D - Shenyang Part 2 - The Exposition

After getting off the train Friday night, we found a very nice taxi driver to take us to our hotel. He was Shenyangese and claimed he could be an excellent tour guide. Sylvia judged him to be trustworthy so we invited him to pick us up at 8am the next morning to take us to the Exposition. The Expo was located about 15km east of Shenyang city and was surrounded by a very beautiful countryside. Only the faint tinge of brown on the horizon could detract from the views around the Expo grounds.

The Exposition began at the end of May and continues through the end of October 2006. So we were catching it at the end of its life. Despite this, overall it was a good experience. One thing you have to remember when judging it is that it's in China. In other words, even if the presentation is bad, it would be good, because we're learning how other people do things and what exhibits are interesting to their mind. Anyway, I would liken it almost more to a World's Fair than a Horticultural Exposition. There were two main categories of sites - Chinese Domestic Exhibitions and International Exhibitions. Each site had plants and gardens from the respective region or country, but there were also stores selling (supposedly) unique items from their culture. Strange how Malaysia, Thailand, and Myanmar all seemed to be selling the same stuff! Of course, my favorite display was put on by Turkey. They didn't actually setup a garden or sell any kitsch, but they grilled up some mean mutton kebabs - very tasty! Our only non-food purchase of the day was made at the India garden where C picked up some incense.

And here are the pictures...starting with the entrance to the exposition. We have many more than this but I still haven't found a photo gallery site I like yet.

Some interesting tree root art

Doing a "Miao" dance in front of a prototypical "Miao" home

One of the many China Regional Gardens. Who's the funny white guy?

Chinese sentiments can seem cheesy to a Westerner

Something you won't see at a US Exposition: A North Korean booth

The Lily Tower built for the exposition

Something else you won't see at a US Exposition: a ropes course??

The Dutch Garden sporting some Van Gogh

The American garden seeks to educate about great American leaders like Washinglon and Einstin.


Sylvia and Cassie hanging out in front of the Italian garden

A rose is a rose

D - Shenyang Part 1 - The Train

Well we have returned successfully from our first intra-China travel experience. It began Friday afternoon when we met our student volunteer Sylvia and her roommate Cassie at the closest bus stop. We took the 502 downtown and got off near the train station, which was the haven of madness we expected. Not only was it packed to the brim with everyday Chinese travellers, but there were hundreds of soldiers everywhere, apparently headed off from Dalian to fill the train station of another city. We were about an hour early for the train so we hung out in the waiting area. There were probably a 1000 people milling about where we were and we felt like every single one of them was staring at us. People would be minding their own business and then make a sudden veer our way. They would inquire in Chinese with our friends as to where we were from and what we were doing. Sylvia explained that many people who travel by train are farmers who may have never seen a foreigner before - and I believe it. The tickets for our friends to Shenyang were 15 RMB - about $1.90! China's train system make it possible for even the poorest to get transportation.

Right before we headed to get on the train at 3:30, I decided to hit the WC. Now the bathroom in any public place like the train station is never nice, but this was a whole new level of unniceness. Actually, the bathroom itself was no worse than your average interstate rest stop, but the air was literally like breathing pure tobacco smoke. You can't smoke in the train station central area (and it's actually enforced), but I know where they go to get their fix! Ugh. Finally, we got on the train. Sadly, we don't have any pictures of the station or the train. From the outside, it was a pale green and looked every bit to be from a bygone communist era. I should add that we took the 2209 train, which is the slowest and least comfortable train. From what I read, there are some very nice trains here but our students of course chose the most economic option.

There are four classes of seats on most Chinese trains: hard seats, soft seats, hard sleeper, and soft sleeper - if you're curious on the distinctions, click here. The picture of the hard seats (our class) is relatively close to our experience with a few exceptions. For example, MANY people in China will stand in the hard seat compartments for incredibly long journeys. Having an aisle seat isn't as advantageous when you have people roaming up and down hoping to find a spare seat, or maybe just leaning on your seat. I was talking to a student today and he told me that to get from his home in central China to Dalian, he would STAND for 22 hours. Another girl got to sit on her train journey to Dalian, but it took 50 hours from her home in Gansu province.

