Some Final Thoughts

Well, here I am, sitting in my hotel room the afternoon before I catch a plane home to the U.S. To risk sounding a little cheesy, it's hard to believe that I've been living here for almost an entire year and that it's now time to go home. In fact, it still hasn't quite hit me--my brain is still firmly convinced that I'm just on another extended vacation and at some point in the near future I will turn around and head back to Qufu. It is hard to internalize the fact that, if I ever do return to China, it likely won't be for several years. And I have to say, as happy as I am to be heading home I will also miss the home I've made here and all of the great people I've gotten the chance to meet and get to know. I would like to formally (well, as formally as you can on a blog) thank China, the university, and everyone I've met this year for giving me such an amazing experience. There were times I was about ready to tear my hair out, but for the most part I was happy and there is no doubt that I have learned and experienced much more in these short months than I likely did in my entire four years of college. So thanks, China. You did good.

Finally, I would like to give a special shout out to my students. They will probably never read this blog, since it is usually blocked in China, but they deserve some serious credit for being enthusiastic, helpful, fun, and--well--for showing me just how challenging being a teacher can be. Though there were many times throughout the semester when I considered coming to class wielding a baseball bat, all in all I love them and I will miss them. I sincerely hope I get the chance to see them again.

Debate dinner

The pinata was a huge hit at our class party

...but the human knot proved a little more difficult

In conclusion, I have had a great time here and I'm sad to be leaving. But I am very happy I came and I'm looking forward to any chance to visit China again in the future.

The secret to Chinese cooking (that you never really wanted to know)

One of the most interesting pieces of spending some time in a new place or culture, I think, is how quickly you get attached to certain aspects of it. For me, this usually happens in the form of food. Everywhere I've lived I've had a favorite local restaurant or dish that someone has introduced me to and that I end up feeling like I can't live without. Having lived in China for almost 9 months now, I find that I have become firmly attached to local food. I almost never crave western food anymore, and even when I get the rare chance to eat it, it just isn't satisfying. I want all the food I've been eating habitually over the past few months--tomato and egg, fried eggplant, stir-fried cauliflower, vinegar-soaked cabbage, all served over a nice bowl of fresh white rice.

Still, as much as I have come to love the food here, I do have a bit of a complicated relationship with it. As tasty as it is, it is usually very heavy in oil and sodium and comes in portions best suited for a football team, which makes staying healthy a bit of a challenge. I have also had more than my fair share of nights spent crouched on my bathroom floor after enjoying a delicious meal that my taste buds loved but, apparently, my stomach did not. And, most frustrating of all, I have found most of my favorite restaurant dishes impossible to recreate. Though I've played around quite a bit with various recipes and ingredients, I've never been able to replicate the exact taste that I'm looking for.  I have pondered over this problem with a few of my fellow teachers who have also been struggling to master the art of Chinese cooking, but we've never been able to come up with the missing link. At least, not until a few days ago, when one of my fellow teachers stumbled upon a possible answer (that also said a lot about the food poisoning issue) that, frankly, made my skin crawl.

One of my absolute favorite Chinese dishes: tomato and egg

Fengwei qiezi--fried eggplant with red pepper and sesame

Dani and I have been allies since our arrival in China. As the only two meat-free foreign teachers in Qufu, we've often had to team up on group outings to fight for our right to more vegetable dishes. We've also spent quite a lot of time trying to come up with ways to explain to our students why we don't eat meat. Most of our students assume it's a religion issue, and when we try to explain health or environmental concerns they mostly just give us puzzled stares and decide to revert to their original assumption for the sake of simplicity. Dani decided to try to clear up this issue once and for all by turning one of her culture classes into a day all about food--diet, food safety, organic farming, everything you could possibly relate to food. In the midst of a class discussion with her students, though, Dani came across a piece of information that was extremely unsettling and, at first, impossible to believe.

According to Dani's students, the majority of the oil used in the restaurants in Qufu--and even in the campus cafeterias--comes from sewage. That's right, sewage. Apparently, in order to save money, many restaurant owners use cooking oil skimmed from sewer drains that has been "refined" in order to make it re-usable. Just how "refined" the oil actually is, I'm sure you can guess.

