Well folks, it's December in Shenzhen and after 4 months of being away I found myself telling mum today that it's not America that I miss right now, but my family and friends. If I could just sea freight all the people I care about into the PRC, then I'd be just fabulous here indefinetely. I also kinda miss limitless news sources at my fingertips and Crystal Light, but other than that.....
A friend of mine went to Shanghai a couple of weeks ago from Beijing on a business trip and was humbled by the fact that overt censorship was still present. She'd be watching CNN and then the TV would go all blue and silent when EU or US members of parliament/gov't would begin to talk to of the necessary opening up of China and the dreaded word, democratization.
Mum asked me today if I thought that China was going to end up being the feared nation that the US is painting it to be in the next decade or so and even though I remain largely uneducated on the matter, I would hazard to guess that no, it will not pose the threat to world hegemony that the US predicts. I say this for two reasons. Number one: While China is no doubt turning out 6 times more engineers each year compared to the US (350K vs.75K and in that 75K in the US 25K of them are foreign-born) each year which is completely worrisome, the R&D and innovation in the US is unparalled. In America it seems to me that alternative thinking and imagination is praised and even incouraged from a rather young age. Children are taught to put words to their dreams and create stories and build models. This translates, I think, to later in life men and women being great innovators. In China, creativity is not strengthened as a child. You are taught through repetition and copying other's thinking. Thus, the Chinese can become great engineers, but I don't think they are as yet great innovators. I joke that China may be one of the only places in the world where a degree in reverse engineering might actually be an option. B/c if some poor guy spends 9 years creating something groundbreaking in the US or India or wherever, I guarentee some guy sitting in a garage here can take apart said apparatus, put it back together and in three months know how to copy it exactly. I came to this rationalization while teaching middle schoolers here. I highly encourage the use of imagination and creative thought in my classes and finally, after three months, my students get it. They understand that they don't have to stand up in class and give me a response from a book they've read, that they are allowed to let their mind wander and engage the fantastic. My mother then said to me, well if 25K people are coming to America each year to obtain higher education, then they're no doubt coming into contact with great innovators and therefore will learn to become an innovator. I agree with the first part of what she said, that overseas students will be in the presence of innnovation, but I don't think it'll awaken some innate force of innovation inside themselves. I think innovation and the creative mind comes from years of development and 4 years of advanced degree study will not yield the same kind of R&D that 25 years of progressional development will. However I could be wrong; time will tell.
Point Two: Everyone and everything here is too darn disorganized and unplanned for it to be a serious threat to the world at this point. The concept of Nowism would not fly too well for a nation aiming to be a hegemon.
Here's another random observance of mine of recent. I was running the other morning, incidently falling and tearing my sweatpants and doing some serious scraping of one knee was also part of this run, and I run about the time that 500 or so women walk to work in the factories near the highway where I live. They are always very pleasant to me and smile and move aside while I run, however I noticed yesterday their apallingly messy eating habits. Roadside breakfasts are usually baozi of some sort and they're put into little plastic baggies and you eat out of the baggie so your perpetually (and i do mean perpetually) dirty hands dont screw with the sanitation of your breakfast. Well the access road along the highway that I run on has trash cans about every 75 or so meters....very nice...one for recyclables and one for reg. garbage. Well not one of these smiling polite women ever manage to get their bags into the trash. They finish off their breakfast and toss the bag on the ground, or leave it on the chest-high bushes to the right of the pavement. The same happens at lunch with bamboo chopsticks and styrofoam containers. It's a bit disheartening really, no one ever throws anything into the trash can.
On the topics of trash cans, I was talking with my tutor last week about the beggars in the city. I had heard a rumor that all the deformed people asking for money downtown were actually bussed in from far away and that all their money went to a company. John told me that this was true. You may be astonished at the commercialization of begging, but it was the same a decade ago in Jakarta while I was living there. The old women with babies who would tap the windows of vehicles at stoplights in the Jakarta suburbs were part of a large money-making scheme. The old women would rent out the babies from poorer younger women, then proceed to starve the child such that it would elicit more heartache from car passengers and thereby increase the likelihood of giving money. Well here in Shenzhen most of the beggars downtown are deformed...missing arms, legs, many appendages twisted into very unnatural positions etc. They apparently come from two regions of China and bosses will go up there, find people with physical disabilities and bring them to Shenzhen, b/c there is money to be made here. People are rich; they have a greater liklihood of making money here than in some village in the countryside in Central China. Often these bosses will further disfigure the beggars by pouring scalding water on their bodies so they will have pocked and burned skin. They are placed in about 500m increments along the 'beautiful road' that runs through the whole of downtown. I realize that some foreigners here feel very sorry for them and give them money, but you have to understand that the beggars don't get that money...it goes back to the laoban or 'boss' who lurks in the shadows. That money will just finance the bringing of more disfigured people into the city, the laoban don't care whethere these people live or die. If you all saw the scene it would become obvious to that someone works behind the scenes.....how could a man with no legs and only one arm climb up two flights of stairs to lay down at the top of a pedestrain flyover? It's really sad. Sometimes my friend Jesse will give them his baozi if he has extra. At least with food there is a greater chance that it will benefit the beggar and not the boss.
However, there is a rather interesting 'beggar' who literally resides in front of the trash can on either the north side or the south side (depending on the day of the week) of the KeXue Guan metro stop downtown. She sits in front of a trash can from morning till night eating from the trash can. Now I've seen this many other places in Shenzhen, but this women does not look like a beggar....there's not other way to say it but she's fat...therefore she eats...alot...not the mark of a starving homeless person. Every time I walk by the metro stop she is there eating, but she doesn't have a cup for money, so she's not your typical street vagabond. Well I didn't notice this, but friends of mine have....she's a fake beggar. You see, when you pass her you notice that she's only ever eating white rice and the rice is along the front panel of the rubbish bin, not actually touching anything in the garbage....she dumps her own rice into the garbage only to eat it out again herself! It was documented by a friend of mine who saw her open her bookbag and take out a container of rice, dump it in the garbage and slowly feed her and her child. I've seen men with fancy cameras snap photos of her and except for widespread recognition, I'm not entirely sure what she gets out of being the Garbage Can Woman at KeXue Guan stop.
