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?

Happy 3rd, China

Last night marked the three-month anniversary of my arrival in China.  It’s a strange feeling.  Three months should probably feel like a great feat of some kind, but for some reason I’m actually surprised that I haven’t been here longer.  I suppose I’ve become so comfortable with my daily routine that it feels like I must have been here for ages.  Still, if I turned around and went home today I would probably complain that I’d barely spent any time here at all.

            When I realized that I was almost finished with my first semester of teaching, I thought it might be a good idea to do a basic evaluation of my experience thus far.  It’s impossible to label living and working here as either good or bad; like any other lifestyle it has its ups and downs.  So instead, I thought I would share some of the highlights—of both the pleasant and the troublesome.

A mid-November view of the campus

Pleasant: The Qufu locals.  Since I’ve been here, and after traveling to a few less friendly areas of China, I have often noticed how kind and helpful the people in Qufu are.  Perhaps with the exception of cab drivers (who mainly seem to view westerners as walking pots of money), everyone here is astonishingly sweet and tolerant.  I’m not sure if this is because there has been a fairly constant circulation of foreign teachers in Qufu for several years or if it’s a particular Qufu quality.  Either way, I am very grateful for everyone I have bumped into who has been willing to put up with me: the woman who sells me vegetables in the market and always knocks down the price or gives me something free to take away; the cheerful vendors in the East market who let me inspect everything extremely closely because I can’t actually ask anything; the staff at the tiny student gym who go out of their way to show me how to use everything and who seem charmed rather than annoyed by my slow uptake of information.  All of them have made adjusting to living here much easier than I anticipated.

Scenes from the Five Dragon Pool Park in Jinan

Troublesome: Sanitation—or lack thereof.  I have already mentioned that the state of most public bathrooms in China is rather alarming by western standards.  In fact, when we encounter clean bathrooms it is often something of an event.  The foreign teachers recently made a trip to Jinan and discovered that the mall’s bathroom was extremely clean and had real toilets, too.  Everyone bolted into the bathroom as if it was a local attraction.  Sad, isn’t it?

            There is also a Chinese habit that I have to say I don’t think I will ever get used to.  Here, if you have something stuck in your nose or your throat the way to take care of it is not by discreetly pulling out a tissue.  It is not uncommon to see people blowing their noses into the street, plugging one nostril shut with a finger and spraying the contents of the other all over the surrounding ground.  Hocking a loogie is also quite acceptable and something that I usually witness at least once a day.  I have had to dart quickly out of the way of several speeding bullets of phlegm.  This is definitely a cultural feature that I will not miss.

Pleasant: The food.  I have to say that the Chinese have far more tasty ways of preparing vegetables than Americans do.  I am also a big fan of how big street food is here.  For practically no money at all you can get a meal to carry home when you’re too lazy to cook and don’t feel like dining out.  One of my favorite ways to treat myself is to buy a bag of leek and egg baozi from the vendor down the street from my apartment, and if he has any on hand a few red bean paste ones, too.  My students and friends are constantly introducing me to new kinds of fruit, vegetables, and candy, and I never get tired of it.

These are, in my humble opinion, the best baozi to be found in Qufu

Troublesome: The side effects of food.  Unfortunately, I seem to have a strong sensitivity to a common ingredient in Chinese cooking, and since I have been here I have had food poisoning six times.  I would like to stress, for those of you considering trying out China for yourselves, that this seems to be my problem.  None of the other teachers have had the same problem, as far as I know.  But the joy of experiencing new kinds of food is dulled a bit by the knowledge that I might end up very unhappy in a matter of hours.  I’m beginning to wonder if my slight fear of dining out will follow me back to the states after so much conditioning.

