Chinese Solstice

The howling, bitter wind awoke me this morning - December 21st - long before the sun attempted its daily token effort at warming the world. Mildly startled, I found myself awake, peering from the safety and warmth of my comforter at the hazy black and white shadows hiding in the corners - things that send small boys shivering for the depths of colorful car-and-truck bedspreads - and which have a knack for appearing at ungodly hours, no matter where you are in the world. It seems fated that the arctic wind finds me today; the shortest day of the year. Qufu is a sunny place and today will be no exception, but the darkness which, day after day, week after week, has been encroaching on all of our spirits takes its toll, and the icy bitterness the wind brings will not lift with the sun today, no matter how brilliant and cloudless the day may be.


My bed is comfortable and warm, but the howling wind - a sound not yet heard since moving to China nearly four months a go - sends a cold shudder straight through me, and serves as a reminder of the dark, cold winter I hide from, existing just inches outside my window. It's Sunday and I have no where to be for hours, so the prospect of burying myself in the heart-warming security of blankets, a pillow, and my imagination is so scintillating I'm happy to be awake to savor the moment. Somebody awesome once said that winter is best witnessed through a window with a glass of wine and a fireplace, but I prefer my trio this time.

I drift in and out of sleep, encountering a half-awake state which on most days would leave me ragged and annoyed, but today finds me happily accepting. I get up to pee - who knows what time it is, but it's still dark - and quickly make my way back, smiling, to bed until it's time to go shopping. Today Olivia, Rachel, and I eat jiaozi, or dumplings, with our Chinese tutor Wish. My eyes water on the way to the store, and Wish suddenly gets concerned, thinking I am upset. "No no," I joke, "my Western eyes just can't take the cold." Apparently watering eyes aren't common in China, or at least Wish hasn't experienced it - or not from cold anyway. I always did have sensitive eyes.

After we eat, Wish tells us that you eat jiaozi on the shortest day of the year for good luck. Like all Chinese traditions, there is a story, and Wish explains that, long ago, there was a woman named Zhang Zhong Jing, who noticed that during the winters many poor people's ears froze, and she wished to find a way to prevent and cure this. Zhang Zhong Jing came up with a special medicine (Wish explains that it is jiaozi, or something she put in the jiaozi, I'm not sure which) to help the poor people keep their ears from freezing, and you eat jiaozi in honor of her on this, the shortest day of the year. The tradition does not seem to be a major one, as it is the first any of us have heard it mentioned, but we enjoy it nonetheless.


I later googled Zhang Zhong Jing, and Wikipedia explained that Zhang Zhong Jing was actually a man, and he is considered to be the founder of "cold damage or 'Cold Disease' school of Chinese medicine." I liked the version Wish told better, but you always tend to like what you hear first, I suppose.

As this, the shortest day of the year, comes to a close, the failing sun reminds me of a "hang in there baby" poster; trying to offer some desperate sense of hope. The wind subsides with the sun, but the effects have been felt: "you're not out yet," it seems to taunt, with one last icy blast. In its bitterness, however, the wind becomes the salvation - with it comes change. I have never felt so connected to the solstice as I do here in this now familiar place. The celebrations, the ceremonies, the parties; I guess I always knew why, but I never understood. Not until now. Tomorrow will be longer, if even for a moment. And that...? That will make all the difference.

Store Mannequins

During the last several weeks I have, mostly because of the Christmas season, found myself shopping more than I usually do. As a group we recently made a trip to Jinan for Christmas shopping, and I have been to the center of Qufu (the shopping district, more or less) on several occasions, the latest being today.

While I have been largely unsuccessful with regard to the actual shopping (I'm really, really bad at buying presents, even in the states) aspect of these trips, I have been noticing some interesting store mannequins.

Most mannequins found in department stores, like most clothing advertisements (or food advertisements, tourist advertisements, toilet paper advertisements, heater advertisements, water advertisements... you get the idea), are either modeled after, or use, westerners or extremely pale-skinned Chinese people. Call it what you will - westernization, californication, "American imperialism;" It's just kind of the way it is. Well, long story short - these mannequins are sometimes on the comical side... as witnessed by my examples.

This one was found in the Jinan "RT Mart," which is similar to a K-Mart or a Wal-Mart type store:

The baby has sad eyes.

This one I found in a clothing store in Qufu:

I'm a waiguoren! please notice my bulging forehead veins and handsome, well-groomed facial hair!

The same mannequin, but this time with an American flag bandanna (sorry about the glare):

I'm a meiguoren! Yeah!

As you can see, store mannequins = big fun.

Things That blindside You at 1:30 on an Idle Tuesday...

In previous posts (you might have to look a ways back, but it's there) I had mentioned the "street food" available just outside the school gates (think plastic bags). Right outside Xintan's main gate, seven days a week, rain or shine, a small collection of food carts and vendors do business. Small little markets and collections of street vendors exist all over Qufu - we see them everywhere we go. Well, for the last month and a half or so there have been some interesting events regarding the street vendors located outside Xintan College, and today I was the unfortunate witness to the latest of these "interesting" events. Read on - this ones crazy.

But let's start at the beginning. About a month and a half ago I walked out to buy fried noodles from the guy I do the most business with, and was surprised to find that the area normally containing the street vendors was eerily vacant, whereas just the night before it had been slammin' busy. Turns out that almost all of the carts had moved about a hundred yards down the road, and there were police officers shouting at the few remaining carts telling them to move. Nothing else much came of this - the market moved down the street for a day, and slowly worked its way back to just outside the gate. I talked it over with some of my students who explained that the area where the carts had been stationed, right outside the gate, was Xintan property, and the college didn't want the carts there because they took away business from the on-campus canteen. It is important to note that the students don't look highly upon the canteen - one of Karrin's students mentioned flies in soup, and we routinely see stray cats running through there.

Well, after a while the police officers' presence became more routine, and slowly but surely the street vendors stopped setting up shop directly on the sidewalk outside Xintan, and instead moved into a nice uniform group lining the edge of the road, catering exclusively to those who happened to be on the very same sidewalk where they had set up shop before... I thought it was clever, really - carts, people, donkeys, and bicycles hanging out in the road is quite common in the streets of Qufu, as my previous post can attest, so simply moving the whole operation ten feet to the edge of the road (it's a big sidewalk) fixed their problem. Business went on as usual.

Now this is where all of us buy our fruit and occasionally our lunches (not as much as we used to - it's just too oily to eat all the time), including the ever infamous Jidan Bing. Rachel and Olivia love the Jidan Bing. We simply call it the "bing." It's a fried egg with vegetables placed inside something resembling a warm pita, with sauces. My point being, we're out there buying food generally on a regular basis. It is also, incidentally, exactly where the bus stops.

Today at about 1:30 I happened to be waiting for the bus for my weekly trip to Qushida to teach the Korean students. Now, this is a downtime for the market - the lunch rush is over and the vendors are all, in general, relaxing. Well, today, just before the bus rolled up, two taxis sped up alongside the vendors and stopped - about 10 feet in front of the bus stop, and thus, me. Immediately, six young men (they looked anywhere between 18 to 24) jumped out of the cabs, each one of them holding some form of a large steel pipe (Naturally). Immediately the shouting began, quickly followed by the men turning the large steel pipes on the vendors' carts. Now, many of the vendors are old women, who of course are completely defenseless against six men wielding steel pipes and the element of surprise. One woman's entire cart was completely destroyed; a chaotic mangled mess of broken glass, bicycle, and vegetables. There really wasn't anything the vendors could do but watch. Directly in front of me (about 8 feet, give or take a few) a Bing vendor had the entire top half of her cart smashed in. I noticed an old, rickety propane tank with a large dent in it about 15 feet away, luckily intact - that could have ended extremely poorly.

There isn't much else to it - as quick as they came the left. The men and their pipes got back in the cabs and sped off, leaving the rest of us to contemplate what the hell had just happened. Total time elapsed, 45 seconds. Most of the vendors were quite calm as they mulled over what happened - some combination of stunned, stoic, and understanding. They didn't really seem that surprised, although it's hard to tell how much actual anger/emotion was lost in translation, plus I immediately got on the bus.

