pilgrimage to tai shan

this account would not be complete without an example of the illogical nature of travel within china. tai shan is about 16 hours south of tongliao by train. to get on that train, however, emma and i had to take a bus 5 hours north of tongliao to get on a train to take us south. these little adventures are not at all uncommon and must be expected when traveling domestically in china.

well, after arriving at tai'an, the city at the foot of tai shan, we loitered outside of KFC for about an hour waiting for it to open at 7 AM (our train got in at 5:30AM). after filling up on KFC breakfast food (as that was all that was open at the time), we headed off to begin our pilgrimage to one of the most sacred mountains in china. why is it so sacred? you might ask. well, i will tell you. this mountain has served as a place of pilgrimage for taoists and buddhists alike for centuries. in the creation story of the world told in ancient chinese texts, tai shan is the head of the fallen creator. the other sacred mountains in china make up his hands and feet. the taoist "goddess of the azure clouds" is also said to be resident on the mountain and is accounted as having kicked the founder of buddhism off of the mountain many centuries ago. the climber, if he or she manages to reach the top in the traditional manner of hiking the entire way, is said to live to be 100 years old. many emperors tried to climb the mountain,as their rule would be proven to be divinely ordained if they did so, but only 4 managed to make it all the way to the top. emma and myself, of course, made it to the top. i'm going to be around for a lot longer than most of you would like . . . mwahhhaahhaa.

so the hike was anything but easy and became excrutiating toward the end. we began climbing around 10 AM and made it to the top around 3 PM. we did stop halfway up the mountain for food from a little trail-side "fandian", though. reaching the end of the climb, the surroundings seemed almost otherworldly. i allude it to the castle of the wicked old witch in the wizard of oz and the forests that surround that. the trail seemed to lead into the sky (it was that steep). each step filled my legs with more and more blood until after about 5 steps i felt like they were going to pop. there were men climbing with us who carried food and water up to the restaurants at the top as that is the only way of transporting goods to the summit. they took each step carefully. i did not envy the burden they had to carry.







finally making it to the top, we found a hotel . . . or rather the hotel manager found us. we engaged in the usual haggling of prices until we agreed on 150 yuan for the night (less than $10 per person - not bad for a mountain-top guesthouse with heat!!). we walked around the tiny village at the summit and ran into some taoist monks. some of them were completely hammered. i thought to myself, "is it okay for taoist monks to get drunk . . . i guess so". well, we hung out with them for a while until they let us go up into the attic of one of the temples and ring the prayer gong. the sounds resounded off of the mountain walls - it was beautiful. i cant help but wonder if perhaps it was inappropriate for us to be ringing the gong, but the head monk was out and the taoist monk fraternity wanted to play, so i conceded.


that night we had a modest bowl of noodles as everything else was too expensive (due to the fact that we were at the summit of a mountain and everything had to be carried up by hand). we were in bed by 8 PM . . . passed out.

we roused ourselves at 4:30 AM to watch the sun rise the next day. this is "the thing" to do when you visit tai shan. us and every other chinese pilgrim hiked to the east side of the mountain to watch the momentous occasion. watching the sun rise over the horizon, i was completely affected by the realization that i was one of the first people in the world to see the sun rise on that day. as the sun grew brighter and more intense, so did my fatigue. emma and i decided to sleep for a couple hours more until we hiked down.



my time on the summit of tai shan gave me a new breath of life. i realized that, "i was in fucking china watching the sun rise on top of the most sacred mountain." after being in a place for a while you tend to begin to take experiences for granted, but that sunrise reminded me just how important this time was for me, even if i don't fully know why and how yet.

a tale of 3 countries (continued)

weary, yet ready for a new brand of adventures, the next leg of our trip began with a flight from bangkok to phnom penh, cambodia (and an addition to our crew - pat - another fellow english teacher at nhis). heavily caffeinated from a refreshing iced coffee in the bangkok airport, i was unable to sleep on the plane, despite being tired. i spent my time reading up on cambodia as well as scanning the landscape below from my window. i found it interesting, yet not all that surprising, that the landscape changed considerably almost as soon as we crossed the border. from heavy development and urban sprawl in thailand, to cambodia which showed a much more humble view of life. very little development or any kind of organization could be seen once on khmer soil. i noted this as i departed the plane and entered the airport.

visa issues and currency exchanges completed, we got in a taxi to take us to the center of the city. it is interesting to note that cambodia uses the US dollar as it's main form of currency due to the destruction of it's national bank and reserves during the khmer rouge administration. prices are quoted in US dollars everywhere you go. so we were in the taxi and not five minutes after we were on the road, the taxi driver pulled over and grabbed two small children, putting them on our laps to be driven in to the city as well. i don't know if he knew them or if they were orphans, but they were my first contact with khmer children . . . i fell in love. as you will see, the khmer child will prove to be my destruction during my time in cambodia, as i could not resist buying them food and other necessities. they won my heart (and the contents of my wallet . . . but all was gladly given). once in the city, we directed the taxi driver to the hostel we wanted to stay at, dropped our backpacks off, and set out to explore the rest of the city.


phnom penh is a small city in comparison to most asian cities. small in the sense that the buildings are all only around 5 stories tall. many of the buildings are in bad need of repair. there were a few buildings showing signs of french colonialism, but very few that had been restored to their original splendor. that night we went to the most famous bar in phnom penh - "heart of darkness" - which proved to exhibit a little slice of khmer life. moody, wealthy khmer teenagers and their body guards abounded. they had an air about them that told anyone within 10 feet of them to move even further away. the designer clothes that they wore no doubt were bought with money that had been funneled from the government by their politically-aligned parents for personal uses. there were the khmer prostitutes who purposely jostled the three of us trying to gain our attention, as well as the group of foreigners who lived in phnom penh and probably worked for some NGO. it was an interesting night to say the least. the next day was to be the most affecting day for me.





the next day we went to the tuol sleng prison in downtown phnom penh where thousands of prisoners were taken during the khmer rouge administration and interrogated, tortured, and eventually killed. thousands of children and babies were killed here as well. the museum did a very good job of showing the visitor the exact conditions of the former school turned prison 30 years ago. the killing fields contained a memorial to the tens of thousands of khmer people killed and showed the mass graves where thousands of bodies were found. i cannot effectively put into words the affect these two places had on me, but perhaps the pictures can do some service. following is an e-mail excerpt that i sent to friends. i think that it effectively portrays some of the feelings and realizations i was having at the time:

"cambodia has been quite different from thailand in both a refreshing and disturbing/sad way. just briefly . . . thailand is a place of "in-your-face" consumerism and media. it is also very sexually charged and this is obvious in both the media and the people. now i am not one to say too much sex is bad, but it was a little tiring (in a completely intellectual way of course ;) ). i didn't really realize just how charged it was until i came to cambodia. it seems that as soon as you cross the border into cambodia, things are very different. there is obviously a reason for this ( i.e. years of civil war and the disasters wrought by khmer rouge). the people live to survive here. children in the streets begging for food, money, to buy their wares . . . anything. it is so sad to see b/c i know that these are not scams, but people who really need help. i have tried to help by buying food for children or patronizing the various NGO-supported restaurants and shops in both phnom penh and siem reap. it just never seems to be enough. it was truly sobering to visit the killing fields and the S-21 prison in phnom penh where so many hundreds of thousands of khmers were tortured and killed by their own people. learning about it in a classroom never really gives you the full feeling and understanding. i could go on and on from conversations with tuk-tuk drivers whose grandparents and parents were killed to the dozen or so amputees i see every day who were victims of land mines set by the khmer rouge. obviously it is a very different scene here in cambodia. one which i am fortunate to experience. on a lighter note, the temples of angkor are incredible and definitely warrant the volumes written about them. they are some of the best preserved ruins i have seen (but then again, they are slightly newer than egyptian ruins and the like)."






