John's Adventures Teaching in China

Moving to My Own Website

2010-06-26T11:02:00.005-04:00

Hi Everyone,
This blog will remain here but new posts will appear only on my new blog at www.millspaughfamily.net/johnsblog. The move will allow my Chinese friends access to the blog (all Blogger blogs are blocked in China.) Hope to "see you" on the new site,
John

Retrospective: My First 5 Days in China

2010-06-20T10:44:00.001-04:00

As I finish writing this post, I've been back in New Jersey for a little more than a week. I'm sorry it's been so long since I've posted here. A lot of things happened between the day I returned to Shanghai (May 2nd) and my return to the USA on June 8th. But, for various reasons, I wasn't writing about them. I started this post while sitting in a Starbucks in Nanjing, China, where I had enjoyed a coffee and sandwich for lunch. I had only two days left in China and, because of many little things, I was feeling a little low. I had become less resilient in dealing with the annoyances that a foreigner living in China faces and I was very happy to be coming home. I'll share more about why I was feeling low later but, in this post, I want to cover some things that happened when I first arrived in China. I spent five days in Shanghai before going to Mianyang, a layover intended to give me some time to get over jet-lag before starting my teaching assignment. I lived in the special flat provided by the company hosting the volunteers, Xu Bo Art and Culture Exchange. For those who may not know, Xu Bo is owned and managed by my friend Jessie Duanmu and I have been her volunteer webmaster since early 2009 (see http://www.xubo.org.)

March 17th: Arriving in China: The first person I saw upon arriving was my dear friend Guoming, who met me at the airport. Guoming is a teacher at the primary school on ChangXing Island. We became close when I taught at the school two years ago and have remained close ever since by talking frequently via email and online chat. Indeed, it was my friendships with Guoming and another teacher, Karen Yin, that made me want to return to the ChangXing Island primary school. Without those friendships I probably would have opted to go somewhere new. Splitting my 3 months between Mianyang and ChangXing Island was a compromise designed to allow me to see my old friends while still seeing something new of China.

It seemed like a lot of trouble for Guoming to pick me up the airport and I had gently tried to talk him out of it. He lives on ChangXing Island and the airport is on the mainland. Driving to the airport from the island is something that has become feasible only recently, with the opening of the beautiful new tunnel under the Yangtze River. At about 9 kilometers in length, the new tunnel is about 3 times longer than our trans-Hudson tunnels. Three wide lanes in each direction support vehicular traffic and there is a lower-level that will be used to extend the Shanghai Metro (train) some time in the future.

Before the new tunnel was completed in 2009, driving to Shanghai required taking the car ferry, an expensive and time-consuming mode of travel. But even with the new tunnel, Pudong International airport is still more than an hour away from Guoming’s home. My destination upon leaving the airport was the Shanghai volunteers’ flat and it would have been easy to get there using the Metro. But I couldn’t talk Guoming out of meeting me. Since my flight from Newark arrived in mid-afternoon, he requested and received permission to leave school early. I must admit, it was great to see his smiling face among the throngs of people meeting travelers exiting customs. After welcoming hugs we headed for his car in the airport parking garage. I gave him the new Acer laptop I had purchased at home for him and brought along in my carry-on bag. It turns out even computers made in China are cheaper bought outside of China. He paid me one half of its value in RMB, which made it unnecessary for me to convert any dollars to RMB. I asked him to hold the other half until I returned from Mianyang, so I wouldn’t have to carry too much cash while traveling. Guoming used his GPS to guide us from the airport to the volunteers’ flat in the Puxi area of Shanghai.

After arriving at the large office building which houses Xu Bo’s volunteer’s living quarters (22nd floor) and office (25th floor,) Guoming handed me off to Xu Bo staff member Nick Yin and then headed back to ChangXing Island.

Over the next several days I became better acquainted with staff members I had known previously only through email and with several volunteers from countries like Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Holland. During this time, we enjoyed meals together at restaurants and one meal cooked by Nicholas, a nice man from Switzerland who, like me, was a bit older than the typical volunteer. He told me he had chosen to come teach on ChangXing Island after reading my 2008 blog. We enjoyed each other’s company and discovered we share an appreciation for the guitar work of Britian’s Mark Knopfler and America’s Doc Watson.

On Friday, Guoming and Karen invited me to meet them at a Korean restaurant in northern Shanghai. Guoming came with his wife Zhou Hai Qin and daughter, Yao Yun. Yao Yun was one of my second grade students in 2008. Karen came despite being 8.5 months pregnant with her husband Gu Chao. It was wonderful to see these dear friends again and we had a great time together. Gu Chao speaks almost no English so we all were curious to see if I could communicate with him in Mandarin. I was able to speak to him a little but needed a lot of help translating what he was saying. When you speak, you know what you want to say and can take some time to figure out how to say it before opening your mouth. Listening is very different. You don’t have the benefit of knowing what the speaker is trying to say, the words usually come faster than you can process them, and you feel there is an implicit time limit on responding that adds to the pressure. During the three months I spent in China my listening comprehension slowly improved. With practice, I began to understand more and became less anxious about not understanding perfectly, giving myself license to extract what (I hoped) was the kernel of what was said.

Karen looked beautiful but fat! She is normally very thin and she must have gained 25 pounds carrying the baby. I don't think she would mind me saying she was fat. Chinese people seem to be less sensitive about weight: I often hear kids say they are fat, or call another friend fat, apparently without hurting the friend's feelings. After eating we took some photos and gave each other presents. Karen and Gu Chao gave me a special coffee mug. When filled with a hot beverage, the mug changes to reveal a couple of my favorite photos of us together and the message "To our dear friend John, we will love you forever." Guoming gave me a beautiful set of porcelain chopsticks painted with a Beijing Opera theme and a nice book about Chinese paper cutting. I had brought all of them gifts as well. During dinner, Karen and Gu Chao honored me by asking if I would be their new baby's "American Grandfather" and give her an English name. I was touched by this request and readily agreed. For a moment I worried that I might offend one of the real grandfathers, who both live on the island. But, since she will call her paternal grandfather "Ye ye" and her maternal grandfather "Lao Ye," I realized I wouldn't be stepping on any toes by usurping the title "grandfather." After dinner, I said goodbye to Guoming's family with warm hugs and Karen and Gu Chao drove me to the Metro station where I hugged them goodbye also. We were all happy to have had such a warm reunion and we looked forward to seeing each other again when I returned in May.

On Saturday, I spent some time getting the lay of the land at EXPO, the World's Fair that is going on in Shanghai through October 1st. I was trying to get a feel for how big the place is (it's too big) and to figure out the easiest way to get there. It's about 3 miles long and 1 mile wide and there are many different gates. Some gates are near Metro stations and others not so near. Guoming had already purchased tickets for Grace and me and I knew that we all would attend at the end of May, when Grace arrived and I finished teaching. I didn't go in but the place looked very impressive from outside the main gate. It's also quite impressive at night. Even from 3 miles away, the view of the lighted bridge and pavilions from the balcony of the 22nd floor volunteer's flat is very nice.

On Sunday, Nicholas invited me to join him in his Sunday routine of breakfast at a coffee house (still rare in Shanghai) and lunch at a restaurant near the volunteer's flat (great dumplings!) In the afternoon I accompanied him on the Metro to the stop where the new bus to ChangXing Island leaves. This bus didn't exist in 2008 and I needed to learn how to get to it because I would be taking it in May when I returned to Shanghai. That evening, I reorganized the items in my two suitcases so I could take just the larger one to Mianyang the next day, knowing I would be traveling after Mianyang. I had to get up early (5am) to catch my taxi to the airport, but waking up early was pretty easy because I was still not time-adjusted. I was very excited about going to Sichuan province, an area I had always wanted to see. I felt a little nervous about teaching middle school but was ready for the challenge.

Shangrila, April 28 - May 2

2010-05-18T10:01:00.000-04:00

Shangrila, April 28th - The bus from LiJiang left at 8AM and took the same route as the one we followed to Tiger Leaping Gorge two days earlier. This is pretty country but the road is narrow and bumpy and the bus drivers go pretty fast so it’s hard to get any good photos from the bus window. The second half of the trip was new territory for me and I enjoyed the view. Shangrila sits at an altitude of about 9,000 feet and I did notice our bus was slowly climbing as we went. I was excited about going to Shangrila, a name that for many of us conjures up images of people living happy, long lives in an earthly paradise. The name comes from the 1933 novel “Lost Horizon” by James Hilton. The book spawned a Frank Capra movie of the same name in 1937. For a good description of the Shangrila story/legend see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shangri-La.

I knew before arriving that many places in Yunnan and Sichuan provinces have claimed to be the “real” site of the Shangrila depicted in the book and movie. But this town in Yunnan province is the only one that has actually changed its name (formerly Zhongdian) to leverage its value for attracting tourists. Of course, the book was a novel, so there is no “real” site of Shangrila. In fact, Hilton never even visited this area. His vague references to Shangrila’s location (e.g.“travel southwest from Beijing for several months…”) were probably based on his readings of popular articles in National Geographic by botanist/explorer Joseph Rock (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Rock.) So, I didn’t really expect to find a “paradise-on-earth.” What attracted me was the fact that it’s near the Tibetan border so it’s an easy way to get a “taste” of Tibet. Chinese government sensitivities about Tibet make it difficult for foreigners to visit Tibet. You cannot travel on your own: you must join an authorized, closely-monitored group tour.

As in LiJiang, I had no hotel reservation in Shangrila, when I arrived at the bus station in early afternoon. Any bus station in China attracts scores of free-lance (unauthorized/unofficial) taxi drivers who rush to the bus as it pulls into the station. I ignored the throng of men around me beseeching me to let them take me to my destination, retrieved my suitcase from under the bus and started walking away. One man walked alongside me and was persistent, yet polite in his entreaties. When he mentioned he could take me to “Old Town,” I asked him how much. His low price of 5 RMB (~80 cents) led me to agree and we walked to his car parked just outside the bus station lot. On the way to Old Town he gave me his business card and a business card for the “Barley Inn” hostel. When we arrived in Old Town he convinced me to let him carry my suitcase to the Barley Inn, which was near where he parked his car. I figured he probably got a kickback for bringing customers to the hostel and I didn’t really want to let him make my hotel decision for me. But something about his manner made me go along with him: I figured I would just check the place out. I had never stayed in a hostel before and the Barley looked interesting. The young lady at the desk spoke English, and she showed me a single room with private bath. I agreed to the rate of 110 RMB (~$20) per night and checked in. I could have stayed in a dorm room (4 beds, no bath) for only 30 RMB/night but I liked the idea of having my own bathroom and a place to lock away my belongings.

Later, as I reflected on the decisions I had made since arriving in town, I remembered how my family had gently teased me about sometimes being too open to strangers (i.e. naïve). Michael and Grace were quite nervous when I let a man from a Bahamian restaurant load us into his car and take us back to our hotel. Here, I was again in a strange place and I had no way of knowing if the driver was honest, but it turned out he was. Perhaps I’ve just been lucky but I do think the chances of being mugged in China are much lower than at home. I don’t think the people are any more honest than Americans, just less inclined to commit crimes. Perhaps the severity of the penalties deters them.

After checking in, I explored Old Town, which was much smaller than LiJiang's and can be covered in just a few hours of strolling. There were no streams flowing through town, no charming footbridges and fewer ancient buildings than in LiJiang. But Shangrila’s buildings have a Tibetan character, which is more imposing and no less interesting than the Naxi buildings of LiJiang. It was also easy to see that Shangrila attracts a lot of Western tourists: several were in the lobby of my hostel during check-in, and I saw many English signs in restaurant and guesthouse windows advertising cheap rooms, free internet, and western style food. Most of the western tourists in my hostel were young to middle-age backpackers.

Old Town

Overall, Shangrila is less impressive than LiJiang. Yet, after six days in LiJiang, the smallness and the rough feel of the place were appealing to me. It somehow felt more authentic and less like a tourist destination, although that’s probably only because they haven’t been in the tourist business quite as long as LiJiang. I found a restaurant on a nearby street called “N’s Café” that advertised western food so I dropped in for lunch. I was delightfully surprised to enjoy a delicious burrito, complete with cheese and homemade salsa. The staff speaks English and the restaurant seems to cater to westerners. It has a warm atmosphere with soft chairs, English magazines (New Economist), wireless internet, and soft jazz playing over a nice sound system. They also have heat in the café, which many places, including my hostel, do not. A young man sitting at an adjacent table was from New York City and he told me he was very happy to be staying in the restaurant’s guesthouse - Nana’s Guesthouse. Over the next day or two I discovered my own room was frigid and the shower’s hot water was a trickle. My New Yorker friend said his guesthouse had heat in the rooms and plentiful hot water. I contemplated moving but decided not to go to the trouble.

That afternoon, I spent some time looking for Tibetan souvenirs and taking photos. In the evening I got my first view of the public dancing in the center of town. It’s much like LiJiang’s dancing, but more people participate and it has a Tibetan character.

I studied their movements in hopes I could give it a try but it looked just as challenging as Naxi dancing. Before I could see the pattern to a particular dance step, the music would change and a completely new dance routine would begin.

After dinner I discovered my netbook computer couldn’t connect to the hostel’s wireless router. Two nice young boys from Germany tried to help me and, since they had no trouble connecting, it appeared to be something wrong with my computer’s network configuration. Since I wanted to let Grace know I had arrived in Shangrila OK, I used my phone to text my teacher friend Guoming in Shanghai and asked him to send her an email, which he did. I never did get succeed in connecting to Barley’s wireless network but I didn’t mind too much because, over the next three days, I used this as an excuse to spend time in N’s café accessing my email. Of course, while I was there, I also enjoyed such treats as pasta, pizza, chicken salad, a double latte and a banana milkshake. Shortly before I left Shangrila, I asked the café’s owner/manager how she learned to cook western food so well. She told me, a few years earlier, she realized there was a market for western food so she bought some cookbooks and started trying recipes. She asked her customers for feedback and slowly perfected her repertoire of western dishes.

At bedtime, the temperature in my hostel room couldn’t have been over 45°F. I thought I was going to have to wear my clothes and coat to bed until I discovered the electric blanket under the bottom sheet. It worked great to provide a jump-start on warming up the bed: after fifteen minutes I could turn it off and my own body heat kept me warm through the night.

Thursday, April 29th: The next morning the room was too cold to even consider taking a shower, especially since the water was only a trickle and barely warm. I got dressed and went down to the hostel’s kitchen area where I had a western breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast and coffee. I had no definite plans for the day and, after breakfast, my driver showed up in the lobby. He asked me (using translation help from the English-speaking hotel clerk) if I wanted to go to any of the tourist destinations he had printed on his business card. One place sounded interesting to me - Shangrila Snow Mountain - but I didn’t think I was yet acclimated to the high altitude so I told him I might want to go on a subsequent day. About that time, my young German friends came along. I learned later that my driver had also brought them to the hostel. They began to discuss possible itineraries and prices and I listened in. One of the young Germans spoke Mandarin well enough to handle the negotiations directly with the driver. After some discussion, he told us that the driver would take the three of us to Snow Mountain, to ride horses, and finally to the popular Tibetan Buddhism Monastery north of town for about $6 each. This sounded like a good deal and I felt flattered that the German boys seemed happy to include me in their plans. There was also something about the driver that was appealing: he was never overly pushy and he gave me the impression of a man with integrity. So, I decided to join the party, even though I was still a little concerned about altitude sickness.

It turned out to be a very nice day. Not only did I enjoy the sightseeing destinations, I got to know and like the German boys, Lenny and Gabriel. Like me, they were working as volunteer English teachers in China. They worked at a middle school in southern Yunnan near the border with Myanmar. They were only 19 years old and had not yet been to college. They were doing this volunteer work to fulfill the “national service” requirement every German boy must complete. Domestic civil service or international volunteer work are acceptable alternatives to serving in the military. Having been in China for nearly a year, they were taking a few days off from school to see other parts of the country. Their assignments would end soon and they would return to Germany. We had a lot to share on the subject of teaching English in China, and they were also interested in American politics. It seems that most Europeans I meet are better versed in world events/politics than most Americans – certainly more well versed than I am, anyway. They were also fascinated to meet an American who had served in the Vietnam War, a historical event they knew well. They wanted to know what I had thought/felt about the war, and I tried my best to recall my state of mind when I was their age, over forty years ago.

As we left Old Town that morning, we could see that Shangrila sits in a wide, flat valley and is surrounded by grasslands. Distant dots on the landscape represented grazing horses, yaks, goats, pigs, sheep and Tibetan herdsmen (and women.) Beyond the grasslands were large snow-capped mountains in all directions. It was quite beautiful.

Lenny chatted with our driver a bit and and we learned his name is Qi Li and he is a member of the Tibetan minority. When we learned this, Qi Li pulled an object out of a compartment over his head and removed it from white the silk scarf it was wrapped in. It was a picture of the Dali Lama and after kissing it he touched it to each of our foreheads to bring us good blessings.

When we arrived at the entrance to Snow Mountain, Qi Li accompanied us to the ticket office. He gave me an oxygen canister to carry with me in case I found breathing difficult at the top of the mountain. He told me he got it for 40 RMB in town and they would charge me about 200 RMB if I bought one on the mountain. As it turned out, I didn’t need it so I just returned it to him unused. Snow Mountain is one of many snow-capped peaks in the Shangrila area but the only one with a cable-car lift to the top. When we climbed out of the cable-car it was only a few hundred more feet to the peak: 4,600 meters, or 15,000 feet! I felt a little light-headed and had to rest often while climbing the final steps but it wasn’t too bad. Many of the Chinese tourists were throwing snowballs and sliding down gentle, snow-covered slopes on their backs. They probably weren’t supposed to be doing that, but they were laughing and having such a great time it was hard to resent their fun. The views were spectacular, as you’ll see in the photos, but it was pretty cold up there so we stayed only about twenty minutes before starting back down the mountain.

Snow Mountain

Qi Li met us at the parking area and drove us to a small set of buildings back in the grassland area where ladies wearing colorful scarves led horses carrying tourists. I say horses but they should probably be called ponies. When you see the photo of me on my mount you’ll probably feel as I did: that I should have been carrying him. Lenny, Gabriel and I had a short, enjoyable ride on these ponies. They moved at the slow pace of the ladies leading them, so the riding wasn’t too exciting. But the beautiful views, the smells, the sounds of the bells around the ponys' necks and the chatter of the brightly attired Tibetan ladies made it memorable.

The photo of me on the pony was taken by the lady who led my pony. I gave her a small tip at the end of the ride. In general, tipping is not done in China but I figured we were practically in Tibet and customs may be different – she readily accepted the tip. I also felt the need to say something to her in Mandarin so I tried to be funny by saying “Wo hen peng – ta hen lei” (“I am fat, (the horse) is tired”). She understood me because she responded with a simple “yes” :-).

Pony Ride

After the pony ride, Qi Li took us to a small, inexpensive restaurant in the modern section of Shangrila where we pointed to the fresh vegetables we wanted cooked for our lunch. It was delicious and we all agreed we were lucky to have met Qi Li, who seemed to be a good man who was trying hard to take care of us. The final part of the journey was a visit to the Tibetan Buddhist monastery. The guidebooks describe it as “… one of the most important Tibetan monasteries outside of Tibet.” It is very old and very, very big – really more of a town than a monastery. Apparently, more than 600 monks live there, and we came across some of them as we walked around the place. Some of them are mere boys – a couple that must have been about 8 years old seemed to be threatening to throw rocks at us. This didn’t seem very “monk-like” to me but perhaps it is normal for 8 year old monks-in-training. The main buildings were under construction and scaffolds covered their faces making them much less photogenic. Also, the monastery has a large, modern visitor’s center where you buy your expensive entrance ticket (about $10) and board the bus that takes you to the monastery. I'm not an expert on Buddhism, but this felt more like a Disney theme park than a place of worship/meditation.

Later that afternoon, the German boys and I shared all of the photos/videos we had taken during the day. They thought they might leave early the next morning so we shared email addresses and said our goodbyes. While copying my photos, Gabriel noticed they all had a very small file size. Sure enough, I had the camera set on the lowest resolution. Unfortunately, it had been on that setting since Mianyang. I was disappointed to learn that all the photos I took in JiuZhaiGou, Chengdu, and LiJiang were low-resolution. I thanked Gabriel for pointing it out and changed the camera settings. At least the setting applied only to still photos so none of my videos were affected.

That evening I enjoyed another great meal at N’s Café while I took notes for the blog and caught up with email. After dinner I watched the Tibetan dancing for a while and then retired early because I was quite tired from the long day.

Friday, April 30th: In the morning, I ran into Lenny and Gabriel downstairs and learned they had decided to stay an extra day in Shangrila. They had hired Qi Li to take them to a town called BaiShuiTai. It was two hours away from Shangrila and they would pay Qi Li 300 RMB for the day. Since I had nothing else to do that day, and since I enjoyed their company I asked if they wanted to divide the cost 3 ways instead of 2. They said they’d be happy to have me join them, so we met Qi Li a few minutes later and set off for BaiShuiTai. BaiShuiTai means “White Water Terrace” and these terraces look a little like the Mammoth Terraces of Yellowstone National Park, although they’re not quite as impressive.

The road to BaiShuiTai was very mountainous and offered beautiful vistas. It also presented interesting obstacles like those in the video below.

White Water Terrace

We explored the terraces for a couple of hours and then had lunch in a local restaurant, again selecting the vegetables we wanted in our meals. On the way back, we stopped in a small village of the “Yi” minority people. The Yi ladies wear colorful clothing and a very interesting large, square, headpiece. In the video below, a lady is carrying water to a site where men are pouring concrete. She obviously was no stranger to hard work and her clothes were quite dirty from the job she was doing.

When we returned to Shangrila, I made arrangements with Qi Li to pick me up Sunday morning and take me to the airport. Lenny and Gabriel had made plans to leave that evening on a “night bus” to Dali. They told me they had done this before and it’s a great way to travel. The bus actually has beds and you are able to sleep while you travel, as long as you don’t mind rolling around in your bed a little. We said our goodbyes (again) and they loaded their huge backpacks into Qi Li’s trunk for the trip to the bus station.

