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Published: November 6th 2009
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Yet again, it's been a while since I've written anything. Don't worry, loved ones, I'm not dead yet. I'm sorry to keep you from tales of my exploits, but you should take my delay to mean that I am growing more and more accustomed to everyday life here, so much so that I don't find many things significant enough to write home about. Or that I'm too busy to think about writing. Or that I'm just lazy. Take your pick.
I've been getting more and more enveloped in work at the school, for better or worse. The better is that I am getting closer with my coworkers, who are actually all pretty nice people, Chinese or American. The worse is that I have less and less time to spend on exploring the intricacies of Chinese life on my own. But work, even though it's heavily Westernized, still manages to sneak a fair amount of Chinese oddities into my daily routine.
Halloween recently passed, as I'm sure you Westerners back home noticed. We celebrated the holiday at our school, too, which on the surface was an attempt to give our students a taste of our culture, but which I believe
was in fact a way for the expats to give their life here a semblance of what they're used to. Chinese Halloween is celebrated as follows:
1) Make the Chinese teachers put up Halloween decorations. From what I can tell, the Chinese teachers (whose job description, I am coming to learn, includes much more than mere teaching) were given some instructions on what Halloween decorations look like and how to make them, and then used all of their free time to cut giant spiders and witch hats out of foam and tape them to the windows. It actually came out looking pretty authentic (I'm not even going to mention the first draft of our Native American decoration for Thanksgiving, which according to my roommate was more offensive than the Cleveland Indians mascot), so despite its potential hilarity this step really can't hold a candle to step two.
2) Require all staff to wear costumes during their teaching hours, and request students to do the same. I was a little upset about this at first, probably for no reason, because it meant I had to go buy a Halloween costume on my own time and money. My roommate and
I heard about a place in the city that sells actual, American-certified masks and garb, so buying a costume turned out to not be a big waste of resources. But the Chinese teachers, partly because they were too busy attending to their dozens of other duties and partly because they had no reason to give a damn, waited until the last minute to get a costume together. Some of my favorites included a giant plastic tarp converted into a cape, and a scarf, also converted into a cape. The Western costumes were infinitely better, which put my hastily conceived costume to shame during step three.
3) Host a night time Halloween party for other expats in the basement of the school on a work night. This actually turned out to be incredibly successful, if not extremely odd. After classes were done on Saturday, we had a real live Halloween party, complete with DJ and drinking games, in the basement of our school for three hours. I didn't stay for much of it, because on the weekends (which days, if you recall, we work for 12 hours) all I really want to do is sleep, but I hung around long
enough to see that the way Westerners get a costume here is to have a tailor make it from scratch and a picture. I was really out done. We had matadors, buccaneers, soldiers, zombies, even a Dr. Evil complete with Mini-Me; everything you would expect at an authentic American Halloween party.
So Halloween was an interesting time. The students' response was more varied; most chose to simply ignore our request to come to class "wearing weird clothes or a mask", and instead took the opportunity to make fun of us queerly dressed teachers. A few students went all out, with pumpkins and vampire fangs, but that was much rarer. All of them got to Trick-or-Treat at the end of class at our teacher's office door, despite their costume or lack thereof.
Our school has two locations, and the one in the city is very understaffed, so us suburb teachers were asked to take a day off to go help them put up decorations. For payment, the head of the Chinese staff took everyone out to dinner at a Xinjiang restaurant, which serves one dish: da pan ji (大盘鸡, or "big chicken plate"). I love Xinjiang food (that's where
the Uyghurs live), and so do most Chinese people despite the Uyghurs' political leanings which are very un-patriotic, as you might have read back home. After dinner we went back to the boss' apartment, where all the teachers had a little game night. Some people played card games, and I learned how to play ma jiang with some of the Chinese teachers. The principal of our school, Candace, is apparently a ma jiang shark; she played for something like four hours straight with no sign of exhaustion. I actually like the game; it's a lot like gin rummy, except there are more suits. I went out the next weekend and bought a ma jiang set, and I've been having the teachers over to play (when they have free time, which they don't always like to spend with their coworkers, understandably). I still can't win as often as Candace, but I'm working on it. She says she wants to come over more, but she is so busy with the weight of our school on her shoulders. I try to offer her and the other coworkers a little rest, but I think all they want to do in their spare time is
sleep. I sympathize; sleep here is in scarce supply. But a great man once said, "I never sleep, cause sleep is the cousin of death." Five points for whoever can name the coiner, and ten for whoever can name the great man I'm thinking of.
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Games
Nice story! Is it like ma jong with tiles?