Final odditity for today. I noticed in a class of 30 students yesterday that 21 of them were wearing glasses and the 9 that weren't were sticking their fingers in their eyes (do i know anyone like this CARLY?!) while watching the American Commercials on the overhead that i brought in for a class on Advertising. That seems like a wildly large percentage of people who cannot see, and that class isn't special, it's the norm. The glasses industry here is HUGE! Incidentally, it also seems that every single woman in this country has bangs too.
Oh wait, one more. I was in Wal-Mart two days ago and all their christmas stuff was out and they had Santa hats. I was going to buy one to wear to class this month, but all of them have these stupid blonde braids sewn onto the side. I say stupid for two reasons....did Santa have blond braided hair? and 2.....who in this country actually has natural blonde hair? The workers in the store, men and women alike were all sporting this braid-hats with their naturally black hair sticking out in all directions...ho ho ho...Merry Christmas China!
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Sunday, November 27, 2005
While you shopped on Black Friday, I saw Jackie Chan!
That's right folks. For one night and one night only, I was a VIP in China. I, along with 50 of my closest teacher friends were taken to Guangzhou to attend the opening ceremonies of the International Culture and Tourism Festival. We sat in a special section, row 2, yes that close! We travelled to Guangzhou on coaches that were lined up with police escorts on all sides, man I felt important. We had dinner in town and then came the ceremony...think Olympic Games Opening event folks, there were fireworks, there were lion dancers, there was flamenco dancing, there were pop-stars, there were the finalists for the Miss World Model Contest, there were men beating water drums, there were acrobats, there were unbelievably ostentatious costumes......and best of all...there was Jackie Chan! He was wheeled in on a big float and sang a song. It was awesome and totally made my night. So yes, I can truthfully say I live in China and I have seen Jackie Chan. Though, the most entertaining part might have been the giant 150 foot long dragon that shot off fireworks b/c it was being carried by a battallion of fellas wearing....well wearing only little white boxers. I couldn't quite understand it, maybe it was because there were sparks flying everywhere and they wanted the carryers to wear fire-retardant clothing, but one would think they could have made a little more a covering garment with said fire-retardant cloth.
Saturday, November 26, 2005
All that for only one cup of coffee?
I've been rather lazy lately about posting updates on goings on here on this side of the world...many apologies; the creative juices have just not been flowing.
Last Monday night, when we were in the middle of our cold front....the lows were in the upper 50s and highs near 70...I was absolutely freezing and decided I desperately needed to have a cup of coffee. Coffee contains the perfect percentage blend of warmth and caffeine so that I can finish my scholarship essays for law school, you know, to keep the blood flowing in my caffeine system.
Quick aside: you are probably laughing when I say it's cold in Shenzhen knowing full well that i reside just north of the equator, but when you live in an apt. that doesn't have a heater and is covered by stone floors...you'd be surprised at just how chilly it can feel. When the outside temp is 58, my apt. temp is probably no warmer than 60. Thus, I donned sweatpants, a fleece, some snazzy patterned socks with pigs or flamingos and slept under three blankets. Now i've got a huge incentive to finish the hat that I've been knitting; it'd be a great addition to my I'm freezing cold clothes, muhaha. Fortunately for me, it's warmer this week before it turns cold again.
Anyway, back to my coffee. I had been doing the China life (ie street food, noodles, steamed bread, chinese tea) pretty seriously for the past few weeks and so I decided I'd hop a bus downtown to starbucks and not only drink my overpriced yet amazing cup of coffee at said bastion of all things America, but also use their free wireless to research some scholarships as well as reading their free copy of the South China Morning Post. You see, I was going to get my moneys worth out of that $1.25US large cup of coffee (that's completely expensive here...that'd buy me 36 baozi (steamed buns) from my favourite street vendor (on a HUNGRY DAY I could eat 3)).
Once again returning to the point, after classes are over for the afternoon I walk into one of the swanky malls along Shennan road that houses a HagenDaaz (sugary liquid gold to Chinese) and a Starbucks. I order my coffee and oddly enough I have to wait for it longer than the man who smugly ordered a 'zhong bei' cappuccino in front of me (I'm damn convinced that 'midsize cup' is the only thing that man knew how to say in Chinese, besides 'fapiao' or 'receipt' so he could charge it to his corportate expense account).
Apparently not many people order coffee here, b/c the other time I came in to have a cup, they had to make it fresh too...odd. Everyone is too busy drinking Green Tea Frappuccinos or something. As i'm putting in milk and sugar (they import their 2% milk from the US b/c all they have here is whole milk) a man comes up behind me and uses the following astonishingly lame line on me: "excuse me, but I just really must tell you that when you smile, your face has the most breathtaking look." Good thing I wasn't actually drinking my coffee at the time, b/c I would wager a fair bet that I would have spat my coffee all over him, perhaps scarring him beyond recognition. I smiled said thank you for the comment and he continued on his way. However, no sooner I had replaced the lid on my freshly-brewed cup of coffee...but cheesy compliment man was back. He asked if I wished to have my drink with him and his friend who were sitting outside. (By the way, this was not in Chinese, he was a foreigner).
I had come to Starbucks to work, but I don't often talk to forgeiners here and I thought...15 minutes...sure why not. I sit down and learn that the man with the line was Lounis, from Tunisia, and his friend was from Canada. We chatted about life here for awhile and they told me they were both partners in startup joint-venture companies here. Lounis' friend Karim come up a bit later and he joined us. Karim is from Morocco. Thus, besides the fact that the whole scenario began with a horrible pickup line that I am sure Lounis uses on every woman here in Szn, the afternoon was rather pleasant. See, we ended up talking about world politics and it was most interesting. In America it is not often that you get viewpoints from three different enthnicities, rooted around three different religions. We shared stories of childhoods...I at least felt I fit in with Lounis and Karim b/c i grew up in Asia and Europe while Ian....he was a Canadian through and through. We talked about terrorism and Karim told me of a bombing near his home in Casablanca in 2001 that nearly killed his father while he was playing bingo. It was a suicide bomber out to target Muslims. None of these men were self-professed academians, none of them spouted out pompous theoretical matter in order to back up points that were weakly posed. Karim even drew a clever analogy between UAEFA cup footballing in Europe and terrorists and suicide bombers, truly priceless. An older man from England joined us later and put in his two cents on world politics. While I did not use the free wireless, nor did I read the free newspaper, my $1.25 spent on coffee that afternoon was more than recouped via enlightening conversation. Plus, each of the fellas proposed to me at least once during it all. Boys....