That evening, I was on my way to dinner at N’s Café when I bumped into another hostel resident I had met shortly after checking in. Johannes was also German but he was about 40 years old. His English was pretty good and he told me he was riding a bicycle across Asia. I had actually met several other people that were doing this. One group of three hailed from Holland, England, and Switzerland. They were all taking months, or even years, to slowly work their way across countries like India, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and China. Their bikes carried large saddlebags on front and rear tires and on the bar under the seat. On such a long trip, they tried to economize on expenses: often sleeping in their tents along the road. So, staying in a hostel was actually a luxury for them. Johannes had briefly shared with me some amazing stories about his journey, like the accident he had when a dog ran in front of his bike in Laos. He was hurt pretty badly and the family who owned the dog took care of him for a few days. They also had the mortally wounded dog for dinner!

As I was leaving, Johannes asked if I’d like to have dinner together. I told him where I was headed and asked him to join me. But, when he learned how expensive their meals are, he said he would prefer to eat more cheaply. So we went our separate ways that night. As I thought about it later, I realized I should have just offered to buy his dinner. Although expensive by Chinese standards, a good meal at N’s Café is still cheaper than the same food at home. So I decided I would treat him to a western meal the next evening.

Saturday, May 1st: I spent my final full day in Shangrila strolling around Old Town taking photos and buying some souvenirs made in Tibet. I gave my Lonely Planet Southwest China book to the English biker and she was happy to get it. I was trying to cut down on baggage weight and I figured if I ever needed it again there would be a newer edition.. That evening I took Johannes to N’s Café for dinner where it was a delight to watch him savor a meal of spaghetti carbonara followed by a double-latte. He was very appreciative and we had time to talk more. I learned he is a social worker and had only recently obtained an advanced degree in this field. His bicycle journey had its genesis in a love affair that ended badly: his fiancée had shocked him by announcing she had met someone else. He didn’t start out to make a bicycle journey across Asia. He started by visiting an uncle in Sri Lanka, and the idea to travel across Asia on a bike evolved slowly. He’s not an avid biker and he’s a heavy smoker. As a social worker, he found himself trying to help many people he met along the way, like the 12-year-old boy in Bangkok who was obviously working as a prostitute. Johannes spent some time with his family and convinced them to enroll the boy in a local school. As an enticement, he set up a bank account (using his mother’s help in Germany) that would provide enough to keep the boy away from prostitution. The money would be available only if he stayed in school and away from prostitution. Unfortunately, the story didn’t end well: the family seemed to be using the money for purposes other than school. He told me a few other stories like this and that most of these attempts were less than successful. One family had a boy who needed an operation and they used the money Johannes gave them to buy a new TV. Johannes is writing a book about his journey but it will be written in German. Nevertheless, I hope to stay in touch with him to see how he fares on his journey. He has no end-date or end-destination for his journey, which I find amazing. I thought I was being brave by traveling around China on my own for two weeks but what he's doing requires much more courage.

Sunday May 2nd: Qi Li picked me up at the hostel early, again insisting on carrying my heavy bag to his car. We talked a little on the way to the airport. I told him I thought he was a good man and thanked him for his help in Shangrila. He seemed to echo the sentiment. The Shangrila airport is brand new and complete with internet café where you can enjoy a $3 cup of coffee (an outrageous price in China.) My flight to Shanghai had a stop in KunMing, a major Yunnan Province city, and those of us destined for Shanghai had to get off the plane and wait in the terminal for a while. We reboarded the same plane, sat in the same seats and headed for Shanghai.

At the end of my two weeks traveling through Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces, I was ready to go back to Shanghai. It had been great fun, with many interesting adventures, but I was tired of being on my own and moving from one place to another. Traveling alone has the advantage of forcing you to meet more people, but it has a lonely and “rootless” feeling that I don’t like. I looked forward to seeing my good friends in Shanghai where I also know how to get around without being a detective.

Blog Entry: LiJiang, Yunnan Province (April 22 - 28)

2010-05-09T12:55:00.000-04:00

April 22nd, Thursday: From Chengdu, it was a two-hour flight to LiJiang, a very popular tourist destination in Yunnan Province. The LiJiang airport is about 20 miles outside of town and my Lonely Planet guidebook indicated I could take a shuttlebus to town. I did this and it only cost 15RMB. However, the shuttlebus station in LiJiang is still at least a mile from “Old Town,” the beautiful area where tourists stay. So, using the map provided by Lonely Planet, I decided to walk. After about 30 minutes, I started wondering if I was lost. I saw a restaurant named MammaMia’s with English items listed on their signs so I stopped for lunch. The waitresses spoke some English and I noticed a Caucasian man speaking Mandarin to two young Chinese ladies at a table near the back. When he saw me, he came over and introduced himself. Diego is from Italy and has lived in China for 8 years, so he is able to speak with the locals. His little restaurant has a New York ambience and the menu included many pastas and other western dishes. Diego pointed out the restaurant’s location on Lonely Planet’s LiJiang map and it was clear the map had the wrong location for the shuttlebus station. (I later got confirmation of this error from an internet chat group.) This most recent bum steer from the Lonely Planet folks was annoying and I considered just throwing the book away. However, some fellow travelers pointed out that the book was published nearly 3 years earlier and things change quickly in fast-developing China, so I decided I would continue to use it… with caution. Diego showed me how I could easily walk to Old Town from the restaurant. He also gave me his business card and told me to call if he could help in any way. I thanked him and headed toward Old Town.

LiJiang’s Old Town is a very large maze of beautiful old homes, teahouses, restaurants, hostels, and shops. It dates back about 800 years, but it’s hard to tell which buildings are really old because the new ones are built to the same style. Adding to the charm are the two or three small streams of cool, clear water that flow through town. Many small footbridges cross these streams and, as you walk around town, the soothing sound of the gurgling water is almost always with you. It was a path along one of these streams that led me from the restaurant to the entrance to Old Town and it was beautiful.

All of Old Town’s walkways are built using large rough stones. These stones are visually beautiful but have a very rough, uneven surface that makes pulling a rolling suitcase difficult, so I rigged my REI “hybrid suitcase/backpack” as a backpack. I discovered that I wouldn’t want to have to carry it on my back very far because it’s just too heavy, but it was a great option for getting into (and out of) Old Town. I didn’t have a hotel reservation because many Chinese friends in Mianyang (who absolutely love LiJiang) told me there are so many little hotels and guesthouses that I wouldn’t need one. As I entered Old Town, a lady came up beside me and asked if I was looking for a hotel. Her English was minimal, as was my Mandarin, but I was able to ask whether she had single rooms and what the rate would be. She told me that it was her family’s hotel, that they had hot water 24 hours a day (some do not) and that it was quiet, away from “Pub Row” in the center of Old Town. She seemed nice enough so I said I would check it out. It turned out to be a stroke of luck that she happened to see me because her hotel, the Mu Lin Inn, was perfect. For only 100RMB (~$17) a night, I had a private single room with my own bathroom and cable TV. My room was on the second floor overlooking a charming courtyard.

She runs the hotel with the help of her brother and two sisters and none of them spoke any English. At the time I checked in I seemed to be the only English speaker and, it seemed, I was going to get a great opportunity for “immersion” in a Mandarin-speaking environment. Later, I learned that some of the Chinese guests spoke English. Also, a large group of foreign exchange students from Beijing University checked in the very next day. One young man in that group was from Ridgewood, NJ.

April 23rd, Friday: I spent most of the morning exploring “Old Town.” One thing Lonely Planet was right about was that you will get lost in Old Town because it is massive!

Old Town

I tried to find some of the places that Lonely Planet recommended for eating and getting local travel information, but it was difficult because their map is very small. You can buy local maps (which I did) but they are not English-friendly. I walked a lot that morning and had lunch at “Les Petit Bookstore,” which Lonely Planet recommended. The waitresses spoke a little English, and I had scrambled eggs with toast. In the afternoon, I had a nap in my room and, that evening, I went to see a performance of the “Naxi Music Orchestra.” LiJiang is the base of a Chinese minority people known as the Naxi. They have their own customs, ways of dressing, architecture, spoken dialect, and even their own written language (although it is no longer used.) The women, in particular, have a very distinctive way of dressing that includes a blue apron and an interesting cape-like thing on their back. This article (http://www.paulnoll.com/China/Minorities/min-Naxi.html) has some interesting facts about the matriarchal nature of Naxi society.

Every evening several Naxi people (mostly ladies) dance in the Old Town’s square and tourists are welcome to join in, although I never did. They move in a large circle with little distance between dancers and they often make quick changes in direction. I watched for a while to try to discern the choregraphy of their movements, but I decided against dancing because it seemed likely I would run into someone :-).

Other minorities, such as those from Tibetan areas, also live in the LiJiang area and they also performed their dances publicly.

One of the most famous shows in LiJiang is the Naxi Music Orchestra; so I bought a ticket to see this nightly show. The orchestra is headed by an octogenarian who is trying to keep the ancient music of the area alive by performing it the same way it has been performed for hundreds of years.

I must admit that I didn’t really care for most of the music but it was interesting to see and learn about the unusual musical instruments that were used. The orchestra also has more than ten members who are over 80 years old. The turnout for the concert was disappointing: less than half of the seats were filled. I’m afraid the orchestra may not last much longer. Most of the people who attended were foreign visitors. It’s pretty clear the Chinese tourists, who comprise about 99% of LiJiang’s tourists, prefer the excitement of “Pub Row,” whose pulsating bass rhythms could be felt even inside the Naxi Orchestra’s concert building. While it’s easy for me to understand why the old music might not hold much appeal for a modern audience, I hope the orchestra can survive. When I left the concert I walked over to get a closer look at Pub Row, where hundreds of (mostly Chinese) patrons drank beer and listened to music loud enough to burst eardrums.

April 24th, Saturday: On Saturday, I booked a day-trip with a company I had discovered on the internet before coming to China – Xintuo Ecotourism. I met my young tour guide Kerry at 9am at the entrance to Old Town. Her English was pretty good and we walked out of Old Town into “new LiJiang.” Like many “ancient” towns in China, LiJiang is only a small part of a much larger city, and the city itself is typical of a modern Chinese town. At a nearby bicycle rental place, we picked out two bicycles and then walked around the corner where a man in a small truck loaded our bikes in the back. We drove about 30 minutes to a large lake called LashiHai Lake, where we started our three-hour ride. It was a pleasant day and I enjoyed riding along the lake’s edge. We visited a large Buddhist monastery and rode through farm country where we occasionally competed with water buffalo, sheep, pigs, cows, and horses for access to the road.

We ended up at a farm house where we had a nice Chinese lunch. I was proud that I had kept up with the 19-year old all morning but also happy that we didn’t have to ride any more after lunch. The truck picked us up, along with our bikes, and took us back to Old Town around 3pm. There, I enjoyed another well-earned nap.

Bike Trip

Late afternoon, I finally decided I would not go to the town of Dali as previously planned. I had heard, from more than one source, that Dali is really more of a “Western tourists watering hole” than a culturally interesting destination. I would, instead, stay in LiJiang a few extra days. So, I started working on planning my next days’ trip to a couple of smaller “old towns” near Lijiang known as Shu He and Bai Sha. I say work because it took some effort to try to figure out how to get there. Lonely Planet said there were shuttle buses from LiJiang but neglected to tell me where I could find them. I spent some time at a local bus stop trying to read the bus schedule. I only know about 300 Chinese characters and you really need about 3,000 to read. I asked a couple of young ladies where I could catch a bus to Bai Sha and they went out of their way to try to help me. No city bus went directly there but they wrote down the name of the bus stop where I could catch the “special bus” to Bai Sha. They spoke a few words of English and they tried very hard to help me. They even offered to take me there but I didn’t want to go at that moment. With their instructions in hand, I went home and practiced reading, writing, and saying Shu He and Bai Sha :-).

April 25th, Sunday: Trip to Bai Sha – On Sunday morning I was concerned when I noticed a dark red rash on the backs of my hands and I wondered what I might have eaten to cause it. It quickly dawned on me that they were simply sunburned. On my bike ride, I had worn a hat and long sleeves but had forgotten to protect my hands. After a western style breakfast at a KFC (the American chain Kentucky Fried Chicken) just outside Old Town, I started my quest to reach Shu He and/or Bai Sha. The instructions the young ladies gave me told me where to catch the Number 11 bus, but the only information I had about where to get off was “… at the Li Ke Long supermarket.” Not knowing which stop this might be and knowing the supermarket’s sign might be in Chinese characters only, I decided to follow the bus. I waited for the Number 11 bus to arrive but, when it did, I didn’t get on. When it left the stop, I followed it at a brisk pace. Of course, I couldn’t keep up with it but I could see when it turned or when it made another stop. When I lost it, I just waited until the next Number 11 bus came along and followed it. In this way, I was able to go to each bus stop and look for the Li Ke Long market. Lucky for me, the Number 11 bus ran about every five minutes. Also lucky for me was that I found the supermarket only about six stops from where I started. I was feeling pretty good about how I had solved the puzzle created by my illiteracy but, when I asked people at the supermarket about buses to Bai Sha they all told me there were none. I had almost given up when I saw the Chinese characters for Bai Sha (百沙) in the window of a small minibus. Aha! This was one of the “special buses” the young ladies had told me about! I had been asking people for a “gong gong qi che” which is a public bus and that’s why several people had told me there wasn’t one. The ride to Bai Sha only took about 15 minutes, but the domestic squabble going on in the minibus made it more interesting than I would have liked. It became clear that the young lady driving was learning to drive and her complaining husband sat in the back seat with their young daughter. Driving in China is not easy as it seems yielding to other vehicles is largely a matter of which driver has the most nerve. You must also dodge pedestrians, bicycles, children, dogs, and occasional farm animals. And, of course, you must honk your horn all the time to warn all these creatures about your presence. The minibus had a manual stick-shift and, with all the sudden stops or changes in speed, she often forgot to down-shift when it was needed. Her husband yelled at her every mistake. She didn’t seem too bothered by his hectoring but I found it quite annoying. It was probably a good thing I didn’t know the Mandarin words for “Hey!! Give her a break! Will ya!?” or I probably would have been walking. When we reached Bai Sha, I discovered it to be a very small town without modern buildings. It had a much more relaxed feel than LiJiang, probably because it has very few overnight rooms for guests and hasn’t reached critical mass for becoming a true tourist destination. I had lunch at Buena Vista Café, which Lonely Planet had recommended as a place for good food and travel information in English. I saw some travel information near my table but, at the time I was there, no one in the place spoke any English. But, my lunch was good and I enjoyed the quiet of Bai Sha after living in LiJiang for several days.

In mid-afternoon I shared a minibus back to LiJiang with 3 ladies from Italy. One spoke fluent Mandarin and told me she had lived in Beijing for 6 years. She also told me not to feel too bad if I had trouble understanding the locals – she also had that problem as their version of Mandarin is quite far from the standard. Late afternoon, I started a new quest: to figure out how to get from LiJiang to my next destination, Shangrila, on Wednesday. I knew there were buses that made this 100-mile trip but I had to figure out where they departed from, their schedule, and how to buy a ticket. So, I went back to the local bus stop and asked a young couple where I might find the bus to Shangrila. Like the young ladies from the previous day, they were very kind about trying to understand and help me, and the young lady spoke a little English which helped. She showed me which bus to get on and then told the driver to let me know when we arrived at my stop. As the bus departed the Old Town area, I tried to pay attention and memorize the route it took, so that I might travel it on foot should it be possible (or necessary.) After about 15 minutes and several turns, I realized it was too far to walk, and I just hoped the driver would let me know when I reached my stop. I figured it likely the bus made a big circuit and, if nothing else, I could just stay on until it arrived back in Old Town. But the driver did tell me when to get off, and I found the “long-distance” bus station. Inside, I couldn’t read anything on the wall. I asked the lady at the information desk about buses to Shangrila but couldn’t really tell what she said in response. A nice young Australian man told me there are buses leaving for Shangrila almost every half hour. Since this was in line with what I had read in Lonely Planet, I decided I would just come here early Wednesday morning assuming I could get a ticket to Shangrila. I went back to Old Town by catching the same bus in the other direction. On my way back to my guesthouse, I saw a travel shop with some English signs and I booked a day-trip to Tiger Leaping Gorge for the next day (Tuesday.) I had read about the beauty of Tiger Leaping Gorge and the trip only cost about $22 for the day. However, other than the name of the destination and the price, I didn’t really have any details about the trip. When you are illiterate, you really must just “go with the flow” and try to give up feelings of needing to be in control. I tried to be at peace with the idea that I would go somewhere on Tuesday and I would take photos. :-)

April 26th, Monday: Leaping Tiger Gorge Trip – I met my tour group at 8am at the entrance to Old Town. I was the only foreigner and that didn’t surprise me. The bus was only half full so I sat in the last row so I could easily move to the opposite side when the better view was there. The tour guide spoke no English and spoke very fast Mandarin so I couldn’t pick up much of what he said. At one point, he stopped talking and looked expectantly at us. A few people raised their hands. Then, he said something else and a few other people raised their hands. I was hoping he was asking who wanted corned-beef and who wanted pastrami for lunch but I knew that was unlikely. I never did know what he was asking. Later in the morning, a nice young couple from Beijing near the back of the bus spoke to me in English. After that, they made sure to translate any really important information for me.

As we neared Tiger Leaping Gorge, we came to the Yangtze River’s famous hair-pin turn at Shigu. This is where a mountain range changes the Yangtze’s flow from southbound to a northeasterly direction. At least a thousand miles downstream from here is where the big river flows past my primary school on ChangXing Island and enters the sea. After Shigu, the road paralleled the Yangtze. Even this far from its mouth the river is large and the muddy water flowed peacefully. Along the banks were terraced fields growing, among other things, strawberries. At roadside stands, farmers did a brisk business selling packs of bright red strawberries and I was very tempted to try them. But, with my MianYang illness still fresh in mind, I decided to be careful. The general advice to follow if you want to avoid digestive tract problems is to eat “only what you can peel” – e.g. bananas, oranges, etc. As we neared Tiger Leaping Gorge, the bus turned to cross a bridge to the other side of the river. The bridge looked sound but, apparently, there are some concerns about its capacity to hold a bus load of tourists so we all walked across the bridge after the empty bus went ahead of us.

At the Gorge, the tour guide spoke to us for about five minutes before we got off the bus. I listened carefully and was able to pick up that he wanted us back on the bus by 12:50. My Beijing friends checked to be sure I understood and were impressed that I had understood that part (not wanting to be left behind sharpens the senses!) Although it was a rainy, cloudy day, the gorge was very nice. Paths built on the steep cliffs along the river take you to it. At a few points where constructing a walkway on the side of the sheer cliff was not possible, tunnels have been dug through the rock. These walkways and tunnels were probably as interesting as the gorge itself.

The gorge has English-friendly signs although some of them are in “Chenglish.” For example, the sign that read “Within 200 meters, notice the rockslide, please is run about the cliff.” I decided this probably meant “For the next 200 yards, watch for rock-slides – if one occurs, hug the cliff so the rocks may pass over your head.” It was a long walk to the end, at which point you are at the center of the gorge, where the sides are the steepest and some large rocks in the river create exciting whitewater (now I understood why I hadn’t seen any boats on the river.) I walked most of the way with my new Beijing friends and we took turns taking photos for each other. At a couple of spots, some local tourists asked me to pose with them in their photos. These people are probably from areas where there are few foreigners, and I had to pose several times so that everyone in the party had a photo of themselves with the foreigner. On the way back to LiJiang we had lunch in a restaurant along the river that specialized in tour buses, and then we were dropped at a large souvenir/jewelry store. You didn’t have to buy anything and I don’t think anyone from our bus did. Back in LiJiang that evening, I enjoyed another western-style meal of spaghetti carbonara and potato soup at the Prague Café, a restaurant with beautiful décor and a nice, cozy feel. Both the soup and spaghetti were loaded with cheese, something rare in China, and I savored the taste of home!

Tiger Leaping Gorge

Tuesday, April 27th: On my final full day in Lijiang, I walked to Black Dragon Pool, just north of town. I got a late start because I had spent the morning packing and taking photos in Old Town, so I stopped at MammaMia’s restaurant for lunch. Just before arriving at the restaurant, I had another slightly disturbing experience. Two young men on the sidewalk looked at me in a way I knew meant trouble. As I walked by, one of them passed directly in front of me and shouted something almost directly in my face. I didn’t really need to know what he said to know it was meant to intimidate me. I’m sure the wise thing would have been to ignore him, but my patience with this kind of thing has grown thin so I stopped and faced them to let them know I wasn’t going to be intimidated. They just smiled back at me and, after a few seconds, I walked away. I’ve had a couple of similar encounters with young men in China in the past. I really don’t think they are looking for a fight, or to harm me. My perception is they are just trying to demonstrate their manliness by showing each other they can intimidate a foreigner. I tried to put this little encounter out of my mind and went on the restaurant. There, I enjoyed a delicious chicken and potato dish for lunch, said goodbye to Diego and headed on to Black Dragon Pool. This small lake is very beautiful and reminded me of the famous West Lake area in HangZhou.

The beautiful tree-covered walkways around the lake, the plentiful fish clearly visible in the clean water, and the melodious singing of the caged songbirds (hanging in trees near their owners) all contributed to a pleasant couple of hours spent there. That evening, I decided I couldn’t leave town without trying some Naxi cuisine so I went to a restaurant and ordered fried yak meat with potatoes. It tasted great but the garlic and green onions stayed with me for at least 24 hours.

