P-A-R-T-Y!

Chinese students are vastly misled about the life of a foreigner. During the past month students have shown me what Chinese money looks like, asked me how I buy things in the grocery store (the easiest of all shopping experiences), and asked me why I was out alone when they saw me around town. I’ve been asked these types of questions all year, but it was surprising to me that they never stopped. The students really have no idea that I lead a semi-normal life in China, despite being an outsider. They must think that I’m ushered around by a translator all the time or have spent the entire year holed-up in my apartment. An entire year of this ignorant curiosity made me want to do something to help the students understand that I’m not just a foreigner, I’m a human too.

At the same time, I wanted to do something for the better students in my classes. These kids have been a source of information for me, helped translate the few times it was necessary, and have been very good students on the whole. I couldn’t just bring in gifts for a few students in the class; that would look horrendous. And I couldn’t host a party at school, as the students’ schedules are packed during the school day.

What to do, what to do? I’ve set them entry up in a way that, I imagine, leads you to discover the solution I came to: host a party at my apartment on the weekend for a select group of students.

This past Sunday, about 35 students came over to my apartment for a small party. Although 35 sounds like a lot, it was really hard to start with about 1000 students and narrow it down to only 40 – less than 5% of the students Kelly and I teach. We chose some of our best and most helpful students to come to the party and explained where they should meet us.

Kelly and I spent all day Sunday making over 40 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, three different kinds of Jell-O, and two kinds of cookies, cutting up a humongous watermelon and childproofing my apartment. Twenty minutes before the party was scheduled to start we went to the designated meeting place to find over 15 students already waiting for us. Once back at my place, the students took a few minutes to take a tour of the Zhuzhou Museum of Ashley. The rest of the party was spent eating American food and playing games (both spontaneous and planned). I think everyone had a good time, I know I did.

I’m really glad Kelly and I had the party. I hope the students enjoyed themselves and learned something about my life outside of school.

The Great Packathon!

An image like this can only mean one thing, the great packathon as commenced. I've been collecting and sorting through all the things I hope to bring back to America all night and now I can only hope they'll all fit in my luggage. Some things that came with me won't be making the trip back and, naturally, a few things will be immigrating to the States in my bags. Cross your fingers that it all makes it safely, soundly, and, perhaps more importantly, underweight.

Sorry!

I just want to take a moment to apologize for my distinct lack of posts these past few weeks. Things in Zhuzhou are coming to an end, which means there are a million things to wrap up. To add insult to injury, not only am I running low on free time, but Blogger is still blocked, so I can't upload videos like I want to. I have a few really great videos of the students that I'll have to share with you once I'm back in non-blocked-internet-country.

一月

In exactly one month, my plane should be touching down at BWI airport. Where did the time go?

What happens when you let 60 Junior 1s play with buckets of water?

This.

Zhuzhou in the News Again

Zhuzhou was recently in the news again, though this time to note a much happier occasion. Zhuzhou resident, He Jianma, made his mark on history by pulling a 9-ton bus with his hair! While I was not present for the exciting event, a Guinness World representative was on hand to certify the new record.

History Comes to Zhuzhou, Or Almost Did

Those of you who have seen Disney’s 2001 film, Pearl Harbor, may remember the America’s retaliation raid on Japan led by Lt. Col. Doolittle. Like the bulk of the movie, the depiction of this raid, which was executed on April 18, 1942 by 80 members of the US Air Force, is based heavily on the reality of the actual raid.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 21, 1941, the US government and military began to plan a retaliation attack to be carried out as soon as possible. The planning committee quickly discovered that it would be impossible for US planes to take off from the closest American landing strip and fly safely to the Japanese homeland. Plan B dictated that pilots be trained to fly B-25B bombers off of air craft carriers. This was a feat had never been attempted before and was planned to allow the planes to take off only 400 miles from the Japanese coast, much closer than the nearest air force base on land. After bombing several targets in Japan, the pilots would then fly on to China, with little remaining fuel they had.

On the scheduled day of the attack, everything was going according to plan until the USS Hornet, which was carrying 16 B-25B bombers 201 pilots and crew members got within 650 miles of Japan, 250 miles from the intended take off location. The ship and those escorting her were spotted by a Japanese picket boat, which radioed a warning to land. Rather than risk the entire mission, Lt. Col. Doolittle ordered planes take off immediately.

