LiT Pt. 2

On this episode of Lost in Translation:

"The Middle-Aged and The Old

 Nutritional Oatmeal"

Sorry, Junior-- this stuff's only for grown-ups.

The simple life

In the past two days I have realized how much as a society we take for granted electricity. In China, because of the overpopulation, each town has power quotas for every month. If that town goes over quota, that’s it, the power gets shut off. Because of the incredible heat wave in Hechuan at the beginning of the month it seems we were a few days over quota, because I got a text from my waiban on Tuesday morning saying that the power would be shut off for all but a few hours a night from Sept. 27-30^th.

Can you imagine the outrage if that suddenly happened to your town in the U.S. one day? But here it is just an accepted phenomena that from what I gather seems to happen almost every month. When I asked my students about it, they said it was good because it helped the environment. Restaurants are still in operation, although serving smaller menus with all cooking done by candlelight. Night classes have all been rescheduled for lunchtime when there is light to study by. Even the construction on our new campus, which happens mostly at night, is currently halted. I wonder if this ever happens in places like Beijing or Shanghai, where everything is brightly lit and neon signs flash in your face from every corner. What must their power quotas be like?

I have learned that my life without power is a much slower and simpler one. Tuesday, I was wholly unprepared since the power was already out when I received the warning text, so I passed the day wandering around outside and luckily had lots of lesson planning to do to fill my time.

By Wednesday, I thought I was ready. My laptop was fully charged, as were my Kindle, my phone, and my IPod. I got up and started the morning by walking down to the bakery where I had a more limited selection than normal. I walked around campus while eating my sandwich to observe the freshmen at military training. I came back to my apartment and cleaned my bathroom and kitchen. I went to a romantic candlelight lunch with a few of my students. I worked out for an hour and a half (this alone should tell you how desperate I am to fill my time). I finished a book. I wrote this blog entry. I refolded all of my laundry and straightened my room. I took a nap, and then started another book.

And yet, by the time I had done all that, it was only 3:30pm. I cannot remember myself being more productive in a single day in a long while, yet time seemed to inch by simply because I didn’t have the option of doing those things which I waste time doing every day. No g-chat, Facebook, YouTube, Hulu, or Skype. No refrigerator to keep my food cold or hot plate to cook any of my quickly thawing frozen goods on. My bathroom is so dimly lit it's entirely possible I washed my hair with body wash this morning. In another hour my computer will die and then I will probably resort to doodling with pen and paper.

I knew coming here I was going to be giving up certain Western normalcy's, but I am astounded by how intertwined with electricity my life is and how different things are when I am forced to live without it. In a way it's calming; I don't have to be constantly checking my email and I'm free to do things I normally wouldn't make time for. But keeping in touch with friends and family back home is what has kept me from feeling isolated and alone here, so I'm looking forward to Saturday when the power gets turned back on and I don't have to wonder whether I will be able to call home at a certain time or not.

(A much angrier post on this subject may come in December or January if this happens again and I am forced to live without heat.)

It's finally here!

The package we have all been waiting for arrived this morning, camera cord in tact. I will now be adding pictures to this blog, albeit slowly as the uploading takes awhile. I thank you, my dear readers, for sticking with me when I had nothing to share with you but my words, which I'm sure were pretty insufficient in most cases.

Now the moment you've all been waiting for (even those of you who somehow found this blog from Croatia and Trinidad and Tobago)... Click to enlarge:

With some fellow CIEE teachers at orientation in Shanghai

My bedroom

The view from my bedroom

My apartment building on the left, my teaching building on the right

The Haunted House (see earlier post)

My motorcycle taxi driver (see earlier post)

How I acquired an imaginary boyfriend

Something I’m going to ingrain in the minds of my future children is that it is never okay to lie. Not so much because of the immorality of it, but because lying once often leads to more lying when you have to elaborate on your original lie. It just gets too complicated. Thanks to a seemingly harmless white lie I told a few students, I now have dug myself into a pretty interesting hole.