Wednesday, April 28th - Goodbye to LiJiang: I was up at 5:30am because I wanted to get to the bus station early. It was a scheduled 4-hour trip to Shangrila but I knew from past experience that, in these mountain roads, a 4-hour trip can easily become a 6 or 8 hour trip. Since I didn’t have a reservation in Shangrila, I wanted to arrive in time to scout out a good place to stay. The planning I had done on previous days made it easy to get from my guesthouse to the bus station and the lady at the ticket counter seemed to understand my request for a ticket to “Shang-ge–li–la.” I got on the small but comfortable bus and started the next phase of my journey

Chengdu

2010-05-02T10:11:00.002-04:00

Blog Entry:April 20th – 22nd: Chengdu – Well, I’ve finally realized I’m getting farther and farther behind in keeping this blog so I’ve decided to cover just the highlights of my travels until I get back to Shanghai and start teaching again. In this post, I’ll cover my two-day visit to Chengdu. Chengdu is the 2nd-largest city in Sichuan Province and is about 60 miles south of MianYang. I visited Chengdu in 2008 and hadn’t really planned to go back there. However, since flights from JiuZhaiGou to LiJiang go through Chengdu, I decided to spend two days visiting the Panda Research Base and my Chinese friend Terry. Terry is a senior at Sichuan University and I met him in 2008 when he graciously volunteered to be an English guide for me and another volunteer visiting Chengdu. His English is excellent and we have maintained contact since I left China in 2008. On Tuesday afternoon, he met me at the airport. We took a taxi and bus to his university campus on the other side of town. I visited his dorm room (6 boys), met some of his friends, walked around campus, and visited a nice museum. In the early evening, he treated me to dinner at his school cafeteria, swiping his student ID card to purchase my meal. After dinner, we took a taxi to the hotel I had booked online, which was quite a distance from the university. The BuddhaZen hotel (also called O&O) is a really, really nice place with beautiful architecture and rooms and a very friendly and helpful staff. Terry helped me figure out where to catch the bus to the Panda Research Base and then went back to his university. The next morning, I got up early and went to the Panda Research Institute, a beautifully landscaped park with a very successful in-captivity breeding program for giant pandas. I had a lovely morning strolling around the park viewing the pandas in their panda-friendly enclosures. The highlight of the visit was capturing the playfulness of several young pandas (see two videos.)
Chengdu, Hotel and Panda Research Center

That evening Terry and I attended a performance of Sichuan Opera that I really enjoyed. A nice feature of the opera was that the performers’ dressing room is open to the public and you can watch them apply makeup and don their costumes before the show (see video.) The show included many different kinds of acts including music, dancing, puppets, fast facemask changes, and a comedy skit about a hen-pecked husband. My favorite part was the man who used his very talented hands to create hand-shadows on a large, round, translucent screen (see video.) Also interesting were the the long spouts (> 3 feet) of the teapots used to pour tea for audience members during the show.

Sichuan Opera

JiuZhaiGou National Park

2010-04-28T18:14:00.000-04:00

BLOG ENTRY: April 17th - 20th: JiuZhaiGou (“geo j+eye go”) National Park – On Saturday morning, April 17, Mr. Wang came in a taxi to take me to the bus station. I tried to tell him Friday evening I didn’t want him to take me (I knew how to get there) but it became obvious that he felt it his duty and if I didn’t let him it would cause him some distress. We arrived at the bus station and Mr. Wang got on my bus to sit with me for a while before I left. It was a comfortable bus and I had the window seat right behind the driver. Mr. Wang asked a couple of ladies behind us to help me when we got to JiuZhaiGou and they said they would. We said our goodbyes and Mr. Wang left, and the bus left about 20 minutes later. The air quality was particularly bad on that morning and the coughing and wheezing that had become routine for me while I lived in Mianyang worsened a bit. But I was excited about heading off to a new adventure, especially since we would be going into a scenic mountainous area. I also hoped that the air would be better as we climbed in altitude, something my friend Connie Claman, who made this same bus trip with her son last year, had told me. The bus left about 9:30am and we were to told we’d make a stop in PingWu for lunch at about 12:30. I had been warned about the limited selection of foods at bus stops so I took along some snacks that included nuts and some kind of dried meat. After we left Jiang You, the driver started showing movies on the large TV that many people bumped their heads on when they got on the bus. At first, I was more interested in the scenery than movies. However, the scenery was only marginally interesting and I found myself watching “The Shanghai Kid” with Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson for the second time. I hadn’t liked that movie much the first time I saw it, probably because I’m not a big Owen Wilson fan. Jackie Chan, however, is always appealing and he was especially so in this movie. There were several young Chinese men on the bus and they were laughing loudly at the same things I was which made it more enjoyable. We started slowly ascending into hills now and the road was often not very good. About 12:00 we slowed to a stop and the bus driver turned off the ignition. We could see a line of traffic stopped ahead of us and the blinking lights of a police car about a quarter mile up the road. It was apparent we weren’t going anywhere soon so everyone, including the driver, got off the bus. I joined them but I kept a close eye on the driver to make sure I wouldn’t be left behind. Two hours later, we started off again but we were rerouted through the narrow main street of a town that was effectively being rebuilt (see video.) My guess is this town suffered heavy earthquake damage in 2008 and was now rebuilding. Going was slow but at least we were moving!

About 3:00 we stopped at PingWu for lunch. By this time I had already eaten a lot of my snacks and I wasn’t particularly hungry, which was good because there wasn’t much to offer at the mom-and-pop convenience store where we stopped. I did buy four bananas and the ladies Mr. Wang had asked to keep an eye on me offered me some oranges which I gratefully accepted. As we left PingWu, the bus began climbing more steeply. There were many sharp turns and switchbacks, and frequent obstacles such as cars or motorcycles pulled off to the side made the bus driver’s job interesting. These vehicles were not really pulled off to the side since the road had no shoulder. Instead, a deep storm basin bordered each side of the road. Any veering to the right would result, at the very least, in a disabled vehicle. Late in the afternoon, I could tell we had reached a high altitude as I felt just slightly light-headed. This section of the road was the most difficult – there were few guardrails between the road edge and steep hillsides. Many small work crews were pouring concrete foundations for new guardrail posts. Their 3-wheeled motorcycles and piles of raw materials ( e.g. concrete mix) often blocked one of the lanes, requiring the driver to alternate use of the single remaining lane with oncoming traffic. At this point I began to understand why several teachers had asked me why I wanted to take the bus – they thought it would be much better and safer to take the plane. Of course, the main reason I took the bus is because I wanted to see the countryside.

Trip from MianYang

It was dark and raining lightly as we approached the JiuZhaiGou national park area. There are scores of large hotels along the main road near the park entrance and I knew that mine, the XingYu International Hotel, would be on the left side just before arriving at the bus station. I tried to spot it but the rain-spattered windows of the bus made it impossible. When we pulled into the bus station (really just a small, unlighted parking lot) everyone got off the bus. Several local taxi drivers, hoping for a fare, accosted us as we disembarked. The ladies who had been asked to help me started talking with the drivers but I wasn’t sure what was said. The drivers wanted 10RMB to take me to my hotel, but I figured that was probably way too much as it couldn’t have been more than a quarter mile away – I could easily walk it. I pulled my poncho out of my suitcase and started to put it on. At this point, one of the drivers lowered his fare to 5RMB and I decided to accept. He took me to my hotel and I checked in without any difficulty. The room was really nice, even though I only paid about $35 USD per night. Especially after living for a month in my marginally acceptable MianYang hotel room, it felt like the height of luxury to have a western style toilet and a mini-bar!

I knew that the park opened at 7AM the next morning so I showered and got ready for bed early. I planned to enjoy the free hotel breakfast when the dining room opened at 6AM. As I got into my pajamas and snuggled into the comfy bed, I decided to look over the materials the hotel provided, thinking I might learn something useful. Very quickly, I became alarmed that nowhere in the materials did I see the name XingYu International Hotel. Instead, most of the references to the hotel were “Grand JiuZhaiGou Hotel” and a few places identified it as “Sacred Hotel.” I had a sinking feeling that the taxi driver may have taken me to a hotel where he gets a kickback for bringing clients. I had made the XingYu reservation online and I had guaranteed payment on my credit card, so if I wasn’t at the XingYu I would be paying two hotel bills that night! I logged onto the internet to see if I could confirm or deny my suspicions but it was difficult to tell. I ended up sending email of the hotel’s name in Chinese characters to my young Chinese friends Lisa and Mandy (they are in the USA going to school and I knew they’d be awake) to ask them whether “Xing Yu” was in the name. At about the same time I got the news that “Xing Yu” was, in fact, in the hotel’s name, I found another piece of evidence that suggested I was in the right hotel: the phone number in the room matched the one shown in my online reservation. With that minor panic behind me, I was able to enjoy a good night’s sleep.

In the morning, I enjoyed the buffet Chinese breakfast which included things like dumplings, hard-boiled eggs, and vegetables. After breakfast I decided to walk to the park entrance. I thought it couldn’t be too far and I wanted to check out the area anyway. It turned out to be nearly a mile and uphill but I walked slowly and it wasn’t too bad. The park entrance grounds are very lovely, and the large main buildings are large, attractive Tibetan-style buildings. JiuZhaiGou actually means “nine village valley” which refers to the nine small villages within the park that are populated by people of Tibetan origin. For this reason, most of the architecture and many of the souvenirs in the area are Tibet-themed. I had read that you could purchase a two-day entrance ticket for the same price as a 1-day ticket so I asked for that. An agent who spoke good English explained to me that the two-day policy is not in effect during the busy season. She asked if I was a student and I laughed and told her no. Then, she asked if I was over 60 – I showed her my passport and I got a 50RMB ($7) discount off the 310RMB ($50) entrance fee.

As I entered the park, I hopped on the bus with everyone else. For the next 20 minutes we held on tight as the bus sped to the two topmost points in the park. Along the way, we caught glimpses of beautiful aquamarine and turquoise colored lakes. As we disembarked at the top, we were met by scores of Tibetan-minority vendors who would dress you in Tibetan attire for a photo using your camera. I decided “what the heck” and had a lady dress me and take my photo for 10RMB. After the photo, I started up a walkway that was supposed to lead to a “primeval forest,” but I was quickly too winded to go on so I turned back. The altitude there was about 3000 meters (or 9,300 feet) which isn’t too bad for breathing unless you exert yourself. So, I took the next bus downhill and got off at the first stop. The park is really nicely equipped and maintained. Beautiful wooden raised walkways snake along both sides of the lakes and waterfalls that cascade down the valley. The roadside route is noisier because of the bus traffic so the walkway on the side away from the road is much nicer. It wasn’t very crowded and I was able to find opportunities to be completely alone while walking (see video), although there were some rowdy tourists who thought it was fun to see how far their voices could carry. I don’t think I would enjoy it in August when it is much more crowded.

The lakes and the waterfalls were absolutely gorgeous – I will let the accompanying photos/video speak for themselves. It was a little dry while I was there. Much of southwest China has been suffering a drought, although Yunnan hasn’t suffered as much as other provinces. Some of the most spectacular waterfalls were much diminished and you could see many dry areas where water normally flows. One of my favorite places was the smaller falls between Arrow Lake and Panda Lake (see video). I liked them so much I went back on the second day. After a very enjoyable couple of hours walking, I jumped on the bus and headed to the massive tourist service center for lunch. I had the Chinese buffet lunch and it was good, though way overpriced by China’s standards (50RMB.) Everything in JiuZhaiGou is more expensive than elsewhere. After checking out a few more interesting places in the park, I took a taxi back to my hotel and had a much-needed nap.

That evening, I attended a “Shangrila” show at my hotel whose theme was Tibetan culture based. I enjoyed a lot of the dance numbers (see video) and some of the music but what I found most interesting were the little things that were different than I’d ever seen at a Western show. First, they provided a plastic-hands-on-a-stick (see photo) device at every seat. With this device, you can applaud by just waving the stick with one hand. They’re very loud and can become annoying when audience members use them to keep the beat with every bar of music. Second, upon entry, every customer had a white (silk-like) scarf draped around his or her neck. During the first solo song, an older lady from the audience stepped up on the stage and approached the singer. She draped her scarf around the singer’s neck and there was applause. Throughout the concert, every song was an occasion for audience members to go up on the stage and give their scarf to the singer. I thought this was kind of cool except that many of the people who did it stood by the singer facing the audience and smiled while their friend snapped a photo from the edge of the stage. Some even put their arms around the singer for the photo-op! It was a routine that I decided I didn’t really like – I think I prefer concerts where the audience is expected to remain in their seats and cameras are not allowed. I was in the second row so I had a great view but there were several businessmen in the first row that kept holding their cameras up over their heads to take videos and photos. One of them was especially annoying because he was constantly running up on stage with a wide grin to have his photo taken with any performer who came near his seat. He was with a group of older men in suits and I got the impression he was trying to impress his boss. I also thought I detected that the performers were not thrilled about this guy either. At another point in the show, one of the performers tried to coax audience members to join him onstage for dancing. The guy next to me tried to drag me with him but I refused – I didn’t know exactly what was expected and, after a month in Mianyang, I’d had enough being the center of attention. Those who did go seemed to really relish it as the stage filled with audience members, and friends snapped photos of each other. One final thing I noticed was that almost the entire audience filed out of the room during the cast’s curtain call. You see this from a few people in Broadway shows and I always find I disrespectful to the performers. But, I realize that I’m unfamiliar with Chinese cultural standards and I may have been the only one with these kinds of impressions. In general, the show was quite fun and I was glad I went. However, the music was quite loud and, after two hours of it, I was happy to escape to my quiet room.

On my second full day at JiuZhaiGou, I got up early, and, this time I took a taxi to the park entrance. There were areas of the park I hadn’t seen yet, and they were my objectives for the day. One destination was a Buddhist Temple near the park entrance - a temple that my Lonely Planet guidebook described as “authentically Tibetan.” The guidebook said the bus doesn’t stop there but it’s a short walk from where the buses are loaded. As I started walking up the road, a man yelled something at me and motioned me to come back. I did as he asked and he asked to see my ticket. After checking it, he asked me where I was going and I showed him on the map. His demeanor was gruff and he indicated I couldn’t go there. I guess the Lonely Planet writer was either lucky enough to escape detection or the rules for visiting the temple have changed since the guidebook was written. With that plan thwarted, I jumped on the bus with everyone else and headed back to the topmost point, just as I had the day before. During that day, I visited some beautiful new places and revisited some of the places I liked from the previous day. I had the buffet lunch again. This time, as I approached the dining hall entrance, a nice young Chinese man offered a buffet ticket to me, saying he had bought one too many (he spoke English). He was really offering it to me for free but I paid him for it and he was surprised but happy.

That afternoon, I had an unpleasant experience when I tried to board a bus at a stop that was very crowded. I thought I was first in line to get on the next bus but found myself pushed back by more aggressive bus-boarders several times. When the third bus pulled up, I got more aggressive and made sure I got on. Even with being more aggressive, I still found there was only one seat left when I boarded. I grabbed it but the guy next to me had his leg jutting out into it, obviously trying to save the seat for his friend. I tapped his leg and motioned for him to move it, which he did, but he and his party seemed annoyed with me during the ride. Little incidents like this can be annoying but I tried to put it in context with all the other occasions on which people have been so kind to me.

My impression of the park is very, very positive. It is truly a unique, beautiful, international treasure and I am so happy that it is being preserved. The park entrance fee is very high (~$45) but they have done a very nice job building walking platforms that blend well with nature and take you to the most beautiful places. The park is also fairly English-friendly, and you can find your way around on your own using the maps located at almost every major pathway junction. My impression of the JiuZhaiGou area, however, was less positive. I found the local people (except my hotel staff) to be less friendly than those in Mianyang, probably because it is a major tourist destination and the locals get tired of tourists. There were a couple of small shops I visited where the people were downright unfriendly. Overall, it was a wonderful two days. It is definitely worth a visit if you love nature. The lakes and waterfalls must be among the most beautiful in the world.

JiuZhaiGou National Park

On my final evening in JiuZhaiGou I rested in my room and prepared to leave the next morning. I had a flight from JiuZhai-Huanlong Airport which was about 60 miles away. After spending the two previous days asking locals and scanning the internet to find the cheapest way to get to the airport, I had given up and agreed to have the “hotel car” take me there for the exorbitant fee of 300RMB (~$50.) My Lonely Planet guidebook had told me there were shuttle buses to the airport and described where you could find them. But I went to these locations and was unable to find one. Perhaps it was my poor language skills that caused the problem but I was a little annoyed with the Lonely Planet writer who had led me to believe it would be easy.

I left early on Tuesday morning in a nice sedan driven by a man in a business suit and white gloves. The airport is north of JiuZhaiGou so we took a route not seen on my trip from Mianyang. We started climbing soon after leaving and the area was very beautiful. As we approached the zenith of a particularly high mountain, it was snowing lightly and the pine trees along the road were very beautiful.

I thought the driver was going too fast but he seemed very competent. Solid yellow lines between lanes apparently mean nothing: it seems in China drivers pass any time they can squeeze a few inches in between the car in front and oncoming traffic. I got to the airport early and couldn’t check in for about 30 minutes. The check-in area was very cold so I opened my suitcase to find my warmer shoes and sweater. Check-in went smoothly and our plane took off about 30 minutes late. As we climbed above the clouds, I had a nice view of the mountain peaks of northern Sichuan protruding through the clouds. I was off to the next stage of my adventure - Chengdu and the pandas!

Goodbye to Mianyang Middle School

2010-04-24T10:53:00.000-04:00

Blog Entry: April 16, Goodbye to Mianyang Middle School #7 - My final week was busy as I made up the four lessons I missed the previous Thursday, teaching 18 lessons before finishing up on Friday morning. The classes were mostly fun as the kids really enjoyed the skit I wrote… well… what they really liked was seeing their classmates dressed up as Michael Jackson or Lady Gaga. They laughed so hard and carried on that I worried a bit about disturbing neighboring classrooms. Getting them to write and perform their own skits continued to be a hit-or-miss proposition. In a few classes almost every little sub-group performed; in other classes I was lucky to get two or three skits. A few kids were great at putting themselves into a role: a couple of boys actually danced and sang like Michael Jackson and they got screaming affirmations from their classmates. But most students were a little too shy to throw themselves into the role. I tried to inspire them by showing them how they might act – “Yao Ming should talk with a deep voice like this…” and “Michael Jackson has a small, soft voice like this…” In an attempt to show them how I thought Lady Gaga might say “I’m very beautiful…” I tried to look alluring and mimed brushing my hair back while I strutted sexily (well, I tried) across the front of the classroom. The students just loved this, but I think I might have shocked a few of the teachers J. I’m enclosing a video of one of the better skits.

By the end of the week, all two thousand grade 7 and grade 8 students had the special email address that I set up for them to write to me. Many seemed enthusiastic about writing but I made it clear I will not attempt to respond to their emails until I return home in June. I have received only a dozen or so emails thus far so my guess is it will turn out to be a manageable number. I am thinking it would really be nice to find American pen pals of their own age. If any of you have ideas about where I might find some interested middle school kids, please forward them to me.

During this final week, I spent more time getting to know some of the 8th grade teachers. On the previous Friday they took me out for Hot Pot. This is a Sichuan specialty in which a large pot of very hot, spicy oil is mounted in the center of the table and you cook your own meats and veggies in it. I like Hot Pot even though some of the “meats” are internal organs (e.g. stomach) that we don’t tend to eat at home, and that takes some getting used to. After dinner, Miss Ma, Miss Huang (Brenda) and Miss Lam and I walked to a local park where many different kinds of dances were underway. Most of the dancers are retired people and it seems to happen every morning and evening. I tried to dance along with the group doing an interesting dance (see accompanying video) but the moves were too complicated for me to pick up quickly. Another group was doing ballroom dancing and Brenda and I did the waltz for a while and it was fun. This is an aspect of Chinese culture that I really like: people meeting in public areas to enjoy dancing, tai chi, and various other activities. I wish I had had a little more time and energy to devote to this activity: I think the locals would have welcomed me.

On Wednesday afternoon, Miss Lai (Lilly) invited me and Miss Huang (Brenda) to her home for afternoon tea. Her home is a lovely, spacious apartment on the 11th floor of a building near the school, with views of the school, the river, and the temple on the other side of the river. She served us tea ceremonially using a beautiful tea set – this involved washing the tea leaves, warming the serving vessels, and some other rituals deemed important by those who take tea seriously. Pre-washed leaves were allowed to steep in a very small pot and each batch of leaves was used three times and we drank from small (tiny) cups that Lilly replenished frequently. Lilly’s apartment is decorated with interesting items she and her husband have acquired and she told us about her experience there during the 2008 earthquake. Following the earthquake, the residents of her building were told they would have to move out until the building could be certified structurally sound. But she and her family stayed anyway, without electricity or water and walking to the 11th floor! She said her whole family (husband is a government worker and their daughter is now in college in Beijing) volunteered to help others for several weeks following the quake.

During the tea, she served some interesting snacks, although I was a bit confused by her pronunciation when she announced “…we should have some slacks” :-). (The “sl” sound seems to be difficult for many speaking the Sichuanese dialect: In a classroom discussion about pets, several students mentioned that they don’t like “slakes!”) It was a very nice afternoon. Lilly presented me with a little gift – a medallion of tea from the Qiang people near Beichuan. About 4pm Brenda said she had to go back to school to give another lesson so our tea party ended. Lilly would prepare and serve dinner for her husband at about 6:00pm and then return to school to teach more lessons that evening.

Tea with Lilly and Brenda

Lilly also took me to the bus station on Thursday afternoon so I could purchase my ticket to JiuZhaiGou for Saturday morning. She is very proud of her car and has been driving for several years so her driving skills were better than some other teachers. The teacher that picked me up at the airport on my first day had planned to take me to the bus station but her car was out of action. The first mishap involved a collision with another car that apparently cost her an immediate 1000RMB ($160) payment to the other driver. Just days later, someone else was driving her car and hit a pedestrian. I’m not sure how that turned out but I know I’m not surprised to hear of accidents. Drivers are very aggressive and traffic violations are virtually non-existent as far as I can tell. Being a pedestrian requires care here – even when you have a green “walk” sign, cars turning into the street you're crossing seem to have the right-of-way – it requires concentration to cross the street here. Anyway, I greatly appreciated Lilly’s efforts to help me buy the bus ticket. Although I think I knew how to ask for the appropriate ticket (correct destination, date, etc.) on my own, it was nice to have an advocate proficient in the language. Her dialog with the ticket agent lasted several minutes and I know I would have been stumped by the first question the agent asked. My Mandarin is improving but I’m still much more capable of asking questions than understanding responses to them :-).