Thankfully we didn't need the restroom on the train so I can't report any findings there. Our dinner consisted of ramen noodles brought by our friends. You can get hot water on the train to make that sort of ready-to-eat dish. The journey itself was okay - there were probably 6 or 7 stops of 3-10 minutes on the way to Shenyang. My bottom was certainly ready to get off though at the 6 hour and 15 minute mark when we arrived at the Shenyang North train station.

D - Holy Shenyang Batman!

Well, this entry will be the last for a few days. We're one week away from our trip to Xi'an and somehow we managed to get another trip together. Our student volunteer was going to the International Horticultural Exposition in Shenyang, China this weekend with her roommate and we asked her if we could tag along. Shenyang is a heavily industrial city about 6 hours north of Dalian by train. The pronunciation sounds like "Shunyahng" according to the Chinese pinyin phonetic system. It's the capital of Liaoning province. Once known as Mukden, it was a hub of industry setup by the Japanese during their occupation of Manchuria during the second Sino-Japanese War. Throughout the 60s and 70s it was among the most successful industrial cities in China, but as market reforms took place in the 80s and 90s it fell behind some of the other cities. It's supposed to be rather dirty and polluted so I suspect this exposition is an effort to try and rebuild some of its reputation.



Ironically, my father has actually been to Shenyang. He gave a speech that was broadcast on state TV in the mid 90s. He gives an interesting description of his visit there. His company was investing about $50,000 in a local Chinese firm, which is pretty small. The hosts of his visit however went all out with a huge banquet and celebration at this magnificent occasion of Sino-American partnership!

The trip will see a number of firsts for me (C is far more Chinaperienced with her study abroad trip so this is old hat for her).

First stay at a Chinese hotel
First train trip in China
First visit to Shenyang
First trip with Chinese friends

One of the firsts I hope to avoid is - "First time using a squat toilet while going around a curve on a Chinese train"!

Some maps from the exposition web site are below...in English.

C - worth a thousand characters

Before we take off for the weekend, here are some pictures from our latest adventures:

At Noah's For Your Ark bar, which D alluded to in his previous post, we came across this very special menu:

The picture isn't the greatest, but if you click on the photo and view it full-sized, you can clearly view the many humorous offerings, not the least of which is "peach pai" ("pai" would be pronounced "pie" in the Chinese phonetic system.) What really takes the cake (or pai, perhaps) for me, though, is #9 -- BBQ wikipedia. I knew that the Chinese government didn't like the thing, but jeez! This is a bit cruel!
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China is corrupting my value system. Two American businesses I've consciously objected to buying from for years, KFC and Wal-mart, are now something I treasure and look forward to patronizing! I realized the extent of my depravity the other day while throwing KFC take-out containers into a plastic bag from Wal-mart we're using for garbage:

Sad.

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I've been wanting a Chinese scroll painting for some time, so our student volunteer, Sylvia, took us to a mall downtown last Friday. I was able to find a beautiful painting and a very pretty fan. Each item cost 50 yuan, or just over 6 USD. I am very pleased with both:





The photos don't give a very good sense of scale, so I'll guess that the painting is 10" x 30", and the fan is probably just over a foot wide.
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This next photo is of a bizarre food made from potato that is apparently exclusive to Dalian. It's pretty tasty. I forget the name of it, but here you can see me chopping up what was left over after Sylvia made it for us the night before:


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And finally, a delightful photo I took just now of my dearest darling D:



He was feeling pretty bad this evening after finding out that he hugely offended our student volunteer by offering to pay for the hotel we booked for our trip to Shenyang, and then I had to ask him for computer help afterwards, which always puts him in a rather, how shall we say, brusque mood, so he wasn't exactly inclined to take a silly picture. I REALLY thought that the cookies he was eating looked like cigars, though, and after some pleading on my part he agreed to put his feet up on his desk and "smoke". And that is why I love him.