Here in Hechuan, dating is a very giggle-inducing subject. Discussing anything to do with boys and girls interacting sends my students into hysterics, even just the innocent task of asking a boy and a girl to be partners for an activity. For example, when I was explaining the concept of rumors to my students, I staged-whispered while pointing at one of my guys and said, “I heard that Ran has five girlfriends!” I felt like a stand-up comedian. The class could not control themselves with their laughter and it took awhile to regain their attention. My university students sometimes seem to have the emotional maturity of American middle schoolers.

I think you can probably guess where this story is heading. Today I went to lunch with two of my female students. At one point, they were excitedly talking in Chinese while throwing furtive glances my way. I have learned this is something they usually do when they are about to ask me a personal question or bring up a typically off-limits subject. They finally worked up the courage and announced to me, “Mike (one of my male students whose name has been changed) really likes you! He wants to know if you like him too! And he wants to know if you like to date Chinese boys.”

Oh, boy. I knew I had already told them in a previous class I was single, but I had no idea how to handle this. I couldn’t straight out say no without Mike losing face (a Chinese cultural concept you can read about here), and I wasn’t sure they understood the inappropriateness I felt in this situation as I knew teachers at my school had dated students in past years. So I took the only way I could see out. I told them that was nice of him, but I actually have a boyfriend at home. They seemed to take this as a reasonable answer and I felt a bit of relief as the subject changed. That was, until I invited them back to my apartment to share some of my grandma’s cookies.

I got a great deal on photo print-outs before I left so have taped 150+ pictures all over my apartment to make it homey. They enthusiastically started looking at all of them, and that’s when the fun started.

First, they pointed at an awkward prom-style photo I took with my friend BJ at an infamous Frisbee House event called DM:

I’m not sure BJ completely remembers this photo, but the girls immediately picked it out and said, “This must be your boyfriend!”

“Uh, no, no… that’s just a friend.”

Immediately they picked out another photo, this one a group shot, taken at senior formal. They pointed at my friend Vikram, “Oh, so this must be your boyfriend!”

“No, sorry, uh...” I apparently just have taken a lot of dressed up photos with male friends that I now regret putting up, and they were going to go through every one until they picked out my boyfriend. And these girls were quick, because while I was still trying to solve this new dilemma, they pointed at another photo. This one of a trip I took while visiting my friend Eamonn in Ireland. “This is him! Yes!”

Shitshitshit. I continued to frantically wrack my brain for a way out. That really expensive Northwestern education never properly prepared me for situations like this. Finally, it came to me.

“Oh, you know, I don’t think I put up the pictures of my boyfriend yet! I will have to get them out and show them to you next time.”

Great, Lindsey, good thinking, real smooth. So now all you have to do is either fake a pretend break-up and face a potentially awkward situation with Mike, photo-shop a random guy into one of your photos and pass him of as your boyfriend, or convince one of your friends that he should stand in as your fake long-distance boyfriend while you’re here.  (Any takers? The Chinese girls will ooohh and ahhh over you like crazy!)

Not one of my more brilliant moves, to say the least. But hey, it has hopefully served its purpose and gotten back to Mike by now that I am off the market. And it proves that I can get myself into as much trouble in English as I can in Chinese.

(BJ, Vikram, and Eamonn: for the record, the girls called each of you, “Very handsome!”)

Lost in Translation (Pt. 1)

This starts a series that I will be posting about quite often. It will include conversations, correspondences, Chinglish phrases, and anything else I encounter on a daily basis that doesn't quite translate correctly and/or leaves me entirely confused. So without further ado, LiT Pt. 1.

An email I got from a student:

hi lindsay, evan is calling up? hows everyting? just let u know i got
ur email connected officially, haha, so feel free to ask me questions
about China, or watever u wanna know, including words to abuse~!
cheers~ evan che

I don't have any students named Evan! And what does he/she mean by "including words to abuse"? Is he/she offering to teach me Chinese swear words? Because as fun as that would be, I think learning more words for food would be more helpful at this point.

P.S. Post coming soon on The Great Flood of Hechuan but I'm waiting a day or two to see if my camera connector gets here so I can finally post pictures. I'm hoping it is not sitting waterlogged in the back of an underwater mail truck.