On Friday morning (April 16), my final day, I took the various presents I had wrapped for the teachers with me to school. I gave Mr. Lee, my Chinese Chess teacher, a New York baseball cap and he seemed delighted to get it. I gave other teachers baseball caps, American chocolates and nuts, and a pen that I had made up special before leaving home – it has my photo, an American flag, and the text “I have a friend in the USA” inscribed on it. I gave the headmasters small, framed photos taken on our outings and they seemed pleased, too. In addition to taking me to Beichuan and fishing, Mr. Bian had given me a beautiful, colorful hand-made over-the-shoulder bag made by the Qiang minority from Beichuan, so I wanted to let him know I appreciated his efforts.

On Friday afternoon, I had a few hours before a scheduled 4pm photo session in the school’s courtyard so I walked across the river to get a better view of the temple I had seen from Lilly’s apartment window. It’s a very old temple and the practices I saw there seemed Buddhist but I’m not really sure: perhaps it’s Taoist? My English teachers weren’t sure about that either but it’s an interesting place and some photos are included with this posting.

The 4pm photo session was fun although I did get a little tired of smiling and being the center of attention (well, not too tired to have some fun as you’ll see in the photos.) The school sent a photographer and I asked some of the teachers to take photos using my camera, too. Following the photo session I had about 2 hours before a scheduled goodbye dinner at a local Hot Pot restaurant, so I just hung around the school grounds for a while. Several kids came up to say goodbye: some wished me well and took some more photos, and some asked again for my email address (perhaps they were ninth-graders whom I had never taught.) One young lady gave me a gift – a small but beautiful sequined Muslim hat from XinJiang Province.

At dinner that evening I enjoyed some final moments with my teacher friends. We talked about how we hoped to stay in touch, and they asked me more questions about America and English usage. I received a very special gift from Miss Chen (Julie), a very nice, quiet person with, perhaps, the best English of anyone I met in Mianyang. A week earlier, we had spent an hour or so looking through an English joke book because there were some jokes she didn’t understand. Humor is always one of the most difficult things to pick up from a new language partly because many of the jokes are based on multiple meanings of words or on references to culturally-specific information. (Actually, Julie’s book was a British publication and there were some jokes I didn’t understand!) The gift Julie gave me was a stamp for my name: with both “John” and my Chinese name “孟思江.” I felt very touched that she had thought to give me such a special gift.

As I finish writing this blog entry, it has been almost a week since I left the school. I spent two wonderful days in JiuZhaiGou National Park, two more days in Chengdu visiting a young friend at Sichuan University and the pandas, and I’m now sitting in a charming guesthouse room in LiJiang, Yunnan Province. As I look back now I realize that leaving Mianyang Middle School wasn’t nearly as emotionally difficult as leaving the primary school on ChangXing Island in 2008. One obvious difference is I spent less time in Mianyang - 4 weeks compared to 12 weeks in 2008. But, I also think I unconsciously kept myself a little more distant emotionally than before. I suppose this special situation - of being welcomed into the lives of so many wonderful people with the knowledge that it’s likely you may never see them again after you leave - warrants maintaining a little distance. But I did have a wonderful time and I would recommend this experience to anyone.

Week of April 6 - 12

2010-04-19T11:13:00.012-04:00

Blog Entry: Monday, April 12th. It’s been a week since my last post: a week marked by busy work days, a brief illness, and two nice outings with hosts who remain persistent about ensuring I have something interesting to do on weekends. Last Tuesday (April 6) was the start of my final two weeks here and, as planned, I began teaching the 14 classes of 8th graders. My plan for grade 8 is exactly the same as grade 7: a “getting to know you” lesson the first week and an “English skits” lesson the second week. I taught the first eight classes on Tuesday and Wednesday and it went well. Like the seventh-graders, they are wildly excited at my arrival, with everyone applauding as I enter the room and some students shouting “Nice to meet you!” before I can even say hello. Some of the girls are so cute because they are really interested in me but they are shy. I often see a little smiling face looking expectantly toward me but then quickly turning away in embarrassment when I make eye contact or speak to them. It’s great fun, of course, to be the object of so many students’ fascination. But it’s also a great honor that they have made themselves so emotionally available to me, and I feel compelled to try to live up to their high expectations for me. They seem to have a predisposition to like Westerners and I don’t want to be the one that disappoints them. So many of them have such a sweet, loving nature that I just want to hug them. Many kids have given me little gifts: origami foldings, pens, candy bars, apples, a Harry Potter book (in Chinese) and even a small compact mirror.

Most students are nervous about speaking to me. I understand that and I try my best to help reduce their anxiety. I start the lesson by telling them I am here to help them speak English better and that I will help them if they make a mistake. I tell them that I understand why they are nervous because I am nervous about speaking Chinese and that we must all be brave and speak anyway. I hope my willingness to utter broken Mandarin with a New Jersey accent inspires them to believe they can do at least that well with English. After this pep talk, I open the floor for questions. Typically, I get no questions for the first 30 seconds or so. Then, one or two of the more advanced/brave students will start the ball rolling. Usually, once a student has successfully elicited an English response from me, they are emboldened to ask more questions. Gradually, more and more of the students join in the fun, sometimes encouraged by their Chinese English teacher.

Often, I’ll be asked if I can say something in Chinese, if I can sing an English song and if I know Chinese Kung Fu. Whatever I say in Chinese brings applause, my rendition of “Wheels on the Bus” is highly regarded, and my faux Kung-Fu movements always generate laughter. My natural tendency to be a ham works in my favor here and the class gradually relaxes. Usually, by the time the class ends, there are many raised hands in the air, and a groan of disappointment meets the bell.

Middle School Students:

I am kind of amazed at my own comfort level in these lessons. Fear of public speaking has always been a problem for me but in these lessons I am totally relaxed from start to finish. I must admit it feels satisfying to be able to walk into a crowded classroom and handle whatever questions are posed, keeping the conversation rolling for 40 minutes. I realize, however, that I have the luxury of having the “real” teacher in the room with me. I know that he/she will help me, if necessary, with discipline and/or translation issues. These teachers have a very hard job. They must handle classes of 65 to 70 young, restless teenagers on their own. They teach about 5 lessons per day but they must also prepare lessons, assign and read homework, grade papers, attend meetings, etc. The school day here is very long. Everyone is here at 7:00am: the students are in the classrooms practicing oral recitations led by a student leader; the teachers peering through an open window in the hallway to ensure the students are behaving. The first 40-minute lesson starts at 8:35 and four lessons precede lunch at 12:00. Lunch is taken quickly in massive dining halls (teachers have a smaller one but there are 180 teachers to feed, too.) After lunch, the school basically closes down until about 2:00. Doors to the classroom building are locked and everyone goes home and has a siesta. For more than half of the students and teachers, home is a flat or dorm room in one of several large buildings adjacent to the teaching buildings. Classes start again at 2:30 and there are 4 afternoon lessons before dinner at 5:45. At 6:30pm, there are three more lessons that run until about 9pm. Evening lessons occur daily between Sunday and Thursday. Teachers and students are always asking me about the difference between their school and American schools, and one of the obvious differences I point out is how much longer their day is. Both teachers and students already suspected this: many of them have told me they think it would be better if they had more free time. Students don’t really even have time to do their homework; much of it must be done on the weekend.

When I was teaching in the primary school near Shanghai in 2008, I taught 7 lessons per week. Here, in the Mianyang middle school, I average twice as many. Yet, this is somewhat easier because I don’t have to prepare two new lessons (one for grade 2 and one for grade 4) every week as I did there. There are so many different classes here -- I can get by with two simple lessons that are repeated many times. The downside to repeating the same lessons, of course, is I get tired of doing the same thing day after day. I also hear the same questions over and over again. I was too tired or busy to be homesick until the 30th time someone asked me if I miss my family. I also didn’t realize how ready I am to be a grandfather until the 20th time I was asked if I have grandchildren (no pressure, Michael, I can wait…)

On Wednesday night (April 7), I started feeling a little queasy and had trouble going to sleep – within hours I was quite ill with vomiting and chills. After a restless night, I called my advisor at 6:30am to let him know I wasn’t going to be able to teach that Thursday. Mr. Wang then came by my hotel room about 8:00 to see if he could help. He wanted to take me to the hospital, which seems to be the normal procedure when you get sick. I told him I had my own medicine that I would take and rest in my room but promised him that if I wasn’t better within 24 hours, I would go to the hospital. During the day I dozed fitfully. Still feeling very ill at about 4pm, I decided I needed to start taking the Cipro antibiotic that I brought with me. I felt much better within one hour so it was obviously the right decision. I still have one 5-day supply of Cipro, should I have another bout of illness. Of course, I’ll try to be careful to avoid sickness if at all possible.

I felt well on Friday morning, though still not in the mood to eat much, and gave the two lessons I was scheduled for. In the afternoon, I felt well enough to play some basketball with the boys. Basketball in China has exploded in popularity. The boys here absolutely love the NBA and play on the playground every chance they get. I was able to play with them for 15 minutes but then gave up out of exhaustion. I also played a little ping-pong with a nice young man who brought a paddle for me: needless to say, they are much better at ping-pong than I am J.

Saturday, April 10: Fishing, Chinese Style – During our drive to see the earthquake damage at Beichuan, we crossed many rivers and I mentioned to Headmaster Bian that I enjoy fishing. He told me that maybe we could go fishing on a future outing. Sure enough, he and two of his administrative assistants picked me up at the hotel Saturday morning and we drove about 45 minutes to an area where we could fish. It was certainly not in the country: the area was more a combination of large business/factory complexes and small homes. We drove down a small lane off the main highway, passing houses and buildings and dodging people and bicycles laden with everything imaginable (one day I saw a guy with a very large sofa strapped sideways across the back wheel of his bike – he was slowly weaving his way across a 6-lane highway!) We made a quick turn and were in a complex that had several large ponds where people were fishing. As you’ll see in the accompanying photos/videos, these are man-made concrete ponds and they are stocked with fish that look something like carp. Fishing poles that telescope to a length of about 25 or 30 feet are provided by the establishment. The pole has no reel – instead a long nylon fishing line is tied to the end of the pole and it’s rigged with a float (bobber to you Midwesterners) and a small hook. Also provided is a kind of dough bait (flour-based?). As soon as we threw our baited lines in, we started catching small (~ 1 pound) fish. The fish are regularly fed something like “Purina fish chow” and several fishermen were throwing handfuls of it around their floats to attract fish. It wasn’t particularly sporting but I enjoyed it anyway. We fished for about 2 hours. When we left, the workers took our fish and weighed them – our fish were weighed (to determine how much we owed) and placed in large plastic bags. I must admit the fish we took away were more lively (fresher) than the ones I usually drag home from a fishing trip at home.

Sunday, April 11: Visit to an Ancient Temple – On Sunday morning, Mr. Wang and his wife picked me up at the hotel and took me to a famous, ancient temple known as QiQu Mountain Temple. The temple is quite far from Mianyang and the roads are under construction so it took more than two hours to get there. Over 1000 years old, this fascinating place is situated on top of a mountain and surrounded by ancient cypress trees. Mr. Wang always wants to get out of Mianyang to enjoy the better air of the countryside. Usually I don’t notice an improvement in air quality on these outings but, in this case, he was right. It was a lovely spot and I enjoyed being there. The temple did suffer some damage from the 2008 earthquake and some of the ancient buildings are still closed for repair/renovation. Some photos and videos are shown here.

QiQu Mountain Temple:

No Earthquake in Mianyang

2010-04-14T10:30:00.000-04:00

Note from Grace: I talked to John Wednesday morning our time (Wednesday evening his time), and he is fine. Yushu, in Qinghai province, the site of an earthquake Wednesday morning, is about 500 miles northwest of where John is. He sent me a new blog entry with pictures and video that I'll be posting soon.

Busy Three-day Weekend

2010-04-06T11:22:00.000-04:00

Monday, April 5th: Thanks so much to those of you have been posting comments and sending email: I really enjoy hearing from you and I’m happy to share my experiences.

The final three school days of last week were marked by more grade 7 lessons where we performed English skits. Once I started using smaller groups (4-6 kids each) we did get some very entertaining scripts and performances. Many kids are too shy to perform (fear of public speaking and/or poor English skills are at play) but others must be dragged off the stage. I will include a video here so you can get the flavor of their unbridled joy in performing the skits. I always congratulated the kids on their English skills and used pieces of their dialog to help point out where they could improve. For example, instead of “Give me!” you should say “Give it to me” and, instead of “I very like…... “ you should say “I like…... very much.” I believe part of the reason the kids are so excited to have me here is they are able to field test their English skills. It’s much easier to believe you are really learning to speak English if you can communicate with a native speaker. I share this feeling – when I am able to communicate with someone here who speaks no English, it’s very exciting. English and Chinese are so different that even a small amount of communication ability feels like a real achievement.

On Thursday, April 1, I was scheduled for four afternoon lessons but was surprised to learn my final three lessons would have to be cancelled. I was told this was because all 1000 grade 7 students would be spending the afternoon marching across the river to a cemetery where they would “sweep the graves of their ancestors.” I asked to tag along and was glad I did. We assembled on the school playground where each class formed two long lines, one with girls and one with boys. As the first class left the playground, the next class fell in behind, creating a long (1/3 mile?) line of students marching two-abreast. We filed through the school’s front gate and then along the local streets toward the bridge that crosses the large river behind the school. It was a long day. We left about 3:15 and didn’t get back until 5:45, just in time for dinner. We must have walked about 4 to 5 miles, much of it up and down hills. Even the much-younger (than me) teachers were feeling the strain by the time we returned.

For yet another time, my understanding of what would be happening wasn’t quite accurate. Our destination turned out to be a very large stone obelisk at the top of a large hill, which is a memorial to the people who died during the long civil war that preceded the formation of the People’s Republic of China. A large red star tops the obelisk and the students stood in front of it while one of them placed a large wreath at its base. Another led the group in reciting what must have been a patriotic oath. Like kids everywhere who are required to attend such ceremonies, most probably didn’t really grasp the solemnity of the event, and they were a bit restless. But the teachers and the other adults who were there did understand and so did I. Despite what philosophical or political differences I might have with the regime that created this memorial, I knew that the people who die in wars are basically the same, everywhere. They are young, idealistic, brave people whose honor, bravery, or just ill fortune leads them to die for their country. Many of my peers never returned from the Vietnam War. Most of us who served there were guided less by political ideology than by simple love of country. Adding to the poignancy for me was the knowledge that many young Chinese soldiers from this area also died in Vietnam. Such a tragedy. These thoughts, and the knowledge that I am the constant target of the students’ curiosity and attention, led me to maintain a solemn visage and I carefully avoided eye contact to lessen the likelihood of an excited “Hi, John!” greeting from one of the kids.

Saturday, April 3rd: Saturday morning, my advisor Mr. Zhang, picked me up around 9am for a day in the countryside. I really didn’t especially want to go. I still haven’t had as much “me” time as I would like. But they are insistent on taking care of me during my stay. Their intentions are always good and I often have a good time anyway. Mr. Zhang doesn’t drive (he is currently taking driving lessons) so he waved to me from the rear seat of a small car that pulled up in front of my hotel. The driver was a friend of his who would take us to his in-law’s town of Shi Ma. Jammed in the backseat with Mr. Zhang were his wife, 10-year-old daughter, and the driver’s very cute 3-year-old daughter. As we drove through the crowded, chaotic streets of Mianyang, the size of the buildings gradually got smaller. We finally took a smaller road that wound up a hillside. We honked the horn continuously to warn anyone who might be walking, riding, or driving just around the next bend. This is the norm for driving in China – people honk their horns all the time. And, unlike at home, the recipients of the loud warning take no offense but just leisurely move out of the way.

We arrived in Shi Ma and met Mr. Zhang’s wife’s mother and three brothers (a pre-one-child-policy family) and their wives. They were very polite and seemed happy to meet me, especially whenever I tried to speak to them in Mandarin. Mr. Zhang and I went for a walk around town while the others did something else. Interestingly, although people here were friendly to me, they were just slightly more guarded than the people in Mianyang. In Mianyang, people don’t see foreigners very often but they know there are a few around, working at the universities. When they see me, they typically react as if they have spotted a movie star – young girls seem excitedly embarrassed, boys smile, and parents all want their children to say “hello” to the foreigner. In Shi Ma, on the other hand, they probably never see foreigners, and this is probably why they seem tentative in how they should receive me. As Mr.Zhang and I strolled around the town, which is quite depressed economically compared to Mianyang, a car with tinted windows pulled slowly up beside us. As the window was lowered, a policeman looked me over, obviously quite suspicious of what I was doing in Shi Ma. The camera hanging around my neck probably made him think I might be a journalist. Sometimes, journalists write less-than-flattering stories about China, getting the locals into trouble. He and Mr. Zhang had a brief conversation, undoubtedly to explain why I was there, and the policeman seemed relieved to hear whatever it was that Mr. Zhang said. He smiled genuinely and waved to me as he drove off. I didn’t really ask Mr. Zhang about the details of what was said – Mr. Zhang’s English is pretty limited and I knew it would be hard to understand him anyway.

We had a wonderful lunch at a small restaurant where a lone table was set up outside for the nine of us. As we ate, we talked and everyone grew more comfortable. We chatted amiably and they seemed to grow to like me more – not even seeming to mind when I refused to drink alcohol and when they learned I had been a soldier in the US army during the Vietnam War. At the table, Mr. Zhang’s 10-year old daughter asked me if I might give her an English name. I first suggested Grace (I’ve already given this name to one 7th-grader who requested a name) but she didn’t like that – she also rejected the names of my mother (Jean) and three sisters (Janet, Judy, Mona.) She finally accepted the simple name Mary. When we left Shi Ma, Mr. Zhang’s brothers-in-law seemed very fond of me (probably more to do with their noon-time alcohol than my charm) and I got a warm hug from one of them.

Lunch at Shi Ma

We took a taxi from Shi Ma to a larger town called Jiang You (it means “River Oil”, not an especially good name for attracting investors, I think.) Here, we strolled through a very nice riverside area called Tai Bai Park, named after another beloved ancient poet. It was one of the nicest places I’ve seen in Sichuan thus far, with lots of flowers and attractive gardens. People were strolling, fishing, playing Mahjong, and taking their kids on the small amusement rides there. We spent about an hour there and I enjoyed it. We then took two pedicabs from Tai Bai to the Jiang You bus station. There, we boarded a very uncomfortable, rattling bus for a 45-minute trip back to Mianyang. I was happy to learn that we arrived at PingZheng Station, which is where I need to go to catch the bus to JiuZhaiGou (National Park) when I leave here on April 17th. Now I feel confident I know where to buy the ticket and how to get there. I just hope the bus to JiuZhaiGou (~10 hour trip) is nicer than the bus we took back to Mianyang.

Shi Ma and Jiang You Tai Bai Park

Sunday, April 4th: On Sunday morning, my teacher friend Kerry picked me up in front of the hotel to take me to meet another teacher, Mr. Lee, who so kindly volunteered to teach me Chinese Chess (after I had told the headmaster I was interested in learning and he announced that fact when I was introduced for my speech.) We met at a very attractive teahouse, where people go to drink tea while they play cards, chess, or mahjong. There are many, many such teahouses here. I’ve been told that many Sichuanese people love to gamble and are especially hooked on Mahjong. I don’t think Mr. Lee falls into that category – he seems to be a nice young teacher who is just interested in meeting and helping me. He speaks no English so that’s why Kerry came along. I had absolutely no knowledge of Chinese chess but had often stopped to watch the older men playing on worn, beat-up chessboards on street corners. Actually, the weather-worn boards and chess pieces I had seen on the street had given me an erroneous perception about the game. The chess pieces all looked the same to me because the Chinese characters painted on them had almost disappeared. I didn’t realize that there are many different kinds of pieces and that the game is just as complicated (and somewhat similar to) the western game of chess. I was hoping it was more like “checkers” which is much easier to learn. I played chess briefly about 40 years ago and vaguely remembered some of the basic rules and none of the strategy. As Mr. Lee patiently explained the game to me, and Kerry translated, I tried hard to concentrate and learn as much as I could. After all, I had asked for lessons and this nice man was giving up a Sunday morning to help me. But my heart wasn’t really in it. It was hard enough to try to keep track of the names and rules of movement for each piece and impossible to understand the suggestions Mr. Lee was giving me about strategy. When it was my turn to move, and I looked at the board without a hint of what I should do, I was reminded of the funny simile I heard years ago… I felt …” like a hog looking at a stopwatch.”

After two games of chess (the second game, Kerry played against Mr. Lee and I tried to learn while watching), we said goodbye to Mr. Lee and headed back to the hotel. Kerry told me her mother was staying with her and invited me to have lunch at her apartment. I agreed and we climbed to the sixth floor apartment near the school. Her mother was very nice and had prepared a very delicious lunch, the best food I’ve had since I’ve been here, and the food has been very good. I was able to communicate with her mother a little in Chinese and that was fun. They invited me to stay and chat or watch TV after lunch but I declined because I wanted to rest a while and I thought I had already taken up enough of Kerry’s weekend. When I said goodbye and “… see you tomorrow,” Kerry informed me that I should say see you Tuesday, because Monday was a holiday. Want to guess what holiday it was? Yep… “tomb-sweeping day for respecting the ancestors.” Mr. Zhang had told me about this upcoming holiday – he just didn’t make it clear when it would happen :-).

At 4pm on Sunday afternoon, I met the young college students who had taken me to lunch the previous week. They had been very kind to me and I wanted to take them to dinner. I met Raulson and Marina and Errol (a girl) in front of the McDonalds near the center of town and we a took bus to their college, Mianyang Normal College, located in the hills just outside of town. We enjoyed a nice long walk around the campus, where students were enjoying a long weekend by playing basketball, riding bicycles or other leisurely activities. The campus is quite nice with many big trees. I also liked how quiet it was, a commodity in short supply in much of modern China. One interesting thing I learned was that, after the earthquake, everyone had moved out of their dorms to live in temporary housing set up in adjacent lots (see photos of low blue-and-white buildings.) Most of the college’s buildings were not severely damaged but the shaking had been quite violent and fairly severe after-shocks occurred for weeks afterward. It was necessary for engineers to inspect all these large building before allowing people to live in them again. (This happened at my Middle School too. All the students who live at the school were sent home for several weeks/months and all the teachers had to move into temporary huts on the playground where I gave my speech.) After quite a long walk, we selected a restaurant and were met there by yet another young college student, named Legend. All of these students are English majors and they want very much to speak with a native English speaker, which partly explains their kindness to me. But they also are genuinely nice people and I feel lucky to have met them. Marina even gave me a nice gift of some Chinese handicraft. She also told me that Legend, who is a very attractive young lady who showed up at dinner wearing a red jacket and leather hot-pants, had hoped she could go with me to JiuZhaiGou as my guide. She had decided against it when she discovered the cost (very expensive park entrance fee). I told her that I appreciated that she had entertained this notion but I was really happy to go there alone. On my own, I would be more challenged to speak Mandarin to other people. I also told her that my wife probably wouldn’t understand when I showed her the photos of me and the sexy 21-year old Chinese girl at JiuZhaiGou park. After dinner (which cost 46RMB – about $8 for 5 people,) they all escorted me back to my hotel on the bus, where we said a genuinely touching goodbye, with all hoping that we might get one more chance to see each other before I leave Mianyang.

