Tongli, Suzhou

After Shanghai, I figured nearly anything would be an improvement -- well maybe that's not fair to Shangahi, which wasn't ALL bad -- so hopping on a bus for an hour and a half ride to Tongli was OK by me. It was also an opportunity for a little down time.

To think that China is all dragons and pagodas or is now only the burgeoning and/or already established industry and bustle of its cities is to miss alot of it. A great deal of China is visible as you drive from one place to another. On the ride from Shanghai to Tongli, for example, you could see the skyscrapers of the city give way to new homes, give way to bricked older communities, give way to places that surely no one lived in as they looked bombed out and had no windows -- but people do live there -- to shallow rivers and canals where people poled wooden boats as they had for centuries. I know some of the kids looked out the windows from the bus while some just talked and looked at each other. I am sure some did a little of both. I hope they took some of this in. In the Shanghai area, there in the vicinity of the Yangtze's delta, is where you saw rice paddies. We passed people fishing from banks and with nets and a great deal of agricultural land tilled by bent backed farmers with straw hats. I was also rewarded with a view of the marsh birds -- cranes and others, Chinese versions.

Tongli was an interesting mix of a real fishing village and a resort town. I thought of Monhegan Island, Maine, which it resembled visibly not at all, but because of this mix of commercial fishing and boating with tourism and the likely uneasy balance each needed to play out in the area's economy. We rode from the bus parking area to the tourist area on a tram, which saved time and walking on cement through a construction site. Our lunch was again a tad disappointing, but better than much of what we ate in Shanghai. Some of the difference was just the style -- more yin I would say that Xi'an, and the yang of the northern food was what most of us in the group seemed to favor, interestingly. Well, we live in a northern climate ourselves, right? Who knows. we were near the ocean, but the feel was more river, there up the Yangtze a bit.

After lunch, we all took a gondola ride through the canals. Some tourist book somewhere made the analogy to Venice, which Y verified, but I had no idea. There were a lot of narrow streets and narrow canals, certainly. It was a very photogenic place, and of course I took a lot of pictures. I also walked around on my own a bit and got a look at the real people who lived in the town, some of whom used the river for everything, washing, their own fishing, transporting goods by boat. On one of the bridges, I offered to take the picture of a Chinese group all together -- they had been rotating who held the camera while they posed in different combinations. This sparked a small queue of other people wanting me to take their pictures, and one group wanted me in one of their group pictures since I had taken their photo earlier. So somewhere in China, there is a picture of a group who went to Tongli and a mysterious anonymous white woman. The presence of my camera means that I likely know something about taking pictures and also that I am probably not going to steal someone else's camera.

It took about an hour to get to Suzhou from Tongli, meaning more looks at the country side and sitting quietly on the bus. The kids generally would settle down and listen their iPods and/or sleep on bus rides of any length the entire trip, so it was quiet.

Our hotel was very nice -- large, beautifully appointed, attractive crisply uniformed staff, polished marble, plus a bathroom in the room with many amenities including a tub and a toilet with all the accessories. The kids found the toilet fascinating, and some just had to share which of the fancy cleansing options they had tried. I guess we all got just a bit closer on the trip. At any rate, our lodgings reminded me of the hotels I stayed in in Japan. The TV also had stations with English speaking channels on them due to a satellite, so I saw the financial news and CNN while I was there. Top that off with a real Western breakfast if you wanted it, and the option to relax and transition out of the scrabble of China was easily attained. Both nights we were there, some kids came into my room to use my laptop for email or what have you.

Our Suzhou day started out rainy, so some of us borrowed umbrellas from the bell captain (very fancy for me -- the hotels Ruthie and I stay in do not have bell hops or umbrellas for loan). WE also had a slight mishap on te way to the garden we were to visit.. Just as we were stopping for a light, we were rear-ended by a smaller truck. The truck was damaged a bit, but drivable, and thankfully no one was hurt. Our big bus was not the least bit damaged, although the incident delayed us a little. The kids all climbed on the back seats and peered out the back windows to get a look.

The garden we went to was actually a home of a businessman in the 18th century and it had covered walkways. This meant we could see everything and not get wet. Nothing in the garden was real, including the large Koi pond and rock formations, but it was beautiful. The materials were real, but they weren't there originally. One room was given a title that meant roughly "The Room of Doing Nothing" It had bookshelves and a large space in which you could meditate, I think. Y thought I would like to have room like that in my house, which I would. I wouldn't mind an Asian style garden or pond either, come to think of it.

In the afternoon, we took another boat ride, this time on the Grand Canal, in a power boat. While we were waiting on the wharf, some the kids practiced squatting flat footed like we had seen people do all over China. It is not easy to do. But some Chinese people, usually men, will wait for a bus or play checkers or smoke a cigarette while squatting on the road or sidewalk. (Not to be confused with what you need to do in Asian toilets, by the way.) It happened that all of the Asian kids in our group tried this at this particular time, and they were all squatting in a circle. It was kind of a joke, though not really disrespectful -- our group members, Y and I included, had all tried squatting at one point or another during the trip. Well, someone got off of one of these boats and came over and took a picture of all the Asian kids squatting. Then another white woman decided to try it, so she joined the circle, then I squatted down. It was actually funny, because the woman who joined us knew what we were doing while the doofus with the camera I think thought he got a picture of local Asian kids squatting. But it was really a few American High School students.

The boat ride was interesting as it took you past real people's homes, and they weren't all beautiful waterfront properties either. The lifestyle on the Grand Canal was more about shipping than fishing, but people were still using the river for their household chores, to be sure. We got dumped up the Canal from where we embarked and had a chance to wander through another tourist area. I just watched a music performance on traditional Chinese instruments at a sort of bandstand after briefly looking around. One store had swords for sale, and when I was looking at one, a man offered me a discount price off the tagged price by typing a number on a calculator-- typical Chinese sale tactics. I laughed and said "Bu yao, xie xie ni" to him and he said "Hey eBay!" EBay. It wasn't a bad idea, but no. We got our last photos and set off for dinner.

Our last night in China was pretty low key and pleasant, and the dinner was better food than we'd had since Xi'an. We were all going to see each other in school anyway, we all knew that. I wondered which of the kids would stay friends or how that was going to play out. All of us I think really had done a great job in China, and there could have been much more of getting on each other's nerves or actual fights or something. We were lucky, but I think all 10 of us tried really hard in a way too.

Back at the hotel, kids packed, used the computer, hung out, and some went out for a little while for a walk. It was a nice base and a very easy place to be as we let go of China bit by bit.

Shanghai-ed

I have no idea why at the end of the trip, just like when I came in '04, you end up in Shanghai. It is busy, quite citified, and very westernized. Last time, I thought I must have missed something because I was so over being in China for three weeks in 100 degree heat, and this time too I was left wondering if I missed anything, but I am not sure I did.

We left the school at 5:30AM, not without tears from some of the kids, some kids who had stayed up with host brothers and sisters half the night and no breakfast. There was supposed to be stricter restrictions on the baggage allowance at the airport, but the girl checking us in didn't care. My carry on was supposed be a certain weight as well, but the security guard at the x-ray belt just said, "It's heavy for you!" I had to have the magic wand passed over me (and I REALLY wanted to click my heels together and say there's no place like home, there's no place like home and wake up with friends and animals around me) because I set off the metal detector. I got to stand on a cylindrical pedestal like at a gown fitting when they did this, too. It wasn't that much fun. Part of the problem was my money clip and the other was my pedometer which I had to explain. Maybe it looked like a timer of some sort. My suitcase was underweight, but set off a siren. I think it was a clock inside with the Chairman on it. We just got waved on.

I also had a slight food emergency in the airport, and ended up paying some ridiculous amount for a pre-made egg and ham sandwich on white bread with cucumber and a V8. It wasn't all that bad. I'm glad I ate it because I slept through what I think was a slightly frightening breakfast on the plane.

We were met at the airport by our guide, Shirley, and taken to a restaurant we ate at in '04 with elephants in it. Well, not real elephants. The restaurant looked a lot more worn than last time, but there was a floor show with dancing and drumming, performed in a somewhat desultory manner by, I think, the same people who worked the tables. We were the only people in the place who clapped for it.