Pleasant: My fellow teachers.  While admittedly I don’t have a perfect relationship with all of them, I don’t think I would ever be able to survive ten months, or even ten minutes, in China without them.  In such a new and different place, it is a relief to have a group of people who understand exactly where I’m coming from.  We help each other fumble through basic interactions in Mandarin (or more often Chinglish), give each other teaching tips, share food, clothing, furniture, and pretty much everything else, and most importantly can bitch to each other openly without worrying about offending anyone.  Above all of that, though, is the fact that together we are able to create a community that at least vaguely feels like home.  I never cared much about Thanksgiving until I realized I was going to miss it, and being able to celebrate it abroad with other displaced Americans helped me forget I was missing out.  And there’s nothing quite so adventurous as attempting to cook a traditional Thanksgiving meal with Chinese ingredients.

Gathering for Thanksgiving

In Qufu, Halloween includes the Bunny Hop

Troublesome: The language barrier.  Although I have done my best to pick up a little Chinese, the truth is that I rarely get a chance to use it.  During the day I am teaching English, hanging out with people who want to practice their English, or spending time with other westerners who don’t speak Chinese.  Aside from the market, which only requires a few phrases, I rarely use my Chinese at all, and as a result I have made little progress.

            The main problem with this is that it makes traveling very intimidating.  With the exception of Beijing, most locals in the average destination don’t speak much or any English, and all signs are in characters.  It’s very difficult to get around on your own when you can’t ask for or understand directions, and it’s quite terrifying knowing that if you get in an accident somewhere you will probably have no control over what happens to you.  I have been lucky a couple of times to find people who can make out my scrambled Chinese and who speak just enough English to help me out, but I am grateful that during the long winter break I will be traveling with a friend who speaks Mandarin fairly fluently.

Pleasant: My students.  Of course, there are days I wish I could throttle each of them in turn, but overall I have to say that I have fallen completely in love with most of them.  They are enthusiastic, hard working, and most of all very eager to learn as much as they can about me and about where I come from.  At this very moment, in fact, three of my girls are in my kitchen cooking oatmeal-raisin cookies.  My job is to make sure they don’t blow anything up, but they are determined to figure it out themselves.

Aimee and Lily showing off their first batch of cookies

            My students are also incredibly generous; in fact, they spoil me rotten.  I have been treated to dinner more times than I can count, and I often find students at my door bearing gifts.  One of my students is always munching on cookies in class, and will often leave two or three on my desk.  My student Aimee brings me about twenty pounds of fruit every time she comes to my apartment, and also once took me on an outing with her family and treated me to Pizza Hut, Haagen-Dazs, and a trip to the mall.

            But I think the best things about my students is that they have become very good friends; in fact, sometimes I wish I could quit being their teacher and just become one of their fellow students.  Avery, a senior who is a friend rather than a student, calls me “jiejie,” which means “big sister,” and I call her “meimei,” “little sister."  Sunny and April have become my best friends and spend a lot of time in my living room.  Jack and Bruce (who named themselves after Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee) are constantly making me laugh, especially with their scrambled English idioms.  If I could stuff a suitcase with my favorite students and haul it home at the end of the year, I would.

Me with my "meimei" Avery

Sunny and April dressed up for Halloween

  

          So there you have it: my slightly cheesy reflection on my past three months in China.  Despite the occasional bout of homesickness, I am very happy to be here.

An Evening of Chinese Dorm Life

            College students in the U.S. complain a lot about dorm rooms.  “They’re too small!”  “I can’t believe I have to share such a tiny room.  There’s not enough space for two people!”  “You mean I have to share a shower with a ton of strangers?  Seriously?”  I have seen many a first year college student cast a resentful glare at their RA after being shown to their dorm room, and bolt to Bed Bath and Beyond to buy shower shoes after being introduced to everyone in their suite.  I was no exception, either.  During my years as a college student I complained plenty about where I had to live.  Even when I had a single I thought it was too small and was appalled by the mysterious things that appeared to be growing in my suite’s shower.  I hated how loud and messy my suitemates were.  Dorm rooms were just awful, and I couldn’t wait until I was out of them.

            But when I first stepped into a Chinese university dorm room, I very quickly took back all the complaints I had ever made in college.  I also vowed to slap silly any resident of an American dorm room that I should happen to overhear whining in the future.