Last Monday night, when we were in the middle of our cold front....the lows were in the upper 50s and highs near 70...I was absolutely freezing and decided I desperately needed to have a cup of coffee. Coffee contains the perfect percentage blend of warmth and caffeine so that I can finish my scholarship essays for law school, you know, to keep the blood flowing in my caffeine system.
Quick aside: you are probably laughing when I say it's cold in Shenzhen knowing full well that i reside just north of the equator, but when you live in an apt. that doesn't have a heater and is covered by stone floors...you'd be surprised at just how chilly it can feel. When the outside temp is 58, my apt. temp is probably no warmer than 60. Thus, I donned sweatpants, a fleece, some snazzy patterned socks with pigs or flamingos and slept under three blankets. Now i've got a huge incentive to finish the hat that I've been knitting; it'd be a great addition to my I'm freezing cold clothes, muhaha. Fortunately for me, it's warmer this week before it turns cold again.
Anyway, back to my coffee. I had been doing the China life (ie street food, noodles, steamed bread, chinese tea) pretty seriously for the past few weeks and so I decided I'd hop a bus downtown to starbucks and not only drink my overpriced yet amazing cup of coffee at said bastion of all things America, but also use their free wireless to research some scholarships as well as reading their free copy of the South China Morning Post. You see, I was going to get my moneys worth out of that $1.25US large cup of coffee (that's completely expensive here...that'd buy me 36 baozi (steamed buns) from my favourite street vendor (on a HUNGRY DAY I could eat 3)).
Once again returning to the point, after classes are over for the afternoon I walk into one of the swanky malls along Shennan road that houses a HagenDaaz (sugary liquid gold to Chinese) and a Starbucks. I order my coffee and oddly enough I have to wait for it longer than the man who smugly ordered a 'zhong bei' cappuccino in front of me (I'm damn convinced that 'midsize cup' is the only thing that man knew how to say in Chinese, besides 'fapiao' or 'receipt' so he could charge it to his corportate expense account).
Apparently not many people order coffee here, b/c the other time I came in to have a cup, they had to make it fresh too...odd. Everyone is too busy drinking Green Tea Frappuccinos or something. As i'm putting in milk and sugar (they import their 2% milk from the US b/c all they have here is whole milk) a man comes up behind me and uses the following astonishingly lame line on me: "excuse me, but I just really must tell you that when you smile, your face has the most breathtaking look." Good thing I wasn't actually drinking my coffee at the time, b/c I would wager a fair bet that I would have spat my coffee all over him, perhaps scarring him beyond recognition. I smiled said thank you for the comment and he continued on his way. However, no sooner I had replaced the lid on my freshly-brewed cup of coffee...but cheesy compliment man was back. He asked if I wished to have my drink with him and his friend who were sitting outside. (By the way, this was not in Chinese, he was a foreigner).
I had come to Starbucks to work, but I don't often talk to forgeiners here and I thought...15 minutes...sure why not. I sit down and learn that the man with the line was Lounis, from Tunisia, and his friend was from Canada. We chatted about life here for awhile and they told me they were both partners in startup joint-venture companies here. Lounis' friend Karim come up a bit later and he joined us. Karim is from Morocco. Thus, besides the fact that the whole scenario began with a horrible pickup line that I am sure Lounis uses on every woman here in Szn, the afternoon was rather pleasant. See, we ended up talking about world politics and it was most interesting. In America it is not often that you get viewpoints from three different enthnicities, rooted around three different religions. We shared stories of childhoods...I at least felt I fit in with Lounis and Karim b/c i grew up in Asia and Europe while Ian....he was a Canadian through and through. We talked about terrorism and Karim told me of a bombing near his home in Casablanca in 2001 that nearly killed his father while he was playing bingo. It was a suicide bomber out to target Muslims. None of these men were self-professed academians, none of them spouted out pompous theoretical matter in order to back up points that were weakly posed. Karim even drew a clever analogy between UAEFA cup footballing in Europe and terrorists and suicide bombers, truly priceless. An older man from England joined us later and put in his two cents on world politics. While I did not use the free wireless, nor did I read the free newspaper, my $1.25 spent on coffee that afternoon was more than recouped via enlightening conversation. Plus, each of the fellas proposed to me at least once during it all. Boys....
Friday, November 25, 2005
Were you mugged or was your wallet stolen?
Happy Black Friday. While all of America parttakes in what is called the biggest shopping day of the year, but in truth really isn't (december 20-24 usually owns the true biggest shopping day) I will be teaching and attending the opening ceremonies of the Chinese International Culture Festival in Guangzhou this evening. I am a guest of the education bureau and my colleagues and I will be accompanied by police escorts to Guangzhou. This makes me feel rather superficially important.
