The Principal Look

I may have forgotten to mention in last week's Halloween post that during one of my freshmen classes I made a girl cry. But it wasn't my fault! Let me explain.

Usually, I am pretty lenient if a student pulls their cell phone out during a writing or reading activity because 90% of the time they are using it to look up English words they don’t know. I can always tell when they are using it for this purpose rather than texting, because if they're goofing off they give it away by sneaking guilty glances my way. But since I don't speak Chinese, sometimes the English-Chinese dictionaries on their smart phones are entirely necessary to get a point across, and most of them don't abuse this privilege.

Last week, however, one girl was not only texting in class while we were watching a video, but she was blatantly distracting three or four of her friends by showing them her texts and reading them out loud. She knew I was watching her because every time I would glance in her direction she would try and put the phone behind her back. Finally, after she continued to pull it out whenever my attention was diverted, I went over to her and asked her to put it away. When she just put it on her lap, I insisted that she actually put it inside her purse and close it. She looked appropriately ashamed that I had to have this talk with the class looking on, and I thought the problem was solved. But not two minutes later she had it out again. This time when she saw that I had caught her, I knew what I had to do.

Growing up in my house when you did something wrong you were rarely yelled at. My dad, who was a middle school principal for most of my childhood, would instead just give you what my sister and I called his “Principal Look”. This look meant, “I am extremely exasperated and disappointed in you. I thought I raised you better than that, and it hurts me that you would think it was okay to act that way. Don't ever let me catch you doing that again.” The Look was always super effective.

This was my first time utilizing The Look, but I directed the best version I could summon right at her. This time she looked horrified, and I felt sure that the problem was really settled. I was secretly patting myself on the back for using The Look and gaining the same effective results it had always gotten my dad. Until a second later I saw her hiding her head behind her friend's shoulder. At first I thought she might have the phone out again. Then I noticed she was instead hiding the fact that she was wiping away tears from her eyes.

Oops. I guess my look was a little more potent than I thought. I'll have to work on that.

Ghosts and witches and vampires. Oh, my.

This past week presented the perfect opportunity to get away from the book's boring topics and plan my lessons around Halloween. As it turns out, the concept of Halloween sounds a lot sillier when you are trying to explain it from scratch to a group of forty Chinese students.
Well, you see, we dress up in costumes. Like witches, and ghosts, and stuff. Then we go knock on strangers' doors and they give us candy! Oh, and we take knives to these big orange vegetables we call pumpkins, and we make faces in them. And then we have a big party!

After browsing lots of Halloween websites I settled on two main activities for the week to practice our new vocabulary words: watching "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown", and practicing writing with horror story prompts. I also brought candy to class, and not coincidentally, had my highest attendance rates of the semester.

I saw Charlie Brown as the perfect way to "waste" twenty-five minutes of class, but I did not anticipate how much I would hate it after watching the same episode seven times in three days. I think in economics this is called the law of diminishing marginal utility. I can now repeat every line word-for-word, and pinpoint to the second which parts are going to crack Chinese college students up. Luckily, my students seemed to really enjoy it.

For the Halloween writing activity, I had them stand in a circle and gave them each a piece of paper with the opening sentence of a horror story on it. Each person added one sentence to the paper and then passed it to the next person, who added another sentence and passed it, and so on. In theory, the paper would make its way around the circle and be a complete story once it returned to its original owner. While the kids had a ball with this, the actual quality of the final product varied tremendously. I included a few good and bad (unedited) examples below, with a little bit of comedic commentary added in. Different colors represent when a different student started writing.


Tom ran through the dark forest... He was very hungry. He searched something to eat. At this moment, he found a bag. Then he picked up this bag and found so many delecious candy and food there. Then, he set on the grass and eat. But blood start spitting out of his mouth when he eat. He found all the food was gone, and lots of blood on his hands. At that time, he felt something in his mouth and spited it. What he spited out was a snack. The snack look at him and say "Hello, I was a girl once". He was very scared. He thought the snack could be good luck, but as he was scared, he ran back home as soon as he could. A week later, he died. Someone said he became a snack too.
(I love this one because it was definitely the most creative of the bunch. Who knew snacks could be the antagonist of a horror story? I will never look at my oreo's the same again.)