I've never held a very high opinion of Chinese food safety, but this was something that was hard to swallow (no pun intended). I decided to do a little googling, in hopes that perhaps Dani's students were simply repeating a popular rumor. Alas, no such luck. I found many articles, that were all very recent, exposing just such a practice that is apparently quite widespread in China.

It's hard to look at a dish this appealing and guess where it's been

There are two main ways this type of "recycling" happens. Underground oil recyclers form buy-sell relationships with "low-end" restaurants, buying a restaurant's used cooking oil and selling it back at a low price once it's been "refined." To add to their collection of cheap oil, these recyclers also sometimes go straight to the sewage drains outside of higher-end restaurants, which don't usually sell their used oil. As a result, especially in smaller cities like Qufu that have very few "high-end" restaurants to speak of, much of the local food cooked and sold to customers is cooked in recycled oil.

The main reason this is an issue (aside from the pure "yuck" factor) is that recycled oil is usually tainted with a high level of toxins, the most dangerous of which is known to cause liver cancer. China, apparently, has one of the highest rates of liver cancer, and considering it's been estimated that up to 1 in 10 dishes in certain areas are cooked with sewage oil, it's pretty clear why.

The legal side of this particular food safety problem has been something I've had trouble pinning down. Like many Chinese policies, their policy in this area is pretty vague. Some say it is 100% illegal, while others say there is no law that specifically bans the practice. Still, the government has made some efforts in the past to crack down on the use of recycled oil and enforce more sanitary methods of using and disposing of cooking oil. The unfortunate thing, though, is that this kind of enforcement is usually pretty ineffective--even nonexistent--outside of major cities. The likelihood of food safety laws being strongly enforced in smaller cities or rural areas is remarkably slim. As Dani's students told her, "There's nothing we can do about it."

It's probably not necessary to say that my appetite for restaurant food has been effectively ruined. There are a few restaurants in town that we feel are "safe," but in general I think I'll be sticking to my own kitchen. But I do plan to boost my efforts to learn to cook some of my favorite foods, and if I don't quite get the taste that I always get in restaurants--well, that's okay with me.

May Day Holiday

Okay, so first off I need to apologize for how long it's been since my last post.  To be fair, my life since vacation has been pretty dull so there wasn't actually that much to report.  Still, for those of you who only get photos and stories from here, I'm sorry!  I will try to be more consistent from now on.

Anyway, in this post I will be bringing you photos from the May Day holiday at Qufu Normal University, as well as from my trip to Qingdao, a seaside city a little north of here.

The Qufu Campus Sports Meet

The May Day holiday on campus is marked by the campus sports meet.  Basically, it's a track meet Olympics held between all the different departments on campus.  Each department selects students (mostly freshmen and sophomores) to compete in various track and field events, and a group of students from each department also puts on a performance to open the meet.

The start of the opening ceremony parade

The students marching by department

The foreign students didn't quite get the marching down, but still had a good time

I think being a part of the crowd was the best part of the event.  The stands were also divided by department, and all the attending students wore matching jackets in support of their team.  We were pretty bummed that we didn't have our own jackets to wear, but we did come prepared with signs to cheer on the foreign language students.  The opening performances were a lot of fun.  Most of the departments did some sort of synchronized dance on the field, complete with matching outfits, pom-poms, and in one case someone wielding a sword.  Our own department performed to Lady Gaga's "Telephone" and I noticed many of their fellow students dancing and singing along with great enthusiasm.  When encouraged to join in, however, most of us foreign teachers opted for simply waving our signs around.

Some of our CFL students

This performance told the story of a warrior, but I didn't manage to grasp any details

After the performances were over, the stands suddenly emptied and only a few small groups of students remained to watch the actual track events.  At first, I was surprised by this, but after another 40 minutes or so began to understand why they hadn't stuck around.  Unless you're an avid fan of track and field, you can only watch people jump over hurdles so many times.  Still, we happily cheered on the athletes from our own department for a little while before wandering back home.

