Describe Your Hero

This week my students and I are talking about heroes and superheroes. The lesson idea was created by my friend, David, and he's been so kind as to let me borrow it. The students really love talking about their favorite action figures like Kung Fu Panda, Pikachu, and Kobe Bryant. At the end of the lesson I ask the students to write 5 sentences about their favorite hero or superhero. While I'm sure to have more funny ones as the week progresses, I thought I'd get the ball rolling with this one. The following is the work of a student from class 11.

My favorite hero is Deng Deng Juan. She is my classmate. She is 12 years old. She has a fat face. She is a good student.

Springtime for Hitler Zhuzhou 1

Springtime in Zhuzhou is a welcome relief from the winter cold and brings with it many new, bright colors. The flowering of the “trees with pink flowers like they have in Japan,” known to most native English speakers as Cherry blossoms, has been the talk of the town for several weeks. Students began talking about the trees in late February and a few trips to Shi Feng Park, in the outskirts of Zhuzhou, were scheduled and then canceled before the trees actually bloomed.

I was finally able to see the Sakura with a few student a few weeks ago on a rainy Saturday. The students were exceptionally excited to have their photos taken with the trees, as were dozens of other Chinese people. Though perhaps it would have been more beautiful under different weather circumstances, the trees were striking. The photos below are documentation of the experience. <sup>2, 3


1</sup> The title is a reference to the Mel Brooks' musical, The Producers. As you may have guessed, the fifth song in the second act is entitled Springtime for Hitler.
² I think the center picture is really interesting because it highlights what modern day China, especially in Zhuzhou, is really like. No matter where you go or what beauty surrounds you, an air-polluting factory is not far away.
³ The students pictured in the bottom left photo, from left to right, are Crystal, Cindy, Beryl, and Sherey from Junior 1, Class 16.

Happy Easter!

I'm illiterate and so are you!

It’s true. We’re all illiterate in all but one, maybe two, of the world’s languages. The difference is that it doesn’t have an impact on your everyday life the way it does on mine. I’ve gotten used to walking down the street and being able to understand or even pronounce very few of the signs I see. I go to the grocery store and pray that there are either photos, drawings, or broken English on the packaging so I can figure out what I’m about to buy. Luckily, the images and random English words haven’t failed me yet when it comes to the difference between rat poison and human food.

Months ago, while I was still living in Changsha, a fellow volunteer mentioned how odd it was that her conditioner lathered up when she conditioned her hair after washing it. I told her that I hadn’t noticed this difference between American and Chinese hair products and that if it was true, it would be very strange. The next time I washed my hair I noticed that what she said was true, the conditioner did suds up in my hair. It looked and smelled like what I would label as regular conditioner. I was satisfied to simply chalk it up to being some kind of weird Chinese preference.

This past weekend, while staying with two friends in another city, I took a shower at my friend’s house. I hadn’t planned on showering during the short visit, so I didn’t bring any toiletries with me. My friend offered to let me use hers and I was surprised when her conditioner behaved like an American conditioner would. I inspected the bottle to be assured that the product was purchased in China; it was. I figured that it must just be the brand of shampoo and conditioner that I was using. I mentioned the difference to my friends, both of whom thought I was crazy. Conditioner doesn’t foam up in China, they said.

A few days later I asked a gathering of a few other American girls. None of their conditioner acts any differently than what we were used to before coming to China. It’s just me. After a few minutes of research, we discovered that I must be using two-in-one shampoo/conditioner, rather than regular conditioner. I have been unknowingly double washing my hair for over eight months because I can’t read!

I haven’t checked the product placement at the store since this revelation, but I assume that the shampoo and two-in-on shampoo must be placed next to each other on the rack and the conditioner somewhere else. Because two-in-one has the same pearly color as conditioner, I guess I just assumed it was the conditioner all those months ago.

Oh, if only I could read the 20,000 characters required to be a literate Chinese speaker!

Size ≠ Development

I got off the train in Hengyang, Hunan and immediately searched for a taxi, as I would in any city in China. I found, or should I say was accosted, by several taxi drivers attempting to “earn” my business. I told them I was headed to “Xin Yi Zhong,” and haggled over the price before my selected driver led me to his car. He opened the front door and as I got in, I saw that there were two other people sitting the back seat of the car. While this would have bothered me in many other places around the world, I didn’t give it a second thought, because I knew that this is a normal occurrence in Hengyang.