like i said in the e-mail, the temples at angkor were incredible . . . once we finally got there. we were delayed a day because of a horrible case of food poisoning i got from eating a mango salad. siem reap is a funky little town on the outskirts of the temples. there have popped up some interesting little restaurants and bars there. there is still much poverty, but the abundance of tourism for the temples has brought much revenue to the area which is slowly being filtered down into the general public. the pictures of the temples will speak for themselves.






after about a week in cambodia, we decided to make our way over to vietnam. an easy bus ride of about 6 hours and we found ourselves right in the middle of ho chi minh city. after much searching, we found a pleasant little family-run guesthouse for $8/night. we even got a fresh lemonade from "mama solis" (as we called her) when we arrived. the next day we went to the war remnants museum which outlines the "american war," as they call it, and the war crimes wrought against the vietnamese people. some of the pictures and personal accounts of being burned by napalm and children being deformed form the dioxin in the agent orange were heart-wrenching. the effects of the war are still being felt so strongly now, from adults with deformities, to desertification by the use of defoliants. we also visited the cu chi tunnels which was the vietnamese guerilla stronghold during the war. these tunnels served as a network of hiding places within the jungle for the guerilla soldiers to hide in order to evade the american soldiers.




the next day we set off on a 3 day mekong delta excursion that placed us on phu quoc island for two days. floating markets, boathouses, and various islands abounded as we made our way through one of the most economically important areas of vietnam. our 2 days on phu quoc were the perfect end to a long journey. very little tourism has come to the island meaning that there are only dirt roads and miles of unspoiled beaches. it was so peaceful. our 2 days of peace were soon wrenched from us as we headed back to ho chi minh city on what can only be called the "bus ride form hell". we rode in a cramped mini-bus with 5 other vietnamese people, ourselves, and four danish people. one of the danish guys was throwing up out the window the whole way back to the city (9 hours), most of the roads had probably not been re-paved in 10 years or more, and there was about 6 inches of leg room. such is the fun of budget traveling. the rest of the time in ho chi minh city was spent preparing to return to china. we had about 2 days to prepare before our flight back to beijing. oh, it is worth noting that when we got back to ho chi minh, we stayed at a different guesthouse than before. upon checking in we were warned about an "old woman" who was crazy in the building. i thought nothing of it, as i had met many crazy people on my trip. not 5 minutes after setting our bags down did we hear our doorknob turn and a woman of about 4'5" appeared in the doorway. she wore a conical hat (rice paddy hat), was balding, and her eyes were so baggy that she could hardly see out of them. she walked into our room and shook her finger at us and sussed us for who knows what reason. throughout the rest of our stay there she was a regular apparition in our room. she would walk in without knocking, would go into our room when we were away, but leave signs that she had been there, and she would yell at us in unintelligible vietnamese as we exited the guesthouse each morning. i requested a picture with "grandma death" as we called her, but my offer was sharply declined with a flick of her gnarly finger.





it was truly an adventure unlike any other. i saw many sides of life in southeast asia and can only hope that i will make it back there some day. there is so much more to absorb. a part of me will always remain.

a tale of 3 countries

i write this entry just as my tan skin has almost faded to the whiteness it was before i left on my grand adventure, but my memories will not soon fade as easily. so much happened on my six week foray into the world of southeast asia that it will be difficult to paint an ample picture in mere writing. this will serve as a simple appetizer, though, and the rest of the "meal" will come later when i can actually relay the true sentiments of the stories to you in person. i promise that there is much more than what is written here . . .

while not the central destination of the trip, our 2, strike that, 3 nights in beijing proved to set the tone for the rest of the trip. for this reason, a few stories must be told from this short "layover" of sorts. first, the 14 hour train ride. i had taken this train many times before. you see, to get anywhere from tongliao you must take at least a 14 hour overnight train and this almost always means taking it to beijing. well, i was expecting this train ride to be just like every other one - smoky, dirty, slightly uncomfortable, but not too uncomfortable to sleep. in order to save money, i chose to buy a ticket for the top bunk in the sleeper car. while this is only around $2 cheaper, i figured i could use every spare dollar i had. bad idea, clay. i guess that it is a nice commodity to have heaters in train cars when you are riding it through the siberian grasslands of inner mongolia. this becomes near suicidal, however, when the heaters are turned on to the "surface of the sun" setting. we all know heat rises, so there is me on the top bunk, heaters full-blast, continuous puffs of dry heat momentarily drying my sweat-drenched, near-naked body. this coupled with my chinese "friend" in the bunk below me grinding his teeth all night (a sound not unlike 100 fingernails on a chalkboard) made for a very deliriously light and intermittent sleep. feeling as if we had been on a 2 week bender, mike and i dragged ourselves onto and off the subway and finally to our hostel. two nights in the hostel, bar-hopping, shopping, visiting with friends, etc. etc we were ready to head down to hong kong on our 24 hour long train ride. being near the beginning of the chinese new year holiday, however, we severely underestimated the time it would take to actually get on said train. we had our tickets. we were at the train station 15 mins before our train left. the crowd, however, that had assembled resembled, well, for lack of a better analogy . . .a cluster-fuck. pushing, prodding, starting near-riot conditions, we finally got through the door . . . 3 mintues after our train had left. $100 down the drain and one more night in beijing. we promptly called our friends and invited ourselves over to crash at their place. missing our train proved to be one of the best things that happened, however - not to mention that it infused our vacation with a sense of reckless abandon and carefree attitude about silly things like flight times and train departures. who needs to worry about useless things like that? slightly hungover and a little more humble, we boarded a plane to guangzhou the next afternoon.

one night in guangzhou. nothing interesting of note. big city. lots of people. in china. that's about it. the airport is pretty nice, though (and that's saying something in china).

the next afternoon we boarded an express train to hong kong. it was almost as if i had taken a 20 hour flight to a different part of the world as i stepped off at the train station in kowloon. it was warm, the sun was shining, people weren't spitting everywhere, the cars ran quietly . . . and were clean. an easy taxi ride to hong kong island and we were at our hostel which was right in the middle of causeway bay - one of the main shopping areas of hong kong. mrs. lin, the owner of our little guesthouse was all business. she took our passports, recorded the information, gave us a map and pointed out all of the important places (e.g. ATM's, subways stops, etc), took our money, issued us a receipt, and then told us that she didn't want to see us for the rest of our time there. "okay, no problem mrs. lin. really, it's okay, we understand. really, you don't have to raise your voice to get your point across. alright, we won't bother you." aren't hostels just so much more fun than 5 star hotels? we met up with our friend justin from BC and he proceeded to show us around like a professional tour guide. he knew all the hot nightspots, the best sights to see, where to eat (not to mention we got to ride around in his new car). our days were spent waking up around 10, going to see some sights, meeting justin around 5 when he woke up, and then hanging out with him and his friends for the rest of the night. the cash ran freely, but we figured that this was the last place we were going to be doing any heavy-spending. ahhhh, how we were wrong. cue the bus to xiamen and flight to bangkok.