Nancy was very scared... when she see a animal! It's not a usual animal. It had black fare with two sharp teeth. It looks like very ugly. And it is very fearful! She want to eat people. Then she characte as a ghost. But she meet a beautiful man!
(While I'm not entirely sure what happened, at least she found love in the end!)


Sarah did not believe in monsters, until... When the Holliween come, at night. A strange man knock the door of Sarah's. He's listening a voice and looking a small thing! It's a white one with fur. Then Sarah saw a pair of red eyes. He think it must be a child. Actually, it isn't a child. It is a E.T. with UFO.
(This is the only one that made me say WTF aloud to myself.)


People say, "Vampires are not real." But... I don't think so, I think vampires are real. One day, I walked through the forest. Suddenly I found someone was behind me. Being scared, I ran fast. So did it. Then I saw there's a river in front of me, so I jump in the river. But the water became warm and bloody, until I realized this was not a river but a blood river. I felt something bad will happen to me, then a black shadow come to me. A big mouth with buckteeth was in front of my face. Then... then... was it vampire? I couldn't believe it, but it was real. So, watch out your back!
(This gem came from my favorite class who keep me from feeling I'm a complete failure at teaching on a weekly basis...)

The rest of the stories generally ended one of two ways:
1. The main character would find out his friends were just playing a joke on him.
2. The main character was eaten.

To conclude, and as a reward for reading this far, here's a picture I showed in class of me trick-or-treating when I was little:

And just to embarrass her, here's one of my sister:

Happy Halloween!

Seeing Through the Fog

There are only two types of days in Hechuan: rainy days and polluted days. Oh, excuse me, I meant "foggy" days. That's what my students call them.

Rainy days are the best because sometimes they bring an hour or two of sunshine and clear skies. Unfortunately, "foggy" days are more common. It makes me cringe to think of what I'm doing to my lungs by living here. Sometimes I have the urge to hold my breath whenever I go outside.

View from my bedroom window on one of those very rare, clear days

Same view from my window on a polluted day

Cooking with Chinese Characteristics

Last night a few of my students came over to my apartment to cook dinner. They were looking forward to each making a traditional Chinese dish and I had promised two American dishes to make up a sort of strange potluck. They brought over a ton of ingredients and then proceeded to ask me all of the English names for things. Anyone who has lived with me knows I am not a very avid cook, so when they pointed to some weird green vegetable I deferred to a Chinese-English dictionary. I learned they were making má là dòufu (spicy tofu), jīdàn hé xīhóngshì tāng (egg and tomato soup), jīdàn hé cōnghuā (scrambled eggs and scallions), and zhān jiǎozi (sticky dumplings).

The first order of business was to get my stove to work. I have never used it, mainly because it scares me to death. It is so old fashioned that there is no automatic ignition. Instead, you have to turn the gas on and then stick your hand dangerously close to the burner with a lighter until flames shoot up and/or your kitchen explodes in a ball of fire. Luckily, one of my students had experience with this at home and could do it without killing us all.

Lighting the stove

They quickly got to work: frying tomatoes, whisking eggs, chopping scallions (the green vegetable I could not identify), and mixing flour and sugar into dough. Hilarity ensued when they forced me to try and whisk eggs with chopsticks and I failed miserably. More hilarity ensued when in turn I forced them to try and whisk eggs with a fork. To me, cooking with chopsticks looks so inefficient, but they made it seem easy and ignored the spoons, forks, and knives I had laid out. As the cooking progressed, any idea that Chinese food might be healthy for me was quickly shot to hell as I observed how much oil they used in everything. And I thought American's loved fried food...