Mianyang Normal University

My college friends at Normal University

Monday, April 5: This is the unexpected holiday that I only learned about on Saturday, and I relished the opportunity to do whatever I wanted…. all day long! In the morning I took the bus to Peoples Park where I watched hundreds of people dancing to several different kinds of music. I’m told this dancing occurs every morning and evening, but I would presume there are more people on weekends and holidays. If time allows, I may get up the courage to try and join them next time. I hadn’t been there long when my phone rang. It was Mr. Wang, the “lead teacher” for grade 7, and he asked me where I was. I told him and he said he wanted to pick me up to take me “…to the countryside” where we could enjoy a lunch. I felt a little annoyed and told him that, if he didn’t mind too much, that I would prefer to be alone today and just rest. He didn’t seem to hear that and said he would pick me up a little after 11am. I had a vague feeling that Mr. Zhang had told me on Sunday that this would happen, but I had forgotten about it so I didn’t feel like I could be too insistent about refusing to go. So, I headed back to my hotel and awaited his arrival.

Mr. Wang doesn’t drive either. He says he doesn’t really have time to take driving lessons, which are required to get a license. (I have ridden in the cars of several teachers since I’ve been here and most of them are obviously new drivers, taking a long time to maneuver their cars into parking areas – owning and driving a car is a recent phenomenon for teachers.) Mr. Wang pulled up in a nice Nissan car driven by his wife. He introduced us briefly and then she drove away. Mr. Wang explained that another car was coming for us. Just a few minutes later another car pulled up and we got into the back seat. It was several minutes before I realized it wasn’t a taxi and the driver was a friend of Mr. Wang’s. This car was owned and driven by Mr. Lee, a college professor who is about 50 years old. I wasn’t especially talkative since I really wanted to be somewhere else. I hoped we could have the lunch and I’d still have some of the day left for doing whatever I might want to do on my own.

It took about 45 minutes to get to the restaurant, which was just outside of town. During the drive, I chatted with Mr. Wang in English and tried to communicate a little with Mr. Lee using Mandarin. He seemed to be impressed that I could speak any Mandarin and I think this raised his opinion of me. Throughout the day, we became friends and he seemed to enjoy talking to me and having photos taken with me. At the restaurant, we entered a private room with a large table where several cold dishes were already present. Arriving in short order were Mr. Wang’s wife and daughter and three other families with children about the daughter’s age. Basically, these were friends of Mr. Wang’s who had middle-school children. They were very nice families and it slowly became apparent that the parents were keenly interested in having their children talk with the foreign teacher. During the meal, they each coerced the kids into coming over to me, making a toast and having a short conversation in English. The kids were not crazy about the idea, mostly because they were intimidated by speaking to a foreigner. Like the students in my classes, they think their English is too poor to be able to talk with me. But their parents (who spoke no English) were excited to have their children speak to me and even more delighted when I told them that their child’s English was very good. I got the impression that getting to know me is considered to be good “guanxi” for a Chinese English student. I’ve been here almost three weeks now and I’m still amazed at the high status with which people regard me, simply because I can speak English. As at all banquets, there is a custom of people making toasts to each other – most men make a toast to every other individual (or family) at the table in sequence. I know this is Chinese etiquette and, even though I would prefer to just enjoy the meal, it is better if I make an effort to make a toast. At this meal, I made a single toast to the entire table, consisting of four or five sentences of Mandarin. I’m sure my pronunciations were poor and grammar horrific but I think they got the gist and were very pleased with my attempt.

After lunch, all but two of the families accompanied me to visit a large Buddhist temple near the restaurant. The temple is called Shen Shui Si (Mysterious Water Temple) and it sits on the side of a very large hill. It’s comprised of many large buildings and has at least two temples that house large Buddha statues. You will notice in the photos that there is also a huge, white, reclining Buddha in the distance. We climbed about 1000 steps (see photos) to get to the starting point and we were all winded. I think the middle school parents weren’t sure it was worth THIS much trouble to meet the foreigner :-). But it was very pleasant walking around the temple grounds and visiting the two main buildings. In accordance with local protocol, I made a small contribution, signed my Chinese name to the visitor’s log, and asked for the Buddha’s blessing by bowing three times while kneeling down on one of the cushions on the floor at the base of the statues.

Lunch with Middle School Families and Visit to Temple

Climbing the Stairs at the Temple

I came home about 4pm and was really beat so I fell asleep on the bed. When I awakened, it was 6pm and I had a sudden urge for peanut butter! I knew the only place that might have it would be the large Wal-Mart on the other side of town, so I caught the bus and headed there. I didn’t find peanut butter, but I did buy peanut butter crackers, potato chips, chocolate bars, some cookies, and a quart of real cow’s milk. Man, did I have a junk food feast that night!

School Surprise and Trip to Beichuan

2010-04-01T10:09:00.000-04:00

Tuesday: March 30: I started the day with big plans for my four scheduled classes. I had written a skit for the characters Michael Jackson, Yao Ming, Lady Gaga and Mr. John (me). With several “props” (funny masks, noses, hair, an MJ hat and a basketball jersey), my first (8:15) class performed the skit to the howling delight of their classmates. They especially enjoyed the rather short young man who played Lady Gaga with great flair, frilly scarf wrapped around his neck, bejeweled sunglasses, and cheesy purple hair (sorry didn’t take my camera today – will have more opportunities throughout the week.) The main purpose of my skit, other than entertainment, was to inspire them to create their own skits, using characters and dialog of their own choosing. I had the class divide into four groups and asked each to develop their own skit. This didn’t work out very well – I did get one group to perform but the others were either too disorganized or shy. I think the main problem is the class size is so large that each “group” had more than 15 people each: not conducive to a small-group dynamic of solving a problem. I have since started using smaller groups of 4 each and this, sometimes, works a little better. I finished the class by asking them to ask me more questions, signing autographs, and letting them sign my “memory book.” One boy asked me to sign my Chinese name which I did and he seemed to think he had a real treasure, rushing off to his seat shouting something excitingly – obviously they are not put off by my lousy calligraphy. They also wanted me to pose for photos taken with their camera-phones and I got quite a few good-bye hugs.
Ten minutes into the second lesson of the morning, I was interrupted by my teaching coordinator, Mr Zhang, who asked me to step outside the classroom where he told me the headmaster of the school was going to take me to Beichuan. I found this a bit odd since I already knew that was planned for next Saturday. But it became clear that he meant we were leaving for Beichuan now. Having been a teacher in China before, I wasn’t too shocked to hear about such a last-minute change – this class and the next 2 classes would have to be handled by someone else. I was also asked to follow him to the playground where the school was going to give me some flowers. As we descended the 6 flights of stairs to the playground, he told me I could give my speech to the students (it became clear he really meant should). This school only has assembly (flag ceremony) on Monday mornings. I had missed giving the speech the first day because I arrived Monday afternoon. My second Monday was rainy so I was told I could give it the following week. So, I was a bit surprised when it happened on Tuesday at mid-morning. I didn’t have my notes with me but I figured I could probably get by without them because I had practiced quite a bit.
Mr. Yang (the correct name for the headmaster who had taken me to Li Bai’s Memorial: I had been incorrectly calling him Mr. Wang) introduced me to the 3000 students and approximately 200 teachers and then handed me the microphone. I spoke first in English and told them my name, about my family, and why I was here. Everyone seemed to enjoy it – the kids responded to my “It’s nice to meet you…” with a very loud “Nice to meet you too!” After I finished in English, I gave the same (hopefully) speech in Mandarin. Kerry, my teacher friend whose English is excellent, told me she thought my Mandarin was very, very good and that everyone could understand me, so I was very happy. She also told me that Mr. Yang had said some very nice words about me to the students… something to the effect of “… this man has a very kind heart to come here and volunteer to help you learn English.” At the end of my speech, Mr. Yang called a student up to the stage and she presented a beautiful bouquet of roses and lilies to me. At this moment, they are making my hotel room smell wonderful. The whole thing happened very quickly and, unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera so I didn’t get it on video. I hope someone at least got a photo on one of the camera phones.
Immediately after the speech, I followed Kerry and Mr. Zhang away from the podium to be introduced to Mr. Bian, the real headmaster of the school. (Mr. Yang is actually Assistant Headmaster Yang. One of the things I like about the Chinese people is they are very forgiving of my ineptitude in learning their names.) Mr. Bian ushered Kerry and me into his chauffeured car for the trip to Beichuan.
Beichuan was one of the two hardest-hit areas of the 2008 earthquake. I knew that it was the sight of terrible loss of life and property and I knew that many of the dead were school children. I was a little uncertain about wanting to see it but they seemed to understand my interest and also seemed happy to do something for me. Kerry and I sat in the back and Mr. Bian sat up front with the driver. Through Kerry’s competent translation, Mr. Bian and I enjoyed a nice conversation which ranged from teaching differences between our countries, to fatherhood (he has a daughter 29 years old who is a journalist in Beijing), to the American health care issue, to the American civil war. He had visited Germany and remarked he especially enjoyed their blue skies – something I told him we had in America too. He asked me why I thought that was and I said it’s because much of the world’s manufacturing base is now in China. I quipped that “America makes movies and China makes everything else” – they laughed and I’m pretty sure they understood it as gross exaggeration. As we left Mianyang city and headed north(?) toward Beichuan, he explained to me that the Beichuan city disaster area can be entered only with government permission but that he was an acquaintance of the local “governor” of the area and he would get us in. The governor would also treat us to lunch. I started wondering why a lowly volunteer teacher should receive such special treatment but they made it clear that they wanted to do something to show their appreciation for my efforts.
As we approached Beichuan, we rode on a smooth new highway and viewed hundreds of workers along the roadside, planting trees and performing other manual tasks. Some earthquake damage was apparent in some small buildings whose roofs had collapsed. As we got closer, we passed an area of massive construction of low (~5-stories) residential apartment buildings. This area is destined to become the “new Beichuan” – no one lives in these buildings yet but they are nearing completion. My understanding was that most of the surviving residents of “old Beichuan” are living in temporary housing in nearby cities. As we left new Beichuan, the road became rougher and our vehicle became one of the few regular cars, among hundreds of large earth-carrying trucks, buses, and emergency vehicles. It was slow going because the road narrowed to a single lane at spots and traffic from both directions alternated at going through. Ruts formed by the big trucks were large enough to worry me about our car getting stuck – but we made it through. I started regretting my request to see Beichuan – it was clear that access was difficult and that cleanup efforts, almost two years later, were still underway. I told Mr. Bian I knew he was a very busy man and that, if it was so difficult to get into Beichuan, we shouldn’t do it. But he insisted he had nothing better to do than to spend the day showing me Beichuan (we were gone from 10am until about 5pm.)
Nearing old Beichuan, we entered a deep valley surrounded by steep, forested mountains. The air was quite dusty from all the large construction vehicles and the sunlight was limited by the mountains and the overcast sky. Our car sped up a steep hillside road toward the restaurant where the governor awaited us. This area is the homeland of an ethnic group named the Qiang and this restaurant was run by a Qiang family. As you’ll see in the photos, these people dress very colorfully. There were aspects of their dress and architecture that reminded me of Native American cultures. We were greeted in the courtyard of the restaurant with a cup of tea, a Qiang custom. After some photos with the brightly attired young ladies, we met the governor and were escorted to a dining area just off the courtyard. The governor, as you’ll notice in the photos, was not what I expected. He was plainly dressed and didn’t seem to project a sense of authority. Actually, this is also true of Mr. Bian, my school’s headmaster – both men are very easy to talk to (through a translator), but both command the respect of their subordinates and locals.
We were treated to another Chinese-style banquet, with way too many dishes for the four of us to eat. One of the dishes was a “small, wild animal” that cannot be bought in the supermarket. They all laughed when I asked (through mimicry) if they had shot the game with a gun. Oh no, guns are illegal in China – these animals were captured in traps. I learned they were not rabbits but Kerry wasn’t certain what they were called in English (perhaps she didn’t know what they were in Chinese); but I ate it and it was tasty. As with every banquet, the toasts were started and everyone received a generous cup of what appeared to be rice wine. I had to again refuse the wine and, again, they seemed to not understand that I couldn’t just taste a little. At this point, the Qiang entertainers came to our table to sing us three welcome songs (see video) - each song wishing us well in some way – and each song was followed by a drink. When the governor seemed hurt that I wouldn’t even taste the wine, I made a decision to make him happy. The situation of being welcomed into a local culture that has suffered so much in recent years made me decide to have a drink – the first drink I’ve had in almost 27 years. I made sure it was a very small drink but was still amazed at the strength of the liquor and how it generated a feeling that had been so familiar to me when I drank regularly so many years ago. I didn’t worry too much about “falling off the wagon” because of this. I have no intention of drinking any more, even at the inevitable future banquets.
After lunch, our driver followed the governor’s car to the gated entrance to old Beichuan, signaling to the Army guards to allow us to follow him in. Once inside the gate, he waved and turned his vehicle around to exit. As we drove down the dusty, narrow street, the scope of the disaster hit me with full force. I had thought Beichuan was a mountain village – that word conjures up a rural setting with few buildings. But Beichuan was a fairly large city, with five or six square blocks of large (5 to 10 stories) buildings lining the streets. What you see there now is both awe-inspiring and heartbreaking. Many buildings were reduced to rubble and many more are partially collapsed or leaning precariously. Everywhere, there is evidence that this was a city much like Mianyang where I live now, with thousands of people going about their normal lives when the earthquake struck. The signs for government buildings (police) and businesses (grocery stores) still adorn the buildings, making it impossible to think of the scene impersonally – you are forced to consider what a hellish event it must have been for so many. Of course, the most heartbreaking part of it all is the ruins of the schools – we placed a bouquet of flowers in remembrance of all the dead buried at a site adjacent to a primary school where almost every child died when the mountain behind the school buried it. It brought me to tears to think of all the heartbroken parents who lost their only child in the disaster.
Throughout the city, you see people burning candles or incense in front of the building where a loved one perished. Indeed, every building has a makeshift altar in front and you can see the remnants of so many previous offerings. There is one special site marked by a large stone with “5.12” (date of the disaster) on it, which is apparently the site of a mass grave of many, many people. We stopped the car here and placed flowers the headmaster had brought at the foot of the memorial. Just behind this area, you can see a flagpole rising above the ruins of the primary school – the flagpole that was used in the morning assembly for the students. Sad bugle music is playing on a loudspeaker and there were no dry eyes among us. Kerry actually lost an aunt in this city – one of many people whose body was never recovered. I am attaching some photos and videos from my visit – I didn’t take very many because it seemed intrusive to the sacred memorial.
There are many workers in old Beichuan, still cleaning up the mess and making it safer. My understanding is it will not be resettled – instead, the core of the destruction will be left as is to serve as a stirring memorial to all those who died.

Trip to Beichuan:

Weekend Adventures

2010-03-28T15:54:00.000-04:00

I ended the week successfully on Friday about noon after giving lessons to the remaining 4 (of 16) 7th-grade classes. One of my teacher colleagues has become very helpful to me as an interpreter – her English name is Kerry, she speaks English very well and she is young, just started teaching this year. She took some video of one of my lessons but the file is a bit large and I cannot easily send it as is – I hope to install my video application on a school computer Monday and then I can extract segments and make a better video for the blog.

Friday afternoon, my primary coordinator (advisor?) arranged to have 3 college students, from a local teacher’s college, meet me at my hotel. The Chinese take very good care of their visitors – this is a cultural thing I believe – and these 3 young people were lovely – taking me to several interesting stores (including Wallmart) and helping me to buy some things that are harder to find in China (e.g. floss). They also took me to dinner at a Hot Pot restaurant near my hotel and insisted on paying– I’ve learned that it is a losing battle to try to convince them to let me pay so I acquiesce quickly. We exchanged emails and phone numbers and promised to stay in touch.

Saturday morning at 9am, Kerry met me in the lobby and brought along one of the students, a young man with English name Raulson (NOT the must unusual English name I’ve heard) - we were picked up by the school (Middle School #7) headmaster, Mr. Wang, and driven to a memorial for famed and beloved poet Li Bai, at a location about one hour’s drive north of Mianyang. The drive was very interesting, as it was my first chance to see the countryside – there are very large mountains just to the west and north of town. Mr. Wang drove and told me (through Kerry or Raulson’s interpreting) about what I was seeing and where we were going. He seemed very stiff when I first met him but I know now he is very nice – during the day we visited the Li Bai memorial and a large and interesting cave (Cave of the Buddha?) and I got to know and like him. He wanted to know more about America and I told him my son was a Buddhist which surprised him – we talked a little about religion and how important Christianity is in America – they were all surprised to learn I am not a Christian – I was touched when he told me that, whatever my religious preferences were, I had a kind heart to come and help them with their English. These are the kinds of things I come for – little personal connections that bring together people who formerly knew little about each other.

After a lunch in a town which is known for a certain specialty food (we had it and I think it must be pig intestines prepared in different ways – some good, some not so good – we went to the Buddha Cave which was very interesting – at the bottom of the cave, we boarded a row boat which was propelled by a guide using a shovel as an oar and had a nice 10 minute journey to an exit from the cave into a beautiful river – I will include some photos with this blog. We then climbed a lot of hills and I was quite winded but enjoyed the exercise – weather was warm so it wasn’t too comfortable – but still fun. When we returned to the hotel, Kerry told me the headmaster wanted me to meet her for dinner – like me, she seemed to not really understand why but we met at the appointed spot and met a third teacher, Mr. Wang (Wang pronounced with a different tone), who led us to a local restaurant near the river (this area is surrounded on three sides by the river). There we met two other teachers and had a typical Chinese banquet with about 20 different dishes to choose from. I learned from Kerry that the hosts for the dinner were the parents of one of the 7th graders – they seemed like very nice people but I must admit I didn’t like the idea of parents wining and dining teachers – this seems to be part of the culture of “guanxi” (connections) which is so important in China. The hosts brought what appeared to be expensive rice wine and kept refilling the teacher’s glasses. I politely refused but had my glass filled anyway. They also were offering cigarettes – like the last time I was here, I found that some of the men have a hard time understanding my refusal to smoke or drink – it seems they think it important to share this “bonding” experience – even if I drink only a little – I guess they don’t know about alcoholism – or perhaps they think this cultural custom is more important than sobriety. In any case, these banquets are one of my least favorite parts of being here – although I am treated as an honored guest. I cannot understand the conversation (Kerry translates what she can but the conversation moves too quickly – also they speak primarily in Sichuanese dialect so even my limited Mandarin is not very useful) and, as the male participants get a little drunk, they become more insistent about offering alcohol and cigarettes. Since I had been climbing mountains all afternoon I found it quite odious – but we were out of there by 9pm so it was tolerable. The host-parents finished the evening by giving us all gift baskets of some kind of plastic-wrapped meat. It was a short walk to my hotel and I got a good night’s sleep. This hotel is not perfect but it’s very quiet at night and I’m thankful for that.

Here are some pictures of our outing:

Sunday morning, I got up and looked forward to a day alone, with time to explore the city on my own. The day started with a mini-disaster and a lesson… “never leave your glasses in a shirt pocket when you use the toilet”. This axiom is universally true, but especially true when you have a squat-style toilet. As I prepared to proudly practice my new-found skill (non-trivial – involves balance, flexibility, planning, and luck!), I watched my eyeglasses fall to the floor and quickly disappear down the drain hole in the bottom of the porcelain floor-level toilet. It seemed to happen in slow motion – like a horrific car accident – and my first thought was.. “Oh my God! This is the worst thing that could happen!” Telling myself not to panic, I began looking throughout the room for something I might use to retrieve the glasses from the very deep (about 3 feet down to where you can see standing water) drain. (Yes, I know, after where they had been, perhaps I didn’t want to see them again – but I only have one other pair with me – trifocals that I don’t like so much.) Returning to the task of “fishing” for the glasses, I realized I had nothing in the room that would work. By this time I had calmed myself and realized: 1) it wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened – worse would have been my wallet, passport or cell phone; 2) as long as I didn’t flush I had time to devise a solution; and 3) worst case, I could ask the hotel for help. I really didn’t want to ask the hotel for help – I didn’t want to have to try to explain it in Mandarin, and I wasn’t sure they would do anything about it. So I went out shopping for something that could be used for a “fishing pole”. I walked around several local blocks looking for one of the many little hardware stores I had seen before, but it was Sunday morning and nothing was open. I had just about given up when I found a wooden broom and thought of a way to use it. I also bought a roll of wide cellophane tape and returned to the room. Breaking off the metal hook of one of my wooden coat hangers, I taped it on the broom handle – I was shocked when my second attempt at snagging the glasses brought them up. I felt like I had accomplished the impossible – that my achievement would be worthy of first place on some kind of unusual episode of the TV show “Survival.” I proceeded to wash my filthy prize in a small waste basket using lots of soap and hot water. Unfortunately, one of the little pads that support the glasses on your nose was lost in the disaster and, thus far, the local eyeglass stores have been unable to find a replacement – tomorrow I’ll ask Kerry if she can help – perhaps I can get a new pair of glasses with the same prescription.

While I was writing this, the maids knocked on my door for their daily cleanup of my room. They come in and completely change the sheets every day – also replenish all the complementary toiletries and do a general cleaning. I decided to give them the plastic-wrapped meats that were a gift from the previous evening and, after initially refusing, they accepted. I wasn’t really sure how I was going to eat them and I figured this was a good way to create my own “guanxi” with the hotel staff.