A Trip to Qingdao

Taking advantage of our long weekend, I and a few fellow teachers decided to head to Qingdao for a few days.  Qingdao is a coastal city that is known mostly for its beer.  I decided to actually do some research for this trip, and discovered that the Germans took over Qingdao in 1898 when they noticed that the Chinese were building up a naval defense base, and they occupied the city until 1914.  While there, however, the Germans had a great influence on the city, most notably starting the Qingdao brewery.  Today, the brewery is still running and is one of, if not the, largest producers of beer in China.  We stopped by the brewery to get a tour on the history and development of the brewery, which came with free beer and some seriously delicious spiced peanuts.  The museum also included a "drunk house," a small wooden house that was tilted up onto one corner and that you had to attempt to navigate through without falling over.

In addition to its brewery, Qingdao is also famous for its aquarium.  I have to say, I didn't have the heart to take photos of most of the sections of the aquarium.  I was extremely sad to see that China does not take into consideration the comfort and health of the animals it chooses to put on public displays.  Most of the animals we saw in the aquarium were in tiny enclosures where they only had room to move up and down, rather than around in any way.  The polar bears were in a minuscule glass-fronted enclosure with barely a puddle to swim in, and both were cowering against the back wall in an attempt to escape the throngs of tourists and flashing cameras.  The arctic wolves were in a glorified cage without anything similar to natural territory, and they had thrown several breeds of penguins into one enclosure that was only 2-3 times the size of an average bedroom.  They were all huddled in tiny groups trying to avoid the unfamiliar groups around them.  It broke my heart to see them.  I hate to depress my readers, but if any of you ever have the opportunity to speak up on animal rights either in American zoos or those abroad, I hope you'll remember this post and take the chance make a difference.

On a brighter note, the sea lions seemed to get a pretty good deal.  They had a rather large tank in which they could swim to their hearts' content, under which was a tunnel for tourists to walk through.  It was fun to see them all zooming around, and many of them came right up to the glass to check out the humans below them.  I tried to take good photos, but the lighting was not in my favor.

Our trip to Qingdao also included a view transportation adventures.  We asked a senior student, Avery, to help us buy train tickets.  Avery, who was also going to accompany us, opted to buy the cheapest tickets she could find, and we all agreed to this plan without pausing to consider what exactly this might mean.  Later, we found out, and I have to say that while I am proud to have survived, I would not wish to repeat the experience.

The train we ended up taking was a seven hour overnight train and did not involve assigned seats, or even the concept "sold out."  Instead, it was a massive free-for-all in which everyone traveling on the line bought up tickets and then fought for breathing room on the train.  We were the fourth stop on the train's route north, and when we boarded it was already packed to the brim.  Every seat was full and people were crammed like sardines in the aisle and crouching in the connecting gaps between cars.  We managed to get ourselves a little space in the aisle, leaning awkwardly against seat backs and unsuspecting passengers' shoulders and heads.  Personally, I have never been good at standing for longer than about 20 minutes, so I was not looking forward to attempting it for several hours through the night.  Luckily for me, there were a few people willing to take pity on me, as well as my friends.  One man stood up and let me doze in his seat for a couple hours, and when I traded with him again Avery had managed to persuade a group on a long bench to slide over and make a little space.  We took turns perching, half on the seat and half off, while whoever was seatless stood or sat on the floor.  By the end of the trip we were in a sort of dog pile, me and Eliza on a bench, and Emily and Avery on the floor with their heads resting on our knees.  Irene had managed to score a seat one row behind us and had a little more breathing room, but by the end of the ride all of us were very worn out and cranky.

What struck me most about this experience, I think, was how easily everyone else on the train seemed to handle standing for so many hours without a break.  It was not just that they seemed to take it in stride, but that by the end of the journey everyone looked as if the ride had only lasted an hour or so.  By the end of the journey, I and my fellow foreign teachers looked like we had spent 7 hours on a cramped and overheated train, but everyone around us looked like they'd just finished showering and getting dressed.  We were sweaty and rumpled, and they were crisp and fresh.  I have noticed this a few times before, and still can't figure out the trick, but if I ever do it may be the best thing I bring home from China.

