Trapped in the Classroom

I got trapped inside a classroom this week.

Currently all of my classes are taught in the same classroom. Because it has a TV inside it is securely locked with a security door that I have the key to. Inside the security door there is also an old wooden door which is now broken and has no handle, and has remained this way for weeks. On Monday this wooden door was closed and utterly impossible to open, and we had to find another classroom. Then, during my Tuesday lesson, a not particularly observant student tightly closed this door while I was speaking.

Sure enough, when it was time to end class and leave, the door could not be opened. Without the handle the latch was not going anywhere, and the class watched on with amusement as I struggled with the door. Students tried the door but it was no more willing to move than Excalibur from the stone. I asked if anyone had a cell phone and the class monitor was quickly on the job. The other students took the chance to take pictures of me with their camera phones (I'm teaching freshman who for the most part have never spoken to a foreigner before this month). Though we were on the first floor we couldn't escape through the windows, as they all had bars. At least no one will steal the TV. After the monitor made a phone call he started shouting out the window at passing students to get help, and trying to communicate with people in the hall by shouting at the small (barred) opening near the ceiling. The students repeatedly asked me if I had a key (after quickly consulting with each about how to say "key" in English); no, I did not have a key to the wooden door, and this was clearly not the problem when there was no handle and nothing to put a key into.

It also began to hail heavily, a very rare event in these parts and an appropriately dramatic touch. Finally a teacher came by to bang on the door really hard, to no avail. She also wanted to know why I didn't have a key. Eventually something she did worked and the door opened, allowing us to leave after waiting around like idiots for 10 minutes after class. I went straight to the English department to inform them about the door. I was assured that because the door has no handle it can't lock and there is no problem. After making clear that I had definitely just gotten stuck in the classroom with 35 students they said they were calling a repairman to take care of it. The door has still not been fixed.

Never a dull moment.

Sichuan Travels

Finishing off my summer travels (in my usual timely fashion), I'll very briefly write about the end of the summer holiday when me and Danielle traveled through Sichuan on the way back to Gansu. The first destination was Zigong, which I chanced upon an interesting description of (at www.holachina.net). It was larger and more modern than what I had imagined, but it was a likable city with some noteworthy ancient buildings and a fun dinosaur museum. At the Wangye Temple I had my first and so far only proper teahouse experience, which was quite enjoyable but does not necessarily make for a exciting story.




Next we set up base in Chengdu and made a day trip to Leshan, a city renowned for having the largest Buddha statue in the world. It was worth braving the crowds to see the Buddha and the rest of the grounds were both attractive and practically deserted.




Chengdu was the last stop before returning to Zhangye. Three years ago I doubt I had even heard of Chengdu, but it is among the largest cities in China with a population of 11 million. Chengdu has all the hallmarks of modernity one would expect in such a large city, our chief interests being pizza and Western-owned bars with great music. Many large Chinese cities rub me the wrong way but I would include Chengdu along with Shanghai and Xi'an in the short list of big Chinese cities I could live in.

One of my favorite moments in Chengdu was in the square in the evening, with the giant Mao statue paternally watching over us. The square is undergoing major renovation including a stop on the city's upcoming subway system, and is now outfitted with a fountain system that by Danielle's account wasn't there last year. It's a flashy fountain with jets of water that dance and shift unexpectedly, but the real fun of it was watching the locals' immense joy over the fountain. Children and college students (who have their childish streaks anyway) got the greatest kick out of running up to the fountain and running away when the water shifted and sprayed them, with amused adults watching on. I'm not sure Americans could muster quite so much enthusiasm over a fountain, and it's often for the simplest of reasons that I love being around the Chinese.

Jones Family in China

At the beginning of my summer holiday, my father and 22-year old brother Erik came to China for a visit, a trip I had long anticipated. It was an eventful and rather successful two weeks, but I'm going to keep the write-up relatively short, especially since I write this blog partly for my family and half of them were there.