Now I am not suggesting that this act of violence-as-intimidation is related to the school. I find it very hard to believe that the school would in fact hire a goon squad to intimidate some food vendors, and at this time I don't have any reason to think the incidents are related, but the thought crossed all of our minds. Whoever it was, they definitely wanted to send a clear message. Thankfully the pipes were directed solely at property - they didn't go for any of the vendors themselves, and they definitely didn't pay any attention to me standing at the bus stop. So on I went with my Tuesday. The Koreans, thankfully, didn't light anything on fire today.

The Golden Chariot of Qufu

I feel that it is safe to say that, for all of us here in Qufu, our daily routines have become, well, routine. We know what to expect. We know what our students get excited for, and that their blood pressures seemingly spike 15 points at the mere utterance of the word "exam." We know that we all need to get more exercise, and that sometimes it's just not in the cards. Okay so usually it's not in the cards (although we're doing better). My point being, we have become quite comfortable with our daily lives; China is no longer a strange and foreign land - at least Qufu isn't, and this means that I know, in general, what to expect during a given week.

I may or may not have mentioned this before, but my typical weekly schedule has come to include a once-a-week trip across town to Qushida (where Lucy and Eliza work), to "tutor" two groups of middle-school and high-school aged Korean exchange students. While this weekly occurrence may or may not be an eventful one (read: the students recently started using the electric heaters in the rooms to try and set the hand outs I gave them on fire...), it has caused me to become extremely familiar with what I consider to be the most important asset of Qufu: the bus.

Enter the #5. This modern marvel of public transportation, while not being the quickest way around town, is by far the preferred method of transportation between the hours of wake up o'clock and 6:00 pm. The bus may not be direct, and it may be a rough ride at times (this is usually because of rough roads), but it is always entertaining. Okay let me re-phrase: somewhere between entertaining and dear-god-I-might-pee-myself-terrifying, but lets be honest, sometimes that is a very blurry line.

The #5 is perfect for the college student (or foreign laoshi, depending on who you are...). It costs only a single yuan (roughly 14 cents) and, at one end, starts at the Qufu train station just past Xintan college, and runs all the way across town to Qushida. Along the way it passes the the Bank of China, two very large shopping centers, the center of the city (where you can find shopping, food, and the Confucius Temple), the bus station, a cool park, and my personal favorite, a clothing store named "Romanticbeaut" (photo pending). What else could a person need?

One reason the bus is usually entertaining is because of the people we sometimes encounter there. The weekend before last I met Lucy at Silver Plaza (the bigger of the two big shopping centers - they sell whiskey!) on a pleasant Sunday afternoon. Now, the bus is easy enough to catch as long as you flag it down, but it is important to notice when it is coming so that you can step out into the street and let the driver know you want to get on (you can do this just about anywhere along the streets the bus runs, bus stops optional), and usually we are on top of this - particularly because the bus ALWAYS stops at Xintan, but also we tend to keep an eye out. Well, on this particular afternoon I was finishing up sending a massive text message (thanks to a recently acquired cell phone), and failed to see the bus until it was whizzing past me. Not wishing to wait another 15 minutes I chased the big-twinkie-of-a-bus down. This was, apparently, the funniest thing since sliced bread to two women riding the bus, as immediately after boarding they proceeded to laugh and attempt to speak to me in loud Chinese. Once they realized (or at least I think they realized, but I'm not really sure) that I could not understand them, they simply started speaking slower... One would say something, enunciating every syllable, the other would laugh, I'd ignore them, the cycle would repeat. They got off the bus before me luckily - however when I returned to Xintan going the other direction, they passed me again (shouting loudly of course) in another bus. Ahh Qufu.

There is also always a decent "hair-affair" on the bus, or a person with a ridiculous and/or amazing hair cut. They love the wild hair here. Recently there was a guy with an MP3 player BLASTING some hilarious Chinese pop/slow dance song. Good times.

A couple of weeks ago Olivia, Karrin and myself headed over to Qushida for a nice dinner with Eliza and Lucy, only to find ourselves stuck at a four way intersection just down the road for literally 10-15 minutes. There wasn't an accident and the road wasn't closed. Rather, there were simply too many vehicles/people, and no one was paying any mind to the traffic lights, let alone the 8 police officers standing helplessly in the middle of it all, angrily blowing their whistles and waving their arms as if to put on the illusion of actually having control of the intersection. Cars and buses were forcing their nose only inches from the vehicle in front of them and would creep inch by inch as soon as they possibly could, ensuring that there was no space for anyone else to nudge in (which they would have, given the opportunity). This of course was converging on the intersection from 4 directions, rendering it impossible for any one set of vehicles to move at all. Pedestrians, seeing the chaos, and being unable to use any form of a sidewalk because there were too many cars, simply decided to walk right through the middle of the intersection, only compounding the already hilarious jigsaw puzzle of vehicles which existed. One bus driver was agitated enough to nudge a man on a bicycle who attempted to get between his bus and the car in front of him. Add to the image in your mind the donkey who was, in a futile attempt to clear the intersection by its owner, headbutting a bus, and you might start to get an idea of why the #5 can be so much fun.

My absolute favorite part about the bus, and the reason I think it always proves to be entertaining/terrifying, is because of the traffic patterns in Qufu, and the complete familiarity of the streets that only comes from driving a bus up and down the same roads day in and day out. You can tell that these drivers are totally on auto pilot. That is all well and good - I like a confident, experienced driver. It does mean, however, that sometimes they tend to drive a little too fast for the traffic patterns, and thus it gets a little scary, as we are constantly afraid that the bus is going to get into an accident. for example, lets consider the following picture:

As you can see, the lane is quite crowded - there really isn't anywhere for a large bus to go - or is there? Hmm, there seems to be some space on the left... well why not?! WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? The driver of course, seeing the open lane will immediately shoot for it, resulting in a scenario, while not taken on the same bus ride, similar to this:

Yes, that is a mother and her small child darting across going the other direction, while the bus careens toward the woman on the cart with the yellow cover and the mini truck. Good times had by all. Lanes in general just don't seem to have much meaning, even when turning corners, as witnessed by this particular picture:

look closely - that is actually the lane boundary for the left side of the road. Yes, the driver did in fact turn directly into oncoming traffic. I must say however, it is not entirely the bus drivers' fault that they drive so insanely. For one, this is simply the norm over here. Roads are pretty much every man for themselves. This of course, means for pedestrians too, as is witnessed here:


I took this picture from the inside of the bus. Right next to the door (it was really crowded). The woman is simply casually walking her bike down the middle of the street as if no one else existed. Now, this doesn't necessarily pose a problem - if a moving vehicle sees another person ahead walking down the middle of the street it is typically easy to slow down and avoid. I've noticed one problem in particular as to why this usually can't happen as it should, and that is that people don't travel in straight lines. ever. In fact, bicycles, electric bikes, three wheeled carts, and people all tend to take a route closely resembling the red line below:

While this happens, a car may come careening down the road in the opposite direction, in a pattern similar to the one shown in purple:

Seemingly at the same time, and from the depths of no where, a dog/car/donkey/bike/pedestrian/chicken will decide they need to cross the road, as illustrated by the teal line:

Casually, all three sentient beings will seemingly pass through the highlighted space at the same time:Miraculously, all parties involved emerge completely unscathed. We can use these diagrams to answer the question, "why did the dog/car/donkey/bike/pedestrian/chicken cross the road?" Simply put, to deny the laws of physics.

As you can very well see, the bus here in Qufu is not only a fantastic way to get around town, it is also cool because it simply does not obey the laws of physics. This may not be all of the fun stories and events we have encountered on the number 5 this year so far, but I'll do my best to update the blog with any further hilarious encounters/pictures of donkeys head-butting buses.

We Now Return You to Your Regularly Scheduled Program...

So lets talk pictures.

I've gone for a couple of very satisfying walks the last few days, mostly because the weather has been exceptional. The temperature is definitely dropping quickly, but the brilliant blue skies and large amounts of sunshine have been making up for it. The wind has been blowing rather briskly, which has worked wonders on the local air quality, something we all have grown to appreciate.

Anyhow, on these walks I have noticed several things... First, I found some bigger Cannons:

I don't think this really needs further explanation, other than these ones are way more badass. Luckily, they are not parked anywhere near my apartment currently.

Next, I finally saw a Chinese fire truck! Karrin and I were walking back from downtown and the FD was at Xintan, apparently doing some sort of demonstration...

I do love a sweet fire truck... If I were able to speak Chinese I would have totally asked for a tour. Oh well.