Festival dancers by the beach

Monument to the May 4th Movement

My journey home from Qingdao was much more comfortable, but still held some adventures of its own.  There were no direct trains from Qingdao to Qufu, so I had to change trains in Jinan, which is only about 40 minutes by fast train to Qufu.  However, I did not realize upon buying my ticket that there were two train stations in Jinan.  My train arrived at Jinan West, but my departing train left from Jinan East on the other side of the city.

Luckily for me, I had about three hours before my connecting train, so I had plenty of time to catch a cab.  However, before I could turn to leave the station and find one, I was encircled by a group of young Chinese boys wearing matching blue jackets and bright red sashes.  It took me a minute to recognize them as members of Youth Volunteer.  I'm not quite sure who they are or who runs the program, but there are always packs of youth volunteers at every train station ready to help travelers with luggage, directions, or anything else they may need assistance with.  The pack eventually thinned to two boys, who took my ticket and began explaining to me in Chinese that I was at the wrong station (at least that's what I'm assuming they were explaining).  I, in turn, tried to explain that I was aware of this and was fine on my own, but before my broken Chinese and miming could get very far, each boy had grabbed me by one of my elbows and I was swiftly propelled outside of the station and to the front of a line of taxis.  I nodded and said "thank you," trying to convey that I was fine and knew what to do, but it seemed that I had been classified as the helpless foreigner, and these two were determined to make sure that I made it to my train without any difficulty.

After the two boys held a heated conversation with the man running the cab line, in which they tried to get me to the front but were told rather rudely to shove off, a brief discussion was held.  Then, one of the boys returned to the station while the other grabbed my elbow again and steered me to the bus station.  At first I thought he would simply show me which bus to get on, but instead he came on with me and insisted on paying my fare.  Eventually we made it to the train station across town, where he accompanied me inside and took me to the platform, waving goodbye through the window of the train as it pulled away.  Apparently, chivalry is not dead--if you're looking for it, try a teenage boy in China.

What was really fun, though also quite challenging, about this experience was our attempt to communicate.  I knew extremely basic Chinese, and he knew extremely basic English, so most of our conversation was limited to fairly boring questions.  I was able to ask his name, which turned out to be Zhang Zeng Wen, and ask where he went to school and what he was studying (though he had to try to translate his major into English).  According to Zeng Wen I did pretty well in Chinese, but he opted to try out his English via his cell phone, and would type a series of questions in Chinese characters into it and then hit "translate."  This not only meant that it took us about five minutes to get through one question and answer apiece, but it also meant that I got some fairly flummoxing questions held up for me to read.  "You to Jinan do?" was clearly "What are you doing in Jinan?" but "You own to person of China?" I had no clue how to interpret.  When I gave him a look of complete bewilderment, he just smiled and typed a new question.

This was one of those moments that made me really love China.  I think you would be hard put to find someone in the states (especially a teenage boy) willing to take a complete stranger all the way across a city and put them onto a train, or to sit with them for two hours trying to hold a conversation with only a few words, a cell phone translator, and body language.  The next time I head through a train station I will give a very friendly greeting to the youth volunteers, and possibly hand out bags of cookies.

A Brief Exploration of Yunnan Province

            Between our two semesters of teaching, the foreign teachers at Qufu Normal University have almost two full months of vacation.  Many of my fellow teachers set off for two full months of travel around China and southeast Asia.  Though it sounded appealing, as someone with a pretty low tolerance for nonstop travel and also far more paranoid about dipping into my American bank account, I decided to opt for a simpler plan.  I decided to spend about 2 ½ weeks traveling in the south of China with my friend David, who was familiar with the area and knew enough Chinese so that we could get around fairly well without worrying too much about getting hopelessly lost.  A shorter amount of time traveling also made me feel much more justified in spoiling myself, something I definitely took advantage of as we traveled throughout the south.  Our original plan was to check out three cities in Yunnan: Kunming, Dali, and Lijiang.  Unfortunately, the crowds of people traveling for the New Year holiday meant that we weren't able to get bus tickets to our third city, Lijiang.  Still, we made the best of our extra time in Dali and all in all things turned out great.