On Saturday I learned that I will give my introductory speech to the entire school during the Monday morning assembly on the playground. I missed it last week by arriving on Monday afternoon. I have revised the speech slightly since I have already met 1/3 of the students. The students are so supportive of my efforts to speak Mandarin that I am not so nervous, even though public speaking is always a challenge for me. I will speak in both English and Mandarin and I hope I will get it on video.

2010-03-25T10:47:00.009-04:00

This morning I got up early after a good night’s sleep (hooray!) and went to the school for breakfast – breakfast there is surprisingly bland (a hard-boiled egg, some vegetables, milk, and porridge), but it’s free and I get to fraternize with the other teachers. After breakfast I walked around the school taking photos and videos, trying not to annoy the PE teachers whose students all stopped paying attention in order to yell “Hi John!” (it sometimes sounds like “ Hi Jo-anne!” but that’s close enough.) After that I came back to the room and rested for a while, then headed back to school for lunch. Before lunch, I was surrounded by kids wanting to talk. The conversation seems to often turn to the NBA and “who is your favorite player?” – they all love Kobe Bryant and also Yao Ming and LeBron James. They talked me into coming onto the basketball court with them where I proceeded to embarrass myself with 4 or 5 consecutive air balls. Now, I’m determined to go back and practice a little – I may be 60 but I should still be able to “shoot” the darn ball!
After lunch, I had about 2 hours before my 4 afternoon lessons so I walked toward the center of town, with the intent of learning my way around and buying a couple of necessities. I was happy when I was able to ask a vendor, in what I think was correct Mandarin, if she had a map of Mianyang – she did so I bought it – now I just have to read all the Chinese signs on the map. The afternoon was four more grade 7 introduction lessons and they were tiring but still wonderful – I have done the same jokes about 10 times now, and I always worry that I may try the same joke twice in the same class because I can’t remember which class I’m in. Between lessons, I am swarmed with autograph and photo seekers so it can be a bit much. OK, I’m going to attach some photos I took today walking around Mianyang and some taken at the school – with one video taken at the playground.

Seventh Graders on the Playground:

2010-03-24T12:05:00.005-04:00

Wednesay, March 24: I made it thru my first day of teaching yesterday - 4 consecutive 40-minute sessions of introducing myself and answering their questions. I have a schedule that tells me where to teach and I'm getting used to it - school has multiple buildings so it's not trivial to find your way around. The students are so lovely and so excited to meet me - standing ovation upon entering classroom, lots of questions for me about myself - my family, my hobbies, my favorite Chinese pop star (only one I know is Han Hong and that seems to satisfy them :-). They wanted to know if I could speak any Chinese and I gave them a little, which seemed to delight them - also asked me to write the character for my Chinese name and they were very impressed that I could write it :-) Last time I taught in China, I remember feeling a little like a pop star but that effect is even greater here - probably because the kids haven't met a foreigner and they are so happy to talk to me.

Many questions from the students were of the nature "What is your phone number" or "what is your MSN/chat name?" which I politely refused to answer. They all use the computer a lot, and I'm sure I'd have too many emails/chat requests to handle. I told them I will give them my email address next week at the end of their last class with me (after that I will teach grade 8) - and I created a special new email account to give them - then, if the amount of email is too much, I can ignore that account without losing any of my regular email. I'm hoping they will be satisfied if I send responses to many students at once.

OK, I'm still not quite adjusted to the time zone and trying hard to guard against getting sick - so I don't have as much time as I would like to create movies, take videos etc. In fact, my video application doesn't run on this netbook and I dont have access to a school computer that I can use -so I'm going to send a couple of video files to Grace which hopefully will give you some idea of what it's like here.

Arrival in Mianyang, Sichuan province

2010-03-23T17:25:00.001-04:00

Monday: March 22: Arrived in Mianyang this morning - very tired from difficulty adjusting my sleep patterns to the 12 hour time difference - have averaged about 4 to 5 hours of sleep a night for last few nights - hope to get more tonight.

Was met at airport by 3 excited teachers with a big "John Millspaugh" sign - taken out to lunch which was excellent (little spicy but not too spicy) and then checked into a hotel room near the school. They gave me a couple of hours to rest this afternoon, then came to escort me to the school just down the street. I learned I will teach all grade 7 students for the next 2 weeks, then all grade 8 students for the final 2 weeks of my stay. They have 16 classrooms of 7th graders - all of which have about 60 to 70 students. So I have about 16 classes of 65 students each (big number!) that I teach per week. Class length is 40 minutes so I think I can manage. I was taken around to each classroom tonight to be introduced - the kids are unbelievably excited to meet a foreigner - their very first! Just entering the room leads to loud applause from them - I said a few words in English and they all seemed to understand and respond so I think I'll be able to get by without a lot of structure to my lessons- I told them we would talk and they should think of any questions they might have for me... about America, about English, or whatever.

Early to tell for sure, but I think I will not be able to produce the same kind of documentation (videos, long descriptions) for the blog as I did last time - seems like I might be busy just resting when I'm not teaching. Anyway, despite the intimidating numbers (and the fact that these are middle-school kids which are always a challenge) I have a very good feeling about being here - they certainly made me feel welcome!

Surprise!

2010-03-16T10:49:00.005-04:00

On March 5th, we had a wonderful SURPRISE party for my lovely wife Grace. Over 60 people attended the affair held at Christ Church in Summit, and we actually succeeded in surprising her! I discovered that being deceitful is quite tiring and was happy when the "cat was out of the bag." The video below shows how effective the surprise was:

Thanks to all of you who made this occasion so special - so many of you went out of your way to make it a special event and I know Grace was very moved by your efforts. We are truly blessed to have such wonderful friends and family members!

The Adventure Continues

2010-01-30T13:42:00.019-05:00

For the last 15 months, I've lived a fairly normal life here at home although I've maintained my interest in China through continuing Mandarin lessons (weekly lessons from my good friend Yi Hao) and by continuing to serve as webmaster for my friend Jessie's volunteer teaching company in Shanghai. Since Feb, 2009, I've also enjoyed teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) at The Connection in Summit. It's been great fun to spend a few hours a week with wonderful people from places like Brazil, Mexico, Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea, Peru, Ecuador and Bosnia - I get the chance to learn more about their countries and cultures and they are so appreciative of the help we give them. My teaching skills have slowly improved as I become more knowledgeable about why English is difficult. Some of the students I have taught appear in the adjacent photo, which was taken during a Spring outing to the Summit Arboretum. I've also been able to use a little Mandarin to help teach a Chinese student from Tianjin who is just starting to learn English - it's really exciting when she's able to understand something I say in Mandarin :-)

I'm happy to say that I will be going back to China to volunteer again in March. This time I will spend the first month teaching at a middle school in Mianyang, Sichuan province. This was actually my first choice destination in 2008, but because of the terrible earthquake that occurred only a few months before my trip, I opted instead for the assignment in Shanghai - which, as you know, turned out to be wonderful! Mianyang suffered little damage in the quake but became the relief center for refugees from nearby villages and schools which were totally destroyed. Many students from those areas go to school in Mianyang now - I understand the typical class size might be as much as 70 students.

During my four weeks teaching in Mianyang I hope to take in the two Panda reserves in the area as well as a scenic mountain known as Emei Shan. Following my teaching assignment, I will travel south to Yunnan province for a couple of weeks to explore some of the beautiful scenery and minority ethnic cultures of the area near the border of Myanmar, Vietnam, and Tibet. I look forward to that for several reasons, one of which is it will be a challenge for my ability to communicate in Mandarin. Actually, it's a popular tourist area so I can probably get by with just English - still I hope to talk to people who don't speak English.

After the Yunnan trip, I'll return to Shanghai and go back to teach again at the primary school on ChangXing Island for 4 weeks. It will be great to see my dear friends and students again, especially Guoming and Karen, who I have stayed in touch with since leaving.

And, I'm also delighted to announce that Grace will join me in Shanghai at the end of my teaching assignment at ChangXing Primary! We will spend a week in Shanghai visiting friends such as Jessie and Lisa Wu's parents. Lisa is a college student who worked for Jessie in Shanghai while I was there in 2008. She is currently on a one-year foreign-exchange to Northern University in South Dakota. Lisa and a friend spent the Christmas holidays with us during their holiday breaks and all we had a great time. Her parents have already bought tickets to EXPO for us - the world's fair that will be held in Shanghai between May and August. Actually, Guoming had bought tickets for us about 6 months ago. We will certainly enjoy the hospitality of these friends!

That's enough for now - I'll add more later.

Webmaster at Xu Bo

2009-06-14T19:44:00.005-04:00

Hi all - I have been busy working on Xu Bo's web site since last December - if you have any interest in volunteering in China or Singapore or if you want to read about many other volunteer's experiences teaching in China, I highly recommend taking a peek at www.xubo.org

Stories: Wrong Room

2009-02-22T13:57:00.003-05:00

My assignment at ChangXing Primary School was to teach English to the second and fourth graders while my co-volunteer taught first and third grade. Why they decided to divide the classes in this way was just one of many things I never really understood. It seemed like giving one of us first and second grade and the other third and fourth grade would have been more logical. Two years difference in age translates to a tremendous difference in maturity and learning ability, and developing lessons for such disparate target groups is a challenge. On the other hand, it was kind of fun to experience the differences between the second and fourth graders. The excitement with which the second graders greeted me and their enthusiasm for singing were offset by their limited English ability. The fourth graders were more capable of engaging in interesting conversation but they could be more difficult, especially if their regular teacher was not in the back of the room.

The school's curriculum is quite rigorous and includes many subjects. Chinese, mathematics, English, art, music, and Physical Education (PE) are all offered starting in the first grade. English has become a significant part of the curriculum in recent years, as the booming Chinese economy has led to embracing the language of international commerce. Many teachers at the school work exclusively as English teachers. First graders get only a small amount of English instruction but, starting in grade two, the children receive several English lessons every week. Some lessons focus on grammar while others center on reading and writing. One weekly lesson, the oral English lesson, is aimed at developing speaking and listening skills and this is the class that foreign teachers are asked to teach. The school's administrators recognize the value of letting the kids hear, and speak to, a native English speaker. They also know that our presence can be beneficial to their English teachers, who typically have had little exposure to native English speakers. At ChangXing Primary, foreign teachers develop and deliver their own oral English lessons, working with the regular class teacher to do so. The regular teacher sits in the back of the room during our lessons, helping to assure discipline and translating for us when necessary.

At the beginning of the school year, students are assigned to specific classrooms and, except for music, art, and PE, all of their lessons are given in that room. English and math teachers move between classrooms to give their lessons. Since the school had four second grade classes and three fourth-grade classes, I visited seven different classrooms per week. Average class size was about 40 so I got to teach almost three hundred different students in all. I was given a printed schedule that told me where and when I needed to teach throughout the week. The school used a scheme that located grade levels on the corresponding floor of the building: all second grade classrooms were on the second floor, all fourth grade classrooms on the fourth floor. This made it easier to figure out where you needed to be: if you were teaching a second grade class, you knew you had to go to the second floor.

I think showing up only once a week made my appearance more special than it might have been otherwise. This was especially true for the second graders, where I was always warmly welcomed as I entered the room, usually about five minutes before the class start time, so I could insert the flash memory device containing my PowerPoint lesson into the classroom computer and make sure the audio-visual equipment was ready and working. There were always five or ten kids that quickly surrounded me, all wanting to ask me the only English questions they knew... "How are you?!" Their excitement was heartwarming but also a little intimidating. One little girl was so happy to see me she would wrap her arms tightly around my leg and I had to pry her off a couple of times. I considered avoiding these little scenes by waiting to enter the room right as the starting bell sounded. I laughed to myself and decided against this when I realized it would be a little like Elvis Presley handled his adoring fans, entering the concert hall minutes before showtime. To complete the fantasy, I imagined they would play an announcement after I left - "Teacher John has left the building!"

After my disastrous first week, when I discovered that the lesson I had prepared was way too difficult for the second graders, I scaled back my expectations significantly. In subsequent sessions, I started each lesson by going around the room, randomly calling on kids to stand and answer a simple question. The question was either "How are you?" or "How old are you?" and I was surprised to see how difficult it was for them to hear the difference. Many answered the question "How are you?" with "I am nine" and the question "How old are you" with "I am fine, thank you." To help them learn the difference, at the start of each class, I would write the two questions on the board and we would review them before I started my rounds questioning the kids. I'm happy to say that, at the end of my three month stay, I rarely got a wrong answer to these questions.

Another routine segment for my second-grade lessons was the singing of "Wheels on the Bus," a perennial favorite of western kids. Using Raffi's rendition of the song, I created a simple music video and introduced it during my second week. Before we started singing, I used a PowerPoint presentation to teach the vocabulary needed: words like bus, wipers, baby, up, down, around, town, etc. And when we started singing along with the video, I taught them how to make movements to match what was being said. We made circles in the air with our hands as we sang "around and around..." and we all stood up and sat down in time to the lyrics "people... go up and down....." Since they enjoyed the song so much and since it introduced so many new English words, I made singing it a regular part of every lesson, immediately following our "How are you?/How old are you?" practice.

One morning, I went to my scheduled second grade classroom and was greeted, as usual, with cries of "It's Teacher John!" The lesson commenced normally and, after writing the two questions on the board and testing the kids on proper usage, we began singing "Wheels on the Bus." I noticed that the regular teacher was late: she wasn't in the back of the room where she normally was, but I wasn't worried about it because, by that time, I felt confident enough to handle the class alone. As we were loudly singing and I directed the hand and body movements to accompany the music, I suddenly noticed there were two teachers in the hallway trying to get my attention. One was the regular class teacher who was late arriving and the other was someone I hadn't met. When they caught my attention, the regular teacher cupped her hands around her mouth to make her voice audible over the music and said, with just a hint of a smile... "You're in the wrong room!"

It only took an instant for me to understand what she was saying and I didn't doubt her for a moment. I hadn't looked carefully at my class schedule and I was teaching two classrooms down the hall from where I was supposed to be. While I was busy teaching the wrong class, the regular teacher had been in the correct classroom, waiting for me. The second teacher at the doorway turned out to be a math teacher who was scheduled to teach math to the kids I now had singing Wheels on the Bus. She spoke no English and had found me actively engaged with her students when she arrived earlier. She didn't want to interrupt me and she had gone off to seek help determining why a foreign teacher was singing to her math students.

I can't remember exactly how I felt at the moment I learned of my error but I know embarrassment was the primary feeling. But when you're busy conducting an enthusiastic group of young singers, you really don't have time to worry about what you might be feeling. Instead, you just have to figure out what to do next. I nodded to the hallway teachers to let them know I understood and, while I continued to lead the song, I started preparing to leave the room. I erased the blackboard with one arm while the other mimicked a windshield wiper to the beat of "... wipers on the bus go swish, swish, swish." I gathered my notebook and papers while cradling an imaginary baby in my arms, singing "... the baby on the bus goes waaah, waaah, waaah." And I held an index finger to my lips as we sang "..the parents go shhhh, shhhh, shhhh," while the other hand removed my portable flash drive from the classroom computer.

When the song ended, I was ready to leave. I gave the kids a loud "Thank you! Bye Bye" and they reciprocated with a chorus of "Bye Bye!" and goodbye waves. If they were confused about the short duration of my lesson, they didn't show it. As the math teacher came in and took over, the regular English teacher and I walked down the hall to the classroom where I should have been. There, another 40 little enthusiastic faces greeted me warmly and I started over.

Stories: Fruit Salad

2009-01-26T15:47:00.048-05:00

Not many years ago, before the arrival of the ZPMC company, which manufactures a large percentage of the world's port loading equipment, and the Jiangnan Ship Yard, considered to be one of the largest in the world, ChangXing Island was known for its oranges. Many of my teacher friends grew up on the island and fondly remember childhoods in a more rural setting, one with fewer people and more orange groves. Many homes, and some orange groves were recently razed by the authorities to make room for these sprawling, new high-tech industries. My friend Guoming and his parents are among many who had to leave their homes and have been awaiting completion of new high-rise apartments the government has promised them.

But there are still many acres of orange groves on the island and many people still make a living from them. In addition to the people who pick and package the oranges, many sell them on the streets. Some do business in small, permanent stalls while others haul them around in hand-pulled or bicycle-pulled carts, setting up for business wherever they think is best for the day. In this YouTube video, you can see vendors doing a brisk business right outside the island's ferry terminal. Sugar cane stalks and assorted live seafood are also sold at that location to the many people commuting between the island and Shanghai. It was often difficult to move around in the ferry boat as large bags of oranges and small bags of live crabs were left in the aisles, near where their owners were seated.

ChangXing Island oranges are very sweet, peel easily like a tangerine and have no seeds, making them a nice treat. During the fall, they are in great abundance and many teachers bring bagfuls to the office for all to share. They were also frequently offered to me by the owner of a small convenience store near the school. This lady became my friend despite our inability to talk much and I think a lot of her customers gave oranges to her. One time, at the ferry terminal, I tried to buy just five oranges for myself. I'm pretty sure the elderly lady who was selling them understood my request ("wu ge jui zi") but I had shown her a 10 yuan note and it was clear she was pretending she thought I wanted to buy 10 yuan's worth. She continued to fill a plastic bag long after five oranges were added and ignored my repeated attempts to make it clear I only wanted 5 oranges. She configured her ancient, hand-held scale to level out when the bag reached the weight appropriate for a 10 yuan purchase and there must have been 30 or 40 oranges in the bag at that point. Her obvious delight at having a paying customer in the rain and my knowledge that 10 yuan meant a lot more to her than to me, led me to accept the transaction on her terms. As I walked away, I started peeling and eating the oranges but the bag was pretty heavy for the quarter-mile walk back to the school. So I began looking for others to share them with. I offered oranges to everyone I passed - "Ni yao jui zi ma?" - and, without exception, all vigorously declined my offer with shaking heads and waving hands. Perhaps they thought I was trying to sell them but, more likely, they just didn't want any more oranges. I imagined them thinking... "Jeeese! Now, even the foreigners are pushing the oranges!"

In October, my grade 4 advisor Karen asked me to develop a lesson to augment the textbook lesson describing the making of a fruit salad. She suggested my lesson could include making a real fruit salad, thinking the kids might enjoy seeing the preparation of a western-style recipe. So I developed a few PowerPoint slides to introduce the lesson and then set off to get the things I would need for a fruit salad. I purchased apples, oranges, bananas, and grapes at a local fruit stand - after asking friends how much I should pay for them. In China, none of these familiar sounding fruits is exactly the same variety we have at home. The Chinese have an amazingly large and diverse array of fruits and vegetables, some of which I couldn't even categorize in familiar terms ("...is this a pear?") But I found fruits that resembled those I had in mind and bought enough for preparing the salad three times: one for each of my three 4th grade classes. Karen borrowed a large stainless steel mixing bowl and spoon from the school cafeteria and I bought an inexpensive paring knife and peeler. On the day of the class, I washed all the fruit in my room and took a couple of wet towels with me to the classroom, thinking I might let the kids help prepare some of the fruit and they could wash their hands on the towels first.

After a few PowerPoint slides practicing the English words associated with making a fruit salad, I pulled out the fruit and the other things I needed. There was great excitement in the room at the prospect of making, and eating, a fruit salad and it felt great to see we were off to a good start. Peeling was one of the words that was new them so I made a point to clearly demonstrate the peeling of an apple. I held up the apple in one hand and had them repeat after me - "Apple!" Next, I held up the peeler in the other hand and had them repeat..."Peeler!" Then, holding both high in the air so all could see, I dragged the peeler gently along the apple's skin, producing a long, thin shaving and leaving the whitish core exposed. "Ooooooooooohhhhhhhhhh" they all cried together. I don't think they would have been more impressed if I had pulled a rabbit out of a hat. But just as I was savoring the audience's delight, I felt a wincing pain in my left index finger. I had carelessly nicked it at the end of my stroke. Now I will readily admit that I'm an amateur in the kitchen - but I didn't want them to know that! Thinking that it was probably going to bleed a little, I quickly grabbed one of the wet towels on my desk, wrapped it around my left hand and held it in front of me, slightly higher than my heart. I could see some red stain in the towel so I knew there was some bleeding but I continued teaching not wanting to alarm the kids. I motioned to the Chinese teacher in the back of the room (Mr. Zhu) to please join me up front, where I quietly asked him if he could take over the peeling and cutting process as I had cut my finger. We accomplished this handoff pretty smoothly and I was feeling pretty clever about concealing the finger that continued to bleed. Only when I saw a little girl in the front row staring at my arm with a look of horror on her face did I realize there was blood streaming down my forearm. So now it was obvious to all what I had done and we finished the class with the one-armed foreign teacher describing what the Chinese teacher was doing. Afterward, I determined the cut was fairly minor - but its location on the fingertip led to the heavy bleeding. I went straight back to my room and applied a band-aid and it was fine.

This incident provided one of my first opportunities to see the power of Chinese word-of-mouth communication (aka gossip.) When I got back from my room, I stopped by the third-floor teachers' office (my office was on the fourth floor.) As soon as I entered, one of the teachers asked me about my accident. When I asked how she had heard so quickly, she told me that someone at the middle school (a different school) had told her on the phone! Within minutes, the news of the "...American who had cut his finger..." seemed to be all over the island. I found the whole thing pretty embarrassing but no one seemed to want to tease me too much about it so it was fine.

When I returned to that class the following week, I enjoyed the solicitous attention of two or three little girls who wanted to see my finger to be sure it was healing OK. One held my hand in hers, caressed the now-healing wound and held it to her cheek gently. It's nice being the object of a little girl's crush :-)

Stories: Boys and Girls

2009-01-25T19:06:00.008-05:00

Most of us have heard stories about the gender imbalance in China, and there does seem to be some truth to the notion that China is producing more boys than girls. Someone told me before I left that this disparity was as much as three boys for every girl, but that is definitely a gross exaggeration. In my classes, I did see that there were a few more boys than girls. In a class of 45 there might be 24 boys and 21 girls. School desks were arranged in pairs and most pairs consisted of a boy and girl. But there were always one or two all-boy pairs which made it obvious they had "run out" of girls.