Snacks and cell phones

Yesterday, I spent the day with three of my sophomore students. They are three of my bolder students, and while some of the time I'm not sure we entirely understood one another, they are incredibly sweet.

The tradition in China among close friends is to have one “host” for the day who pays for everything when you go out. The host assumes the next time someone else will host to repay them. This meant I spent the entire day trying to pay one of the girls back for things she kept buying me, to no avail. It is apparently the person who does the original inviting and planning that does the paying. Throughout the day I was given red dragonfruit, red beans, Chinese jello(?) and several other "snacks" they wanted me to try, ranging from good to downright weird. Just wait until I host, these girls aren't going to know what hit them with all the candy and chocolate I'm going to buy them to show what true American snacking is like...

They took me to a local restaurant for lunch where I told them to order me their favorite dish. I think they instead ordered what they assumed to be the most American because while they all had funny looking meat dishes, mine was sweet and sour scrambled eggs with rice. It was still delicious, so I appreciated it. Next they took me to a nice shopping district of Hechuan that I previously did not know existed. The stores were on a pedestrian only street which was a wonderful break from dodging traffic, and had lots of clothes, shoes, and trinkets. They helped me get a cell phone which was incredibly helpful. I had been feeling cut off from the world since I could previously only be reached when I was in my apartment. How did people manage that in the olden days?

So now my four day weekend has almost come to an end and I'm looking forward to keeping busy this week by (hopefully) actually teaching all of my sophomore classes. *fingers crossed/knock on wood*

Chinese bureaucracy

Bureaucracy is driving me a little insane lately, so I need to complain a bit to get it off my shoulders.

First off, even though the fourth week of school starts tomorrow, I still have not met with one of my sophomore classes. The first class was cancelled because of heat, the second class was cancelled because of a holiday, and the third class I was told was on Thursday afternoon and then it was rescheduled to Wednesday afternoon without anyone telling me. (Even the other foreign teacher knew, how was I not told?) So it is hard to get into a routine because my schedule is so uncertain, and it is going to change again once my freshmen arrive. Of course, no one has been able to tell me when those classes start, how many classes I will have, or which days of the week I will be teaching.

Secondly, I am trying to plan a trip to Chengdu, but my school took my passport the day after I got here and they still have it while trying to obtain my residency card. Once again, no one seems to be able to tell me whether I will have it back by the time National Day rolls around in two weeks. Since this is one of the biggest Chinese holidays, I’m hoping that hostels and trains don’t get sold out while I wait to make sure I can go.

Finally, a package was supposed to arrive last week with my camera cord, but when I went to the English department to inquire about it they looked at me like I was crazy. I know this is not their fault and is probably just a result of slow incoming mail, but I want to upload pictures!

Okay, rant over. Hopefully these things will get themselves sorted out this week!

Not your average class

Now that I have had most of my classes, I am getting a better understanding of who my students are. Surprisingly, they aren't typical Chinese students.

More than ¾ of my students have a sibling. Some even have multiple siblings. In a country where the One Child Policy has been in place for so many years, and not too long ago baby girls were left at the side of the road, this statistic shocked me. When I asked Elvia about it, she explained that many of our students come from very rural parts of China. In rural China, not only is the strictness of the One Child Policy hard to enforce, but oftentimes it is ignored for a price. Rural families who need more children to help farm are allowed to continue having children until they have a son. Even if they have a son already there is flexibility, as families can pay a few thousand yuan to continue having children. This is something that would never be tolerated in the overcrowded city centers.

Not surprisingly then, my students come from some of the poorest and most rural parts of China. The majority of them hail from Xinjiang, with some from Sichuan and Anhui, and one even having migrated from Mongolia. Xinjiang is the most Northwestern province of China and the largest by area. It has been in the news a lot recently because of recent riots by the Uigher minority group. Unlike most provinces in China where the Han majority dominate, Uighurs make up 43% of the population in Xinjiang. They are of Turkish Muslim descent, and are often marginalized by the Chinese government. Elvia told me that because most students come from this area of religious unrest, Pass College encourages students to become accepting of all religions. Not a Chinese mantra you hear very often.