The operation went well and all the intended targets in Japan were successfully hit. However, because they were forced to take off 250 miles too soon, the air men were unable to reach their intended landing location and were forced to land in rice patties throughout the Chinese countryside. The Chinese people were very helpful to the lost US pilots and most were able to return to America unharmed. The mission was considered hugely successful, and although it did not do a substantial amount of damage to the Japanese targets, it boosted American morale greatly. Furthermore, the attack shocked the Japanese government and public and caused the Japanese military to recall several fighting units back to protect the homeland.

The real shame of the story is that the US Servicemen were unable to reach their planned landing site: Zhuzhou! American history almost made its mark in this city all those year ago.

***

I was happy to learn about the raid’s planned landing site from this article on Coloradodaily.com, which is itself an interesting read. The article provides far more details of the Doolittle Raid from a pilots who survived the raid himself.

It's Not Too Late

I recently had the honor of visiting Lingyuan, a city in the Hunan countryside, with my friends, June and Rock. The visit was billed as the opportunity to visit Meishan Dragon Palace, a cave near June’s hometown, but my favorite part of the trip was far less exciting for everyone else.

Hundreds of years ago June’s ancestors began work on a family compound that still stands today. The large, traditional home was build so that there would be adequate room for the entire, extended family to live comfortably together. June’s family must have been wealthy when the home was built, as it is very intricate and ornate. Each door is adorned with a carved relief depicting some aspect of daily life. Carvings were used to decorate other parts of the home as well. Needless to say, the home is beautiful.



Time, however, has definitely taken a toll on the home. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s government demanded that the heads be removed from all the reliefs and so nearly every door has been defaced. Additionally, many of the other carvings have been exposed to the elements for sometime and show considerable wear.

Years ago, the Chinese government purchased the home from June’s family to protect and restore it. The family hadn’t actually lived in the home for some time, so they were happy to sell it. Unfortunately, the government hasn’t actually done any of the promised restorations. A 300 year old, traditional bed is simply sitting in a moldy, dusty room, more than likely on its way to ruin. Other aspects of the home and quickly falling into disrepair and likely won’t last much longer.

Like many other historical relics, the Chinese have fallen far behind on their upkeep. During the Cultural Revolution, many beautiful and time-honored Chinese buildings and temples were lost forever. Therefore, the Chinese can’t afford to lose any more of these pieces of history. If the government doesn’t quickly step up and take action, we could have nothing left for future generations to enjoy. As I don’t see government and popular opinion changing anytime soon, this is a real fear. But it's not too late, a change could still happen.

Do a Deer...

This Sunday my students participated in a singing competition sponsored by the school. Each class sang a common song as well as an additional song of their choice and was conducted by a fellow classmate. To separate themselves from the other classes, some classes chose to incorporate choreography or dancers into the act. Below are a few photos from the day. I’d love to share some of the video I took during the competition, however, due to current blockage of Blogger by the Chinese Firewall, I am unable to.

吸管

Oh, and for those of you who are interested, the Chinese word for straw is 吸管 and is pronounced "xīguǎn". I'll have to see if that will work as well for me the sucking sound has. Somehow I doubt it.

创造力. Creativity. Die Kreativität.

According to a recent study, I may just be more creative than you for having lived abroad.

I came across this interesting post in the Economist’s Business Travel blog, Gulliver, a few weeks ago and wanted to share it with you. According to the blog article and the referenced study, living abroad seems to make people more creative.

I can’t say for sure that I’m more creative than you, but I can say that China has made me think outside the box more often when communicating with non-English speakers than I’ve ever have before. For example, every few days or so I decide to treat myself to a soda after school. China is super dirty and as a result, you won’t see me touching the rim of the can to my mouth. Chinese people feel the same way, so every small shop has a bunch of straws for the people who buy canned beverages. Sometimes the straws are located on the counter and I can just take one myself. Other times, however, they are stashed under the glass counter and I have to ask for one. The problem is I don’t know how to say straw in Chinese. I could look it up, but I’ve just never done it. Instead I’ve developed a motion that means straw. I say, “have not have” in Chinese and then hold the can up and make a sucking sound with my mouth. It hasn’t failed me yet. The shop owner always knows that I want a straw. My friend, Caroline, has developed her own system for getting a straw that involves a different hand and mouth motion that also works. There are many many non-verbal ways to get a straw.

