Things I'd Like to Hear the President Say:
Or any incumbent, really, but it would be cool if Obama did.
"My vision for America is of millions of families, living in warm homes with roofs that keep out the rain, in safe neighborhoods; families where children go to good schools and where adults work at jobs that pay living wages, where the dogs get walked every day and the taxes get paid. Families that are able to save a little for a rainy day. And whether those families have a mom and a dad or a single parent or two moms or a step-dad, I don't really give a flying rat's ass."
Monday, January 23, 2012
Bai Jo, continued
The bad news: people smoked at dinner, and in the bar, so I washed those clothes and have to wash my hair tonight; have been airing my coat out on the enclosed balcony. Not too bad, though.
The bar is called “live”-something b/c they frequently feature live music, though the bands don’t usually play very late, as it’s in a mixed business/residential neighborhood and the neighbors object to late noise. I’m guessing this would be especially true on a Tuesday night, so the band only played until about 10:15. They were a drummer contributing occasional backup vocal, a singer on rhythm guitar, and a lead guitarist, all young and male, wearing jeans and plaid flannel shirts. Good music, strong voice, guitarist has a nice shy smile. No idea what their songs were about, but I’m guessing (as Douglas Adams would say) boy-creature meets girl-creature.
We drank a couple of rounds of beer (and I had some water) and talked. Zach talked a lot of trash (in a good-natured way) about cows being violated by aliens on his home farm in Arkansas and about his good dawg saving him from a timber rattler. We quizzed David about his love life. Emily wanted stories of my misspent youth, so I told some. Matthias doesn’t drink but took part in the conversation (perhaps making more sense that some others of us were at times).
After the band quit I went over to the lead singer and said “Ni de yinyue hen hao” on my way to the bathroom. Later, when the canned music was on, I asked him “Youmeiyou yinyue Grateful Dead ma?” He repeated “grateful dead” and asked me to type it into his phone. He then went up to the muzak station and, in minutes, we were listening to “Truckin’.” In Lanzhou, drinking German beer at 1am. Life is indeed good.
Today I had class from 10:40 to 12:20, collected papers, and then came home and got
serious about organizing/packing, marked the papers, organized my gifts for giving away tomorrow. At 6:30, went to taco Christmas/farewell dinner with the American crowd. Tacos all homemade and really good; Christmas music; small Chinese children showing off – one small girl, three-ish, has moves worthy of Toddlers and Tiaras.
Tomorrow will have last class meeting with my students, give presents, take class photo. : ( And tomorrow night at about 8pm, will take overnight train to Yinchuan to visit Lily. I think I can get train to Xi’an on 25th for about $50 US and then a flight back to Lanzhou for about the same, on the 28th. Will have one more night here to rearrange bags and make sure I have everything (am only taking two small bags on this week’s tourist trip, leaving large bag here in apartment) before getting on the plane, the morning of the 29th, for HOME.
The bar is called “live”-something b/c they frequently feature live music, though the bands don’t usually play very late, as it’s in a mixed business/residential neighborhood and the neighbors object to late noise. I’m guessing this would be especially true on a Tuesday night, so the band only played until about 10:15. They were a drummer contributing occasional backup vocal, a singer on rhythm guitar, and a lead guitarist, all young and male, wearing jeans and plaid flannel shirts. Good music, strong voice, guitarist has a nice shy smile. No idea what their songs were about, but I’m guessing (as Douglas Adams would say) boy-creature meets girl-creature.
We drank a couple of rounds of beer (and I had some water) and talked. Zach talked a lot of trash (in a good-natured way) about cows being violated by aliens on his home farm in Arkansas and about his good dawg saving him from a timber rattler. We quizzed David about his love life. Emily wanted stories of my misspent youth, so I told some. Matthias doesn’t drink but took part in the conversation (perhaps making more sense that some others of us were at times).
After the band quit I went over to the lead singer and said “Ni de yinyue hen hao” on my way to the bathroom. Later, when the canned music was on, I asked him “Youmeiyou yinyue Grateful Dead ma?” He repeated “grateful dead” and asked me to type it into his phone. He then went up to the muzak station and, in minutes, we were listening to “Truckin’.” In Lanzhou, drinking German beer at 1am. Life is indeed good.
Today I had class from 10:40 to 12:20, collected papers, and then came home and got
serious about organizing/packing, marked the papers, organized my gifts for giving away tomorrow. At 6:30, went to taco Christmas/farewell dinner with the American crowd. Tacos all homemade and really good; Christmas music; small Chinese children showing off – one small girl, three-ish, has moves worthy of Toddlers and Tiaras.
Tomorrow will have last class meeting with my students, give presents, take class photo. : ( And tomorrow night at about 8pm, will take overnight train to Yinchuan to visit Lily. I think I can get train to Xi’an on 25th for about $50 US and then a flight back to Lanzhou for about the same, on the 28th. Will have one more night here to rearrange bags and make sure I have everything (am only taking two small bags on this week’s tourist trip, leaving large bag here in apartment) before getting on the plane, the morning of the 29th, for HOME.
The More Bai Jo, the More Pengyou
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
6pm ish
Whoof, another big news day. The meeting yesterday turned out to be the end-of-year formal meeting with university bigwigs: half a dozen Chinese men, most of whom spoke little English, on one side of the table, and six of us western teachers (5 US, 1 UK) on the other, with a handful of more junior (and female) Chinese teachers of English at the ends of the big table. Fruit and peanuts and sunflower seeds as refreshments.
The Big Head Guy, Mr. Cai, is a vice-president, I think, and he (through an interpreter) made a gracious speech thanking us for our contributions and inviting us to make suggestions. (Linda, the resident old hand, had warned us that this meeting is really all about celebrating our joint wonderfulness, and any real concerns should be raised in a much lower-level setting.) Some coffee and tea was drunk. Introductions all around.