I will make this aside for movie buffs out there. This will not make a lot of sense to all you intellectuals, most likely, so you might want to skip ahead to the next paragraph. Our guide has a Chinese name, but told us, "Just call me Shirley." This has created a raft of jokes based on or stolen from the movie "Airplane." That "film" has been quoted and re-quoted for a couple days now. The first thing said, of course was "Stop calling me Shirley." But it has gotten progressively "worse" and repetitive. The other strange thing is that my sub at SHS has the same name as the "star" of that movie Airplane. Now some of the kids are going on about this because of our guide's name. Funny huh? Hopefully our plane will only be arriving at only one gate in Boston. ;)

ANYWAY, we saw some things in Shanghai over a couple of days: the TV tower, which was big and touristy. Y got an earful there from a Chinese woman who thought she cut her in line. At first, this was about how "foreigners" have no rights in China, then Y corrected her, and said she was Chinese. Then the woman went on about how Chinese living in America have no status in China anymore, who did she think she was, etc. It was ugly. The woman was really raving for about 10 minutes as we snaked our way around the lines to get on the high speed elevators to the top of this thing. Her daughter started crying. I felt sorry for her. Y stayed cool.

That first night we saw an acrobat show which was great. Lots of balancing -- about 8 people high on chairs, plate spinning, juggling, as well as old school clown type stuff with see saws and flipping through the air. There was also a magician who did a legerdemain act with cards and scarves which I had a lot of respect for. There was also a silly bit about knife throwing that was a cheesy comedy routine. There is more real comedy at our department meetings at school than that little skit provided. There was an interesting combination of music throughout the acts that included beautiful flute music, hip hop and other stuff. Some of the juggling and see saw stuff included modern dance moves as well. It was fun, and the auditorium was full of a bunch of white people. I have not seen that many Caucasians in one place since we left home, no joke.

At breakfast the next morning, a man started yelling at one of the staff because they told him he wasn't supposed to smoke in the breakfast room. He chain smoked anyway. Then when we went downstairs to catch the bus, he started yelling again, and included in his remarks that the rules of the hotel trying to oppress him was as bad as "what the Americans were trying to do in Beijing." That said no doubt for our benefit. Nice.

After this display, we went to the Shanghai museum in the morning, and had to wait around for a little bit because we "weren't on the list."Apparently you couldn't get in as a group unless you were on a special list. Our guide straightened that out, and we got in eventually. I had been talking to a Canadian woman who was on her own teaching in China. In retrospect, I think she was trying to get in line with us, then when it was clear we were not being successful, she just ran ahead and put herself with another group for entry without so much as a goodbye or anything. Clearly she has learned the Chinese way of doing things.

The museum was too much for some of the kids, and they hung out in the tea room there for most of it. Others, though, checked out the museum and seemed to enjoy it. I enjoyed seeing it again. We were fairly early and it is a huge place, so I could see what I wanted easily. I spent a lot of time looking at the huge diorama of Ancient Greece as it would be set up for the Olympics, a special exhibit, and looking at paintings and calligraphy. The May Day holiday meant a lot of Chinese people from different class backgrounds were in the museum and it was interesting to see the variety of people.

After lunch, we went to this huge shopping place -- three floors of it -- that sold everything from knock off Rolexes to Buddha statues. I walked through and got so tired of being assaulted by people selling things, that I went out the back door and wandered down the street for a while. I went into a neighborhood that was really for locals, and people-watched and took pictures. It was quite festive there with lots of food being cooked outside and people walking around. Much more interesting than the giant souvenir place.

We then went to the Bund, which I was leery of. The Bund is an esplanade along the waterfront where if you look across the river, you can see the modern buildings and if you look across the street in the opposite direction, you can see the older western buildings that really show the colonization that occurred in Shanghai. (The Party TV channel that night showed a very good program about the westernization of China, from the nationalist perspective of course.) Shanghai can best be described still as an international city. The Bund was mobbed as it was mobbed in '04. However, we still managed to get a look at the river and the giant barges. We also spent some time in a beautiful tea shop where a lovely lady in a pretty outfit poured us a couple different types of tea. Several of us bought some, including me. I had to give my tea away when I left Xi'an because I simply had no way to carry it given the alleged baggage restrictions. It was a beautiful tea shop selling beautiful tea and because we sat through her lecture/demonstration, we got a good discount, actually. And after that, supper.

The food in Shanghai was really god awful. All of it. Even y didn't really like it. Some of the boys chomped away at some of it though. I actually missed chili peppers in everything because it would have had some flavor to it. It was also extremely oily and/or deep fried. I gave up eating at meals except for rice, although at breakfast I found some toast. When we got back to the hotel, I wandered around on the street to take some video footage of the night market there, but also to buy some fruit.

Our street was a little sketchy, so I didn't stay out very long. The bar nearby played "Scarborough Fair", not sung by S & G, though, as well as "Vincent" (aka "starry Starry Night") sung by some woman with a nice voice, but they played these tunes over and over. You could hear them quite clearly in the room. The street had vendors selling the usual Chinese stuff, but the most interesting and sad were the live fish swimming in shallow tubs awaiting their fate. There were flounder,those fish that look like fish,skates, abalone,small sharks, shrimps, a big variety of fish, really, plus some chickens and snakes in cages in case seafood wasn't your thing. However, I just purchased some bananas, a peach and something I am not sure about. It needs to be peeled, which is delaying me.

The room was nice and clean didn't smell weird, so that was a great change from Xi'an. Also, surprisingly, there is less air pollution in Shanghai. Shanghai has a lot of neon, and reminded me of Tokyo in that way. Still, maybe I am missing something. It would be interesting to come through here again -- maybe -- without a group to deal with or be a part of and look for something else. Maybe.

Next stop, Tongli Village and Suzhou.

Zai Jian Xi'an

The last couple of days, we've been traveling and are in Shanghai right now, so the end of our Xi'an time was never duly recorded.

Our last official act as a group was the farewell ceremony. The farewell ceremony was held in the school upstairs cafeteria, the "nicer" one, where we ate lunch every day. (As opposed to the George Orwell Dining Hall downstairs on the ground floor.) The kids and Y and I had been warned ahead of time that we would be making speeches, so the kids worked on them with the Chinese teachers.

They had set out a buffet table in the cafeteria and a PA system that was playing Western Elevator style music. At the appointed time, Madame Jiao gave a fairly lengthy speech in Chinese which was translated fairly well by her assistant. It was classic -- how wonderful the Sharon students were, what a fortuitous start our collaboration, Y and I were praised, etc etc,. There was also a few aphorisms like "we will be separated by distance, but friendship is eternal" -- that sort of thing. Then the kids got up and gave their speeches. What I noticed, even though they were reading them, was how much more fluent their Mandarin was. It seemed like they understood the Chinese and were reading words, not just syllables. They had progressed so much beyond the phrasebook Mandarin some of them were speaking at the beginning. Y was very proud of them, understandably. The kids received some sort official certificate from the school as well.

I had to give a speech too, and other than hello and thank you, I spoke in English. Y assigned me that task as she would be the translator. I had written the speech standing at the windowsill in the classroom while the kids polished up theirs with the Chinese teachers. I used notes, mostly so I wouldn't forget to thank anyone, but it is pretty easy for me to talk, and this was actually less formal in some ways than the whole speech thing in Japan was. It is a different culture than Japan, and in this case, I had a personal relationship of one sort or another with most of the people there. My main point was that although we came to China as American students, teachers, and citizens, that we were leaving as better citizens of a wider world. I also mentioned that the kindness and generosity of the Chinese people we met would be things we would bring back to our friends and colleagues along with all the photographs and souvenirs. blah blah blah. Very Chinese speech-like and with the same level of sentimentality we had heard in everyone else's speeches in China. But, I meant this, actually.