D - Socializing with Chinese characteristics

Well, this has been an easy week for me. Currently I have 4 sections of students. 2 of those sections only have 1 class this week (8-9:30 Friday and 10-11:30 Friday), and the other 2 sections have shipped off to the island of Hainan for some hands on ship training. While my charges are enjoying the cramped splendor of a Chinese freighter, this means I have Monday through Thursday totally off. Really it's just the calm before the storm. Next week the freshmen, who have been marching around the first 5 weeks of school for required military training, will begin their class for the semester. The impact for us is that our measly 8-9 hours a week of teaching will rise to 12, 14, and finally 16 during certain weeks. It won't be too bad though because now we have a few lesson plans stored up.

So what have we been up to the last few days? Well last week we were conferring with our Danish friends about our trip to Xi'an when one of the student volunteers stopped by. She wanted to formalize the group of students who help the foreign teachers and students into a "Student Union" (Club) and she needed a good name. We bandied about several ideas but eventually she settled on my suggestion - "Foreign Friendship Volunteers". The criteria were that the name be "easy to remember" but "clearly state what our purpose is". Now in Chinese, this is easy - slap down 3 or 4 characters and you can tell the history of a dynasty it seems. In English though, you need a lot of letters!

Once the name was chosen, this volunteer wanted to organize a party for the students and the foreigners to celebrate the official kick-off of the student union. We helped draft their advertisements which were sent out via email and posted on the outside of the foreign teachers building. Well last Saturday was the day for the big event. It took place in the Student Activity Center on campus. The volunteers had a staffed bar serving (warm) beer and soda, and a nicely appointed dance floor replete with the requisite disco balls, light patterns, and spotlights. The evening kicked off with several dance performances. A few Chinese girls did some hip hop, while there was even a bit of Latin dancing from an older Chinese couple, who were followed by their younger proteges. There were two vocal performances in English by the winners of their equivalent to the American Idol contest at DMU. They also managed to talk Derek, a foreign teacher into playing the guitar and singing a few songs - he regaled the Chinese students with Oasis and John Denver. He had quite the singing voice, I was impressed. The evening continued with a bit of slow dancing. C and I were recruited on to the dance floor, but separately. I tried to dance with some Chinese girl, and some Chinese guy tried to show her the dance. Sadly we were not too successful but at least we gave it try. Finally, the rest of the evening was caught up in an epileptic's worst nightmare as the Chinese students flooded the dance floor to break it down to the world's best english techno. Apparently dancing all night to electronica is the Chinese night life, although they didn't so much dance as rotate in concentric human circles.

We topped off Saturday night with a brief visit to "Noah's: For your ark bar" with a few of the foreign teachers. We had some Asahi (very dry Japanese beer) and enjoyed some pizza from their oven, which wasn't all bad. All in all it was a good night. The student volunteers did a great job putting the event together on incredibly short notice. They are really great to us. All the teachers keep raving about the students. DMU should really advertise that the student volunteers exist - without them this experience would not be the great thing that it's been so far. We are certainly getting better at navigating with our limited Chinese but there are times it is invaluable to have a fluent speaker. It's also just a great cultural exchange. For example, we needed to go to the post office to mail our absentee voting request to our districts back in the US. We asked our volunteer to help us mail them. "Could you give us some help, we're trying to VOTE?"

On the way to the post office our volunteer remarked that it would be very expensive for 1.3 billion Chinese to vote in an election. A very astute economic observation no doubt, but nothing good comes cheap!

C - on a heavier note

You can easily judge the character of a man by the way he treats those who can do nothing for him. -- Unknown

For the past several days, I have been unable to practice Chinese, develop lesson plans, reply to emails, or work on my law school applications. Any higher-level thought processes I might be capable of have been completely overwhelmed by my aching heart and screaming conscience.

In my ninth grade “Global Studies” class, I learned about the sex-selective abortion, female infanticide, and abandonment of baby girls that takes place at astonishing levels in China. The stories of these practices made an impression on me like nothing else ever had. Even though it would be years before I would hear of feminism, I instinctively felt that there was something very wrong with valuing girls less than boys, and certainly it was downright evil to murder baby girls simply because they are girls.

