Black River, Drinking in a Yurt

So imagine that at your job in America, there is a national holiday that gives you three days off, Monday-Wednesday. In order to let everyone enjoy a full week's vacation, Thursday and Friday are re-scheduled so that you work the previous Saturday and Sunday instead. How far in advance do you think you would know about this? Two months? Six months? In China, make that two days. Tonight my "co-teacher" (the Chinese teacher in charge of telling me what's going on, who I had forgotten about because this is the first time he's contacted me) called to inform me that we will work this Saturday and Sunday so we can take seven days off next week. Luckily I am not the only foreign teacher, and I found out about this about a week ago from my better-informed colleagues; it would have been slightly inconvenient to have made plans and bought train tickets starting this weekend. Chinese people don't plan ahead because they simply can't with the way things are run here - you can't even buy train tickets until a few days in advance, and there can be so much competition for train tickets that you can't set an itinerary in stone for a long trip. Someone is camping out an hour before the ticket booth opens tomorrow morning for our train tickets, as if it were a Rolling Stones show.

Last weekend me and other foreign teachers went on an organized trip to the Black River, about a half-hour bike ride out of the city. The Black River is almost, but not quite, as majestic as the Susquehana River in Binghamton (if you're not from Binghamton, yes, that is sarcasm). But it was a perfectly nice place and I suppose any river is cause for excitement in a desert province. My students have been very excitable when I've mentioned going to the Black River (they are also just generally excitable; when I asked "what do you want to talk about?" at the beginning of my office hours today the reply was "your new clothes!"), and one student's plans for the week-long holiday are "go to the Black River".

For lunch we ate at a pseudo-Mongolian restaurant, in a "yurt" (the Mongolian-style hut) that had a big-screen tv. Public bathrooms in China are generally a nightmare but this was one of my favorites so far, basically a room with three walls and a dirt floor where you picked a good spot to pee on. After we finished eating they wheeled out a monstrosity of a karaoke machine in front of the yurt entrance, effectively blocking any escape, and one of the waitresses launched into song at more-than-adequate volume. The trick was, while she was singing one of us would be picked to drink a cup of baijiu, not the weakest liquor I've had, and in the likely case we were coaxed into finishing it before the song ended they would refill it and we would have to finish that cup as well. That's Sam in the picture, the foreign teacher from America by way of India. After the karaoke came the drinking games, a favorite mealtime activity among Chinese men. I can't actually talk to the head of the Foreign Affairs Office, so I'll have to be satisfied with playing a drinking game with him that begins with showing each other the middle finger for friendship.

That evening 7 of my most social students had made plans to cook dinner at my apartment, which turned out to be a somewhat chaotic three-hour extravaganza which was fun but did not inspire me to take up Chinese cooking. Along with the heapfuls of dumplings there were 7 different dishes, which after the extravagant lunch brought my dish total for the day to around 15 or 16. I really wonder now whether the Chinese don't have more fun with life than us; more than the British, at any rate. Dinner was of course excessive and left-overs were dealt with in the usual rounds of rock-paper-scissors, with losers eating to the point of bursting.

I was invited to eat with students a second time early this week, from my only year-two class which I was beginning to think hated me. They only got into the two-year program (testing decides basically your entire life here) and are soon graduating, and know for a fact they are graduating, so they are a bit ambivalent about coming to class or actually talking when they do come. Out of 35 students, 16 came last time, so I took attendance for my own amusement and personally thanked them for coming. Phillip has the same class and apparently he had 6 of them show up for his lesson in the afternoon. Of the four students I ate with, I hadn't actually seen three of them in weeks, including the student whose very spartan one-room dorm we were in.

This week's lesson has been an attempt to teach about American humor, which has not been as successful as hoped. I segued from the reading that mentions Mark Twain into some humorous Twain quotes, and the sarcasm and cynicism simply go over their heads despite my attempts to teach what "sarcasm" is. In the hands of a Chinese English student the quote "It is better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt" becomes an uplifting message about not letting peoples' opinions get you down. I've also been trying to teach what "satire" is, and I don't think I've caught even a smile at The Onion article I've passed out for them to read. I guess it takes more than a two-hour lesson to teach American humor to the least-cynical people I have ever met, although the comic strips at least have gotten a few laughs.