Last we have my personal favorite of the week, compressed gas cylinders:

I have to say, this is certainly my preferred method of transporting large compressed gas cylinders: on an electric three-wheeled cart, roaring around the congested streets of Qufu, using a person - sitting on the tank - as a restraining device, all the while smoking, as to ensure that only one hand is being used for driving, and to add that extra level of zest to life which only comes from smoking around compressed gas cylinders. Lord knows what was actually in the tank, but I'd be curious to find out. It was probably either air or helium, but I'd like to think either oxygen or hydrogen. Just for funzies.

Continuation

I promise that soon I'll return to regularly scheduled posts such as "Pictures of The Week" and travel updates, especially updates on travel plans, but for now I am going to continue on the topic of my last post (I got rave reviews, after all). One thing I mentioned in my previous post concerning the presidential election was that, while I harbored all these feelings of anguish and frustration, finding anything that resembled evidence as to why, was difficult.

Well, quite by accident, I stumbled across two recent New York Times articles that I feel back up my anger, at least a little bit. Both articles are concerning health care in America - a hot-button issue. The first article is quite long, however I ardently urge anyone who has the time to read it to do so. For those of you who don't, I'll briefly summarize:

The article, while focusing on a few specific cases, addresses health care for immigrants within the United States. Specifically, repatriation of patients who are still very much dependent on hospital care. By repatriation I do in fact mean the sending of patients, often by ambulance, back to their home country. In one case a child (born with Down Syndrome and heart defect), born in the United States and thus legally a U.S. Citizen, was almost sent back to Mexico because of his parents Mexican drivers licenses, despite their residence in the United States for almost two years (The article does not however comment on the legality of their residence, only the citizenship of their son). Another patient was lost in an airport. The main case the article tackles is that of a 19-year old legal immigrant who, injured in a car accident, upon his parents refusal to pull the plug, was transferred, septic, from an Arizona hospital to a Mexican hospital. His parents through a church organization found a hospital in California willing to treat him pro bono, where he made a (albeit miraculous) recovery. He now walks with a slur and a cane.

The underlying issue which I'm getting at here, as is the article, is funding. Hospitals every day face intense budget crunches, and are asked to choose. Some hospitals apparently respect life more than others and do not attempt to repatriate patients who are on feeding tubes, but the fact of the matter, and the main point of my argument, is that hospitals are not provided with proper funding, specifically in the medicaid and emergency medicaid programs, to provide long term care for these patients. They are thus forced to choose. One hospital advised the parents of Antonio Torres, the focus of the article, to pull the plug - to END THEIR CHILD'S LIFE, quite simply, because the money is just not there.

Enter the second New York Times article, which I noticed a few days ago but failed to read in-full until after I had read the first this morning. This article, titled "New U.S. Rule Pares Outpatient Medicaid Services," discusses a new rule enacted by the Bush Administration 3 days after the election. The article sums up better than I can: "Alan D. Aviles, the president of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, the largest municipal health care system in the country, said: “The new rule forces us to consider reducing some outpatient services like dental and vision care. State and local government cannot pick up these costs. If anything, we expect to see additional cuts at the state level.” The Bush administration (what I was ranting about in my previous post, for those of you who forgot what my argument is), in it's push for 11th hour legislation, is cutting back medicaid services.

While a direct connection does not exist - the medicaid services cut by the Bush administration are not those concerning illegal immigrants - the connection between the two, and the fact of the matter is a blatant slap to the face for anyone willing to see it. I'll do my best to wrap it up into a nice, clear thesis statement for you: At a time where medicaid services are already stressed and stretched (see a third article commenting on the rise of patients unable to pay), as witnessed by American hospitals going to such extreme measures as repatriation to remove patients unable to pay from their hospitals, the Bush administration is cutting that very same program, and doing so at a time that is IMPOSSIBLE to ignore - directly following an election. This of course implies that they waited, calculated, and schemed the best time to enact unpopular cuts to social services.

This is the type of behavior that had me in an uproar earlier this week. The under under the table wheeling-and-dealing. The making of cuts to programs that support the most under privileged of Americans, and doing so while all the while Smiling, nodding, and saying, "Oh no! We would never do anything to harm under-privileged Americans!"

I'll leave you with some final thoughts concerning the Articles. First, that Both the Mexican and the American physicians were surprised to learn that their mutual patient, Antonio Torres, was a legal immigrant - implying that the hospital in Arizona didn't care enough to check this, or to point it out to the patients doctor; and that the Mexican physician was used to only receiving illegal immigrants as repatriated. And second, that the very same hospital advised that Antonio be removed from life support. To end his life. Simply because there wasn't money to treat him. I now refer you back to my original post, exclaiming why I was happy Obama was elected, and why I was angry with the Bush administration.

Election Day - China Style

As I sit here eating my dinner of oily street noodles (yes they came in a bag) and a half dozen Satsumas (the whole meal costing approximately 57 cents), I can't help but smile. The last few days have been extraordinarily exciting for us here in Qufu, at least concerning the election. I'd like to share some of the feelings I've had over the course of this last election, but especially over the last few days. As a disclaimer, what follows is political rambling backed up by very little evidence of anything other than my own opinion, so if that doesn't sound appealing to you, I fart in your general direction, and please go away (before I taunt you a second time). I rarely find it prudent to rant politically, but I'd like to take this moment to do so.

First and foremost, I have found myself swept up in the party vibe I have been getting from friends and family, all the way across the world. I make no claims toward being an overly ambitious person when it comes to politics - I fully understand the importance of voting and have always felt compelled to do so, however this has really been the extent of my political activity. I've never campaigned or attempted to get those around me to vote my way or really made that extra effort. This is of course due in part to the fact that I have been, for the entirety of my voting-able life, surrounded by screaming liberals. At Skidmore, the few conservatives around were so dug into their trenches that you could hold a smoking gun to their face, say take a whiff, and they would shout and ardently ask to see the proof, all the while obviously not listening to a word you said about how, you were in fact, holding a gun, recently fired by those they were defending, and it was still warm. This election was really no different for me, up until about two weeks before election day. I'm not really sure what changed, but I found myself following the polls and the New York Times religiously in the days leading up to the election. As Tuesday got closer and closer, and the numbers stood fast in Obama's favor, I began to realize what was different for me. While I personally have enjoyed every chance to jab, poke, insult, and generally bash George Dubyah, I always thought of myself as, in general, very dismissive of his reign of terror - never really being motivated past this dismissiveness to really try and change what was happening. Perhaps the thought of actually caring was just too painful, or maybe it had just become so routine that I simply didn't care anymore, but it was how I felt, and thus I didn't expect much to change because of the election. When your head is surrounded by smoke, it's hard to see anything else without help.

Now that the smoke has cleared, I have come to realize just how angry, fed-up, and brutally pessimistic I had been about the last eight years. I can honestly say I didn't realize the extremity of it until now. I can only describe it as suddenly realizing you have that feeling that, the whole while you knew something was unjust, wrong, or just plain stupid with every fiber of your being, but being completely unable to pinpoint WHAT, while at the same time feeling completely helpless to do anything about it - like a teenager pissed off at the whole world for just not getting it, all over again. Almost as if I had been repressing the sentiment that, if everybody would just STOP being WRONG all the time, you might learn something.

The election of Obama has lifted the pessimism off my shoulders like it has done to many other Americans, not because I harbor the belief that he will fix the world - the man is not a miracle worker, but simply because the world really, really needed a win. It feels good, and I mean really good, to have something go right for once. For once, the political Red Herring's didn't work - people got tired of the slander, the slur campaigns, the focus on issues simply to get elected, the negativity of it all. The cycle has been broken. The last time the presidency was not held by a Bush or Clinton, I was two. TWO.

When I say the World needed this, I think that maybe this is why I feel as strongly as I do about Obama winning as apposed to McCain. The opinion which exists of our country within the rest of the world is so brutally embarrassing, and has been for so long, that the thought of identifying myself as American is just not appealing, and that INFURIATES me. I really like America. I really like being from America, and the idea of being able to hold my head high and saying, "look! we didn't just think of ourselves this time! You can come play too, world!" makes me happy. really happy.

I received an email from a friend here in China, Li Zhao (we have dubbed him Elvis Thomas Lee, because he really wanted an English name), once the election had been finalized, entitled: "congratulations to Obama," and reads as follows:

My American Friend:

I on behalf of myself congratulations to Obama was elected the President of the United States!