            Emily and I take an evening yoga class with two of my students, Sunny and April.  One night after class Sunny and April offered to give Emily and I a tour of their dorm.  Their building was only a few steps away from our yoga class, so we agreed to stop by on our way home.  The girls led us to a large and cheerful-looking building down the road, which was painted a bright turquoise.  From the outside it looked comfortable and homey.  Students walked in chattering groups in and out of the front doors, leaned out of their dorm room windows to hang laundry to dry, and bought nighttime snacks from the convenience store situated just inside.  How nice, I thought to myself.

            As Sunny and April led us up the stairs to their rooms on the second floor, they explained the basics of Chinese dorm life.  All dorms are gender-specific, with no co-ed mingling.  Students almost always live in the dorms all four years of their undergraduate education, and they do not get better rooms as upperclassman like most students do in the U.S.  Each dorm room houses six students and there is one bathroom on each floor.  At this point, April gave a little shudder.  “The true horror is to use our bathroom,” she told me.  “Wait, you will see.”

            One of April’s roommate’s was already asleep, so our tour of a typical dorm room took place in Sunny’s room.  Although I had been warned that the room would be cramped, I was still shocked by how little space there was.  I had thought that a room housing six girls would be of a fairly decent size, but instead I found a room roughly the size of my first double in college.  Somehow, someone had managed to cram six beds inside, stacked awkwardly along the walls.  Also jammed into the room were two tiny desks that the six girls shared.  I couldn’t see anything else, and I tried to figure out where the girls kept their clothes and books.

            When I explained my surprise, Sunny and April shrugged.  “This is China.  There are too many people,” they joked.  Emily and I laughed uncomfortably.  I think both of us were reflecting on our own college dorm rooms with a deep sense of guilt.

Sunny showing off her dorm room

            “Now for the bathroom,” April said, turning to us with a menacing grin.

            I smelled the bathroom before I saw it, and Emily and I exchanged a knowing glance.  Bathrooms in China are not known for their cleanliness.  Generally, toilets are “squatters” that do not flush well, and all toilet paper is deposited into a small trashcan in the corner of the cubicle.  The bathrooms are not cleaned very regularly, and a decent amount of experience has also taught me that many people have trouble hitting their mark.

            But when it came to unappealing bathrooms, this one took the cake.  As we approached and the smell grew stronger, April turned to us and said, “Ready?  Take a deep breath.  Okay, hold it!”  We obeyed and stepped inside.

            The main part of the bathroom was a large, hexagonal tiled room lined with what looked like a metal trough and several spigots for cold water.  This was where the girls washed, we were told.  Several girls were currently engaged in splashing their faces or under their shirts, wincing as the ice-cold water hit their skin.  But they waved happily at their visitors and waved us in to explore.

            In the center of the room was what could only be described as a pit of trash, where I assumed the girls dumped their own trashcans every day.  “How often do you think they clean that out?” Emily whispered to me.  I shrugged and wondered how many of these girls I could fit into my apartment.  Maybe I could adopt some of them and give them hot water.

            “The toilets are in there,” April pointed to a door on the right side of the room.

            As I had thought, the toilets were all squatters and not very clean.  But on top of that, there were also no cubicles.  Girls who needed to “answer nature’s call,” as one of my students always says, had to do it in full view of everyone else.  “It’s awful,” April said.  “And at nighttime there are no lights in the bathroom, so you have to go in the dark.”  I couldn’t imagine feeling my way in this bathroom, and I promised myself to buy the girls a flashlight.

            “Are there showers?” I asked.

            Sunny nodded and smiled.  “Yes, of course!  There are two public showers on campus that we can walk to.”

            When I got home to my apartment, I wanted to give it a hug.  I hoped for the sake of Chinese students everywhere that dorm room conditions would improve in the next few years.

            And as for all you American college students out there, you should get down on your knees and kiss your dorm room floor.

Shoving through Xi'an, Eating Up Beijing

How do we get to the Terracotta Army?