Carlon demonstrates whisking

And then forces me to try

Alice frying the eggs

while Jennifer chops tomatoes

and then fries them too

At this point, you may be wondering what I could possibly be making with the limited Western ingredients over here. Well, I was making spaghetti with marinara sauce and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Two of my culinary specialties, and sources of incredible wonder to my Chinese students who had never tried either. And let me tell you, they absolutely loved PB&J. It was by far the hit of the night, and they could not stop talking about it. One girl even called her mom to tell her about it right in the middle of the meal. It just goes to show that sometimes less is more. Too bad I only have a limited amount of peanut butter and am loathe to share it again.

Enjoying their PB&J sandwiches

Posing with the spicy tofu

Our completed dinner

Ready to eat!

When we finished dinner, I was a little disappointed because the sticky dumplings that the dough had been made for never appeared. It was not until clean-up that I was told sticky dumplings are not in fact dumplings as I was imagining, but instead a type of dessert. This dessert was extremely complicated to make because it involved sparring with an incredibly hot pan full of oil. Dozens of dough-balls were thrown in the pot at once and each could only be left in for a certain amount of time without overcooking them, so they were stirred and picked out quickly while trying to avoid getting scalded by flying drops of oil. But boy was it worth it. Sticky dumplings essentially tasted like fresh mini-donuts slathered in tons of sugar. We ate more dumplings than dinner, and by the end the girls pretty much had to roll out the door back to their dormitories. We have lots of flour and sugar left over, so since it has already been established I will not be lighting the stove and attempting to fight oil by myself, I'm looking forward to another round of stick dumpling cooking with them in the future!

Carefully adding the dumplings to the boiling oil, using the pan's lid as a shield

Sticky dumplings!

I love Hong Kong.

After a busy week of classes, I’m finally getting around to giving my trip to Hong Kong a proper blog post. You may want to grab a snack before you begin, because this one is going to be a long one.

Friday morning I headed to the bus station with my friend Katherine to buy a bus ticket to the airport. As luck would have it, they were sold out. So while I tried to convince Katherine to just let me get in a taxi, she instead bought me a ticket to downtown Chongqing, dragged me kicking and screaming on to a bus, and waved as the doors closed promising her boyfriend would meet me downtown to direct me onwards. Okay, well maybe I wasn’t kicking and screaming, but mentally I was shouting, “But I don’t speak Chinese! I don’t know what your boyfriend looks like! I don’t even have his number!”

Cue lots of traffic on the way down that turned a one hour bus ride into two, and my anxiety level shot up to Mach 10. I was now heading in the wrong direction of the airport, planning on a rendezvous with someone I had never met somewhere in a city of 28 million people, and I only had two hours left of the five I had allotted to get to the airport. When the bus dropped me off at the street corner that passes for a bus station, I called Katherine to get her boyfriend’s number. It turns out he does not really speak English, so as she hung up she said, just find a Chinese person to tell him where you are!

Oh man. Just at that moment, a guy asking for signatures on a petition shoved his clipboard in my face. In return, I shoved my cell phone back in his, gesturing with a pleading look on my face. Right as he was about to run in the other direction from the crazy foreigner, one of his female colleagues picked up on my desperation and talked to Katherine’s boyfriend. Who apparently had gone to the wrong "bus station" (read: the wrong street corner).

To my relief, I made my flight to Hong Kong after a four hour circular trip to the airport. And as soon as I saw the skyline from the airplane, all my annoyance at the morning's events disappeared.

Skyline as seen from my hotel room

I was practically jumping up and down with excitement by the time I got to the hotel where my aunt was staying for business. She was kind enough to let me share her room, and this place was amazing. I'm pretty sure I cracked her up by oohing and ahhing over the simplest things, like fluffy, white towels. But come on, there was a shower that had different modes and temperature settings! And a free mini-bar with peanut M&M’s! And a pool with the coolest view imaginable!