Elvis

I share this with you simply to show that, yes, the world did notice that we got something right, and yes, they care. Anyone who has seen a newspaper in the last few days I'm sure can agree. This above all else, is what makes me happy about this election, and I think is why I am smiling most of all. This didn't just give Americans hope, it gave people all over the world hope, and I don't think that can be understated. Ever so slowly the sense of impending doom is receding...

You've Got to Read It to Believe It

As is the case at most college campuses both here in China and back in the states, Midterm season has arrived. By U.S. standards, the importance of the midterm exam varies greatly - at Skidmore, at least in the Philosophy department, they really weren't all that important, or didn't exist at all. Usually it served simply as a good half way point for a major paper to be due. Here at Xintan however, midterm exams are a very big deal. The student's grades are heavily influenced by the outcome of the midterm, and thus they become very agitated and nervous whenever the topic manages to rear its ugly head.

On the whole, we as a group of foreign teachers have placed far less emphasis on the importance of the mid-term than the students are used to, largely because most all of us prefer to base grades on class participation and assignments than on tests - unfortunately, no matter how much we re-assure them that the midterms in our classes really aren't that big of a deal, it is really, really difficult to go against 15 years of schooling telling them otherwise.

One of the most important things I've been reminding myself while grading midterms is that, when taking a test, you are almost always nervous and rushing. My students have done very well on the whole, which I am happy about - however some of the answers have been either odd, out of context, or just plain wrong; and sometimes in distinctly hilarious and shocking ways. Karrin and myself were grading papers several nights ago, and were so taken aback by some of the answers we received, that we decided to post a blog segment about them. So much so, that this may even become a re-occurring segment: "You've Got to Read it to Believe it."

I would like to make one disclaimer: these quotes, while hilarious, are not the majority of our students' work, and are largely taken out of context. Many of the writers here are extremely talented, some more so than many American students, so don't think we are simply making fun of our students, claiming they are of low caliber. Some things just tend to get lost in translation...

So, without further adieu, let the quotes begin:

In an essay on the topic of beggars, the following sentence appeared: "...he [the beggar] stretched out his hand with a broken bowel in it."

In an essay where a student wrote a letter to themselves, 10 years in the future (actually a very well written essay): "Go to your parents home twice a month. Buy them one or two pieces of gift, not valuable but right to their taste."

On one of my tests, I asked students to provide several definitions from or about the movies we've watched...

Desegregation: "An act of treating a group of people with sexes, faces, its unfair." (I'm still not exactly sure what they were trying to say)

"That's the whole ball of wax:" "The everything from your ear."

"Cold Feet:" "The Cold War."

"That's the whole ball of wax:" "An imaginary place."


I will leave you all with a passage from the clear winner in the game of "shock the foreign teachers," from one of Karrin's writing classes, in an essay titled: "Be For Death Penalty."

"In addition, he [someone who commits a murder] has no life aims in the rest of life. So why not gust advance his lifetime and end his meaningless life earlier ... Whats more, Death Penalty can also let the criminals pure their devilish spirit and comfort the victims hearts in the heaven."

We've all still got a lot of grading left to do, so we'll keep a running list of quirky, hilarious, and sometimes downright shocking answers. That's all for now!

It's Like Crack in Picture Form.

So for this weeks installment of Picture of The Week, I thought I would discuss something which we have been experiencing since our first or second night in Qufu... Fireworks.

I say fireworks, but really this is an unjust description of the mind numbing explosions - which can only be described as automatic-machine-gun-esque eruptions (they call them fire crackers), quickly followed by small bombs, often in the form of something similar to a flash-bang grenade on steroids, maliciously cavitating across the night sky, destroying the ear drums of the denizens of Qufu without prejudice - that have become a tri-weekly/quad-weekly/nightly occurrence here in the city. Fun for the whole family, I promise.

In the U.S., large fireworks are often known as "mortar shells." A description that I always thought made sense - a loud thud as the firework leaves the tube in a smoking display of chest-vibrating awesomeness, quickly followed by the brilliant and colorful explosions we all so dearly know and love. I always thought the description accurate, but of course not exact - a real mortar causes way more dismemberment and has only about half the cool colors... it would be a ripoff. I mean let's be honest, who in their right mind would actually use MORTARS to launch fireworks?Enter the Chinese. What better way to celebrate a wedding than to light off fireworks? Alright, I can get behind that. However, when your fireworks begin involving SIX LARGE MORTAR CANNONS which seemingly are military surplus from the KOREAN WAR, you begin to lose me... Oh what the hell, I guess if you put red bows on them so the kids know they are fun to play with too, I'm okay with it... who am I kidding, I LOVE being woken up at 4 in the morning to the event I have deemed "The Battle for Qufu." Oh, I guess I forgot to mention that. Local custom in Qufu dictates that the earlier you light off fireworks on the day of a wedding, the luckier the couple will be. Or something like that... hence the 4 a.m. (3 a.m. central) start time to "The Battle for Qufu." The first time it happened, Karrin later informed us she had literally rolled out of bed and taken cover on the far side of her bed.

Sorry if this week was more rant than picture, but it had to be said. Have a great week everyone!

It's beautiful outside!

After several days of gray, cloudy, and polluted skies, the weather gods have relented and graced China with a beautiful fall day. The all too familiar crisp breeze of change is blowing, and the sun casts it's rays in a way which could only be described as melancholy. I have been very pleasantly reminded of why autumn is far and away my favorite season - I wish a photograph could do justice to the day outside. This morning I walked out the door and was immediately taken by a big tree on standing on the corner of the building which had, seemingly overnight, turned bright orange.

It has been a few days since my last post, primarily because along with the fall I have found myself suddenly very busy. Last week ended in a whirlwind of class, students, and friends, all which blew right on through the weekend, and this week shows no signs of getting any better. Today's beautiful weather has, however, served as a nice reprieve from the grind, so I figured I'd better attempt a post while the going is good.

On Friday of last week, following the end of class, we had a brief meeting with Connie just to check in with the office to ensure that classes were running smoothly, etc., and shortly after that we took Peter and Li Zhao out for a nice dinner at a Korean BBQ restaurant. Let me start by saying a few things about Korean BBQ. It is cooked right in front of you, it's delicious, and its an endless meat fest. The whole meal consisted of a ton of protein and nothing with any carbs - no bread, no rice, no nothing. This is all well and good for anybody still on Atkins, but is BAD for anybody who enjoys beer and/or rice wine. Suffice it to say, we all got very happily loaded, gave Li Zhao an English name (he is now Elvis Thomas Li... say it really quickly and pointedly and it sounds super bad ass), drunkenly decided karaoke would be a good idea, sang out off-key hearts out, came back here, watched Elvis Thomas Li open bottle after bottle of beer (none of which got drunk) with chopsticks, an interesting Chinese parlor trick, decided it would be fun to go walk around the track, and finally end our heroic night of fun at the late hour of 10 pm. Ah China, how I love you.

The next day was Saturday, and after doing my best to sleep in (read: tossed and turned all morning, refusing to get up but being unable to fall back asleep due to the repeated chants of "JI YO!"[which means literally "add oil" or "add fuel;" the Chinese equivalent to shouting "fire it up!"] outside my window coming from the Badminton tournament only feet from my front door...) I awoke and spent a good portion of the afternoon cleaning my apartment for the freshman "free talk" I was hosting at 4. Following the free talk, several of the male students in my class very cheerfully asked me out to dinner - not yet having dinner plans I happily accepted (I decided it would be good to have some guy time). Dinner was in no way noteworthy other than to say that I was really tired... One of the biggest drawbacks to going to dinner with students is that it is in no way relaxing - the language barrier, their desire to impress and make comfortable the foreign teacher, and my desire to maintain at least some aura of professionalism wears you out - especially after a long day and a long night previous.

I had another free talk planned for Sunday afternoon at 4 (one freshman class Sat., one Sun.), but I was looking forward to a relaxing day for the most part - or so I thought. Saturday evening after returning from dinner I received an 11th hour phone call from Peter asking if I would do a favor for a former student of his (we had talked about this on Friday night briefly but we had both decided against the idea) in Jining, a city about an hour away. Peter's student had apparently become very adamant about having a foreigner teach a one hour class to his students, and was, in Peter's words, "begging" me to come and speak. The whole thing was to take only three hours, two of which being travel, and they were going to may be 200 yuan, so I accepted. I was to be picked up promptly at 8:00 the next morning, be driven to Jining to a class where I would teach from 9 to 10, and then be driven back, returning to Qufu by 11:15 at the latest. It didn't sound like a bad way to make 200 yuan.