This last week in has been rather action-packed, beginning with the events that unfolded on Friday-Saturday. First you must think, which is worce, to be mugged or to have your purse stolen? In actual fact, the two have the same meaning, but for some reason here in China, people say "oh, you've had your purse stolen" while in New York for example, you would say, "I was mugged." On Friday, three friends and I went to Bao'an (one of the 6 districts in Szn, but it is one of the two which lies outside the SEZ (Special Economic Zone)) to visit Meredith for the night and stay at her school. Friday was quite a bit of fun, when we got to her busstop, we all took motorcycle rides to her school which was about 1km away down a desolate road. That was only the second time in my life that I had ridden on one, the first being with my dad in Phuket when I was about 12. We then were invited to a dinner by her headmaster and vice principals which was very kind of them, but also rather strange as it was 4 twenty-something girls and 4 forty-something fellas at this dinner. They all just assumed that we all didn't speak Chinese b/c Meredith doesn't, so while they were chattering away about us on the other side of the table, I was the fly-on-the-wall and proceeded to tell the ladies what the guys were saying. For some reason Chinese people are obsessed with talking about my "gao bizi" or "pointy nose." They got a lot of time and mileage out of that one, yeesh. We spent the rest of the evening wandering down a local shopping street. It was hilarious; our mission for the evening was for everyone to buy something for under 10 kuai (1.25). We were getting close to the end of the street and only meredith had found a 5 kuai shirt....honestly at that point I couldn't see myself coughing up even 60cents for a shirt that I could have made with a Bedazzler when I was 6 years old. But....we happened upon a 5 kuai bin of shirts that was filled with cotton tshirts with a mushroom applique in the left corner. We decided that each of us needed one in a different color and here was the criteria for the winning shirts: find the ones with the fewest stains and the least amount of snags and holes! Ha, have you ever decided upon shopping goods that way? Thus, 10 minutes later we were each in possession of a holey-moldy-mushroom shirt that each of us willingly sported while playing euchre and choking down 1 gross bottle of chinese beer between the four of us and the outside "jungle bar" by Mere's school.
After promptly falling asleep at midnight due to exhaustion, we awoke by 9:30 Saturday morning and were ready for the highlight of out trip: a 10kuai hair wash at Mere's local salon. It was lovely, for one hour I got a scalp massage, back massage, and they even loosened the joints in my arms (think made them tingle to the point where I couldn't feel them). On our way out to the busstop from the local market street afterward was when our perfect weekend turned into the worst weekend. The four of us were walking one direction and apparently 2 men came up behind us on a motorcycle, slashed jenny's purse strap with a knife, yanked it from her and drove off. They were too far away for mere and I to run and catch them. I yelled at a police officer across the street and said in chinese "look, the thief took her purse" and I pointed to the direction they went, but the officer did nothing, just continued peddling on the bike in the opposite direction. I couldn't believe it, hundreds of people saw what happened and yet did nothing! Jenny was beyond distraught and rightly so. The thieves had cut her under her arm while stealing the bag and she was bleeding and they also had stolen quite the loot. She had 800kuai, a US$750 camera and a bank card in her purse. Julia and I got Jenny on the bus and we headed home, while meredith headed back to her school.
I got a call later that afternoon from Mere telling me that as she was walking home, Aaron (her boyfriend who is with here here) called and she pulled out her cell phone and as she did so, another man on a motorcycle zoome by and grabbed her purse. Luckily since emotions were already running rather high due to the previous incident, she flipped out, yanked the purse back and started screaming, so the man just drove off without the purse.
What a saturday. So, my best friend here had her purse stolen, but if that had happened in NY, you all would have called it a mugging. It's the same thing, however stealing here happens much much much more often. Jenny was lucky not to have been hurt. Over the last week I have heard other more unfortunate theft stories like where motorcyle thieves don't actually cleanly cut the purse away from the victim and the person is actually dragged behind the motorcycle for hundreds of meters until the strap or purse actually breaks. Pretty bad huh.
Basic chinese policy is to mind your own business. This translates into watching people get stolen from and do nothing about it. My tutor John told me on Wednesday that last week he prevented a little child thief from stealing a women's wallet at a downtown busstop, and pretty much everyone at the stop scorned him afterward for getting involved in business that was not his own. I found this interesting, b/c john paints shenzhen people as people who keep to themselves and mind their own business and yet as I walk down any road in china, I can hear people talking about me, I can see men who ride their bikes into tree trunks b/c their head is screwed so far backward b/c they're staring at me. Thus, I have yet to marry these two forms of thinking. Time will I suppose.
This last week in has been rather action-packed, beginning with the events that unfolded on Friday-Saturday. First you must think, which is worce, to be mugged or to have your purse stolen? In actual fact, the two have the same meaning, but for some reason here in China, people say "oh, you've had your purse stolen" while in New York for example, you would say, "I was mugged." On Friday, three friends and I went to Bao'an (one of the 6 districts in Szn, but it is one of the two which lies outside the SEZ (Special Economic Zone)) to visit Meredith for the night and stay at her school. Friday was quite a bit of fun, when we got to her busstop, we all took motorcycle rides to her school which was about 1km away down a desolate road. That was only the second time in my life that I had ridden on one, the first being with my dad in Phuket when I was about 12. We then were invited to a dinner by her headmaster and vice principals which was very kind of them, but also rather strange as it was 4 twenty-something girls and 4 forty-something fellas at this dinner. They all just assumed that we all didn't speak Chinese b/c Meredith doesn't, so while they were chattering away about us on the other side of the table, I was the fly-on-the-wall and proceeded to tell the ladies what the guys were saying. For some reason Chinese people are obsessed with talking about my "gao bizi" or "pointy nose." They got a lot of time and mileage out of that one, yeesh. We spent the rest of the evening wandering down a local shopping street. It was hilarious; our mission for the evening was for everyone to buy something for under 10 kuai (1.25). We were getting close to the end of the street and only meredith had found a 5 kuai shirt....honestly at that point I couldn't see myself coughing up even 60cents for a shirt that I could have made with a Bedazzler when I was 6 years old. But....we happened upon a 5 kuai bin of shirts that was filled with cotton tshirts with a mushroom applique in the left corner. We decided that each of us needed one in a different color and here was the criteria for the winning shirts: find the ones with the fewest stains and the least amount of snags and holes! Ha, have you ever decided upon shopping goods that way? Thus, 10 minutes later we were each in possession of a holey-moldy-mushroom shirt that each of us willingly sported while playing euchre and choking down 1 gross bottle of chinese beer between the four of us and the outside "jungle bar" by Mere's school.