our days in hong kong already seeming to be a distant memory as we entered mainland china again by bus to catch a plane in xiamen. i'm sure xiamen is a very nice place, but we were only there long enough to disembark a bus, board a taxi, disembark the taxi, and then board a plane. within one day, i had traveled from a special administrative region, to another country, and finally to another country. we were finally in thailand and after being the victims of a little taxi scam at the airport, we were finally on khao san road in the heart of the banglamphu region of bangkok. as we slid out of the sweaty taxi into the even sweatier air, the scene before us was almost otherworldly (or at least something from a movie). very attractive people speaking a menagerie of languages in various states of undress could be seen wandering/stumbling/sleeping on the street. this was truly the backpacker's haven that i had read so much about. it was a little after 1 AM and we still did not have a place to stay. wandering from guesthouse to guesthouse all the while dodging and hopping over passed out foreign revilers, we finally found a room at what seemed to be a lice infested motel of the pay-by-the-hour kind. we were so tired, however, that the bedsheets that hadn't been changed since mao tse-tung was the leader of china nor the various paraphernalia of questionable uses on the floor didn't bother us at the time. i passed out and woke up the next morning in a pool of my own sweat. i was finally REALLY in thailand. the next few days were filled with sightseeing and getting oriented. we took a boat cruise through the canals at night, went to clubs, parties, after-parties, after-after-parties. an expected duration of stay of 5 days became 8. i even went to a backstreet boys concert with a friend i made there. he had VIP tickets with all of his friends and invited me to go. yes, i saw the backstreet boys live in bangkok. they were pathetic; i couldn't have been happier. the whole time it felt like we would be there forever and that we would never continue on our adventure, but reality soon caught up with us (as did our party fatigue) and we realized that it was time to get out while we still could. we hopped a bus to chiang mai in the north of thailand.




the bus that conveyed us to chiang mai could only have been the tour bus for "the golden girls". pink, ruffled curtains, pink blankets, pink ruffled pillows . . . you get the picture. we were traveling in style with our "girls". chiang mai proved to be the respite we needed. clean air, quiet, relaxation, beautiful temples, $2 massages. we needed to regain our energy for the next leg of our trip which would take us to the south of thailand and the islands of ko samui and ko phangan. it was not all rest, though. being in the mountains of thailand, a mountain trek was only appropriate. we rode elephants, bamboo rafted down a river, and visited some native village populations in the hills (a.k.a hill tribes). the laid-back atmosphere of thailand permeated every experience in this mountain paradise.








due to the "fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants" philosophy on this trip, we did not book tickets to get to the south of thailand until 2 days before we wanted to leave. this presented us with the problem of both being able to get on the same flight. the decision was made that i would go first in the morning and find us a place to stay and then mike would come on the next plane in the afternoon. so, i rose on the morning of departure, arrived at the airport, fell asleep on the airplane and woke up in paradise. the ko samui airport was a mere cluster of bamboo huts all open to the air. after some haggling, i found a taxi that would take me where i wanted to go. i asked around about beach bungalows all along the beach until i found one that would accommodate 2 people and wasn't horribly dirty. i had about 5 hours before mike was supposed to arrive on the island, so i proceeded to get some fresh seafood, lie on the beach, get a thai massage (again $2) while watching the sun set, and then shower and go to a restaurant on the beach that just happened to be presenting a free traditional thai dance show. oh, i had also made friends with my thai masseuse and she had invited me to come to a club with her that night. once mike got in, the three of us headed off to the club (all three of us on her motorcycle . . . the following picture explains all). fun was had by all. the following day, with my head pounding and my veins still pumping with thai whiskey i rolled onto the beach to nurse myself back to health. after some hours in the sun, mike and i reconvened and decided that ko samui was "so touristy" and thus needed to proceed on to ko phangan. we did not leave, however, without experiencing the traditional art of "muay thai" or thai boxing. this was one of the most interesting sights i saw in thailand. each opponent did a personalized dance before he was to begin the fight. this dance is to pay respect to the other team's teacher as well as to ask for luck in his fight. these dances were very elaborate and were accompanied by traditional instruments. there were 8 different fights the night that we went with fighters ranging in age from around 7 years old to 25 years, old. i was enthralled the entire time. waking the next morning, we boarded the ferry to ko phangan and left ko samui well behind us. when i thought i had stepped into paradise on ko samui, i was obviously naive to the fact that ko samui was merely the "purgatory" outside the gates of paradise. ko phangan seemed nearly unspoiled. with few paved roads and a much more "homegrown" atmosphere, this became a place that i could easily never leave. movies played on TVs in the worldly restaurants that abounded, mats were set up on the beach at night for people to enjoy their drinks on, and during the day you could lie on the beach without another person around for nearly 500 meters. this was truly paradise. well, until i fell off of a motorcylce and put a hole to the bone in my knee. you see, mike and i thought that it would be a great idea to rent motorcycles to explore the far reaches of the island. we had not realized, however, that unpaved mountain roads are not conducive to amateur motorcylce riding. after falling twice myself and employing the aid of a very nice thai guy, mike then proceeded to follow suit. the motorcycles sat outside our bungalow for the rest of our time there . . . un-ridden. our brief stay on ko phangan was ceremoniously ended with a drunken night on the beach. on ko phangan, the island of the world famous "full moon parties", the "thing to do" is to buy a bucket (which consists of one bottle of alcohol and then two bottles of some other mixer all poured into a beach bucket) and then share it with 2 or 3 other friends. well, mike and i decided to share one between the two of us . . . i only remember having a round of affirmations with mike and then dancing by myself in a beachside bar. there will always be a place in my heart for ko phangan.




from here i traveled to cambodia and vietnam. my reflections on these two countries will have to wait until my next entry, however, as i feel it only appropriate to write about them separately from my adventures in hong kong and thailand. i also felt it only appropriate to describe the level of partying that was had in hong kong and thailand in order to juxtapose it against the completely different types of adventures i had in cambodia and vietnam. i leave you with this expectation of new stories in the next entry.

from the great known to the great unknown

so i have been kicking myself over the fact that i have not been blogging as much as i did in the beginning of my adventure here. i have been trying to figure out why that has been. have i gotten lazy? well, that may have always been the case, but i don't think i am any more lazy than before. have i become apathetic to my experience? hardly. i find myself enthralled in this experience every day and to survive i can hardly be apathetic. do i want to cut off all communication with people from "home" and run away to the grasslands of mongolia to spend the rest of my life as a siberian tiger trapper? the thought has crossed my mind, but living in a yurt and eating mutton for every meal would kind of chafe after a while.

i think the reason i haven't been writing as much is just that i am not surprised by things that happen here anymore. a little boy pulling down his pants to urinate on the sidewalk on a busy street. a man smoking while taking a shower at the bathhouse. floating naked in a salt pool with a mural of outer space above me while listening to chinese mood music. being asked to wear a traditional chinese woman's costume complete with a wig while making dumplings all of which to be taped by the school TV station. these are just some examples of things that don't surprise me anymore. every day is filled with little events such as these that i rarely have time or even think about stopping to ponder over. have i become chinese? undoubtedly.

well, to give a quick update. the holidays here were filled with chinese cheer. we were asked to perform on two different ocassions. one performance consisted of a mariah carey "all i want for christmas is you" dance and singing rendition, while the other performance was a mixture of us guys singing and dancing to the backstreet boys' "i want it that way" with the girls doing a dance to a variety of britney spears and christina aguilera. it was without question the most ridiculous showing (as most of it was heavily baijiu fueled) and was without doubt well received.

i am heading out this evening for a six week vacation to hong kong, thailand, cambodia, and vietnam (for the chinese new year and spring festival). mike and i are taking to the road and not looking back. the things we have learned in tongliao will hopefully serve us well for the next six weeks. i now know how to clean up a child's vomit with dirt as well as how to clear a dead cow from the street. those skills should come in handy at some point along the way. i know.

rising from the dust of inner mongolia

contrary to popular belief, i am not currently working in a chinese work camp shearing sheep with my cell-mate named "da guoren" or in english, "big nuts mcgee". while this may serve as some resemblance of my work situation, it is not reality. the past month or so that i have been MIA has been uneventful/full of experiences that cannot fully be put into words. i will try to give some highlights of the experiences i have had during my past hiatus from writing, as well as write about my recent trip to tokyo. get excited!

i will begin from about a month ago . . . one of the foreign teachers here from providence college left and returned to england. given the lack of foreigners in tongliao, we were the logical shmucks to take up the slack. i was given two more classes of 7th graders, adding 6 more lessons per week to my schedule. while i do get paid a little extra money for the extra classes, my time now is spent entirely devoted to teaching during the week. i have become accustomed to this schedule now, but there were a couple of weeks in which i found myself lost and purposeless. let me explain . . .