Much was made of Emily’s project setting up an English-language library on one of the campuses; it is being used for browsing, book-club discussions, and all kinds of stuff. Mr. C suggested she submit a report about it so that the project could be nominated for a regional award (go, Emily! She is the Peace Corps volunteer who reminds me of me. ). I gave Emily my card and told her I could probably get books for her when faculty clean out their offices or their teenagers’ bookshelves.
David had a substantive suggestion which he very carefully made in a constructive and positive way (about teaching research skills and ways of thinking), and there was some discussion about that. Then it was time for “part two” of the meeting, our banquet.
We took a van and two private cars across town to the same Muslim restaurant where we had beef noodles for breakfast last week. At night it looks much dressier, with wait staff in purple uniforms. We were ushered upstairs to a private banquet room with two round 12-tops of lovely dark wood, each with a large lazy susan in the middle, and cushy high-backed chairs. We each were poured hot tea and, as each person asked, wine (in a large wine glass) and/or “pi-jo,” something like everclear, in a teeny-tiny glass. (I got both.) By my count, we each eventually had about 20 shots of the pi-jo.
Things got underway about 7pm. After a starter of yellow, cold watermelon soup, the cold dishes came out first and were placed on the lazy susan: mint and some kind of nuts; a green salad that deserves a much nicer name; shrimp; thin beef slices with sauce; sushi; and so forth. Then came the hot dishes, which I will not attempt to name, because at some point Mr. Cai started the long process of ritual toasting.
Three different times, about five minutes apart, he stood and made a gracious little speech wishing the whole group well, and each time we said “cheers” and clinked glasses and tossed back the pi-jo. After that, it was time for each person at the table to go around and individually toast every other person, with a corresponding glug of pi-jo. Emily had given me a heads-up about this procedure, and we started getting our refills (which seemed to come every five frickin’ minutes) only half full. Also I had a few wine toasts instead of all pi-jo.
To make it quicker and a little less deadly, people other than the big boss can go around in pairs and can toast people in pairs. So Emily and I went around together and toasted Matthias and David together and Ms. Li and Ms. Ji together.
Then we had to go and toast everyone at the other table. Of twelve.
And then the people at the other table of twelve had to come over and toast us.
It was a jolly affair, quite a love-fest, and the food was fabulous. At about 9pm we headed back to campus, not nearly as wasted as I thought that I would be. The pi-jo goes down like it will blow your nose off, but it isn’t actually that alcoholic, apparently.
So we went out to a tiny bar to drink German beer and listen to a 3-man Chinese rock band. On the way there we took two taxis; on the way home, at about 1:30, the five of us squeezed into one taxi, um, so maybe we were a little bit drunk by that time.
To be continued ---
6pm ish
Whoof, another big news day. The meeting yesterday turned out to be the end-of-year formal meeting with university bigwigs: half a dozen Chinese men, most of whom spoke little English, on one side of the table, and six of us western teachers (5 US, 1 UK) on the other, with a handful of more junior (and female) Chinese teachers of English at the ends of the big table. Fruit and peanuts and sunflower seeds as refreshments.
The Big Head Guy, Mr. Cai, is a vice-president, I think, and he (through an interpreter) made a gracious speech thanking us for our contributions and inviting us to make suggestions. (Linda, the resident old hand, had warned us that this meeting is really all about celebrating our joint wonderfulness, and any real concerns should be raised in a much lower-level setting.) Some coffee and tea was drunk. Introductions all around.
Much was made of Emily’s project setting up an English-language library on one of the campuses; it is being used for browsing, book-club discussions, and all kinds of stuff. Mr. C suggested she submit a report about it so that the project could be nominated for a regional award (go, Emily! She is the Peace Corps volunteer who reminds me of me. ). I gave Emily my card and told her I could probably get books for her when faculty clean out their offices or their teenagers’ bookshelves.
David had a substantive suggestion which he very carefully made in a constructive and positive way (about teaching research skills and ways of thinking), and there was some discussion about that. Then it was time for “part two” of the meeting, our banquet.
We took a van and two private cars across town to the same Muslim restaurant where we had beef noodles for breakfast last week. At night it looks much dressier, with wait staff in purple uniforms. We were ushered upstairs to a private banquet room with two round 12-tops of lovely dark wood, each with a large lazy susan in the middle, and cushy high-backed chairs. We each were poured hot tea and, as each person asked, wine (in a large wine glass) and/or “pi-jo,” something like everclear, in a teeny-tiny glass. (I got both.) By my count, we each eventually had about 20 shots of the pi-jo.
Things got underway about 7pm. After a starter of yellow, cold watermelon soup, the cold dishes came out first and were placed on the lazy susan: mint and some kind of nuts; a green salad that deserves a much nicer name; shrimp; thin beef slices with sauce; sushi; and so forth. Then came the hot dishes, which I will not attempt to name, because at some point Mr. Cai started the long process of ritual toasting.
Three different times, about five minutes apart, he stood and made a gracious little speech wishing the whole group well, and each time we said “cheers” and clinked glasses and tossed back the pi-jo. After that, it was time for each person at the table to go around and individually toast every other person, with a corresponding glug of pi-jo. Emily had given me a heads-up about this procedure, and we started getting our refills (which seemed to come every five frickin’ minutes) only half full. Also I had a few wine toasts instead of all pi-jo.
To make it quicker and a little less deadly, people other than the big boss can go around in pairs and can toast people in pairs. So Emily and I went around together and toasted Matthias and David together and Ms. Li and Ms. Ji together.
Then we had to go and toast everyone at the other table. Of twelve.
And then the people at the other table of twelve had to come over and toast us.
It was a jolly affair, quite a love-fest, and the food was fabulous. At about 9pm we headed back to campus, not nearly as wasted as I thought that I would be. The pi-jo goes down like it will blow your nose off, but it isn’t actually that alcoholic, apparently.
So we went out to a tiny bar to drink German beer and listen to a 3-man Chinese rock band. On the way there we took two taxis; on the way home, at about 1:30, the five of us squeezed into one taxi, um, so maybe we were a little bit drunk by that time.