After promptly falling asleep at midnight due to exhaustion, we awoke by 9:30 Saturday morning and were ready for the highlight of out trip: a 10kuai hair wash at Mere's local salon. It was lovely, for one hour I got a scalp massage, back massage, and they even loosened the joints in my arms (think made them tingle to the point where I couldn't feel them). On our way out to the busstop from the local market street afterward was when our perfect weekend turned into the worst weekend. The four of us were walking one direction and apparently 2 men came up behind us on a motorcycle, slashed jenny's purse strap with a knife, yanked it from her and drove off. They were too far away for mere and I to run and catch them. I yelled at a police officer across the street and said in chinese "look, the thief took her purse" and I pointed to the direction they went, but the officer did nothing, just continued peddling on the bike in the opposite direction. I couldn't believe it, hundreds of people saw what happened and yet did nothing! Jenny was beyond distraught and rightly so. The thieves had cut her under her arm while stealing the bag and she was bleeding and they also had stolen quite the loot. She had 800kuai, a US$750 camera and a bank card in her purse. Julia and I got Jenny on the bus and we headed home, while meredith headed back to her school.
I got a call later that afternoon from Mere telling me that as she was walking home, Aaron (her boyfriend who is with here here) called and she pulled out her cell phone and as she did so, another man on a motorcycle zoome by and grabbed her purse. Luckily since emotions were already running rather high due to the previous incident, she flipped out, yanked the purse back and started screaming, so the man just drove off without the purse.
What a saturday. So, my best friend here had her purse stolen, but if that had happened in NY, you all would have called it a mugging. It's the same thing, however stealing here happens much much much more often. Jenny was lucky not to have been hurt. Over the last week I have heard other more unfortunate theft stories like where motorcyle thieves don't actually cleanly cut the purse away from the victim and the person is actually dragged behind the motorcycle for hundreds of meters until the strap or purse actually breaks. Pretty bad huh.
Basic chinese policy is to mind your own business. This translates into watching people get stolen from and do nothing about it. My tutor John told me on Wednesday that last week he prevented a little child thief from stealing a women's wallet at a downtown busstop, and pretty much everyone at the stop scorned him afterward for getting involved in business that was not his own. I found this interesting, b/c john paints shenzhen people as people who keep to themselves and mind their own business and yet as I walk down any road in china, I can hear people talking about me, I can see men who ride their bikes into tree trunks b/c their head is screwed so far backward b/c they're staring at me. Thus, I have yet to marry these two forms of thinking. Time will I suppose.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Toasters, Regulations and Cooking a Gorilla
Ooof, it's been awhile, but alas I am back....and not really ladden with any comical stories of the present. Unless......you find it funny to be 'taught' how to do things by 12-15 year olds as I chose to do for English class last week. It was their midterm prep week and I wanted it to be light-hearted, so the gist of the lesson was that the students had to break into groups and teach the class how to do something. We practiced with "how to make rice." They told me step by step how to make the rice....elementary level classes told me to 'fire the rice' instead of heat it in the cooker, while the advanced classes told me how to first plant and harvest the rice. The presentations of teaching were priceless...among the mundane How to make a cake and how to plant a tree (in their english book) were splendid presentations on How to capture and cook a gorilla, How to ride an eleophant in the city, How to cheat on an exam, How to copy homework, How to rob a bank (complete with ladies stockings to be worn over your face to shield your identity), and my favourite....how to kidnap an airplane. Now, before you get all worried about terrorism, it was all in good fun. There were four funny guys in that group and they claimed that in order to properly procure said plane, you would need a thin man, a fat man, a short man and a tall man (coincidence....these 4 boys fit the bill just right). The fat man would drive the plane, the tall man would scare the people, the short man would play with the children so they wouldn't be afraid and start crying and my favourite....the thin man would count the money and drink the coffee. I encourage the use of imagination in my class....otherwise i'd die listening to 16 classes all teaching me how to plant trees. They got the biggest yuck out of me sitting at one of their desks while others presented. I pretended to be an annoying american student waving my hand really high and back and forth and yelling 'teacher teacher teacher, i have a QUESTION!' I'd make the 'teacher' call on me, then he'd make me stand up and I'd ask some stupid question pertinent to what they were teaching, just to make sure the actually understood what they were saying and weren't just reading someone else's words. It's coming back to haunt me though....my students now wave their hands furiously and exclaim.."TEACHER TEACHEr, I have a question!" So long as their not shouting though, I welcome an inquisitive nature, even if they're really just secretively making fun of me.
This week I've started teaching a class on Celebrity TV interviews.....we all watched students pretend to be everyone from Yang Liwei (first Chinese astronaut) to Eminem, to Lei feng (product of propaganda in the early 20th century) to Bruce Lee. It was great. My students are finally relaxing and talking more freely in class...without chaos ensuing.
Random thought.....I think I've figured out the key difference between China and Hong Kong...Imperialism struck the territory (i.e. the formidable British in the 19th century) and basically punished people for breaking rules, hence....order! Thus the main disjunct between HK and China....besides a lack of business regulation on the part of the Chinese, is that there is order in HK. People stop at cross walks and wait for the little green man before crossing the street, people line up on the right side of the elevators to let people pass on the left, heck....people actually form lines, people follow rules printed on signs. In China, if a sign says there is no spitting or public urination, i gaurentee that aforementioned sign is peed and spit on daily, thereby fully neglecting the importance of printed rules. Ha. Back to crossing the street. I was walking across Dongmen Lu the other day (main shopping road in the city), and around 4 in the afternoon, gov't appointed traffic assisters come out to make sure that pedestrians are following the traffic patterns. This is actually useful, b/c when 1000 people are trying to cross the street at once, as well as 1000s of cars going all directions, chaos can ensue, mainly b/c daring pedestrians try to cross when the little man isn't green. Well public safety man gets a red vest (think Wal-mart blue vest, only in this case..it's red) and a whistle and his job is to whistle at people to deter them from illegally walking across the street at the wrong time. On this particular afternoon, a daring man on a Flying Bird bicycle crosses the street at the wrong time and turns a deaf ear to 4 traffic men and their whistles. When he gets to my side of the road, traffic man is waiting for him, grabs his bike and gets ready to send him to the policeman standing behind me to get a ticket or something. Well the dude on the bike has a girl sitting on the back and she promptly bolts down the street. The man then begins to verbally assault the red-vested whistler, and when he does not let go of the bike, bike man punches red-vest man in the face. A full on brawl breaks out, and everyone just watches; such is the mentality here. People just watch others be pick-pocketed and i'm sure are just silently thanking god that they weren't the one being pickpocketed....in this case everyone was thinking that were lucky that the cops didn't catch them.