I’m not saying this is the most creative thing I’ve ever done, but situations like this one come up on an hourly basis in China. As my time in China is drawing to a close, many of my American friends have begun to talk about what it’ll be like to be back in an English speaking country. In China, I’ve danced around the store to get what I want, baked banana bread in a rice cooker, and used hair bands to fasten countless things closed. In only a few months, none of this will be necessary. How strange it will be to have things I want and to be able to communicate with the public using words! I just hope my creativity doesn’t wane.

The Chew of Hunan

During the first week of orientation in China we were sent on a scavenger hunt all around Changsha. Armed with one group member who spoke Chinese, 100 RMB, and a list of items to find, we were let loose on the unsuspecting public. There were many things on the list that were easy to find: a Chinese flag, a Chinese knot, Beisha beer, KFC ketchup, a picture of a younger Mao, and a business card. There was, however, one thing on the list that no one in my group had the slightest idea what it was. It was something called a betel nut. We searched high and low to find that stupid nut. We tried to translate it into Chinese. We asked countless bystanders if they knew what it was. In the end of the game, we never did find out what a betel nut was.

Now, over nine months since that fateful day, I can barely imagine a time when I didn’t instantly recognize the look and smell of the betel nut. Also called the areca nut, the betel nut is chewed daily by any self-respecting Hunanese male. The nuts are harvested from the areca tree in the tropical pacific, packaged, and sold in large quantities in Taiwan, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Hunan. Oddly enough though, it is rare for betel nut to be found in any other Chinese city out side of Hunan and Taiwan.

The nuts are chewed for their effects as a mild stimulant, causing a hot sensation in the body and slightly heightened alertness. Like chew, betel nut is a carcinogen, which releases its drug through the walls of the mouth. According to Wikipedia, the effect of chewing betel nut is relatively mild and could be compared to drinking a cup of coffee. Betel nuts have created an entire generation of people who have ruined their teeth and gums.

I’m not sure what got into me a few days ago, but I decided to try a betel nut for myself. I figured that since it’s only chewed in this area of China, I will likely never live in a place that chews the nut again. And being relatively exotic, I guess I though it would make a good story. I had heard that the nut was minty and “not delicious,” and I’d have to agree. Though I gave it a good go, I was unsuccessful at chewing the nut to it’s fullest extent due my gag reflex getting in the way. I’m not sad that I tried it, but I’m certain that I’ll never need to do it again.

If you, like me, are interested in trying a betel nut for yourself, let me know and I’ll bring a pack back to America. They are an uncontrolled substance in the states and can be purchased at many Asian grocery stores if you can’t wait that long or mine get taken away by Customs officials.

Zhuzhou from Space

I went on Google Maps to look at Zhuzhou for the first time today. Google's satellite images are really quite amazing and I thought I'd share them with you. It's just too bad that there was some mild cloud cover the day the photos were taken.

Below is a picture of Yandi Square and a portion of the campus of Number 2 Middle School, where I live. The orange arrow is pointing to my apartment building. You can also see the top of the tower that I mentioned in my post on December 20th, 2008 about pollution.



This is an image of the area surrounding Jing Yan Middle School, where I teach. As you may have guessed, the orange arrow points to the school. In the center you can see the "playground" where you've witnessed students "exercising," playing basketball, and putting out fires.

This is a test of the emergency evacuation plan. This is only a test.

During my time in the Hempfield School District we had a fire drill once a month, tornado drills twice a year, and a yearly intruder drill. I imagine the goal was to have all students be prepared for whatever emergency might face us. The one time we did have an actual emergency (a tornado in kindergarten) everyone remained safe the entire time thanks to the hours the district had spent teaching us what to do.

Naturally schools in Hunan want their students to remain safe during an emergency as well. They have, however, adopted a very different system to ensure the students know what to do in the event of a fire or earthquake, like the one that shook Sichuan Province just over one year ago.

The drill at Jingyan Middle School stated with a 45 minute lecture given by some type of school authority and a military official. All 1000 junior 1 students brought their chairs into the “playground” (ie: basketball courts between the academic buildings) to listen to the talk, while the other students “listened” over the loud speaker. At some point during the lecture I heard the soldier say weiguoren several times in quick succession. Meaning foreigner, weiguoren is one of a handful of Chinese words that almost always catches my ear. I asked one of my Chinese friends if he was talking about “my people” and she said that he was telling the students that foreigners know how to deal with emergencies better than Chinese people and that the Chinese should learn from them. As one of the resident foreign experts at Jingyan, perhaps they could have asked if I had anything to add. They didn’t and I would have.