with adam leaving the school, chinese teachers complaining about the way they are treated here, and students coming from relatively affluent families who expect good grades (whether truly earned or not) for the amount of money they are paying to send their children here, i began to feel a little useless and impotent. i had had all of these goals for the year. i wanted my students to speak perfect english by the time the year was over. i wanted to be a part of a progressive institution that valued education over rank in society. i wanted to open my students' minds to the world. naive? unrealistic? perhaps. but, we all know that i don't deal well in realism. during this period of time i lost motivation in all endeavors. well, things are much better now and i have realized that perhaps just by serving as a "bright spot" in these children's days that are usually filled with endless rote repetition, slave hours in the classroom, and very little play time, i can make some kind of difference, however superficial it might be. i guess it was a good lesson for me to learn. the learning just never ends here in inner mongolia.

well, during this brief period of despair i had the pleasure of eating dog with some chinese military leaders, experiencing snow in early october, and buying 2 new pairs of shoes for 150 yuan each ($18). yes, these are the highlights in my life. it was right before the end of october that i emerged from the doldrums just in time for halloween.

now, halloween proved to be quite the celebration here in tongliao thanks to us foreign teachers basically forcing it on the residents of this provincial town. from an entire week of lessons devoted to halloween (including showing the movies sleepy hollow and the cartoon version ichabod craine & mr. toad) to throwing a party with some truly inappropriate costumes, the holiday was amply observed. i was appropriately scantily clad dressed as a baby (although i don't think that any parent would let their infant leave the house looking the way i did). the party was a complete success as could be evidenced by the state of my room the next morning. see, i guess when i welcomed everyone at the beginning of the party telling them to make themselves at home, they really took that to heart. from cigarette butts, food, and spilled beer, i felt like i was cleaning up after a college party all over again. COLLEGE!!



time quickly flowed into november and i found myself getting ready for my trip to tokyo. this trip was nothing short of incredible . . .

as anyone who knows anything about me would know i have a ravenous appetite for sushi. tokyo presented me with endless options to gorge myself on fat slices of slimy, raw fish and i couldn't have been happier. to avoid a day-to-day account of my time in tokyo, i will just talk about some of the things that really stand out in my mind. i think the first thing that surprised me when i stepped off the subway car into the streets of tokyo was how silent it was. walking out of tokyo station, i was almost creeped out by how quiet it was. the cars ran quietly, there was no horn honking to be heard, and the people refrained from talking on their cell phones in public. i could hardly even make out anyone talking. there was just a quiet stillness to this completely modern and bustling city. perhaps i was more surprised having spent the past 5 months in china where constant noise is expected and welcomed but nonetheless, silence and serenity are an integral part of japanese culture. the next few days were filled with visiting various shrines, temples, and museums. i saw an exhibit of one of my favorite japanese artists - hokusai. i have missed being able to just stroll through a museum whenever i want. tongliao is not known for its cultural offerings such as museums. i think perhaps my favorite day was when i met up with a japanese friend i had met in dalian on my previous trip there. having just moved to tokyo himself, he didn't know much about the city either, so we were both experiencing it for the first time together. it was really interesting and much more meaningful to have a japanese person with me. we talked about japanese culture, my impressions, his experiences. i shared with him about how much of an impact japan has had on the world from design to electronics to cars. he shared with me those cultural nuances that could not be ascertained during a 5 day trip. even if we hadn't visited shibuya, harajuku, akihabara, asakusa, or yanakka on that day, i would have been happy to have talked with him about japanese culture for hours. it just seems that the japanese embody and value many of the things that i find myself valuing as well - respect for the natural environment, beauty, mental/spiritual health, simple design, and an ability to spend time with a close friend without having to talk the entire time. i felt "at home" among the japanese. oh yeah, and there was the usual messy night in roppongi in which all parties involved watched the sun rise over tokyo. the trip was exactly what i needed to reinvigorate my motivation and excitement for the months ahead.

ahhh, china

so nothing of real importance has happened since my last posting, but i figured that it was time to provide a little update . . .

every day is basically the same. i wake up in the morning around 7:30 after around 30 minutes worth of snooze button pressings. i then follow with making some oatmeal and letting it cool while i wash my face (no, i can't shower in the mornings, because the water is not warm yet) and get dressed. i then eat my breakfast, brush my teeth, get my things together, and go outside to pull some grass. yes, i pull grass every morning, afternoon, and night for my newly acquired guinea pigs harrington and mimi. you may ask why i have guinea pigs, so i will tell you the story . . .

so my friend liu jinpeng (james) who i have mentioned in previous posts (the one who sends me around 52 text messages daily) texted me one day and asked if i could meet him on a saturday around 5 for dinner. i didn't have anything planned as of yet, so i agreed. on that day, i hopped into the cab to take me to the city to meet james expecting a nice dinner and then to return to my apartment afterward for a night in with my foreign cohorts. well, i pulled up to the pre-arranged meeting spot and saw james holding a cage with two furry creatures scurrying around within it. i was not surprised as i often see people with an array of animals in varying degrees of life or death all over the city (including chipmunks, doves, mice on strings, etc.). well, james was grinning ear to ear as i exited the car and handed the cage to me. i looked at the guinea pigs and acknowledged that they were cute and told him that he must enjoy having pets to keep him company. well, he then proceeded to say that they were my gift since we were "best friends" and all, handing over the following letter:

dear clay,
how are you? do you like them? they are very interesting and lovely. how about your feeling with them? they like grass best. if you have not grass, the rice or millet or vegetables is ok. they have a good stomach and they eat very much. so you must give them enough food to keep them alive. if you won't let them make your room dirty, you can put a plastic bag under the cage so the dirty will on the bag. you only need to change the bag. it is very easy! put the bag like this: [detailed diagram]. best wishes for you! everything goes well!
your friend,
james

well, we continued on to dinner with the guinea pigs and all. i set them down on the chair next to me, as this is allowed in china, and commenced dinner. i then said that we each had to name one of the guinea pigs. he named the female mi-mi, which means beautiful and clever in chinese, and i named the male harrington as this seemed like a respectable name for a chinese guinea pig. after dinner, the guinea pigs had proceeded to "dirty" on the chair which i had to clean up. well, that is the story of harrington and mimi. not that exciting, but it has added a great deal of responsibility to my life. i now not only have kids to take care of at work, but also at home. ahhh, china.

oh, yeah, and today all of us went to lunch with our boss for no particular reason. we ended up going to a restaurant that specializes in the preparation of gou rou (or dog). so with our boss's prodding we got drunk and ate dog only to return to have to teach children. ahhh, china.

oh, yeah, and one other thing, one of my boss's secretaries called me a "dreamboat" today. ahhh, china.

from dreary to dalian

as i promised, i will post an entry about the "not quite chinese, yet not quite western" city that is dalian.

the vacation came as a great relief to me as i had been in tongliao for two months and had not left its confines since i got here. for those of you that know me, you know that i don't sit still in one place for very long and thus this momentary captivity leant to an almost claustrophobic sentiment on my part. the promise of sand and sun helped me get through that week prior to setting off for dalian. bleary-eyed, yet hopeful, myself along with a few of my other foreign counterparts boarded the train at 6:30 in the a.m. and prepared for our 12 hour journey to the coast. i, of course, passed out as soon as we got on the train and awoke a few hours later to two small beady eyes staring at me from the opposite bunk. as my eyes struggled to focus, i realized that it was a small child lying on his stomach just staring at me. i was taken aback at first, but then gave him the customary and requisite "ni hao ma?" (sort of "what's up?") and he just giggled. i obviously had gotten the tone incorrect or maybe i had some drool streaming down my chin . . . either way, this was the beginning of another train inspired friendship with a chinese child. i have about 32 pictures of just the two of us playing with my camera and him spitting at me and trying to eat my fingers, but i will spare you. the following picture is the best out of any of them. "le la" as his mother called him was very interested in my ipod - in the following picture he is listening to it. well the train ride progressed throughout the day and into the evening much the same. we listened to music, drew pictures, and drove his mother crazy . . . ahh, to be a child again.