To be continued ---
Tibetan Monsastery
Sunday, December 18, 2011
noon ish
Day Twelve, Lanzhou Adventure
Today is remarkably like a Sunday at home: read the NYT this morning, listened to NPR, had fruit and coffee for breakfast. Showered, washed hair, did laundry. Lunch at the student cafeteria (noodles & onion & cabbage; tomatoes cooked with egg; something like green beans – but not – cooked with chicken – I think) for under $2. This afternoon will read student work and refine plan for this week’s classes. At some point I’ll take a break and go to the “supermarket” for a Sprite and a candy bar : ) Maybe I’ll see the security guard who always say “hi.” Now I’m icing knee/foot, and a big difference is that I’m wearing silk long johns and staying under a big comforter to keep warm while doing so.
Yesterday was this week’s big adventure, a day-trip to the Labrang monastery, about 150 miles from Lanzhou. Here a blurb from Wikipedia (may not reproduce the Tibetan characters here):
Labrang Monastery (Tibetan: བླ་བྲང་བཀྲ་ཤིས་འཁྱིལ་ Wylie: bla-brang bkra-shis-'khyil; Chinese: 拉卜楞寺 Pinyin: lābǔlèng sì) is one of the six great monasteries of the Geluk (Yellow Hat) school of Tibetan Buddhism. Its formal name is: Gandan Shaydrup Dargay Tashi Gyaysu Khyilway Ling (dGe ldan bshad sgrub dar rgyas bkra shis gyas su 'khyil ba'i gling), commonly known as Labrang Tashi Khyil, or simply Labrang.[1]
Labrang is located in Xiahe County in Gansu province, in the traditional Tibetan area of Amdo. Labrang Monastery is home to the largest number of monks outside of Tibet Autonomous Region. Xiahe is located about 4 hours from the city of Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu.
The school arranged the trip for all the current Western teachers, so counting the driver, our tour guide Ms. Li and her husband Keith, there were nine of us. Me; Matthias the quiet speech teacher; David the Scot (grizzly red hair and faint brogue, former rugby player); Emily and Zach the Peace Corps volunteers, who’ve been here almost three and one years respectively and seem very young to my aged self; and Linda, who has, with husband-Glen-who-stayed-home-to-grade, been in China about fourteen years and Lanzhou about eight.
I stepped outside just before 7am and met the others a few yards down the alley toward the main street. At 7 Ms. Li called and woke our driver, who had forgotten to set his alarm, so we had about half an hour to get acquainted; I’d met Linda, David, and Matthias before, very briefly, but didn’t know there were any Peace Corps folks here. Zach immediately made my taste buds homesick by mentioning that he’d gotten up early and made bacon & eggs for breakfast. I learned that Emily is from Minnesota and has also been to a December Packers game, and that Matthias is from Massachusetts – no one was freaked out by the cold. Ms. Li reported that it was -17 at Labrang and asked if we would all be warm enough. (Our Chinese hosts are very solicitous of our comfort.)
The driver turned up and we got underway about 7:30, and we got through the city with very little traffic interference, stopping at a restaurant on the western edge for Lanzhou’s claim to fame, the beef noodles, for breakfast. Now that I’ve had said noodles, apparently, I can say that I’ve truly lived.
They come in a medium-size bowl with half-red and half-greeen liquid (I think the red is added spiciness) covering the noodles, which you dredge up, along with bits of onion (and other stuff). The beef comes on a separate platter, and you add pieces of it to your noodles, let it get soaked a bit, and chow down. I think I was the only newbie to this experience. (And they WERE quite good.)
Out of the city, we drove in between rows of low, barren, reddish-brown hills, sharp-edged, with low scrub brush here and there. For the first half-hour, the haze of Lanzhou pollution followed us, and details of the distant landscape were indistinct. As the road steadily and slowly climbed, the haze disappeared and it got colder. There was a skiff of dry snow on the ground. The van’s heating system kept us pretty comfortable, but fog and then ice formed on the inside of the windows. The hills fell away, and there were small fields on either side of the road, every speck of land cultivated, shocks of corn bundled together.
To get to XiaHe, the town near the monastery, you have to pass through a Muslim-populated area, and we saw tiny villages with the tower of a mosque in the center. And I do mean tiny: a cluster of red-brown walls, carved gateways. We began to see groups of cattle or sheep in the fields. Some trees, but not many; not enough water here to support much vegetation, I think. (And the forests got chopped down a long time ago.)
As we approached XiaHe, the hills’ big brothers reappeared on either side, knife-edge mountains in intricate curves. We began to see Tibetan pedestrians, moving toward Labrang, in groups of two or three. They would walk a few paces, put their hands together in prayer, and prostrate themselves, full-length, by the roadside. Get up and do it again. Pilgrims come from their hometowns, praying all the way, to the monastery. Loose pants and long wraps, headbands, black hair and darkish complexions.
We passed through the town of XiaHe, elevation about 13,000 feet, most of which seems to be on that one main street: a couple of hotels, police station, tire shop, and lots of street stalls set up in front of the shops: fruit, shoes, coats, sides of beef, veggies, jewelry, belts. Would love to come back here in the fall (the tourist season).
A right turn off the highway, and we see the monastery complex ahead: white buildings with curving, upturned roofs touched with gold, backed by steep mountainsides. After we get our tickets, we are met in a central open area by our tour guide, a student monk. As a student, he is not allowed to wear anything covering his arms. He has warm-looking boots, and his draped maroon robes may have several layers, but his right arm is bare, and he is hatless/scarfless/gloveless, while we’re all wearing coats plus an assortment of accessories. The senior monks we saw wear a heavy maroon cloak which looks something like an academic robe – and looks a lot warmer than the basic robes.
The monastery has (he says) over 1200 monks, most of whom study in one of six colleges; he is in the college of philosophy, and they spend much of their time in debate. (Rhetoric lives!) There is also a college of medicine, devoting a lot of time to herbal remedies, and an upper and lower Tantric, or Vajrayana, college. The monks rise at 6 to begin their days of study and prayer.