The start of the trip was near disaster--as I waited for the two of them to arrive in the Lanzhou airport, wondering why their flights wasn't appearing on the arrival board, I realized for the first time that the copy of the ticket I had said "22 Jun" instead of "22 Jul," nearly impossible to notice from the way the ticket was printed. My plan of buying their tickets from Beijing to Lanzhou really early had backfired, with the travel agent selling me tickets for the wrong month. To my immense relief they arrived on a slightly later flight; after some confusion in Beijing they were able to get same-day tickets on the same airline for cheap.

The first day was spent in Zhangye, where they were able to meet a number of my friends and see in person where I'm teaching and why I like it so much (the food by itself is reason enough). Their first meal was at China Fire, where owner and friend He Le cooked up some fish. I don't like fish in China because of the tiny, deadly bones, which combined with the spicyness make the dish at best annoying to eat and at worst lethal. He Le placated me by saying "oh, this fish has no bones." When it arrived with every bone intact, I brought this to his attention, to which he replied "oh, well it has far fewer bones that other fish." Chinese-style communication. In the top picture they are standing with my friend Little Ma's father, who is a painter and quite generously gave my dad and Erik a painting each as gifts.

After Zhangye we visited Jiuquan, a city similar in size to Zhangye where we were invited to visit the homes of my friends Joy (her Chinese name is 徐莉) and Beth (高彩霞). Joy and her uncle can be seen with my dad and brother in the second pictures above. During this stay, and throughout the trip, my friends insisted on calling my dad "Uncle" in English because using his first name would be rude. There something endearing about my non-English speaking friend Beth catching my dad's attention with "uncle" and leading him around. We were guests in one of Joy's English classes, a summer class she organized completely on her own by going door to door and renting a classroom. It took her a lot of work to convince the wary, mostly poor locals that their children would benefit from extra English class, and she made enough money for herself to pay off a decent amount of tuition she still owed the school. Knowing her situation I had insisted she borrow money from me, but all she ever took in the end was 10 yuan (about $1.20) to buy a train ticket at the end of last semester when she had quite literally run out of money. Nowadays Chinese people are often accused of excessive greed and concern for money, and I'm sure that sometimes it's true, but you don't have to look far to disprove most stereotypes.



After Joy's class we rode to her Uncle's house in a cart, powered by her cousin on a bicycle. I knew this was going to be serious "country living" and was looking forward to the stay, as well as the reaction of my dad and brother. Overall they enjoyed it, despite the perils of using the toilet: it was nothing more than a pit in back of the house, and to even reach it one had to run the gauntlet of two blood-thirsty dogs. At the end of its chain, the second and larger of the two was no more than a foot or so from the toilet, all the while barking and trying to break free and tear your face apart. Add to this a curious cow, whose large head comfortably fit over the fence and into the bathroom "stall" to see what you were up to, and the fact that a family member insisted on chaperoning any guest to the toilet at a close distance, and you have your ideal Chinese bathroom experience to welcome newly arrived foreigners. The bathrooms in general (Western, sit-down toilets are quite rare outside of classier hotels and homes) were a constant source of shock/amusement/photo opportunities for my dad and brother throughout the trip.

After Jiuquan it was back to Lanzhou for a flight and an unexpected hospital visit. My parents give to a charity called Smile Train which fixes cleft palates in poor children around the world, and my dad (who is a doctor) had a visit organized for us at the participating hospital in Lanzhou. We were met at the train station by head surgeon Dr. Lu and an attractive medical student with the English name Sara who would act as translator. They had obviously been confused by the e-mail I sent to Dr. Lu, as Sara was eagerly holding a sign that said "Welcome Dr. Dan." My dad and Erik were surprised and amused at the royal treatment we received, especially the banquet lunch with some of the higher-ranking hospital staff that ended in drinking games (one hopes they didn't have surgery in the afternoon). During the hospital tour my dad started to take a picture of a dental hygienist working on someone's teeth, but they made him wait while she awkwardly put on her mouth guard and cap. A doctor beside me said quietly to Sara "we wouldn't want the foreigners to think that..." but she stopped him and said "he can understand Chinese" while motioning to me. I gave a knowing smile.