I bought the most amazing addition to my apartment yesterday. I went to meet a friend for dinner and procure a toaster. This toaster is the best use of US$7 ever! It's waaay cute...white and green, and it makes toast. That was a key part. The only problem here is that bread is very large and square (comes in bags of 8 large square slices) and thus when I pull the lever down to begin the magical toasting process....about 1.5 inches of the bread sticks out of the toaster....so a little 180 degree bread rotation is necessary mid-toasting. However, despite the extra work, the toast and jam is amazing.
Oh and for the most random element of the last two weeks.....no I haven't found a job yet...but...for all of you who think Customs officials are scary and official and have power to keep you in and out of particular countries.....just learn the native language..apparently that's the way to their heart. On my way back from HK last Thursday I wrote my address in chinese on my arrival card as sort of a knee-jerk rx..i'm not sure how to write it in english to be honest. The customs officer reads it aloud and then I tell him that's right, that I am a teacher at the school next door to my building and that I was in HK b/c my students have midterm exams. Well that sent his eyeballs out to Jupiter and back...what?!?!!!! the blonde speaks Chinese? So then he, the customs officer...highest upholder of the Chinese law, asks me for my phone number. I told him i didn't know it...like hell I want to give out my number to a stranger, let alone someone who could change my address to "cell 2 Chinese Jail" at will. Then he asked me for my address. I played stupid foreigner and told him i didn't understand. He was very persistent. What is the world coming to? Last time I left the country the customs man didn't believe my passport photo bore any resemblence to the actual me...this time he asks me out. Strange!
The temperature dropped 30 degrees today...it was 65 and raining, completely depressing. Can it really be the middle of November already?
This week I've started teaching a class on Celebrity TV interviews.....we all watched students pretend to be everyone from Yang Liwei (first Chinese astronaut) to Eminem, to Lei feng (product of propaganda in the early 20th century) to Bruce Lee. It was great. My students are finally relaxing and talking more freely in class...without chaos ensuing.
Random thought.....I think I've figured out the key difference between China and Hong Kong...Imperialism struck the territory (i.e. the formidable British in the 19th century) and basically punished people for breaking rules, hence....order! Thus the main disjunct between HK and China....besides a lack of business regulation on the part of the Chinese, is that there is order in HK. People stop at cross walks and wait for the little green man before crossing the street, people line up on the right side of the elevators to let people pass on the left, heck....people actually form lines, people follow rules printed on signs. In China, if a sign says there is no spitting or public urination, i gaurentee that aforementioned sign is peed and spit on daily, thereby fully neglecting the importance of printed rules. Ha. Back to crossing the street. I was walking across Dongmen Lu the other day (main shopping road in the city), and around 4 in the afternoon, gov't appointed traffic assisters come out to make sure that pedestrians are following the traffic patterns. This is actually useful, b/c when 1000 people are trying to cross the street at once, as well as 1000s of cars going all directions, chaos can ensue, mainly b/c daring pedestrians try to cross when the little man isn't green. Well public safety man gets a red vest (think Wal-mart blue vest, only in this case..it's red) and a whistle and his job is to whistle at people to deter them from illegally walking across the street at the wrong time. On this particular afternoon, a daring man on a Flying Bird bicycle crosses the street at the wrong time and turns a deaf ear to 4 traffic men and their whistles. When he gets to my side of the road, traffic man is waiting for him, grabs his bike and gets ready to send him to the policeman standing behind me to get a ticket or something. Well the dude on the bike has a girl sitting on the back and she promptly bolts down the street. The man then begins to verbally assault the red-vested whistler, and when he does not let go of the bike, bike man punches red-vest man in the face. A full on brawl breaks out, and everyone just watches; such is the mentality here. People just watch others be pick-pocketed and i'm sure are just silently thanking god that they weren't the one being pickpocketed....in this case everyone was thinking that were lucky that the cops didn't catch them.
I bought the most amazing addition to my apartment yesterday. I went to meet a friend for dinner and procure a toaster. This toaster is the best use of US$7 ever! It's waaay cute...white and green, and it makes toast. That was a key part. The only problem here is that bread is very large and square (comes in bags of 8 large square slices) and thus when I pull the lever down to begin the magical toasting process....about 1.5 inches of the bread sticks out of the toaster....so a little 180 degree bread rotation is necessary mid-toasting. However, despite the extra work, the toast and jam is amazing.
Oh and for the most random element of the last two weeks.....no I haven't found a job yet...but...for all of you who think Customs officials are scary and official and have power to keep you in and out of particular countries.....just learn the native language..apparently that's the way to their heart. On my way back from HK last Thursday I wrote my address in chinese on my arrival card as sort of a knee-jerk rx..i'm not sure how to write it in english to be honest. The customs officer reads it aloud and then I tell him that's right, that I am a teacher at the school next door to my building and that I was in HK b/c my students have midterm exams. Well that sent his eyeballs out to Jupiter and back...what?!?!!!! the blonde speaks Chinese? So then he, the customs officer...highest upholder of the Chinese law, asks me for my phone number. I told him i didn't know it...like hell I want to give out my number to a stranger, let alone someone who could change my address to "cell 2 Chinese Jail" at will. Then he asked me for my address. I played stupid foreigner and told him i didn't understand. He was very persistent. What is the world coming to? Last time I left the country the customs man didn't believe my passport photo bore any resemblence to the actual me...this time he asks me out. Strange!
