Forbidden City 2

Forbidden City 1

Beijing

Trevor and I had made plans to take the bus to Beijing and spend three days touring, then I would take a plane home and he would take the bus back to Taian. Unfortunately, two days before we were supposed to go, the school "made a decision" and it included having Trevor work that week. So, I had to completely change my plans.

At 3:30 am Thursday morning, I caught a train out of Taian. What I wasn't told until a few hours before leaving) is that there wouldn't be any seats on this train. That was the understatement of the year. There was barely any room to stand! So for six hours, I stood on the train to Beijing, rather than getting any sleep. I arrived in Beijing at 9:30 am and had an hour to get to my hotel to meet the friend of a friend who was going to take me to the Great Wall. I made it with ten minutes to spare after getting gouged by a taxi driver taking advantage of a foreigner.

Getting to the Great Wall was an adventure in itself. My guide asked me how I wanted to get there: taxi, train, or bus. A taxi would cost a lot of money and I just got off a train so I thought we should try the bus. We got to the bus station but my guide was having a hard time finding which bus we should get on. I was very grateful to have her because if it was difficult for someone who spoke Chinese, it would have been impossible for me! While we were searching, we ran into a couple from the south of China who were also looking for the bus. When we finally found the right place, a man was there who told us there would be no busses because it was off tourist season. He, however, was a taxi driver and he would take us out to the Wall for an enormous sum. We started negotiating with him and while we were doing so, a giant of a man from Germany and his small Chinese companion came by, also looking for a way to the Great Wall. Finally the six of us managed to negotiate a price that was still high but acceptable with the driver and we all piled into his car like a bunch of clowns in the circus.

It took us about an hour to get to the Wall. I was dozing on the way but couldn't really sleep in the cramped conditions. The Wall, which has the highway running though it, was an awesome thing to see. Granted, it was winter so everything was a dull color and it was cold and windy. The climb was challenging though I think it was easier than my experience at Qian Shan. I got a kick out of the German guy who was drinking a beer as he climbed. I was very grateful to get back to the hotel that afternoon though I still didn't sleep well that night since the bed was typical for a Chinese bed: just slightly softer than granite.

The next day, I walked to the Forbidden City. The history and art found here is just incredible! It is a maze of courtyards, gates, halls, thrones, stairs, bridges, and gardens. The detail that went into it is astounding from the vibrant-colored, intricate paintings to the carvings on the stairs and even the door hinges! I walked around for about four hours and still didn't see it all!

I'll let the videos do the rest of the talking.

Things I Have Missed, Things I Will Miss

It is just over two weeks until my return so I have been thinking a lot about the things I am looking forward to when I get back as well as the things I will miss from China.

At the top of the list, I am looking forward to seeing friends and family again. As much as I love travel and adventure, I am also a home-body. The two must be kept in balance. My times away make me appreciate my home-life and when my daily routine becomes boring or stressful, I know it is time to get away for a while.

There are a few people here who have become "friends" but I'm putting that in quotation marks because it is really hard to make a genuine connection through the language/cultural barrier. People in China tell me, "we are good friends," but really, our friendships seem very superficial to me. I am sure that I won't hear from many of them ever again. Still, they have been friendly and kind and a part of my experience here so I will remember them and wonder how they are like one does about childhood friends.

I have missed the beauty and simplicity of the American countryside. I am not really a city-girl and people use their car horns here like I've never heard before. Sometimes I am able to forget the constant noise but it will not be something I miss.

I am also looking forward to regaining my independence. It sounds a bit strange since I am obviously on my own here but I can't problem-solve in China the way I can in America. The resources are different or non-existant. When I need something in America, I know where to get it, or at least I have a general idea or there are ways to find out. For example, when I was looking for hay for Tuza, first I needed a translation for the word and everyone kept saying "grass" and I was trying to explain that it is a particular type of grass. I would ask them what their horses eat and they would say, "grass". I know hay exists here because I have seen it when I went out to the villages. I couldn't get it on my own, however, because 1. I don't have a way to get out to the countryside on my own, 2. I can't speak to the farmers to ask them for some. I would ask people I know to help me out and they would always say they could get some for me but they never did.