Following the lecture two students were selected from the group to come over to a burning trash wheel-barrel. The school leaders had lit a small fire in the barrel and it was the students’ job to put the fire out with fire extinguishers. After a quick fire extinguisher lesson, the students were let loose on the fire, which they put out with ease.



Next the military representatives brought a gas tank to the stage area and proceeded to set it on fire. A soldier was successful at extinguishing the tank with a wet blanket after about five tries, several of which almost burnt him. Naturally, at this point a student was called up to give it a shot. The student happened to be one of the most outspoken students in class 5, named America. Thankfully, America was far better at putting the fire out than the “expert” and walked away from the demonstration unharmed.



All the students then went back to their classrooms to prepare for the drill portion of the day. A school official somehow produced fake smoke, that I doubt anyone except me actually saw, which signaled the beginning of the drill. A voice came over the loud speaker telling the students to begin coming out of the buildings. Teachers were stationed a different points along the way, yelling at the students to run. And run they did. The students bent low and covered their faces while they ran from the buildings as quickly as possible. They reported to their morning exercise positions in the playground. Many feigned joy at safely escaping the burning building while they waited to be told they could go home for the day. It took only a little over five minutes for all the students and staff to get out of the buildings. Pretty good for over 3,000 people.

I’m not actually sure how prepared the students are. In the case of an actual emergency I imagine several students would be trampled by a stamped of their frightened classmates, while others are injured by burning or flying debris falling from the buildings only feet from where they’re standing. Whatever its faults, I believe the students are better off for having practiced rushing out of the buildings than had the school never run the drill.

Back at Hempfield, students are likely still “quickly walking” out of the buildings during their monthly drills, entirely ignorant of how to put out a burning gas tank. While I have my opinions on who is more prepared for an emergency, I’ll keep them to myself and let you decide on your own.

Yup, They're All Mine

Can you believe all the munchkins within the red box are my students? I barely can!

Diaster in Zhuzhou

Last night Kelly messaged me and asked what I thought “You knew our here has had a bridge to collapse?” meant. Maybe you understand severe Chinglish better than we do, but we both had little idea what the student was trying to say to her. Obviously it was something about a collapsed bridge, but there were still many questions to be answered. We got a few more details from the student, but still were unable to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

This morning my friend Bridget sent me a message about a collapsed bridge in Zhuzhou. Only then did I understand the message from last night. It turns out the first urban flyover in Hunan, which was built in 1995, was located in Zhuzhou. It was 200 meters of this viaduct that collapsed over Hong Qi Square around 4:30pm on Sunday, May 17th. According to the Xinhua News Agency, the death toll has reached nine, with another 17 people still in the hospital. It’s amazing that it wasn’t more. The few times that I visited Hong Qi Square, it was always bustling with hundreds of people walking or driving beneath the bridge at any given moment.

The interested people that we are, Kelly and I went to the site to take a look at the damage this morning. In the bus on the way we saw over 18 military trucks lined along the road, each loaded with an estimated 40-50 soldiers. It appeared that they had just finished up their work and were getting ready to head out after a quick lunch. At the disaster site, a strong police presence was milling around, keeping people out of restricted areas. Apart from the few people who were snapping pictures with and of Kelly and I, the rest of the population hurried past the wreckage, simply going on with their lives. It was surprising how normal everything seemed to be, only 20 hours after the collapse.

This link leads to an article that includes four pictures of the site shortly after the collapse. And this leads to a YouTube video from the AP entitled “Raw Video: Viaduct Bridge Collapses in China”. As you may know, YouTube is blocked in China, so I haven’t been able to view the video myself.

It's For Your Safety

After months and months of fabulous luck, the powers that be have decided to block Blogger for my safety and the safety of the Chinese public. While I appreciate the thought, I’d rather be able to post and edit blog posts without the hassle of being forced to use a proxy server and an image hosting site. Blogger is just one more to fall in a long string of recent blocks. YouTube has been dead to me for several months.

