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Published: September 10th 2007
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Train from Hell 1
The image is really poor, but you get the idea. I didn't want to attract more attention to myself than I had already done just by being there in the first place so I refrained from using the flash. Wow, where do I begin? Slowly but surely I am getting settled in, acquainting myself with the immediate and non-immediate surroundings and gaining more confidence in my ability to do anything and everything.
I have begun teaching two of my classes thus far-- an adult Oral English class and a freshman/sophomore American & British Culture. The adult class turns out to be 17 professionals from an oil company located in Henan province. They all seem to be very intelligent, motivated and disciplined, yet their English is definitely lacking. A few of the students speak fairly well, but most of them still have a long way to go. This class was a late add-on to fill in the first bit of my schedule, spanning just the first four weeks of the twenty week semester. For one of my first in-class exercises, I had everyone prepare a hypothetical schedule for a day and present it in front of the class. Since it's difficult for them to comprehend my instructions, I shared my hypothetical schedule in order to give them an example of what I expected. My schedule was both realistic and fantastic. It included mundane activities like brushing my teeth, taking a
shower and eating breakfast. Additionally I threw in a few ridiculous activities such as meeting with President Hu Jintao for a discussion of trade relations, product safety regulations and the undervalued yuan. The idea behind the assignment was to give the students a venue to be as creative as possible so that I could gain insight into their dreams and aspirations. Unfortunately after nearly half of the class came to the front to present, it was very clear each person was sharing their normal daily schedule verbatim. This didn't surprise me at all as it reaffirmed a subtle, yet very important characteristic typcial of the Chinese persona--often when given open-ended instructions, Chinese students will follow the guidelines directly and give little to elaborate upon the fundamental directive. In Western culture this would be viewed as only doing the bare minimum to get by, but in Chinese culture it is acceptable because it is following directions to the tee. In this particular instance, I said I wanted a "schedule for tomorrow" and elaborated upon it breifly, emphasizing my desire for them to be creative and make things up. The fact that my underlying instruction was to share a schedule for tomorrow
however was really the only thing that mattered. Obviously the fact that there English skills are still quite limited didn't help the situation, but one of my main goals for this short period of time I have with this group of adults is to get them to take more risks and not be embarrassed to make mistakes.
In response to the essay question "what is your dream?" one student had this to share:
A dream is to a man what wings are to bird, so a life without a dream is like a bird with broken wings. I have a dream. It is a dream that is deeply rooted in my mind. I dream that one day I can travel around the world with my backpack. It's very exciting to visit different places. As you travel, you will see beautiful sceneries of the regions. Besides, you can meet and make friends with people of different colors and races. Furthermore, you can get to know the customs and living habits of the local people. Finally, if you are careful observer, you learn much about the history, geography and biology of the places you visit. No matter how well educatied I hate spiders
These spiders were all over the place near the base camp and in the trees on the early part of the hike. When I asked Mr. Li about if they were poisonous, he said "Yes I think so." God I hate spiders. you are, there is always a lot for you to learn through travelling. The knowledge acquired from travel is more valuable then that from any influential reference books.
-Karen
I found out that a group was to head to the city of Tai'an and climb the sacred mountain called Tai Shan. After class on friday, I began my adventure. I borrowed my friend's trekking pack, packed a bit of clothes, some food, a sleeping bag and met Mr. Li (my contact-person in the International Programs Office) in the lobby of the international hotel. With smiles on our faces and a kick to our steps, we headed for the west gate of campus. We grabbed a cab and headed to the train station at the other end of the city to meet the fifteen other people and commence our journey. I won't get into too much detail of the train ride, but let it be known--this particular train from Dongying to the city of Tai'an was one of the more challenging experiences I've ever been through. When you take a train in China, you have basically five different choices for seating/sleeping arrangements. Here is the order
More critters
This little guy was all about my pack. I had to force him off after he did a little dance for almost five minutes. from the most comfortable to least comfortable. "Ruan wo" (软卧) or "soft sleeper" is a manageable, yet compact sleeping cabin with a closing door for four people. They generally come with a table in between the two sets of bunks and sometimes even have t.v. screens. "Ying wo" (硬卧) or "hard sleeper" is generally speaking the same size as a soft sleeper, but the cabin is set with two sets of three bunks side-by-side and does not have a shutting door. For shorter train rides, "ruan zuo" (软座) and "ying zuo" (硬座) or "soft seat" and "hard seat" follow the same concept. The soft seat might be comparable to economy class on an airplane, while the hard seat is a bench seat capable of holding three people rather uncomfortably. Last and definitely least is "wu zuo" (无座) or "without seat." This as you can imagine is quite awful. Regardless of the distance of the trip, you must stand in the aisle and continuously move out of the way of people and carts. You're only place of sanctuary is the small area in between cars, reserved for smokers to get their nicotine fix and passengers going to and from the small
restroom. I had no idea this was to be my fate, but I did my best not to complain and pretend that the six hour trip next to the crapper didn't phase me.
At approximately 9:45pm we finally made it to Tai'an. The last hour of the trip was truly grueling and every minute seemed like an eternity. We made our way to a group of three small minivans. After a brief period of negotiation (for unmarked taxis in China you need to bargain beforehand to decide on a fare), we started on our way to the base of Tai Shan Mountain. After a ride of approximately thirty minutes, we arrived at our destination. Upon stumbling out of the vans, we found our flashlights and/or headlamps and began hiking in the dark to our base camp. The hike only lasted about thirty minutes, but we were all exhausted and thankful to stop when we came to the small patch of grassy area suitable for a host of tents. The preamble to the mountain climb was finally over and I slept like a rock.
The following morning, we rose at approximately 7am and began the day's hike. I wasn't keeping particularly
close attention to the time at any point, but I guestimate that we hiked until about 4pm. The terrain was manageable, with no sections too steep or too flat. It was a good beginner mountain. The best part of the whole affair was the fact that we took the southern face route. This is basically the opposite side of the way that you would normally travel up the mountain. So instead of dealing with the tourists, the buses, the cable-cars and all the other distractions, we were able to enjoy the beauty of the land without a single soul to bug us along the way. I will let the pictures speak for themselves.
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Sarah
non-member comment
This is so cool
Wow, you're doing such amazing stuff. I don't think I could have done the train ride. I've had to work with coworkers from other countries, including Japan and China, and communication was definitely a challenge. Learning how to give instructions in a different language would very valuable.