That day’s lessons have stayed with me. In fact, what I learned in that class has in large part motivated my current year-long relocation to China. What I was completely unaware of until recently, however, was that the Chinese customs that privilege males over females are actually used as justification for the unhealthy attitudes toward girls. The customs aren’t questioned, and since the values are based on the customs, how could the values be wrong? I’ve had this argument made to me half a dozen times, and in none of the instances did the other person ever think to consider that perhaps the customs are inappropriate as well. “Thinking outside the box” is not a very Chinese thing to do, apparently.

Speaking about these cultural phenomena on a sociological level, though, isn’t what’s been keeping me up at night. What makes my heart ache is to hear a beautiful, intelligent girl tell me that it doesn’t bother her that her grandparents love her male cousin more, just because he’s male, or to see my immature and lazy (male) students act so smugly superior day in and day out. The young women at this university, even those who don’t have boyfriends and are otherwise unconcerned with marriage and parenthood, desperately want to have a son in the future. They don’t see anything wrong with preferring males; in fact, given their culture, it would be illogical not to prefer males.

Some cultural differences, such as music, food, fashion, etiquette, etc, are completely relative, and any preference for one culture over another would simply be a matter of individual taste. I would defend these aspects of Chinese culture to the end against any Westerner who thinks that their culture is superior. Anyone who knows me knows that I am the opposite of an arrogant, idiotic American who believes that the whole world should be like the USA. For me to be so upset, then, this must be a matter of a different sort.

I believe that the quote located at the beginning of this entry is true. Even if the Chinese customs that disadvantage females were immutable (although I don’t believe that they are), it’s still not right for females to be valued less. They can’t pass on your family name? Won’t be expected to live with you in your old age? Can’t work the land as hard? Can’t give you your “own” grandchildren? Love them equally anyways. Value them equally anyways. Even better would be to change the customs that have created the preference of sons over daughters, but if that isn’t possible, it’s still no excuse to prefer males. Letting the girls live is just the first step. The preference, in and of itself, is what I am taking issue with.

Think of the precedent that is set by the kind of thinking that values girls less than boys. If we as humans value others only to the extent that they are helpful and useful to us, we exchange our humanity for a cold, calculating kind of utilitarianism that creates a world I don’t think any of us would want to live in. We all have shortcomings and flaws, but instead of bearing with one another in patience and love, we would simply lower our view of the offending party’s level of innate worth according to the extent we were harmed by it.

The choice is either to value other human beings for their innate dignity, worth, and personhood, or diminish humanity altogether: those devalued for obvious reasons, and those doing the de-valuing by being allowed to develop such selfish patterns of thought. I don’t know if this aspect of Chinese culture will ever change. All I know is that I’m deeply troubled, and that I seem to be the only person here who is.

D - Xi'an or bust

Well C and I have decided to go to the city of Xi'an for 十一（10/1 - The Chinese National Holiday). We get a week off from school and we didn't want to putter around campus for 7 days thinking about all the cool places we could be going.

Dalian has been a real success story for us in terms of a place to live. The air IS actually clean. It is a modern, accessible city and there's Western food when we think we can't take another bowl of rice. As expected, however, it completely lacks in the culture department. There's a few museums here and there but nothing that speaks to China's long history. The only place remotely close that qualifies is the city to the south of Dalian known as Lushun. There's a former Japanese prison where many Chinese were killed and they turned it into a museum on the occupation. Of course Lushun is also home to the Chinese Navy so parts of the city are forbidden to foreigners. Until we find someone who knows Lushun well we will probably avoid it so we don't have an uncomfortable meeting with a Chinese policeman.

So, Xi'an -- what's there? Well, Xi'an was the first capital of China and the home of the first emperor. A brutal but intelligent dictator named Qin Shi Huang united the warring clans of China into a single Chinese empire spanning much of modern China. As seems par for the course for ancient dictators, Mr Qin (Chinese surnames come first) decided he wanted to live forever, so he commissioned hundreds of sailors to go searching for the islands of eternal youth. Not surprisingly, they didn't come back - his response to their lack of results would not have been favorable. Failing to obtain eternal life through the usual means, Qin realized he must build a tremendous army to protect him in the afterlife. Thus he commanded the construction of the Terra Cotta soldiers, a massive group of life-size soldiers and generals surrounding his tomb. Qin likely shortened his lifespan by consuming mercury pills, which were thought to provide immortality. He spent so many resources of his empire on building the Terra Cotta soldiers that his reign was increasing brutal to keep control. Reportedly he kept body doubles and slept in a different place every night to ward off the assassination attempts.