I can’t really complain all that much as the internet has been rather “free” this year. Leading up to the Olympics China unblocked a great many sites for “the benefit of the visitors.” Unfortunately, the rolling block-outs began again during the winter, taking out many websites that are disruptive to the public good and many that are not.

I imagine that the current blockage of Blogger will continue until I leave in a few short months, so I’ll just have to learn to live with the change. Though I am able to post text with relative ease using a proxy, it seems that the proxy cuts out all the frills of Blogger that I’ve grown accustom to. Rather than relying on the makers of Blogger to know all the HTML codes to do things I want, I have to figure them out myself. So far I’ve figured out how to post pictures using an image hosting site and how to add links. Take that Net Nanny!

The New York Times has written some informative articles on this topic over the past few months. Here are the links to two:
China Is Said to Restore Blocks on Web Sites
Surveillance of Skype Messages Found in China

May Madness at Jing Yan

The Junior 1 classes are in the midst of a very serious basketball tournament. This tournament is one of the more organized things I’ve seen Jing Yan do and personally, I’m pretty impressed. The students took the tournament to another level by getting NBA or CBA jerseys personalized for the event. I’ll keep you updated on the status of the tournament as things progress.

Be Prepared

I used to joke that I allot over an hour for a 25 minutes commute because I can’t ever been sure that a spaceship won’t land on the bridge I take the get to school. While this is an exaggeration, it isn’t far from the truth. In China, I need to be prepared for absolutely anything to happen.

There are two main reasons for this need. The first is that I can’t read or understand Chinese. A few weeks ago I noticed a piece of paper taped to a wall near my apartment. The other people living in the community all took a quick look at the paper before moving on with their day. All I knew was that obviously it contained some information that I should probably know about. The following Saturday, I woke up and went about my business. I put a load of laundry in my washer and was about to brush my teeth when I realized that my water was off. I called two of my friends who live in the apartment complex. The both confirmed that they too, had no water. From my best guess, the water was turned off from 10:00am-8:00pm. Perhaps the water had been halted for repairs (though I didn’t see any), but in all likelihood, had I been able to read the posted sign a few days before, I would have been aware of the fact that my water supply was going to be cut off for ten hours the following Saturday. Unfortunately, I could not. Luckily this was all not a big problem. It just meant that I had soapy clothes sitting in a washer all day and that I smelled.

The second cause for my cluelessness is that for some reason, Chinese people don’t share information as readily as I might like them to. I have a liaison, named Amy, whose job it is to help me with my life in China and tell me what’s going on at school. It’s not that Amy’s malicious or mean, in fact I really like her a lot and I know that she does the best that she can to help me, but she often doesn’t clue me into to changes to the school schedule or activities going on at school until the last possible minute or at all. A few weeks ago I showed up to school in time to be ready for my 1:45 class. Everything was going normally until at exactly 1:36 Amy told me that the entire afternoon schedule would be pushed back 30 minutes for the rest of the school year. Rather than having 10 minutes until my class began, I had 40. (Better that I was too early than too late, I guess).

10 minutes warning was actually not all that bad. Just yesterday I asked Amy if there was anything I should know about this week. She said that nothing at all special was going on this week. Only a short while later I found out that in fact there was something special going on that very afternoon. My students let me know that they would be competing in a basketball tournament starting during the 8th period. 2 hours since I asked, 1 thing it might have been nice to tell Ashley. This morning I woke up to find out that today is the anniversary of Sichuan earthquake the killed hundreds of students last year. At 2:28pm there was to be a moment of silence to remember all those who lost their lives. 22 hours since I asked, 2 things it might have been nice to tell Ashley. We’re at about 36 hours since I spoke to Amy about this week’s schedule. We’ll have to wait and see how many more things will end up surprising me.

After almost 10 months in China, these things hardly bother me anymore. I’ve gotten completely used to having little to no warning. If I ever get asked in an interview if I’m a flexible person, I’ll just have to answer that I’ve had a year of full time flexibility training and wouldn’t have a problem working around a spaceship in the office.

Welcome Summer!

Yep, that was the actual temperature at 19:18:29 today, May 10th, 2009. Let me assure you that it was much hotter in the afternoon when the sun was actually out. It's so hot, the weather widget felt that it needed to add the little cactus to help all of you understand just how hot it feels when you add 90% humidity into the mix. I guess this is just pay back for all the times I wished for warmth during the winter.