China's one-child policy is still in effect and that means there are a lot of only-children in every class. However, many of my students did have siblings. I learned this while teaching lessons about family: I shared photos of my own family and asked about theirs. Indeed there were some kids with siblings in our school. About half-way through my stay, I noticed that one little girl who I liked seemed a bit taller than I remembered. Not until I saw her leaving school one day did I realize "she" was really two girls; a second-grader and a fourth-grade sister who looked like a slightly-larger clone. I think the reason there were so many kids with siblings was because many of their families came from other parts of China, seeking jobs in the ship-building and manufacturing industries of ChangXing Island. In many of the rural areas of China, the one-child policy has not been enforced. I also learned that, even on the east coast where the policy has been enforced, it is currently permissible to have two children if both parents are only-children themselves.

Recently, someone asked me if I had observed any cultural differences related to the differences between boys and girls. I thought about this and couldn't think of any cultural-based differences. Much more obvious was how the Chinese kids exhibited the same gender-based differences that seem to be universal: the girls are a little more mature and the boys are more likely to get in trouble for being naughty. In so many ways, the girls and boys were not very different; the girls were generally just as outgoing, fun-loving and boisterous as the boys - and just as likely to be class leaders. But I do have a couple of little gender-based stories I can share.

The first incident occurred while Monica and I were observing a Chinese teacher teach English to a first grade class. It was the first week of September and the very first week of school for these kids. They were still growing accustomed to primary school routines and they didn't even have their school uniforms yet. The teacher was teaching them the English words for objects they all possessed. She asked them to demonstrate they understood by asking them to "... show me your pencil box." Once they all had held up their pencil boxes, she would move on to another object - "... OK, now show me your back-pack." With great commotion the kids raised their large back-packs into the air. When she asked them to put away the back-packs, we watched as the kids stowed them in the open bin just under their desks' writing surface. One little girl in the back row was having trouble getting her heavily-stuffed back-pack into the opening. The little boy who was her seatmate noticed this and began trying to help her. As they both struggled to force it in by squeezing it to a smaller volume, bending corners, etc., it became apparent that the little boy was losing his patience and he said something in exasperation to the little girl. Monica, who understood a little Mandarin, was able to translate for me - what he said was - "You brought too much!" I laughed and thought how universal this phenomenon must be! How many times have men complained about women carrying too many things in their purse?! Of course, we are always ready to ask our wives or girlfriends "Do you have a ....."

Another incident occurred during a fourth-grade English Corner lunchtime session. I had begun to believe that the school curriculum was falling short in the area of encouraging individual creativity. It seemed to me that the kids were very busy learning/memorizing things they were told were important, but seldom asked to write anything creative. A Chinese English teacher told me they do, in fact, write creative stories, but not in their English classes. Nevertheless, I decided to see if my most advanced students - those selected for English Corner in Grade 4 - might enjoy an exercise in English creative writing. The exercise I conducted started with me writing a sentence on the board. Then, I went around the room asking each child to add a new sentence to advance the story. Explaining the rules of an unusual exercise was always a challenge. Sometimes my instructions were met with uncomprehending looks but, usually, there were a couple of students who understood me, and I would ask them to explain it to everyone else in Mandarin.

The sentence I wrote to start the story was "There was a boy with three eyes." I hoped the unusual/funny nature of the sentence would inspire them to add more unusual ideas to the story as it evolved. I called on the student nearest me to add the next sentence. He looked at me and made it clear he didn't know what to add and wanted to pass. After a couple of kids had "passed" I started asking if anyone could add another sentence. When no one volunteered, I began thinking my exercise might have been ill-conceived. As a last ditch effort to salvage it, I added another partial sentence to the story - "His sister had ...... " This was enough to elicit a volunteer: a boy raised his hand and said - "His sister had five ears!" This clearly broke the ice for the entire class and we warmed to the task. I asked him to draw the sister with five ears on the board and his rendition brought great joy from the class. It was easy to get someone else to go next. A girl offered "His father had ten mouths!" More laughter ensued as she sketched the 10-mouthed father on the board. Now I had too many volunteers, and they surrounded me and attempted to grab the chalk so they could be next. When the next boy added the sentence - "His mother had fifteen arms!" I finally realized what was happening - there was a gender war going on. All the girls' sentences were aimed at male family members and all the boys' sentences were aimed at female family members. The next girl offered an uncle with fifty legs and the girls gleefully counted aloud as she drew the 50 legs on the board. It went on from there: each new sentence described another opposite-sex family member having an ever-larger number of some body part. Things got a little tense when a girl tried to erase one of the boy's drawings but we worked through that problem. The exercise didn't go in the direction I had hoped - I was looking for more unusual twists in the story line than their additions provided. But we had a lot of fun and they made me aware of the underlying competition between girls and boys that could appear at any time.

Finally, there was the incident that happened during my last English Corner session - the one I wrote about in the earlier post "Readjusting." I had given all the kids American quarters as gifts and many of them had more than one. As I described in the earlier post, when the girl fell and hurt her knee she didn't seem to want to stop crying. As I tried, unsuccessfully, to console her, one of the boys came up and tried to get me to put one of his quarters in her hand. She didn't seem to want it and he had to pry her fingers open to place it in her palm. I had a couple of different reactions to this. First, it seemed obvious that he had a good heart and was willing to give up something to try to make her happy. Second, he was probably the youngest man I had ever seen thinking that he could "buy" a woman's happiness - sort of like "... here's a quarter, now PLEASE stop crying!!!"

Stories: Haircut

2009-01-24T15:00:00.004-05:00

When my family toured China for two weeks in 2005, I remember seeing a barber working on the sidewalk near Tiananmen Square in Beijing. He was wearing a white smock and was cutting the hair of a client seated on a stool right along the busy street. That memory stuck with me and I decided that if I ever had the chance I'd get a haircut at such an interesting venue. Unfortunately, I never saw that kind of barbershop in Shanghai or on ChangXing Island. Instead, modern unisex salons are commonplace and about the only difference between them and the ones at home are their lower prices.

After about six weeks in China, my hair was starting to look pretty ragged so I decided to get a haircut in one of the salons near the school. My friend Guoming was insistent that I not over-pay for the haircut. Almost everything for sale in China is negotiable and haircuts are no exception. Another fact-of-life for westerners in China is that you will be quoted a price that is much higher than the one offered to a local. Merchants know that westerners pay much more for the same things at home so they are hoping that what would be an exorbitantly high price to a local might still seem reasonable to a westerner. I really dislike haggling but I had to learn to do it. On principle, I didn't want to be paying a higher price simply because I was a foreigner. Anyway, Guoming made it clear that I should go no higher than 10 yuan (about $1.50) for a haircut.

As I entered the door of a salon near the school, a young woman regarded me with a bemused smile as she waved me toward a barber's chair. The other people in the shop also showed great interest in my arrival but I was used to this kind of reception, especially on the island. Before I sat down I asked "Duo shao qian? (How much money?) but this got no response. I wasn't sure if my pronunciation was so poor she couldn't understand me so I tried asking a couple of more times as I let her seat me and place the cape around my neck. Finally, a lady who was apparently the owner quoted me a price - "san shi kaui" (30 yuan). I quickly decided this was too high and, since I didn't like the way they had hesitated to answer my question when they clearly had understood, I stood up, removed the cape, said "Tai duo!" (Too much!) and left the shop.

The second shop I entered was farther from school and, initially, it seemed I was getting a similar reception. A young barber seemed hesitant to tell me how much it would cost. Just as I was thinking of leaving, a young man came out of the back room, took one look at me and cried out "Teacher John!" This young man was Ni Renjie, the fourth-grade student I have mentioned in earlier posts and it turned out his mother owned the salon. After Renjie appeared, his mother, who stood nearby, quoted me a price of "shi kuai" (10 yuan) so I was happy to sit down and let them cut my hair. The cut was preceded by a shampoo with a nice head massage. As the young man worked on cutting my hair, I chatted with Renjie who was quite excited at my presence. My limited Mandarin made communication with anyone but him difficult but I was able to tell his mother that I thought Renjie was a good boy (hen hao nan hai) and, though I couldn't understand her answer, I got the impression she had a different view. An excited Renjie lingered at the side of my chair to chat with me while his mother kept yelling at him. It was pretty clear she wanted him to get back to his homework: he would reluctantly go back to a table on the far side of the room where his homework was laid out - but it wouldn't be long before he reappeared at my side.

The young barber who cut my hair did a wonderful job - I thought it looked better than it had in a long time - but since I've been cutting it myself for a couple of years, this is probably not saying a lot. When he was done cutting and styling, I stood up and pulled out 10 yuan to pay. They wouldn't take it. I looked to Renjie's mother and tried to insist that she take the money - I was happy just to be paying the "normal" price. But it was very clear I wasn't going to win this argument. Renjie's mother seemed to enjoy the opportunity to show such goodwill to me. Whether it was because I was Renjie's teacher or because I was a visiting foreign teacher I couldn't tell. I thought about offering the 10 yuan as a tip to the young barber but realized this would probably be awkward as no one tips for anything in China. I thanked them very much ("fei chang gan xie") and left the shop.

When Guoming and the other teachers heard about my "free haircut" the story spread quickly and it seemed everyone was talking about it. It became pretty clear that getting a free haircut wasn't something that happened to them very often so I decided that my being a foreigner was a part of the motivation for their generosity. The next day, I went back to the salon and took them a large box of chocolates which was greatly appreciated by all in the shop. The chocolates cost about three times as much as the haircut - still a much cheaper haircut than I can get here :-)

Stories: Repeat after Me

2009-01-20T19:34:00.010-05:00

One of the first things I noticed about the school environment were the sounds of group recitations emanating from the classrooms and echoing down the hallways. The sounds were a bit unnerving to me at first. Their loud volume, rhythmic nature, and incomprehensible (to me) content made them sound a little like religious chanting and added to my initial uncertainty about what I had gotten myself into. Of course, there wasn't anything religious or mysterious involved - it was just my first glimpse of Chinese primary school education, where much of the learning seems to involve memorization and oral repetition. The kids work very hard and are given a lot to learn: three hours of homework on weeknights and four to six hours on weekends seems to be the norm even for second grade kids. Their school day starts officially at 8AM but most all of them are in their seats at 7AM, reciting or reading materials under the leadership of one of their fellow students.

When I started teaching, I quickly learned the kids were extremely enthusiastic and willing to do whatever you asked of them. If I posed a question and asked for a volunteer to answer it, I usually got 40 hands raised immediately. When called upon, the responder would stand, answer the question, and then sit back down. Often it was hard to hear their answer because many of the other kids would be trying to get me to call on them next by calling out "Me! Me! Teacher John!, Me!" And as soon as a responder sat back down, their hand would often go right back up so they might get another chance. I tried not to call on anyone more than once for a given question but, with so many kids (and without knowing names) it wasn't always possible.

The combination of enthusiasm and a readiness to repeat things made it pretty easy for a new teacher. The bulk of my lessons consisted of presenting English words or phrases (and/or pictures representing those words) on the large screen at the front of the room and teaching the kids their meaning and how to pronounce them correctly. The images shown came from PowerPoint presentations running on the classroom computer and a large part of my time was spent preparing these presentations. After some initial bumps in communicating what I wanted from the kids, they became adept at participating in my lessons. Sometimes I'd ask the entire class to respond. At other times I'd call on individuals or subsections of the class (e.g. rows 1 and 2 only). Full-class responses were usually very loud but the loudest responses came from class subsections. The kids' competitive spirit resulted in a deafening response as each sub-section tried to out-yell the others. The kids always loved it when I winced and pulled back in mock fear of being knocked over by their voices.

As I mentioned, there were some initial bumps in communicating with the kids. The first time I asked the second graders ... "Can you say cat ?" there was no response at all. This worried me and I quickly repeated loudly "CAT" while using my hands and arms to signal that I wanted them to repeat it after me. This worked great - a loud response of "CAT!" resulted and it felt great to know I had been able to work around the language barrier to establish a teaching method. However, during one of my early classes, I looked up at one point to see a blank screen with the message "Windows is restarting....." As my entire lesson was based on the computer presentation, a pang of fear hit me as I considered what I was going to do for the next 30 minutes without it. Hoping for help, I looked to the Chinese teacher at the back of the room, raised my eyebrows and said "Ooohhh Boy!" To this, I got a rousing chorus of "Ooooohhh Boy"s from the students. Despite my anxiety at that moment, I just had to laugh.

This kind of problem occurred a few times in the early weeks. I remember sitting in on one of Monica's lessons. She taught grades 1 and 3 and after she had explained to the class what she wanted them to say, she tried to get them to say it once by stating... "OK, one time!" Of course, what she got was a loud chorus of "OK, One Time!". On another occasion, when my students repeated something I didn't want them to, I said "No! No!" while shaking my head and waving both hands in a motion which hopefully conveyed "Stop". In response, 40 little pairs of hands waved back at me as they shook their heads and repeated loudly "No! No!" At times like these, it became necessary to enlist the help of the Chinese teacher who explained to the kids in Chinese what I was trying to ask of them.

Let me share here one other little story that's marginally-related to this topic. One of the second grade teachers had asked me to prepare a lesson around the phrase 'I can't." After I had developed my PowerPoint lesson which included slides such as "I can't touch the sun," I went to show her what I had. During our discussion she pointed out that my American pronunciation of the word can't is not the one they teach the kids. Rather, they use the British English pronunciation for the word - which I'll represent phonetically here as con't. I was a little surprised to hear this but told her I would try to use the British pronunciation throughout my lesson. Though it felt very odd (and I felt certain that my friends would get a big laugh out of my lousy British accent) I was able to use the British pronunciation throughout the lesson. The only time I made a mistake was when I presented a slide showing a baby biting a cat's tail. I was supposed to say "I con't eat a cat!" - what I said was "I con't eat a cot!" Later, I learned that the teacher was wrong about the notion that only the British pronunciation was taught - other teachers were using the American pronunciation. Still it was kind of fun to pretend I was from a different English-speaking country for a while :-)

Stories: Jerry in McDonalds

2009-01-20T17:16:00.000-05:00

On one of my first weekend returns from the island to the volunteers' flat in Shanghai, my co-volunteer Monica and I decided we wanted some kind of western food. Though neither of us is a fan of McDonalds at home, we decided it sounded pretty good for a change so we went to one in a shopping mall not far from the flat. Let me make clear that almost all the Chinese food I had while in China, including that from the school cafeteria, was excellent and I really enjoyed it. I'm not sure why but the food seemed to be more flavorful than much of ours - perhaps they use more locally grown vegetables. In any case, our trip to McDonalds was really about wanting a "taste of home" - not about being tired of the local cuisine.

We enjoyed our burgers (especially the cheese!) and fries at a small table in the restaurant's large and crowded dining area. Half way through the meal, a young man who was about 10 years old appeared beside our table and asked me in a very loud voice... "What is your name?" I replied that I was John and asked about his name - as I did I noticed his mother was coming up behind him, obviously concerned that he might be bothering strangers. He told me his name was Jerry and we had a brief conversation while his mother nervously watched. He wanted to know where I was from, what I liked to do and it was pretty clear he was taking this opportunity to practice his English. When he asked me "How old are you?" his mother decided that he had crossed a line and started trying to gently coax him into saying goodbye. While I assured her I was OK with that question, Jerry dug in his heels about continuing the conversation and became more passionate. Perhaps he knew his mother wasn't going to allow it to go on much longer and that's what prompted him to ask for my phone number. At this, Jerry's mother stepped up her efforts to end this little episode while a bemused Monica watched from across the table, and I pondered the ramifications of giving him the number. I could tell from his passion that he might easily become a "phone stalker." Jerry was insistent about wanting my number and as his mother neared the point of physically dragging him away, a fast-thinking Monica suggested that Jerry give me his number so that I could call him. That seemed to be acceptable and Jerry gave me the number. We said goodbye then and a relieved mother led him out of the restaurant.

I never did call Jerry although I thought about doing it several times. I didn't realize it at the time (I don't think I had started teaching yet) but Jerry's English was excellent for his age and his passion for using it was something I would have liked to reward. What stopped me from calling was the fact that receiving my call would give him my number. I admired his mother for how she handled the situation. I suspect this wasn't the first time Jerry had done something like this and she was probably conflicted about intervening: she had to be proud that he was brave enough to start such a conversation with a stranger and she was probably trying to walk a fine line between encouraging his passion for learning while keeping him from being a nuisance to others. Jerry was my first encounter with kids hungry to use their English. I hope he forgives me for not calling.

Readjusting

2009-01-17T18:16:00.001-05:00

I've been back from China for about six weeks now and while it has been wonderful to see my family and friends again, it has been a somewhat difficult adjustment for me. Grace and I have talked a lot about this and, with her help, I've begun to see a little more clearly just how extraordinary this experience has been. The deep satisfaction I got from doing something so meaningful and rewarding, the love and appreciation I received from the kids and teachers, and the emotional farewell upon leaving the school still linger in my thoughts. I find myself dwelling on these powerful memories and looking for opportunities to keep them fresh, often to the neglect of the other things I should (or would like to) be doing. One activity I have been able to enjoy is developing a web site for my friend Jessie, whose Shanghai company made the volunteer teaching possible. I also talk to my friend Guoming in Shanghai over the internet a lot: partly to continue helping him with English but also to maintain our special friendship that has bridged two very different cultures and languages.

I saw evidence of re-adjustment difficulties in some of the other volunteers who left China before me. Their emails made it clear that they were missing China very, very much and they were having trouble getting back into the groove of their college studies or jobs. Since many of those volunteers were only in China for four weeks, my longer stay (13 weeks) probably contributed to a more difficult re-adjustment. With the extra weeks, I became a better teacher, made deeper friendships and became more attached to my students - as they did to me.

So, with Grace's encouragement, I've decided it will be helpful for me to write about the readjustment process here. Grace has also pointed out that many stories that I've shared with her never made it to this blog, so I will try to share those too, before they fade from memory. Hopefully these additional posts will help me work through some of these issues and be of some value to anyone who has shared my journey over the past several months through this blog.

In this post, I'll focus on my thoughts about readjusting and save the stories for future posts. I don't really know why readjusting has been difficult but the symptoms are pretty clear. They include dwelling on the memories of my adventure, difficulty in moving on to new tasks, and a general malaise (with bouts of moodiness thrown in just to keep it interesting for Grace.) I have several thoughts/ideas about what might be going on and I'll discuss them below.

1. A Most Affirming Experience

I think the main cause for readjustment difficulty is simply how special the experience was, which has made it difficult to "let go." I felt so happy to be doing something that was so helpful to other people. All of the children and many of the teachers made it very clear to me that they greatly appreciated my efforts in coming to China to help them with their English. They knew that I was doing this as a volunteer and that I had left my wife and affluent US life-style behind. They also knew that I really cared about them and I felt their gratitude every day. I have joked about how many times I had to answer calls of "Hello" from the children. They really enjoyed talking to me, and the enthusiasm with which they offered these greetings kept them from becoming tiresome. Much of their enthusiasm probably stemmed from their interest in learning English. It's much more exciting to speak to a foreigner who is an "English expert" (and cannot even speak their language) than it is to their Chinese-speaking English teacher. Also, I think many of them have a genuine fascination with foreigners, particularly on ChangXing Island, where foreigners are somewhat rare.

Like many of us, I've always had the desire to do something that might help make the world a slightly better place. For one of the first times in my life, I felt like I was doing my little part, both as an individual citizen of the world and as a good-will ambassador for my country. I was highly aware that many people, especially in places like China, have a less-than-positive view of the USA, and I felt like this was my chance to show some people that Americans are basically good people who care about others. It felt wonderful to think that I might have left a good impression in several little (and some grown) minds. I really believe that this aspect of volunteer-teaching in China will have more lasting value than the help I offered with their English.

Another thing that made the trip so special were the strong feelings of accomplishment I got. At the outset of my journey, I had some trepidations. I was, after all, traveling half-way around the world to live in a vastly different culture, under a communist government, to do a job that I was never really trained for - teaching primary school. I was also one of the oldest volunteers: my colleagues were much closer to my son's age than mine. As I slowly learned that I was able to make the necessary adjustments to living in Shanghai, make wonderful new friends among the Chinese and other volunteers, and grow to become an effective and respected teacher, the feelings of self-affirmation were strong. While there was never any doubt in my mind that I wanted to try something like this, I really wasn't sure I could pull it off. There was definitely a "Wow! I did it" component to this and that's another reason it felt so special.

2) Post-celebrity Syndrome

I really enjoyed being a pop-star. I'm being somewhat facetious here but it's not a great exaggeration when I think of how the kids regarded me. Particularly among the 2nd graders, my arrival in the classroom once a week was met with excited cries of "It's Teacher John!" and a large (but short) crowd met me at the front of the room to greet me, shake my hand, and ask me questions while I tried to ensure my PowerPoint lesson and the audio-visual equipment were ready to go. I couldn't walk anywhere around the school without drawing a crowd. I never stayed in one place in the hallway too long because I felt ill-at-ease by the attention I was drawing. I was definitely a "different" teacher, partly owing to the luxury I had of not having to be a disciplinarian in the classroom . Most of the time the Chinese English teacher sat in the back of the room, playing "bad cop" to my "good cop" when necessary. Even outside the school compound, I often heard little voices calling to greet me. When my students were with their parents, my response often resulted in a smile of delight (and pride) on their parents' faces, making me feel the parents also appreciated my efforts. This kind of attention is heady stuff and I think anyone would feel a sense of loss when it suddenly stops.

3) Return from Vietnam Phenomenon

Surprisingly, some of the feelings I've had remind me of ones I had 40 years ago when I returned from the Vietnam war. In 1969, as I looked out the window of the bus taking me from the Seattle-Tacoma airport to Fort Lewis for re-entry processing, I remember feeling a little shocked to see the evidence that people here were, and had been, going about their lives as usual. It wasn't that I expected a parade in our honor (though that would have been nice :-) It was more that it was it a bit of a jolt to see that people were so detached from the very personal sagas that were playing out every day ten thousand miles from home.

