Blogs from Hangzhou , China, Asia - page 8

It’s been a few days of darkness on my end, so I figure it’s about time for a little bit of an update. To be completely honest, I’ve been horrendously busy being bored. See, DE presented Maeghan and me with a choice last week: To dive immediately into a teaching schedule, or to take a role as a kind of marketing puppet for a while. I selected the latter in hopes of investigating as many avenues as possible while in this world of self-exploration. I’m really, really glad that I chose the route that I did in some ways, and am not so glad in others. To the positive end, I’ve gotten to know the staff and the building WAY better than Maeghan has yet had a chance to do. She is often stuck in her ... read more

Where to begin… So, as I mentioned in my last post, I was very quickly moved to Hangzhou this weekend. The process did not, however, go as I previously mentioned (or thought it would, for that matter…). It all went down a little something like this: Around 4:00pm yesterday, I was taking a nap when I received a phone call from the Regional Director of DE that oversees my center. With the Hangzhou staff in a bind, he inquired as to whether I would be able to relocate – not on Saturday, but FRIDAY NIGHT in order to help cover a few classes. They made it seem like a choice, but a big part of me knew it really wasn’t. So, Maeghan and I made for the trainstation in a hurry to change our tickets to ... read more

My most recent class, and by far my best, dealt with an advertisement the Chinese Propaganda Ministry is running in Times Square. 300 times a day. $400,000 a month. For six years. (Look it up on Youtube.) The textbook topic was TV and advertising. I showed two videos (in Chinese with English subtitles): the first simply talking about the ad (which shows only Chinese people)--scientists, athletes, scholars, supermodels, astronauts, designers, artists, the wealthy, and the ordinary; the second showing dissident (a word harboring no heat literally) opinion that it is a whitewash so dissonant with actuality that it will raise only further negative thoughts, and that not only does it not portray true Chinese spirit, but such an ad should not be used in an attempt to cover up the human rights abuses and government obfuscations ... read more

So, I've started wearing earplugs to bed. I hear reveille every morning at 6:15. Not to mention the rumbling and clanking of food delivery trucks to the cafeteria (what they call the canteen, which dovetails with reveille, I suppose) across the street, and what I take to be morning salutations among the maintenance staff. Chinese still sounds unnaturally loud and barky to my ear, and when the volume is raised, well...let's just say my gut reaction is to want to tell them to shake hands and make up fercrissake, people're trying to sleep here. There are several take-me-serious-looking military installations within nearby blocks and, call me crazy, I first assumed the trumpets blared from there. Too hasty. The unwelcome music actually comes from the campus rocks. (Think amusement park, where manmade rock-like objects dot the landscape ... read more

Mid-Autumn Festival officially started this past weekend, and today is the 63rd birthday of the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Interestingly, today is the only day this week that is not officially "off". Go figure. Below, I'm embedding the reason I won't be exploring my adopted hometown to the extent I anticipated during this "Golden" week--so-called due to the rumored 50% bump in in prices "enjoyed" by the shall we say opportunistic tourism industry. http://www.echinacities.com/hangzhou/city-in-pulse/15-million-tourists-visit-hangzhou-during-national-day.html When Mr. Green Blue explained this to me, he was rewarded with a new English word: gouge. Hear tell, celebration of said event is minimal outside Beijing, consisting of maybe flags and probably firecrakers (which celebrate everything from having a baby to having enough mone... read more