Yellow Submarine

Last Thursday night me, Andrew, and Phillip stopped at the Xinjiang restaurant where my friend plays the dutar for some lamb kebabs and music. This time I brought my guitar, much to their delight, and of course I had to sing many an English song. Me and Ehkbet attempted a guitar-dutar duet, with mixed results, and as we were outside we attracted an audience that reached 30 during the night. Me and Andrew have the same students, and a large group of them who passed by stayed to listen and take loads of photographs (that's Andrew in the picture). They fed us three platefuls of kebabs and a few beers, and refused to take payment at the end of the night.

I have finally claimed the bicycle the school gave me, in time for a bike ride with Andrew, Mohammed, two students Mohammed knows, and Miss Mao from the Foreign Affairs Office and her husband. Miss Mao is always full of personality, and usually wearing the brightest red clothing I have probably ever seen. She clearly had no plan but eventually led us to a fishing pond outside the city, where Mohammed failed to outsmart the Chinese fish, and through the Muslim quarter to a good restaurant. I had pictured every Chinese town having a street of half-dead sheep lying on the pavement and unidentifiable animal parts, and now I have seen Zhangye's, complete with sheep's heads and bloodied wool coats. I had asked Miss Mao about the possibility of a cleaning service for my apartment, and she unexpectedly recruited the two English students with us, which is good news but feels exploitive somehow.

Saturday night MoMo called to invite me to a "party" of Xiao Ma's, which I figured could mean anything after the "game" at Hexi University. It turned out to be a big get-together at a restaurant (hot pot as per usual), which wasn't too thrilling after having already eaten and not understanding any of the conversation. The next day MoMo helped me with some shopping I had to do, and in true Chinese style I was able to ride my bike with a small girl on the back. After I was finished and about ready to go home she suggested he go for a hike, in a place that "wasn't far". After 20 or 30 minutes of riding against a strong wind with a second person on the back, I was getting rather tired, and I asked how much farther it was. She said another 20 minutes; it was also about 5pm, an awkward time to be arriving somewhere 40 minutes out of the city for a hike. Sometimes I wonder if the Chinese think we are as illogical as we think they are.

This week in class I'm doing a lesson on music, and I do love a job in which I can bring my guitar to work. Most of my students don't so much as know who The Beatles are, so I figured it was time to educate them. It's been a fun lesson so far, perhaps highlighted for me by having the students write out on the blackboard what they think the words are to Yellow Submarine after listening to it ("and he told The Beatles' life" instead of "and he told us of his life", "and our friends all live in a stone" instead of "and our friends are all aboard" etc.). I get asked to sing so often here that it no longer bothers me to do it, and leading the students in "Let It Be" with their sweet angelic voices has been worth it. I'm not too bothered about public speaking anymore either, or the fact that a male friend is likely to leave his hand on my knee while talking; I guess it takes something like living in China to break down some barriers.

Dust Storm

With so few clouds the weather can change very dramatically here, but so far never as severely as in the last few days. Up until three days ago, there was a streak of t-shirt weather that left me with some color on my face, and I confidently retired my winter coat out of the main closet. However, I woke up yesterday to see my first sandstorm raging outside. These are not uncommon in the spring around here, but I was quite taken by surprise. Basic visibility was fine but the horizon was lost in a hazy screen of dust and sand, and with the sun completely out of sight the temperature absolutely plummeted. I could smell dust all day, and sand has infiltrated every room of my apartment. Today there is no sandstorm, but the weather is absolutely freezing, to the point of seeing my breath and shivering in my winter coat this afternoon. Last Thursday there was also an earthquake during my office hours, and though I felt the building shake briefly it was so minor that I wasn't certain it was really an earthquake.

