Lost in Kathmandu

Coming to Kathmandu from China was a shock. While living out in the country, I regularly deal with issues such as lack of clean water, hot water, water at all, internet, electricity, and the tendency of things to break down or explode in curious ways.  China, however, has a long history of organization.  Cities are planned and laid out in grids, attention given to cardinal directions and feng shui. Street signs even indicate which direction you are going in addition to which street you are on.

That would be pointless in Kathmandu.  Seemingly not a single street actually runs straight in any direction. They seem to have been thrown down haphazardly without regard to anything, not even the average width of a car. The city is in a very hilly valley, and houses and gardens are cut right into it. The highest building in the entire city was 12 stories, but houses were generally not more than 6 stories, and with a population of almost 1 million, this means the entire city is sprawled out. Beautiful, new, bright buildings stand next to broken down hovels. There are walls with gates in them that lead to seemingly nothing, because behind the door is a slope so steep that house, garden, and people are all hidden entirely from view.

At my hostel, I met some girls lamenting that their maps, printed within the last year, are apparently useless.  Given how randomly the streets seem to curve, I probably could have told them that, but they told me that the problem was actually that the street names have changed.  In a city with no accurate maps, changing street names, and disorganized roads, the average tourist is forced to rely on taxi drivers.  I was less than enthused about taking taxis everywhere, and so Michaela and I tried our best to do without.

A very scenic dead end.

Walking around Thamel, the area where most foreigners stay (but not us), we routinely got lost.  One particularly frustrating spot for us was a beautiful stupa.  While it was a nice find the first time we wandered there, it also marked a dead end.  Michaela and I found ourselves in a closed route to the maze of Kathmandu– no matter which direction we went, we found ourselves back at this stupa.  We eventually found our way out through a small alley which contained a bird shop.  While passing through, a young boy, maybe 12 or 13, grabbed a live chicken, thrust it at me, and yelled, “This is your lunch!” It wasn’t, but I was happy to be out of that dead end loop.

 

Michaela and I had been assured we could walk back to our hostel from that area, but nobody had actually told us how, or that it would be entirely uphill.  In China, people on the street are always perfectly happy to ask for and give directions, so I started asking people every 20 feet which way to go to get back to our hostel. Michaela had the foresight to carry around a flashlight everywhere (Nepal is in a power outage more often than it is not), and our walk went swimmingly until we ended up in an area that lacked shops and thus people to ask for help. Along the way, one shop-owner had drawn us a map containing 3 of the 15 or so streets we’d need to take to get home, and this led us to wander into a dark residential area.

Eventually we managed to backtrack to an area we were certain led to a place that would lead to a road that would get us home, and we found two people talking. We worked up the courage to talk to them, or perhaps we milled about until they got curious about what two foreigners were doing on a dark, empty road, and we told them where we were trying to go.  In a stroke of luck, one of them was planning on walking the same direction, and despite our nerves at being two foreigners walking in the dark in the company of a stranger who may or may not have been telling the truth, his plans did not involve robbing us and we made it home safely.

In another attempt to avoid using taxis, Michaela and I chose to ride a public bus to get to Bhaktapur. Our bus was relatively empty, which meant that Michaela and I were only moderately squished in the back. On the ride I got a good look at other buses.  Some were so full of people, that through the windows I couldn’t make out individuals, just a mass of flesh and clothing.  Not everyone actually fit in the bus, and so at least six people were hanging on out the door and hoping not to hit anything. On top of the buses they had what we would call back home a “bike rack,” but what I suspect Nepali people call a “goat rack,
given that I only ever saw it transporting goats.  I was not lucky enough to witness someone actually placing the goat on top of the bus, however.  Despite our successes using the bus, in the end it wasn’t incredibly helpful for avoiding using taxis, as we needed to take a taxi to and from the bus station from and to our hostel.

In this mapless city, even in a taxi we weren’t safe from getting lost.  Kathmandu has a million things I wanted to buy, and after only a few days there, I needed to mail some of those things back to China.  I found the main post office on Google maps, pulled it up on my phone, and showed it to the cab driver, making sure he saw the cross streets. He told us he knew where to go, but it didn’t take all that long for him to tell us he was lost and ask for more money.  I simply ignored him and hoped that we would magically arrive at a well-marked post office. Instead he dumped us on a street lined with shops offering international courier services.  Confused, lost, and hopeless, we wandered into one of them and asked a worker there who spoke no English how much it would cost to send one postcard.  Her answer was $20.  Had I been in a better mood, I might have laughed, but instead I just walked out of the store without a word.

In the end, we were lucky.  After walking aimlessly for an indeterminable amount of time, we found ourselves at a tourist attraction.  I went to the ticket booth, asked about the post office, and was told to take 3 rights and a left. I wasn’t told where to make these turns, but we set off nevertheless. Not long after having decided on our first right, I noticed an enormous yellow building with the word “parcel” written on it. Unfortunately, there was a wall blocking access to the building, so we took our second right trying to find an opening in the wall, and a third right when we finally found it. Happily, sending a postcard cost less than 50 cents, and when I finally got home to China, my purchases from Nepal were waiting there for me.