Our group was the only tourists on site that day; this cold and dry season is not a very tourist-y time, but there were a dozen or so worshippers. We visited four different temples, each fairly small, each smelling of yak butter, and each holding, on the front wall, a giant (about 25 feet tall) golden Buddha, in different poses. And each with elaborate fingernail polish. On the walls to either side are rows of smaller (14-inch high) Buddha figures, and from the ceiling and beams hang brightly-colored scarves and panels of cloth. (No photos inside, sorry. Also, the souvenir shop was closed.) The largest indoor space was the “plaza,” a dim, cloth-draped interior with row after row of kneeling mats and little artwork.
There was a sort of museum space where we could take pictures; I took some of large masks which are carried in festival processions and of scenes (a bit like Russian icons) made by local artisans and given to the monks.
We took photos – including some with a tiny donkey – and piled back in the van at about 1:30, I guess, for the drive back. We had a late lunch at a Muslim restaurant (the cuisine is slightly different, and they follow halal – like kosher – in the kitchens), which meant sitting at a round table with a big lazy susan in the middle while servers brought out dish after dish after dish for us to pass around and sample. Rice noodles, bao zi, mushrooms, corn, lamb, beef, radishes, potatoes, and then soup. YUM.
We got lucky on traffic again and were back to campus by about 6pm. The city has made some efforts to tame the traffic beast, restricting driving to city center by odd/even license plates for both private cars and taxis, but those restrictions don’t apply to weekends, and Saturdays can be insane.
noon ish
Day Twelve, Lanzhou Adventure
Today is remarkably like a Sunday at home: read the NYT this morning, listened to NPR, had fruit and coffee for breakfast. Showered, washed hair, did laundry. Lunch at the student cafeteria (noodles & onion & cabbage; tomatoes cooked with egg; something like green beans – but not – cooked with chicken – I think) for under $2. This afternoon will read student work and refine plan for this week’s classes. At some point I’ll take a break and go to the “supermarket” for a Sprite and a candy bar : ) Maybe I’ll see the security guard who always say “hi.” Now I’m icing knee/foot, and a big difference is that I’m wearing silk long johns and staying under a big comforter to keep warm while doing so.
Yesterday was this week’s big adventure, a day-trip to the Labrang monastery, about 150 miles from Lanzhou. Here a blurb from Wikipedia (may not reproduce the Tibetan characters here):
Labrang Monastery (Tibetan: བླ་བྲང་བཀྲ་ཤིས་འཁྱིལ་ Wylie: bla-brang bkra-shis-'khyil; Chinese: 拉卜楞寺 Pinyin: lābǔlèng sì) is one of the six great monasteries of the Geluk (Yellow Hat) school of Tibetan Buddhism. Its formal name is: Gandan Shaydrup Dargay Tashi Gyaysu Khyilway Ling (dGe ldan bshad sgrub dar rgyas bkra shis gyas su 'khyil ba'i gling), commonly known as Labrang Tashi Khyil, or simply Labrang.[1]
Labrang is located in Xiahe County in Gansu province, in the traditional Tibetan area of Amdo. Labrang Monastery is home to the largest number of monks outside of Tibet Autonomous Region. Xiahe is located about 4 hours from the city of Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu.
The school arranged the trip for all the current Western teachers, so counting the driver, our tour guide Ms. Li and her husband Keith, there were nine of us. Me; Matthias the quiet speech teacher; David the Scot (grizzly red hair and faint brogue, former rugby player); Emily and Zach the Peace Corps volunteers, who’ve been here almost three and one years respectively and seem very young to my aged self; and Linda, who has, with husband-Glen-who-stayed-home-to-grade, been in China about fourteen years and Lanzhou about eight.
I stepped outside just before 7am and met the others a few yards down the alley toward the main street. At 7 Ms. Li called and woke our driver, who had forgotten to set his alarm, so we had about half an hour to get acquainted; I’d met Linda, David, and Matthias before, very briefly, but didn’t know there were any Peace Corps folks here. Zach immediately made my taste buds homesick by mentioning that he’d gotten up early and made bacon & eggs for breakfast. I learned that Emily is from Minnesota and has also been to a December Packers game, and that Matthias is from Massachusetts – no one was freaked out by the cold. Ms. Li reported that it was -17 at Labrang and asked if we would all be warm enough. (Our Chinese hosts are very solicitous of our comfort.)
The driver turned up and we got underway about 7:30, and we got through the city with very little traffic interference, stopping at a restaurant on the western edge for Lanzhou’s claim to fame, the beef noodles, for breakfast. Now that I’ve had said noodles, apparently, I can say that I’ve truly lived.
They come in a medium-size bowl with half-red and half-greeen liquid (I think the red is added spiciness) covering the noodles, which you dredge up, along with bits of onion (and other stuff). The beef comes on a separate platter, and you add pieces of it to your noodles, let it get soaked a bit, and chow down. I think I was the only newbie to this experience. (And they WERE quite good.)
Out of the city, we drove in between rows of low, barren, reddish-brown hills, sharp-edged, with low scrub brush here and there. For the first half-hour, the haze of Lanzhou pollution followed us, and details of the distant landscape were indistinct. As the road steadily and slowly climbed, the haze disappeared and it got colder. There was a skiff of dry snow on the ground. The van’s heating system kept us pretty comfortable, but fog and then ice formed on the inside of the windows. The hills fell away, and there were small fields on either side of the road, every speck of land cultivated, shocks of corn bundled together.
To get to XiaHe, the town near the monastery, you have to pass through a Muslim-populated area, and we saw tiny villages with the tower of a mosque in the center. And I do mean tiny: a cluster of red-brown walls, carved gateways. We began to see groups of cattle or sheep in the fields. Some trees, but not many; not enough water here to support much vegetation, I think. (And the forests got chopped down a long time ago.)