Make no mistake about it, the Chinese government has many flaws, and the system that runs the country has made many mistakes. We lived in an area that was driving out poor people, that was polluting the air, and the Chinese students we lived with there stood in the yard everyday doing exercises Mao would have liked. But the individuals we met or interacted with were also kind, helpful, interested in knowing more about us, patient, all sorts of things. I liked most of them. Some of them liked me, I know. They were really just people. One student on a card the kids made for me with notes on it wrote, "Please support Beijing in 2008." This wasn't a grand political statement; it was a request person to person. She said "please"; there were no exclamation marks. The Chinese people want to hold the Olympics. The Chinese people include this 16 year old girl who listened to me talk about American history at 7:30 in the morning. It is hard to hold all the things China is and represents in both hands sometimes.

Before we could eat in friendship, or whatever, however, we went out to the front courtyard and took a million pictures. Some were done by a professional photographer, some by individuals. There were all kids of permutations and combinations of teachers, kids, host parents, Madame Jiao, and on and on. When we got inside, everyone was ready to eat. The chef had done an outstanding job. Where he is when the regular food is served out of that kitchen, I have no idea. There was quite a variety including spam and cucumber sandwiches and little tiny whole shrimps that i couldn't see without my glasses so ate anyway. They were crunchy and tasty. There was also rice and vegetables, fish , chicken, passable sushi and other stuff. One of the best things for me is that it wasn't laced with MSG. I sat with the grownups and managed to choose my own food, the only exception being some oxtail soup Madame Jiao had the serving girl bring over. Y said it was a delicacy. I told her my line that delicacies to me are either weird animals you have to eat or weird parts of regular animals. In this case, the whole thing was weird. I ate some anyway, naturally.

At the end, people just left. The kids went with their host families and I changed clothes and went for one more bike ride. We had one more day to tie up loose ends, and Y and I had one more fancy dinner with Madame Jiao and Shang.

We were concerned about the weight limits on domestic flights from Xi'an to Shanghai - 20 kilos or about 44 pounds, and the word was that the airports ere going to be very strict. We were set to travel on the May 1 worker's holiday (don't even ask me why) so traffic all over was supposed to be more intense than usual. The day before we left, Y and I decided what to do with our personal stuff, clothes we thought we could with out and in my case of course the pounds of books I had brought.

We gave some stuff away and regifted things to people in the school. I left some books on Chinese topics with the school for future groups. I also left my bicycle for the use of whomever and then for the next group from our school if it survived that long. Y mailed some of her winter clothes to her parents and I left a couple of things on the clothesline, hoping some kid or worker would find them and make use of them.

The night before we left, y and I had one last dinner with Madame Jiao and Shang in a very fancy restaurant in a private dining room, as we always had with them. We had hot pot cooked meat and vegetables, but they cooked the food for you "off stage", so to speak. Shang picked everything as he always did. They brought the meat out before it was cooked for his inspection, a little like they uncork wine for you I guess. We sat for a couple of hours and ate and drank tea, excellent oolong tea. At the end of the meal, we were driven home by Madame Jiao's chauffeur. It was time to go.

Last Solo Excursion in Xi'an

Last Sunday was the last trip I would be taking into Xi'an and environs -- this time. I decided to touch base with my Taoist leanings and go to Ba Xian An, or the monastery of the Eight Immortals.

I have had some contact with other Meiguoren interested in the Eight Immortals, particularly a tai chi teacher in the Boston area, so it was kind of cool to make this, um circle, no pun related to yin yangs intended.

I threw all caution and some Yuan to the wind and hailed a cab to get there. I have been taking cabs with Y and buses on my own, fearing somehow that I would ripped off as a white female if I was by myself. However for this trip, I wasn't sure which buses to take and the internet was vague on that point. I did know about where the place was, so when i got into the cab and told the driver where I wanted to go, I figured I could "do something" if I was being led on a Wild Goose chase. (Like what, given my limited Chinese? Say some key phrases? : "Not here! There!" "Yes, I would like tofu!" "Stop driving""My bicycle is not expensive!"" I teach history. " "Thank you, I am only a student of Mandarin. " "I am enjoying Xi'an" "The food is very spicy here!""Everything I do, I do for the People." ) The cab ride was about 30 minutes, but I know Xi'an enough to know that in fact the guy wasn't driving around willy nilly. The ride cost about $3 American. OK.

Outside the temple, you could see dozens of vendors with their wares on blankets or in stalls, and you had to walk through this to get to the temple itself. It was a little like one of the large temples in Tokyo where there was a giant bazaar at its doorstep as well, but this was, as Y would say Chinese "style", dustier, older, edgier in a way. I was also reminded as I was in Japan about the money changers and the sellers of animals for sacrifice outside the Great Temple in Jerusalem like the Bible describes. (Earlier in my time here, I read Anne Rice's Christ the Lord and she wonderfully describes this scene as Jesus first sees it as a boy.) I am sort of digressing I guess, but the intensity of the commerce outside this temple dedicated to the Tao was a little incongruous, I would say.

It has been fun to speak the Mandarin I do know when I get a chance, but occasionally if I do speak, it opens a torrent of Chinese from whomever I am speaking to. For example, as I walked through this bazaar, people would pick up things and show them to me. I have gotten beyond "Bu yao" which means literally "Don't want" to "How does that work?" for example, when one guy showed me a sort of trick lock made out of brass. He went on about something, but did show me. Y thinks people are surprised a white person would know any Chinese and also that my pronunciation is understandable. This is good, but it also means I have to manage the energy of interacting with people a lot. This also can be very good, but it means I am not anonymous, although I stand out here no matter what, especially in non-touristy areas.

The Chinese concept of personal space is very different than what we are used to. People will tug on you, hand you things, and stand very close. If they bump into you, they do not say "Excuse me" usually and if they want to get past you, they just move you out of the way. They do this to each other; it isn't just a thing they do with foreigners. I took some pictures with the video camera, and this old guy just came up behind me and looked over my shoulder to see what I was recording. He didn't even try to pretend that he wasn't doing that. So, you can't just stop to look at something without an interaction. I have also learned to say "Just looking, thank you". Though one woman said, "Look at this!" and then handed me something. But I wasn't in buying mode.

The temple was quite a contrast energetically -- very peaceful with many halls for prayer and incense vats. A fair amount of people were there praying and it looked like the monastery had an active membership of male and female monks. In the back garden, they had a rock walkway where they had created a stone ying yang and the eight trigrams of the I Ching. Many of the doorways were octagonal as well. The temple had been renovated by the Empress CiCi as she used it hide from people at one point and it had many intact steles and statues. In the hall of the Eight Immortals, a young monk was on duty and he talked to me, I am guessing because he was bored sitting there. He showed me how to pray and kowtow, asked my nationality. He was very nice, really just a young guy who seemed like he was glad to see something different at his post.

Once I finished there, I wanted to go to the Muslim area to get something to eat, and thought I would hail a cab again. But for the life of me, I could not come up with the name of the street, so I said "Mosque?" "Muslim quarter?", in English and the guy didn't know any English. But before I could pull out the dictionary, he said, "Wait," in Chinese and pulled out his cellphone. He then called some woman and said in Chinese, "Speak." So I told her in English I wanted to go to the Mosque or the Drum Tower, and she said in English, "I understand your meaning. Give phone to driver." So, I handed it back, and he listened for a second, then said to her, "Dui, Dui, Dui, so, so, so," which roughly means, "Gotcha" and we drove off. He was a very nice guy, you could just tell that really, and I thought that whole thing he did was very clever. I wonder who the woman on the phone was!

It was fun to be back in familiar territory actually, and it was also one of the nicest days weather wise we have had. The area was much more crowded than the day we were there with the kids, however, and I made my way down past the largest numbers of people to a restaurant where they were cooking outside. I had lamb and what I thought was potatoes (I didn't ask), but was tofu and some bread. Again, about $2 American. The Chinese people paid me no mind, but a white guy came into the place at one point with his girlfriend and we just stared at each other for a second. "Ni hao!" I said. He laughed and said, "Ni Hao!" His girlfriend found the place unsuitable as there were "No spare tables," and pulled him out of there. I hope someone clues them in on the "If There's a Seat, Sit in It, Even if There Are Other People At The Table" Rule that applies in these sort of eateries.

