fun; they obviously aren't interested in "could you help me use the past tense correctly?" so much as "play us a song!" or "what kind of girls do you like?".

Later that night I saw MoMo for the first time in a couple of weeks. The fact that their daughter is friends with not only a boy but a foreigner has worried them enough that they've told her not to see me anymore. Her parents' friends saw us walking on the street and talking and said we are "too close". As Andrew sarcastically put it, "yes, you are too close because you talk to her and listen to what she says; when you see her you ought to have your arms draped around another guy friend, smoking and drinking and ignoring her". The worlds of males and females are much more separate here; if you are seen with a single female everyone assumes you plan on marrying her. MoMo's parents told her she should stop being friends with me and find a boy to marry, as if she is allowed one male at a time only to talk to.

On Sunday I finally got around to visiting the Great Buddha Temple, the one tourist draw of Zhangye and the reason it is mentioned in the Lonely Planet China Guide. I went with Joy, Fiona, and Sarah, who tend to call or randomly show up at my door more often now that Andrew is gone (Joy: "do you miss Andrew?" Me: "um... he's only been gone one day" Joy: "but we miss him very much!"). The tickets were a special price of 5 yuan, which as it turns out was because you couldn't see the big Budda statue at all (the largest reclining Buddha statue in China), only the surrounding buildings. There was a procession of monks and Buddhist laypersons walking a circle and repeating a prayer (mantra perhaps?), something about Guanyin, the Buddhist goddess of mercy who is popular in China. Because Chinese words sound so similar, to my ears I was hearing "that juice is also not there", which I was simply shocked to find wasn't correct.

Good Performance, Bad Performance, Music Lessons

This week is the last of classes, and things have been busy now that the end of the term is approaching. Xiao Ma's new thing is the "M-Club" (for "music" and "movies"), so all the people who frequent the guitar shop now have matching t-shirts, and there will sometimes be "parties" with "activities", which could mean anything. He's also more serious about forming a real band, which includes me, so I'll be spending more time there (every day if he had his way). We had a performance last weekend, which they told me about around 2 hours before it happened. It was in an internet cafe, oddly, and along with the music included unusual performances like street dancing and bicycle tricks. There was a band with a female singer who sang two English songs, both by the Cranberries, one of the five or six Western bands whose music can be bought in Zhangye. I was dragged to the front for a game I didn't understand, that involved pressing the space bar on a computer to get a number, after which someone in the place apparently won, what I don't know.

Last week one of my classes was invaded by a foreigner, namely Andrew. There was mild chaos as he suggested we go outside for pictures during the break, and then the students talked him into talking me into abandoning the rest of the class and drinking apricot tea and talking in Chinese. After we went back inside, Mohamed caught wind of the chaos after finishing an exam and joined the room, so the excitement in the students reached a boiling point with all three of their young foreign teachers in the same room. We were talked into singing Chinese and Scottish songs and generally fooled around. Very difficult job, this. I think both students and teacher have been losing their enthusiasm after 17 weeks of class, so I didn't mind being irresponsible for 50 minutes.

Andrew had a friend named Chris visit, another foreign teacher in another province in China. He was from Denmark, and only about an hour from where I spent the summer doing archaeology, so it was good to reminisce about Denmark and show my total incompetence in pronouncing Danish place names ("could you spell that?"). An example of just how complimentary Chinese people are: one of our student friends complimented Chris' Chinese as having "great improvement"; she had known him for two days.

Tonight was a performance in honor of the Communist Party, in which all of the Chinese English teachers were forced to sing, and have been practicing daily for a couple of weeks now. The foreign teachers were invited to participate, and if I'm to overcome my dislike of singing in public, it certainly wasn't going to be tonight. But as my co-teacher was pestering me I agreed I would still come, which I thought plainly meant that I would watch the performance. Lo and behold, last night I receive an e-mail from my co-teacher telling me that I need to meet at 5pm to get my t-shirt, and arrive at the performance by 7:00 for make-up, and that I better eat beforehand so I don't spoil the make-up; I was meant to just stand there on the stage while the English department was singing. He was shocked and appalled when I said I had no interest in being paraded on a stage just because the judges wouldn't embarrass foreigners with a low score (I didn't say it in those words but we heard that is why they wanted the foreign teachers up there, even if they didn't sing). So, I had to meet him at 5pm, and with a pouty-face on he led me to see the Dean of English Department, which maybe he thought was intimidating, but there's only so much authority someone can muster when they have to keep asking you if their English is correct. The Dean put on a disappointed face, but I explained I never agreed to this and Americans are not keen on being displayed on a stage doing nothing, make-up or not (talent doesn't have that much to do with getting on a stage in China, and some performances in the square have been endearingly amateur). My co-teacher is a strange, uptight man who sent a page-long e-mail criticizing me for not responding to a minor e-mail in time, and I'm hoping not to hear much from him in the future. Many of the other foreign teachers didn't go but I was only one given such a hard time about it, because of him. The whole thing was kind of amusing, because Chinese people in authority are used to having a lot of control over their subordinates' lives, and they have little control over the foreign teachers, and if anything we're the ones who intimidate them, because they have to use their English to talk to us.