My students themselves cannot come from particularly poor families though because my college is a private institution. In China, public universities are only for those who do well enough on the Gao Kao (the Chinese version of the SATs). Those who don’t do well enough end up paying a lot of money to attend private universities. Pass College costs 11,000 yuan a year, which is cheap by American standards but a huge amount considering the average disposable income in Xinjiang is 6,000 yuan a year.

I guess having atypical students just continues to show that China is an enigma. I'm excited to have students from such unique backgrounds as I feel it will present me with an opportunity to learn even more as I get to know them better.

The Best and Worst of China (so far)

Worst

1. The Bugs. This may just be in my apartment, but I kill at least seven a day; ranging from infinitesimal to the cockamouse from HIMYM.

2. The Bed. Chinese beds are really hard. I currently sleep on top of five quilts, sort of like The Princess and The Pea, but still feel like I’m napping on a two-by-four.

3. The Dirtiness. China is not going to win a Most Hygienic award. I have seen men spitting and blowing their noses right in front of me, ladies emptying their trash bins into the gutter, and toddlers publicly pulling down their pants and squatting wherever they happen to be. People smoke everywhere, including cars and hospitals. Don't even get me started on public toilets.

Best

1. The Food. Hot pot, sweet and sour pork, bao zi. Just typing the words makes me hungry. (Although I would do just about anything for a pizza right now.)

2. The Prices. Self-explanatory, see past posts. But just to rub it in, I splurged on an extra large lunch today and bought a Chinese sausage, some kind of egg sandwich, a large Coke, a bottle of water, and a Chinese pastry for $1.60.

3. The People. Everyone here in Hechuan has been wonderfully accommodating, especially considering my lack of language skills. I have never been asked for my number so many times (in non-creepy ways). Everyone smiles and seems happy to see me, and the staff here has gone out of their way to make sure I'm comfortable. My students are willing to do just about anything to help me out. The friendliness has even made up for all of the staring.

Navigating Chongqing

Yesterday, I successfully navigated the city of Chongqing by myself. This was a major accomplishment in my opinion. Chongqing is one of the largest cities in the world by administrative area, surpassing Beijing and Shanghai by 10 and 6 million people respectively. It is built on mountains surrounding the intersection of the Jialing and Yangtze Rivers, and skyscrapers cover every inhabitable inch. There have to be well over a thousand tall buildings, with many more in various stages of construction. According to an independent website, there are 539 buildings in Chongqing that are over 40 stories high. In Chicago, there are 72.

This city is so big there is not one “downtown”, but six. I met up with some other Americans who suggested we go to the only Mexican restaurant in Chongqing because it was fairly close to their school and we were all in the mood for something Western. Close was a relative term because it was a forty-minute cab ride, and I felt like I was on a foggy, densely populated, Chinese version of Michigan Avenue the whole time. This picture of the main skyline in the Yuzhong District should give you a small-scale idea of the vastness of Chongqing:

I had ventured in with Justin, the other American here in Hechuan, so allowed him to do most of the work as he speaks Chinese fairly well. He left Saturday afternoon while I stayed overnight, so Sunday morning it was time for me to make my way back by myself. I caught a taxi to a bus station, and picked out the characters for which bus I needed easily because the characters for Hechuan are fairly simple. It looks like this:

合川

 Hechuan means the reunion (the first character which looks like a house) of three rivers (the second character). Bus ticket in hand, I spotted my gate and beamed at everyone I passed because I had gotten this far without a hitch.

The problem came when the bus arrived back in Hechuan. I was dropped off at a different station then the one we had left from, and had no idea where I was. On top of that, I could not hail a cab because every one was busy as a result of the Mid-Autumn Festival. Forty-five minutes later, I was hot, tired, and frustrated that things had suddenly gone so wrong. Finally, I ventured up to the place I had been keeping in the back of my mine as a last resort. I flagged down one of the unlicensed motorcycle taxi drivers that are incredibly prevalent all over China, which you can read more about here. These taxis whip in and out of traffic, often ignoring red lights and driving down lanes the wrong way.