The temperature dropped 30 degrees today...it was 65 and raining, completely depressing. Can it really be the middle of November already?
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Paper Hats, Pearls and Parties
Mere, Me and Jenny at the beginning of our evening. 
Awwww, these witches don't look scary at all
Beijing teacher partners reunite.....Tom was off-duty by this point...no giving out citations.
Tom and Mike being off-duty PSB men at this point...totally stealing the party
My three favorite Shenzhen ladies....Jenny, Julia and Meredith looking mighty snazzy in black .
Fellow WashU Alum and Beijing Summer 2004 friend Melanie and I. Wasn't she the most perfect Corpse bride ever? I think so .
Tyler being a rocker....after a hard day of attempting to "Rock it" on the tennis court with me....we failed. And Chris, who claimed to be someone from the Big Lebowsky...but I've never seen it...I'll take his word on that. 
Andrew in his most clever costume of Chinese Calligraphy...minus the imperative mop at this point in the evening.
Julia, Meagan and I all in black and all different characters....gotta love the chopstick cigarette...and LOVE how all my friends are soooooo much shorter than me, ha. Look Dawn couldn't even fit my head in the pic.....it's almost as if my mom was taking the photo...she used to do that to dad in photos all the time :-)
After a week of playing Monster Mash, doing crossword puzzles with words like eerie and coffin, creating pretend Costume Shops that inevitably all sold Harry Potter costumes (you must all know that ALL Chinese middle school students are totally over the moon with some element of the movies and books...oh yeah as well as the NBA) and accidently pelting tons of kids with candy due to poor aim....the weekend before Halloween finally arrived. So what, you say? You're living in a non-western country where peoples don't celebrate Halloween you say? Well to you all, I say HA. Saturday, there were Halloween parties to be visited. But let me back up to earlier in the week.
About Tuesday I received and email from a friend of mine here asking if I'd be interested in playing in a tennis tournament in town sponsored by the Futian Municial Gov't. I laughed and responded that if it were for fun, and if someone would lend me a racket, sure I would play. Well, I got a call from my director on Thursday saying she'd worked out the racket issue and that Tyler and I were going to play mixed doubles on Saturday and Sunday. I'm thinking sure....I've never played mixed doubles, and hey, I've played tennis twice in 4 years since Varsity in high school....this'll be fun. And oh it was, it so was. But that doesn't overshadow the fact that for the first six games we played (and lost) I sucked! But Tyler, being a nice, polite partner (or just versed in the philosophy that if you berate the person you're playing with, only bad things will happen) was very encouraging and by our second match we had gotten into a rythmn and darnit....we almost won our third match...we were getting good and I was hitting that ball like i was back in hs in England. The funny part of it all was realizing that really Tyler and I weren't playing two players on the opposite side of our net....Mr. Opponent would stop at NOTHING to make sure that Mrs. Opponent never touched the ball. Mr. Opponent would fly, leap, bound, hurdle and dive if necessary his way 40 feet cross-court to take a shot that would have been mere inches from Mrs. Opponent. Then whenever Mrs. Opponent would miss her Drop-serve (for all you not in the know, this is an underhand, technically illegal, dinky, get the ball in play serve), Mr. Opponent would yell, point, and stop match play to give his poor wife a lesson in serving underhand.
After all this festive atmosphere on Saturday, I found myself dealing with the fact that it was already 7:45pm by the time I got all the way back to my apt. Part of me just wanted to shower and call it a night, but it isn't often that I have the opportunity to celebrate Halloween, so I showered and got dressed and became the world's tallest and blondest rendition of Audrey Hepburn. The most daunting part of the evening by far was walking out of my building, dressed in a black dress, hair piled high on my head, pearls around the neck, Huge black sunglasses perched on my head, and a chopstick make black by a permament marker that doubled as Audrey's famous long cigarette holder.....and having to board a city bus. Now I normally get stares when I ride the bus, no big deal. But this time, it was fixation, wonderment, astonishment, sheer perpextion....what was this chick doing? Then I got off the bus, boarded the Subway at 9:30 at night and the same thing happened, there was even a clever little kid jumping up and down behind me trying to 'be as tall as me.' Once I met up with my friends at a pizza place, I felt much better...i was in the company of witches, cats, goblins, and a favorite...the PSB Men (my two friends who dressed as Public Security Bureau peoples)....when I got the restaurant i originally thought my friends were just chilling with two cops at their table. They sure had me fooled. But the all-time best costume went to my friend Andrew; he was Chinese Calligraphy. He dressed all in black, including a pair of pantyhose on his head with the empty leg parts hanging down. Now he had a mop, that he taped into the shape of a paintbrush and drawn a black tip on it like it was a chinese paint brush and then he'd give it to someone and told them to wave it and then he'd move his body into shapes of chinese characters (this is where the pantyhose come in handy...they served as extra appendages for characters). I really was oh so ingenious....it won him a prize at the costume contest.
The party itself was really fun.....Ibiza was completely packed full of costumed people...from sunflowers all the way right down to a guy who looked like he should be KGB, but was dressed in a Red Guard outfit. Finally around 3 I made it home...to the questioning looks of the security guard in my neighborhood...I'm sure it's b/c everytime I walked past her that day, I was dressed totally differently. At 9am I passed her in Pjs going to the corner baozi (bread dumpling) lady to get breakfast....at noon I passed her in tennis clothes....at 9pm I passed her dressed like a million bucks...no wonder she was confused.
The weather has finally gotten cool here and this week I'm teaching the kiddos about News and Newspapers and I'm teaching them to fold newspaper hats and forcing them all to wear them in class....This only works if I sport my own paper pirate hat...essentially I get to look like an idiot for one week. I was walking between classes with the hat on and one of my students, Sphere, came by and said...."OOOOOh Ms. Nelson, so beautiful"....I really need to work on increasing their vocabulary....b/c there is no way that darn paper hat was beautiful. Then as i'm walking around the classroom yesterday soliciting responses to what I might find in a Features section of the paper, the Principal walks by the classroom, reverses and looks a my powerpoint and my stupid hat and the stupid hats on all the kids, and walks by again i think laughing at me. I hope he was laughing all in good spirit...and not because I'm an idiot teacher.
