Blogs from Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China, Asia - page 23

Now that is winter, our apartment is pretty cold. Most mornings the standing water on the roof outside my living room window is frozen. This cold seeps into the concrete walls of our apartment and doesn’t really seem to ever let go. That and the single pane windows make for a great excuse to lay in bed. Heating these places is a bit of a joke. While some people have caught onto the joys of radiant floor heating, our “old” apartment, (built in 1999) has several wall mounted electric blowers. But in a two-storey place, all the heat goes upstairs. So that’s where Sean and I have been hanging out, going through his dvd collection. Not that he has tried to collect movies, it just happens. Going to the movies in Shanghai will run a guy ... read more

Christmas Crap This being China and America being in a Christian nation, I can tell you I was wondering when I’d begin seeing the Christmas decorations. They actually started going up before Thanksgiving but that’s a chronological technicality that no one here bothers with. There are trees and tinsel, red and white and now, just two weeks before the big day, nearly every waiter is wearing a red Santa hat. The folks at Pizza Hut have them. And the Japanese noodle shop. The clerks at the upscale DeCleor are not wearing them but they dress in bright red suits anyway. Wanting a hat myself, I asked the waitress if I could have a bowl of noodles and her hat. Fortunately, her managers were standing nearby and they informed the odd foreigner that indeed I could buy ... read more

I keep hearing about how it gets cold in Hangzhou and it has finally arrived. It wouldn't be as bad if the apartment heater worked, but this is China. Not that the heater doesn't work, per se, put last night we noticed a foul plastic burning smell. Upon investigation we discovered a very hot electrical cord and a melted outlet. It seems the last people wanted a floor lamp plugged in there too so they used an extension cord, but this heater is pulling all of its 15 amps and that smell was the cord, nice and black now. I'd say we were close to setting the drapes on fire and this couch I'm sitting on no doubt would have added fuel to the fire and that's just no way to spend the first week in ... read more

The first month passed with the swiftness of a sparrow chasing sparrow. I had virtually no time to become acclimatized to the culture before I started teaching yoga at Y+ . Teaching yoga brought me into intimate contact with an alien cultural before I could say “ni hao” . Pronounced “nee how” it is the Mandarin greeting. And with a very sensitive and specific sector of its population - educated upper middle class and upper class women. The vast majority of whom were being exposed to and practicing yoga for the first time. The impact was cushioned to a large extent by the bubble of the Y+ environment with its staff of very friendly women all eager to learn English and very curious about the foreigner in their midst. We quickly established a relationship of ... read more

One of the great things about living in China these days is the relatively unrestricted access I have to information resources. If I get a little homesick, I can log to the web and hear the latest twist in Washington scandals or the growing dissent over America’s latest war. Sometimes, I log onto NPR and cherry pick the best stuff. Today I listened to NPR’s China correspondent Rob Gifford talk about President Bush’s visit to Asia. Gifford gave up the post a couple months ago and is writing a book about his six years working in China. During that time, he had countless encounters. Among his favorites are filling in for a missing pastor and delivering Sunday Mass. At the end of the conversation, the host asked him what he missed most now that he was ... read more