Since these taxis are unlicensed, you negotiate the price beforehand. I had no idea what an average price was or how far my school was from where we were. When I showed the driver my address, he said “ba yuan” (8 yuan or $1.20). Since this was slightly cheaper than a taxi ride and I was in no mood to negotiate, I hopped on. During that ten-minute ride across town, I have never been so scared for my life. We swerved in and out of lanes, sometimes squeezing between two cars or buses, took corners too quickly, and sped over potholes making me fly up in my seat. Despite all that, I think that my driver was trying to take it relatively easy on me as we were passed by dozens of other motorcyclists flying by without helmets. This is for good reason one of the most dangerous forms of transport in China, and one I will hopefully never have to experience again.

Needless to say, after navigating around China for the first time alone, I was happy to be safely back in my apartment. 

A Chinese Hospital

Yesterday, Elvia and I took the school van down to Chongqing to visit the Foreigners’ Hospital for my physical examination. While I already went through this whole procedure in the U.S., I had been warned by CIEE that I would probably have to do it again because often parts of it are not recognized by the Chinese government.

If I have anything to say about the Chinese system, it is certainly efficient. I had an ECG, an ultrasound (this was a new one), a blood test, an eye and ear exam, a chest x-ray, and a physical exam, all administered in under an hour. This hospital felt more like an assembly line than a patient care facility. I was herded into rooms with three or four other people, and often asked to take off my shirt in front of them. The blood test was performed at a window with a line ten or fifteen people deep, as if you were queuing up to buy concert tickets rather than have a needle stuck in you. This would not be a good place for the shy or modest, and there certainly was no such thing as patient-physician confidentiality.

Elvia, having forced uncomfortable foreigners through this process many a time, told me that because of this efficient and impersonal approach to medicine, China was abusing the use of antibiotics because they could easily be prescribed for anything and often bought over the counter. She also told me about a new phenomena where sick young people who do not have the time to stay at home, drink fluids, and rest, will instead come in to the hospital and for 200 kuai ($33) get an IV inserted in their arms to recover their fluids. Elvia thinks this practice is a scam, but apparently most Chinese young people swear by it if they can afford it. While this practice seems pretty crazy to me, with almost 2 billion people to care for how could the medical system not become a little impersonal?

My class was cancelled Thursday because of my hospital trip and all classes are cancelled Monday because it is a public holiday. So I’m heading into Chongqing this weekend to meet up with some other Americans and hopefully get some pizza!

Halloween comes early

This is a particularly long post, for which I apologize in advance, but I promise that it’s (most likely) worth it! Spoiler alert: it involves a haunted house.

The weather finally got a bit cooler here thanks to a healthy amount of rain. I decided to take advantage of this and wander to a park I had passed a few days ago on my way home from the supermarket. It had looked like a beacon of tranquility in a dusty and noisy city.

I knew immediately when I walked in I was going to love it there. There were several middle-aged women practicing tai chi, an older man dancing with a sword, and several little children getting martial arts lessons all within the first one hundred feet. Cliched, maybe, but this was the China I had been imagining. This park is not so much a sprawling Grant Park, but more of a forested recreational area built all over the side of a steep hill. I decided to venture up a set of stairs that disappeared upwards into the trees. There were less people following this path and I wanted a little more peace and quiet, and perhaps a little less being stared at.

So I climbed, and climbed, until finally I reached the top, only to find an oddly charming rundown amusement park. Covered bumper cars, rusted rail tracks, and lonely swings were all that was left of what had clearly been a lively children’s play center. With the rain, the pollution that surrounds everything in an eerie fog, and the sudden quiet, the abandoned rides would have made an excellent setting for a horror movie.