Transformation

In Beijing,   at a pizzeria/bar  that was clearly owned  by a laowai* who was trying way too hard to appeal to the foreign college students who live in the pink  highrises sandwiched between dozens of university campuses, I  heard the song “Safety Dance.” I was immediately reminded of Colin Fanning, a guy I had a crush on for the better part of my sophomore year of high school.  That year he had discovered that song, and he would frequently play it– dancing when he wanted to and leaving his friends behind.

The pizzeria/bar is directly next to a 7/11 and another pizza place, and on the other side of those are clubs, each known for being “meat markets.”  This area, other than being filled with college students and pizza joints, is also known for amazing Korean food and some of the cheapest liquor in Beijing that is not baijiu**.  Despite my description of a foreigner’s haven, the locals outnumber the transients by far, and the brightly-lit international money-sink only encompasses a little more than two intersections. Outside these intersections are dark, quiet streets.  Mistakenly believing I knew how to navigate the Beijing bus system, I once got lost on these streets, and the emptiness made me question if I hadn’t been dropped off in a different city all together.

I avoid the foreigner hot spots in Beijing. They are expensive. Because they are expensive, they attract people in nice clothing,  people who definitely look in the mirror other than when they are brushing their teeth and have no other place to look, people who actually check to make sure their hair is lying flat after they’ve brushed it and that their clothes don’t have stains or holes on them. Since moving to China, I very frequently don’t fit into this category of people, and when I am around them, I feel thoroughly wrinkled.

In these spots, the vendors don’t even hold out hopes that the customers can speak Chinese, and everything is done in accented English.  All of the comforts of home are available, except for perhaps air that won’t give you cancer.  And though these foreigner hangouts are supposed to be a comfort to the expat, I find myself feeling more foreign than ever.  I am so foreign that Beijing has special areas for me to be in, areas where I am expected to eat and have fun, areas that should be easier for my Western palate to  handle, but that still leave me feeling exhausted and drained.

I’d been in Taigu for four or five months, and what I wanted– desperately needed– couldn’t go even another day without– was a sandwich with real cheese on real bread with meats that are normally found on a sandwich, and I was promised that I could get one here, at this pizzeria/bar.  And in the middle of Beijing’s foreigner scene, in a basement pizzeria/bar filled with posters about open mic night and beer pong, while drinking a margarita that didn’t contain a trace of baijiu and eating a sandwich that contained conventional sandwich fillers, I heard an 80s song and I was no longer a tired traveler. I was once again a 16-year-old girl, watching Colin Fanning dance awkwardly with a heart full of anxiety and cautious hope.

*foreigner

**Chinese liquor.  It’s pretty foul.

Ignorance

The other day, Skylar asked me, “Claire, why do you sometimes like to let people believe you can’t speak Chinese?”

This was a good question. I’ve spent over four years struggling with this language to be able to speak just passable Mandarin. It would make sense that I would use every opportunity to practice my Chinese, as well as to prove that Americans are willing and able to learn this language, something that currently seems very doubtful to the Chinese.

Instead, I walk silently through stores, pay the amounts I’m prompted to, but rarely respond to anything said. Skylar’s question took me by surprise; I had never really thought about why I choose to feign ignorance.

The answer, though simple, came to me slowly. Every day when I walk outside, I am noticeable.  Never in my life have I experienced being noticed so frequently. I can never blend in with a crowd, can never feel inconspicuous.  In Beijing, vendors see me on the street and know that I have money and don’t know how much things should cost. In fact, as a probable American, they feel they should get as much money from me as possible, since America owes China so much debt.  I’m never just a student or a teacher, going about her business, completely unremarkable.

But if I go into a grocery store, where the prices are marked and no bargaining is required and pretend that I don’t speak the language, I get ignored. Most workers in grocery stores cannot speak English, and assuming that I can’t speak Chinese means they can ignore me while I look around for food I recognize. While I may be noticed, I am then ignored. It’s one of the few times in public when I can feel totally relaxed.

During my summer in Beijing, I would frequently go to the local grocery store after class to relax.  I very rarely needed to buy anything, but I’d wander through the store, idly wondering if there was actually popcorn here and I just couldn’t find it, and I would be left alone.

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In Taigu, it’s different.  It’s much, much worse.  There is no point here in pretending I can’t speak Chinese—I won’t be able to get by without it.  And the fact that people assume that I cannot speak Chinese has become a constant irritant. How on Earth could I survive here without it?  Even more basic is when people are surprised that I could eat chopsticks.  When I point out that I would literally starve to death without that ability, they still don’t seem to appreciate the idiocy of the question.

When I go out, I face an unending stream of racism.  This isn’t surprising—the Chinese seem to have no desire to curb their racist tendencies.  As a white woman, I get the benefit of positive stereotypes.  I’m told I’m beautiful because my eyes aren’t Chinese and my hair isn’t black.  It’s assumed I’m not a thief or a bad person.  But then again, it’s also assumed that in a Chinese setting, I’ll always be hopelessly incompetent.  Vendors raise their prices for foreigners, but they also raise their prices for anyone who wasn’t born in their home village.My grasp of the English language is highly admired, despite acquiring it with little effort. Despite these generally positive attitudes about my race and differentness, I am still reduced to my race and nationality and nothing else.