Hotel pool

I was already in love with Hong Kong and I had only seen the airport and the hotel.

The first thing we did Friday night was get to work shopping. Hong Kong is known as the shopping capital of Asia, and I managed to do all of my Christmas shopping in approximately 48 hours while blowing my budget for the rest of the semester. Those of you getting gifts should be thankful for this, because had I been forced to do my Christmas shopping in Hechuan you would probably all be getting chicken feet.

There are four different main markets that sell everything from jade jewelry to t-shirts to Chinese scrolls. You bargain for everything, so generally my exchanges would go something like this---I would find something I thought was mildly intriguing and pick it up to look at it. The clerk would come up and state a ridiculous price. I would tell them thank you, but that’s too high and I don’t think I really want it. They would lower their price marginally. I would walk away, because I really didn’t need this random trinket. Then they would call me back, hand me a calculator, and ask me to type in what price I wanted to pay. I would type in a ridiculously low number, because once again I didn’t really think I wanted this. They would negotiate until I would buy said trinket since the price was too low to pass up. So I generally walked away happy with something I didn’t really need, while the clerk probably smirked behind my back, laughing at the stupid foreigner who paid $3 for that thing they made for 20 cents.

Stall at the Jade Market

After more shopping early Saturday morning, my aunt and I had traditional Dim Sum for breakfast, which included buns with BBQ pork and shrimp dumplings. Not my typical breakfast, but it was some of the most delicious food I’ve had in China.

my Aunt Sharon and our dim sum!

Then it was off to a ferry across the harbor, and a tram up to The Peak to look out over Hong Kong’s awesome skyline.  Hong Kong is made up of two parts, Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. Kowloon is actually a peninsula connected to mainland China. Our hotel was on Kowloon, where all of the giant markets are, but Hong Kong island is what you think of as Hong Kong because it has the most famous sites and is the main business district which makes up the majority of the fantastic skyline.

Tram up to the Peak 

View from the Peak

On Sunday my aunt had to work, so I was on my own. I hopped on a bus tour to Hong Kong Island's south end, not quite knowing what to expect. I was amazed when we left the city behind for a more tropical, Caribbean island-type atmosphere. It was 85 and sunny, and we drove along a beautiful coastal road passing resort hotels and beaches. When we came upon a stop in a town with a really cute boardwalk, I jumped off and took in the sea air and the least crowded strip of land I had seen since landing in China. It was absolutely perfect, and a welcome relief from the smoggy, crowded streets of Hechuan.

South Hong Kong Island

One thing I have concluded after this trip, though, is that I need to upgrade my imaginary boyfriend to an imaginary husband. On the ferry over to Hong Kong by myself I had two different men approach me to talk. Both at one point asked if I was married, and one even said he wanted to take me to a nice dinner. So clearly I need to get a fake wedding band to ward off unwanted suitors.

Ferrying back to Kowloon

My aunt’s sister used to live near Hong Kong, so she had told me about a few places I could buy Western goods. I was in heaven as I wandered the aisles of a giant grocery store, relishing the look of foods I hadn’t even realized I was missing. Since I calculated I only had a minimal amount of space in my bags after all the souvenir shopping I had done, I skipped the boxes of Cocoa Puff’s and instead settled for one block of sharp cheddar cheese, two small jars of peanut butter, and a Hershey’s bar. I was so happy that I didn’t even flinch when the register told me I owed 200HKD or approx. $25. (At the airport later on, I learned that peanut butter is technically considered a liquid, so I could not take it in my carry-on bags. Instead of forfeiting that precious commodity, I chose to walk back out through security and check my bag.)