As we approached XiaHe, the hills’ big brothers reappeared on either side, knife-edge mountains in intricate curves. We began to see Tibetan pedestrians, moving toward Labrang, in groups of two or three. They would walk a few paces, put their hands together in prayer, and prostrate themselves, full-length, by the roadside. Get up and do it again. Pilgrims come from their hometowns, praying all the way, to the monastery. Loose pants and long wraps, headbands, black hair and darkish complexions.
We passed through the town of XiaHe, elevation about 13,000 feet, most of which seems to be on that one main street: a couple of hotels, police station, tire shop, and lots of street stalls set up in front of the shops: fruit, shoes, coats, sides of beef, veggies, jewelry, belts. Would love to come back here in the fall (the tourist season).
A right turn off the highway, and we see the monastery complex ahead: white buildings with curving, upturned roofs touched with gold, backed by steep mountainsides. After we get our tickets, we are met in a central open area by our tour guide, a student monk. As a student, he is not allowed to wear anything covering his arms. He has warm-looking boots, and his draped maroon robes may have several layers, but his right arm is bare, and he is hatless/scarfless/gloveless, while we’re all wearing coats plus an assortment of accessories. The senior monks we saw wear a heavy maroon cloak which looks something like an academic robe – and looks a lot warmer than the basic robes.
The monastery has (he says) over 1200 monks, most of whom study in one of six colleges; he is in the college of philosophy, and they spend much of their time in debate. (Rhetoric lives!) There is also a college of medicine, devoting a lot of time to herbal remedies, and an upper and lower Tantric, or Vajrayana, college. The monks rise at 6 to begin their days of study and prayer.
Our group was the only tourists on site that day; this cold and dry season is not a very tourist-y time, but there were a dozen or so worshippers. We visited four different temples, each fairly small, each smelling of yak butter, and each holding, on the front wall, a giant (about 25 feet tall) golden Buddha, in different poses. And each with elaborate fingernail polish. On the walls to either side are rows of smaller (14-inch high) Buddha figures, and from the ceiling and beams hang brightly-colored scarves and panels of cloth. (No photos inside, sorry. Also, the souvenir shop was closed.) The largest indoor space was the “plaza,” a dim, cloth-draped interior with row after row of kneeling mats and little artwork.
There was a sort of museum space where we could take pictures; I took some of large masks which are carried in festival processions and of scenes (a bit like Russian icons) made by local artisans and given to the monks.
We took photos – including some with a tiny donkey – and piled back in the van at about 1:30, I guess, for the drive back. We had a late lunch at a Muslim restaurant (the cuisine is slightly different, and they follow halal – like kosher – in the kitchens), which meant sitting at a round table with a big lazy susan in the middle while servers brought out dish after dish after dish for us to pass around and sample. Rice noodles, bao zi, mushrooms, corn, lamb, beef, radishes, potatoes, and then soup. YUM.
We got lucky on traffic again and were back to campus by about 6pm. The city has made some efforts to tame the traffic beast, restricting driving to city center by odd/even license plates for both private cars and taxis, but those restrictions don’t apply to weekends, and Saturdays can be insane.
Classes in China
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
4pm ish
Yesterday and today the two long class days (8:30 to 12:20). Collected various writing assignments – students vary a lot in their ability to write in English. The better students (it seems to me) are pretty good in both speaking and writing; the weaker students have a harder time paraphrasing; for all of them, talking about an academic reading is more difficult than talking about everyday things like lunch and travel and one’s parents.
I’m still confusing students’ names sometimes (especially for the quieter students – it’s easy to remember the talkative ones), but the individual personalities of these students makes me wonder how the “they all look alike” conception got started. Emma and Bonnie and Shirley look so different, even though they do, yes, all have black hair and dark eyes. While we waited for the elevator, they stole each other’s hats and poked back and giggled, maybe more like American high school freshmen than college freshmen. I’m betting that the coed socializing opportunities are quite different here.
Had lunch at the school cafeteria (canteen) after class today, with several students. Vivi and Carl are the class monitors and thus my official contacts; Keith joined us, and Bonnie and Shirley. The food was quite good and reasonably priced; I had rice and three different side dishes (one mushroom-based, one celery-I-think-based, one potato-and-tofu-based) for about a dollar. Would have been better if it were hot, but that serving line doesn’t seem to have a way to heat serving dishes. The noodle line, on the other hand, was steaming, as were the noodle bowls that some students got. (I might get noodles next time, though they do look a lot harder to eat. On the other hand, the preferred method of consuming them seems to include a lot of slurping, so I might be okay, even with chopsticks.)
I’ve noticed that no one seems to want anything to drink with meals; sometimes tea, but not always even that, and never anything cold. Also, the cafeteria (and restaurants) don’t provide napkins; individuals carry around a packet of tissues and take one out after the meal to wipe their fingers. Hmmm. I carry my water bottle to class with me, full of cold water : ) and I’ve been buying a bottle of sprite every day or so to drink at home. Every time I’ve gotten a meal somewhere, it’s been large enough that I don’t want to do it twice in one day; I have breakfast at home and one meal out, and that’s it.
Today I went back to the supermarket and tried to buy band-aids, but they didn’t have any. (I’m pretty sure we did figure that out correctly.) At the food places upstairs, I got a huge bunch of bananas for a couple of dollars (that’s going to be breakfast for the rest of my stay here) and a bag of cookies. At least I think they’re cookies. In the faculty office yesterday I took one from what looked like a package of cookies, and it was a “wheat digestive biscuit,” obviously an item of cuisine invented by an Englishman.
Washing machine fixed yesterday – the water pipe was not attached securely enough – but when I did laundry and the washer drained, the floor drain was so slow that water backed up onto the living room floor before I caught it. Had to use a dustpan to bail water into the adjacent toilet/shower room, where the two floor drains could handle it better. * sigh * So, today waiting for a third visit from a plumber; I asked about “drano,” but Vivi didn’t seem to know if there was that kind of product in China. (Should have tried asking in the supermarket, but I’m not sure how I would mime that!)