As soon as I leave my house in the morning, I face a battle to keep a semblance of self-esteem.  It’s a seven-minute walk to class, and it’s a gambit of students.  Students see me and laugh. Students see me and point.  Students see me and elbow their friends to look up and see me, too.  Students see me and call me a foreigner.  Students see me and call me the derogatory version, an “old outsider.” Students see me and double-take.  Students see me and pull out their cameras. Students see me and almost crash their bikes because they stop looking at the road.  Students see me and hopefully shout “hello!”—the one English word they have been reliably taught.Once I make it into the classroom, I get to teach my students, who are used to me now and have stopped taking pictures of me without my permission in the middle of class—that is, until I got a haircut.  Then they needed to update their Chinese Facebooks to account for this minor change.

There have been some more irritating run-ins.  One Sunday morning I caught students photographing me as I took out my trash.  I wondered if they were going to go through my trash as well, something that does happen here.  A student once mistakenly walked into my classroom and quickly walked out, but then from across the room, I saw a hand holding a camera slowly reaching in.  Yes, he walked into the wrong classroom but couldn’t leave until he had gotten at least one picture of the funny looking alien scolding her freshmen for being late again.  One night, some students knocked on my door and walked into my house, telling me that they wanted to look around and see a foreigner’s house.  I was on my way out, so I told them to get lost, but what I wanted to say was that this was not a zoo, and I was not an exhibit and how dare they assume that this was acceptable behavior.  These incidents all happened within a 48-hour period.

I am always seen. I am always studied. I am always scrutinized.  Even on this small campus, I go to a limited number of places.  My newness has worn off of the waitresses and shop owners, and so they stare less and treat me more like a person. But because of my differentness, I am recognized more easily, my order remembered more quickly, and I am spoken to and questioned more frequently.  These interactions do not bother me, but I am not fooled.  If I looked like everyone else here, I wouldn’t get this friendliness.

When I came here, my self-esteem was high and the attention was flattering.  But three months have worn off the charm.  I’ve adapted to the college, but it looks like the college is not going to adapt to me. When people snap pictures, I’m tempted to flip them off. When I hear the words “old outsider,” I’m tempted to throw things at the offenders.  People in America tell me that it’s because they are curious, they want to know more about me.  The thing is, I’ve asked Chinese people.  They told me that if someone took their picture without their permission, they would snatch the camera right out of the offender’s hands and yell at them.  Basically, this behavior is not polite, and they know it.  They just don’t care, because to them, I’m not a real person.  I’m an other.

And so here I am, struggling to keep my cool and my humanity.  I’ve yet to explode in a rage at someone, and I currently don’t think that I will. But if I’m destined to be an other, sometimes pretending to be a completely unapproachable other is the only option to keep sane. So when I can, I’ll pretend I can’t speak Chinese and I’ll trade invisible for just inaccessible.

A Thousand Sacred Holiday, or Halloween

While my job in China is to teach English, my fellowship is to promote cultural exchange. This means that putting on a haunted house for Halloween is actually part of my job.  I don’t get paid more if the students are actually scared, but hearing the terrified screams of my students and the pounding of their little feet as they flee is really payment enough.

The idea was Johnny’s.  For his birthday he did not want a party and cake smashed on his face, but rather the chance to scare the English right out of his students. He drew up plans on paper that none of us paid attention to. He explained how groups would tour the house, and we listened skeptically.  He talked of writing a script for the tour guide, and we cocked out eyebrows at him.  But as the time crept nearer to his birthday, the preparations were set into motion.  He bought tarp to partition off areas of the house, face paint to turn us into ghosts, and apples, donuts, and candy for the party outside while people waited for their turn to be frightened.

Friday afternoon I showed up at Johnny’s house, ready to transform it into an abandoned hospital. We removed some furniture, broke into the kitchen through the padlocked door, and started hanging tarp from the ceiling.  To do this, we stood on wobbly chairs, lifted up the ceiling panels, strung some tape up, and attached the tarp.  The tarp itself was translucent, so in the dark, the students would have fuzzy view of the “ghosts” contained by it.

Outside the house, we hung Chinese lanterns painted in Halloween styles.  Some came with lights attached, but for the rest of them, we taped candles to the bottom and hoped they wouldn’t light on fire.  Our fire extinguishers were recently all taken with the promise that we were getting new, better ones soon, but we have yet to see these theoretical extinguishers.  John’s house doesn’t have a porch light, so we covered the porch with candles of various sizes purchased last-minute at the town grocery store.  Overall, the effect outside was a very warm Halloween feeling, despite lacking jack-o-lanterns.

John had asked a handful of students to show up and work the haunted house.  They came around 7 and it was time to get in makeup.  Francis, a teacher here who tutors most of us in Chinese, can do professional Chinese opera makeup, and so came well stocked to make us all look pale and deathly.  He started with a layer of light pink across the entire face, followed by white powder that prevents the makeup from rubbing off, as well as changing the pink to ghostly pale.  Then came the more personal touches—sunken eyes, bloody mouths, whatever struck the ghoul’s fancy.

Some of us ended up going in a different direction.

You can decide whether or not I'm wicked, but I'm definitely from the West.