Once we left Gansu, the trip became significantly more touristy and less unique, so I don't feel the need to go into detail, as plenty of travel writing exists about these places. We spent three days in Yangshuo, followed by shorter stays in Hangzhou, Xitang, and Beijing, including a day trip to the Great Wall. We did a four-hour walk on the Great Wall, starting at Jinshanling (金山岭) and ending at Simatai (司马台), a good choice that escapes the hordes of tourists that apparently descend on spots like Badaling that are close to Beijing. The least known of the places we visited was definitely Xitang (西塘), a fairly quiet little water town in Zhejiang province that was a nice change of pace from the large, modern Hangzhou. The pictures below are from the area outside of Yangshuo as well as the Great Wall.



Finally, I'll include a brief excerpt from the journal my father wrote about trip (which totals over 20 pages). I enjoyed seeing their surprise at all the little cultural differences I'm now used to (though still amused by), which have been put down in writing by my dad:

General Observations About The Chinese

Everyone:

They love to cook and love to eat and most of their life centers around food.
Their families are very close and they all respect one another including the kids.
They have very little in the way of possessions and are much happier then most of us.
They enjoy “taking a rest” after lunch and can stay up real late at night.
They love to do everything and share everything (including experiences) in groups.
They have tremendous pride in their locality and also in their nation as a whole.
They love to have visitors, especially foreign ones, and are incredibly hospitable.
They love to have their picture taken.
They are getting much taller.
They generally seem to be where we were at in the 1940-50s
They do not know how to form lines and wait their turn.
They never touch their food with their hands.
They squat rather than sit on the ground (like "animals & wild people").

Men:

Men love to play drinking games with each other using beer in shot glasses.
Men chain smoke
Men drive crazily.
Men sometimes are seen wearing their shirt with its bottom rolled up exposing their belly.

Women:

Women do not drink alcohol.
Women do not smoke.
Women ride on the back of bikes and motorcycles in a side-saddle manner.
Women respect themselves and their men.
Women are great cooks.
Women do all the cleaning and serving.
Women find lighter skin to be more attractive and some cover up completely outdoors.

Items that could be used in making squares for travel bingo in China:

- girl riding side-saddle on back of bicycle
- kid standing up between parents on motorcycle (no helmet)
- man with shirt rolled up over belly
- “welding mask” on woman to block the sun
- arm cuffs on woman to block the sun
- a women with an umbrella to block the sun
- public urination
- hacking up and spitting out a “lugie”
- a cow or water buffalo being walked along the roadside
- people playing badminton on the side of the road with no net
- “happy pants” on a baby boy
- hawker shouting “hello, water”
- a rickshaw
- a motorcycle/cart hybrid
- a bicycle extremely overloaded
- a cart or truck extremely overloaded
- poor “Chinglish” on a sign
- a bathroom with a Western toilet
- a person squatting
- men playing drinking games
- people doing Tai Chi
- a car passing a car that is passing another car

Bonus squares (automatic wins):

- any Chinese forming a line
- a car stopping for a pedestrian
- a bus that is not packed
- a bathroom with toilet paper
- a motorcyclist wearing a helmet
- a Chinese man wearing a green hat (means his wife is cheating on him)

Guizhou Travels

note: if you are in China and therefore must use complicated means to actually read this and other blogspot blogs, I recently came across the best method I've yet seen


After my father and brother left I met up with friend/co-worker/bearer of confusingly similar name Danielle in Guizhou province. Before meeting her I killed a day in Tongren (铜仁). An opinionated woman who resembled Jabba the Hut told me about America over my bowl of local noodles. The only thing I understood was that America is not stable, unlike their stable China.

With limited options that night I wandered into one of the only places open, a karaoke bar. A birthday celebration was in full swing and I was eventually coaxed into joining the party, and even talked into singing Chinese karaoke for the first time. I was pleasantly surprised when the men in the group insisted I drink slowly the whole night. I obviously wasn't in hard-drinking Gansu anymore. A fake platinum blond with a cigarette in the group who exuded old Hollywood cool eventually made sure I went home in a taxi, informing me that "this place isn't stable."