            I don’t have quite as many interesting stories to share this time, and most of my friends and family seem more interested in what I saw during my vacation than what bizarre things I managed to do, so I’ll mostly be sticking to a brief summary of the more interesting places I visited.  I may cram a story or two in there, but there sadly aren’t too many this time.

#1: Green Lake Park, Kunming

            This was, aside from the restaurants, my favorite part of the city of Kunming.  The park is very large and beautiful.  In the mornings it is mostly quiet and peaceful, but in many areas you can find various exercise classes—tai chi, fan dancing, some sort of very fascinating sword dance, and even waltzing.  By the afternoon it becomes crowded and lively but is still great fun to explore.  This time of the year there is also an astoundingly large population of Russian gulls that have migrated south for the winter and who are extremely bold when it comes to getting food.  So bold, in fact, that you can pay to have your picture taken with a gull eating bread crumbs out of your hand.  We passed on that bit, though.

#2: The Bamboo Temple, Kunming

            This particular temple is situated in the mountains and is famous for its collection of 500 clay sculptures of arhats.  An arhat, as I understand it, is (in Buddhism) anyone who has attained Nirvana.  I believe there are some variations on this, but that is the basic idea.  Anyway, apparently a sculptor created these life-sized clay figures in the late 1800s during the restoration of the temple.  Today, they are lined up on enormous shelves in a series of dark rooms and protected by glass.  Unfortunately, we were forbidden from taking photos so I have none to share with you.  But I can tell you that, while the ability of the sculptor is impressive, I found the sculptures themselves highly disturbing.  They are incredibly lifelike, but have a brightly colored, cartoon-like quality to them that makes them just a little bit eerie.  I had the distinct impression that at some point one of them was going to climb quietly down from his shelf and grab me when my back was turned.  The fact that many of them were crouched in vaguely menacing positions did not help.  I even managed to yank a similar opinion out of David, my travel buddy, though he was still determined to view them purely as a cultural relic.  The rest of the temple, though, was gorgeous, and we also discovered upon further exploration near the residential section that Buddhist monks enjoy satellite TV as much as we do.  Who knew?

The biggest incense burner I have ever seen

The temple kitties

#3:  The Flower Bird Market, Kunming

            This market apparently began selling just what the name describes, but is now filled to the brim with vendors selling everything from snacks to pet rabbits to jade.  It is overwhelming, crowded, and somewhere to bargain heavily, but a blast to explore.  We saw live maggots being sold (yes, for consumption), beautiful scarves and wall hangings, and one stall with the most impressive collection of pipes I’ve ever seen.  This was also where I discovered the fascination the southern Chinese have for cowboy hats, something that I found highly entertaining.

Lunch, anyone?

Trying out my Chinese cowboy hat

#4: The Western Hills, Kunming

            The western hills are a section of the mountains just outside Kunming filled with various pagodas and temples.  This was where I decided that the Chinese tendency to attempt to organize and tame nature had gone too far.  I had already seen my fair share of parks reduced to stone pathways and benches with a few scrubs of trees, but stairs up a mountain?  Really?  As if hiking wasn’t hard enough already.

            Aside from the stairs, though, the mountains were a blast.  The most interesting section was the Dragon’s Gate.  I’m not sure of the origin of the gate, but apparently there is a legend that if a fish from the water below the mountain jumps all the way to the top of the mountain and passes through the gate, it will turn into a dragon.  Visiting the Dragon’s Gate requires passing down a very intimidating flight of stone stairs in a dark, cramped tunnel.  But it is definitely worth the experience.