Despite our new looks, Johnny had enough students to help him that he didn’t require me or Joe to be scary.  Perhaps he didn’t think The Hulk was quite the touch he needed for his abandoned-hospital set.  My new job was to teach the students outside the appropriate way obtain candy, donuts, and apples on Halloween.  The first was the simplest—all they had to say was “trick-or-treat!” and I graciously allowed them to stick their hands in my pot of Chinese candies.  The rest of the food they would have to work for.  Joe and I demonstrated the joys of trying to eat a donut off of a string without your hands.  Given that we had tied all the strings to the laundry line, this got even more complicated as the efforts of others caused all of the donuts to start bouncing up and down.

Once I had gotten the students interested in attacking donuts with their teeth, it was time to introduce them to the biggest challenge of all—bobbing for apples.  Not wishing to turn the water as green as my Shrek-like face, I couldn’t demonstrate the idea.  A brave student came forward and offered to donate his self-respect to the cause, and the rest of the students watched amusedly as he failed for 15 minutes to snag an apple.  He apologized and bowed for his failure, and another brave soul sacrificed his dignity for the cause.

Eventually almost all of the apples were successfully retrieved!

Once it was clear that the partiers outside had a handle on things and the line to get inside had shrunk a little, I decided I wanted a spooky tour for myself.  I managed to get a tour with the English-speaking guide (John), and I walked into the poorly lit “hospital.”  Our guide explained that in the early days of the hospital, the doctors worked with no rules, and eventually the whole project was shut down… with the doctors and patients still inside.  We walked first to the chemistry lab, where a phantasm slowly undulated.  We moved into the OR, where we touched some leftover eyeballs and toes.  A victim of the surgery appeared suddenly and grabbed the tourists to many screams of surprise.  We exited back through the chemistry lab, where the phantasm was clearly agitated, and narrowly escaped becoming a victim to rogue surgeon.  Back in the main room (or rather the emergency room), more ghouls were gunning for the living, and we shuffled away from their eager hands. The next room had been mostly partitioned off, and we were cramped in with a couple of angry zombies, pushing us into the kitchen and last room of the tour.  The kitchen was dark and seemingly empty, and with the door closed, we were safe from the zombies of the earlier rooms.  Then, from behind every cabinet (and from within some of them), more ghosts popped out and chased us out the backdoor of the house.

A job well done.

I ended up doing the tour twice.  After I had gone through the first one, a couple of my freshmen showed up, and clung desperately to my arm.  This was actually problematic for getting through doorways in the house, and at one point I had to physically drag them past some of the “ghosts.”  Given their reactions, though, I believe the haunted house was truly successful at terrifying some Chinese college students.

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I am... the night!

In order to get more students in on the Halloween action, we also hosted a Halloween dance party.  We told all the participants to show up in costume, but held some doubts about whether or not this would happen.  I had packed elements of my Batman costume with my winter clothes. When my family sent me my winter clothes, however, they had seen fit to send everything except the mask. Thus, I had everything I needed to be a person dressed in black.  Working with this and an abundance of glowy stars, I decided to be the night sky. An hour before the party had me taping as many stars as possible to my cloak, and then Skylar (going to the party as an angry banana) sweetly agreed to paint my face with the moon.

That's a mean-looking banana.

Unsurprisingly, students showed up early and not in costume.  This ended up being fortuitous, as Skylar grabbed the face paint and set up a corner to decorate the faces of the party-goers.  The students told me that my costume was terrifying, which wasn’t exactly my goal, and then everyone’s cell phone came out to take as many pictures as possible.  Soon a group of students in homemade costumes showed up and our party was starting to look like a more typical Halloween party.  Over at Alexandra’s house, Francis was once again working his makeup magic on some of his students, and when they arrived the party definitely gained a new level of scary.  The music showed up, the lights turned off, and it was time for the dancing.

A leopard, two "noodle spirits" a rabbit, and something else.

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My intention to celebrate ended with the dance party.  Two nights in a row of oil-based face paint was enough to empty my reserves of soap and patience, and conversations with students had led me to believe that the Chinese were generally unaware of Halloween.

This turned out to be a mistake. Although the Chinese are generally unfamiliar with the customs of Halloween, they do know that October 31^st (or possible 30^th or maybe November 1^st) is a foreigner holiday, and holidays are times when people see their family and so are prone to feel particularly homesick.  As a result, various people showed up to wish us a Happy Halloween, and Skylar and I were completely unprepared.  Even worse, someone had told the local children to paint their faces and come to our house for candy.  We lacked candy, costumes, and time.  Panicked, I grabbed all the fruit we had in the house and handed them out.  Yes, China has turned me into one of those houses that hands out fruit.  One group of students gave us a sign that wished us a merry Halloween and a happy Guy Fawkes Day, along with a bag of fruit, so we ended up replenished.

It dawned on me that I should have expected this.  The students here are truly curious about us and our customs, as well as being very hospitable people.  It is not surprising that on a day when we might feel more homesick than usual, students would show up to keep us company, give us fruit, and try to share in a foreign holiday.

Come Thanksgiving, I will be prepared.

Chinese Birthday

During the first day of classes, I figured the easiest way to get my students to speak in English was to give them the opportunity to ask me any question they wanted.  In China, asking personal questions is one way people show they care about each other.  The questions asked ranged quite a bit from “What was your major?” to “Do you believe it was God’s will that we met here today?” to “Do you have a boyfriend?” and “What do you think of the phenomenon ‘Made in China’?”