I had another "only in China" moment the other day. I had purchased a backpack from one of the bigger stores in town, and had a sizeable tear in it in less than one week (you get what you pay for). At the guitar shop I asked where I could get it fixed, and lo and behold there was a dusty old man in his blue Mao suit sitting on the next street over with an ancient sewing machine and thread. He repaired the bag, which set me back about 7 cents US. I also finally concluded the adventure that has been setting up office hours. The first five weeks, I had the following conversation with the English Department every week:
"I'd like to set up my office hours"
"Oh..... ah, well we haven't been able to set those up for you yet. Come back next week"
Finally, the head of the Office told me to just set them for whenever I wanted to, exactly what I knew would happen since week 1. When I showed up for my first office hours, the door was locked. I kindly asked across the hall in the English Department if they would unlock the door for me, to which I was told "ah, well we don't have a key. Other teachers have all the keys. I know this is very inconvenient for you". They then set about calling all the foreign teachers, who were all in class. It had obviously not occurred to them at any point previously that I might need a key.

My Chinese is slowly improving, such that I can make such intelligent observations as "the weather is really cold today!". My vocabulary is a bit selective; I can say "fly a kite" and "play this part on the guitar four times, but more slowly" but not "menu". And if I still don't understand people very well, at least my vocabulary has improved for telling them so. It's still frustrating not being able to really communicate with Chinese locals, especially when they are really keen to. About a month ago I went into a restaurant across from the school where the older couple running it were really friendly, and after about 7 misfires I finally found it again today. If you don't read Chinese well, it's astounding how difficult it is to find a place again, even if you know the street it's on. Every place looks the same, and the little noodle restaurants will have a heavy curtain, characters all over the window, and the minimum of lighting inside in order to effectively prevent you from knowing what's inside. Anyway, after stopping in only once about a month ago I got warm smiles of recognition from them and some attempted conversation, and I'll be sure to stop in more often. Zhangye is small but I still find small surprises (I was shocked to discover an entire street of classy wine bars, and there is a street with bizarre Michael Jackson video-esque neon pillars that change colors), and I expect I'll miss it when I'm gone.

A "Game" with the "Music Team"

Well, I knew the time I was spending with Xiao Ma at his guitar shop would lead to something unusual, but I very surprised to find myself performing with him on-stage at a singing competition last night at the university in front of hundreds of students. We had been practicing a song he wrote and through an English-speaking student he had asked if I would promise to join his "guitar club" and take part in a "game" with him, but I often don't know what they are talking about and didn't pay much attention to it. Even as late as yesterday evening I didn't realize what was going on, until they suddenly announced we were going to Hexi University for the "game", and when we arrived at the school there was a large stage set up with a crowd cheering on the performing students. It was generally karaoke-style and I think we were the only ones to play instruments, but we didn't win. That was one of the largest audiences I've played for, and I've definitely never gotten that much applause for taking the stage. There was a big laugh when I finally looked up from setting up my guitar into the crowd and the lights with a bewildered look. His song is pretty good as far as the singing goes, but my attempts to suggest that three guitar solos might be too many and that the music should change at some point were either not understood or ignored. Actually, apparently not satisfied with the amount of soloing that would go on, he added an additional minute-long introduction at the last minute. There is another competition soon, and he is pretty well set on us playing "Hotel California" (universally adored throughout Asia) and trading singing on the verses with me. No amount of explaining that I neither can nor want to sing on a stage in front of 400 people has worked so far, so we'll see what happens here. And it's best if I just keep the fact that I don't like "Hotel California" in the first place to myself.

There was a singing competition Friday night as well, and it's been satisfying to see some kind of entertainment going on on the campus. I was there with Mohammed, the teacher from Egypt, and I was glad to overhear some students he had been talking to taking their leave to go to a party, the first sign of some students letting loose on the weekend. However, what it turned out to be was a Communist Party meeting; they had joined the Party and were going to attend a two-hour lecture on the virtues of the Socialist Motherland, at 9pm on a Friday. Even Xiao Ma, the living Spinal Tap stereotype of the hard-rocker, brought everyone back to his store after our performance only to have noodles and go to bed at 11:30. And also to put a muzak version of "Hotel California" on repeat for about 40 minutes.