Xi'an has many other interesting sights, such as an ancient city wall, the Wild Goose Pagoda, the Bell and Drum Towers, and the Hot Springs where Chiang Kai-shek was kidnapped prior to the temporary unification of the Communists and Nationalists to fight the Japanese. We are actually going with a retired couple from Denmark who are also here at DMU. So the 4 foreigners are going to brave a Chinese city alone - stay tuned, this could get interesting!

We originally wanted to take the train to Xi'an. It would have been 7 hours overnight to Beijing, and then a day in Beijing followed by a 12 hour journey overnight to Xi'an. We were going to book the best possible class (known as Soft Sleepers) which has 4 bunks in an enclosed compartment. Alas (or perhaps for the best) because the holiday is so significantly travelled, all the train tickets were sold out and we were forced to look into airfare. The only web site in English you can book through is Elong. Usually the airfare in China is very cheap but being a peak travel time it wasn't as nice.

After consulting with our Danish friends, I went ahead and booked the flights as I would on any other web site (minus the Credit card...they call you to get that information, or so I thought). A few minutes later I got a call from a nice gentleman from Elong who spoke English. He confirmed the reservation but he also informed me that to use a credit card they charged a 2% fee and they couldn't issue the tickets and thus book the prices unless I mailed them a signed authorization. Given that the prices were going up daily, we couldn't afford that option. So I said we could pay cash. He indicated they could deliver the plane tickets that afternoon. I tried to give him the address but he didn't believe me so I had to have him call a Chinese friend who gave him directions to the Administration building of our university.

Now picture this - the total for all 4 roundtrip plane tickets was 7600 Yuan. The largest denomination of currency in China is the 100 Yuan note. 76 notes to carry around! I felt like Al Capone...Of course when we went to meet the driver I accidentally dropped all the money...haha

(Try to ignore my latest face experiment)

D - The world's greatest detective...

a coke fiend??? Okay so this is only moderately related to China, but I found it so amusing I had to post. Last week C was accompanied by a Chinese friend to the local English bookstore which contains literary classics such as The Da Vinci Code. The selection is not the greatest as I understand it. However, the bookstore did have "The Complete Sherlock Holmes". C has always been a big Holmes fan so she picked it up. The book is entirely in English so it's as good as buying it back home (perhaps with the exception of the rubber book binding).



In a few bored moments, I've picked up the book and read some of the stories. My previous Holmes experiences were not good so I was surprised that I quite enjoyed the repartee between Holmes and his assistant Dr.Watson. So last night I decided to read one of the longer stories, which is called "The Sign of Four". Here are a few quotes from the opening chapter...

"Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantlepiece, and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle and rolled back his left shirtcuff. He thrust the shar point home, pressed, the tiny piston, and sank back into the armchair with a long sigh of satisfaction."

or
Watson: "Which is it today? Cocaine or morphine?"
Holmes: "It is cocaine, a 7% solution. Would you care to try it?"

and later in the first chapter...
Watson: "Would you think it impertinent if I put your theories to a more severe test?"
Holmes: "On the contrary, it would prevent me from taking another dose of cocaine."

Now I haven't finished the story of course, so maybe Holmes beats his cocaine habit by solving a mystery in a rehab facility, but I was shocked! To the author's credit, Watson does lecture him about the ills of addiction but I did not realize Holmes had such a bad habit. No wonder he can get away with wearing that hat...

D - Our students

Looking over the blog, I realized we've really only alluded to our job here, which is teaching English.