As with all things of this nature, it didn't quite go as planned... for starters, the car was half an hour late - not that big of a deal, I just taught from 8:30 to 9:30. "Teaching," is however, not really the word I would use to describe this particular experience. I've done several of these little side gigs and have come to one conclusion about them: They simply exist to show off the foreigner, and as an excuse for the cadres of the school to hang out with a foreigner. I read the students some Shel Silverstein poems, I talked about America, we did some tongue twisters, I showed them pictures of my family, the usual hour long show-off-the-waiguoren-routine. Then we took pictures in three different locations for 45 minutes. Everybody had to have their moment with the foreigner... I have decided that if you accept going into these situations that you are there simply as a showpiece, and resign yourself to this, it's really not so bad.

by this time it was approaching 11:15, and they asked if I would be willing to let them treat me to lunch, and given that I hadn't really eaten that day, I happily accepted. This particular group of teachers however was hell-bent on impressing me, so "lunch" meant driving half an hour to this remote, excessively fancy, and excessively expensive, traditional Chinese restaurant. They asked me to pick out what I wanted for dishes, however presented me with an overwhelming assortment of green-onion-thingys-inside-pig-intestines, an assortment of small fowl (I discovered later it was pigeon. Nothing like freshly ground pigeon pancakes... mmm), scorpions, crunchy-looking-exoskeleton-covered-alien-eyed-slimy-bug-thingys, duck heads, and sweet potatoes. I went with the sweet potatoes and let them order the rest... I really just wanted a bowl of rice. Oh well.

The meal itself wasn't actually all that bad, aside from the obviously excessive time and money which went into the affair, which, on top of the 200 yuan they were already paying me, all ended up seeming a bit much to me... I kept wanting to shout, "really guys, I TALKED ABOUT MYSELF FOR AN HOUR. THIS IS A BIT EXTRAVAGANT." I never did get my rice - I figured it would have been a bit impolite for them to order me all this nice food and then eaten nothing but some rice. I had informed them that I needed to be back in Qufu by no later than 3:00, because I had my free talk at 4, a request they happily honored. We had to make a pit stop however to buy some tea to give me and Peter (for letting me come to Jining in the first place). So all in all I ended up with 200 yuan, an extravagant lunch, and a really nice box of tea. Not bad for talking about myself for an hour.

That night we all gathered at Qushida for our second Italian dinner of the week (on Monday night I cooked a surprise spaghetti dinner for Rachel's birthday), a fantastic eggplant parm cooked by Eliza. One thing we have discovered is that, given butter and cheese, things like spaghetti and eggplant parm and garlic bread are all totally doable. Which is awesome. It was a nice cap to the weekend, despite how exhausted I may have felt at the time. Luckily I was able to relax a bit on Monday.

Unfortunately the future looks bleak - from here on out I imagine classes and weekend will begin to blend together more, grading will increase, and sleep will decrease. Also, on a sad note, Rachel has to return to New York early next week for personal reasons, and will likely not return until next semester. The remaining three of us here at Xintan have been asked to cover her classes, which we will happily do, but it means things are going to get that much busier, so blogging might end up taking a back seat unfortunately... I'll try and at least keep everyone entertained with pictures of the week; I've got some good ones lined up.

Picture of The Week!

So I actually missed last week, but for all of you out there who would much rather see cool pictures than spend an hour reading the marathon posts (which I'm guessing is most of you, alas... I can't blame you though - I'm terrible at keeping up with blogs), here we go:

The pictures this week hail from the city of Shanghai. While nothing really caught my eye like the beer in a bag or "Jazzbeefsteak" (lets be honest, I'm not sure who I would be able to top those two), I did manage to snag some cool shots. I also thought this would be a good time to branch out from the common theme of "comical" photos. After all, there is no rule stating the "Picture of The Week" must be funny.

First we have two shots (I couldn't decide which I like better, although I'm leaning toward the first, and more mysterious, of the two) of a building to the west of People's Park in central Shanghai - I was reminded of Isengard.

My other choice for this week is a bit comical (okay I couldn't resist) - inside the Shanghai Urban Planning and Exhibition Museum, somewhere on the third or fourth floor, is a time line showing the progression of the city. Apparently, in 1920, the city planners decided to "debut" prosperity. There wasn't an exact date, but my guess is March 26th, 1920. Sounds reasonable, right?

That's all for now! Be watching for a post on teaching and/or spaghetti dinners.

Trains, Plains, and Paninis - A tale of Shanghai

The city of Shanghai is a bustling metropolis; fast paced, crowded, beautiful at times, skeezy (a combination of sketchy and sleezy, we'll say) at others. On the whole it makes for an amazing place to visit, due in part to the magnificent tourist attractions, the existence of a nightlife (something Qufu is in desperate need of), and a wonderful selection of western products such as sandwiches and wine. I also felt however, that part of what made Shanghai so fun to experience this past week was the "skeezier" side - the back alley behind our hostel, the kabab vendors who quietly whisper in a questioning manner "hashish? hashish?" as you walk past, and the knock off goods market (well, some are knock offs, some look like originals that "fell off the truck...") located in the subway stop underneath the Science and Technology Museum. Sticking with my recent theme of "the contrast," a.k.a. the giant two sided coin I have found China to be, I have found myself seeking out the contrasts in the few places I have visited thus far - I feel it's good to find oneself somewhere in the middle of the two extremes a place like Shanghai has to offer. Stick with just the tourist traps and sightseeing and, while enjoyable, one feels like an ignorant American who is unwilling to see the "real" China; however spend too much time shopping in back alleys and sneaking around the streets of Shanghai late at night and the cheap shoes you couldn't resist buying will fall apart right after you get food poisoning - both literally and metaphorically. In part I feel it's almost that I simply enjoy seeing that these places really exist - almost to marvel at them; relishing in the experience of a world dissimilar to one I am all too comfortable with. But a delicious tuna panini with a glass of freshly made apple juice (the woman literally had a juicer and some apples - I almost peed myself) on the side doesn't hurt at all. In fact, after a month of almost nothing familiar to eat and over sweetened half-juice, it's kind of like the first time you hear The Beatles (to quote Superbad).

Random Wednesday evening musings aside, I will do my best to share with all of you out there in blog-land last weeks adventure to Shanghai. The six of us left Qufu on Monday the 29th, or the week of the national holiday (celebrated October 1st). Lucy and Eliza arranged through Andy at Qushida to purchase our train tickets, and we were lucky enough to get afternoon tickets on the express train (a very comfortable ride - the seats where similar to an airplane but with more leg room), which, with a group of six traveling during the national holiday, was great. Not wishing to leave Eliza and Lucy to do all of the planning for our trip (Lucy had booked the hostel as well) Karrin, with the help of Kathy (another English teacher here at Xintan College), graciously arranged for a van taxi to take us to the train station in Yanzhou, about 30 to 35 minutes away. Unfortunately, the driver arrived almost 20 minutes late, drove a broken down pill-box of a van, and was somewhere in the realm of a Will Farrell in that movie about race car driving yelling "I WANNA GO FAST!" (what else is new). Kathy explained that we were in a hurry, so Rachel, Olivia, Karrin and I all piled in and were quickly at the front gates of Qushida where Lucy and Eliza met us, and off we went to Yanzhou; all the while desperately trying to breathe something other than the nauseating stench of exhaust mixed with the acrid taste of burnt oil quickly filling the back of the van. Knowing we were short on time, our driver took us on a frantic tear through downtown Qufu traffic, causing us to wonder if we were, in addition to missing our train, in fact destined to die horrifically in a head on collision with the smog monster brewing in the back of the van which I was convinced would take beastly form and lunge out in front of the van. Standard driving jitters aside, all seemed to be going according to plan - until of course the van broke down in the tollbooth... What would the trip be without some crazy travel adventure (Don't worry, more of that to come)? We were half way to bailing on the guy (there happened to be several other cabs waiting nearby) when he finally got the van started again after adding several gallons of oil to the tank underneath his seat, and we managed to make it to the train station without further incident. As a side note, up until the hair razing cab ride I had not been on pins and needles in anticipation for Shanghai - not that I didn't want to go, I just hadn't gotten overly excited yet. The cab ride did it for me - I was ready to go. call me a sucker for action. Despite the lack luster service provided by the driver and his young daughter who accompanied us, I smiled a little bit as we were leaving because he did in fact seem like a very nice man, and the overall impression that I got from him was that he was happy to have the passengers (I'm still unclear whether he was a full time driver or if it was a side gig he has set up because he owns a van). Hopefully he wasn't stuck at the train station with a dead van all afternoon.