            During the first week of October, the entire country of China goes on holiday to celebrate National Day.  Excited to have a whole week of vacation after only four weeks of teaching, the English teachers of Qufu Normal University scurried to make plans.  We pored over maps and what was left of our September paycheck trying to decide where to go.  In the end, a good number of us settled on Xi’an, home to the famous Terracotta Army.  After a few days in Xi’an, we would then travel to Beijing to finish off our week.  It seemed like the perfect plan.

            My friend Irene and I departed a few days earlier than the rest of the crowd.  We took an overnight sleeper train and found ourselves blinking blearily in the Xi’an train station at about 6:00 am Saturday morning.  A little groggy after 16 hours of travel without much sleep, we were still determined to make the most of our day.  After making our way to the hostel, showering, and downing a few cups of much needed coffee, we set off to find our way to the Terracotta Army.

                                              My bunk on the sleeper train

            However, “finding our way” soon proved to be much more complicated than we had anticipated.  We had been spoiled by Qufu, which is small enough that getting lost isn’t really possible, and where we constantly had an army of students willing to tag along with us anywhere we wished to go.  Even when we were alone and completely befuddled, the marketplace vendors and shop attendants in Qufu were typically very helpful and willing to participate in a long-winded game of “mime that vegetable.”  But in Xi’an we found a very different culture.  Even the women who worked at the hostel front desk seemed irritated when we asked them for directions.  After giving me a long look that clearly asked “What, are you stupid?” one girl scribbled a few bus numbers on a piece of paper and handed it to me.  “Um…thanks,” I said, having no idea how to reach the bus but a little afraid to ask.  Irene and I wandered out of the hostel and found a bus stop around the corner.  A bus with the appropriate number showed up, so we hopped on.

            Thus began a confusing series of bus rides, during which we were rewarded only with stares of fear or annoyance when we attempted to ask or gesture for help.  At one point we wasted almost an hour riding on a bus in the opposite direction from our intended destination.  But eventually we found our way to the train station, where tourists were being herded in droves onto the bus that led to the burial site.  We hopped on, paid our fare, and settled down happily.  Weren’t we clever?  We’d managed to figure it out even after getting lost!

            Our pride lasted until we were told to disembark from the bus.  We had arrived, the driver informed us all.  We stepped off the bus and found ourselves standing on a dirt road, with nothing that looked even remotely like a tourist attraction in sight.

            “Um…where do we go?” I asked Irene.

            “Follow the Chinese tourists,” she suggested.

            This seemed like a good plan.  After all, they could read the signs.  But after walking for a while, I realized that there weren’t any signs.  There was nothing indicating in what direction we should go, and the groups we were shadowing looked just as confused as we did.  Everyone seemed to be employing the same tactic: walk in a straight line and hope that eventually you reach something.  Finally, after about ten minutes, we began to catch sight of tour buses—the big ones that foreigners with real money pay for.  Passengers looked down their noses at the addled pedestrians on the side of the road, and I suddenly had an overwhelming urge to shout and shake my fists.  A few of the Chinese tourists in front of us, who appeared to be students, pointed after the buses.  Follow that bus!  We began to trot down the road, suddenly feeling hopeful.

            After a few minutes we reached our destination.

            “That’s crap,” Irene said angrily as we joined the swarms of tourists heading for the ticket booths.  “How can you have such a popular tourist destination and not have any signs?”

            I shrugged.  Maybe it was supposed to be part of the experience.  Maybe Emperor Qin felt that people had to prove themselves before they could see the contents of his tomb.

            “It’s crap,” Irene repeated.

            We bought our tickets, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that with my expired Skidmore College ID I got to buy one for half price.  Distracted by my cheer, I didn’t notice the real live army that was approaching me.

            “Tour guide?”

            It was a small, delicate woman in a business suit and holding up an umbrella to block out the sun.  In a semi-circle about ten feet behind her stood several identical figures, who were watching our interaction closely.  “You need tour guide?”

            “Oh.  No, thanks,” I told the woman politely, and proceeded towards the entrance.

            “Yes.  You need a tour guide!” she insisted, stepping in front of me to block my path.

            “No, I’m fine, really.  Thank you.”