well that night we were required to celebrate mike's birthday in the only fashion we saw fit (i.e. find some random bar and drink and dance the night away). the night began with little success and i soon began to worry that our plans would be dashed, but after walking for some time we found a place called "sky bar". it was already past 10 p.m. when most of china closes up (or at least in our experience with tongliao) and this bar was still raging, so we entered. smoke, lights, loud music, and the sight of western skin flashed before my eyes. it took me a little while to realize that i was still in china. there were tourists everywhere and nary a chinese person anywhere to be seen. the small dance floor in the middle of the bar held 4 black-clad dancers singing every song that came on and trying to get people to come up and dance. the music was familiar, the staff all spoke english, the drinks were international. i could hardly believe it. well the rest of the night is history . . . at least at that bar. after finishing a bottle of jack daniel's between us all, the voice of the night called to us once more. we walked out of "sky bar" one tambourine heavier and found another bar called "alice bar". at this point it was already 1 or 2 a.m. this bar proved to be a glamorized karaoke bar which we stayed at until 4 or so in the morning. singing and dancing among a large german man and his harem of prostitutes, this bar ended our first night in dalian.


the next morning a few of us decided to make a trek to the beach after a highly disappointing breakfast/lunch (i will have to say that the chinese food in tongliao is much better than dalian - or at least where we ate there). just an aside since i am talking about food, i did try some of the culinary delights of dalian which included everything from seahorses, scorpions, and squid to caterpillars, crab, and mealworms all on a stick. the picture below shows just a smattering of the buffet i was confronted with on the streets of dalian. okay, now back to . . . the cab ride to the beach revealed some of the most beautiful scenery i have ever seen. the driver drove through a large park that surrounded the beach which included green grass (as opposed to brown grass in tongliao), tall trees (as opposed to near dead trees in tongliao), flowers of all colors (as opposed to no flowers in tongliao), and even hills (as opposed to the monotonous flatness of tongliao). the rest of the day was spent sunbathing, sweating out all of the garlic, pepper, and oil that had inhabited my body since i arrived in china, and swimming in the water. it was exactly what i needed. despite the fat chinese men, the strangely unattractive russians, a huge pile of trash just sitting on the sand, and a naked baby that ran around screaming the ENTIRE day, the beach was beautiful and relaxing. perfection (chinese style, of course).




well that night, feeling relaxed as it was, pat, mike, and i decided to make a little trip to the all night bath house for a massage. we weren't really aware what was in store for us . . . we walked in paid for the treatment that was not the cheapest, but not the most expensive either. we were escorted into a locker room, told to strip, and then walk into a shower room to rinse off. we obediently followed. after the shower we were exfoliated by a man with a towel. lying naked on a table in front of many other people, the guy exfoliated one's ENTIRE body. this includes places that i didn't even know needed to be exfoliated. well, sleek and smooth, we then were instructed to don some see-through little pajama things and go upstairs to get the massage. mounting the stairs with a number of women just sitting around waiting for their next client, i began to question the exact nature of this bathhouse. not one to challenge culture, though, i followed my masseuse into a private room. the entire massage was completely professional (to my relief . . . and disappointment ;) ) and very rejuvenating. walking out after the hour limit, i felt the cleanest and most relaxed since i had come to china. well, on the way back to the hotel we exchanged stories about our respective massages and mike's proved to be anything but professional. let's just say that she was trying to massage other parts of his body not customarily dealt with by a masseuse. his pleads of "bu yao, xie xie" ("i don't want it, thank you") went unheard at first until it became clear to her that he was not going to have any of it. pat and i of course found this very amusing and proceeded to share it with the rest of the group. and it happened to mike of all people!!

the rest of the trip provided me with more of the same relaxation. after a few days of sun, massages, the purchase of stolen designer clothing, and hot showers, i headed back to tongliao with the sun at my back and the smell of autumn (and sewage - just to remind me we are still in china) in my nose.

a window into my life

what follows is a collection of extremely accurate and valid observations about living in china. i got it off of daveseslcafe.com (just to give credit where it is deserved). all of these events and observations i have either experienced or observed (with the exception of maybe 8 of them) in the 2 months i have been living here. this list is extensive and includes some of the more colorful aspects of life in china. it is no lie that this is and will be my life for the next year. enjoy! i will be posting another entry this weekend detailing my trip to dalian. this list just couldn't wait, though.

you know you're in china when . . .