Our hostel was located in the north-eastern section of the city, a few blocks above The Bund, and, just far enough out of town to really get a good feel for back street Shanghai. The location I actually thought was very neat, as we could walk two blocks and be at a Starbucks and the local metro stop (The Shanghai subway system is a model for any city: immaculately clean, on time, and well thought out) which daily stole us away to visit all that Shanghai had to offer; while at the same time walk 30 seconds to the street behind the hostel and buy just about anything anyone would ever want to purchase for anywhere from 5 to 50 quai. to the left is a picture of the intersection of two streets. My favorite was the vendor who simply pushed a cart with his computer with a random assortment of USB, IPOD, and Flash Memory reader connections out to the middle of the intersection and put up a sign advertising MP3's and MP4's. Apparently this is a standard way to purchase music.

That first night Karrin, Olivia, Rachel, and Lucy all went in search of a nightlife (I'll let them tell you that story) while Eliza and I stayed back in the hostel and talked with some other people staying for the week. There was a group of Canadian English teachers from Shenzhen (or Guangzhou? Near Hong Kong, anyway), some other random groups of people whom I can't remember, and Tom, a very relaxed Brit who, after recently graduating university was taking the better part of a year to travel to China, South Korea, Japan, and finally to spend six months as a snowboard bum in Whistler, B.C. He reminded me a bit of my cousin Zach. The six of us ended up traveling around with Tom for the better part of the trip, and he made a welcome addition to the group (not that, you know, I don't love spending every waking minute traveling for a year with five girls).

The next day we attempted to purchase return tickets to Qufu, which ended up being a completely ridiculous adventure. We returned to the train station where we had arrived the night before, and went in search of the ticketing window. After wandering aimlessly into buildings, rooms, standing in the wrong line for a while, and in general walking around without any idea of where we were going, we finally asked for directions and slowly but surely made our way to the ticketing building. A completely separate complex with some of the most massive lines I have ever seen (with the exception of the museum we tried to visit later). The good news was that there was an English speaking counter - however it also was the window that had a special statement explaining that soldiers in the PLA could cut the rest of the line. This didn't happen until we were almost at the counter - the polite American tourists disappeared, and we delicately explained that they should all go to the end of the *>!$ing line. When we finally did get to the counter, we were faced with an exceptionally lame outcome to our morning of searching - sold out. All that remained as standing room only tickets on a 9 hour overnight train Saturday evening. Afraid we would lose even that option if we waited, we purchased the tickets and decided to sort it out later.

That afternoon we headed into the city and explored a bit around the museums and People's Park, as well as East Nanjing Road. The museums we were unable to visit that day because we failed to get there soon enough - the national holiday marked a "Golden Week" on the Chinese travel calendar and in celebration almost all of the museums were free for the week. This of course meant MASSIVE lines, so we opted to postpone the Shanghai Museum until the following day rather than stand for an hour and a half waiting to get in. East Nanjing Road proved to be a giant tourist trap. A complete sea of people, (see photo) in order to stay together we were forced to walk at a relatively slow pace and even stop at times. The only problem with this was that, whenever we were walking, let alone even thought about stopping, the barbarian hordes of the cheap goods underworld would accost us with little laminated cards advertising their shitty wares while all the while shouting some variation of "HELLO! HEY HELLO! WATCH? BAG? BELT? YOU WANT TO BUY WATCH?" The pushy ones even followed us after we began moving again, even though we very obviously were completely ignoring the fact that they were standing so close to us it was very obvious that they placed little value on toothpaste. The urge to throw the occasional elbow was not far from the surface, especially near the end of the first day. Later on in the week Tom and I returned to East Nanjing Lu (street) and toyed with the idea of walking into the middle of the crowded square and shouting, "FOR GOD SAKES WHY CAN'T I FIND A WATCH?!?" Just to see what would happen, but we were never brave enough.

That night we all went out to a bar near Xintandi (the trendy section of the French Concession, a mesmerizing neighborhood on the south western side of Shanghai proper). Eliza, Karrin, Rachel and myself decided to call it a night after a while, as we had plans to get up early for the museums the following day, leaving Olivia, Lucy and Tom to their own devices with nothing but the nightlife of Shanghai in front of them. Karrin found them giggling in the hall at 6 am the next morning. Apparently they had gone to a hip-hop dance club which stayed open until seven. They also, oddly enough, happened to run into recent Skidmore grads Ben Gallagher and John Wolfberg. You know, country of 1.3 billion - you're bound to run into somebody you know.

The next day Rachel, Karrin, and Eliza headed off to the museums and I was left to my own devices, as Lucy and Olivia were sound asleep from their long night, so I rode the metro across town to the back side of the french concession in search of a burrito restaurant/bar I had read about. Alas, it was too good to be true - I located the place with little trouble, however either because it was October 1st or simply because they decided to not serve lunch tat day, they were closed. Desperately hungry, I wandered the French Concession in search of something resembling a western meal until after about an hour I stumbled upon a magnificent coffee shop named "Saturday Coffee." A menu completely in English, options for spaghetti, sandwiches, cheesecake - yes cheesecake - and freshly made juice. Jackpot. I sat and enjoyed my sandwich in a dream like state, savoring every bight.

Still on a mild high from my lunch I continued my aimless meander through the French Concession, completely losing myself in the process. This was actually very fun, and after a while I simply started heading north and east, and after finding an amazing DVD store which I spent a good amount of time in, I finally made my way back to the subway station in peoples park, via another french bakery which sold RASPBERRY cheesecake (which I promptly purchased) and a wonderful garden oasis where I sat by a quiet pond and enjoyed my dessert. That night we all went back to the same club where Lucy and Olivia had met Ben and John the next night and had a grand time (there are some interesting pictures of me dancing, but what else is new), although I didn't stay out until 6 am (Lucy, Olivia, and Rachel took care of that for the rest of us).

Somewhere in all of this the girls had been able to locate plane tickets from Shanghai back to Jinan, and decided that instead of taking their chances on the standing only train (we had heard some horror stories about not being able to use the bathroom, or really move at all for that matter), it was better to shell out the 400 yuan to fly home. Being unable to purchase anything costing more than a few dollars without having given a solid month to consider it(I blame this character trait on my dad), and half thinking it sounded like an adventure (like I said, I'm a sucker for action), I decided to take my chances with the Saturday evening, standing only, all night, nine hour train ride. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Back to Shanghai.

The next day was Thursday and I slept in a bit while Karrin, Rachel, Eliza, and Tom went off to explore the french concession. Olivia and Lucy wanted to see it as well, so the three of us set out to do the same. Despite being a repeat of the previous day I had a very nice afternoon walking around with Olivia and Lucy - and wouldn't you know it, we miraculously ended up back at Saturday Coffee! Oh hell, I guess we'll just have to settle for sandwiches and fresh squeezed juice again won't we...

That night we ate on the street. This is a good time I feel to mention some of the amazing Chinese food we found in Shanghai... While Karrin I felt was most fond of the "soupy dumplings" (pork dumplings with a delicious broth inside, oddly resembling the experience of eating a gusher), I personally was all about these personal soup hot pot style vendors we located on the first night. basically, you pick out skewers of vegetables, tofu, and meat (if you dare), combine with dried noodles of your choice, and put it all in a basket which they cook in this DELICIOUS broth and hand to you in a bowl. Amazing. Other big favorites was the morning fry-bred (if only we had cinnamon and sugar with us), and SATSUMAS! It took me a while to realize what exactly they were, but am now convinced they are a very close relative of the Satsuma oranges which you can get on the west coast around the holidays. They are also available now on the streets of Qufu, and have made our daily lunches ten times better.