I wandered a bit. There were two Italian women trying to find the Mosque, and I had watched them unsuccessfully ask a Chinese woman first in Italian and then English, so I just went up to them and offered to point them in the right direction. (In English) They'd tried an alley someone had suggested, but it was closed off and had construction work in it. It was nice to be able to tell them another way. I had remembered this place from '04, and this was the third time I had been in the neighborhood this trip, so I felt like an old hand.

Then, I was done. I walked back up to the main street to a taxi stand. The first driver didn't want to drive out to where the school is I guess, but the second guy didn't mind, so I got back to school in one piece.

All Dressed Up

We have discovered a number of things we didn't know before we came to China and one of them is that any future groups from SHS would not be working at this particular school, but at another campus, the Tang Nan School. Last Saturday, Y, the kids, and I, wearing our finest, visited the other campus before we went out to a "western" lunch, hosted by none other than Madame Jiao. ("Get as dressed up as possible, " were my instructions to the crew, knowing their travel wardrobes were somewhat limited.)

Kids arrived at school Saturday morning all gussied up. Back home, when we'd told them to bring something to dress up in, they complained, but I think they were glad to. They looked nice. I wore my suit, justifying for the second time its weight in my suitcase. We drove in the familiar van to the campus which was more towards the center of the city than our current location. When we got there, Y said, "Look everyone! They're ready for us!" They sure were. They had a marching band with a majorette in school uniforms standing on the sidewalk and a phalanx of people holding bouquets of flowers, one for each of us, kids included. Throughout our entire day, we were also photographed by someone with a still camera and someone else with a fancy movie camera. Despite the fact that I am certainly un-photogenic, I would love to see some of this footage.

We were escorted to the schoolyard, led by the marching band. The kids were photographed with their Chinese student hosts, and we were led to seats under a large banner. Madame Jiao never speaks to me -- she knows no English -- but she always interacts with me, takes me by the hand constantly, and in this case in a typical Chinese manner, just pushed me, not at all unkindly, into the seat I was to occupy. Alrighty then. We had our photograph taken and went inside to a conference room with fruit on the table.

The table was oval shaped, and Y initially suggested the kids alternate -- American student with Chinese student -- but The Plan was to have the Chinese students on one side and the Americans on the other. The discussion was led by the Chinese students, and by one girl in particular who spoke truly excellent English. Her first comment was how "handsome and beautiful" all the American students were. She said this again later; I think she meant it. She said one boy looked like Beckham the soccer player which Y and I thought was pretty funny. Our guy has a buzz cut, but is very dark and looks nothing like Beckham -- maybe all westerners look alike. The kids talked back and forth for a while. They got onto the subject of "grounding", which our kids defined as no cell, no computer, no going out, no TV, etc. One Chinese student laughed and said he was always grounded -- meaning he never had access to any of these things, not as punishment but because it was his way of life. Another girl pointed out that he was top student, however, so maybe "there is something to this."

I had a chance to talk to their English teacher, the woman who will coming to the US for their side of the exchange and liked her very much. Her English in terms of pronunciation and vocabulary, syntax, all of it was really excellent, and it was clear she had done a terrific job teaching these kids. She talked about how when she was young she listened to American music to expose herself to English, and that she really liked The Carpenters. Well they certainly had great diction and understandable music. We discussed Karen Carpenter (no I did not tell her the Mama Cass joke) and while she did know poor Karen had died, she did not know she was a drummer. The teacher said Karen had a "beautiful and special" voice, and being a fellow alto, I did agree. [I actually do think she had a beautiful voice. I told her about singing "Close to You" in a karaoke session while I was in Japan, which was met with huge approval. The Chinese teacher especially likes "Top of the World" which I said was a cheerful song. "Rainy Days and Mondays" was also reviewed. (Of course I like that sad tune better.) I am embarrassed to admit I could easily sing all of these songs right now. I picked "Close to You" in Japan because it was in my range and I knew all the words.] She also said that I spoke "almost British" English, that it was very clear and that I had a good vocabulary. (I have even been avoiding words like "ameliorate" and my personal favorite "deleterious" since I have been here. ha ha) I wonder what she thinks American English is like, or who she thinks epitomizes American spoken English. She has not traveled outside of China, but has met "foreigners" before.

After the Q and A was over, the kids piled into the van again, but Y and I got to ride in Madame Jiao's chauffeured car, a beautiful Honda sedan with tinted windows. Her driver, who we'd met on several occasions, is a nice guy, as are all of her people, as I've said before. We drove to the Bell Tower Hotel in the center of town, the same hotel R and I stayed in last time we were in Xi'an. They have a "Western Restaurant", according to the sign, and that's where we went -- what was used as the breakfast room in '04.

Some of the food was not Chinese, certainly, which was appreciated by many of us. There was a great selection, served buffet style. The kids stuffed themselves silly and Y tried a little of everything. Madame Jiao wasn't right next to me, so I got to choose my own food for the most part, except she sent one of her assistants to get jiaozi, dumplings, for me at one point. Of course I ate them.

After lunch, we said goodbye to the Chinese teachers, packed the kids into the school van and sent them off, and Y and I got into Madame Jiao's Honda to go shopping. I really was not into this, but it was another example of doing whatever you have to do for work. The trip was to get gifts for the superintendent and the former superintendent which Y and were to take back.

We drove to a fancy department store where her driver parked with the few other cars there on the sidewalk -- this is common enough -- no street parking in Xi'an really. Y and I helped pick out blouses for the two other ladies, and then Madame J insisted that Y and I pick out something for ourselves. In the ladies department of a Chinese department store? I was concerned as well as embarrassed by her generosity, although I am very aware of Madame J's financial position; it wasn't going to hurt her in any way, let us say. Y and I ended up in a section of the store where "Tang Style" clothes were sold. These are Chinese-ish modern style things - interesting cut, colors, and Mandarin collar. I found one thing, but the driver, who had been following us around and dealing with the money -- he is really an assistant, not just some guy who drives--picked out something else and I tried that on. Everyone agreed I should get this one particular blouse. I like it, although it is sort of fancy. It makes me look a little like a diplomat in a Star Trek episode, somewhat Vulcan-esque, but I can probably find an occasion to wear it. It was very expensive. Y got another thing from the same department. We be stylin' now.

We got dropped back at school and Madame Jiao mentioned that we will have another dinner with Shang before it's all said and done here. If it is warm, I will wear my new blouse.

In the Mountains

Again, this is a late entry, happened last Tuesday, and today is Sunday, but here it is anyway.

Tuesday, we went to Mt. Huashan with the group from Brookline and had a hike in the foothills of what appeared to be serious mountains, southeast of Xi'an. Each school divided up into two smallish vans and we drove through the city, then a suburb and then the countryside to reach the mountain.

Suburbs in China are not like suburbs in the US, not surprisingly, and visible declines economically and with regard to the infrastructure were sudden once we left the "city proper", whatever that is. It didn't take us long to get out of the high rise section of the city into areas with brick buildings, and small communities divided into villages or neighborhoods with gates. These should not be confused with "gated communities" (ala Hilton Head or something) except that's what they were in the most basic sense. All through China, you can see collections of one floor brick or tile buildings or housing developments of apartments that are closed off by walls and courtyards with a gated entrance. In some cases, the gate or door itself is no longer there, just the opening where one once was, but frequently, these openings have a sign over them. These are names that the communities have been given at one point or another.

We also drove through rural areas with various plants, trees and flowers planted. These were all for some sort of crop or farming use. Mulberry trees, for example, make nice juice which is served frequently here, but also feed silk worms that help create beautiful cloth. This part of China is not a rice growing area -- though it is served three meals a day in the dining hall -- so we didn't see paddies, but there was lots of stuff growing.

To get to the mountain, we drove through a kind of "resort" area, with basic hotels and restaurants. We stopped at one point because our guides had to contact the local guide and notify him of our arrival -- for our "protection." They have been very concerned about our "protection" lately, more to follow.

The mountain had an official parking area and place to pay. It was clear that we were in a much larger range of mountains, and like the time Ruthie, my mom, and I went to Fussen, Germany and got up an Alp for an afternoon, we were not going to see the whole thing, for sure. We walked for over an hour up a fairly steep granite walkway which at several useful points had stairs as part of the route. Y remarked at one of these places that it was like "another Great Wall." Sort of. It was steep anyway and with a view, to be sure.