In class, I’m trying to include some more active/more fun/more interactive stuff every day, as well as reading, talking about the reading, writing, going over aspects of “how do we write in college in America.” Today we did the phone activity (and then they wrote to a friend about the plans they’d made) and a preposition activity. Each student got a card reading “please stand ON the pink paper” or “NEAR the windows” or “AT the blackboard” or “IN the box” and so on, and we talked about how “near” is not quite the same as “by” or “at.” Both pretty fun; I like it when we can do marginally silly things in class.
Things that it would not have occurred to me I’d need to tell students, but which we assume in the US: name and date go on everything you turn in; use paper that is 8 ½ by 11; turn in the whole page, even if you don’t use the whole page. If I were planning this trip now, I would bring pads of “normal” size paper and just give out paper for them to use. Also, I’d bring UNCP folders for them and have them keep everything for our class in that. (“I left it in my dorm room” sounds the same in every language.)
4pm ish
Yesterday and today the two long class days (8:30 to 12:20). Collected various writing assignments – students vary a lot in their ability to write in English. The better students (it seems to me) are pretty good in both speaking and writing; the weaker students have a harder time paraphrasing; for all of them, talking about an academic reading is more difficult than talking about everyday things like lunch and travel and one’s parents.
I’m still confusing students’ names sometimes (especially for the quieter students – it’s easy to remember the talkative ones), but the individual personalities of these students makes me wonder how the “they all look alike” conception got started. Emma and Bonnie and Shirley look so different, even though they do, yes, all have black hair and dark eyes. While we waited for the elevator, they stole each other’s hats and poked back and giggled, maybe more like American high school freshmen than college freshmen. I’m betting that the coed socializing opportunities are quite different here.
Had lunch at the school cafeteria (canteen) after class today, with several students. Vivi and Carl are the class monitors and thus my official contacts; Keith joined us, and Bonnie and Shirley. The food was quite good and reasonably priced; I had rice and three different side dishes (one mushroom-based, one celery-I-think-based, one potato-and-tofu-based) for about a dollar. Would have been better if it were hot, but that serving line doesn’t seem to have a way to heat serving dishes. The noodle line, on the other hand, was steaming, as were the noodle bowls that some students got. (I might get noodles next time, though they do look a lot harder to eat. On the other hand, the preferred method of consuming them seems to include a lot of slurping, so I might be okay, even with chopsticks.)
I’ve noticed that no one seems to want anything to drink with meals; sometimes tea, but not always even that, and never anything cold. Also, the cafeteria (and restaurants) don’t provide napkins; individuals carry around a packet of tissues and take one out after the meal to wipe their fingers. Hmmm. I carry my water bottle to class with me, full of cold water : ) and I’ve been buying a bottle of sprite every day or so to drink at home. Every time I’ve gotten a meal somewhere, it’s been large enough that I don’t want to do it twice in one day; I have breakfast at home and one meal out, and that’s it.
Today I went back to the supermarket and tried to buy band-aids, but they didn’t have any. (I’m pretty sure we did figure that out correctly.) At the food places upstairs, I got a huge bunch of bananas for a couple of dollars (that’s going to be breakfast for the rest of my stay here) and a bag of cookies. At least I think they’re cookies. In the faculty office yesterday I took one from what looked like a package of cookies, and it was a “wheat digestive biscuit,” obviously an item of cuisine invented by an Englishman.
Washing machine fixed yesterday – the water pipe was not attached securely enough – but when I did laundry and the washer drained, the floor drain was so slow that water backed up onto the living room floor before I caught it. Had to use a dustpan to bail water into the adjacent toilet/shower room, where the two floor drains could handle it better. * sigh * So, today waiting for a third visit from a plumber; I asked about “drano,” but Vivi didn’t seem to know if there was that kind of product in China. (Should have tried asking in the supermarket, but I’m not sure how I would mime that!)
In class, I’m trying to include some more active/more fun/more interactive stuff every day, as well as reading, talking about the reading, writing, going over aspects of “how do we write in college in America.” Today we did the phone activity (and then they wrote to a friend about the plans they’d made) and a preposition activity. Each student got a card reading “please stand ON the pink paper” or “NEAR the windows” or “AT the blackboard” or “IN the box” and so on, and we talked about how “near” is not quite the same as “by” or “at.” Both pretty fun; I like it when we can do marginally silly things in class.
Things that it would not have occurred to me I’d need to tell students, but which we assume in the US: name and date go on everything you turn in; use paper that is 8 ½ by 11; turn in the whole page, even if you don’t use the whole page. If I were planning this trip now, I would bring pads of “normal” size paper and just give out paper for them to use. Also, I’d bring UNCP folders for them and have them keep everything for our class in that. (“I left it in my dorm room” sounds the same in every language.)
Monday, January 9, 2012
Bai Ta Park, HuangHe bridge
Oldest modern bridge over the Yellow River, built with German aid about 100 years ago.
White Tower Park a large hillside complex of museums.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
7am ish
My circadian rhythms are still confused, since I want to pass out at about 9 and have been wakeful since about 4, up since 6. (Not like me!) But I don’t feel bad, just a little off.
Things to bring (or ship ahead? Or get them to install in apartment?) next time: a humidifier. Long extension cord for same, since there are only two places I can plug things in. (I am being careful not to plug in and run multiple things at once, although the power strips look pretty substantial.) A reading lamp. The only lights are overheads, and none is positioned very well for reading or doing work. Flipflops for shower (can buy those here – and will, today). Also want to get, if possible, a small rug and something like a shower curtain – the sliding door between the shower/toilet part of the room and the washer/sink part of the room has not moved in, I’d say, a couple of years, and it’s hard to keep the floor dry. (Have to figure out how to hang said shower curtain.)
When everything is so different (dare I say “alien”?) it seems important to have this little nest of things that work in a way I expect them to. I have had only positive interactions with all the people I’ve met, but still there is this constant sense of being a little on guard, of having to watch out. (Well, that’s justified when crossing the street. That’s downright scary.)
NOON update: finished this week of class, and the 121 students are great, better than I expected. Today we did a short reading from a freshman comp reader --- with some preliminary vocab and discussion – and they didn’t seem to have any trouble with it. (They could answer questions about it, not just say “yes” when I asked if they understood.)