Someone must have read my thoughts because a little ways down the path I came upon a haunted house. Suddenly, three teenage Chinese girls came out of nowhere and knocked on the door. To my surprise, it opened. An old lady took the girls admission fees, and then glanced at me and beckoned me in. Since I still can’t upload photos, picture instead, if you will, something like this:

 So for the exorbitant price of 10 kuai ($1.50, three times what I usually pay for meals) I found myself walking into a rusted Chinese horror house with three very frightened Chinese teenagers. Whether because I was the foreigner and that meant I was brave, or simply that I was expendable, they quickly pulled me to the front of the group to lead the way. After the lights flickered out, the girl immediately behind me suddenly grabbed my hand. And so I found myself, walking into the dark, leading a gaggle of skittish sixteen-year-olds.

Now, I love the cheesiest of horror movies and haunted houses, but this one was particularly disappointing. You could clearly see what was about to pop out at you, and I was even able to distinguish the trip-laser that triggered the mechanical devices as you walked by. Some of these included a giant hot-pink skull whose eyes flashed, a witch who looked like she had last been dusted off during the Salem Witch Trials, and a doctor who was supposed to be some sort of Dr. Frankenstein, but instead looked to be performing a routine appendectomy.

But the Chinese girls loved it, and therefore, so did I. Because really, when else was I ever going to be in a situation like this? After it was over, approx. three minutes after it had begun, I thanked the girls for the experience and asked to take their picture, to which they shyly replied, “No problem!”, posed, giggled, and ran-off.

Follow-up pictures to come in about a week and a half when my camera connector gets here!

You're the teacher now

I had my first class today! A section of thirteen sophomore English majors. I wanted to focus mainly on introductions so they could get to know me and me them. With this in mind, I had a bunch of fun group games and activities lined up.

For the first, I explained to them what “pulling your leg” is. (One of many idioms the textbook wants me to teach.) I then told them they could ask me a question and I would answer with the truth or a lie. They then had to guess in groups whether I was “pulling their leg” or not. Every time they guessed correctly, their team got a point. They seemed to enjoy this, and one of the first questions I got was, “Are you married?” The next was (not quite in question form), “Well, you must have a boyfriend!” When I said,”I do!” they quickly decided, “That’s true!” and would not be convinced otherwise. They also thought I was 26, which I have decided to take as a compliment. The game wound down when one of the boys figured out he could get his team easy points and started asking me things like, “What is your name?” I may have some trouble with this one...

I quickly regained their attention with a PowerPoint with pictures of my house, school, family, etc. I have never, ever, held such rapturous attention from a group, and doubt I ever will again. I used it to explain all of the great things that come from Chicago (some of which I hadn’t even known until I looked it up the night before): Walt Disney, McDonald’s, the Ferris wheel, etc. Watch out New York, the conversion of China into Chicago-lovers has commenced.

Next I asked them to do an activity that involved interviewing a partner to find out three things they had in common and then presenting their interview to the class. I had already learned at this point to assign partners so they wouldn’t chat with their friends in Chinese. It turns out the learning curve for teaching ESL is very quick. Some groups used this activity to show off their senses of humor (or their sarcastic sides, it was hard to tell). One conversation went:

Student A: “Hello, where are you from?”

Student B: “I am from Anhui, where are you from?”

Student A: “Oh, I am not from Anhui, I am from Jiaxing. Look, we are both from China!”

Another pair went through several questions, answering with comically opposite answers until finally one asked, “What is your favorite fruit?”, and before his partner could answer shouted, “Mine too!” Not quite the intention of the activity, but bonus points for creativity.

As a final small group project, an idea from my dad that went really well and I hope to repeat everyday, I showed them a unique photograph and asked them to come up with a story behind it to present to the class. Here is today’s photo:

Many stories were simple, involving a man who wanted to learn to fly. One hilarious version included a tiger chasing a man at a picnic who had to jump over hay to save his family. I was impressed that this particular group even memorized their lines. There was an especially insightful description that made this activity particularly worthwhile and went beyond what I was expecting:

“The man named A’Gan, he is a little foolish but he has a wonderful goal. He practices running fast day by day and hopes one day he could become a spiderman to save the world. He lives in a not so peaceful world, where has lots of wars, fires, drugs and so on. Good for him.”

Here’s to a (mostly) successful first class!