I guess the biggest question is, will I miss teaching here? In some ways it is the easiest job ever. I can talk about anything I want, the students love me, and there is no tests or standards to meet. However, these blessings have a dark side.

Yes, I can talk about anything but if I talk about something new to the students, I need to explain things and that gets really tricky. There are no teaching tools here except a blackboard and some chalk. No maps (except a few world maps that students buy, and these have China in the center so all of Europe is squished on the left and all of America is squished on the right), no pictures, no printer, a copier that is only available at certain times a day, etc. Recently, I started downloading pictures from the Internet, saving them to a flash drive, taking them to a computer shop to print, then showing them to help explain parts of my lesson.

Yes, many (but not all) of the students are fans of the foreign teachers. I don't know if I will ever get applause when I walk into a classroom again. However, just because they like me does not necessarily translate that they pay attention to me in class. For some of them, they don't really care what I have to say, they just like me because I'm a foreigner. They will greet me in the hall or when I enter class like I'm their best friend but they won't listen to a word I say during the lesson.

Yes, one of the worst parts of teaching in America was testing and grading and I have escaped that here but when there is no accountability for what they have learned, there is no incentive for them to pay attention in class other than their own interest, and let's be honest, they are teenagers so how interested in school can they be? Classroom management is nearly impossible when there are 60+ students in the room.

To be completely honest, I think I will miss China a lot more when it is a memory and not my reality. I know that sounds really bad. We all have memories of some of the seemingly horrible times in our life that we are able to look back on and appreciate much more when it is done. For example, my parents used to drag five whining kids across lava fields in Hawaii, up mountains to see glaciers in New Zealand, across the desert of Australia to watering holes, etc. As torturous as it seemed at the time, I appreciate it now.

Thanksgiving in China

I taught a lesson on Thanksgiving to my students last week, giving them both the holiday traditions (trying to explain stuffing was really challenging!) as well as the history. In each of the classes I asked the students if they knew what holiday was going on. Most classes had to think for a while and usually they gave me the Chinese name first. In one class, when I pressed for the English name, a student replied, "thanks-give-me". Close enough. As I talked about the idea behind Thanksgiving, I really began to think about the deeper meaning of it. I wanted to share how being in a foreign country has given me perspective on Thanksgiving.

On the surface, the warm-fuzzy part of Thanksgiving is the time to spend with friends and family. Seemingly shallower, we eat, watch parades and football, go shopping, and just enjoy a few days off work. All of these “less noble” parts of Thanksgiving, however, are what I see as being distinctly American. I have a greater sympathy for those who move to America and hold on to their holidays because I see now how much a part of one’s life they become. Being surrounded by people who not only don’t celebrate one of the most important holidays to my culture, but don’t even know about it really brought home the meaning of cultural identity.

Cooking has always been challenging here but, I’ve been planning Thanksgiving dinner for some time so I was able to collect ingredients for a good-enough attempt at a Thanksgiving feast. The menu included turkey and stuffing casserole and instant mashed potatoes (thanks to mom and dad), deviled eggs, garlic bread, salad, and oatmeal raisin cookies. Just note that all of the food required ingredients purchased outside of China—even the salad, for which I made a home-made dressing since they don’t have salad dressing here.

Thanksgiving is a day to remember our blessings so at the risk of sounding trite, I want to share the things I was grateful for. I really like the idea of having a holiday to feel gratitude for the things we usually take for granted and if there is one thing I’ve learned here, it is to appreciate things that I never thought twice about before. Things like forks. I only have one fork and while my dexterity with chopsticks has improved greatly, I still think the fork is a superior tool. You can’t eat cake with chopsticks. Reliable electricity and hot water are high up on the list as well.