Yesterday I was also invited to fly kites again by my friend Wang Ya Mo, or "Mo Mo" as her friends apparently call her. The way she pronounces it it sounds like "Mama", so I'm not sure how often I will be calling her that. The city square was taken over by a serious-looking military procession, so she took me to a park instead, which turned out to be well outside the city by bus. With her limited English and very quiet personality I often don't know what's going on; after walking about two minutes into the park we had gone out of our way to get to she said only "I think we are wrong" and turned back. So we went across the street into a dusty, barren landscape with nothing but a telephone pole and a few farmers while I silently wondered "where the hell are you taking me?". I eventually got it out from her that there were too many trees in the park for the kite, so after having as much fun as you can with a kite in a desert we headed back into the park to basically walk around and try to think of things to say. She wants me to help her with her English but like most Chinese will not get more specific than "my oral English", and this is definitely a good way to learn Chinese words. When we were almost at the guitar shop where she would again act as translator, she said not to mention we had gone to the park, and waited to enter the store 20 minutes after me. I didn't press her about that but I'm not sure how common it is for men and women to be friends in China, and Xiao Ma is the type to tease her endlessly. She's very hard to read and she knows my stay here is limited and we can barely communicate, but I'm hoping she doesn't have any ulterior motives besides kite-flying and learning English, knowing that the Chinese idea of dating is only of the "Romeo and Juliet" one-love forever variety. That's probably the biggest negative of my stay here; in a city of traditional Chinese values and only two Western women (in their 40's), my dating life isn't looking too promising.

An Unusual Instrument

I went out of town this weekend and saw Lanzhou, the provincial capital, for the first time. Gansu is a good-sized province and it's a nine-hour overnight train trip to Lanzhou. With 3 million or so people it is considerably bigger than Zhangye, and has considerably more foreigners. I even passed Westerners on the street, always a head-turning experience. There is a Western grocery store where you can get exotic imports like cereal, cheese, and coffee (at Western prices), but I was more interested in the DVD and CD shopping. I was also thrilled to get a new book in English, a collection of translated Chinese short stories actually. At least one study has given Lanzhou the honors of "most polluted city in the world", and though the shopping is superior to Zhangye it's a crowded and mostly character-less city and I didn't come away wishing I had chosen my job offer in Lanzhou.

The reason I went to Lanzhou was because I was invited by Julian, the Peace Corps volunteer who teaches at the Zhangye Medical College. We met his friends there on Saturday, who were having a birthday party for a girl turning 23. It was basically like being in college again, playing frisbee and drinking with young Americans. Most of them are near the end of the two years and trying to get out early; you don't get to pick where you are sent by the Peace Corps and I don't know how many of them adored China ("I think we've seen enough cultural things... I'm all about the beach next trip"). They spend their weekends partying and the straight-edge, vegetarian image I had in mind for Peace Corps volunteers was thoroughly destroyed Saturday night. There are a lot of Peace Corps teachers in Lanzhou, and about 15 in one room during the party - more than all the foreigners in Zhangye. The party was fun for sure, but I'm still glad to be in a place cut off from Americans, and would hate to spend my time abroad watching seasons of Six Feet Under on DVD and making homemade kegs. I did get to hear more about teaching at International Schools however, since a teacher named Meredith expects to do that in Africa after she's done with the Peace Corps. International Schools are schools abroad for children of diplomats and other ex-pats, such as the children of Su and Chris from OWDC, where all the students speak English and the classes are regular curriculum, but it happens to be in another country. I would need to get a Master's in education, but this is something I have considered doing, and much more of a serious career possibility than what I am doing now.

While shopping and wandering the streets on my own Sunday, I was reminded that I wasn't in sleepy Zhangye anymore. There was a row of street sellers lined up next to each others, and I bought a number of posters with Chinese paintings for my apartment. I was then looking at the selection of the next seller when all of them suddenly grabbed their carpets of goods and started making a break for it, like something out of Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. I looked behind me, and several men in suits in an unmarked van were getting and grabbing the street sellers. Still holding my posters, I didn't wait to find out if they were ununiformed police or thugs or what, and casually walked on down the street to get my bus. It hadn't really occurred to me that the goods were likely stolen, and I smiled as I pictured the scene of police in western China trying to figure out what to do with a foreigner they have to arrest.

