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Published: November 18th 2008
Jo's Notes: Had fun the past week, going for dim sum with another teacher, getting myself into the city and back BY MYSELF for my first Chinese haircut, attending a student variety show "Welcome Freshmen 2008!", and being escorted to a 1300 year-old Buddhist shrine, Nan Hua Temple, by 13 of my Money & Banking students. I only teach 16 hours -- an easy schedule, with lots of time to prep for class and meet with students who are taking upcoming Business English exams. The running track is a block away so easy to jog most mornings. Next weekend, the university is taking all the foreign and foreign language teachers (about 30) to a spa resort in the mountains. Hot springs, walking trails. Will be great to stand in a hot shower and just soak up the heat.
Full Story: Life has taken on a comfortable routine. My fellow American teachers -- Keyvan (read Kevin), John and Kim -- and I go places together, like Wal-Mart and McDonald's. Wal-Mart is a hike from the center of town, requiring a walk through narrow streets filled with gawking locals. It's a bit unnerving. We're always the only Westerners, and quite a curiosity,
particularly to children. I know so little Chinese, I'm not yet comfortable going into these neighborhoods on my own. John is helping me learn Chinese and made me some flash cards with Chinese characters. He's been in China for 3-4 years and is quite proficient. (John's an interesting character -- a JD by profession, he doesn't have any interest in practicing law or in reading books. A contented bachelor, he calls himself "commitment averse". I asked him if he'd read
China Road, Rob Gifford's outstanding account of his trip on Rte. 312 across China, which I just finished and totally loved. He said he is so commitment averse, he never even commits to doing anything like reading something as long as a book!) I have made several attempts to find Chinese instruction on-line. ChinesePod.com, the site I mentioned in an earlier entry, turned out to be a dud. One of the teachers is going to bring over some primary readers used to teach children to read. These will be a start. Also, a student has offered to meet with me to give me Chinese lessons.
Last week, Keyvan and I went to a dim sum restaurant in the city.
A popular spot with the locals, the food was terrific, especially the dumplings. The bill for both of us, $5.00. Keyvan has taught Oral English here for over 2 years, and is feeling bored. He got another teaching job at a university in Zuhai, a beautiful city on the southern coast of Guangdong, so he leaves in January. He promised to bequeath me his comfy cushions, which took him over a year of complaining to procure.
Last Saturday I went into the city on the bus by myself. Had fun finding my way to the R.T. Mart, the Taiwanese-owned discount superstore. I went there to buy fresh fruit (oranges and pommellos, a type of large grapefruit) and snacks, like their wonderful peanuts and dried sweet-potato strips. Housed in an upscale indoor shopping mall right in the center of town, it does a huge business. Just like malls in the States, it is full of entire families making an outing out of shopping. Mothers and fathers leave their toddlers with the grandfathers while they run to different sections. Most of the grandfathers dote on the children, chuckling apologetically to me as their toddler grandson or granddaughter rudely stares and points
at me, or worse, starts crying out of fear. (This doesn't bother me as I am used to this from my Chinese neighbors' children in Collegeville. Until she was two, little Iris usually cried or hid behind her mother when she saw me.) I read recently that the economic benefits of the One-Child Policy are now accepted by urban-dwellers as sufficient return for the sacrifice they make by limiting their families. The male Only Children are referred to as "Little Emperors", pampered as they are. One interesting difference is that here only the more affluent use disposable diapers. Those of modest means use no diapers at all. The infants' jumpers are split along the crotch inseam for easy on/off. I saw a mother stop at the edge of the sidewalk, squat with the baby held between her legs so the baby could urinate into the gutter. It seems virtually all children are potty-trained by the time they are 18 months old.
Anyway, after completing my shopping, I went in search of a beauty parlor as I was overdue for a haircut. Found a wonderful place. Very professional and friendly. I was uncertain if the beautician understood me, but she
immediately sat me in a chair, wrapped me in a towel, and applied shampoo to my dry hair. Then, she slowly added warm water to the shampoo and gently massaged it all over my scalp. Within minutes, my hair was a close wet mass of soapsuds. She massaged my scalp for 20 minutes, then took me over to the sinks, where I lay down in a recliner chair so she could rinse out the shampoo and apply a nice-smelling conditioner. I was then led to another area and invited to sit down. Out of nowhere appeared a man wielding scissors and an air of confidence. He started in combing my wet hair. I had already used my handy little Rough Guide Mandarin Chinese Phrase Book to tell him I just wanted a trim, but I stopped him to point to another hair stylist whose hair was just the look I was going for. He understood, smiled and within minutes transformed my hair to exactly the look I wanted. It is one of the best haircuts I ever got! A photo of me with my best student assistant Yuky is included here. The cost for this hour of pampering, $4.40.
Saturday night Yuky and her friend Ketty came to pick me up to escort me to the student variety show "Welcome Freshmen 2008!". Quite a gala affair, with the belly dancers again in full regalia, choruses, and lots of dance numbers. Uneven quality, but all of it with great enthusiasm and a freshness that was charming. Though fortunately I didn't have to act as judge, I was seated in the VIP section right behind the judges. I had looked forward to talking with Yuky before the show, when all of a sudden, there was Tracey, a freshman who was introduced as the daughter of the Communist Party Secretary, who was to sit next to me so she could practice her English. Yuky quietly moved to the next seat. You may recall this same Party Secretary was dominant head judge at the Song Contest of the prior week. Well, there was the Party Secretary, Judge #1 again, sitting in front of me, smiling encouragingly at me and her daughter. Ugh, the politics and favoritism are so blatant. The students wanted me to video the event, so no stills.