Probably the thing I have been most grateful for since I’ve been here is the internet and the modern technology that uses it. I’ve been able to keep in touch with friends and family in ways that were not possible during the time I lived in Australia. The contact has really been food for my soul, making it possible for me to be here in relative contentment. I don’t want to imagine how much harder it would have been without it.

And now for the really cheesy part: I know that I whine and gripe a bit in my posts about what life is like here but really, I am thankful for this experience. The value of self-discovery and cultural education gained by living in another country cannot be measured. If this had been all fun and giggles, I don’t think I would have learned the lesson’s I have. We are stronger after facing the challenging times of life for the lessons they have to teach us are more powerful. Good times are sweeter when you have experienced bitterness; the sun seems brighter after clouds. When things seem like they’ve all gone to heck in a hand basket, stop and find something to be thankful for. Ok, I’m done now!

Routines

It has been getting more difficult to come up with topics to write about. Things have been fairly routine with the average, ordinary, every day craziness. Like this:

Last Monday, I was up fairly early because I teach the first class so it was around 6 a.m. when I was on my computer, checking my email and all that when the power went out. I was only annoyed, not surprised, because this happens every now and then. Its not that there is a problem--there is no storm or problem with the state grid--it is just something they do once in a while. Usually it will be back on in a couple of hours or once, during the summer, they turned off the power at around 9 in the morning and it came back on around 3 in the afternoon. When I got to school, however, I learned that the power would be off until 10:00 that night (it was actually 10:30 when it came back on) throughout the entire city. So, I couldn't take a shower and I couldn't entertain myself with my computer but it really didn't get too annoying until the sun set...which was at around 5:00. The people here take it all in stride, which makes laugh when I think about how Americans would react if someone said, "Oh, by the way, the city will be without power today, guys."

I did buy my plane ticket home last week. It has been very difficult to make plans because, of course, "the school didn't make a decision" about when the term would end or when the students would have winter classes, which I thought I would be teaching. Ricky informed me, however, that because Spring Festival, which is the Chinese New Year, would be earlier than usual, classes would end at the end of December and the winter classes wouldn't start until around mid February. To be on the safe side, I assumed that classes would be in session the last week of December that runs into the first week of January so I booked my flight home the following weekend. The flight is direct and leaves Beijing at 7:00 pm on Friday the 9th and actually arrives at Dulles at 7:20 pm on the 9th because of the time difference AND it will be less travel time as a direct flight because the plane flies north over the artic rather than south toward LA, which I did when I flew out.

I had a student break down in tears when I told her class I was leaving. They work the students very hard here. Their day starts around 7 and they will study late into the night. They took a test recently and I could see the anxiety, and afterward the disappointment. In the conversations I've had with some of my students that is all that is drilled into them: study, study, study. When a student told me she wanted to visit Japan and be a writer after school, I was encouraging her goals and she said to me that if she told her other teachers they would tell her to stop dreaming and study. Another student wrote me a letter in which she was saying what a failure she was because she couldn't stick to her goal to stay up until midnight to study every night.

It has been very cold out and today has been the coldest yet. There was snow and ice outside this morning, which I was pleased to see but it did make walking to school a little perilous. It is hard to get an accurate weather forecast or temperature because Anshan is the closest place that I can find online with weather reports but I'm pretty sure we are in the low teens at night and low to mid twenties during the day. Of course, it feels much, much colder with the wind factor...and it is very windy here very often. One weather report I saw said it felt like four degrees with the wind chill. After walking to school this morning I would have to say "at most!" At least the heat is on in my apartment now.