One of the simpler questions asked was when my birthday was, and many of my students dutifully wrote down the date.  When my birthday rolled around, they were ready for it and very curious as to how an American celebrates her birthday.  I didn’t have a very good answer to that question—I couldn’t remember how I’d spent the day the year before, though there was a graham cracker and nutella cake involved in the evening.  I had originally planned to spend my birthday here getting a cheap massage and avoiding responsibility, but my students hopeful eyes made me realize it was an Exchange Opportunity.

I haven’t sponsored many of these.  It doesn’t always occur to me that going about my daily life could be an opportunity to teach my students or Chinese friends a little bit more about what Americans do. On the other hand, my life gives me plenty of opportunities to delve in Chinese culture.

Learning to make dumplings at our Mid-Autumn Festival celebration.

I have already been to a Chinese birthday party this semester, two celebrations for Mid-Autumn Festival, the opening ceremony for the Information College (quite a different experience from what we had at Oberlin), and getting a cold allowed me to see how Chinese students take care of their friends (a student demanded I take my temperature in front of him, explain to him what was normal in Fahrenheit, and then just felt my forehead to make sure I didn’t need to go get an IV at the hospital). So when my students expressed interest in an American birthday party, I figured this was time for me to step up.

This presented a bit of a dilemma for me.  My ideal party would probably involve at most 10 people and some board games, but too many people and too few board games killed that option.  Our houses have some loud speakers, dance music, and a floor, so all we really needed for a bona fide American party was to buy some alcohol, but I’ve never really thrown that kind of party before. I wasn’t really throwing this party for myself, so my main priority was to make sure my students felt comfortable and hopefully had a little fun, and I had major doubts about whether I could manage that with a type of party I rarely felt comfortable at. The day of the party, I was anxious and pessimistic. Would anyone dance? Would they all fit in my house? Should I get more alcohol? Or should I bring less because they’ll feel pressured to drink? Can I honestly dance in front of my students? Will they think I’m a slut because I like to move my hips? I had already decided I simply couldn’t drink in front of them, but what if that was culturally wrong?

I invited my students to come over at 8:30pm, so it was unsurprising to see some of them bright and early in the morning. In my pajamas, I explained that the party was in the evening, and they should definitely come back then. Around 7:30pm, I went out to buy some juice and soda with the assurance that the other foreign teachers would be coming over soon with beer.  I got back to my house around 7:45 to discover that 8-9 students were waiting outside, ready to start the party.  My furniture wasn’t arranged correctly for maximum floorspace, the beer wasn’t there, my cups weren’t clean, and I was wearing the wrong clothes for a dance party, but there they were, and more were coming. Over the next 15 minutes more than 20 students filed in, and not a single foreign teacher with them to help me out or provide beer or distract them while I changed.

Despite my growing panic, I rallied.  I did my best to make small talk, despite my social deficiencies. I asked a student what Chinese birthdays were usually like, and she told me that normally they eat dinner and they sing karaoke.  I informed my students that tonight we were having an American party, so we would eat dessert and dance. I offered everyone fruit, juice, water, but for the most part everyone said no and simply sat in whatever seat they could find. There were too many awkward pauses and silences, and I was too socially inept to work through them.  Where were the other foreign teachers??

Eventually Skylar showed up, helping me manage and calm down about hosting 80 students in my house and using her beautiful social graces to make everyone feel more comfortable and chatty. Every chair was overflowing with students, we only had about 15 cups, but more students kept coming through the door. A stool was placed in the center of the room for me to sit on, and my students decided to start teaching me their local dialects. Since each small town has its own dialect in China, there was a lot to learn. I spun around on my stool, imitating my students as best I could, getting plenty of laughs when I failed. While I was entertaining these students, Skylar was plotting among other students.  In Chinese party culture, it is very common (if not required) to toast people.  Generally there are general toasts for the entire room, and then a personal toast between each of the guests (though at non-formal events, this is not strictly adhered to). Since it was not in anyone’s interest to murder me with alcohol, eventually the students decided that I should do 24 toasts for my 24 years, and they lined up around me with cups of beer and juice ready to wish me a happy birthday.

Presents from my students!

The students had not arrived empty-handed.  I learned very quickly that when attending a birthday party, Chinese students always bring presents (something I would have discouraged had I known).  Most students went in with friends to buy their presents, but in the end I was feeling guilty and greedy as I checked out all of my loot.  Among the things I got for my birthday were key-chains, a ping pong set, a hat, gloves, a scarf, a piggy bank, a certificate for being an awesome teacher, and a bike. Two groups of students also brought me cakes.  I had known about one of the cakes beforehand, so I hadn’t bothered to provide my own. The other cake provided a delicious sequel to my birthday the next day.

My glorious birthday cake.