- you forget what clean smells like.
- you know what time they burn the garbage every night.
- you barely flinch when you see a small child emptying his bowels in the street.
- you know the news you're getting isn't the REAL news.
- a cup of coffee costs more than ten times a bottle of beer.
- you find yourself crying over a menu in a western restaurant because they serve potato salad.
- you haven't eaten anything baked in months.
- you eat every kind of meat off the bone, and spit the bones on the table.
- you speak really slowly and enunciate when you're speaking English, and sometimes find it easier just to speak Chinese.
- you have to ask if the VCD is in English when you rent it.
- you know what a VCD is.
- you ride a bike. All the time. Even in the rain, and people look at you strangely if you're not wearing a poncho.
- you can expertly maneuver your bike through any traffic situation.
- you know the currency exchange between RMB and your home country but not your home country and its neighbor.
- you spend less than 10RMB on a fully satisfying lunch, but might end up eating at a table with 4 strangers.
- you carry a supply of TP with you everywhere you go.
- you know how to use a squatter.
- you know what a squatter is.
- grown men and women often say hello to you, and when you reply they run away giggling.
- you can't decide if you love or hate the country you're living in.
- you realize that the smog-o-meters they use in western countries would explode if they were brought to the colder parts of the country in the middle of winter.
- you see nothing wrong with standing on a white stripe in the middle of a highway while cars whiz past you at 90kph
- you don't slow down when you see someone standing in the middle of the highway
- you never stop for a right turn, particularly when the light is red, although you don't really understand why no one ever crashes into you
- it seems completely normal that some guy on a tricycle wants to buy your garbage
- you don't blink an eye when a complete stranger wants to take a photo of you with his family
- you actually put some thought into which live snake you want cooked for your meal
- you eat soup with chopsticks
- you use Kleenex for table napkins
- you drink warm sodas and find them refreshing
- you are accustomed to seeing people's heads popping up and down in the VCD you are watching
- you no longer use articles when you speak
- you bargain with the grocer over the cost of a head of lettuce
- you no longer question why the expiration date on the milk you just bought is two months from now
- you buy a movie that hasn't been released theatrically yet at home...
- you take cigarette breaks during dinner...
- you complain about the price of chocolate bars...
- you enjoy a glass of dusty brown wine...
- you comment the pollution "isn't really that bad..."
- when you can get ANYTHING to eat on a stick
- when a trim at the barber invloves two washes, a scalp massage, a whole lot of time, and a crowd of onlookers
- When beer is most often served cold in the winter
- When you go to a park and you can't walk on the grass
- When you go to the park and get heavily sprayed with pesticide that keeps that same untouched grass green and strong
- Where the red stamp is all powerful
- when in the case of a driver hitting a bike or pedestrian, the driver showers abuse and violence for the damages to his passat.
- when you are constantly asked if you think simple foods and beverages are delicious. "This is the best boiled water ever!" "fantastic seeds!"
- where every city is (in)famous for some kind of food
- you find yourself spitting in public places (i.e. the street, restaurant) and not thinking twice
- you speak chinese with other foreigners (even if they speak the same language) simply because it is easier
- you can access programs on computers even though there are no english prompts
- you take it in stride when you are offered beer/baijiu at lunch before going back to work
- you start wearing a face mask on windy days and wonder at the "silly foreigners" who don't do the same
- you can play charades so well that it is often not necessary to talk (due to lack of chinese when you arrive)
- people ask if they can keep some of your hair after you get it cut at the salon
- you start to believe that it isn't really a cigarette unless it leaves a yellow stain on your fingers after a night out
- an entire class looks at you with a blank face when you ask them to try and discover something on their own, rather than you just telling them the answer
- you are commonly spoken to in russian and cursed when you don't understand it (mostly in northern china when you are blond and blue eyed)
- the smell of stinky tofu doesn't faze you anymore
- your host offers you silkworms telling you that they are very good, and when you ask if they like them they reply no.
- most of the club stops dancing to watch in fear/horror when you actually start to shake your thing
- you make a scheduled trip to KFC weekly to buy them out of mashed potatoes!
- you complain about that price difference of DVDs/VCDs/CDs bought in the stores and on the streets
- you start to wonder if the chocolate ice cream you find in the store is even chocolate... sure it is brown, but it doesn't taste anything like the stuff back home!
- you are not surprised when your garbage lady answers her cell phone and keeps digging thru your trash!
- you find face lotion that actually bleachs your skin whiter....
- you deliberately block traffic on a highway zebra crossing, because you want to reach the other side safely; drivers actually stop, and some even offer a proletarian-style kowtow (touching their forehead);
- you shove the guy before you back to where he stood half a minute before in the queue, barking a loud "hou mian, hou mian, ni nongmin!"
- you come to an appointment late, fully prepared with a run-of-the-mill explanation such as: "Sorry, but I was the only person standing at the bus stop, and no bus would stop, seeing as they did that I was a foreigner...";
- you dialled the wrong number, and instead of saying "buhao y-she, wo da cuole..." you simply slam the receiver back into its cradle;
- you forget to turn off your mobile phone, and of course, your girlfriend rings right in the middle of your first lesson in the evening class; of course, you answer, and the whole class gets a titillating lesson in what Westerners in love with each other talk about;
- you address the parents of your child charges as 'xiao pengyou', because you actually think they are more childish than their own children; they laugh good-humouredly;
- you have learned to enjoy being stared at
- you stare back especially at knockout women
- almost anything can be "fixed"
- you can open and hull sunflower seeds with your tongue
- you have a jar full of "fen" at home
- you give a beggar a handfull of fen and he gives them back
- you can climb 6 flights of stairs without a rest stop
- you can buy a NEW bicycle for US $17
- people offer you a stool to sit on when you stop in front of a shop
- chairs are never tall enough for you to sit with your legs straight down
- someone hands you a pair of scissors with one of the handles snapped off and you try to use them
- long underwear is a wardrobe staple five months of the year
- you don't blink your green eyes or shake your very brunette head when someone compliments you on your blue-eyed blondness
- you have trouble sleeping when you go home for a visit because it's just too darn quiet
- Nescafe instant with edible oil product topping IS cappuccino
- you stop thinking about the big blood stain on the wall
- a 4% mortality rate seems a safe bet
- when you go shopping for clothes or shoes you often find that they don't have what you want in a size that will fit your big foreign frame. Instead they offer you something bigger and uglier and think it's a fair compromise.
- you're yelling at a kid that's throwing a chick around and you turn to his father for support and all he can say is that your Chinese is really good.
- you can stop watching tv for 2 weeks and when you start watching again they're still showing reruns of the same show.
- you have ten different responses to the question, "Do you like China?"
- you're looking forward to blending in with the crowd.
- you know ten different ways to point out a foreigner in Chinese.
- you point out foreigners to your Chinese friends even though you're foreign yourself.
- you no longer find it humourous that the bus never really stops to pick people up, it just sort of slows down.
- you find yourself asking anyone and everyone if they can make the price cheaper.
- you know which chocolate is real and which chocolate is glorified butter.
- you know words in Chinese for which you don't know the translation in English.
- your students bow and call you teacher when you enter a room.
- if the average salary is 2000 RMB/month, then why are all the apartments costing 450,000-800,000 RMB?(with 100 grand to decorate!!)
- with all the traffic jams, who owns all those cars?
- why does it seem everyone between the age of 21-25 is now either in Australia or the U.K.?
- if students are so stingy to study in Shanghai, why do they put up hundreds of thousands of RMB for overseas studies without question?
- what are all those MBA seekers going to do when they come back?
- where do all those foreign people flooding in expect to work?
- why do most foreign teachers last less than 6 months here?
- your mashed potato has squid guts and fish heads in it...and you think it tastes fine.
- you answer 'China' when people ask where you're from
- you answer 'China' when people ask where you live
- having fingers poked into your ears when you're getting a shampoo no longer makes you wonder at the cleanliness of the 100 who came before you
- you see 'Made in Australia' on products you've never even dreamed of when you lived there
- you answer 'ni hao', giggle, and run away when someone says hello to you
- your Chinese friend Faye has such poor pronunciation you tell her she's speaking feihua
- everyone assumes that if you know one word of putonghua, you know them all
- you pick your nose, burp, fart, and scratch so much even your Chinese friends get embarrassed
- you get a discount if you speak English, but you pay more for putonghua
- you no longer wonder if that guy who's up his nose to the second knuckle is drilling for oil or scratching his brain
- you start thinking that stupid questions are reasonable
- you call home and your family tell you to speak faster and stop correcting their grammar and pronunciation
- you spit on your own floor to save time treading it in on your shoes
- you think that having the runs for 2 weeks is normal
- SARS doesn't worry you; 4% chance of death is considerably lower than eating the food, breathing the air, riding a bicycle or listening to bad KTV
- you don't have any idea what something is, but you'll eat it anyway.
- if you just ate and liked it, you don't ask what it is.
- you have strict mental rules as to when you reply to a hello (ie person must be within a 20 foot semi circle radius and not with a group of men)
- you completely ignore most people who say hello to you
- you have a conversation while sidestepping feces, vomit, and mysterious green puddles on the sidewalk without blinking.
- you dodge urine streams spurting from an infant.
- you stare at dogs that are over 1 foot tall.
- you see a woman with dyed hair and trying to figure out of she's Chinese or foreign by walking fast to catch up.
- you eat cake with chopsticks
- you're afraid of toilets
- you constantly wonder if everything has been boiled long enough.
- you'll sit through a half hour of Beijing Opera on TV because there's nothing better to do.
- contemplate suicide when taking a long distance hard sleeper train.
- you know what it is and you eat it anyway
- you catch a taxi and it becomes a dutch oven
- nobody blames it on the dog
- you stop wondering why the river fish have 3 eyes
- you miss your old apartment, where the roof only collapsed once each year
- you've stopped wondering why it takes a 20 gallon flush to clear a 2 ounce pee
- the open sewer next to your school smells better than the canteen food
- the open sewer next to your school tastes better than the canteen food
- you answer 'So is mine.' when people say their English is so poor
- a family sedan is a mid-size scooter
- you think that pedicab drivers who charge you 100 times more than the trip's worth are cheats
- you think that pedicab drivers who charge you 50 times more than its worth are honest
- you think that pedicab drivers who charge you 25 times more than its worth are poor businessmen
- you think that pedicab drivers who charge you the correct fare are...(don't know - it's never happened)
- you convince yourself that it doesn't matter how dirty the cooks' hands are, cooking will fix it
- you wonder why they bother with squat boxes when everyone pisses on the floor
- you think squats are great because no one can piss on the seat
- you think bottled water is clean, safe, and is bottled by people with high moral standards who put quality before profit
- you think Yang Rei (CCTV9 'Dialogue' program) is an unbiased reporter
- you believe that the HR department of your school actually stands for Human Resources and not Hit and Run.
- you believe that anything done to you is because you're not culturally sensitive enough
- you stop wondering why they're not culturally sensitive to you, their guest
- you are becoming proficient in 4 other languages: Mandarin, local dialect, Chinglish, and gibberish
- if there are only 4 screaming children running around the classroom, you consider it a good primary class.
- if there are only 4 students sleeping, you consider it a good middle school class.
- if there are only 4 dictionary obsessed nerds, you consider it a good language center class.