            “No, No, you need tour guide!  Won’t understand without tour guide.”  The woman continued to shuffle backwards, hopping back and forth so that she was constantly right in front of me.

            “I don’t need a tour guide,” I countered firmly.

            “Yes!  Nothing in English, won’t understand.  You know nothing about story, about history.  You will get lost.  Need tour guide!”

            I wanted to ask this woman if she usually got clients by insulting them, and also to point out that every sign around us had a clear English translation.  But I thought discouraging any conversation was probably best, so I stepped around her once again and began to walk more rapidly towards the entrance, scanning the crowd desperately for Irene who was nowhere in sight.

            The woman continued to pursue me, and I began to speed walk, saying over and over again, “I don’t want a tour guide; bú yào!”  When I finally managed to break away from her, she stood angrily shouting after me.  “You will wish for tour guide!  You understand nothing!”

            Her words seemed to cue the rest of the tour guides who had been shadowing us from a distance.  Suddenly they swarmed me, all urging me to select them as my tour guide and waving maps in my face.  I refused in every language I knew, pushing and shoving my way past them until I reached the entrance and handed the guard my ticket.  Once I was safely through, I looked behind me.  They had gone, already pursuing a new victim.

            “Holy shit,” I said aloud.

            “I know.”  Irene had made it through the gate, apparently having gone through a similar experience.  “They’re crazy.”

            Permitting myself a small shudder, I turned and followed Irene down the path that led to the museums.

The entrance to the Terracotta Army park (above) and a view of the army (right)

 When life gives you a push, shove it back

           Someone once told me that every city has its own personality and that you can use one word to sum it up.  By the end of my stay in Xi’an, I felt I had found its word: shove.  Everywhere we went we were tossed about like animals in a herd that hadn’t figured out how to get with the program.  Standing in a line in China is never a sure thing, but in Xi’an it is reduced to a toned-down fist fight in which no one has anything to lose and everyone will do whatever it takes to get to the front.  In museums, in the market, waiting for the bus, and even just walking down the street everybody pushes and shoves as much as they can.

            At first, I tried to resist this slightly violent culture.  I was sure that if I just stayed out of everyone’s way and wove my way around people quietly, I would still get where I needed to go.  But after my first full day of constantly getting pushed from side to side, and once even punched, I decided that it was time to join the masses.  When in Rome, right?

            On our second night in Xi’an, Irene and I decided to go explore the Muslim quarter of the city for dinner.  According to our guidebook it was a cultural gem, and something you couldn’t leave Xi’an without seeing.  Naturally, it was packed with tourists and stalls selling hokey souvenirs.  It was so crowded that it was impossible to move a foot in any direction, and though we struggled mightily to make it to one of the few ethnic market stalls we could find, we struggled in vain.  It was also cold and raining, which made standing in the street hoping to find sustenance an even less pleasant experience than normal.

            “Let’s just give up,” Irene shouted over the noise.  “There’s nowhere to sit down, anyway, and it will take ages to get food.”

            We had spotted a restaurant on our way over that had looked cheap and tasty, so we turned to head back.  Irene emitted a groan, and I could see why.  Masses of people covered the street, and all of them were heading with deep determination in our direction.  Moving against them would be, to put it mildly, difficult.

            But I had had enough of being pushed around, and taking confidence from the fact that I was about twice the size of most of the tourists, I grabbed Irene’s arm and shouted, “Let’s go!” pointing down the street like some sort of Disney-fied army general.

            Hauling Irene behind me, I barreled my way through the crowd.  I was almost looking for someone to knock over, and while I elbowed and shoved I shot as many nasty looks as I could come up with at every person I passed.  Irene soon followed suit, and eventually we seemed to begin emitting some sort of “Get out of my way” vibe that leapt ahead of us and parted the sea of people.  Soon we were standing outside the restaurant, still crabby but slightly mollified.  Each of us had gotten in at least a few good shoves that had sent people flying.  Somewhere in the back of my mind a voice told me I shouldn’t be proud of my behavior, but I didn't listen.  Instead I sat down to enjoy my reward of hot noodle soup.