Alexandra arrived, and we decided it was time to bust into one of these cakes.  The bigger cake was set in the middle of the room, and a plastic candle was set in the center.  These candles are pretty high-tech.  They start out as flower buds, and the fire causes them to bloom.  To cause blooming, first you light a stick and thrust it into the center of the plastic bud. The whole thing then bursts into flames, lighting smaller candles ringed around the center. The heat causes the plastic petals to unfold, each with its own small candle, and the burning off of the explosive bit causes a circuit to connect, making the whole thing play “Happy Birthday” somewhat indefinitely (after the party was over and the stupid candle was still singing, Johnny took it outside and stomped it to death). I made a wish, blew the monstrosity out, and started cutting and passing out cake.

Chinese cake isn’t good. They don’t use butter, so the frosting tastes like oil or lard or whatever horrible substance they make it out of. This is not a huge problem, however, because the Chinese don’t actually bother eating cake. On birthdays, the proper place for frosting is not in your mouth, but rather on the birthday girl’s face.  As pure decoration, Chinese frosting does its job admirably, and not even half the cake had been passed out before the party became an all-out pie fight. No one was spared. When there was no more cake left to throw and everyone was sticky and uncomfortable, it was time to clean up a bit. The students started washing my floor, and I ducked into my room to wash my face, rinse my hair, and change into dancing clothes.

Chinese students don’t dance.  There is a handful who study break-dancing or how to emulate Michael Jackson perfectly, but most students really don’t dance. Ever. Thus, even my slightest rhythmic movements are considered expert dancing and applauded, and getting the dance floor really moving can be a challenge. This group was really ready, though, maybe due to a sugar high.

Getting our groove on in my living room.

At the start of dance parties, the bolder girls generally hold hands in a circle and move around it in some fashion.  As confidence rises, the circle might break up into pairs.  All it took was playing a popular Chinese song that calls for a conga line, and my students got down with their funky selves.  I spent the dancing portion of the evening traveling around the room, dancing with as many students as possible and getting a lot of laughs from my exertions.

The students started departing around 10 (the dorms close their doors at 11, so this is pretty standard).  Once one student bravely asked for a hug goodnight, the others excitedly lined up to get their own foreigner hug. I was truly sorry to see them leave and have the party wind down. I sat down for the first time in hours, examined the damage (some of the dancing had removed the finish from parts of the floor, not to mention there was still frosting everywhere), and opened my presents.  Despite my goal of giving my students an authentic American birthday party, I think that they did a better job of giving me a wonderful Chinese birthday.  And after being so nervous and doubtful about my party, it was one of the most fun nights I’ve had while in China.

Her Nose is as Fat as a Dumpling

My class doesn’t have a curriculum or a textbook, so it’s up to me to come up with each lesson. Nobody seems to care what I teach as long as it’s not about Taiwan, so I can talk about whatever I want. While freedom is nice, coming up with two hours of material for a class can be rather daunting, and I steal other teachers’ ideas almost as much as my students plagiarize.  Of course, I do it with permission, and nobody is grading me.

My class is supposed to focus on oral English, so I try to think of useful activities and units that will improve my students’ speaking ability in a relevant way.  Common activities for an oral classroom are dialogues, which Chinese students like because all they have to do is memorize the correct responses, speeches, which are boring for everyone involved, skits, which really give my students a chance to show how much fun they are, and story-telling, which is a common part of English conversations and gives me a chance to talk about children’s stories and fairy tales while learning more about Chinese folklore.

Over the past month, I’ve been focusing on story-telling with my students. We started with descriptions.  Descriptions are generally the most boring part of stories, so based on a lesson that Johnny taught to his class, I decided introduce my students to similes.  The examples they were given were “busy as a bee,” “healthy as a horse,” and “tall as a giraffe.”  There are also similes in Chinese, so they caught onto this concept fairly quickly and had some fun with it. Based on their answers, I was able to figure out some common Chinese similes:

• As small as a cherry (when talking about noses or lips).
• As lazy as a pig.
• As relaxed as a cat.

Some of my favorite similes that they presumably made up themselves are these:

• Claire is as sunny as a sunflower. She is as irritable as a tiger.
• He is as flexible as a monkey.
• He is as smart as a happy sheep.
• Her disposition is as tender as the afternoon sunshine.
• Her fingers are as slender as bamboo shoots.
• She is as lively as a cricket.
• His mouse is as big as a horse (I think this student meant mouth).
• His chest is as broad as the sea.
• He sings like a hungry wolf which hasn’t eaten any food in weeks.
• He is fat like a penguin.
• His small eyes are as bright as 100-watt bulbs.
• Her teeth are as white as salt.
• She has two sex lips like two orange slices.
• Her eyelashes are as dense as a comb.
• Her eyebrows are as short as hairy insects.
• She eats as slowly as a chicken eats rice.
• We are as good as mandarin ducks (she was talking about their friendship).
• Her temper is as fiery as a volcano.
• My father is as fat as a balloon, his skin as black as chocolate, and he eats as fast as a tornado.
• He is as talkative as a never-ending flood.
• But unfortunately, there are too many zits on his face, making his face like the moonscape devastated by meteorites.

I like that these similes teach me a bit about China—for instance, chickens eat rice (albeit slowly), and mandarin ducks apparently make good friends. Comparing teeth to salt makes me cringe, and calling someone’s eyebrows hairy insects seems like it would be a huge insult, except that all of these students are far too polite to write anything rude about their subjects.