- if you're only mocked in public 4 times, you consider it a good day.
- you love tofu because there's nothing to spit out and it doesn't have any taste.
- you start saying 'play computer' 'I very like' and other assorted chinglish.
- you know exactly what CS is.
- you're curiously nonplussed when children stick their finger up your bum.
- every town is famous for something or other.
- you hold hands with men and think nothing of it
- you avoid touching women like they have cooties.
- you get absolutely knackered at a 12 year old's birthday party while playing drinking games with children and munching on turtles. Can't get more Chinese than that.
- you whole-heartedly agree with things that you don't agree with.
- you can do almost anything standing on, but not actually wearing, your sneakers (ie change your pants)!!
- you've got a pre-paid ticket with a booked seat for a soft-seat train or plane, but you still run like mad to make sure you get a seat.
- the cure hurts more than the sickness
- you very like saying 'very like'
- you forget that vegetable soup is actually pesticide broth
- smoking does less harm to your lungs than breathing
- you call polluted water and preservatives wine
- living in a 'clean' city means living in one where you won't mutate. At least not immediately.
- you run substantially less risk of picking up a bug by swimming in a toilet than you do by swimming in the local pool
- going to the beach for a swim really means scrabbling over rocks to wade through sludge
- you can wear a t-shirt with a suit jacket and fresh-out-of-bed hair and feel completely normal.
- you laugh and smile when someone calls you a fat pig.
- you point over your back with your thumb when using the past tense.
- you watch TV and not know what the hell is going on but enjoy it anyway because of the women in the shampoo commercials.
- you think that America's '60 Minutes' program is 48 minutes of bullshit and 12 minutes of commercials, but you can't wait for China's '60 Minutes', which will either be 60 minutes of bullshit OR 60 minutes of commercials.
- 'investigative reporting' is either slagging off at America or toeing the Party line
- you're beginning to like fruit salad and mayonnaise
- you've stopped wondering why you only get bread if you order a chicken and mayo (mei you 'nothing') sandwich
- your Chinese friends have such revolting breath you wonder if they secretly eat turds
- you eat chocolate from home and: a/ miss the taste of salt b/ bounce off the walls from sugar overload
- you've learned that it's okay to be 3 days/weeks late for appointments because everyone else is
- you've stopped wondering why restaurants don't clean up the barf right outside their door
- you've stopped wondering why people will step over it to get into the restaurant
- you drop sliced bicycle tyre into the hotpot, tell everyone it's snake, and stifle your giggle when they tell you it's 'very delicia' (delicious)
- you've used those big toothpicks so often you now have circular gaps between your teeth
- if the gaps get any bigger you'll need chopsticks for toothpicks
- you just love it when new brethren arrive and give you their list of what they will and won't do and eat
- you've learned to enjoy the 'list of demands' from applicants who are nobodies going nowhere, but 'will consider' gracing you with their presence.
- Chinese guys think we get the girls because we're white and rich, and not because our breath doesn't smell like shit
- when people say 'You're a foreigner; what country are you from?', you answer 'Foreign'.
- how many foreigners live in Foreign? 5.5 billion less 1.3 billion = 4.2 billion
- you give your students deodorant and they eat it icon_wink.gif
- every village is different from the rest of China but all foreigners are the same
- the thing your city is 'famous' for is the most revolting thing you've ever seen/heard/smelled/tasted
- everyone wants to be your friend - all you have to do is teach them English for free
- everyone wants to teach you Chinese by speaking to you in English
- your Chinese lessons consist of 50 words your teacher wants to know the English meaning of
- you buy a new shirt and have to sew the buttons on
- when people ask if you speak English you answer (in English) 'No, I only speak French', and they believe you
- when people say 'My English is so poor', you agree
- when people say 'My English is so poor', you tell them to look up the word 'atrocious'
- you tell people you don't understand, so they write it for you - in Chinese.
- your boss thinks you're a stupid foreigner if you let him cheat you, but thinks you're a bad foreigner if you don't
- your boss speaks really good English until you ask for more money
- the grocer doesn't understand why you're pissed off at being charged 50 yuan for a chicken, but gets narky when you offer him 10 fen
- you have accumulated hundreds of notes and addresses but you can't read any of them
- you choose one that looks vaguely familiar, give it to the taxi driver, and he tells you he doesn't have 3 kilograms of potatoes, 4 carrots, and 6 tomatoes
- you tell your Chinese friend you want to go to a VCD store and he takes you to a VD Clinic
- you buy some cute little birds to keep at home and your housekeeper cooks them for you
- your doctor tells you it's not serious but you should go home and get some money. When you do, you're whisked into the operating theatre to remove your burst appendix
- the nurse jabbing the needle into you would have trouble finding a road, let alone your vein
- when he's taking the stitches out he says you might feel a little pain, then he drops hot cigarette ash on your stomach
- when you jump and shout and beat it out he says you're very strong and making a fast recovery
- fixing a cavity in one tooth requires the almost total demolition of the teeth around it
- the dentist doesn't offer you a local anaethstetic and later marvels at your ability to withstand excruciating pain
- groups of people find it fascinating to watch you buy an orange at a fruit market. Commentary is provided in case some people don't know exactly what's going on.
- you think it's pleasurable to ride your bike down the road with 10 tonne monster trucks flying past you 2 feet away.
- you have no qualms that someone who thinks you're stupid and gullable has total control over your life.
- the ugliest western man always has a beautiful Chinese girlfriend.
- at the beach women wear bulky swimsuits from the 1950's while men wear speedos
- men apparently smuggle olives in these speedos.
- a hike up a mountain calls for a plastic grocery bag full of junk food. Later you add to the scenery by littering the ground.
- there are fences around the flora in nature parks to keep people from eating it.
- you can buy snake, crab, and donkey meat in little plastic bags with a smiling blonde woman adorning the front. 'eat my brand of donkey, you sexy man.' Marketing genius. Sometimes the bags of spicy donkey meat will have a smiling, anthropomorphized donkey waving at you, beckoning you to come gnaw on his leg. It's priming people for cannibalism.
- someone with bleached white hair with pink dots and dressed like an 80's New Wave reject will laugh at the funny looking foreigners.
- you love and hate children at the same time.
- grown men think it's fucking hilarious to say hello. Hello, haha! I'm a stupid git, hellooo, haha! Me and my mentally-arrested-at-age-13 buddies like a say hellooo, haha! Foreigners go around saying hellooo in high pitched voices like me, hello, haha! I just bought a VCD of nothing but people saying hello, I wet myself laughing! Hellooo, haha!
- you walk into a bar on Friday night at 11.00pm and you are the only one there.
- you approach a bar frequented mainly by Chinese and the bouncers give you a look like you are a potential health hazard
- you walk into the supermarket and the masses part like the red sea before Moses to let the Foreigner through
- people everywhere wear masks with pores the size of 1000 viruses, and then step into a taxi without wearing a seat belt in a country where 12 000 people die per month in traffic accidents.
- the same people who are so terrified of SARS walk blindly across bustling streets as if they believe thay are immortal
- students tell you to wash your hands before you mark their book
- the locals blame every other country and race (The Thais, Hong Kongese, The Foreigners) for the SARS problem, except the one real source - China.
- the Mayor and the Health minister get fired for not telling the truth by a government that still refers to the "peaceful liberation" of Tibet, blocks web sites, bans books, imprisons Beida students for wanting a say in the country's future...
- the major exercises are:
* drinking tea (weightlifting)
* reading the newspaper (exercising biceps and triceps)
* picking your nose (eye/hand coordination)
* picking your feet (bend and stretch)
* picking your teeth (fine motor skills)
- the local teacher's timetable looks like this:
*8:05 - 11:20 drink tea and read the newspaper
*11:20 - 12:00 have lunch
*12:00 - 2:20 sleep after a solid morning's effort
*2:20 - 5:05 drink tea, read the newspaper, and prepare for tomorrow
*5:05 - 8:30 go home, drink tea, read the newspaper, have dinner, and tell everyone how hardworking you are
*8:30 - 11:00 watch TV to help you relax
*11:00 go to sleep - another big day tomorrow!
- the average employee will spend 40 hours in strenuous effort trying to avoid 10 minutes of simple work
- the more you listen to the news, the more uninformed you are
- you suspect your school wants to get rid of you because:
a/ they wrap your lunch in roadmaps
b/ they keep moving but won't tell you where they're going
- you throw your school leaders out of a boat and tell them it's how we teach people to swim
- they ask if the concrete shoes are really necessary
- you tell them the concrete hat is the difficult part
- you don't mind the crime and poverty but you really can't handle the cold
- you give names to your roaches and cry if one dies
- coffee tastes like Chinese medicine
- your neighbours 'airmail' their garbage because walking to their front door is 'tai taoyan' (too much trouble)
- you see the 9001/9002 Quality Assurance logo in the dodgiest restaurant in town
- you know that the New Year's Eve countdown must begin before 11pm or you'll be doing it alone
- you're 4th in the queue but 40th to be served
- you start thinking instant coffee tastes pretty good.
- you realize that all wild animals are to be caught and eaten and/or ground up for medicine.
- when the national news is on, your forty TV channels magically become the same channel.
- no one cares if you wear the same clothes all month.
- absolutely everything that can possibly be eaten is in some way good for your health.
- your biggest decision every morning is matching your tie colour with your face mask.
- you're from Austria or Australia, but nobody seems to know the difference.
- KTV becomes interesting.
- warm beer becomes drinkable.
- local drinking games are your most effective language learning environment.
- buying a DVD is cheaper than seeing a movie in the cinema, and it's available before the movie is released.
- you walk past a river or lake that looks like something out of the Simpsons---radioactive sludge strewn with garbage---and there are people FISHING. Alternatively, you stop at the radioactive sluge and TAKE PICTURES.
- you want to home and watch TV even though you can't understand a bloody word of it.
- you are willing to see a dentist novacaine or no novacaine.
- apples are the size of pumpkins
- the local beauty spot is a concrete eyesore
- buildings were apparently designed by the local kindergarten
- you daren't have a salad 'cause you know what it was fertilised with
- The locals think your family were monkeys living in caves while China was ruling the world.
- you eat your lunch whilst admiring the live baby rat in a cage (complete with watermelon rind for food) your friendly restaurant owner caught and is keeping for a pet.
- student assessment/placement at your school consists of evaluating the student's parents' guanxi rather than the student's level or ability
- only five minutes of prep time for a unannounced class no longer fazes you
- when you grocery shop it looks like you are panic buying to your fellow Chinese shoppers
- evaluating the contents of your shopping cart is the past-time of all the other shoppers in the store
- your housekeeper throws out the chicken breast you have marinating in garlic and olive oil but organizes your empty beer bottles and cans
- you leave your laundry hanging up for more than a day its dirtier than it was before you washed it
- you actually believe you're here to teach English
- Chinese staff from your school are shocked and mystified by the pictures you show them from brochures of the town you all live in and they swear it can't be "*#*@" because in the picture the sky is blue
- at English Corner (aka English Speaker Cornered) a person asks you how to "improve my oral English" and when you tell them the only way is to continually practice they walk away dejected and sad
- you begin to question your own pronounciation
- when children ask if you like Chinese students you reply "Yes they are very delicious." without batting an eye
- you plan to ask students questions they must form their own answers to and you bring reading material along to occupy your time during the long silence that fills the period between you asking the question and the first hand that tenatively rises
- you stare back
- dental procedures are a spectator sport (why else would the chair be in the storefront picture window)
- being served dog when you go out is no longer your greatest culinary fear
- begin giving the staff ratings on the answers they give you based on their creativity rather than their candor or truthfulness
- you no longer expect the truth