Just when I thought the day couldn’t get any better, on my way back to the hotel I passed by a place called Rocco’s Pizzeria. As many of you know, or have picked up on by reading this blog, pizza is the food I miss the most. So I was immediately drawn inside, and was happy to discover that the place was packed with ex-pats because the bar was playing the New Zealand vs. Australia Rugby World Cup Semi-Final Match. (An event I’m sure you all have been following diligently back in America.) Knowing a little about rugby after going to two games when I lived in Scotland, I sat down, enjoyed the most delicious pepperoni pizza I have ever had, and jumped on the New Zealand bandwagon because I had seen them play in person before (and they were winning). A great end to a great weekend.

Hong Kong at night from the Peak

Well, that could have gone better...

This past week I had both my first freshmen classes and my first English Corner. As the title of this post implies, neither will go down on my favorite memories of China list. Highlights of my freshmen classes included:

1. One of my students breaking out into song randomly during a getting to know you activity. Apparently he told some girl he likes to sing, and then she asked him to demonstrate. This distracted the class for a good five minutes.
2. My freshmen's listening and speaking abilities are light years away from my sophomores. Where as my sophomores can have pretty eloquent debates, some of my freshmen had a hard time understanding and answering the question, "Do you have a brother?" This meant our first class lasted exactly half an hour of the hour and a half allotted because I did not have enough games that were easy enough for their abilities.
3. We didn't have enough chairs in either class because even though there are 25 people on the roster and 30 chairs, for some reason we had 34+ students.

On the plus side, as I had been hoping, many of my freshmen did not yet have English names. That means that one of my classes now has almost the entire cast of The Office, including Michael, Jim(my), Pam, Kelly, Erin, and two Angela's (because both girls wanted this name and neither wanted to be called Phyllis). Sadly, I could not convince anyone to be Dwight.

The other self-chosen names of my freshmen are certainly creative. Some of my favorites include: Butterfly, Seven, Milk, Museum, Zero, Prissy, Love, Tea, Dream, and Yoga. Oh, and I have a boy name Liberty who told me his hobbies are "watching politics programe about Taiwan news and reading books of freedom of published." Hmm, interesting...

On another note, Wednesday evening I had my school’s first English Corner. I was not quite sure what English Corner entailed because all I had been given about it was a sheet that had Wednesday’s topic: “What college students know about the current state of their major.” Since this was a very long, muddled description, the other American and I decided the whole thing would probably just be casual group conversations with interested English students.

We were, therefore, very surprised when we turned up and were greeted by an emcee, stereos, and a crowd of about fifty students, none of whom were actually English majors.

We were immediately accosted by another teacher who said we would start the opening ceremonies soon. Wait, what? Opening ceremonies? This was not the casual chatting we had prepared for. The first few acts included a student reciting one of President Obama's speeches, another singing My Heart Will Go On, and the last rapping Eminem.  I suddenly had the inkling that I was going to be made to do something outrageous and/or embarrassing on stage.

I was a bit relieved when it was announced all of the English teachers would be giving speeches rather than singing or juggling. A speech at least I could BS. As my luck would have it, I was the first up of the two foreign teachers and two Chinese teachers on the bill to talk.  Without the luxury of listening to the others to judge appropriate topic and length, my “speech” went something like this:

Hi. My name is Lindsey… and I am from Chicago. This is my first time in China… and my first English Corner, obviously. I like both so far… and I am impressed by the students here. I know today’s English Corner topic is majors… I think that you have all made a very good choice being English majors. English is very important… for the future and now. And you will get good jobs if you know English…. So… thank you for having me, it is nice to be here.

As I mentioned before, none present were actually English majors, making my speech totally irrelevant. But when Justin got up and pretty much repeated my speech verbatim because he didn’t know what else to say, I felt much better. Next weeks topic is “On Morals and Moral Degeneration”, and I’m hoping I don’t have to make another speech on that subject…

So between rowdy freshmen and impromptu speeches, I’m pretty glad this week is over. Next stop, Hong Kong!