We made friends with a tour group on our way up the mountain

#5: The Golden Temple, Kunming

            Another up-the-stairs-on-the-mountain experience, the Golden Temple was fun but very confusing.  We managed to find what we were looking for—the 4^th largest bell in China that it costs only 2 RMB to ring as loud as you can with the help of a giant log—but after that only succeeded in getting incredibly lost.  The signs posted all over the sprawling trails and roads are mostly contradictory and unhelpful.  Go here for a good session of exploring, but make sure you have enough time to get lost and then get found again.  This is also where my camera ran out of battery for the first time, so I sadly wasn't able to get any pictures of the bell.  But I promise that once David gets his own photos online I will steal one and post it here.

Entering the Golden Temple

I'm not sure what the camel was there for, but it seemed very comfortable

#6: Cangshan, Dali

            This is one of the more popular mountains of Dali, where you can spend an entire day (again, mostly up and down vertical staircases) exploring gorges, waterfalls, and spectacular views.  We also made friends with a woman named Feifei and her family, who were in Dali to celebrate New Year’s.  Feifei’s husband is French, so she and I bonded over our slightly broken French and some casual mocking, while David tried out his Chinese on her parents.  We took a cable car about halfway up the mountain, then walked up, across, and back down to Dali Old Town.  After a few calculations David and I added our walking/hiking distance up to about 13-15 kilometers in roughly 3 ½ to 4 hours.  We had a spectacular time, but our calves were definitely not happy with us the next morning.

#7:  Old Town, Dali

            Thanks to New Year’s (a holiday that in China only ends when you run out of fireworks and other explosives), cancelled travel plans, high tour prices, and one case of food poisoning (for once not me!), we didn’t do that much sight-seeing in Dali.  However, Old Town is somewhere I would be happy to explore for months on end.  It is filled with market streets selling beautiful hand-crafted items (mostly made by the Bai, a Chinese minority that is a large part of the Dali population), almost every kind of food you can imagine, and tons of shops to explore.  One of my favorite sections of the town is a little park where I could hang out in the sun and read for hours, occasionally peering over the top of my nook to people-watch.

            I think perhaps the biggest lesson I learned on my vacation to Kunming and Dali was the importance of choosing the right traveling partner.  For some people this might mean finding someone with a similar sleeping schedule or budget, but I discovered that perhaps the most important thing to consider when deciding whether or not to travel with someone is your respective tourist personalities.  This was somewhere where David and I fell down flat and it caused a considerable amount of trouble for both of us during the roughly 2 ½ weeks that we spent traveling together.

            David is a cultural tourist.  He studied anthropology and religious studies in college, focusing a lot on China.  David’s interest lay in things like temples, pagodas, monuments, and interacting with the locals in Chinese.  David is, in my opinion, the more admirable tourist.  He takes time to learn about the history and culture of the place he is visiting and has a deep respect and sense of awe for everything he sees.  For David, being a tourist is a serious business.

            I am not a cultural tourist—or a serious one—by any means.  The best label for me would probably be something like an environmental or nature tourist.  While most people are looking at the temple, I’m hugging the trees that surround the temple or petting the temple cat.  I prefer the hike up the mountain to whatever it is we’re hiking up the mountain to see.  While receiving a lecture on the importance of a building or street, I’m usually nodding along and pretending to listen while looking in the other direction hoping to see something like a playground.  For me, an interaction with a local is usually asking them what the best hiking trail is or if I can play with whatever animal is nearby (a question which often attracts strange looks in China since pets aren’t really a big thing).  I want to be a serious tourist, and I’ve tried several times, but I can’t help it.  I don’t know how many of you ever watched the PBS show “Arthur” when you were kids, but I remember that I always identified with D.W. in the episode when the Read family took a vacation to Washington, D.C.  At the top of the Washington Monument D.W. points out, “We were down there and we looked up here.  Now we’re up here and we’re looking down there.  What’s the point?”  I remember feeling similarly when my own family went to Washington, D.C.  Why were we here when just a short drive away in Maryland or Virginia there were horses everywhere?