After I was done teaching this class, Skylar came to find me in my classroom. She walked by my students leaving the classroom, and one of them, Constantine, was clearly struck by her. He stared at her wide-eyed, and as she walked into my classroom, she heard him say to himself, “As beautiful as an angel.”

I have done my job well.

My Bike

This was written in Beijing this summer. Taigu traffic, bike lanes, and bikes are all different than what I experienced in Beijing.

I love my bike. It’s black, boring, lacks gears, squeaks when I brake, and I overpaid for it. Basically, it’s perfect for my life in China. I put a sticker on it. The first sticker got stolen, so I put another on it.

My Bike!

Every morning I hop on this beloved friend, and off we go through the big city to learn us some Chinese.  Or just sit underneath a tree, in the bike’s case. And then, once the sappy Chinese music cues that my day is over, I hop right back on that bike, and head for home.

The Chinese love bike lanes. They love them so much, that no matter what current mode of transportation they are using, be it a bike, a motorbike, a motorcycle, a 3-wheeled vehicle, a taxi, a sedan, a bus, or their own two feet, you can see them all pile into the bike lane (and sometimes in rather unfortunate circumstances, onto the bike lane). And the bike lanes are everywhere! Every street I have attempted to bike on, I’ve had my very own clearly marked off section that generally was only marginally filled with cars. There are even bike traffic lights!

A car parked in a bike lane.

The Chinese hate to stop. The idea of braking is repugnant to them, be it in car, on bike, or on foot, and the idea of stopping would make any local spit. They like spitting, too. This make traffic patterns fairly interesting (the not-stopping, not the spitting). Pedestrians are able to duck between cars to avoid having to actually stop at a crosswalk. Cars turning right on red simply honk to let people know that unless they are quick, they will be run over. I have not mastered the not-stopping thing.  Every time I lay on the brakes, I feel like my attempted immersion into Chinese culture has failed.

Traffic seems to work like this: If you are moving, and the other vehicle is not, you have right of way. If the other vehicle is moving and you are not, they have right of way. And if you are both moving, whoever is bigger has right of way. Nobody actually wants to hit anyone else, on account of having to pay fees, so everyone will avoid collisions to the best of their abilities.

And so, despite my need to occasionally stop while riding my bike, I have become an expert at Beijing traffic on a bike.  And having read this, you are now, too. Good luck.

China's bike lanes welcome you!

Trapped

Today I rode a train from Taiyuan to Taigu. The ride takes a little over an hour (despite the fact that back at Oberlin I was told Taiyuan, the big city and capital of Shanxi, was only half an hour away), and the ticket cost less than an American dollar.

To get on this train, the four of us who had ventured to Taiyuan first tried the car in which we had one reserved seat (the rest of our tickets were standing-only in a different car), but found that curiously, the line into the train wasn’t moving. The train itself seemed in danger of leaving, so we asked what to do, were directed to run to a different car, and there we squeezed in. I was the last of our group to get on the train, and for a short time it looked like I was going to be the last one at all to squeeze in. But as the train’s departure became more imminent, those on the platform became more desperate to get on the train. There was a massive push, and my feet briefly left the floor as I was helplessly moved farther into the train. At this point I was separated from my friends by maybe only 5-7 feet, but there was no way of actually reaching them.

I came to rest not in a car, but in the area where two cars meet. One of my feet was firmly on one side of the divide, but the other foot was standing directly on top of it. I stood facing a man head on, and for much of the ride had my hand placed at the wall next to his head in a manner that would have been suggestive had it not been necessary to retain any balance at all. My butt was against a woman’s butt, my back against a man’s back, my left arm up against a woman’s side, and my right arm, when not pressed against the wall, had a man’s head resting on it. At any given moment I was touching five different people.

I attempted to lighten the situation. I told the guy I was pressed up against “nice to meet you,” and he gave me a smile, the only one I’d get from him for the duration. To the man who occasionally rested his head on my arm, I asked if Chinese trains were always like this. He laughed, and told me that pretty much yes, they were always this way. I told him it was my first time (which wasn’t quite true—I took an overnight train to Xi’an a few years ago, and although it was a similar train, the conditions were drastically different). He proved to be very friendly, and concerned for me, asked me about my stop and made sure that I’d get off at the correct one.

Not long into the trip, the people behind me decided that they would rather sit than stand. First the lady sat, freeing my butt, but taking up more floor space than currently existed. In order to make herself comfortable, she kicked me repeatedly until I was able to shuffle my foot forward a little. She then urged her companion to sit next to her, and my back was then exposed. Because he was also attempting to take up more space than existed, he had his back now resting on the back of my calves, forcing me into a squat that I could not keep up or move out of.

The worst issue facing me was that posed by my left foot. It was straddling the divide of the two cars, and very soon my shoe got wedged in the divide. I was not easily able to move my feet anyway, but being wedged like this meant that when the train rounded a curve, my shoe and foot got wrenched in a way that neither was meant to be moved. An inability to move my knees meant I could not pull my foot out of the shoe upwards, so I had to bear the wrenching and hope that neither shoe nor foot would break, or that the train was going in a really, really straight line.

At the first stop, a woman attempting to get off the train was faced with this barrier of people. She tried gently pushing, climbing over, and then pushing harder, but there was simply nowhere for any of us to go. In desperation to get off the train, she basically jumped into us, bowling us over. I couldn’t actually fall over, but I did fall into the woman sitting behind me.