Comfort food 

           After the rude and violent attitude of Xi’an, Beijing seemed like a safe haven.  Not only was it cleaner, friendlier, and much more navigable, but it also had something that is extremely valuable to a westerner who has been away from home for six weeks: an abundance of western restaurants.

Our hostel was situated in Sanlitun, which is also where most of the foreign ambassadors and their families live.  As a result, in the streets surrounding the hostel almost any type of meal could be found: American, French, Mediterranean—you name it, they had it.  In an attempt to save money and to retain at least a slight grip on reality, I tried to eat at least one Chinese meal every day, but the familiar and comforting food all around me was extremely tempting.  Though I had been happy to experiment with cooking Asian (or at least my version of it) in Qufu, I had missed all of my old staples.  Still, I was determined that the western food I wolfed down with enthusiasm in Beijing would be just a vacation treat.  I wasn’t going to spend a ton of money on the few western ingredients available in Qufu.  I would live practically and enjoy my eastern meals.

My first meal in Beijing: a panini with beets, salad greens, the most delicious spicy mayo in the world, and Camembert

            My resolve was broken rather swiftly when I discovered the western grocery store around the corner from the hostel.  A fellow teacher, Sarah, had told me about it, and I thought it would be fun to explore.  I was only going to look.  Really.

            When I stepped into the store, I almost wanted to cry.  All of my favorite things were spread out across the aisles.  There was cheese—cheddar, mozzarella, Brie, and Camembert.  There was chocolate—real chocolate—everywhere, and an entire floor to ceiling stack of shelves lined with candy.  “Peanut M&M’s!” I shrieked with joy, snatching up a bag.  There was pasta, tomato sauce, ice cream, lentils, black beans, split peas, and hot chocolate.  There were peanut butter and fruit preserves.  There were western brands of bath products, and I could actually read the labels of the shampoo and the conditioner!

            There was butter.

            Turning the corner at the back of the store, I couldn’t manage to hold back a gasp of delight when I found myself standing in front of a wall of French baked goods.  There were baguettes, boules, the little square French rolls topped with pumpkin seeds I had eaten in Paris, and shelves and shelves of croissants.  I stared at it all like a deer frozen in headlights.  Where was I going to begin?

            A man who was unloading a fresh delivery of bread approached me and handed me serving tongs.  He smiled in understanding.  Clearly, he had seen this reaction before.  Perhaps hoping to help guide me, he pointed at what was probably one of the most popular items: two shelves of chocolate croissants.

            I gave a little squeal of jubilation and bounced over to snatch one.  The man started back, a little surprised at my enthusiasm, then grinned.  “This one is funny,” he seemed to be thinking.  Then began a game of “tempt the tourist” in which I lost all dignity I had ever possessed and very quickly ceased to care about the contents of my wallet.  The man, who spoke no English, led me about the bakery pointing at various items and giggling as my enthusiasm rose to astounding proportions.  I beamed happily when he showed me various breads, hopped up and down when he pointed out the pastries, and oo’d and aah’d in appreciation over the tarts.  Somehow managing to retain a little self-control, I selected just one roll and two chocolate croissants to take back to the hostel, miming and stuttering in broken Chinese to my new friend that I would return the next day.  He nodded knowingly, and I left making rapid calculations in my head of just how much money I could spend and how many groceries I could stuff into my backpack.

            The roll and croissants were gone within the hour.  On my way to the train station when it was time to go home, I made a quick stop at the grocery store.  Sitting in my seat on the train, I gazed lovingly at my shopping bag of bread, butter, preserves, and a host of other goodies.  Okay, I could have saved a little more money.  But it was worth it.

Pardon my reach...