Back on Thursday night, me and Phillip stopped by the Xinjiang restaurant with the young man who plays the two-stringed instrument (called the dutar, literally "two strings" in Persian) for some kebabs and music. Andrew, Gary, and a friend of theirs from Lanzhou also saw us and stopped by, and we ended up staying several hours, while Andrew talked with our new friend Aqbar and I started to get the hang of playing the dutar. Xinjiang being the Muslim Autonomous Region, it's traditional music is much more Middle-Eastern than Chinese, and the dutar is played mostly on one string while the other is left open to act as a drone. After playing guitar for so long and watching Aqbar (who can be seen in the photo in this post) play it, I can improvise songs in my own way on the dutar and learned a few good melodic runs from Aqbar, though I certainly am not playing it the way he does. I expect to visit Xinjiang during the week-long May holiday and am tempted to buy a dutar if one is affordable enough, though I think taking it back home on a plane might be mildly tricky. Aqbar of course does not speak English, and once again music has become a great in to making local friends despite my fledgling Chinese skills.

Ping Pong and Paper, Rock, Scissors

Had a very decent weekend, and the most Chinese so far. On Friday me and four of the other foreign teachers (Andrew, Mohammed, Cynthia, and Gary) met for dinner and had some good conversation, mostly at the expense of our students. The main dish was a local favorite that would translate literally as "big plate of chicken", which is exactly what it was. I was excited to find not only the chicken's claws but the head within the mess; the Chinese are not a people to waste anything. I tried my best to eat the claw, but there wasn't too much meat and it was a little disturbing anyway. We took turns playing with the chicken parts and taking pictures, which I thought might be a little rude until I remembered just how much we are stared at and generally made a spectacle of. Towards the end of the meal we were all shocked into silence as we watched an unknown foreigner walk into the restaurant, an older man and the only non-teacher I have seen so far. It was our turn to stare at the foreigner, who pretended not to see us and sat far away. Like proper Chinese spectators, we all wanted to know where he was from and why he was here but no one wanted to ask.

On Saturday I went down to Xiao Ma's guitar shop again, this time with Gary, the Canadian foreign teacher who's been in China 14 years and knows Xiao Ma. My friend Wang Ya Mo, the primary school teacher and "translator" between me and Xiao Ma was there again as well, although Gary sometimes had to actually translate between me and her. As always there were a lot of students hanging out there, and I ended up performing "Hey Jude" against my will twice, the first time with Gary at least. Two high school girls kept giving requests and were mystified that I didn't know anything by Shakira, Mariah Carey, or China's all-time favorite Western pop group, The Carpenters. Xiao Ma's girlfriend cooked dinner for about 10 of us in the back room (this is where the picture above is from), a spectacular meal with 13 dishes besides the rice. The Chinese often play games during dinner, and this time it was rock, paper, scissors. I'm not sure how our hosts were able to destroy us at a game that doesn't involve skill, but they did. It's easy to get the impression that the Chinese don't have as much fun as us because they work long hours and don't do much of what I think of as "entertainment" (movies, bars, rock shows etc.), but I'm starting to notice how much they enjoy each other's company. I can only picture a group of Westerners getting that excited about rock, paper, scissors if they hadn't seen each other in 8 years or were on drugs, which I think is a compliment to the Chinese. During some of the rounds the losers had to sing a song, which few Chinese have any reservations about. Me and Gary, on the other hand, were struggling to think of something when we lost, and of all the songs we knew we ended up singing a rousing rendition of "Oh My Darlin' Clemetine" (not my pick). On the walk home (at about 11pm, after about 7 hours at the shop) there was a man from Xinjiang Autonomous Region (the large, Muslim, northwestern-most part of China) out in front of his restaurant playing a Xinjiang two-stringed sitar-like instrument. He was happy to sing us a few traditional songs, and seeing my guitar, let me play the instrument for a minute, which made for a memorable end to the night.