Classes cancelled

I have learned that I am in charge of all of the freshmen and half of the sophomore English majors. Since all freshmen have military training for the first few weeks, I do not have to start those classes until October. I have three sophomore sections with 10, 15, and 20 students respectively, relatively small by Chinese standards. I am relieved by this because at orientation we had been told to expect 30-40 students. I have been given a book to base my curriculum off of that looks to be surprisingly useful. I only have to use the themes of each chapter, and can pick and choose between book activities and my own. The only downside is the text was written in Britain, so for certain things I will have to clarify what the real English term is.

Now, however, classes keep getting cancelled because of the heat. None of the classrooms have air-conditioning, so on top of being postponed all last week, classes have again been cancelled Monday with a forecast of 101 degrees. I am supposed to have classes Tuesday and Thursday, but we'll see what happens because the forecast doesn't have the temperature dropping below 95 until Friday. 

So it looks like a few more days to wander around, drink lemonade, and eat Chinese street pancakes. As you can probably tell by the frequency of postings on this blog, I'm ready to have something productive to do with my time. At least I'm getting all my law school applications filled out way in advance!

ADLUSTABLEAPEED

Best Chinglish encounter so far: there is a dial on my wall that says ADLUSTABLEAPEED. Below that it says ON/OFF. I was so baffled by this that I stared at it for twenty minutes, terrified if I tried it something involving “adlust” and/or “apeed” would abruptly shoot out from somewhere. I was incredibly proud of myself when I figured out it is the button to my fan, and was meant to read Adjustable Speed.

As an aside, my shower head is broken. This is in a way a relief; I thought I just couldn’t figure it out so fiddled with everything in my apartment for a few hours. For the foreseeable future I will be showering with the help of a bucket and a faucet next to the toilet that stands about a foot and a half off the ground. I am not sure the original intended use of this faucet, but I would guess somewhere along the lines of a bidet in Europe. Oh the things I do for you, China.

For all one of you wondering (Hi Mom!), the cockroach has been captured and disposed of. I pray he doesn’t have family somewhere on the sixth floor calling in reinforcements to avenge his death and try the weird food the waiguoren (foreigner) has in her refrigerator…

Picky-eaters Prohibited

Last night Elvia showed me around downtown Hechuan so I know the proper places to buy essentials. Everything here is amazingly cheap. Elvia would point at something and talk about how it was a little more expensive at this shop, but still reasonable. I would then look at the price and start jumping for joy. I bought a lemonade-tea concoction (so delicious, I have a feeling the ladies at this specific shop are going to get to know me very well) for only 2.50 yuan or FORTY CENTS. I stocked up on a giant thing of water, loads of toilet paper and garbage bags, and a towel all for approx. $8. My fancy dinner with Elvia’s friends, which included plenty of pi jiu (beer), was the wallet-emptying purchase of the night at a whopping $5. I think I’m going to like it here.

When Elvia told me about the restaurant we were going to she told me it was very famous in Hechuan for its ji rou (chicken). I could have found this place from half a mile away, as a few blocks from the place we started hearing lots of squawking. We walked in and I stared in the eyes of a dozen chickens, one of which I was about to consume. I saw the wash bin where a cook was de-feathering the chicken, and another block that I would prefer not to talk about for the sake of the vegetarians reading this blog (*cough* Chelsea and Anita *cough*).

The bowl that was brought out to us after we sat down is a very unique version of hot pot, and I was lucky that there were a delicious Chinese potato included because I could not quite bring myself to eat more than a few measly bites of chicken. This was not so much out of a sense of animal activism, but mainly because I was having a hard time distinguishing between meat and non-meat. At the end of the meal, a giant bowl of ‘soup’ was brought out. Or at least that’s what I thought it was. It turns out it was the chicken’s innards and private parts, as no part of the animal goes to waste in China. Congealed on top was what I was told was chicken blood, and the Hechuanese believe it is very good for you to eat this because it clears away all the dust from your system that has collected as a result of the construction. Honestly, it tasted better than some of things I have had-- kind of like a salty pudding. I think China is a good cure for picky eating, all American food is going to look safe compared to the guesswork involved over here.