The next morning I watched a blind fortuneteller under the shade of some trees for an hour or so and chatted with the elderly Chinese whose had noticed me. One of them asked me "are you American or Japanese?" Later in the conversation he became confused and said "in your country..... you're Japanese, right?" I was once told a story by another foreign teacher about a blond woman arriving at a school to teach and being confused with the new Japanese teacher. The school also later insisted on giving the actual Japanese teacher a spoon during the first banquet, despite her insistence that they also use chopsticks in Japan. The blind man talked with me for a short time and while making polite conversation I almost asked "are you often busy?" but stopped myself; "busy" (忙 máng) and "blind" (盲 máng) are pronounced exactly the same in Chinese and "are you often blind?" didn't seem like a very polite question.

After several hours on the bus next to a drunk 65-year old philosophy professor who looked like Professor Snape from Harry Potter and adored America, I was in Kaili (凯理) where I would meet Danielle. This was the starting point for our exploration of southeastern Guizhou, home to a wide variety of ethnic minorities, including the Miao (苗族) and Dong (侗族). We passed a couple of very pleasant days in the villages of Xijiang (西江) and Zhaoxing (肇兴), where a way of life completely different from that of the dominant Han Chinese could be observed. We only saw a glimpse of two of the area's many cultures (by official count there are 55 minority cultures in China in all) but each had its own language, style of dress, and architecture, and I found the trip much more invigorating than the many hours of anthropology classes I attended in college.

In Xijiang we encountered a group of about 20 French tourists led by a Chinese-speaking man from Cameroon, and some miscommunication while they ordered dinner led to the unusual situation of A. the man from Cameroon speaking to the Miao hostel manager in Chinese B. the manager speaking back to me in dialect Chinese because I could understand her (only slightly) better C. me talking to the man from Cameroon in English and finally D. him translating back to his friend in French. After dinner I ended up with my first translating "job," as I was asked to expand their English menu by about 80 dishes, a good challenge. Earlier we had noticed a spontaneous but full-fledged game of basketball had broken out between five of the French and a Chinese team in uniform, with a referee and practically half of the small town watching and cheering.

In Zhaoxing I went out in the evening alone and befriended an entertaining group of young Chinese - four likable girls, a portly man from the Bai minority who sang when he lost in our drinking game, and a charismatic man from Guangdong with a serious smoker's voice who had driven by himself all the way from Beijing. Though I couldn't keep up the conversation was much more stimulating than normal (in a year and a half the only time I've seen discussion and even disagreement about the Taiwan issue) and it was one of my more memorable moments of the summer.












The bus rides on winding, bumpy roads through this part of Guizhou were memorable in and of themselves, both for the beauty of the scenery and the curious things the locals brought on board. During one trip a man was standing in the aisle next to me when an unmistakable sound come from the sack he was holding tightly in his hand: "meoooowww..... meoowwww......" When the ride got bumpy this changed into a frenzied "meeOOWWW!!!! mEOOWW!!!!" On various bus rides we saw chickens in a sack, ducks in a sack (one of them tried to bite a baby), and enormous fish in a sack. During a stop for food on one bus ride we heard the yelping of a dog, and quickly realized it was coming from a large, moving sack across the street. The sack, with no visible air holes, was tied to the back of a motorcycle that had just ridden in. This was definitely dog eating country and when two men took the dog out of the sack we thought we were going to watch them kill it on the street right then and there. They didn't, merely tying it up where it could pant and drool as it wished.

Last stop in Guizhou was Chishui (赤水), which is so close to Sichuan you could probably reach it with a baseball and unsurprisingly was the start of Hot Pot country, a distinctive Sichuan meal popular throughout China. Me and Danielle were intrigued by a paper-burning ritual by the river in honor of a deceased relative. It was not a gloomy affair, with the family joking around with each other and one middle-aged man looking simply bored as he fanned himself and rolled up his shirt over his large gut. The city itself was small and quite pleasant, and allowed for a couple of outings to nearby waterfalls and surrounding bamboo forests.

Hunan Travels

I'm now in the midst of about four weeks of traveling over my summer break, and wanted to make some comments as I go along. Most excitingly, my father and brother visited China for the first time and traveled with me for two weeks, but I'll write about that in more detail when I have the chance, probably when I return to Zhangye. For now I'll just talk about the past few days after they flew home and I left Beijing.