Tomorrow night, dinner and shopping with a friend of a friend; Saturday morning, sightseeing with students. Sometime in the next couple of days, I sincerely hope, getting the washing machine to work! Later today, will try out the vocabulary my students taught me today: rice, lamb, beef, vegetables, dumplings, steamed buns, and “no spices”!
***
Friday, December 9, 2011
9pm ish
It’s been another great day in China! This morning I relaxed over Starbucks instant and NPR; discovered that I’d lost a nosepiece from my glasses. Mei wenti, there’s an eyeglass shop across the street from school. The man fixed it and sold me some cleaner for about 16 cents. No English was spoken – you can get a long way by smiling and pointing : )
Then I went to the supermarket (which is becoming a daily event) for a bathroom rug and other niceties. Also got a fork and spoon in case I’m at a restaurant which can’t find one for me and there’s something really difficult to eat. Went back alone to the place that students took me the other day, armed with the list of words they had provided for me, and only needed to get translation help on one item (“not spicy”!). I had the translator write that one down for me, so I’m good to go.
Later I read student work and washed some clothes in the sink – no fix-it person has showed up for the washer. At 4:30 I met Yimin, Lily’s good friend, and we went shopping at a big indoor place, something between a mall and a flea market. Good bargains, crowded, narrow aisles, ALL kinds of stuff. A mechanical Santa playing a saxophone.
OH NO – I’m just now hearing about today’s shooting at Tech. more later --
****
Saturday, December 10, 2011
6pm ish
Lots of news today. Up at about 8:15 to temperature of ONE DEGREE, and out with students at 9:30 to go sightseeing. Vivi and I took a bus across the city (about 40 minutes to city center, and then about 10 minutes past that) to the Gansu Provincial Museum, where we were met by Carl and Keith and Oliver, who are from Lanzhou and were home with their families for the weekend.
Spent a couple of hours in the museum: geology, fossils, skeletons of giant elephants (photo opportunity!!); pottery, Silk Road trade items, musical instruments; Buddhas smiling, laughing, sighing, sitting; one exhibit room devoted to the Glorious Revolution.
Lunch at KFC: fries perfectly normal, but chicken in sandwich cooked with different sauce. Not bad. Chinese teenage boys chow down just like any others.
Then a bus ride and short hike to Baita (White Tower) Park and several museums there. We went through the Qin Opera Museum and the Museum of Folk Culture: costumes, drums, flutes, harps, looms, tea, silk, swords, and stretchy noodles. Crossed the first modern bridge across the Yellow River (the one they light up in multi-color swoops at night), another good photo op, and then a long bus ride home.
Throughout the day, I was meticulously shepherded and cared for: watch your step, sit here, be careful, cross NOW! on the crazier streets.
Outside our building on campus, have not seen a single other Western face. I make a point of smiling and waving at children, as an entrée into conversation with adults. The bus ride through busy city streets is sometimes just a bus ride through a busy city; other times I am struck by how incomprehensible all the flashing signage is: lspelekmvei acsz.z,eiwond SHOES lmclakjeav;q aen NIKON alkfnxoi mvefc verptiyab, ABC cwomeinvjpwapeiutbxm BABY CARE.
The traffic is, I cannot emphasize strongly enough, completely insane. In the busier downtown areas there are elevated crosswalks (and what do you do if you’re in a wheelchair?), and at some points there are street-level zebra crossing with a flashing “walk” sign and everything – but if you don’t make it across in the allotted 10 seconds, you’d better step on it, because no one will wait for you. On the historic bridge, a big tourist site even for locals, there is a slightly-elevated pedestrian walk to either side, but people also walk on the bridge itself. And cars just drive down the middle, splitting the two lanes. They honk and keep going.
Saw three homeless people begging; each knelt on the cold sidewalk and put his/her head down, almost touching forehead to the ground. A box nearby for donations (all small change). How cold, how sad. A silent, shamefaced appeal.
Long walk today put a little stress on knee/ankle; sitting under comforter now w/icepack on knee. (Thank you, Uncle Mao, for turning the heat down, I don’t think.) May soon crawl in bed to keep warm, brrr.
Photos, my students, Gansu Provincial Museum
Adventures in China, two
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
5pm ish
A quick flashback to the trip itself, which I consider The Lost Decade. Flight out of Newark delayed by mechanical difficulties; some turbulence en route. The first 8 or 9 hours not too bad, 2 difficult hours, then had a nap and awoke excited about impending arrival. Got to Beijing late, and my connecting flight to Lanzhou had been cancelled anyway, even if I had been in time. The agent at the gate gave me a voucher for a free reschedule. Got through customs, found my bag, schlepped it all over to another terminal to talk to China Eastern, and was told “There might be a flight at 10. Check with me at 9pm.”
Sat on luggage for an hour or so, too tired to seek sustenance.
Flight out delayed by weather, left sometime after 10; actually slept for about an hour en route. Met Mr. Liang right outside baggage claim, and the driver brought us to Lanzhou by about 2am.
It was dark.
Bright spots: talked Chinglish with a five-year-old in Beijing airport; her big people, I think, did not shou Yingwen, but they were clearly proud that their little one had been watching the Zhongguo equivalent of Dora the Explorer. Met a young Chinese man who’d been in the States for 3 years and was returning home to Lanzhou to get a job. He bragged about Auburn football.
Okay, end of flashback. Today I had an excellent breakfast of tiny oranges and a Chinese bread and Starbucks instant (thank you goddess for Starbucks instant!!!), then class with my students from 10:40 to 12:20, mostly get-acquainted stuff and time for me to size them up (and, I’m sure, vice versa). They are writing homework for me, to turn in tomorrow, and tomorrow we will start a piece of reading. May also do the telephone scheduling activity, which they could write down as well. [Pairs of students sit back to back and make pretend phone calls to set up activities, so they have to know verbs, time expressions, phrases of acceptance or polite refusal; they end up with a week of lunch, dinner, movie, baseball, and dancing dates at specific times.]