Chinese Generosity

Something that became immediately evident when I got to know people here is that the Chinese are some of the most generous people I have met anywhere. My waiban explained this is a result of China's collectivist culture. A Chinese person will always go out of their way to help anyone who is a friend, family member, or someone "within their circle", even at significant inconvenience to themselves. A friend teaching here told me a story about how she casually mentioned to one of her students that she needed to find some tomatoes for dinner. When she came home from class she saw a bag full of twenty tomatoes sitting on her front doorstep with a note apologizing that they were not quite as fresh as usual.

I experienced this type of generosity today. This morning I went up to one of my students to ask if she could help me out by writing down some directions in Chinese. I was hoping to eliminate miscommunication by just handing those to the taxi driver when I head to the airport on Friday. She instead told me that the taxi would too expensive (by Chinese standards) and said she would take me to the bus station on Friday herself. Then she said since the bus doesn't drop you right at the airport she would have her boyfriend who lives near the airport meet me at the bus station to direct me onwards. I was blown away by her offer; she already has seven hours of class on Friday but wanted to get up at 8am to help me out, and was going to enlist the help of her boyfriend who had never met me.

After class, she came up and told me that she had talked to her friend and it turns out there is a direct bus from a different station, so she would take me to that station on Friday instead. I thanked her and told her I would buy her lunch or dinner next week to repay her. But it didn't end there. This was the text conversation we had this evening:

Katherine: I am sorry this is late, but I find out you want to buy ticket in advance on Thursday. I canot go with then.
Me: Thank you for letting me know! That's okay, would you be able to help me by writing down what I need to buy? Thanks again for all the help!
Katherine: Yes of course, it is my pleasure. (Insert random Chinese characters here giving directions.)

...10 minutes later...

Katherine: But I am very worried about you. Would you be free tomorrow night 7pm to go?

I am grateful for her help because getting to Hong Kong with its promise of pizza and peanut butter is too important to me to try and figure this out alone. With my Chinese I would probably end up on a bus going the opposite direction of the airport...

So two more days until I get to do my first real traveling! I can't wait. But first, I finally have my first freshmen classes tomorrow and Thursday. Updates on those to come before I leave for the weekend.

LiT Pt. 3

Every day on my way into my apartment complex I am warned to "Pay Attention to Fireproof". I certainly would, if I had any idea what this sign was actually trying to tell me.

Pay Day

Last week I got paid and now I’m rolling in dough. Literally, since I get paid in cash every month. We have no use for confusing banking systems and financial intermediaries here. Picking up a giant wad of 100yuan notes in a small backroom in the basement of the English building made me feel more like I was participating in a drug deal or other illicit activity rather than my respectable position as a Foreign Expert. The only thing that could have made it better were if the 100yuan notes were $100, rather than approximately $16.66.

 And yes, my official title is Foreign Expert. I think Foreign Expert has a much nicer ring to it than simply English Teacher. I am eagerly looking forward to handing a future employer my resume with my new title on it. I also now have my Foreign Expert Certificate, which makes me legitimate.

 With this card I am now legally allowed to reside and work in China. I’m not sure what I was doing before. You are supposed to get this within 30 days of your arrival, so I’m pretty sure there were a few days in between where I ran the risk of being deported. Oh well, I am now allowed to travel out of the country, just in time for my trip to Hong Kong next weekend. And yes, for some reason Hong Kong is considered travelling out of the country…

Conclusion: The Three Dollar a Day Diet

So I (just about) succeeded in sticking to my 18 kuai a day budget this week. I'll give you a quick day-by-day menu, complete with pictures. I included in the total cost the 9 kuai a week I pay for water. Anything I bought in bulk (pasta, dumplings, etc.) I tried to divide the total cost by the number of servings. I apologize because I am not the best photographer of food, and I often forget to take pictures when delicious food is in front of me. I'll try to remedy that in the future.


Monday 

Breakfast at my favorite bakery. They have an assortment of delicious breads and pastries, some stuffed with cream or red bean filling. I always eat breakfast here, and there are so many good things it never gets boring. Every pastry is 1 kuai, which makes it even more amazing.