Hengyang is a city of 9 million people located an hour and a half train ride south of Zhuzhou. It has been the Chinese home of two of my fellow foreign teachers for the past year, which is why I was visiting. While Hengyang is larger not only in population than Zhuzhou, but also in land area, it is less developed. My friends and I have a very sophisticated system for measuring the development of a Chinese city. A city must pass a three question test to be labeled “developed.”
1. Is butter available for purchase in said city?
2. Can one buy peanut butter without selling a bodily organ?
3. Is cheese, in addition to the Kraft Singles variety, accessible at select supermarkets?

The cities are then branded using the following scale:
0 yeses: Not developed.
1 yes: Shows some signs of future development.
2 yeses: Is on its way to development, but needs improvement.
3 yeses: Is officially a developed Chinese city.

Here are the results of several cities: Wulingyuan: Not developed. Changsha: Developed. Zhuzhou: Needs improvement. Hengyang: Shows signs of future development. Hong Kong: Off the charts (but that’s a different story).

All joking aside, the structure of taxis in a city is an indicator of development in China and good example of my point. In Zhuzhou taxi drivers always use the meter. One needn’t ask; they put it down automatically. Most taxis are equipped with walkie-talkie like radios and I haven’t heard of a driver attempting to drive more than one party at a time. Hengyang is a different story. Haggling over the price is a must, as it is impossible to get a driver to even consider using the meter. The claim that the trip will be more expensive with the meter only means that the driver will run you around until it is. And packing people into cars like sardines so that the driver can get even more off the meter money is commonplace.

In America, the size of a city is a good gauge of its development. A town with 250 people likely has fewer things for sale than a city of several million. I think that both my very refined quiz and the "taxi test" prove the same in not true in China. As with so many other things here, you just never know what you’re going to get.

On Baking in China

Like many things in China, baking can be a real challenge. Historically the Chinese don’t bake, so ovens are a completely unnecessary appliance. Therefore, I, like my neighbors, don’t have an oven in my kitchen. Luckily, I have a small toaster oven in my apartment. It works well for toast, garlic bread, cookies, and other small toasting needs, but falls far short of all of my oven desires.

Baking is one of my hobbies in the US and, due to my lack of an oven, I spent the first several months in China baked good-less. Sure, I enjoyed a steamed cake now and then, but when I say baked good, I mean baked good. Recently, however, I discovered the joys of the rice cooker, an appliance that, believe it or not, is common in Chinese kitchens. I’ve used it to make a Rachael Ray rice cooker meal (the recipe for which can be found here) and, more interestingly, a lovely Neapolitan marble cake (here’s that recipe). The cake was a real long shot, but it worked out amazingly well.

Baking in a rice cooker is a real guessing game. First of all it’s hard to find all the ingredients necessary for baked goods. Vanilla, for example, is nowhere to be found. And just forget about icing. Secondly, I have absolutely no idea what the cooking temperature is. The temperature options on my rice cooker are “warm” and “cook rice,” which aren’t as descriptive as, say, numbers. As a result, I just throw the batter in and hope for the best. Finally, the cooker switches from “warm” and “cook rice” at will. If it detects that there is no longer water in the pan “cooking” the “rice,” it shuts itself down to “warm.” And although I can wedge a clothespin under the switch, it ends up burning the underside of the cake if I do. I found it’s just better if I let the temperature vary greatly during the cooking, rather than burn the entire bottom of my cake. So after pushing the button up and it popping down, me pushing the button back up, it popping back down again several times, the cake finally bakes the whole way through.

The problems don’t end when the cake is finally thoroughly baked. Good luck finding a cooling rack. Thus, as you see in the pictures, chopsticks step up and fill the void nicely.

There are so many things about the US that are able to be recreated in central China with a little creativity. The longer I’m here, the more I’m able to do. On one hand, it makes me sad when I realize that I’ll only be here for a few months. On the other, I remember how much easier, and more delicious, all of my baked-goods are going to be back in North America and I get excited. Muffins, icing, cupcakes, breads, cakes, cookies, baked macaroni and cheese here I come!

Team Building at English Corner