Next day, Sunday, I was up and out by 8:45 to join
my Money & Banking students for our outing to Nan Hua Temple. This is a huge and astonishingly beautiful temple near Shaoguan, built around 600 AD, with of course, many additions over the centuries. The whole compound is a work of art, with beautiful painted main temple, side temples, arches, statuary, and on and on. The day was gorgeous -- 80, sunny and low humidity. Nan Hua Temple is located in a beautiful grotto-like area in the mountains near the town of Maba. Maba is the area where the caves are located in which one of our human ancestors lived, Maba Man. Jack, our lead tour guide for the day, is from Maba. He told me that when he was a boy, he would ride his bike to the caves, and also to the temple. I turned down his offer to lead the group to the secret entrance to the temple he knows about through which he used to get in for free as a ten-year-old. I was quite all right with paying my 6 yuan (about $0.80) to enter.
After touring for three hours, everyone was ready for lunch. Jack had thought we would be able to eat
at the large vegetarian restaurant that's at the entrance, where he used to eat with his Buddhist grandmother. But he found out from a monk that you have to be a Buddhist to eat there. The group was feeling somewhat weary, thinking we would have to get a bus into Maba to find something to eat. Jack was feeling the pressure of his role, and I had asked him to point me to a bathroom. He said to wait while he went to scout out the facilities, so we stood around contemplating the beauty of the place and resigning ourselves to no lunch, or very late lunch. Suddenly he reappeared with a big smile. He not only found a bathroom, he found a lovely, quiet outdoor restaurant catering to tourists, with no religious requirement. What a find! We were almost the only guests, and they were delighted to see our group show up. It was totally delightful, with wonderful vegetarian food. As Jack said, they serve meat, but it's fake, made out of soybeans.
I was intrigued and delighted by how the students behaved on the outing. First, they were all so well-mannered, treating me like a VIP the
whole day. They are all soft spoken, including the boys. At lunch, the large round table had the traditional lazy-susan, on which were placed 14 small soup dishes. While one of the servers poured tea all around, Andrew of our group called for a pot of boiling water, which he had the server pour into each soup bowl to wash it. He used this to swish around each bowl, throwing the used water into the bushes. I have come to appreciate that in this country with no potable water coming from faucets, everyone at the university takes care to only drink bottled water, and avoids drinking from receptacles of uncertain standards of cleanliness. He then served each of us our soup. Hot and tasty, with vegetables, stewed tomatoes and chunks of tofu swimming in the broth. The remains of some of the 11 dishes we ordered are shown in the pictures. There were those who really like spicy food, who devoured the very spicy dishes, and then there were the rest of us. We sat and ate for an hour, with much laughter and enjoyment of the good food. The cost per person for this feast, $4.11. After touring the
Women's Monastery, we piled back on a bus and returned to the university. Something of note -- of the 14 students, only about 5 of them used a public restroom during the day. I have heard that young women in China will go to any lengths to avoid public facilities due to their unsavory reputation. I, on the other hand, who am not fond of public facilities, was quite ready to use whatever was available as long as it was clean. I was relieved to find the restroom at the restaurant was quite clean (albeit a squatter), and even provided toilet paper, which is unusual. All in all, it was a marvelous day. Sorry my pictures are mostly of my group. There were reminders everywhere that picture-taking was prohibited out of respect for the worshipping monks.
One of my Stateside friends asked me recently if all the reading I did before coming to China proved helpful. I read several memoirs of Americans who came to China to teach English, as well as books about the history, the culture and a couple novels. All of it has proved extremely helpful. For example, the culture books explained the Chinese way of
eating at restaurants, with the lazy-susan, where the protocol is that as a dish is placed in front of you, you take just a small portion and immediately send the dish to the next person. Other, more important cultural differences are the importance to the Chinese of "face", and how it is considered very bad form to put another in a position where they might lose face. This has helped me a lot in knowing how to behave in social situations with other teachers, and even more with students. Also, having read about the concept of "quanxi", relationships, has proved very helpful. Helped me understand why people are so friendly to me if they consider me to be someone who can help them, through our guanxi -- for example by helping them improve their spoken English.
One aspect that wasn't in any of the books is the heavy emphasis the Chinese now place on sports. It seems to be an outgrowth of the Olympics, but it may have developed on its own and before 2001 (when the Olympics Committee awarded the 2008 games). Both the boys and girls (that's how they talk about themselves) are all into sports, as
participants and as spectators. In my students' self-introductions, many of them listed their favorites. Since badminton is my favorite participant sport, I was delighted to see this is one of the favorites for both boys and girls. I want to find someone to play with. Now that I know my way around campus, I am becoming active again, jogging on the running track that's a block from my apartment 3-4 mornings a week.
The weather is certainly conducive to being active. November has been wonderful -- 80-degree days, 60-ish at night, with low humidity and a fresh breeze to blow away the pollution. Something different here -- workers just put a coat of fresh white-wash on every last tree, half-way up each trunk. All streets and walkways are lined with trees. I don't know for certain, but it seems to me the purpose of this is a low-tech solution to the lack of street lights. The white trunks are easy to spot in the dark.
Next weekend, I'm going on a university-sponsored trip to a spa resort in the mountains. Hot springs and hiking. Should be fun.
Assuming you're still reading (and thanks for that!), please let
me know how you're doing and what you've been up to.
Jo Anne
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hank
non-member comment
good reporting!
Jo, you are really keeping a good journal of your experiences; its been fun to keeep tabs on how things are going. The thing I love about China is how sweet, humble and friendly everybody is -very different than in the US; I can only think that this is more prevalent in a homgeneous country. In a mixed society there seems to be more distrust and suspicion between people; it sure seems like you made the right choice of places to go to for your teaching adventure! Keep up the blogs.