            To sum up, David and I clashed quite a bit when it came to our interests, although we tried to do it as politely as possible.  I happily followed along to look at temples and pagodas, although as the weeks wore on I became increasingly convinced that there is only one pagoda in China and it jumps from location to location in order to drive tourists mad.  I listened as David explained the historical and cultural significance of buildings, food, clothing, and language but rarely came up with a response more creative than “uh-huh,” “wow,” or “that’s interesting!”  I tried to ask intelligent questions, but usually I retained no information whatsoever so it was a fairly useless endeavor.  Still, I did my best to be a willing participant in the required tourist activities.

            David, in turn, politely didn’t notice when I was clearly not listening to or understanding a word he said, and chose not to ask questions when I seemed to be forming a deep relationship with something like a patch of woods or a boulder.  He also would sigh and wait patiently whenever I stumbled upon any form of animal.  Dali especially must have worn him pretty thin.  Dali, a popular hiking and cultural destination, was filled with ex-pats.  And where there are ex-pats, there are pets.  David would stop several times a day to notice that I was no longer following him obediently down the street but instead had bolted into an alleyway to cuddle with someone’s golden retriever.  After a few days, I’m pretty sure he started scouting for dogs and steering me down side streets in order to avoid them before I was able to notice their presence.  In fact, my attraction to dogs—and theirs to me—was something that by the end of our trip David had started to make fun of me for.  I managed to find them everywhere, and he found it highly amusing when the dogs in our last hostel at one point started following me around.  I give him great credit for not taking offence that I could barely hold an intelligent conversation with him but was reduced to a cooing, baby-talking puddle at the sight of anything furry.

One of the many dogs I formed a friendship with in Dali

            Dali was perhaps the best of the two cities for our opposing personalities, as it combined what I loved—beautiful nature and lots of hiking—with what he loved—anything culturally significant.  There was still the trouble of my preference for a silent communion with nature and his for a conversation about whatever historical relic we were exploring, but we managed.  The differences between our personalities are actually, in my opinion, more likely to cause the greatest problems when we go back to the states.  When we go home at the end of our respective teaching experiences in China, David’s friends and family will be able to ask all the questions they like about his pictures.  He’ll be able to tell them exactly what everything is, when it was built, and everything interesting about it.  My friends and family will be treated to a shrug and a response of, “I dunno, some temple on a mountain.  But they had a camel!”

The top 8 questions you get sick of being asked when you're living abroad

            A couple days ago I was talking to a friend of mine online.  Like many of my friends back in the states, she has a lot of questions about my life in China and usually begins conversations by asking me how things are going here.  When I first arrived in China in September, I was flattered by people’s interest and always pleased to answer their questions, but lately the shine has begun to wear off.  In the midst of this particular conversation I suddenly realized why: this friend was asking me the exact same questions she had asked me the last time we talked only a few days before.  In fact, the questions she was asking were the same questions I had been asked repeatedly by almost everyone I knew.  “Well,” I thought to myself, “this explains why I’ve been so annoyed with everyone lately.”

            Don’t get me wrong—being asked about China is usually great.  I like that I have such a cool experience to talk about with other people and I ask my friends living abroad in other countries about their experiences all the time.  But there are certain questions that you really only need to ask once—and some that are just stupid.  So, because I have finals coming up and am in a particularly resentful mood, here is a list of the top 8 questions that I despise being asked about China.  I apologize in advance to anyone who takes offense to this list for any reason; it is not intended to be personal.

1.  “So what time is it there, anyway?”

            The main reason this question annoys me is because it is usually asked by the same people over and over again.  I will talk to someone on Friday and they will ask me what time it is, then say, “Wow!  That’s a big time difference.”  The next day I will bump into them online yet again, and the same question is raised.  This cycle never really seems to stop.  Come on, people.  The world is not stretching in and out of time zones every few hours, and basic addition is not that hard.

            Also under this category is the classic, “Whoa…it’s Friday here and it’s Saturday there.  That’s so crazy!”  You figured that out three months ago the first time we talked across time zones.  Get over it.

2.  “Why haven’t you sent me anything yet?”