On Sunday I socialized only with Chinese people for the first time. I spent the morning and early afternoon with Wang Ya Mo, who called me at 9:30am to invite me to fly kites in the city square, which is such a wonderfully innocent thing for one 22-year old to ask another that I couldn't possibly say no. Her "little brother" (cousin) was there flying his kite, but I don't think he said a word, certainly not to me. Ya Mo's kite was broken as it turned out, so I bought one and made pitiful attempts at getting it to fly in the slight wind. Going back to what I said about the Chinese enjoying each other's company, I was amused to see a middle-aged couple in the square sharing one jump-rope and obviously having a blast. Of all the things to be going on in Zhangye there was what looked like a small pop concert going on on the other side of the square, so we went to investigate. A crowd of mostly straight-faced middle-aged men in suits was watching a girl singing on a stage that was set up, with a giant pink banner behind her and suspicious-looking pink umbrellas set up all around. At the end of each song, there was an eerie silence, and I didn't know whether to take that as a sign that they hated the music or pop concerts are so new that they didn't know they were supposed to clap. Ya Mo explained to me what the elaborate set-up was for: to advertise a brand of milk. The People's Republic your parents knew and feared is gone indeed.

Once the entertainment potential of flying a kite with someone you have trouble communicating with was exhausted, we wandered around town for a bit, highlighted by the sight of two ridiculous costumed cartoon characters walking around to advertise something or other. Ya Mo invited me to have lunch with her mother in her apartment, my first invite into a Chinese home. I think her mother was a bit surprised to see me, and the first thing she said was "I don't speak English" in Chinese, as if I were accustomed to English speakers in Zhangye and this would come as a shock. Lunch was quite good and more than adequate, as can be expected. I will not be cooking for any Chinese until I become a master chef, which is not in my foreseeable future. Typically when I eat with Chinese people they will eat little while insisting I have more and more, which I don't object to but feels a little strange to my Western concepts of politeness. After lunch Ya Mo played some music for me that she likes on the computer. The Chinese love their sentimental music (meaning, all of it) to come with slow video montages of mountains and river valleys, and the traditional-style music was pretty good if you ignored the "fashionable" drum samples and guitar riffs layered on top of it. She wants to work on her English and I am obviously in need of learning more Chinese, so I'm glad that we will "make good friends".

Even earlier than Wang Ya Mo, a few of my students had called me in the morning to see if I wanted to play badminton in the gym with them. They suggested 3:30 for a time, and said they would call again at 3. At precisely 3:00 my phone rang, and it was "Sonya", one of my students. She had obviously been running and was completely out of breath, and wanted to know if I wanted to meet with her and her friends. I said sure and wanted to know when to meet, so she replied "oh, right now. I am waiting for you outside of your building". I had only just gotten home and intended to relax for 10 minutes, but instead had to rush out the door to meet my students. She was in fact not standing outside of my building, and I correctly guessed she thought I lived in the same building as Andrew and some of the other teachers. She was still out of breath when I found her, and we met some of her classmates and went to the gym.

For the next hour or so I faced an unending series of my students on a ping-pong table, a match-up I have long awaited. They were almost all better than me but not by too much, which made for some good matches, though the only person interested in keeping score was a very serious and very random man who took over for 10 minutes and was definitely not my student. I finally quit the ping-pong for the basketball court, where a pick-up game was started and I realized how woefully out of shape I am. However, on this side of the world I am definitely a better basketball player than at home. The gym also had badminton, which I tried briefly, and Chinese chess, which I did not.

After exhausting myself, the students invited me to eat at the canteen with them, and refused to let me pay for my meal. I hadn't been there before, and the large cafeteria atmosphere won't be drawing me back too often. After this I invited the three students who were left, some of my most outgoing and talented at English, to see my apartment. Or rather, they invited themselves, but I was happy to accomodate. They thought it was too big and lonely, and not homely enough for their tastes. I was told by "Vivien" that when she heard they would have a new American teacher this term, she thought I would wear very fashionable clothes. Obviously, I am a poor representative of my country in that department. I was also asked why I don't dress "very open" like the American pop stars they see on TV, and they are convinced that most Americans must be completely different than me. They played me music they like, typical Chinese pop which I tactfully described as "not my style", and I was surprised when they took to the Pavement and Morrissey I played for them, and more surprised when they claimed to know Chinese singers who sounded similar. I will likely spend more time with students in the future, which should be interesting, or at the very least sharpen my ping-pong skills.