After class I came home and vegged for a while; found that a neighbor’s net access is not password protected and got online to send mail. At about 3 I went out → this means I found my way home alone, and then to the supermarket (where I bought some taste-of-home Coke and Pringles) and to a restaurant and back home. A major triumph, considering how exceedingly difficult everything seemed yesterday.
At the restaurant I bought 4 delicious steamed, filled buns for about 50 cents. The hardest thing was ordering, since I don’t know the words for any kinds of foods, and the restaurant staff didn’t know any English. We got by with “I would like something to eat, not too expensive, not too large” and pointing. They asked if I taught at the daxue, and I said yes, I’d just arrived on Monday. “Thanks! See you later!”
I enjoyed walking around a bit. I haven’t seen any Westerners other than those in “our” building; we must be a sort of curiosity. I get lots of looks, but no one has spoken to me first. (Except for one nice fellow who saw me standing outside this morning, waiting for my student escort, and asked if I needed help.) The air seemed a little better today, but I wore a face mask, and I think I’ll continue to do so. Especially off the campus, where there is city traffic, the air is just plain bad. (And, the mask helps with breathing the cold air.)
Yes, it IS cold here, but it’s not Minnesota cold or Blacksburg-with-the-wind-blowing cold. And all the interior spaces are overheated, so I am moderating by (a) changing into a sleeveless top at home and (b) opening the door onto my enclosed balcony for brief periods. Also the air is very dry, indoors and out, so I’m using a lot of saline mist nasal spray and keeping a bowl of water sitting out, hopefully to evaporate.
They provided three large fluffy comforters, all of which I folded to sleep ON, not under, as the beds are very very hard. I only need one light cover, and so far the makeshift mattress has not been a problem. I will know that I’m truly rested when/if it becomes one.
It may not sound like a very active day, but I am one tired puppy! (Photos, some shopping, my living room.)
Adventures in China, one
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
9pm ish
It’s been less than 48 hours (I think) since I crawled out of bed at 5am to go to the airport, but much longer than that experientially. And so far, so good. All my problems have been bathroom-related, beginning with the lurching stomach I developed en route, which I categorized as a combination of end-of-term fatigue, jet lag, and excitement. Have been eating light meals and drinking lots of water. Also, I hate those squat-toilets. And I learned today that in China, even the familiar-looking thrones can’t have paper put in them.
The plumbers – who looked like plumbers all over the world and probably, though I didn’t see them from that angle, have The Crack – said that this problem started long before me, which made me feel a bit better. (Thank goodness I got suspicious early and went upstairs and asked my neighbor if I could use hers.) (Which was more complicated than you think, since she doesn’t speak any English and I don’t know the Chinese for “toilet” or “bathroom.” I do know “poop” but didn’t want to start saying that at our first meeting.) So as the plumbers left, I said “I didn’t know” and “Sorry!” in Chinese, two vastly useful phrases for any cultural travelers.
Also, the water guy brought me a big container of potable water today, one of those upside-down stand-around-the-water-cooler bottles, which is on a unit with a heater, since the Chinese like to drink hot water. (Students were between scandalized and amazed that I like to drink cold water : )
So now I am freshly pottied, showered and dried off, and I have a trash can, bath towel, and Kleenex from the underground “supermarket” a couple of blocks away.
None of these improvements – working toilet, drinking water, trashcan, second bath towel – would have been possible (well, at least not likely) without the help of four of my students. Two of them, Vivi and Carl, came over at 10 this morning to walk me around; they intended to take me to breakfast, but I didn’t want anything to eat, so we had a little tour and ended up at “our” building, where the department faculty gave me (bad) instant coffee, which I gratefully drank. I met for about 15 minutes with my whole class of 18 students, and we chatted. They were impressed that I know some Chinese and can write my Chinese name in characters, but what really blew them away was that I was writing with my left hand.
Carl and Vivi came back at about 4:30, I think, and made cell calls to get the water guy here (all in Chinese, none of which I understood except the word for “water”). They also waited with me for the plumbers and interpreted for them. (I had reported the plumbing problem earlier in the day to H. Xiao, the director of International Education.) Then they took me shopping and out to dinner and walked me back to my door. (I’m hoping that by the end of the week I can navigate solo from my apartment to the classroom, supermarket, and campus cafeteria.) (It’s not far, I’m just extremely braindead.)
While we waited for the water guy, we talked about Chinese characters; the students each wrote their names and told me what the Hanzi mean. Also we talked about different expressions: when someone doesn’t close a door behind him/herself, the Chinese say “Do you have a long tail?” rather than “Were you raised in a barn?” We talked about left-handedness; the Chinese think it’s a good thing, but it’s very rare. I told them about the European stigma against lefties (gauche, sinister, left-handed compliment).
Food: excellent and possibly way too spicy, both as advertised. Had “hot pot” for lunch, with mild, sweetish hot tea (“San Pow Cha”), while watching it snow outside, first snow of the season. Perfect. Dinner was a couldn’t-finish-it large plate of rice/veggies/mutton for about $1.15. Had bottled water, but before a student warned me about the cups of shui the server had brought, I had taken a sip. Stomach, beware.
Infrastructure: Apartment is spacious (2br plus a den, small kitchen, small bath, large central living area) but with cheap fittings, details. Can’t tell if the microwave works; I haven’t needed it, and the labels are all in – you guessed it. The tv doesn’t work, but I wouldn’t be able to understand it anyway, so mei wenti. All my appliances/electronics are working fine, and there is a possibility that I’ll have internet access at home by tomorrow. (Will definitely have it in the schoolroom.)
Roads are in good shape and relatively litter-free; they do drive on the right, and like ultra-friggin’ maniacs, worse than Boston or Atlanta. You have to be really careful not to be run over. What is this “yield” of which you speak?
An EPA badly needed; city air smells bad.
And so to bed – more soon. (Photo, the view out my kitchen window.)
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