As our faithful readers know, we are teaching at Dalian Maritime University. What may not be obvious is that the school is more than just teaching sailors. There are English majors, Information Management majors, Electrical Engineers, and so on. In other words, at least for China, it's a standard multi-disciplinary university covering liberal arts and science. They do have a special program for maritime students however. The two majors for martime are Marine Engineering and Navigation. The Marine Engineers will apparently end up on ship supporting the chief engineers and working on huge diesel engines and so forth. Eventually they will work their way up to chief engineer. The Navigation students will hang out on the bridge of ships and use a telescope to navigate the seas. Er, only kidding, they do have GPS on Chinese ships. Some intrepid navigators may end up as ship captains.

Although it's somewhat easy to mock the career choice of maritime students because it's so foreign to us, they are really excited about it. Managing a ship for import/export companies and multinationals is a very important part of the global economy so I am glad these students exist. I hope they like us enough to keep them on commercial ships and not serving on future Chinese aircraft carriers!

Anyway, so how do C and I relate to these various majors? Well, most likely because we don't have a TESOL (teach english as a second language) certificate and no prior teaching experiences, we've been assigned to teach majors called Marine Engineering, Automation, and Mechanism. The class for all of them is called Oral English I. The Automation and Mechanism students are completing military training through week 6 so we haven't had them yet. It's unclear to me what these majors are but I suspect they are also shipboard. The 4 classes I do have (C's as well) are all Marine Engineers and they are ALL male. Yes, not a single girl in any of our classes. And yes, they all wear cute little white sailor outfits with lapels on the the shoulders.

The engineering students we have are okay. Their english ability varies widely from inability to say anything to students you can actually have a conversation with. The skill disparity of course makes it difficult to plan lessons.

Interesting observations about our Chinese students
1) Must harness the group mentality rather than working against it. I swear that if I asked a question and only one student in the class knew the answer that the other 29 students would have it written on their paper within 30 seconds. You cannot create the concept of individual work. You will tell them you will fail them, you will make sure they understand and agree that this is an individual assignment....and without fail they will all "collaborate". My response to this is to create group activities where each group has different materials or objectives...and although some better students end up doing more of the work, at least it's not a total wash.

2) Lack of maturity. The students we have in our engineering classes are Juniors. Now freshmen are often immature in the US as well but usually by Junior year there's a certain amount of maturity gained. My personal belief is that these students have everything chosen for them. Their parents, their teachers, the school administrators either directly make the choice or strongly influence every choice. They also lack life experience - buying train tickets, awareness of other cultures, managing your own life. In a lot of ways I feel more like I teach high schoolers than college students. Our student volunteers don't fall into this category - they are a lot more mature than the other students but even there I have a sense of this almost child-like earnestness rather than adulthood. You begin to understand where this comes from when you find out that they can't change their major. Whatever they pick going in is what they are required to do the rest of the time!

In a future entry I'll address the trials and tribulations of lesson planning.

C - in sickness and in health

A few minutes ago, D headed out for an evening on the town with some of the other foreign teachers. I didn't share his desperate need to escape the apartment, though, because I recently caught a cold and have been feeling really lousy. I didn't expect D to stay home and watch his wife Sniffleupagus blow her nose into her shirt all night, but tonight is "a dark and stormy night" if there ever was one, and the wind is rattling our apartment door in a way that is, if not unsettling, certainly far from settling. This rattling door combined with my plugged-yet-somehow-dripping nose are pretty much guaranteeing my inability to sleep tonight, and if D were here, I would probably feel a little bit better/calmer/safer etc. But I will instead spend time with our little blog here and my quickly-dwindling box of Kleenex. (And no, that isn't an instance of a brand name being substituted for a generic one -- I really do have Kleenex® brand tissues!)

I slept so little last night that I asked D to cancel my 8:00 am and 10:00 am classes for me, since he was going to the be teaching one room down the hall at both of those times, but I finally managed to get myself up and teach every class scheduled today. The 8:00 class isn't my favorite group of students, but I got through it okay, and consoled myself with the fact that my 10:00 class is much, much better. I wasn't prepared for how much better they actually would end up being, though; they had written "Happy Teachers' Day!" on the board in perfect English, and on top of that, they gave me flowers and applauded for me.




















Needless to say, all of that made me feel a great deal better! The 2:00 class went on forever, though, because a random graduate student decided that he will be auditing my class for the semester, and he talked with me for what felt like an eternity after class about Jack Welch, how I should teach bible stories (???), and maybe we could go out to dinner some time! Sigh. How I would love to have just ONE female student!