Making Chinese Friends

Went back down to the Rock and Roll Guitar Pub last Saturday. The owner Xiao Ma ("Little Ma"; Ma is the surname, and this is how friends of the same age refer to each other in China) was glad to see me again, and insisted on stopping what he was doing and changing my guitar strings for me even though I'm fully capable of doing it myself. As he speaks no English I was again lucky to have someone there who does, his friend Wang Ya Juan who is a primary school teacher our age with a lot of "young and naughty" students. According to Miss Wang, Xiao Ma (the "x" in Chinese Pinyin sounds like "sh") wants me to join his "guitar team" and come down every week. She was translating literally from the Chinese and was not grasping the word "band". So, yes, I have been invited to form a band with Chinese students who love Guns 'n Roses and speak no English. Needless to say, I will not be passing that up.

Xiao Ma has a dream of buying an American Fender guitar, a dream I was forced to crush over the course of the afternoon. He was looking to buy a good guitar from America and have it shipped to him - for about $100. Through Miss Wang I delicately explained that a reasonable Fender guitar will cost a minimum of $300 or $400, not including shipping. He was eyeing Eric Johnson's guitar and wanted to know if he could get it for $100, so I looked it up on the internet: $2,000. After an extended period of looking at guitars on musiciansfriend.com, I think reality finally set in, and that was that.

Xiao Ma also took me and Miss Wang to dinner, hot pot once again. I then proceeded to fail at handling my chopsticks, stain my shirt with hot sauce, blow my nose around 20 times (not very polite in China, though spitting is fine), and very nearly die from a hot piece of fish containing about 40 small bones. Miss Wang is a very nice girl but her English is unspectacular, and my Chinese is much worse, so conversation was a bit limited. However, I have actual Chinese friends now, at a guitar shop no less, definitely a step in the right direction. After dinner we went back to the shop to play some more music. I knew they would force me to sing so I brought the lyrics to "Let It Be", and I can only hope the language difference helps mask my terrible voice. Random students hang out there, so there was a girl on drums for some songs. When I finally left at 11pm they watched me take a taxi to make sure I didn't walk home, and Miss Wang called me at home to make sure I was "safe". As an American this was hilarious to me, and you would know why if you saw Zhangye.

To help my Chinese studies I bought a large Chinese-English dictionary this week. It was published in 1978, and therefore serves two purposes: a) looking up Chinese words, and b) good old-fashioned propaganda. Here are some of the example sentences used in the dictionary: "Thanks to the leadership of the Party, we are leading a happy life today"; "When the enemy halts, we harass him" under a word for "rest" or "halt"; "Wherever the troops went, they never infringed on the peoples' interests" under "army"; and my favorite so far, "No one is born with a proletarian world outlook; one acquires it only through ideological remoulding". I couldn't find an entry for Confucius besides "Confucius and Sons: as in the popular slogan, 'Down with Confucius and Sons!'".

I have also had the bizarre experience of a haircut in China. Walking into a haircutter's and saying only "I want" while making a hair-cutting motion, I spent the next half-hour having my hair washed and shampoo-ed, then my scalp massaged for five minutes (by a guy, while my hair was full of shampoo so it was extremely hard not to laugh while looking at the mirror), then my hair washed again, and then cut, followed by another round of wash and shampoo. This set me back all of $1.25, a full ten times cheaper than home.

I don't find it too hard to get by in daily life, but most everything is just slightly different somehow. My campus doesn't seem all that different from a Western campus, but you notice little things like students reading to themselves out-loud from books while standing outside, possibly because of the limited study space you have with 6 or 7 to a dorm room. There is also a loudspeaker system outside, which at certain times plays inspirational music or messages in Chinese or English.

Yesterday, a group of students from class six, my most motivated, invited me to watch the basketball game with them after class. It turns out that different classes form their own basketball teams that play against each other, so me and my students watched their classmates from the side of the court while cheering "Liu Liu! Jia you! (Six Six! Come on!)". I can't say much for their talent, but they have heart. After about 20 minutes they insisted I had better go to get inside, because it was too cold out for me. They want to play basketball or ping-pong with me this weekend, and I suspect they are better at ping-pong than basketball. My students are only about two years younger than me, and I can have actual interesting conversations with them outside of class, one reason I'm glad to be at a University rather a middle school.