The weather was in our favor, and we were also blessed with beautiful blossoming trees. As well, there was a large brook or stream that had been managed and routed down the side of the mountain. We stopped at a pagoda part of the way up and took pictures. I remembered Flat Stanley for this trip, but forgot my hat. I took a picture of Flat Stanley against the mountainous backdrop and also one with the Brookline teacher's 6 year old son holding him.

When we reached the top of this part of the mountain, more or less, there was a large lake with boats in it. Our trip had been paid for and arranged by Madame Jiao -- she footed the bill for our restaurant lunch there later and the bus and the guides -- and she had made it clear that no one was going boating: too dangerous. There was very brief and very mild grumbling, but not much,really. A couple of girls I was walking with contented themselves with scrambling up a boulder and looking into a fairly extensive cave. What I thought was great is that one girl asked my permission first: "Ms. Beebe can we please climb this rock and look down the cave?" This is exactly the sort of thing I would have wanted to do, so of course I said yes. "Please avoid splitting your skulls open," was my reply, or words to that effect. I totally forget I am a grown-up half the time here. They didn't want bats in their hair (nor did I-- theirs or mine) so when I asked them to come back down, they did so obligingly.

Several food hawkers had established small businesses up there, and we walked past them to get to the tourist attractions -- the wind and ice caves. I am not sure which was which, but they were caves all right, real ones you had to duck and/or crawl through at different points. The landscape in general was a little strange -- Star Trek (The Original Series) meets Planet of the Apes -- but it was natural. The interiors of some of the caves though were silly. Whether actual stalagmites or stalactites had actually formed or not was difficult to determine as they had plastered versions of them in the caves. Were they real, just plastered over, or fake? I have no idea. This is a kind of symbol of some things Chinese anyway, particularly the Tang Paradise Park we'd also visited with the Brookline group. I would love to learn the Chinese character for "Ersatz".

We'd brought several people from the school and Madame Jiao's office with us to make sure we did or didn't do something, I am sure. They were all very nice. We paused before lunch to have several group pictures taken. We posed, passed cameras around, and the other Chinese people also hiking up there found all of this fun to watch.

Lunch was in a castle-shaped (not the least bit Chinese on the outside) restaurant overlooking the lake. We sat at three tables -- I was at the grown up table with the guides. As has been the case at our restaurant meals here, the food was very good. Lots of vegetable dishes and locally grown chicken (saw some of the relatives of our protein source on the way up, most likely) and locally produced eggs. There was also a sweet treat-- Chinese meals are not about dessert -- that was a hot pumpkin cookie, for lack of a better way to describe it. We have been eating a fair amount of pumpkin here in restaurants. Yummy.

We took more pictures on the way down. Mr. Zhong, who had accompanied Y and George and me to the center of Xi'an when we first got here, gave me suggestions as to what to photograph. He is a great guy actually, and also drags a camera around with him. I think he appreciates the hobby and may have a good eye for it as well. I took his email address at the end of the day to send him some photos. Zhong is another of Madame Jiao's assistants -- I am not sure of his function, though it may be translator or something like that. All of her people are very nice and easy to get along with. She is too, amazingly so considering her considerable wealth, influence, position and the fact that she speaks absolutely no English.

Our trip down the mountain was not particularly eventful, and certainly easier. The weather still held, so we had a pleasant time of it. I walked for a while with the Brookline teacher's 10 year old daughter who is one of those great girls -- pretty low key, but very bright and articulate. I got lots of information about how they managed to leave their home and dog and come to China as a family, which was interesting.

Kids sacked out on the ride back -- we took a different route and so saw more of the mountain range out of one side of the van. It was good to see some more of the countryside. China has many mountains, and many with temples and monasteries that I would like to see for more than one reason. It would be a different way to see this part of China -- there is so much to see here, so many layers, so many types of experiences.

Field Trip

This actually happened on Monday of this week, but here I am getting around to officially reporting on it. It seemed like a long time ago, but it has only been a few days, this time-shifting a theme likely to be repeated one way or the other, I bet.

Xi'an is full of official things to see, being an ancient capital and all, and one idea Y and I had was to take the kids to the Big Wild Goose pagoda (not to be confused with the little wild goose pagoda, which also exists). Turns out, about half of our kids had been with their host families, so we decided instead to go as a group to the Shaanxi provincial museum. I'd been there in '04, but also really wanted to go again. The Friday before we left, we'd asked one of the school officials to check on the opening times and Monday hours specifically.

Monday, we all piled into a school van and headed off to the museum. We got there, and it appeared that it wasn't open yet. There were groups of people standing outside the mechanized gate and the guard was standing inside the gate looking at every one. Y got out of the van and determined that opening time was 9:30. At 9:30, the guard stepped into a doorway and brought out a sign that said "Museum closed for repairs". With that, he turned on his heel and went away.

Bell broken please knock. Don't nobody get to see the wizard, not nobody, not nohow.

This is actually typical of China -- we saw things like this all the time last time. The person on the phone had answered our host's questions, but didn't tell her that the museum was closed the next business day, Monday. The guard knew the museum was closed, but waited until opening time to tell all the people in the drizzle about it. So, now what? Our plan was to go to the museum then into the center of town to the Muslim Quarter for lunch and shopping. We decided to just go downtown. But our driver was only supposed to take us to the museum, and refused to drive us downtown, so we had to figure out own own transportation. We walked for about 15 minutes to a main street and hailed three cabs.

The cabs did not come in rapid succession, so saying something to the drivers like, "Follow that cab!" wouldn't work, like it does in the movies, so the kids gave the drivers the name of the main tourist street in the Muslim quarter. Y and I were in the last cab, and once we were dropped off, found half of the kids easily. Apparently, the other half had been dropped off in a slightly different location. I went with a couple of the girls in search of them and found them in a McDonald's! We were all reunited in not too long a time and we sat in the land of golden arches and figured out what to do next. We decided to take the money we would have used for a group lunch and divvy it up among everyone, let people go off on their own, and gave a time to meet later that afternoon.

The fact that Y and I decided to do this without hesitation is really a comment on these kids. Neither Y or I are particularly permissive, boundary-less people or teachers, but time and time again, these kids have proven their ability to be sensible. And some of them had gone out to different parts of the city with their host brothers and sisters anyway. So we let them go with the stipulation that they stay with at least one other person. Y and I decided to split up too, figuring we could take adult privilege and break the buddy rule, I guess.

I wandered the bazaar and bought a few gifts. I had already been in the bazaar earlier in the trip, but there were a few things I still wanted to get. Bargaining is a curious process. People suggest a price, and I automatically counter with a another about one half as large. They counter, I counter, and in the end I decide if I want to pay the amount it is going to equal in American money. Sometimes, I have walked away when they refused to meet my final price and they say "OK OK". Some non-Chinese folks make a huge game out of haggling and I think it is embarrassing. I do not discuss my purchases with many Americans here because it turns into this contest about how little you can pay. I hate contests like that and I also know that in terms of my own income, I can afford to pay what I do pay, and I am getting a lower price than I would pay at home. Why be mean to the Chinese people about it? It is true that local folks assume I have a lot of money and they sometimes suggest ridiculously high prices for things. So I have to counter with another price. It doesn't always feel good because they are trying to get as much money as they can out of me, and this feels slightly sketchy. I am not a great shopper, but I don't need a lot of this stuff anyway. I also have a space issue in my suitcase and in my house when I get home. I tried to be very careful about what I did purchase. You could knick knack yourself to death. Something else to collect dust or for the cats to knock over.

I had a lot of fun on the street full of restaurants. I brought my video camera with me instead of the still camera and took some footage of all the outdoor cooking and various vehicles. I ate in a small restaurant that was managed by a beautiful but curt Muslim woman in a lovely outfit. Her workers only smiled when she stepped away from the stand to buy fresh vegetables for the restaurant. I ate noodles with spicy sauce and dumplings. I tried to be very careful in shooting pictures in that area as it was clear that many women in particular did not want to have their pictures taken. I was shooting generally and tried not to aim the camera at anyone in particular. In the food area, there were no signs for amounts, so I had to say what I wanted, then ask how much. My lunch cost me 7 yuen, or a little more than a dollar. There were many carts with vegetables and fresh and dried fruits for sale, and again, no signs for amounts. I think this was another case of where the proprietor would set a price depending upon who his customers were. As you walked further and further down the street, you saw only locals. The Muslim quarter is off one of the main touristy sections of Xi'an, but many people don't make it past the big restaurants on the square and down the side streets very far.