I now have a new hobby - learning the gu zheng (古筝), an ancient Chinese instrument called the "zither" in English that has 21 strings, is laid out on a stand over your lap, and played with picks taped to your fingers. There is a school in Zhangye that usually performs in an area of the square in the evenings, so I got talking to them, and decided that what the hell, I'll sign up for lessons on an instrument I've never seen before from a teacher who doesn't speak English. As it turns out the teacher is well-known in these parts, and will travel to Vienna in the summer, which is pretty much unheard of around here. She's amazing at the instrument, and so far I enjoy the lessons. I can figure out most of the important things she is saying, and I otherwise learn by watching her demonstrate. It's not a very difficult transition from the guitar, though it is strange being a beginner at an instrument again. Sarah, one of the excitable music students me and Andrew know, also wants to learn gu zheng; she'll come when I do, which should keep the lessons adequately enthusiastic at all times. Every teacher should be so lucky as to get students like the ones here.

My Chinese Name

I've finally been given a Chinese name - "Dong Yang" (冬阳), which means "sunshine in winter". Because Chinese words sound so similar, the Chinese often explain their name when meeting someone ("Dong as in winter, Yang as in sun"); "Dong" with the same tone also means "east," and "yang" with the same tone could mean "ocean," so there's the potential for some confusion. Chinese name meanings are often flowery and poetic, and the students like to pick English names like "Rain" and "Snow". MoMo gave me the name, so I turn gave her an English name, Maya. I knew she would ask about the meaning so I looked it up, the main meaning being the Hindu concept that reality and the appearance of separate living things is an illusion, not something I had any hope of getting across to her. I just told her it had to do with dreams, and I did originally find it searching for a name with that meaning because it suits her personality, though it seems it means "goddess of dreams" only in the world of Marvel comics.

Me and Andrew now have several mutual Chinese friends, mostly Hexi students from other departments or older English students we don't teach. It's very difficult for me to keep up with the conversation (Andrew rarely talks in English when among Chinese people, which is always) but it's very good for my Chinese. As it turns out the students who want to befriend us are mostly girls, but to be fair almost all the students truly interested in English are girls. In particular there are three very excitable students who have invited us to the park a few times and cooked us dumplings. I'm trying to picture American students giggling around young Chinese guys who could speak only basic English, and somehow I don't see it happening. Andrew had his students give written feedback about his class, and one wrote something like "Thanks to the God for giving us such a handsome foreign teacher to teach us lots of knowledge".

I continue to find out bizarre facts about life in China. Two English students told me they would be busy the next day because they were preparing for an exam; as it turned out they had to practice their gymnastics in order to pass a P.E. exam. They would also have to run; I asked if they would fail if they didn't fun fast enough, which I meant mostly jokingly, but they replied "yes, and we won't get our scholarship". Surely the first thing one does in a job interview for a English teaching position is run the 50 yard dash, so I guess it pays to be prepared. Also, there is no drinking age in China. In the park I saw an 8-year old take a drink of beer from the bottle in front of his parents. Shocked, I asked MoMo how old you have to be buy beer, and she replied "oh, everyone can buy beer". Though I suppose drinking and driving isn't a problem in a country in which hardly anyone can drive. I'm often asked "do you know how to drive?" (they can't believe we learn at 16) and "do you know how to swim?" (very few have ever done so here).

Last week in class as part of a discussion about "stereotypes" and "national characteristics" I asked the students to describe people from different countries. I liked hearing the British described as "optimistic" and Americans as "shy" (I guess they are going by the one British person and one American they know), but the most interesting was always getting them to describe the Japanese. There is a deep-rooted hatred of Japan going back to WWII, so everyone perked up a bit and started shouting things like "aggressive", "cold-hearted", "small", "cunning", etc., while even more enthusiasm was mustered to describe the Chinese as "friendly", "clever", "generous" and every positive adjective they possibly think of. Also last week I gave my first final exam, the final part of which involved summarizing one of the short readings on the exam in their own words. Some memorable statements on Martin Luther King, Jr.: "It is became famous, because he spread the idear which urged people to disobey unjust laws that unfair betwern blank people and white people", and "He was hot and killed in 1968". I should mention that these students were only on the two-year program and are now graduating and have degrees qualifying them as English teachers. But my favorite, which I will quote in full, starts off like this:
"When I reading passed 2, I'm confused! My God! It's too difficult. What should I do? There are a lot of no meaning words. I'm scared I'm going to fail. Take it easy! 'I can I do!' Said to me. So I began to this passage from word to word. When I answered these questions. Because I didn't this passage what's meaning. so I didn't know which chose it. Maybe I haven't confidience. But I tried my best to do it."
She then went on to actually answer the question, and wrote "(Sorry. Maybe I've a mistake. Cancell first paragraph)" at the top. I gave her bonus points for making me laugh.