About Tuesday I received and email from a friend of mine here asking if I'd be interested in playing in a tennis tournament in town sponsored by the Futian Municial Gov't. I laughed and responded that if it were for fun, and if someone would lend me a racket, sure I would play. Well, I got a call from my director on Thursday saying she'd worked out the racket issue and that Tyler and I were going to play mixed doubles on Saturday and Sunday. I'm thinking sure....I've never played mixed doubles, and hey, I've played tennis twice in 4 years since Varsity in high school....this'll be fun. And oh it was, it so was. But that doesn't overshadow the fact that for the first six games we played (and lost) I sucked! But Tyler, being a nice, polite partner (or just versed in the philosophy that if you berate the person you're playing with, only bad things will happen) was very encouraging and by our second match we had gotten into a rythmn and darnit....we almost won our third match...we were getting good and I was hitting that ball like i was back in hs in England. The funny part of it all was realizing that really Tyler and I weren't playing two players on the opposite side of our net....Mr. Opponent would stop at NOTHING to make sure that Mrs. Opponent never touched the ball. Mr. Opponent would fly, leap, bound, hurdle and dive if necessary his way 40 feet cross-court to take a shot that would have been mere inches from Mrs. Opponent. Then whenever Mrs. Opponent would miss her Drop-serve (for all you not in the know, this is an underhand, technically illegal, dinky, get the ball in play serve), Mr. Opponent would yell, point, and stop match play to give his poor wife a lesson in serving underhand.
After all this festive atmosphere on Saturday, I found myself dealing with the fact that it was already 7:45pm by the time I got all the way back to my apt. Part of me just wanted to shower and call it a night, but it isn't often that I have the opportunity to celebrate Halloween, so I showered and got dressed and became the world's tallest and blondest rendition of Audrey Hepburn. The most daunting part of the evening by far was walking out of my building, dressed in a black dress, hair piled high on my head, pearls around the neck, Huge black sunglasses perched on my head, and a chopstick make black by a permament marker that doubled as Audrey's famous long cigarette holder.....and having to board a city bus. Now I normally get stares when I ride the bus, no big deal. But this time, it was fixation, wonderment, astonishment, sheer perpextion....what was this chick doing? Then I got off the bus, boarded the Subway at 9:30 at night and the same thing happened, there was even a clever little kid jumping up and down behind me trying to 'be as tall as me.' Once I met up with my friends at a pizza place, I felt much better...i was in the company of witches, cats, goblins, and a favorite...the PSB Men (my two friends who dressed as Public Security Bureau peoples)....when I got the restaurant i originally thought my friends were just chilling with two cops at their table. They sure had me fooled. But the all-time best costume went to my friend Andrew; he was Chinese Calligraphy. He dressed all in black, including a pair of pantyhose on his head with the empty leg parts hanging down. Now he had a mop, that he taped into the shape of a paintbrush and drawn a black tip on it like it was a chinese paint brush and then he'd give it to someone and told them to wave it and then he'd move his body into shapes of chinese characters (this is where the pantyhose come in handy...they served as extra appendages for characters). I really was oh so ingenious....it won him a prize at the costume contest.
The party itself was really fun.....Ibiza was completely packed full of costumed people...from sunflowers all the way right down to a guy who looked like he should be KGB, but was dressed in a Red Guard outfit. Finally around 3 I made it home...to the questioning looks of the security guard in my neighborhood...I'm sure it's b/c everytime I walked past her that day, I was dressed totally differently. At 9am I passed her in Pjs going to the corner baozi (bread dumpling) lady to get breakfast....at noon I passed her in tennis clothes....at 9pm I passed her dressed like a million bucks...no wonder she was confused.
The weather has finally gotten cool here and this week I'm teaching the kiddos about News and Newspapers and I'm teaching them to fold newspaper hats and forcing them all to wear them in class....This only works if I sport my own paper pirate hat...essentially I get to look like an idiot for one week. I was walking between classes with the hat on and one of my students, Sphere, came by and said...."OOOOOh Ms. Nelson, so beautiful"....I really need to work on increasing their vocabulary....b/c there is no way that darn paper hat was beautiful. Then as i'm walking around the classroom yesterday soliciting responses to what I might find in a Features section of the paper, the Principal walks by the classroom, reverses and looks a my powerpoint and my stupid hat and the stupid hats on all the kids, and walks by again i think laughing at me. I hope he was laughing all in good spirit...and not because I'm an idiot teacher.
The first four classes I did it with got pieces of newspaper that I had in my apt...it happened to be the copy of the South China Morning Post from HK. They didn't want to fold it..they just wanted to keep it to read b/c there isn't really an English anything here...no books, and only one rinkydink english paper that is printed on tabloid-size paper. But I made them fold it into a hat nonetheless and wear it. I told them it would make 'em all more clever (they love this word in china...smart means nothing....clever means everything). I'm sure they all unfolded the hats and kept the paper afterward....except for the 3 or 4 delinquents who decided to make wadded paper balls and airplanes out of their hats..and for them I just took the newspaper away.
The kiddos have midterms next week and there's a 50/50 chance that during that time i'll get to go up to Beijing to visit some friends, otherwise, barring an outbreak of H5N1 here on the Mainland, I will be in HK for a few day trips....though maybe I ought to aim to be on the HK side of the border when they finally admit to having the virus on the Mainland....It's totallly a call of which side of the border I want to be sealed on...HK or China. Hmmm decisions, decisions.
The kiddos have midterms next week and there's a 50/50 chance that during that time i'll get to go up to Beijing to visit some friends, otherwise, barring an outbreak of H5N1 here on the Mainland, I will be in HK for a few day trips....though maybe I ought to aim to be on the HK side of the border when they finally admit to having the virus on the Mainland....It's totallly a call of which side of the border I want to be sealed on...HK or China. Hmmm decisions, decisions.
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