my best friend

i met him last saturday at lunch with some of my fellow english teachers and some former students of ours from the summer session that we taught at. he was quiet at first and when he did speak it was only chinese. as lunch that day progressed, he became more and more comfortable speaking . . . that was the end of any shred of shyness he had possessed. the following is an account of the text message conversations we have had over the past week. the bulk of the messages came within the past couple of days (32 in total). i am flattered by his persistence and desire to be friends, but just hope that the deluge of text messages recedes and that a respectable 1 or 2 texts per day will suffice. the following are only some of the more humorous and notable of messages received:

Message 32: September 4, 19:43
"I will need English name. Will you give me?"

Message 31: September 4, 19:47
"James, oh, James, that name is cool! Call me James when you meet me next."

Message 30: September 4, 20:10
"Let us become the best friends and our friendship will be last forever. Are you agree?"

Message 29: September 6, 12:31
"How are you. I am missing you very much. Is everything okay these days?"

Message 27: September 6, 17:58
"How can we get together before you leave?"

Message 22: September 6, 18:32
"Ok I look forward to see you. After dinner we could do everything."

Message 21: September 6, 18:39
"Everything goes well! Bye! I expect that day will be a fine day!"

Message 1: September 8, 13:14
"It is up to you I will listen to you where we go."

well, i actually had to cancel dinner with him tonight because i have a meeting that was just announced (as per usual - last minute). he was sad, but i promised that we would meet once i got back from dalian. my next blog entry will probably chronicle the four day weekend i will be spending in the coastal city of dalian . . . beach, sunshine, cocktails, warm showers . . . paradise!

"crazy english"

so the past week has not been full of the crazy and blog-worthy adventures of weeks past, but there are a few interesting tidbits i would like to relay . . .

first, during one of my regular lunches with my tailor friend (who has altered jeans, shirts, and will be making me some pants in the near future . . . i know, tough life), he showed me the book that he has been using to learn english entitled "crazy english". every lunch or dinner with him is filled with him feverishly writing down everything we say in english and him translating everything into chinese for us. well, upon looking through the book, i came across the following mantra of sorts:

i'm chinese.
i'm from the people's republic of china.
i love my country. i love my people.
our country has a history of 5000 years. i'm proud of it.
our motherland is going through changes now. i'm part of it.

i want to speak good english.
because english is an international language.
the japanese have to learn english.
the koreans have to learn english.
the french have to learn english.
the germans have to learn english.
all nations of the world are learning english now.
we chinese must learn english too.
because we need a common language to communicate!

i enjoy learning english!
i enjoy speaking english!
i enjoy making mistakes!
i enjoy losing face!

i'm crazy about speaking english.
i practice speaking english everyday.
i can speak good english!
i'm an international chinese!

i love chinese language too.
it's spoken by billions of people in the world.
it is a beautiful language!
more and more foreigners are starting to learn chinese now.
i hope to teach the whole world chinese when i grow up.
so i must study chinese well.

this is me.
a chinese high school student!
this is my dream!
to spread english throughout china and chinese throughout the world.
i want to share this dream with all of my friends all over the world.

let's make miracles together!
let's just do it!

hilarious? i think yes. from required military training to mantras about learning english, the chinese people will be well-outfitted to become the next super power both physically and psychologically. i guess it is good to know that they are "crazy about english" though. makes my job a whole lot easier.

the other little morsel just has to do with a certain student that diana named clay after yours truly. he had come into the office crying because he missed his mother. i talked to him, comforted him, and made him laugh as only an awkward funny looking american like myself can with a little chinese boy. his picture follows. he doesn't look too happy, but he carries my namesake. there will forever be a clay roaming the great land of china. with any luck, he will be speaking "crazy english" by the end of the year.