Never has it been so easy for me to meet people (whether I want to our not), because they will come find me. When leaving my apartment on Sunday there was a woman walking towards me, who stopped me to ask "are you Dan?". I'm not sure how she knew where I lived and why she didn't bother to just phone me, but she owns a small private English school called "You and Me" and wanted me to stop by a celebration her students were having that afternoon. I'm always curious what I'm getting myself into, so I did stop by Dicos (the city's gaudy Western-style fast food restaurant) to talk to the children. It was not entirely unlike being a clown, and I'm starting to get used to being randomly videotaped when I'm talking, but it was amusing. Afterwards Tappy (the woman's English name, which I'll assume she did actually chose herself) invited me to her home for dinner with a group of teachers and Hexi students. It was fun after all, with a few of the students having very good standards of English, and ended with an effeminate male student singing Whitney Houston and Peking Opera and a rousing game of "paper, rock, scissors" to finish the food.

Dragon Boat Festival, sans Boats or Dragons

There happened to be back-to-back holidays last week: first the Dragon Boat Festival, and then Children's Day on June 1st. The main feature of the Dragon Boat Festival are the dragon boat races, which in the middle of a desert are of course non-existent, so people here just eat the traditional zongzi (glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo leaves) and tie string around friends' wrists for good luck (no one told me I was supposed to wear it for a month so I cut the first one off immediately the next morning). For Children's Day I spent the afternoon in Ganquan Park, for the first time in Zhangye fighting through a crowd, for tickets into the park. One of the more maddening Chinese habits is the lack of lines: if a lot of people want something at once it turns into complete chaos. I told my students we should have had the day off because they are often as excitable as children. Last week also had a few amusing moments in class as I taught them American slang and had them use it; there's something wonderful about a job that involves hearing "let's go the canteen, it's totally fabulous. The food is to die for" from a Chinese English student. There was also a group that had obviously learned some slang from somewhere else, but God knows where, as they ended a skit about a bothersome friend by telling him "Fuck off!". Me and Andrew also finally saw the student dorms: eight beds to a room, no desks (certainly not things like computers), and washing clothes by hand in a basin (they often just wear the same clothes everyday).

It's always entertaining to be at the mercy of non-native English speakers. On Saturday a trip was arranged for the foreign teachers by Miss Mao, and we didn't really know what was coming next until we saw it with our own eyes. She had first told me only "we will go to an interesting place... meet at the big tree at 8:30", so she had me hooked from the start. On the bus (we had no idea we were taking a private bus, even after seeing the bus sitting on the campus) she expanded that to "we will go to the countryside.... the hills are different colors". If I had any reservations before, now I was definitely excited. The second and most random stop (there would be many) involved us getting out to look at an office building for a farmer's union for approximately 2.5 minutes, and then getting right back on the bus. After a number of short stops at farmers' homes (more interesting than the union building), we eventually arrived at our destination, which after all was a pretty spectacular landspace of large multi-colored clay formations out in the middle of nowhere (well, even more out in the middle of nowhere). That's the closest thing I've seen to the American West; most likely I'll end up being better travelled in China than America. Lunch was fancy and elaborate (wouldn't have it any other way) - two of the notorious "big plate of chicken" dishes were just the appetizers. I also met Miss Chen, the reclusive teacher from Hong Kong, for the first time. I had had three dramatic sitings of her without seeing her face, and I half-hoped I would go the entire term without meeting one of the foreign teachers (and no one is sure why she is considered a foreign teacher).

In the continuing series of children's performances in the square, I caught a few minutes of what turned out to be Snow White. Chinese children are amusing when dressed in silly costumes, but I think none more so than as the Seven Dwarves. I was mobbed by about 15 senior middle school students in the audience, who fetched another 15 or so and their teacher to come talk to me. Chinese people are probably the most complimentary on Earth; foreigners that can speak any Chinese in China are praised with "your Chinese is great!"; foreigners in America that have any trouble speaking English are often despised.

Also in the square, I had one of my better language adventures so far. An old man was writing calligraphy on the pavement with a water brush, so me and MoMo went to watch. When he found out I knew a little Chinese he and a few passer-bys watched in amusement as I wrote some characters on the pavement. So he started writing sentences to me, such as "which country are you from?", which I in turn answered with the brush. It certainly didn't hurt that MoMo was there to help me. When he left, he didn't say anything, writing only "goodbye, American friend".