I also walked around the big square there. When I was here in 2004, the square was there of course, but it wasn't as polished up. This is a theme for what i have been seeing of the tourist spots in China. (The same was true of the Terra Cotta Warrior complex -- very spiffed up in the last few years.) Underneath the street in the center of Xi'an, there is a subterranean pedestrian concourse connecting the drum and bell towers and the hotels and restaurants that line the giant traffic circle. I walked through this and popped out of one exit to find a huge mall. In 2004, this same building was a very basic 2 floor department store. Now it had 7 floors with an internal atrium and there was a trick bicycle exhibition going on inside. The store sold familiar and unfamiliar brand names. One shoe company was called Senda Woman -- the bags and shoes just had a logo that said Senda. There was another shoe company called Love Cat. I don't know if this was an adjective/noun combination or an imperative.

As we thought, the kids came back at the appointed time -- we rendezvoused at the McDonald's again. A couple of them had bought knapsacks and T shirts with Chairman Mao and communist logos on them. Many had also picked up stuff for friends and family back home. It was sweet how excited they were about the things they had bought for other people. We divided kids up into groups based on the location of their host families' apartments and hailed cabs again.

Y and I rode back to school alone -- she in the front speaking rapid Chinese to the driver. I sat in the back and watched Xi'an go by. Another good day.

Get Out of Town!

Last Sunday, I finally made a break for it. I decided to chance the iffy weather and take the bus out to the Huaqing Hot Springs. I was not disappointed, although I found something more interesting in the long run.

Before I left home, I looked in the bookstore for a likely travel book to use while I was in China. Lonely Planet, my usual choice, was short on Xi'an suggestions and long on weight and extra information, so I decided to do without. I looked up Xi'an tours on the internet while I was here and got information about how to use the bus system to access a number of places, including the Hot Springs. So I planned a trip.

Just the day before, our entire group plus the group from Brookline had visited the Tang Dynasty Park in the rain, and we saw this truly over the top dance show with elaborate costumes and loud music about Emperor Xuanzong during the Tang dynasty and his favorite concubine, Lady Yang. She liked these hot springs at it turned out, so this seemed a nice coincidence, although she was forced to commit suicide later in her life. (Blamed for the decline of the dynasty, don't you know.) Fortunately it was not Actively Raining on Sunday and I headed out.

Y and a friend needed to go to the train station from where the connecting bus to the springs was to leave, so we all boarded the 608 which stopped near us. Bus 608 is a double decker bus, and we rode on the top-- the trip was about an hour just to the train station. Y talked loudly into a cell phone the whole time, and her friend who is a Chinese teacher of English sat next to me and asked me questions like the differences among the words "common","general", "typical" and whether you can ever mix tenses in a composition. Riveting.

Y has many positive qualities, but a sense of direction isn't one of them, so when we got off the bus, I told them where I needed go. Y was a little skeptical that I could tell the east side from the west side of the station, even given a look at the map earlier, (isn't that one thing you can tell from a map???) but I found my way over there all right. I waved merrily and made myself disappear into the crowd after saying goodbye. No offense to anyone, but I was glad to be on my own; I really hope it wasn't obvious.

I stopped at a snack cart to get a sort of flat bread thing -- and avoided being overcharged. The woman wanted 6 Yuen, although the sign said 1. (I can read enough to see that!) I just told her Too much; this is one Yuen in Chinese, handed her the note, pointed to the sign and stood there. Wordlessly, she gave me the bread. I felt guilty because 6 yuen is equal to something like a dollar, but I didn't want to pay the Meiguoren price. I just didn't.

The bus to the springs was a city bus, and I was the last passenger on it. They fill the buses for these out of town excursions, but no one stands; if the bus is full for a longer haul, you wait for the next one. I was lucky going out there and coming back because I was on my own -- last passenger on coming back too. I was the only white person I saw after that all day. I sat next to an old man who argued with his son about wanting to pay the fare for him and his wife (typical grandpa thing, no matter what country!). The old guy clipped every single one of his fingernails for part of the trip and then swept them off his lap onto the floor of the bus. People read papers, talked, slept, etc. The fare was 6 Yuen -- like I said before, about 1 dollar each way. We passed a huge nuclear power plant with four stacks, two of them smoking, fields, farms, a small village made entirely of bricks (big bad wolf had blown down the others, no doubt) , and a river where many, many people were fishing. I had the aisle seat and tried to look past the old guy next to me out the window. The other passengers pretended not to look at me, but they really do stare. It's not a mean stare, but they just look and look wherever I go. Sometimes I will say Ni Hao or smile and sometimes they will smile and say Ni Hao back, but not always.

The town the springs in which the springs are found stands at the foot of Mt. Lishan, one of China's sacred mountains. Even this part of China is getting built up and there was a brand new polytechnic university there along with a new resort hotel. Students got off the bus for the Uni, but the hotel didn't look it was getting much action yet. The bus went on to the Terra Cotta Warriors after it dropped some of us at the entrance to the hot springs.

The hot springs were an attractive collection of pools and Tang Dynasty architecture. You could go into a bath house and "take the waters", but the only people coming or going out of there were men. I didn't want to deal with this. Chinese society is not open, is still essentially patriarchal in many ways, and while I could not find anything in any of my reading about the baths being male only or anything, I was not going to overstep my bounds in any way. When I was in Japan, by contrast, hot springs, hot tubs, etc unquestionably were for both men and women and were always segregated in the places I went, which appealed to both a Japanese and my own sense of modesty.

The weather was hazy during the earlier part of the morning, but I wandered around and looked at everything. There were small pavilions, pools of varying sizes, dragons, pagodas, and a few places where you could sit at small stone tables with elephant shaped stone stools. I found a quiet corner of the place and sat in the garden for a little bit. Many Chinese people were visiting this area, and it reminded me of when I went for a day trip to Kamakura when I was in Japan. Like there, this was a kind of tourist destination, but it was local people, Chinese people, who were there enjoying something of their own heritage. What I was seeing was the Chinese middle class -- and a few nice looking cameras other than my own indicated that some of these people were above the Chinese standard of middle class, higher up by the local standard of living. I looked around until I figured I had seen and photographed the place and wondered what next. Since the weather cleared up, I found myself looking up at the mountain above the spa, and spied cable cars going to the top. Hmmmm. This seemed promising, so I exited the gate, and headed vaguely in the direction where it looked like the cable cars were descending.

Once I stepped outside the gates, I was approached by several people, all speaking English, basically, although they were of course, Chinese: "Taxi, taxi, taxi?"" Xian, you go Xian?" "Terra Cotta Soldiers?" "Cable cars? cable cars?" One very nicely dressed woman came up to me and simply asked in beautiful English, "What can I do for you?" I am assuming this was transportation related. She followed me for about 50 meters down the street, actually. "All set!" "No Thanks!" " Bu Yao!" "Bu Qu!!" "Xie xie!" "Seen it!" "I'm OK!" "No!" were a few of my responses to all of this attention.

Good grief. I walked down the block and found a sign to the mountain in Chinese -- was very proud I knew this character, and found a ticket booth where I bought an "Up and Down" ticket. The sign and the ticket seller both said that, actually, "Up and down." So I walked up to the cable car hut and was relieved for some strange reason to see the cable car brand was German or Swiss or Austrian -- was in German at any rate. They know about Alps and stuff there in those places in Europe, so I thought I would be safe taking a cable car in China that was made in a German speaking country. (I mentally castigated myself for my Western bias.)

