methinks

Christmas in China

This Thanksgiving I experienced the same feelings the Pilgrims must have felt on their historic day. There was a long period of nervous planning - what to eat, where to get it, how to cook it - that gave fruit to a joyous, delicious feast of thanks. Not only did the food fill my stomach with satisfaction, but if filled my heart with pride. I knew that every morsel of succulent chicken (no turkey in Duyun), every fork-full of creamy mashed potatoes and gravy, was the result of David's and my labors. (True, the farmer who raised the chicken and the butcher who cleaned it did have a small role, but it wasn't food until we got hold of it. The same argument can be made for the instant mashed potatoes and gravy my grandma mailed me. Let's not split hairs.)

This Christmas, however, I experienced the same feelings those first Pilgrims would have felt if they had walked five-hundred yards into the woods and found there had been a Cracker Barrel there all along. That is to say, our little Thanksgiving 'feast' seemed but a poorly planned picnic compared to the Christmas bonanza the foreigners of Duyun prepared.

It seems that in addition to their day jobs, the foreigners here are also master chefs. Everyone except David and myself, of course. There were exotic salads, creamy vegetables, fresh breads, home made candies, and more deserts than I can begin to remember (all of them perfect). The most unbelievable dish of the evening, however, was the 20lb turkey flown in from America. It was just like at home. David and I only added mashed potatoes and gravy to the menu. They were more than edible but far from delectable. (The potatoes were from scratch this time, but we did a test run two days before Christmas to make sure they were within our skill level. It's a good thing we did, too, because our first batch ended up with crunchy, uncooked cubes of potatoes in them.)

The location was as picturesque as the food was delicious. Tim and Debbie, twelve year residents of Duyun, have within the past year or so moved into a charming new, two-story apartment. Perhaps it is my American bias, but their apartment seemed more like a home than any house I've visited in China. Pictures on the walls, books on the shelves, climate control in every room. It was refreshing to see a living room without a monster karaoke system and floors covered in wood instead of tile. It was relaxing to recline on a tasteful, cloth couch instead of a teal, pleather monstrosity. And it just occurred to me, but this was the first holiday gathering I've been to in China whose atmosphere wasn't defined by the clickity-click of majiang tiles. But like always the most memorable aspect of the holiday was the company.

There are too many foreigners (i.e. non-Chinese) here for me to justly describe them all (14 of them), so I will just generalize by saying they are as genuine and kind hearted a group of people as one could hope to spend Christmas with. Other than my family, I can think of no one else with whom I would have had a more memorable Christmas. Not only did we have stimulating conversation on topics ranging from cattle ranches to teaching methods, we got to bond over a game of 'pick up the box with your teeth'. I dare you to try it. Put a small paper bag or cereal-bar box on the ground and, with only your feet touching the floor, bend over and pick it up with your teeth. Remember, hands and knees can't touch the floor. Make the bag shorter and shorter until only the 10 year old girls in the room can get it. This game is an ice-breaker to say the least.

But even with the food, the house, and the lovely company, it still wasn't Christmas at home. The food was unfamiliar; no ham, no brown-n-sever dinner rolls, no canned green beans and cherry pie. The home was the wrong home; no cars gridlocked on the driveway, no stockings by the chimney, no chimney. And the company was only that; it wasn't family. No one else ever is.

The evening ended with handshakes and I made my way though the settling night to my own apartment. I had papers to grade and four hours of class to teach the next day. There were no Christmas lights, no carolers, no bell-ringers or Scrooges. It was just another Chinese night. I'll be glad to spend Christmas at home again.

The 400m Relay

The girls from the English department chase victory in the 400 meter relay.

Click here to see more photos from the race.

Surviving LPS

Every evening a tourist-class train filled with tired shoppers and exhausted businessmen leaves Guiyang, the provincial capitol, and returns six hours west to the coal mining mecca called Liupanshui (LPS). Allegedly, this tourist-class train offers several advantages over the standard train, most notably air-conditioning. Another convenient amenity is that the windows are sealed shut, presumably to prevent the fickle tourists from wasting the air-conditioning. This seems like a useful feature until the train staff mysteriously decides to not actually use the AC. When that happens, cigarette smoke quickly gathers into carcinogenic clouds, and you curse the antiquated travel policy that restricts foreigners to riding only these "superior" tourist trains. This is how David and I began our journey to LPS, trapped inside an ashtray on wheels.

Click here to see photos from LPS.

Ten minutes underway, finishing my fourth second-hand cigarette, the woman across the isle asked her husband, "Where do you think the foreigners are going?" (There are several stops before LPS.) "Liupanshui," David replied. More alarmed by our destination than his Chinese she blurted out, "Why would you ever want to go there?" "Travel," he answered. She protested, "No, there's nothing beautiful to see there. You shouldn't go there for travel. That's stupid."