The re-shifting that occurred after the first stop made it so that smiley-head-resting-man could make a space for me against the wall. He urged me over and told me where I could put my hands to be stable, and for a while this was a much better position. I got my shoe un-wedged, and felt a bit safer and more comfortable.

For the next half hour, we were constantly shifting in position as people forced their way through. Each time I was certain that it was going to be futile, but each time they made it through. I became more and more annoyed with the sitting people (of which there were around 5). At one point I’m certain I kneed some poor man in the crotch. And the whole time I knew that if there was an emergency, there was no way of escaping, of coping, of surviving. And this was life on a Chinese train.

We got off without incident. The man who earlier helped me get a better spot made sure I got off the train, and even forced some people out of my way to clear a path for me. I thanked him and wished him luck, and slowly relaxed. Never had I felt so trapped and helpless and scared, but then it was over, and we all took in the night air before cramming into a taxi and heading home.

Brief Interlude

The sequence of events which got Skylar and me from Beijing to Hong Kong and then to the final destination of Taigu was truly a string of successes that left us high-fiving each other repeatedly, an action that proved so powerful and so addictive that we now congratulate ourselves on the simplest things, such as eating a meal or tying a shoelace.  I spent the trip in a state of guardedly optimistic shock, waiting for the disaster to strike.   The only striking, however, was palm on palm as Skylar and I pummeled our way through the travel, visa process, and eventual arrival in Taigu.

Skylar and I left Beijing on a hot, muggy morning. After carrying our luggage down 7 floors (multiple trips required), we were both dripping with sweat and not looking forward to the prospect of lugging all of our stuff around. Luckily, the lady downstairs who goes through my garbage decided to help us out and hired a guy with a cart attached to his bike to pedal our luggage to the bus stop for the bargain price of 10 RMB. Given that we didn’t actually know how to get to the bus stop, this was a fantastic deal.

Because I had more bags than contents and the two airlines we were using had different baggage requirements, I had two large bags with me that each contained two smaller bags. In this way, we were able to easily meet the different bag number and bag weight requirements of the airlines without paying extra fees. When our clever plan went through flawlessly and we had made it through security (I had the special pleasure of being groped, but Skylar got through untouched), our feelings of victory were boiling over.

We celebrated our ability to use an airport with tea lattes.

It was around now that we we had our first high five.  After spending hours trying to figure out the luggage and travel situation, it had all gone down without a hitch. At this moment, we realized that perhaps we could have a simple trip in Asia: one where we make plans and these plans come to fruition with the least amount of resistance.

Our optimistic suspicions turned out to be correct.  Hong Kong was a sea of high-fiving. Our main goal was to attain work visas, and attain them we did, all the while seeing the sights of Hong Kong. Night markets, day markets, museums, buses, trams, trains, walks, parks, zoos, enormous Buddhas… we saw them all. In the world’s shopping hub, we bought sunglasses, bows, signs, compasses, medicine balls, clothing, and gifts. We even made a stop in Macau.  As more things went well, our conception of what constitutes a success got broader and broader.  Ate a good breakfast? Success.  Bought a chocolate milk? Success. Talked to a Cantonese person using Putonghua? Success. Remembered to get off the subway at the right stop on the first try? Success!

And then, almost as if in a testament to our successful journey, we got bumped from economy to business class on the flight back to Beijing.  Hong Kong is a city full of luxuries, and it seemed only fitting to ride back to Beijing in style.

Our flight from Beijing to Taiyuan saw our first problem—our flight was delayed. Yes, I went on a vacation with only one other person, carrying everything I owned with me, and the biggest snag we faced was that our flight “home” was delayed by an hour or so. This was more of an issue for the man responsible for picking us up, Du Jun, who waited at the airport for 2 hours. After a day of traveling, I was pretty wiped, and slept through the ride to NongDa, my new home. Skylar and I were led through the dark to our bungalow, towing our luggage ungracefully, made a quick decision about who gets what room, and collapsed into sleep in our new home.

Fearless

When Oberlin adopted the motto “Fearless,” there were many student complaints. They thought it indicated foolish braverism as opposed to the previous naive but thoughtful tagline about changing the world.

I didn’t really have a problem with the idea of Obies being fearless. I thought it was a pretty accurate description of students who wear whatever they want, study whatever they want, express themselves however they want… Oberlin felt like a safe place, and I think that made us all a bit more confident in overcoming our many, many neuroses and dealing with life head-on.

Of course, the best place to test your fearlessness is not on the grassy campus of Oberlin, but out in the world.  Clearly Oberlin saw the fearlessness in me when they accepted me not once, but twice.  It was not until I moved to China that I had the chance to prove myself. Here are some of my demonstrations of fearlessness:

• I left a Chinese man drive me around for a total of 14 hours.
• I used multiple group bathrooms that had no stalls.
  
• I slept in a bed that had once contained a centipede.
• I ate chicken soup that had a chicken head floating in it.
• I used a bathroom that not only lacked stalls, but seemed to lack anything recognizable as a toilet, squat or otherwise.
  

And all of this occurred on just one little weekend trip to Inner Mongolia.