The next day was Friday, and while the girls all packed up and prepared for their afternoon flight, Tom and I took to the city. First we traveled to the Shanghai Urban Planning and Exhibition Museum - an absolutely stunning five story exhibit of the city of Shanghai, past, present, and future. In 2010 the city of Shanghai hosts something called the "World Exhibition," and it looks simply amazing. The city is in the process of completing a completely new section of the city near the Pudong area of Shanghai - complete urban planning from the ground up. Tom and I agreed that it will be exciting to visit in 2010 and see some of these buildings which look to develop into just behemoth structures of modern urban architecture. Tom was looking to buy a sweater, so after spending the morning and part of the afternoon in the museum we went in search of a "cheap goods" market which we thought was located underneath the Urban Planning Museum. We of course were confused - the market we were looking for was located under the "Shanghai Science and Technology Museum," located across the water in a completely different part of the city. We spent the rest of the afternoon wondering around on a wild goose chase for the market, although I did almost buy a sweet coat (complete with belt buckle neck) in a store we found. That night Tom headed off as well, and I was left to myself in Shanghai for the evening and remaining day. That night on a whim I walked down the street until I found a beautiful little park on the water overlooking Pudong (where all the tall well lit buildings are - it made for an incredible night scene), and after enjoying the view for a while wandered back to the hostel, but not before purchasing a murse (man purse... it's really just a messenger bag) - an item I had been in search of all week.

I actually really enjoyed exploring Shanghai on my own for the better part of Saturday. I located the cheap good market Tom and I were in search of the day before (It was insane - you could buy everything from camera accessories to Chinese souvenirs to tailored suits to north face down jackets... some of the stuff total fakes, other stuff real, which just made you wonder how they were managing to sell authentic north face down jackets for insane, bargainable, prices), I sat and watched people fly kites near century park, took alot of really artsy fartsy photos of the steel structure located on the walk up to the Science and Technology Museum, bought a journal, and sat and considered the obnoxious train ride I had ahead of me.

I returned to the hostel, prepared, ate a quick dinner, wrote, and headed out. The train left from Shanghai South Station which was a good 45 minute subway ride away (I ended up standing for the subway ride as well, which I was less than thrilled about), but I arrived with plenty of time. The train itself could have been a lot worse - when the group of us had heard the description previously in the week, we were all (myself included) imagining a cattle car filled to the brim with people. In actuality, it was a normal train car with seats - the only difference were people located in the isles. I spent the first four hours or so leaning against a seat, writing off and on and listening to music. It actually went by quickly. Around midnight a string of three different students, all from Shandong University in Jinan approached me to have conversations (always the same conversation; always awkward, never interesting) with me, and that took me up to about 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning. One of them gave me a teapot "so we could be friends." Such is China. At around 4, after the Zhaozhuang train station, some seats opened up and I spent the last 45 minutes passed out.

I'm very happy to be back in Qufu - I think a city like Shanghai, filled with excitement and nightlife and many of the comforts of home I had been missing here in the Shandong countryside, is made all the more enjoyable to visit when you have a city like Qufu to return to. On the same coin, I'm very happy with Qufu and the quieter life I lead here, having experienced the fast paced China. Well that's all for now. I'm not going to apologize for a long post, I think they are quickly becoming the norm. One of these days I promise I'll get around to writing about the haphazard experiences/daily adventures of being a first time teacher - there are no travel plans in order for the near future, so have hope!

Picture of the week!

So it's everyone's favorite time of the week again - and this time 'round we've got some doosies.

First and foremost, lets talk about bags again. Those of you who have become faithful to my blog may remember a comment about street food and how EVERYTHING comes in little plastic bags, even soup. Well this past weekend in Qingdao we saw something which expanded the definition of everything. You guessed it, beer in a bag. Since the brewery is right there and readily accessible, unlike most of the beer we have found in China, Qingdao has beer on tap, and many small restaurants are able to provide this fine service - whats that you say? you want your beer to go? WHY OF COURSE! LET ME JUST GET A PLASTIC BAG.


My second pic(k) for this week, and my personal favorite, also hails from the city of Qingdao. Some of the things which we have been missing here in China as a group are the simple things... Some nice ambient jazz at a restaurant, maybe a cup of coffee, pizza, a nice beefsteak... like I said, the simple things; what's that you say - this place has jazz, pizza, coffee, simple meals, AND beefsteak?!? SIGN ME UP!It's also worth noting that JAZZBEEFSTEAK was located on the European Style Street, noted below...

That's all for now. We're heading to Shanghai at the end of the week for five days, so there may be a lull in material, but have no fear! I have high hopes that Shanghai will create not only marvelous stories, but many, many marvelous pictures.

Qingdao

So this weekend as some of you may already know, Rachel, Olivia, Lucy, Eliza and myself (Karrin stayed back and made sure Qufu didn't miss it's foreign teachers) all hopped a Friday afternoon bus and took the five hour ride to Qindgao, the famous city by the bay. What we had heard about the Qingdao up to the point of us actually visiting, was that it was very famous for beaches, it was beautiful, the Olympic sailing events took place there, and last but certainly not least, that it was the home of Tsingtao beer. Additionally we had heard that the city, formerly a German occupied city had an interesting blend of Bavarian and Chinese architecture, which proved true for the most part. As we walked through parts of the old city, the European influence was unmistakable.

Oh, and one more thing - our brief visit to Qingdao mysteriously coincided with the opening of the 19th annual Qingdao International Beer Festival, but we'll get to that in a minute.

First things first - getting there. Earlier in the week we all took students to the bus station to help us buy tickets, without any real trouble. I went last and was lucky enough to snag the last ticket for the 2:30 bus. We arrived at the station with plenty of time to spare - we were all in the terminal ready to go by 1:50, which by Chinese standards is ludicrously early for a bus (...so we were a bit nervous, it being our first bus trip without a translator). At any rate, as we sat in the station, watching everyone around us hurriedly get in lines at terminals and get on buses which didn't leave right away, we of course became worried that we wouldn't get good seats if we waited until 2:20 to board like our students had said. After fumbling with phrasebooks, pointing, grunting, and pantomiming our destination and time of departure we established that we should be leaving from terminal two, however the woman at terminal two kept telling us to sit down and wait, which got us even more nervous. Was she that person we had read so much about, trying to stick the foreigners with the bad seats? Knowing we didn't speak Mandarin, trying to squeeze the extra dollar out of us? Lucky for us, she wasn't pulling a fast one on us (that comes later in the trip) - she simply knew something we didn't. At about 2:20 (go figure) she comes over to the group of us, and says "Qingdao this way please" the five of us, relieved that we would finally be on our way, walked up to the gate, handed our tickets, walked outside to the buses, and continued to walk past all the buses... over toward the gate... and right for an old, rickety seven seater van. If only I had taken a picture of the van. At this point of course we were all thoroughly confused as to what was happening - were we really taking this rickety old thing all the way to Qingdao? Were they kidnapping us? ...oh well, no time for that now, everybody in the van. Luckily there were two other Chinese travelers with us, so we were generally sure they weren't in fact attempting to kidnap us, but it was still a bit unnerving. Turns out, the 2:30 Qingdao bus doesn't leave from Qufu, but rather it swings past on its way from another town. The rickety van pulls off the road next to the highway, the bus drops off the interstate and picks you up, and away you go. We of course took the last five seats on the bus (at least we had them was the feeling), and I ended up stuck in the very back with the middle seat (the one that opens up into the isle so when the driver slams on the breaks you fly all the way down the isle because there isn't a seat in front of you...), with two people on either side of me and no air vent. Did I mention it was a five hour ride? So it goes.

When we finally arrived in Qingdao after our long, terrifying ride (the driver was insane - even the Chinese passengers were angry and cursing under their breath) at about 8:15 at night. Our destination was a youth hostel we had located on hostel world international, however we neglected to have anyone translate the address and location into Chinese (why would we need to do that? It's just an address...) Taxi was the logical method of travel, and upon exiting the bus station we were greeted by a sea of them who we happily approached and began attempting the translation of our destination. Luckily Olivia's Lonely Planet guidebook had the address of the hostel in Chinese, but the cabby's didn't seem to have any idea on WHERE exactly the street was (this later made sense, once we realized exactly how massive Qingdao is...). Finally one of them seemed to understand our destination and held up a 5 and made the sign for 10, meaning he wanted 50 yuan to take us in his cab. Now is a good time for a brief lesson in the golden rules of Chinese cab drivers - always use the meter. always make sure they start the meter when you ENTER the cab (not keep it running from the previous fare). Make sure they actually know where they are going so they don't decide to drive around in circles to run up the meter. Upon realizing this guy wanted a very large sum of money for the ride we promptly walked away from the group of about 10 or so drivers who were all haggling over our fair and went to the street where other cabs would pull up every ten or fifteen seconds or so. Getting these cabs to take us was equally as difficult, but thanks to a very nice Chinese family who volunteered their English speaking daughter to translate for us, we made it (if i haven't mentioned it before now is a good time - in general, Chinese hospitality and kindness is unrivaled) to our "hostel."