            Most people ask me this as a joke, but there are a few who have actually demanded that I mail them souvenirs—not just postcards, which is totally cool, but actual presents.  First of all, mailing stuff to the U.S. is incredibly expensive when you’re making as little money as I am.  Even my own family members aren’t receiving their holiday presents until I haul them out of my suitcase next year.  Secondly, with the way the mail system works here anything I sent probably wouldn’t even reach you until after I returned home, anyway.  Thirdly, why haven’t you sent me anything yet?  Do you have any idea how many of my favorite everyday things I don’t get to have anymore?  I’ll send you some jade or a box of moon cakes when you figure out how to send me a bagel shop.

            As a side note: for all of you who have sent me stuff, you rock and will get a mammoth amount of China stuff when I get home next summer.

            For any of you who have asked me the above question, however, don’t hold your breath.

3.  “Are you dating anyone?”

            Or, more often, “Have you hooked up with anyone?” (clearly the college mind does not die with the college experience).  To be honest, this question irritated me even when I was living back home in the U.S.  It’s a perfectly legitimate question (well, the first one is--the second one is none of your business), but for some reason it is the very first question that certain people always ask me.  The level of importance that some people place on my relationship status, and just the fact that they are interested in the first place, astounds me.  Who cares that I’m living abroad, working at an actual job, and experiencing a new culture?  That isn’t worth talking about at all.  What really matters is whether or not I wake up with someone else in my bed.

4.  “So, nothing’s in English?” or, even worse, “So, everything’s in Chinese?”

            Yes, people have actually asked me this.  I don’t think I need to explain why it’s a stupid question.

5.  “So, you actually have Internet out there?”

            Really?  All those stories in the news about the Great Firewall and this fact still surprises you?  It's China, not the Stone Age.

6.  “Have you stolen me a panda yet?”

            You know who you are.  Stop it.

7.  Any professor or politician-worthy question about China.

            I am happy to answer any questions about my own personal experiences in China.  I can tell you what the program I am involved in is like, my general impressions of cities I’ve seen, and the kinds of food I’ve eaten.  I cannot, however, recite the statistics from the population census of every city in the country, nor can I tell you why certain members of the government decided to do whatever it is they’ve decided to do that has pissed you off so much.  I am also not a Chinese-English translation service.  For some reason, certain of my friends believe that because I now live here I have the same amount of—or even more—knowledge about the country as someone born and raised here.  Not only that, but when I fail to answer one of their questions they treat me like I’m a big fat ignoramus.  Half of these questions are ones they probably couldn't even answer about their own country.

            Come on, guys.  I know you spend half of your time on Google, and it’s a much more reliable source than I am.  Use it.

8.  “How’s China?”

            I know it’s kind of unfair to add this to the list because it’s really just a replacement for the usual “How are you?”  I have my reasons, though.  It mainly bugs me because of the amount of expectation it is loaded with.  The conversation that follows this question usually goes something like this:

            Friend: “How’s China?”

            Me: “It’s good.  You know, same old, same old.”

            Friend: “What?  Aren’t you traveling all over the place and meeting cool people and skydiving and stuff?”

            Me: “Um…no.  I have a job.  So I pretty much stay in one place and go to work every day.  Most of the time nothing very exciting happens.”

            Friend: “What?  That’s so boring!  Why aren’t you doing anything more interesting?”

            Me: “Well, like I said, I have a job…so…”

            Friend:  “But when you move abroad your life is supposed to be a remake of Eat, Pray, Love!  Entertain me, dammit!”

            Me: “Sorry…”

            Friend: “You are such a disappointment.”

            Okay, I might be exaggerating a little bit.  When I actually get a chance to travel I am able to do and see some interesting things, but when you live and work abroad your life tends to fall into a dull routine pretty quickly.  It gets tiring having all of your friends tell you how lame you are all the time.

So that’s it.  I apologize for the rant, but now you all have a comprehensive list of what not to ask your friends (at least not more than a few times) when they are living abroad.  Also, if I ever slip up and ask any of you these questions, you have a right to slap me.  Pretty good deal, right?