Emily and I at the Temple of Heaven (left)


The Temple of Abstinence, appropriately closed (below)

            One of my favorite things about Beijing was that there was so much to see.  We trekked along the Great Wall, wondered if the Temple of Abstinence in the gardens of the Temple of Heaven was always closed, and explored the various shopping streets all over the city.  There were also a few oddities.  For example, whenever I was with Irene we seemed to run into something Scottish.  Irene, who hails from Glasgow, seemed to attract all things Scottish that could be found in Beijing.  We passed several St. Andrew’s golf stores, a Scottish pub, and at one point even ran into a fleet of Chinese men dressed in kilts and playing bagpipes.  While I laughed, took photos, and wondered what the occasion was, Irene muttered, “I fucking hate bagpipes.  If I can’t get away from them here, where can I?”

Did you know that you can take a ski lift up to the Great Wall?

Irene and I on the Wall

           But perhaps my most memorable experience in Beijing occurred in Tiananmen Square.  I had spent the day with two other teachers, Sarah and Emily, exploring the Temple of Heaven.  Tired and hungry, we were now packed tightly into a crowd of tourists waiting to watch the flag lowering ceremony in the square.  Guards were moving along the borders of the crowd and arranging us all in an attempt to allow everyone to see.  Most of us were asked to sit down in order to allow those behind us to have a clear view.

            Emily and I obediently maneuvered onto the ground, trying to get comfortable kneeling on the harsh stone.  But once we had settled ourselves, we discovered that comfort was the least of our problems.

            When I was studying abroad in Paris, one of the things I found most frustrating was how acceptable it was in Europe for men to harass women.  I was propositioned, groped, and followed more times than I could count, and it was the major downside to my time there.  One of the things I loved about China was that I had not run into any behavior of this kind.  Men stared every once in a while, but I always assumed it was simply because I stood out and never saw any hint of lewd behavior.  China, it seemed, was the land of the respectful.

            Or maybe not.

            The ceremony was beginning, and I was watching the soldiers march into the square when I felt an elbow prodding me in the ribs.  Emily was shooting me a look of alarm and jerking her head towards the people behind her.  I turned to see what the problem was.  A relatively senior-looking man, who was situated directly behind us, had chosen to squat rather than sit and seemed to be having trouble maintaining his balance.  To prop himself up, he had placed a hand on Emily’s back.  But as he leaned forward to watch the procession in the square, his hand was beginning to slide perilously downwards.  As Emily shot me increasingly desperate looks, I struggled to control the sudden urge to laugh.  The man didn’t seem at all interested in Emily’s behind and was watching the procession with great attention.  Emily shifted around, trying to dislodge his hand, and he rocked back away from her.  But in a few moments his hand was back in place and sliding down once again.

            “What do I do?”  Emily asked me.

            I shook my head.  We could hardly turn around and slap an old man.  We couldn’t be sure if he was doing it on purpose, and how were we supposed to explain ourselves when the rest of the crowd took notice?  I shrugged my shoulders and gave Emily a look of pity.  She was just going to have to sit it out.

            But Emily, it turned out, was not going to be the only one to receive this man’s attentions.  Near the end of the ceremony, the crowd in front of us began to get restless and move around.  I rose up on my knees to get a better look, and suddenly I felt a pair of hands wrapping around my thigh.  Turning to look, I saw that the old man had seized the opportunity of something sturdier to hold on to and was now using my thigh as a means of balance.  I shot a look at Emily, who was biting her lips in an attempt not to laugh.  I tried shifting around and wiggling my leg.  The man responded by removing one hand and returning it to Emily’s backside, still leaving his right hand on my leg.  No matter how much we squirmed, he seemed determined to use us as a means of staying upright.
           By now, Emily and I were both in a state of mixed hilarity and distress.  There was no room to stand up, and none of our limited Chinese phrases would be at all helpful.  I looked around, hoping that perhaps someone nearby had noticed and would give an indication of what I should do.  I made eye contact with a man standing just to my right.  He smiled, wiggled his eyebrows, and then leaned over to peer down my shirt.

            This was too much.  When the ceremony ended and the crowd began to disperse, I jumped to my feet and Emily and I bolted for freedom.

            “That was so awkward!” Emily giggled.

            Feeling like I should be more offended, I laughed along with her and vowed never to wear a pair of shorts to a crowded place again.