I hesitate to call it a hostel, because as soon as we saw Kaiyue Youth Hostel, we knew it was going to be a good trip. The building itself is an old Christian Church from the 1920's - a five or so story building in the heart of old Qingdao. It was most a hotel attempting to disguise itself as a hostel, and charging you hostel rates. We had two rooms to our selves which were very comfortable and fully furnished, and we had our own bathroom (nicer than all of our bathrooms back here in Qufu). The picture is the room which Olivia, Rachel, and I stayed in. As you can see, not huge, but for a "hostel," it was fantastic.

The lounge/restaurant was the highlight a mood-lit room with big couches and personal booths, with a pool table lit with chill European style hanging lights, playing good ambient music, which blended well with the very relaxing water feature on the back wall made for a great atmosphere. The fare was the best part however - not only did they serve REAL drinks (not just Baijiu and beer), but they had pizza, french fries, western style breakfasts, the whole nine yards. We of course immediately ordered four pizza's which we promptly devoured, laughing hysterically. The hostel was full of other waigoren who were visiting for the festival and I'm sure they thought we were crazy - the pizza wasn't really that good, but to the five of us who had been away from anything resembling comfort food for almost four whole weeks, it was heaven. On Sunday when we left I took several photos of the lounge and upon returning to Qufu I attempted a Panorama of the lounge. It came out okay - well enough for you to see what the hostel lounge looked like.

After our pizza we decided to check out the nightlife and took a taxi across town to a place called The Lennon Bar" which apparently was where a lot of westerners liked to visit. It was pretty empty but there was a live band playing decent music, so we hung out for a bit before heading back to the hostel and eventually on to bed.

Saturday morning we woke up around 8:3o or 9 after sleeping peacefully. I tried the "American Style Breakfast" down in the lounge which was mediocre at best... the sausage was more rubber than meat, the "hash brown" was a silver dollar sized portion of something out of a freezer (which I found ironic because potatoes are abundant, and hash browns are one of the FEW things which they could very easily cook from scratch), but the eggs and toast were good. After I filled up on breakfast and the girls had their coffee we headed out to see the sights of Qingdao. We had a map with us and decided to try our luck at walking for a bit, and wound our way through the streets and eventually made our way to the coast. Qingdao has some cool things to see, as witnessed below: I Think my favorite is the sign explaining that it was in fact a "European Style
Street..." The picture of the skyline doesn't do the city justice - this is actually only a small section of the western part of the city. The much newer and much nicer central part of the city isn't pictured. I did However very much enjoy the stark contrast of the mountains rising high above the city just minutes from the water. I also really, really wish I had had climbing shoes, a week, and a whole lot of gear with me when I saw some of these mountains...

After a very fun afternoon enjoying the waterfront and surrounding parts of Qingdao, and after getting a delicious lunch at a place we found on the street, we decided it was definitely time for a visit to the beer festival. Who doesn't love international beer festivals? On our maps was the location of the "Qingdao International Beer City," which appeared to be a bit of a drive away, so instead of paying high taxi fares we took the number 4 bus which took us all the way across town to the beer festival - about a 45 minute ride. It was a very cool drive which ran along the southern border of the city (right on the water for parts) and gave us a very good feel for the layout of Qingdao and what it had to offer.

The beer festival was, in a word, fantastic. The "Beer City" is much like a fairground. Massive, filled with carnival rides, over priced food vendors, cheap fair goods (like hilarious beer hats), a giant statue of the world announcing your arrival at Qingdao International Beer City, and beer tents. Lots of beer tents. It was interesting to see the parents walking happily with their children to all the fair rides and events while being feet away from a MASSIVE tent where people were drinking themselves silly listening to techno at volumes beyond comprehension. There were about seven or 8 different German beer companies there, and we chose which ones to visit based partly on how loud it was inside their tent. We arrived at the festival at around 1:30 and wandered around for a bit, sampling food and just taking in the festival before exploring the beer tents themselves. There were a good number of westerners at the festival, however many of them European. The only other Americans we ran into were mostly college students studying abroad - however we never actually hung out with any groups of foreigners. Below is a picture of me holding a Keg of a delicious hefeweizen which we purchased at one point. It is important to note that the only beer you can get with any frequency in China is very light lagers, much like a Budweiser. It's better than that, but it's all the same style, so a change of pace was greatly appreciated. I sampled a delicious stout (well more of a brown than a stout) as well prior to the mini keg. We slowly tried different beers and enjoyed the stage shows of different tents for the better part of the afternoon, until about 5:00 in the afternoon or so, at which point we were all a bit weary. This turned out to be only the beginning of our experience at the beer festival - when it seemed as if we were all getting to the point of retiring back to the hostel for a nap followed by an excursion exploring the other nightlife options of Qingdao, a funny thing happened... Walking through one of the tents, we began to notice a startling increase in the crowds. Tables were filled - everybody was drinking. And sure enough, exactly what we had read about began to happen... tables of Chinese businessmen, in varying states of intoxication, began standing up whenever we drew near, began shouting and waving at us at the top of their lungs, and immediately either pouring us glasses of whatever beer they were drinking, or just skipping the middle man and handing us the pitchers and running off to buy new ones. This went on from about 6 to 10. I danced alot, Eliza was interviewed by some Chinese news station, we were challenged to more gambei's (bottoms up toast, usually put forth in a very loud yell, kind of like GAMBEEIIIII!!!, which it is of course extremely impolite to refuse, especially if your host is providing the drinks...) than I'd care to count. we somehow managed taxi's back to the hostel, the girls stayed down in the lounge talking with some people from Shanghai, I went to sleep, and that's all that needs to be said about the Qingdao beer festival...

The next morning Lucy and Eliza caught a 7:50 am bus back to Qufu, due to obligations back at Qushida. Rachel, Olivia, and myself slept in and took the 3:40 bus, after of course visiting "technology street" so Rachel could get an external hard drive (a ridiculous street dedicated to back alley computer vendors selling motherboards out of piles on the street mixed in with big box stores featuring name brands such as Lenovo, Apple, Dell, etc.). The bus ride home was in itself uneventful - long, however not as painful (we all had decent seats this time). The fun began when we arrived in Qufu...

Or at least the outskirts of Qufu. Remember how the bus picked us up before on the side of the road on the outskirts of town? Well this time we were prepared - we figured they might pull the same stunt on us, and sure enough the bus pulled up along side the side of the road and the driver and his assistant gruffly pointed out the door and made grunting noises indicating we should get off. The only problem with this however, was there wasn't the rickety old van to take us into the city. There was however a single car with a driver who came over and began gesturing at us to come over and get in, and the bus driver(s) almost insisted that we do so. Our initial thought was that there were only three of us this time, so why send a van when you could just send a car? But wait - what about the other seven Chinese passengers who just got off the bus too, and who after a heated and angry discussion with the bus driver decided to walk into the night toward the signs pointing for Qufu? Oh hell...

By this time of course we were already halfway in the car with our bags in the trunk and before we knew what was happening we were driving away, luckily toward Qufu. The driver of course wanted 40 yuan to take us the remaining distance into the city. Rachel called one of her students who has been extremely helpful at a variety of different times here in Qufu, and we handed the phone to the driver so we could figure out what the HELL was going on and to figure out whether or not we had just been kidnapped.

She talked him down to 30. He took us right to the front gates of the college, probably would have been about a 15 - 20 yuan cab ride, so it wasn't terrible... but we definitely got the shaft. The bus was supposed to of course drive us all the way into the city, which was why the Chinese passengers were so upset. John, our guru and all knowing master when it comes to Qufu (graduated Skidmore in 2004, has been in China off and on since, however now he works about 45 minutes away in another city), said it was probably sketchy bus drivers and the guy in the car was probably a friend of theirs. So not everybody is all about showing hospitality. All in all though I've had FAR more positive experiences than negative ones, and it makes for a good story. The weekend as a whole was amazing - I loved traveling and can't wait for next week when the six of us will travel to Shanghai and meet up with Travis and Carrie, two more Skidmore teachers who are in the south of China.

Well that's all for now, sorry this was such a long post! Gives you all something to read off and on for a few days... keep you busy.