This brusque attitude was nothing new for David. He'd been hearing that sentiment from Chinese people since he first moved there as a Peace Corps Volunteer last September. This year when he moved here to Duyun (which I should add is a nationally designated tourist destination, so people here tend to be a bit snobby about these kinds of things) I got to hear first hand what people in Guizhou thought of LPS. It's a dirty, polluted, poor, backwards, coal-mining mess of an urban sprawl. A little harsh, but yeah...that about sums it up. But we weren't going there for its greenery. We were going for what David had left behind when he was evacuated last April, friends and belongings.

We arrived Friday evening. Eagerly awaiting us were several of David's old Chinese friends. Whatever LPS lacks in urban aesthetics it makes up for in genuine people. Li Ping, a twenty-something hairdresser, greeted us with an honest smile, deep eyes, and a trendy red ponytail to make sure she looked her age. Another hairdresser friend, Xiao Hui, was there with her boyfriend. David and I were to stay with Xiao Hui and her boyfriend at his brother's apartment for that weekend. There were empty beds and it was a lot cheaper than a hotel. David began his reunion, while I began my introductions.

I learned that the boyfriend had recently purchased a shiny new three-wheeled motor-taxi which was to be our primary transportation for that weekend. It was red and roomy enough (by Chinese standards) for our luggage and us five people. His last venture, a small restaurant, ended in failure, so he was eager to prove his mettle as a driver. I think a little too eager.

If he was as cautious a cook as he was a driver, I can only imagine the conflagration that ended his business. Three times we nearly died on the way to their apartment. The final time he swerved so abruptly, my shoulder knocked the side window clear out of the vehicle onto the road behind us. It happened so quickly I didn't even know the window was gone until a hundred feet later. Of course plastic windows are more valuable than five lives so we pulled our three-wheeled go-cart to the side of the road and let Li Ping dodge oncoming traffic to fetch it. She made it back and we continued on to the apartment.

During the next couple of days we visited what few sights LPS could offer. We climbed the mountain. (In case you don't know, that's Chinglish for, "We hiked up a big hill.") We saw the lake. We visited the shops. We endured ceaseless shouts of "laowai (foreigner). And I came to see that LPS's reputation was not undeserved. But not everywhere can be a nationally designated tourist destination, right? More importantly, however, the company was pleasurable and the hospitality abundant, so the days seemed happy and well spent. Before it seemed possible, the last night had come. But, oh, what a night it was.

One of David's former colleagues (Shannon is her English name) invited us out to a farewell dinner. She knew of a particularly tasty hot pot place. (Hot pot is like a big bowl of boiling, communal soup.) And judging by the crowd of people at the restaurant, she wasn't the only person who thought so. Now, I've had my fair share of hot pot and am more or less unflappable when it comes to possible ingredients, but this particular evening required me to tap latent pools of will power heretofore unknown.

As is Chinese custom, Shannon reached over and dropped a piece of "meat" in my bowl. She was the host and wanted to make certain I got a generous portion of the most succulent pieces. I rolled it around in my spice dish, seasoning it and cooling it at the same time. I picked it up between the chopsticks and dropped it in my mouth. I'd done this drill ten thousand times, so I was completely unprepared for my gag reflex to engage and my brain to scream, "This taste like shit!" And I don't mean that in a figurative, spice-up-my-writing sense. It tasted like rubbery feces. Somehow I pawned the gag off as a cough. Maybe I said it was too spicy. I was stumbling in the fog of war then, so my memory is not so clear. I quickly reverted to the awkward but necessary 'chew-chew-swallow' technique, emptied my glass of tea, dried the tears from my eyes and hoped I'd never have to endure that again. Right on cue, Shannon asks, "Did you think it was delicious?" Like a soulless automaton I replied, "Oh yes. I thought it was very delicious." What can I say, I've been brainwashed by Chinese culture. She dropped another, larger, juicier piece in my bowl. I ate that one, too. The more pieces I ate, the more numb I became to the pain and the less worried I was about my getting the few "bad" pieces in the bunch. They all tasted the same. With that worry aside, two things still plagued my mind. One, why did everyone else seem to enjoy it? And two, what in the world was I eating?

After swapping horror stores later that night, David and I decided it must have been rectum. Several weeks later David worked up the courage to ask Shannon over the phone. It turns out it was large intestine. She answered him, "It is supposed to taste like that. Don't you think it is delicious?" No, dear, I don't.

As if choking down cow colon wasn't enough of a parting gift, LPS had one more goodbye surprise in store for us. The police.

We were walking home from dinner in a nagging drizzle when about 50 yards from our building two men stepped from the shadow and began to trail us. In general, I am suspicious of people on the street so when I see something like this I go on red alert. They saw my fists of seasoned oak and decided to call out before getting any nearer. It turns out that we were not allowed to stay in a local resident's apartment. There are special hotels for us foreigners. We didn't register. We broke the law. The short of it is six officers came to the apartment (all but one happy to meet the foreigners) to register us. One person asked the questions. One person filled in the form. The other four thumbed through our passports for a while then started in with the usual line of English Corner questions. "Do you like China? Do you like Chinese food? Do you like Chinese women? (snicker snicker)." They permitted us to stay one more night at the apartment (since it was like 11 p.m.) and the owner had to write a self-criticism. If we were going to stay longer, we'd have to check into a hotel room. We weren't.