D - China: The good, the bad, and the ugly

Well, C and I have had a good start to life in China. We are definitely adjusted and in the flow of our classes and our daily activities. We're both being tutored in Chinese by a student at DMU. In addition, I've ordered another economics correspondence class to continue to my college education I neglected while at RIT. I never took undergraduate econ, which I found out will hurt me when I apply to grad school for a MBA or MA someday. Between Chinese, economics, lesson planning, and our daily lives, time is filling up! But I thought I would take some time to summarize a few of our experiences with CHINA: THE GOOD, THE BAD, and THE UGLY.

CHINA

THE GOOD:

Cheap chinese food around the corner. It's not obvious from previously posted pictures but there are 3 medium sized apartment buildings directly south of the DMU campus. Ours is pink and the other two are a dirty white. In the downstairs of all three buildings, there are various shops and restaurants. At first I was a little reluctant to try the restaurants but now that we've developed a repetoire of dishes we like, it's becoming a joy. And the food is CHEAP. And good. The 西红柿炒鸡蛋 (scrambled eggs and tomatoes) are delicious. C and I can have a great meal with 3 different dishes for only 15 kuai (about $2). Even on our teacher's salary it would be manageable to eat out locally every day.

Learning Mandarin Chinese. Although learning Chinese is very difficult, it's actually a real joy when you can practice something like that and then go out and talk to real people. For example, our tutor taught us a dialogue for ordering a large bottle of water for our cooler (you can't drink from the tap here). I was definitely nervous but the next day I called and was able to order the water successfully. Yes, it was a little hairy here and there but she repeated my order back to me and lo and behold the water was delivered the next day as requested.

Watching a talented girl learn American speeches. Our Chinese tutor is also our student. In exchange for her help, we read her english compositions and give suggestions. We also help her with pronunciation. Just last week she was required to read Martin Luther King's "I HAVE A DREAM" speech. I wanted so much to try and explain the significance of the speech. I felt so proud to be American when she was reading it. I wanted to inspire her to change China as much as MLK changed the US

Note that I could list many more "GOOD" things here, but this will probably become a regular feature, so no doubt I'll share more positives in the future.

THE BAD:

Squat toilets. Yes, they are more sanitary, I'll grant you that. I have been forced to use them a few times so far and it's nice to know you're not sharing the same porcelain as Dirty Harry. However I've yet to master the gymnastics required to really get my money's worth. Probably not what you wanted to read about in this blog I'm sure, so I'll stop there! Oh, I should note that our apartment has a nice western toilet, so this is not a daily issue.

The English obsession.EVERYONE here wants to learn English, which is laudable. I wish Americans shared the same passion for the languages of others. Of course it's easier for them to want to learn English because you can use it to speak to Americans, Brits, Swedes, Africans - almost anyone. If you're a native english speaker, it's harder to choose but these days Chinese wouldn't be a bad idea. Anyway, so why is this bad you ask? Well, within the past few days we've been inundated with people trying to come to our classes, talk to us on the street, or knocking on our doors. Some of our Chinese friends keep trying to introduce more and more people. To a degree, this is flattering and I certainly hold no grudge against them for trying. I'm quite impressed with the quest for knowledge. It is hard for us to say no however because we don't want to be rude. Sometimes enough is enough!

THE UGLY:

Spitting. I think spitting is putting it very mildly. I saw people spit on the sidewalks in New York. I found it gross there as well. But I think China would win the gold medal. When the guys here spit, they reach deep within. It's the throat clearing to end all throat clearing. Even in our apartment, we can hear them outside. It's not a big deal, I'm being a bit childish for blogging purposes but it can certainly make one cringe!

C - non-standard standard speech

D is sitting at the kitchen table right now, practicing his 普通话 using flash cards. He (ideally) recognizes the character and then practices saying the word a few times. When he says a word that uses the third tone, though, it sometimes sounds like he's burping. I'm trying not to laugh.