I rode up with a party of 3 -- again filling out the number by being on my own. One guy asked me I where I was from. I said in Chinese I was an American. "Really? You are American?" Maybe, like so many times when Ruthie and I travel, he thought I was German. I said I was an American teacher, here with students, that I taught history. I spoke Chinese, he spoke English -- good practice for everybody. The ride was not overlong and he and his friends were harmless. At the top, there was another ticket hut if you wanted to explore the park. Or you could just hop back on the cable cars, or take a path down. I bought a ticket. They had maps of the mountain, all in Chinese and quite out of scale, so I decided to just strike out without one.

The first place I hit was a small parking area and plaza where there were food booths, souvenirs, and a place to play a shooting game. The shooting game was a toy sized rifle you aimed at an electronic target. However, the strangest thing about this game was the music. The tune was a kind of American Western style theme of 16 bars or so played with instruments that sounded like those you hear in Mao-era orchestra marches, plus traditional Chinese instruments. It looped endlessly over and over and could be heard through the decent sound system for many yards, including inside one of the Taoist temples nearby, somewhat unfortunately.

I walked past the horse men -- you could get a ride on some tired looking but festively adorned horses if you wanted -- and found myself in a huge bird sanctuary on the side of the mountain. They had netted off quite a large portion of the side of the mountain and were keeping peacocks, chickens, guinea hens, parrots, along with ducks and swans who had a nice pond fed by springs and waterfalls. Most of the birds were roaming free, kept in this very large area by the netting overhead and a gate at the entrance up the hill aways. There was also an exhibition area with a small ring that they clearly used for cock fighting. Nearby, there were roosters in cages -- different than the ones they had roaming free. I did not see this performance-- didn't want to -- but they also had a kind of small amphitheater there for that purpose as well. This was not hidden in any way, just part of what they do in China, I guess. It was a little sad.

Once I got back up the hill and past the plaza, I found two Taoist temples. Both had monks selling incense, and people were purchasing sticks of varying colors and sizes and kowtowing to the gods inside. The second one I went into had many halls, and the biggest hall contained an image of the most important goddess to Taoism, Lao Mu. Here, the hall was filled on one side with about 15 women, over the age of 50 I would say, chanting. I sat very quietly on the floor and listened for a long while until they finished. The hall was attended by female Taoist monks in black headdresses and robes. It didn't seem right to take any photographs in these places, so I didn't. I really liked that place, as it was peaceful and still filled with the energy of the chanting.

On my way back down to the cable car, I passed by a small restaurant, really just some tables on the hillside outside a small open building. The sign was in pretty undecipherable Chinglish, though I correctly gathered they served vegetarian food only, and they were cooking Baozi, large dumplings, in a wok outdoors. The chef was friendly and invited me to sit down. I guess I seemed hesitant, so these two young women who were sitting there invited me to sit with them (there were two tiny tables) and one said in basic English, "It's good. Give it a try. Cheap. Vegetarian." and only 5 Jiao -- half a Yuen for one. "Try some dippage," the other girl suggested, indicating a sauce. It was good, all vegetables. I finished one, and I ate a second. What is this? I asked in Chinese. The chef answered, and I admitted I didn't know that vegetable. "Oh!' the girl said. "Not found in stores! They pick here!" Oh! I see, it was grass and stuff right from the mountain. Picked right there around the restaurant, probably. I tried not to think too hard about this, but I suffered no ill effects then or later, thankfully. It looked like grass, actually, but the dippage gave it a good flavor.

My trip back down the mountain was uneventful, although I traveled alone in the cable car and looked anxiously at the trees which were swaying a bit. I caught a bus going back to Xi'an which was full again, but I got the window this time. Everyone in it had done something that day -- sight seeing, visiting, working -- that was keeping the ride quiet on the way back. The train station was the usual writhing scene of busyness. Many times I have seen Chinese people just sit down on the ground with their belongings and wait for whatever they are waiting for. If my experience in two visits is any indication, Chinese people do a lot of waiting. I pushed my way onto double decker 608 eventually. I stood for a while, but a guy getting off made a big deal about making sure I got his seat, which I took.

I went out on my bicycle to replenish my breakfast supplies after I got back, and it was only after I got back upstairs that it started to rain.

Wasted Calories

I have tried eating a few things here that I wouldn't have at home. I feel like I can justify this because I do not think I am up to my fighting weight right now. So I have tried a few snacks. Some of these things I have eaten by accident because I didn't read the label carefully. The labels are in Chinese, and deciphering them is an additional step beyond putting on my reading glasses.

Here's a small list:

"Orion cakes" -- These taste like Yodels, but feel and look like miniature scooter pies.

"Haw rolls" == tart fruit roll ups that are made from Hawthorn, the berry not the author, I believe. They are supposed to have antioxidant properties. I need that here given the pollution and GIGANTIC nuclear power plant outside of town with four stacks.


"American almonds" -- These are "expensive" almonds that are only lightly salted instead of having MSG, sugar and other things added to them. Most nuts are a little interfered with here.

LABS brand (now that sounds appetizing, doesn't it?) drinkable yogurt - The label shows the yogurt going down your gullet into your intestine -- frankly how I was sure it was yogurt. I tried a sample in the store that they thrust at me, drank it mostly to be polite, and I liked it. I like the plain, and buy this regularly. At one point, I bought a strawberry one, but it is languishing in the fridge because I am afraid of it. I find food actually frightening sometimes. Even at home.

Cream Coke -- yikes. I thought it was Coca Cola. It was Coca Cola plus cream soda. A tad sweet.

BBQ flavored Bugles -- this was a tragic mistake. I got the blue pack and didn't look at it. (I thought Bugles were blue packaged?) I ate one and it tasted strange. I looked at the package more closely and it had a small picture of BBQ spare ribs on it. I admit I finished the package and regretted it. I looked at the Bugles in the store today and they have the following flavors: Chicken; Spicy Chicken; Fish: Sushi (different than Fish);"Tomato Meat"(god help us); and Vegetable and of course BBQ Beef, oh and regular Beef. I miss crunchy food, but am off Bugles now, perhaps forever.

The other day, I bought an ice cream bar, bit into it and the inside "ice cream" was quite purple, and tasted kind of malt-like. A bit of cognitive dissonance there. This was in the food court of the Lotus Market where people LOVE to stare at me eating, so I nonchalantly finished it. It wasn't great.

I am shocked at my focus on food, although I do eat pretty much daily, even back in the States.

Tang Dynasty Park

The kids and I at Tang Dynasty Park, a sort of Epcot for the Tang Dynasty. It rained the whole day.

Carry Water, Chop Sticks, Zenning out

Well at least one friend of mine seemed a little bored by my last blog about doing wash, and how she hoped that my life in China wasn't about the day to day. But yes it is, and now, upon reflection that has been part of the interesting bits and one of the challenges of being here.

I ran across an American here who seems invested in having the most important, coolest, most dramatic, bestest time here. She is not bound by any schedule really but her own, so she can. She has to go here and see this, she has to go there for the most authentic experience, etc etc. I cannot just hop around Xi'an, except at night. And they change things up on us. I am here to work, or "on business" or something. Latest example: I thought up until 6:00 tonight that I had tomorrow morning free, Saturday morning for us. Saturday afternoon is not free as we are taking the kids somewhere. But no, I ran across Y in the hall and she told me that the assistant principal wants to take us out to a fancy restaurant for lunch before we go on a field trip with the kids. I do not want to go to a fancy restaurant and listen to people talk Chinese tomorrow at 11. I want to eat these weird German cornflakes I found in the international supermarket on the main drag and ride my bike. But it is my job. So I found the nice blouse I am going to wear, will put out play clothes for the trip with the kids and hope I get back in time from this lunch to change out of the fancy clothes.

I was invited out for dinner -- strictly social!!!-- by some British expats for tomorrow night and I do want to go. But we may not be back in time. I cannot control the time things happen here. It is just the way it is. One of these Brits says his all purpose response to the unexpected, a daily occurrence, is "Welcome to China."

I signed on for an experience, but no one could predict what the experience would be. China is so not the United States, not in any way, not if you use any of your senses or any other faculties at your disposal. Things do not run like clockwork, except the bell schedule in the school. The school curriculum runs in a set pattern, which is its own entry I guess. But, how I function within that predictability is not the most interesting or instructive part of my experience, actually.