My bakery

Typical breakfast foods

Lunch is a fried egg/pork type sandwich that I unfortunately don't know the name of. It basically tastes like someone stuffed pita bread with bits of meat and then fried it in oil and an egg with bits of onions and scallions. So delicious, and only 2.5 kuai.

In the afternoon I'm feeling a bit tired so head for some caffeine. This involves my favorite tea shop, where I pick up some lemon tea and a snickers bar. The owner knows me so well she doesn't even need to ask how I want my tea made anymore. Tea = 2.5 kuai, snickers = 3 kuai.

I cook a pretty boring dinner for myself at my apartment-- your basic ramen noodles with a few frozen dumplings thrown in (3.5 kuai).

Daily total= 12.5 kuai/$2.08

Tuesday

Usual breakfast. Lunch involves a stop at my favorite kebab stand to pick up some Chinese sausage (2 kuai). I have only really tried the sausage because I have yet to work up the nerve to taste the chicken feet or various other meats I can't identify. Then a stop at my drink place in the afternoon, the convenience store for some chips (3 kuai), and a dinner of homemade pasta and marinara sauce (6.5 kuai).

Daily total = 15 kuai/$2.5

Wednesday

Fried red bean deliciousness for breakfast. I grab an egg and ham sandwich from the same bakery for a lunch of 2.5 kuai, plus some strawberry milk tea for 3 kuai. For dinner I head down to one of the various noodle stalls that line the entrance to my school and grab some take out noodles with vegetables for 4 kuai. Dessert includes a snickers.

Noodle stand

7CUPTEAS- my tea shop

Iced lemon tea

Daily total = 13.5 kuai/$2.25

Thursday

After my breakfast I get the urge for something more Western for lunch. Luckily there is exactly one fast food chain in Hechuan (KDS- no idea what it stands for) and it happens to sell fried chicken. It is no KFC, but it comes pretty close. So I head downtown and come back rewarded with a fried chicken sandwich, French fries that make me feel like I’ve died and gone back to Chicago, and a coke. I don't even like fried chicken that much at home, but here it is a rare treat that I indulge in once or twice a week for 17 kuai. I'm still so full at dinner that I just grab a sausage kebab and a pastry to go. 

Daily total = 21 kuai/$3.5

Friday

Last day of the "diet" and I'm feeling good about myself. 1 kuai breakfast and another of my fried egg/pork sandwich things for lunch. Since I've only spent 63.5 kuai at this point, I indulge at the convenience store on campus and buy a pack of oreos, some Lay's chips, and a coke for 12 kuai, leaving me at 75.5 kuai with only dinner left.

And then, something goes wrong. When I go on a walk through a previously unexplored part of town, I come across a bakery. And not a Chinese bakery like I go to for breakfast every morning, but a real live Western-style bakery that sells cakes and pies. It is so enticing I am immediately drawn inside. Everything is a bit expensive by Chinese standards, but I just have to know what that chocolate cake tastes like. So I give in and buy a slice for 14 kuai.

Sadly, it is very dry inside, although the chocolate on the outside is amazing. I have now made it my goal to try everything in that shop. Cheesecake is next on the menu...

So after my small indulgence I finish up the week back at my local noodle stall, having spent a total of 93.5 kuai/$15.58. Only 3.5 kuai over budget, and severely under budget if you subtract my last minute temptation. Not bad, all things considered. I probably could have done it for less had I taken out some snacks that I have become addicted to or if my students were around to take me out to eat since they always insist on paying. Of course, I could also have done it for more had I insisted on eating at restaurants every meal...

Conclusion: Living on $3/day in China is not bad at all.

The Great Hechuan Flood

This post is two weeks too late, but it’s still worth discussing and I wanted to wait until I could post pictures.