Miscellaneous Part 4 (Average, Ordinary, Everyday Craziness)

China is a country in the throes of development. Here in Taian, things are just getting going and it gives me many occasions to laugh. Trevor and I went to a place near the apartment complex to get something to eat. There was nothing extraordinary about this place—not too fancy, not the biggest dump here—just your average restaurant. Like many of the restaurants here, dining is done in a private room but unlike in some places where we go with a big group that give us our own room, this place has booths with a curtain. As we are talking, I look around the booth and notice how dirty the walls are. Fifty or so years of grubby hands and God knows what else smeared all over it. The second thing I notice is how ugly the lamp on the wall is. The third thing I notice is that the curtain for the booth is similar to the car seat-covers I have seen: pink, lacy, embroidered with flowers. It is such a mish-mash, juxtaposed collection that is so China!

I mentioned in a post shortly after I arrived that I had a solar heater for hot water. When I returned from Greece, I found that the pipes (or something) were broken because I would send the water up to the heater but it wouldn’t hold it; the water leaked down the walls and onto the floor in my bathroom. I called my go-to guy for issues with my apartment and he came and took a look. I got no assessment of what was wrong or when it would be fixed so after a couple weeks went by I inquired again. This time, he brought the owner of the apartment and they both looked around; again, no assessment, no information about fixing it. Yesterday, I found out that the owner has decided that the problem (whatever it might be) would be too expensive to fix so I must go without hot running water (though I still have the electric heater for my shower). I had never learned this before but apparently, hot water doesn’t exist here—its not considered a necessity—so unless a person has a solar heater or an electric heater, boiling water is the only option.

I’m also waiting for the heat to be turned on in my apartment. It has been getting colder here, often dipping below freezing at night but the heat in buildings is not controlled by thermostats in rooms. Heat is all state controlled. My heat was supposed to come on the day before yesterday but it has yet to be turned up. So for now, whenever I’m home, I’m usually wearing my sweats under my robe, some thick socks and my slippers, and I sit at my computer curled under a blanket. This way, the only part of me that is cold is the hand on the mouse.

The heat is not on at the school, either. This is not really a problem in the classrooms because they place them all on the side of the building that gets sun in the afternoon and there are 60 or more bodies to keep the room warm. My office, on the other hand, is not populated nor on the sunny side of the building so it was freezing. It didn’t really bother me too much because I didn’t spend too much time there and I figured I would just have to wait till they turned the heat on because the radiator was right next to my desk but they had other ideas. On Thursday, they had me move all my stuff, and they moved all the furniture to the fifth floor so the office would be on the other side of the building. I have to say, I’m not really thrilled about having an office on the fifth floor!

Over the summer, my assistant got married. I, unfortunately, missed the ceremony because the people I was riding with to get there got lost but like in America, it is popular to have a film of the wedding made and I borrowed the DVD so I could see it. It was very shocking, but perhaps unsurprisingly so. The first part was Ricky and Janet at the park before their wedding day, running through the field, him pushing her on the swing, that sort of stuff. The next section showed pictures taken at a studio where they would dress up in different outfits and be put in different scenes like dressed as private-school children at a subway station or dressed like they were going to Hawaii on a boat. The day of the wedding had some interesting rituals. They greeted each other’s families like we have a receiving line but they gave and lit a cigarette for each person. Perhaps the most shocking thing, however, was during the ceremony, Ricky’s cell phone rang (he had it in his pocket) and he answered it!! It is true that there is no cell phone etiquette here but I couldn’t believe he paused in his own wedding to answer the phone! (Actually, I think it was us telling him we were lost.)

There are three parts to the following video. The first is a refreshing hint of culture. Every night during the summer, some musicians would play at the park entrance and women would come with fans (some in traditional outfits) and do a dance-like walk. I think it was mostly for exercise. Trevor called it the senior citizens dance club. The second part of the film is a shot of the restaurant I described above. I had to go back with my camera so you can see what I’m talking about! The third part took place earlier this week. Whenever someone of importance dies, there is this really depressing music playing. It will play all day. Then, at night, we get an even more depressing song. I only caught a little bit of it but you’ll understand. Lucky us, someone of importance dies once every two or three weeks.