Back on the cloudy tourist-class train, ten minutes underway, a woman across the isle asked her friend. "Why would foreigners ever come to Liupanshui? There is nothing beautiful to see here." For the experience, I thought. I came to say I'd survived LPS.

The Great Basketball Relay Race

Last year during College Sports Week, teachers got to compete in the same events the students did. That's not to say they competed alongside each other, but if there was a student's long jump competition, there was also a teacher's long jump competition. Well, I guess this year the organizers of the event (The P.E. Department) felt that those events were too dangerous for our aging teachers. I mean, one teacher did get a little ruffled when he landed short of the sandpit.

This year, to prevent such ego bruising mishaps, the teachers were given a roster of events so silly that I am more inclined to call them Physical Challenges than actually sporting events. For example, there was The Jump Rope competition; how many times can one jump rope in a minute. There was The Free Throw competition. But by far the most enjoyable to watch was The Great Basketball Relay Race. Imagine if the baton in your hand was replaced by a basketball on your head. If only this school had a nice gymnasium! I would have dominated in The Backward-seated Scooter Sprint.

Click here to see more photos of The Great Basketball Relay Race

Building China

I don't know much about economic development or percent increases in GDP. I don't know if China's construction boom is a profitable enterprise or a World Bank funded diversion for would-be idle workers. I don't know when - if ever - this China bubble will burst. But I do know that four months ago the new eight story apartment building to the right of mine was not there. One year ago the same could've been said for the building to the left and the one across the street. My building is the last building on the block to be razed and rebuilt. And the only reason that hasn't happened yet is because the college owns the building and can't give the teachers a new place to live until its new 10 acre campus is complete. It will be finished next year.

Like in the photo above, you see entire suburbs in progress. This community used to be where that pink and white tower in the background stands; that's prime riverside real-estate. And this 'relocation' is minuscule compared to what happens when a new damn is planned. I don't know how it happens, where the people live in the interim, who pays for it, if it should happen. Most all of the details, I don't know. But I do know that it can happen, that it does happen, and that China's regenerative powers are impossible to fully comprehend from facts and figures in the newspaper.

On a Raft

Students having fun on a raft in the rain. Of course, they all fell in before the day was over. That was the point though, right?

Ratsbane and Thurg: Slayers of Fiendish Rodents

Maybe slayer is an overstatement. We didn't actually kill the rat. We didn't actually see it either, but we heard it. I mean, we heard something. Some kind of animal noises. Last year I thought the scurrying and screeching noises coming from a nook in my back porch were caused by a bat. Last year I was attacked by a bat in my own house, so I just kind of linked the two. But this year was more scurrying than screeching; can bats really scurry? My neighbor David did a lot of field research to figure out what we were up against. He'd beat various areas of the wall and listen to the scurry/screech pattern. Eventually he concluded that it was a rat. We donned some anti-rat-disease head gear (i.e. towels around our face) and attempted to fumigate the rat out of his lair with concentrated bleach. Like tear gas, right? It got awfully agitated but didn't leave. Next time were going to try the roach poison.

Geister im Kopf

Last night I was visited by ghosts. They haunted my dreams, calling their names, to remind that they are still there. To remind me that they still remember me, even if I have forgotten them. These ghosts were not people, though. They were words. German words.

You see, yesterday evening I watched a German movie called Toten Winkel, in English The Blind Spot, an interview of Hitler's last personal secretary. The woman, now elderly, retells her impressions of her time with him. And while her story is unique - it was she who took dictation for Hitler's final testament. She heard his death shot - it wasn't what she said that intrigued me, but how she said it. She spoke in pure, well paced Hochdeutsch. In perfect German.

Since living in Germany for a year, the conclusion to 7 years of German study, I have spent over three years without using the language. It is as if the language was among the friends I left behind when returning to America. Like parting companions who have awkwardly promised to write, I've been meaning to get in touch. Over and over again. So watching this movie was a nervous reunion. With every phrase I understood, I was assured that things hadn't changed. With every word I missed, I knew that things would never be the same. While I understood the meaning of most everything, the once polished sheen of my second language had dulled to a functional yet lackluster finish.

I tried to smother this disappointment in sleep, but it wouldn't be snuffed. The words, words that hadn't entered my mind for years, began to flood my dreams. Random words, whole sentence, half sentences. Everyone wanted to be heard. The dreams were so vivid that I was still pondering the meaning of half a dozen of them over breakfast and in the shower. At that time, I felt that every word recalled but not remembered was the epitome of my failure, of my forgetfulness. But I don't see it like that anymore.

They are not words forgotten, they are words almost remembered. They are not ghosts who haunt, they are memories that grace. They are not lost, they're just...temporarily misplaced. I think many things in our lives are better seen in this way. Languages and places and people alike.

Silver

This picture is from my website Chinalogue. Just posting it here for practice.

Post the First

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