I met some of Elvia’s third-year English students on the way back to my apartment. They were very friendly, spoke English amazingly well, and when I told them I was from Chicago one quickly lit up and shouted, “Chicago Bulls!” It turns out reverence for Michael Jordan extends all the way to China, which is great and means I have an instant in with my students. I’m planning on using this to my advantage and converting all of my students into massive fans of anything Chicago.

My hospital visit has been postponed until next week, as have classes as a result of the incredible heat-wave (102 degrees today), so I will have plenty of free time this weekend to do some exploring, reading, catching-up on things in the states, etc.

We're not in Shanghai anymore

I arrived in Hechuan last night and just got my internet up and running. Lots to share, so I apologize for the long post...

Hechuan is a pretty poor city. It is on the outskirts of Chongqing, one of the largest cities in China. Chongqing has been pegged as the next city to modernize to the standards of Beijing and Shanghai, although it is about ten-fifteen years behind. China views Chongqing as the gateway to connect Eastern China with the West and its resources. My "waiban" (foreign helper) explained to me that when you talk about Chongqing, you say it is Three H’s: Hot (both the heat and the women apparently), Hilly, and Humid. Chongqing’s nicknames include the “Mountain City” and one of the “Furnaces of China.” It was a sweltering 99 degrees when I got here yesterday and will apparently stay that way through September.

Hechuan itself is a mixture of farmlands and rapid development, as I can tell just from the view outside my bedroom window. Right below me is a house that hosts a chicken pen, cats, and a few other animals on its porch, and a few hundred meters beyond that are six different skyscrapers in various stages of construction. While I didn’t really notice the pollution in Shanghai, it is hard to miss here. I can only make out the outlines of most buildings and hills in the distance, and the sun seems to be in a perpetual haze.

My apartment, while still slightly cleaner than the Frisbee House, leaves a lot to be desired. There are lots of holes in the wall and tiles, and my washing machine looks like it was hit by a nuclear bomb (I kid you not, wait until I can post photos.) I have a TV that I can’t figure out since the remote control is in Chinese, and a welcoming party of one cockroach who has so far evaded the broom I keep swinging at him. Nothing that hopefully a bunch of throw rugs, wall hangings, and lysol can’t fix.

When I got out of the airport in Chongqing, I was met by my college’s waiban Elvia. She is a young teacher in the English department who volunteered a few years ago to help coordinate the foreign teachers in order to improve her English. She is wonderful, and informed me that once I got in we were going to dinner with some officials at the school to welcome me.

After dropping my luggage off, we met up with Mr. Deng, the head of human resources; the dean of the English department; Mr. Yan and his assistant, who as far as I can tell are in charge of the logistics of my stay with the Chinese government; an art teacher at the school; Justin, the other foreign teacher from Maryland, and his Chinese girlfriend.

As only half the table spoke varying degrees of English, most of the meal was in Chinese and involved lots of gesturing and toasting. I quickly learned it is a Chinese tradition to frequently toast other people at the table. As you do this you clink glasses (or bowls in our case) and try to lower your glass below theirs as a form of respect. Beer was flowing and after many of these toasts, Mr. Yan asked Elvia how to say something in English and then turned to me and pronounced, “Drunk!” while gesturing to his increasingly red face.

The food was delicious and plentiful. However, as has been the case for most of my stay in China, I didn’t know half of what I was putting in my mouth. I had been warned how spicy Sichuanese food is, and experienced this firsthand when I accidentally ate a peanut dish that had whole red peppers in it. My mouth felt like I had licked a fire poker and my eyes were watering for the next ten minutes to the amusement of the Chinese at the table. Mr. Deng took it upon himself after that to pick out all of the non-spicy food and put it on my plate. I think this was also in reaction to him observing my lack of chopstick skills. I felt obligated to try everything he put on my plate, so as a consequence I am 75% sure I ate chicken feet at one point.

Overall, the meal was wonderful and incredible welcoming. Even though I couldn’t understand most of the conversation, I did understand the congenial and humorous atmosphere. On to a Chinese hospital tomorrow for my physical examination...