A few weeks ago thanks to a substantial amount of rain in neighboring Sichuan province, tributaries of several small rivers that flow into the Yangtze River flooded. This included the main river that runs through my area, the Jialing River. I had noticed some rain and saw several odd things going on around downtown, but was unaware of the flood risk until I got a text from my waiban telling me to stock up on food and water. Then I put a few things together.

Earlier that day I had taken my usual route to the supermarket and noticed more shops were closed than usual. On top of that, I noticed that a ton of shops looked to be boxing up all of their belongings. I attributed this to some sort of odd spring-cleaning, but thought it strange they had decided to do it all at once. Finally, on my walk home, I spotted two different police cars slowly driving through the streets announcing something through a loud speaker. Lacking the language skills to understand it, I chalked it up to some kind of public service announcement about the importance of street sweeping. (That was an actual announcement my students' informed me of last time we were out.)

When I got the text warning me to be careful when I leave my apartment and to stock up on supplies, I still didn't quite believe all of this worry was necessary. It had barely rained and the river was over a mile away! My school's director assured me the danger was real when I ran into her, and she commented on how in recent years flooding had been getting worse and worse thanks to several dam projects downriver.

So the next day after class when no flash floods had interrupted my lecture, I decided to stroll out and have a peek at the river. I didn’t have to go far to find it. The river had inched its way up to my school’s front doorstep. I was shocked. At this point I had to give major props to the local government; it seems that all of their preparations were well advised. While there ended up being pretty extensive property damage, because of the advance warning most shops saved their goods and no lives were lost in my town. Sadly, other flooded areas were not quite so lucky.

Now the efficiency of clean-up… well, that’s another matter:

National Day and the Three Dollar a Day Diet

Yesterday marked the 62nd Anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, otherwise known as National Day. This holiday has morphed into a week long vacation where typically every person in China travels. And when I say everyone, I mean that at last estimate China's transportation system was hyping up for the movement of half a billion people. 500,000,000 people. Imagine if all of the citizens of the United States plus Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean decided to go on vacation at the exact same time. That is the kind of exodus we are talking about.

For a variety of reasons, I am one of the few staying put. I just got my passport back on Friday so had no time to plan anything, and I am heading to Hong Kong in two weeks so will be saving up some money for that. Plus, my Chinese/Northwestern friend Zhenyu told me I would have to be a bit crazy to want to travel with all the rest of China, and I would have to agree...

As a celebration of the start of the holiday, and as a way to welcome the freshmen who are finally back from military training, my school put on a giant talent show on Friday. This show had everything. From bubble machines to fireworks, Britney Spears to Phantom of the Opera, hip-hop and break dancing to Chinese traditional dance, name some form of entertainment and it was probably included in some manner.

Chinese classical dancing

A cappella

A few of my students performed in one of the traditional dance routines and you could tell they were very talented. Their costumes and make-up were so elaborate they said it took three hours to get ready. In fact, when they came up after the show I had a hard time telling who was who.

The other American also got on stage. He was probably roped into it by the school administration, but his ballad of I Need You Now by Lady Antebellum was more suitable for a karaoke stage than a talent show showcasing our school's best and brightest. Don’t get me wrong, he sung his heart out and all the Chinese girls swooned. I am eternally grateful to whoever decided not to include me in this show.

Justin doing his thing

I didn’t even need to be on stage to be a spectacle myself. I tried to stick to the back to avoid unwanted attention, but without fail whenever an act was particularly slow gaggles of students would turn their backs on the show and point and take photos of me like I was a real celebrity. I seem to have that effect wherever I go here.

The Grand Finale

So since now most of campus is gone and I'm left to my own devices this week, I have come up with a little experiment to keep myself amused. I am dubbing it the Three Dollar a Day Diet. I think the title is self-explanatory, but basically I will be only eating and drinking what can be bought with $3 a day or 18 kuai. The money can be cumulative, so between Monday-Friday I am aiming to spend only $15 or 90 kuai. Check back later for updates on my progress.

快乐中国国庆！