I ended up heading to a small place in Hunan Province called Fenghuang (凤凰; the name means "phoenix"). There is no train station in Fenghuang so I first had to head to the nearby city of Huaihua (怀化). As I waited for my train in the Changsha station a girl my age in over sized sunglasses took the empty seat next to me, greeted me with a confident "hello," and then stammered for about 15 seconds, managing only "speak...... China......?" I assured her I could speak Chinese (I was also clearly reading a book about Chinese grammar, dork that I am), and she immediately relaxed. As a college graduate she had probably studied English for 10 years; I have my serious doubts about China's policy of mandatory English instruction for all students. She was named Chao Lang (巢浪) and was heading to the same city, where she works in the construction business.

I've been having a hell of a time understanding the accents in southern China, even the normally standard Chinese of students, and conversation with Chao Lang was awkward and brimming with silence. Even so, it's not necessary for a Chinese-speaking foreigner to be clever, and she suggested we hang out while I killed time until my bus the next day. Actually, translated literally she said "why don't you come to my place and play." This sounds saucy indeed but in Chinese it's simply the way you talk about hanging out with a friend.

Even so I was wondering what this pint-sized girl, with her smoking habit, big earrings, and tiny shorts was up to. As it turned out not much; she took me to her apartment, which had five people in two bedrooms, introduced me to her co-workers/roommates (it's normal for your job to arrange your living situation in China), treated me to her roommate's cooking, and found a hotel for me. Oddly, 20 minutes after meeting me she had also suggested I could come down for next Chinese New Year if I didn't have plans. The Chinese are nothing if not hospitable.

The city of Fenghuang, from the road, looks like a hidden gem of ancient China - picture-perfect traditional architecture, a lazy canal, working class Chinese hiding from the sun in lampshade hats, picturesque countryside. It's not in the guidebooks, and I had only read about it 48 hours earlier on the internet. On closer inspection, it's quite a nice place but is oozing with Chinese tourists. I don't feel the need to go into the amusing spectacle of Chinese tourists, as I can refer you to a spot-on description I read yesterday on another blog I like. The site of boatloads of Chinese in identical orange lifesavers, singing in unison to the tune of a microphone-wielding woman in a token minority outfit outside of my hotel room window was humorous, followed quickly by very annoying. However, the advantage of the herd mentality of Chinese tourists is that if you move a couple of hundred meters away from the crowds you will be completely alone, and down the river I watched local boys swimming (many naked) and jumping gleefully from a bridge.

It hasn't quite been totally ruined but the town has been built up for tourism in a major way; a sign that said "No Jap!" in English and Chinese in one of the bars caught my attention. In the evening I was drinking imported Budweiser at imported prices when the woman sitting near me passed me a note in Chinese, along the lines of "are you also alone? Don't misunderstand me, I don't normally talk to strangers but if I'm not bothering you maybe we could have a conversation. Do you speak Chinese?" I liked that she didn't ask if I can speak Chinese until the end of the paragraph. I had seen her sitting by herself and casting glances at me. She was older than me and drinking by herself, and I thought she might be a prostitute. It turned out she was a kindergarten teacher. Her accent wasn't so difficult to understand, but liquor-inspired Chinese shouted into my ear over the sound of live musician with a full PA system was, and it was kind of a relief when she finished her glass of mysterious Miao nationality alcohol and we went our separate ways, accompanied only by the sounds of Chinese cover songs and the glow of tacky neon lights.

Chinese Words and Phrases 3: 自我批评 zìwǒ pīpíng

Looking through old text messages on my phone I was reminded of something Andrew had passed on to me from a mutual student we've taught:

"Oh, Dolly [classmate] is very afraid to see our headmaster, you know the self-criticism only has 3,000 [characters], not 10,000, so she had to write the rest. She is very busy these days! Terrible!"