Yes, here, my world is smaller for a while -- we are out in the middle of nowhere really --the bike, my biggest indulgence, helps -- and I live where I work, literally steps away from it. I struggled in a lot of different ways when I got to Xi'an. Some days it was adjusting to the food or issues with my living quarters. And sometimes too I fought against some things I could not name. Issue of time, space, my own demons. Who knows. Well, OK, I do have some ideas.

But now, I have gotten a little better at letting go of the struggle, maybe because that is all there is to do. I do not want to be the cause of my own struggle by holding on to something that is elusive or some that is a fantasy, like an outcome I cannot control. "Let go of all striving," as Sudha in the Kripalu yoga video reminds us. Striving to be perfect in a yoga pose there, striving to have some perfect experience here. And yeah, knowing me, I will have to remind myself of this again, maybe as soon as tomorrow. There will be endless opportunities to practice in this organic Zen way.

I have been attempting various forms of Taoist and Buddhist practices since I was a teenager. "Practice" is a great word. You get to keep trying and trying; it becomes its own activity. Then you get to point where, as Yoda says, "There is no try; there is only do." What is different here is that sometimes the the day to day has its own acuity and color that it doesn't have at home. Carry water, wash clothes. When will I have the opportunity to do this again? (Remember I am a romantic and a dreamer after all, which is how I was pulled into Philosophy in the first place probably.)

At home I can do laundry in my house and do 10 other things at the same time and still have clean clothes for the next day or same day if I really wanted. And I can be very busy! Hurray for me!! But I hope that after I return and my life goes back to the way it was that I never take for granted what I could do here. Or maybe in some way it won't go back to the way it was. Or I won't. If I'm lucky I won't.

I am "seeing China", am visiting tourist locations. I am also seeing China in the people I eat lunch with, the people who were at the outdoor street market I found the other night, the kids at school, the officials who want us to have long meals with them, the pace of the place, the pollution, the poverty, the Communist TV show I like. On the Monopoly board, there is that place around the Jail on the corner there that says "Just Visiting". Well, I am not in Jail by any means, but I am not "Just Visiting". If I were, I could send my laundry out in those nice plastic bags they leave in the room and it would come back all clean.

Washed up

I had to wash some clothes today, finally. Like in a washer. I have been hand washing clothes in my sink using my hot water heater upper that I use for tea, drinking water, instant coffee, etc etc. My jeans are black, but they were getting ridiculous. So I thought, no big deal, I will run them through the plastic and rubber Chinese washing machine here in the dorm and put them out to dry on the line on the "patio." I stuck some other things in too. I filled up the washer with hot water I carried to it in my all purpose basin-- the taps are cold only -- and turned on the spigot. Someone had thoughtfully used duct tape to attach the spigot to the hose used to fill up the machine. This seemed to take too long, so i looked in to see all the water had drained out, which also explained why my shoes were wet. There's always something wet on the ground around here. The cook happened by and in a combination of my little Chinese, his no English, and sign language, he explained which of the knobs meant the water would not drain out. I started all over again. The washing took about 15 minutes, created a frightening amount of black water, and was basically a mechanical version of scrubbing clothes over rocks. The banging noises and violent rocking for the spin cycle resulted in no great loss of water, which would have facilitated the line drying, but no more noise than randomly occurs on any given day here. It is never quiet. I have no idea why there is banging. There seem to be different sources all the time. I almost don't notice it any more. Almost.

I hung my stuff on the line to dry and had a flashback to my freshman year at college where I'd used a dorm machine and the line in the basement for laundry, and someone ripped off my Gandalf T shirt. Surely no one was going to want my jeans and a couple of cotton shirts that despite their day to day comfort were looking to me at that moment as devices to extend the time my laundry was going to take to dry. It started to rain only at about 4, so it wasn't a total, er, wash. I think my jeans will dry in a couple of days.

Oh yeah, the school has been scrubbing itself down for the last 3 days. "People from Beijing" (???) are coming to inspect. Yesterday, the entire school, 1300 people or so including adults, stopped for almost 2 hours and scrubbed inside and out, including the plastic soccer field. (there is no grass here at all) The guys at the guardhouse put on tall rubber boots over their uniforms and used a huge fire hose to hose the guardhouse down. Kids scrubbed the bars on all the windows of all 6 or so stories (yes, there are bars on all the windows -- we barely notice them ) and the gates that lock us in at night with brushes. Groups took rags to the poles on the basketball hoops. There was a sort of advance inspection team sent out yesterday ahead of the big wigs, and apparently the school didn't pass muster! So this morning, they were at it again! The place smells better. One comment from the team was that the cars inside the compound weren't clean enough and that dirty cars like that belonged on the street, not in the school grounds. The school "grounds" are entirely paved except for a planting area out front and a curious inner courtyard no one ever steps in. The sense of urgency about this "campaign" as Y called it, recalling "campaigns" from her earlier life a little fondly, was somewhat diminished today. Yesterday there were no slackers I could see, but today, out in the distance, past the plastic ball field out where kids were supposed to be scrubbing the tennis nets, a few looked like they were goofing around. It was somewhat heartening to see a few out of step with their mates --- rarely happens in group activities.

Teaching At Last

We have been here for two weeks, and while there have been tasks connected to our group that both Hu Laoshi and I have done, we have not been given the opportunity to work with the Chinese students here. Yesterday was when this changed. We have been assigned some sections of reading and writing to a group of very competitively selected students who are part of a British style international program -- a kind of school within a school. Hu Laoshi taught a block yesterday on writing and I sat in on the second part of it as a kibbitzer, so the kids got two teachers' style, etc. Today, I finally got to teach my own class in reading to this same group.


The textbook I was given was a British one, so the article was about British homeschooling, and I found that I was able once again to call upon my training in teaching reading which were mostly from the early part of my career as an educator. Although this is something I have not done recently, I could see how a sort of "sleeper effect" had taken place and the lesson went well, I thought. The text itself was fairly high level, and it will be interesting to see what they do with the assignment I gave them. Their language skills are excellent, but unlike American students, they are a little shy about speaking up, at least just yet. Still in many ways, they are just teenagers.

One guy, who when he introduced himself, told me his name and age, and also said that that he was a "funny person." Funny meaning humorous. At the end of the class, he was the one who asked me if he had to create the T chart of pros and cons from the article I had assigned, or could he just leave his underlining in the text. The T chart, of course, was for them to practice paraphrasing and writing -- all part of reading comprehension in some way. So, here was this guy, in a completely harmless faux "troublemaker" style, trying to sort of get out of a part of the assignment, just like I have seen kids do at home. When I said that aspect of the assignment was not optional, he took it in good humor, again just like a student who was trying to "get out of it" at home would do. It felt good to be in a classroom, actually. I also really tried to talk slowly, which I certainly don't always do at home.


Tomorrow, I begin a series of short classes on American History and culture, and I will continue teaching reading and additional writing sections.

It took a while, from my perspective, to wind all this up and get it going. My personal tempo is a tad rapid, I would say, and while this is sometimes a good thing for me, it may not be the style here with regard to some things. Just like the kids, I continue to learn and adapt. There is a sort of routine here, but our days as teachers have not been highly structured.

Going with the flow? This is one of my lifelong goals, and the number of times in any given timeframe that I have to re-orient myself to this Taoist and Buddhist notion is a great reminder of why meditation is called a "practice." Anyway. I am learning a lot and also calling on so many different aspects of my past experiences to be here. Some of these are visible -- like teaching reading, and some of them are not yet apparent.

Jay Mc Inerny, of "Bright Lights Big City" fame wrote a somewhat uneven novella, really that genre, called "Ransom" about a young American man in Japan in the late 70s. (Yes I know Japan is not China). I have read and re-read this book over the years -- in part because I want the ending to come out differently, I think. One of the things the main character, Ransom, is doing in Japan is taking karate. He finally lands a punch on the top student in his school, and knocks him down, no small feat. The Japanese student he scores on congratulates him on this, and says," All your training went into that punch." That's what it feels like here: "All my 'training'" is required to, at times, just get through my 40 days here, not just teacher training, but all of it.

Hmmm. More to be revealed, doubtless.