Learning Mandarin Chinese isn't easy, but it definitely could be a lot harder. Many of the sounds are easy for English speakers to make -- only a few are very hard to pronounce. The morphology and grammar are relatively simple compared to English. What makes learning this language hard is a) the fact that the written language consists of thousands of tiny, very abstract drawings, and b) the abundance of homonyms.

Regarding the abstractness of the characters, my Chinese character workbook tells me that this is a picture of a pig under a roof: 家

Oh, a pig! Of course! Now I see it. (In case you wondered, this character means "home." Home is where the pig is, as we all know.)

(Somewhat relatedly, D and I recently tried to teach one of our Chinese friends the meaning of the word "sarcasm.")

This is a picture of a bird flying:飞

And this is a picture of a sick person lying in bed: 疒

I never knew that a flying bird and a sick person lying in bed could look so similar. I do know, however, that if someone who died three thousand years ago invites me to play Pictionary with him, I should just say "no thanks."

And regarding the homonyms, there are 39 characters pronounced "yi" with the fourth tone. Their meanings are hardly similar; they range from friendship to epidemic disease to legendary archer. Needless to say, understanding spoken Chinese is sometimes difficult. We're still optimistic, though -- just don't ask our tutor about her level of optimism for us!

A trip to downtown Dalian

Last Saturday (Sept 2), C and I decided to visit downtown Dalian. I had been there once for some bar hopping last week, and then we both saw it in a blur during our medical examination the following week. But we never really got to walk around and experience the heart of the city.

We took the 502 minibus, which costs 2 kuai (about 23 cents) from the nearest bus stop all the way downtown to Zhongshan Square, which is considered the heart of the city. After about only 2 or 3 stops we managed to get a seat, which is practically unheard. Given that the ride downtown is at least 30 minutes, you definitely want a seat! The Chinese buses and trams are insane in terms of the number of people getting on and off, but Saturday's bus trip was comparatively mild.

When we got to Zhongshan Square, I took a brief movie with our camera, which I will share below:



And here are some pictures of Zhongshan Square:






From the Square, we decided to go looking for a Chinese antique store we heard about that was supposed to be on Tianjin Jie (Jie=Street). We walked the length of Tianjin Jie and we never found the place (addresses in China are very difficult to track down when you're not a native). That was fine though because we saw so many different markets. There were people selling vases and woodwork and bubble tea and meat-on-a-stick and a thousand kinds of fish. On Tianjin Jie you could find the perfect bra or bargain for sea cucumber. The street markets have an energy that you don't feel shopping at your local department store. It was a neat experience to see all the wares. And of course everyone tried to get our attention by yelling "HELLO!!!!" at the top of their lungs.

Here's a picture of a long line of food vendors:


Something you don't see in China very often - an orderly queue:


We also saw a Starbucks during our meandering. I promise we didn't go in. I hear a cup of coffee is 30 kuai, which is ridiculous.


After wandering around for awhile, we decided to get some food. We had a Korean restaurant in mind on Qiyi Jie, but yet again we were thwarted. We wandered up and down Qiyi Jie but never found the place. Not to worry however, becuase on the bus on the way into the downtown area we saw two western restaurants that looked interesting. One is called the I-55 Coffee Shop and the other was the Bavarian Brew House. Believe it or not, we do eat Chinese food all the time during the week. I swear we don't eat Western cuisine all the time!





In the end we opted for the brewhouse. The allure of the Paulaner Weissbier was too good to pass up (apologies to my german relatives for not using the eszett in Weiss!). We both had some sausages, sauerkraut, and mashed potatoes. We were magically transported to the Fatherland by our English speaking Chinese waiters. The food was pretty good. I am not sure it compares to the real Bavaria but it was certainly a treat for our noodled out taste buds. C had some ice cream for dessert, while I opted for another wheat beer. From here we headed back to our humble abode via taxi. It was a good first experience downtown.

D - Coming soon, C will post...

Well, I have monopolized this here blog long enough. Pretty soon C will step up to the plate and post entries to our humble blog. From the better half will come better entries! So if the entries seem different in style, they are probably from her!

Photos: Xinghai 2

 
 
 
  

Photos: Rainy Xinghai Square