A self-criticism (自我批评) is a very Communist Chinese phenomenon that I know of mostly through its use during the Cultural Revolution, when as part of the political paranoia of the time people were obligated to make criticisms of themselves and their failings to uphold the ideals of the Communist Party, or in more extreme cases to confess their "counter-revolutionary" crimes. At that time this was often done in an atmosphere of intimidation and threats. Mao on self-criticism: "Conscientious practice of self-criticism is still another hallmark distinguishing our Party from all other political parties. As we say, dust will accumulate if a room is not cleaned regularly, our faces will get dirty if they are not washed regularly. Our comrades' minds and our Party's work may also collect dust, and also need sweeping and washing." Recently the governor of Shanxi province in northern China publicly made a self-criticism for the slave labor scandal in which hundreds of people had been kidnapped and forced to work in illegal brick kilns.

I never did find out what my student got in trouble for or what she had to write about. Another curious feature of Chinese education.

Qinghai Travels, Part V: Close Encounters with Knife-Wielding Mongolians

When we returned to Xining I was still ill and needed a day to recover, and since we didn't arrive early enough for the day trip we had planned anyway it became a day of rest. The next day was set aside for Qinghai Lake (青海湖), probably the best known attraction of Qinghai Province. It is the largest lake in China and features blue, unpolluted water and the aptly named Bird Island, which has... lots of birds.

The lake is well outside of Xining with no public transportation, so despite knowing better we had to sign up for a Chinese tour group. This was the low point of the trip (disregarding the several days of bus riding) and I was only further turned off of tour groups. In a marathon of a day trip we spent 10 hours riding on the bus to spend a grand total of one hour at the lake. The distance was the main problem, but more irritating were the numerous stops at lame souvenir shops along the way. Before the lake we were also subjected to the Sun Moon Mountain, a hideously touristy Tibetan temple crawling with opportunists selling Chinese tourists the chance for a photo on a yak in a tacky minority costume. It was a big artificial yawn in comparison to the temples in use we had already seen. Referring to the Tibetan prayer flags covered in obviously Tibetan writing on the way in (it vaguely resembles Arabic), a man behind us on the bus asked a companion "is that writing Tibetan or English?" I would compare this to an American not being able to differentiate say, Chinese and Russian writing, after having had six years of compulsory Chinese study at school.

Having seen the ocean in my life the lake itself wasn't too thrilling, though it was indeed a very pretty lake. It was much too crowded with tourists, and the time was too short. Besides that it was far and away the most expensive day of the trip; Andrew even got in a protracted argument with a restaurant owner when he tried to shamelessly cheat us by charging 5 yuan each for tea. Before going to Qinghai every single Chinese friend asked us "are you going to Qinghai Lake? Qinghai Lake is very beautiful." When I replied yes but we were mostly interested in Yushu, they would nod blankly and say "oh," which is probably one reason Yushu was 100 times better: no one knows about it.

The last destination of the trip was Tongren (同仁), which stood out mostly for a reputation for distinctive Tibetan paintings known as Tangka. We were approached on the street by a young Mongolian man without a whole lot to do, and made a friend for the day who showed us around town and helped us. When we talked about the paintings he started telling us about how they were illegal but we could come back and buy them at night in the temples, and we had to clear up that we were buying new paintings for sale, and not antique hunting for the black market. True to our different personalities, Stephen went marching up hills by himself at the first temple, while me and Andrew relaxed in the shade talking to the Mongolian, whose Chinese name was Bateer. A Mongolian through and through, Bateer is in the habit of carrying a large knife on his belt at all times. When we finally saw Stephen again he shouted at us "that was flippin' awesome!" Apparently we had missed the best temple ever. But on the other hand, it was hot out.

Bateer took us to another temple complex where we could buy paintings. We were introduced to a monk artist and his entourage of apprentices, and soaked up the surroundings of his atmospheric workshop/home. I wasn't originally planning on buying a painting, but Stephen's enthusiasm caught on, and I finally broke down as I realized I would be returning to America with very little to show in terms of purchases. I asked the monk to explain the painting, but he would only say "it's too complicated," and in Chinese I was definitely going to take his word for it. Afterwards we had to be heading back to Zhangye, with Bateer (who was fond of us and still had nothing to do) hanging out on the bus until it was time for us to go. About two months later, that finally wraps up the story of the May holiday. I'll try to be a little more on the ball when I travel this summer.