While many people have welcomed me home from China warmly I have, at times, been disappointed that they haven't shown more interest in hearing about my experience. I have wanted - needed, really - to talk about it more than many people might realize. I understand that no one can really understand how moving the experience has been for me and that some people are just not that interested (probably some even wonder why in the world someone would want to do what I did :-). There is simply no way I can really share the full power of my experience: it's one of those cases of "you had to be there." Yet, I find I want to talk about it and I can feel a little hurt if it appears people are not interested. I realize that comparing my return from China to Vietnam is a bit melodramatic. There are so many more differences between the two experiences than there are similarities. I didn't have such a wonderful time in Vietnam, didn't feel so satisfied with what I had done there, and didn't really miss it too much when I came home. But the feelings of having been profoundly changed in ways that I couldn't easily communicate to the people back home were very similar.

4) Sad to say goodbye

Near the end of my stay I posted an entry here called "Overwhelmed." That was written on my second-to-last day at the school and I tried to relate how moving and special the day had been. On the final day, I had three classes and one of them was the noon-time English Corner session for grade 4 students. One thing that became apparent when I was leaving was how much emotional maturation occurs between age 9 and 11. I had noticed that it was always the second graders who treated me as a pop-star and were more excited about my presence in the classroom. But I was a little surprised to see that they handled separation much more easily than did my fourth-graders - and me.

English Corner sessions were intended to be informal sessions giving selected students a chance to talk informally with the foreign teacher during the lunch hour. While the objective was practicing spoken English, as it was with the formal lessons, I tried to make it more fun by playing games whenever possible. Only kids who had finished their homework were candidates for attending English Corner. We tried to keep the class size down to about 20 so that meant that only about 7 kids from each of the three 40-plus classes could attend. As word spread that these sessions could be great fun (the Halloween Party was held during an English Corner session) teachers had to resort to a round-robin method of selecting who could attend on a given day and I actually saw kids fighting at the door to get in.

On this final day, I didn't have a definite game or exercise in mind. Instead I took some pictures and videos, and I talked about how much I had enjoyed knowing them and how much I would miss them. I had brought some American quarters that I had always intended to use as game prizes but never did, so I went around the room placing them in the outstretched hands of the kids. At one point, one of the girls slipped and hit her knee on the hard floor. She started to cry and I went to attend to her. While I was trying to determine the seriousness of her injury and noticing that her crying showed no signs of stopping, one of the boys nearby called "Teacher John!" and pointed to the other side of the room. There, I saw that many of the kids, mostly girls but some boys, were crying and it became apparent that they were sad about my leaving. I guess I should have anticipated this but I didn't and I was not really prepared to handle it. Instead I found myself going around the room hugging them and telling them it "... was all right.." and that it was "... OK to be sad..." My own teary eyes didn't help them much but somehow we got through it all by supporting and hugging each other. I can still cry when I remember the tear-filled eyes of some of the boys when I hugged them. Just as in western culture, it was clearly not easy for them to cry publicly and I felt great empathy for them. Some were able to express their concern in English - "I am sad that you are leaving." Later, in the teacher's office, one of the teachers gravely told me that "... many of the children had been crying when they returned from English Corner today." I told him that, yes I knew that and that I was afraid that I had been too.

When I left school that afternoon, Karen, Guoming, and the head teacher Carol insisted on accompanying me to the ferry. It was a cold, windy day, and I had a lot of luggage, some of it being last-minute gifts. They helped me down the four flights of stairs, into the school van and into the ferry terminal. They had rearranged their schedules to stay with me until the boat left, and when the high winds caused the boat to be 60 minutes late arriving from the mainland, I couldn't convince them that they should go on back and I would be fine waiting alone. We waited this time in a quiet togetherness, with occasional hugs and hopeful expressions that we would see each other again some day. Guoming, especially, treated me with extra tenderness, carefully arranging the winter scarf he had given me the day before to keep the biting cold at bay. They got permission to accompany me onto the boat to help with my baggage. They also convinced a young man who spoke some English to help me with my bags when we left the boat on the Shanghai side of the river. When we exchanged a final hug and they left the boat, I felt very sad but very loved.

One final moment of sadness came when I reached Chicago on my way home. One of my students, a young man, named Ni Renjie (one of the few names I learned) had given me a special little gift on the final day - a snow-globe with a sign inside that said "Miss You!" Renjie and I had a special friendship - he seemed to often be in trouble with the other teachers and some of his peers, but he was obviously bright and he liked me a lot. Of all the little gifts I received in my final days at the school, the snow globe was the one I felt most attached to. It made the trip from Shanghai to Chicago in my backpack but, when I passed through the security check for the domestic flight to Newark, it was taken because it contained more than 3 ounces of liquid. It was too late to go back and try to have it placed with the checked baggage. Even the security man who took it felt bad for me as he could see what sentimental value it had. I tried to console myself by thinking that the globe itself wasn't really that important - I would always remember Renjie and I knew we certainly didn't need another tchotchke on our crowded shelves at home. But losing it was very upsetting and I knew why.

5) Retirement syndrome (again)

The final thought I've had about why coming home has been difficult is that I was faced with a second retirement transition. In 2005, when I first retired, I had trouble getting used to "not working" and struggled with the same issues many people do at retirement. It's natural that when you work for so many years, it becomes a big part of your identity. When you stop working, you must figure out your new identity - your new "reason for being" - and this takes some time. I think the transition is probably more difficult when you feel your job or position is fulfilling or important. Retiring from my software development job in 2005 was challenging but, since I didn't regard it as particularly fulfilling or important, it wasn't that hard. This time, however, I "retired" from something that was very fulfilling and personally gratifying. So I think that another contributor to this difficult transition has been this abrupt change from doing something so rewarding to being home again where I had no such duties or opportunities for self-fulfillment.

I am feeling better now. I believe the most difficult adjustment period is behind me. Grace's loving understanding and encouragement have been so helpful and I think writing this post has helped too. I am now thinking about my next move which will probably be to return to the workforce for a while to replenish our recession-depleted financial resources. (I have joked that I should probably find a job where I don't have to pay them to work!) I have no immediate plans to teach or to return to China anytime soon, but I know I definitely want to do something like this again. I have never had a more rewarding experience than the time I spent teaching in China. I feel so lucky to have had such a wonderful opportunity and would do it all over again - even knowing in advance that readjustment might be difficult.

If you've read this far, I feel like I should offer you a prize - I know this has been a very long post. Next time, I'll lighten things up and share some stories about little things that happened while I was there.

Pandas

2008-12-04T10:51:00.010-05:00

The following video captures the highlights of our visit to the Panda Breeding Research Base outside of Chengdu. Yalda Gaffari, my Dutch co-volunteer at ChangXing Primary School, and I spent two days in Chengdu hosted by a friend of Jessie's named Kie. Kie is a young (25) building/home designer who heads an organization of young people interested in helping those in need. Many of these young people are university students and several of them helped Kie (whose spoken English is not so great) entertain us while we were there.

We spent most of one day at the Panda Research Base and it was very nice. Kie's girlfriend Wei-Wei (who speaks a little English) and two other young ladies (Jane and Nancy, who speak English well), escorted us to the center which is about a 1.5 hour bus ride from where we were living. We all had a very nice day - I don't think any of them had been to the Panda center before so they enjoyed it as much as we did.

The center is basically a zoo with only two types of animals; Great Pandas and Lesser (red) Pandas. The animals are nicely situated in large natural enclosures with plenty of room to hide from the tourists if they so wish. Pathways between exhibits are nicely landscaped: bamboo trees planted on both sides of the walkways create a shaded, tunnel effect. Distances between exhibits are a bit long, especially since it is very hilly there, so we got a lot of exercise that day :-)

The center has been very successful in the breeding of Great Pandas: this year alone they have had 14 new cubs born (to 9 mothers) and they are expecting more.

The song accompanying the video is by a popular Tibetan-born folk singer named Han Hong. I first heard her music while riding in a teacher's car on the way to an evening get-together and I really liked it. Jessie and my fellow-volunteers gave me a CD of her music for my birthday. My first version of this video used music from the movie Kung Fu Panda. However, YouTube blocked that video when it's filters detected the use of unauthorized content. I really think that music worked better with this video but I'm just as happy to find a way to share the wonderful music of Han Hong.

Home!

2008-12-03T17:23:00.004-05:00

Just a quick post to let you know I arrived home safely last night about 10PM into the arms of Grace and Michael who met me at the airport. After a good night's sleep, I'm still feeling the effects of jet-lag but was able to make it through today without napping. I've started working on a video of my trip to see the pandas in Chengdu but it will probably take me a few days to complete it. I also will probably add one more post to include some of the videos/photos taken during my farewell lessons at the school.

Winding Down

2008-12-01T05:34:00.009-05:00

I'm sitting in an internet cafe in the Chengdu airport where I have about 3 hours left before my flight to Shanghai departs. I've been in Chengdu for two days, visiting some local sights, including the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base and a school that is hosting some of the kids displaced from their home village by the spring earthquake. A nice young man named Kie, who is a friend of Jessie's, has treated us like royalty here, moving out of his bedroom to make room for us (he and his girlfriend slept in a tent in their living room) and marshalling several of his friends to accompany us on our sightseeing trips.

Tomorrow night I leave Shanghai for home and I'm excited about it! The last week has been wonderful, but stressful. I've had a bad cold that I'm almost over, and a stomach virus that nearly forced me to cancel my Chengdu trip. Coming to Sichuan with a temperamental stomach seemed unwise but the thought of seeing the pandas made me forge ahead and I am happy to report that within 24 hours I was feeling well enough to enjoy the spicy local dish known as "hot-pot."

The pandas were wonderful. I got to see six young pandas (born in July and August and now weighing about 20 pounds) but they were sleeping: still - incredibly cute. Older Giant Pandas and the beautiful reddish-colored Lesser Pandas were in abundance and the reserve is a very nice place, with plenty of room for the pandas, the only downside being that distances between the various areas of interest require a lot of (up and downhill) walking. I have many photos but cannot easily post them here in the airport.

Our visit to the school today was brief but we did get to meet some 2nd-grade kids housed there while the earthquake recovery efforts proceed. Apparently, these kids are not orphans - their families are still up in the mountains where the earthquake destroyed everything, living in government-provided temporary housing. Their teachers are here with them and told us that there was still much uncertainty about what would happen to the kids in the future. The kids are members of the Qiang ethnic minority group and lived in the county known as WenChuan which was the epicenter of the earthquake. They appeared to be in good spirits but were living in less-than-optimal conditions: 16 kids to a small room (two in each bed) and they get only one shower a week. Yalda and I met them briefly on the playground and we were of great interest to them as they haven't seen many westerners. They were quite shy at first - if we moved toward them, they smiled and moved away. But within five minutes some of the braver ones were saying hello and shaking our hands. It was quite moving to think what they have been through and we both felt a great desire to help them. But since we are both winding down our volunteer teaching assignments, we knew there was little we could do at this time.

On Thursday, I had a very emotional day saying goodbye to my friends and students on ChangXing Island. I still feel very moved when I think back to the tear-filled eyes of many of the kids and to the love my teacher friends showed as they excused themselves from their normal teaching duties to escort me to the ferry for the last time. I cannot possibly explain how significant this has been to me so I won't try further. I'll just say I came here hoping to make a connection with people and in that I was very successful. I guess the downside to making such a connection is in the dis-connecting.

All for now: if I have any time in the Shanghai flat tomorrow, I'll try to post some photos of the pandas.

Overwhelming

2008-11-26T07:32:00.009-05:00

Tomorrow is my last day on ChangXing Island. I will teach three classes and then leave on the ferry at mid-afternoon. I cannot really describe how I feel but I will try. There is no doubt in my mind that I want very much to go home, to be with Grace and Michael who I have missed so much. But I am also acutely aware of what an incredibly special time this has been in my life and that makes it difficult to let go.

Today was emotionally overwhelming as I received such an outpouring of love from the children that I could barely speak. They brought me gifts and hand-made cards throughout the day, all indicating how much they love me and how much they will miss me. My favorite class, Karen's fourth-graders, gave me applause as I entered the room (I'm sure Karen helped engineer that :-). This being a special session, I opted to just sing songs. We sang Wheels on the Bus which they have sung many times and then I introduced two other songs - Hello and Big Nose. Big Nose has been a hit with the second-graders for many weeks but I had not tried it with the older kids. They liked it a lot; especially when I put on the funny glasses-with-big-nose-attached near the end of the song. I let them each have a turn at trying on the glasses and they laughed every time someone put them on.

Earlier in the week I had written a goodbye letter to the kids and that task helped me realize just how much I have become attached to these children. I found myself misty-eyed while writing it. Since I think it may help you understand why what is happening here is so special for me, here is the letter:

Dear Students of Grade 4,

I will be leaving ChangXing Island on Thursday, November 27th and going back home to the USA. I am excited to see my wife and son again but I am sad to say goodbye to you. Being your teacher has been a great pleasure for me. I have gotten to know you over the last three months and to learn how special you are. I love you all and will miss you very much.

I hope I will get to see at least some of you again some day. Perhaps you can come and visit me in the USA or perhaps I will come back to ChangXing to visit you. I will never forget you and the gift you have given me. The gift I mean is your friendship and your respect. I have so enjoyed teaching you and answering your many questions in the hallway. I have said “Hello” and “Good Morning” many, many times while I’ve been here, but I never got tired of doing it. I want to leave you with ten things to think about:
You are very special. I know this is true, and I hope you remember it always.
China is a great country and you are the future of China. Be proud of your country, be proud of your school, and be proud of yourself.
We all need each other in this world. Remember to love each other as you love yourself. Do something nice for someone every day if you can.
Take care of your environment the way you take care of your school. There are so many people now, it’s important for us to be gentle to the earth.
Remember that learning is the key to a better future. Work hard at your studies, ask questions about things and never stop learning.
Respect and listen to your teachers. They are here to help you become valuable, happy citizens. I know that they love you and want you to succeed.
Be creative in your thinking. We teachers can tell you what we know and that will help you grow. But you will discover your own truths about the world and you should trust your own ideas. Use them to make the world a better place.
Learn about other people and countries. My stay in China has taught me so much about China and helped me to understand its people much better.
Take care of your health. Don’t eat too many sweets and don’t smoke cigarettes.
Have fun. Remember to always find time to just have some fun!
If you want to write to me, you can send email to johnmillspa@gmail.com and I will write back to you. Of course, you will need to use English for this!

Teacher John

My second-graders got a simplified version of this letter and Karen is ensuring that all seven classrooms where I have taught will have it posted on their bulletin boards.

After we sang all the songs and had fun trying on the funny glasses, we took several group photos and I enjoyed the way the kids huddled around me, wanting to be close. With only a few minutes of class left, Karen told me that some of the kids had some things they wanted to say. As hands were raised and I called on them, each came forth and made a little speech to me that was so heartfelt I nearly cried. I can't remember exactly what was said but lots of "I love you" and "Thank you for your words," and "Welcome back to ChangXing Island some day", etc. Hugging the kids has been something I've always wanted to do but have held back from for cultural and professional reasons. But on this occasion, I threw caution to the wind and pulled them in for big hugs. Some kids were a little uncertain about being hugged - others threw themselves into it wholeheartedly - but I had the feeling that even the nervous huggers really enjoyed it. I sure did! It was almost too wonderful to believe it was really happening. That's part of the reason I wanted to write this post tonight, even though I'm really beat and have another emotional day ahead of me tomorrow. I want to make sure I never forget what that classroom was like today.

After the children left, Karen and I were talking about what had happened. She told me that she had read my goodbye letter to them this morning, translating for them where necessary. She said that many kids were actually crying. I know their affection for me is real and that they will truly miss me, but I suspect the cause for tears is more about hearing that someone cares so much about them. I don't think I love them or care about them any more than their Chinese teachers do: I know that Karen loves them very much and they know that too. But I think my special situation of being a teacher, but not really a teacher, gave me license to say some things that a regular teacher might feel uncomfortable saying. So I'm so glad I said them.

As I have written this post, I've felt like I may be being a bit immodest. If I have sinned in this direction, I beg your indulgence. My objective is simply to share with you the joy that these beautiful young people have brought me.

Around ChangXing Island

2008-11-24T08:24:00.009-05:00

In the 12 weeks I've spent on ChangXing Island, I really haven't seen a lot of it. Usually, I'm too tired after school to go very far. I did spend one weekend on the island and I took a bicycle and headed toward the northern shore. I didn't make it all the way but I did see a lot of nice orange groves. This island produces a lot of oranges and they are for sale everywhere. They peel easily, like tangerines, and they have no seeds so they are very nice to eat. They may be what we call "Mandarin oranges" but that name doesn't mean anything to my English-speaking Chinese friends.

Shortly after getting here, I started a video to document the island beyond the school gates. I never got around to completing it because I was waiting until I had the chance to really see the island. Well, since I have only 3 days left here, it's a safe bet that I won't see any more than I already have, hence I offer the video below. This video is really a hodge-podge of topics: the only common thread is that they are areas outside the school gate. To me, the most interesting part is the segment on the people who live on boats in the island's canals. Hopefully, you'll find something of interest and get a little better flavor of the area where I've been living.

Murdering Another Language

2008-11-22T23:49:00.003-05:00

At present, the weekend occupants of Jessie's Shanghai flat consist of three young ladies from Holland, two young ladies from Germany, and myself. Yalda, my co-volunteer at ChangXing Island has always gotten a chuckle out of my attempts to pronounce Dutch words so she asked me to read from a Dutch children's book so the other Dutch girls could hear it. Apparently, my accent is so horrific, they couldn't even understand what I was reading - the hilarious result is captured in the video below.

Musings

2008-11-21T09:16:00.029-05:00

Winter is Here

It has gotten quite cold in Shanghai, as low as 5 degrees at night and often not reaching more than 10 degrees during the day. That's not quite as cold as it sounds since they use the Celsius scale here. Still, it is quite cold and since the school has no heat, students and teachers wear winter clothing all day during school. They also keep classroom windows open so there is often a wind-chill factor in the classroom. We do have heat in our bedrooms so we can stay warm at night. Interestingly, most shops and restaurants leave their doors wide open, with sales people bundled up in winter parkas, their breath clearly visible as they talk with customers. Clearly, they are not wasting any money on heating bills in China. I really think they have the right idea about this - we could easily save a lot of energy in the U.S. if we learned to tolerate lower temperatures at home and work. By the way at our good-bye dinner this past week the school gave us appropriate gifts: long underwear :-)

Language Skills

As I have mentioned before, my Mandarin skills are limited and I haven't learned as much as I hoped because I just haven't had the time and energy to dedicate to it. But, I have learned a little and I find I'm able to get around the city/island on my own to some extent. I can ask for prices and negotiate for a lower price, though I'm still a very poor haggler, in any language! In stores, if I'm not successful in finding what I want on the shelves, I can often convey to the sales person what I'm looking for by drawing it or acting it out. My pantomimes of dental flossing and straw-sipping have received critical acclaim and netted the product I sought. Luckily, toilet paper has been prominently displayed and required no sales assistance.

Metro Ride

The Metro (subway) in Shanghai is a very good one: trains are frequent, clean, and fairly inexpensive. They are, however, crowded. I've mentioned before that my commute back to the flat in Shanghai on Friday evening is difficult, particularly because you can rarely get a seat and standing for a couple of hours is tiring (especially if you're carrying a backpack.) Since the stop near the ferry is only 5 stops from the northern end of the line, I have resorted to going north (wrong direction for the flat) first and, when everyone gets off at the final station, I stay on and have my choice of seats. This adds 40 minutes to the trip but having a seat the whole way makes it worth it.

On Friday, I had to go to the Chinese visa office to extend my tourist visa for one month. I had returned to Shanghai on Thursday night and then got up early Friday morning to take the 40 minute Metro ride to the office. When the train arrived, I got my first glimpse of how crowded the trains can get at rush hour. It was hard to imagine anyone else could possibly get into that train, yet we all pushed and several of us did get on. It was so packed, we were standing sternum to backbone - there wasn't even a need to hold onto a strap - there was no way anyone could possibly fall down. At the next several stops, even more people got on: bodies compacted even more as determined new passengers pushed themselves through the doors. It was actually kind of fun for me and I couldn't help smiling at the situation, but, not surprisingly, no one else found it very amusing. I was reminded of this video of people boarding a Japanese train. Without the pushers, we were probably not taking full advantage of every square centimeter of space, but we did pretty well on our own.

Pandas or Bust

On a recent trip to escort two new volunteer teachers to Sichuan (the first volunteers placed there since the earthquake last Spring), Jessie had a chance to visit a friend in Chengdu, the largest city in Sichuan province. When she returned, she was very excited about all the young pandas she has seen at the Panda Breeding and Research Center just outside of Chengdu. She has a friend in Chengdu (also involved in charity/volunteer activities) who extended an offer to host any of her volunteers interested in seeing Chengdu. It was an offer I couldn't refuse so I am scheduled to fly to Chengdu on Saturday, Nov 29th, where I'll spend two nights. Jessie's friend is not only providing a place for us to sleep (my co-volunteer Yalda is going too) but has offered to be a tour-guide while we are there. I'm not sure what I'll get to see except the pandas but it should be an interesting end to my 3-month journey. I'll return to Shanghai on Monday, Dec 1 and leave for the USA on Tuesday the 2nd.

Patriotic Music Concert

2008-11-12T09:02:00.018-05:00

On October 30th, the school held its annual traditional/patriotic music concert on the playground behind the school. October is "National Month" and this concert is designed to encourage the children to express how they love their country. The concert was held during school hours. The audience was the children, the teachers and administrative staff, and several neighbors who peered through the fence with interest.

Each class sang the national anthem, which they do every morning during the flag-raising ceremony, and one additional song. Some of the performances are quite charming and accompanied by choreographed movement. I really enjoyed the concert and I think the video below will show you why. A patriotic music concert is the kind of event that some westerners might cynically dismiss as an attempt to indoctrinate the children with government party line. But that's not the feeling I get being here. Rather, I think it was quite special and it reminded me of my own primary school days when we sang "God Bless America" regularly and recited the Pledge of Allegiance every morning. Learning that we are all part of something larger than ourselves is an extremely valuable lesson.

As my adventure nears its end, my growing excitement about returning home is paired with a growing impatience with some of the things that I don't like about living here. Things like the incessant horn-honking and the widespread cigarette smoking (even in the teachers' office) are more annoying than they were earlier in my stay. When my adventure ends on December 2nd, I will be ready to come home. But, as I put this video together and I watched the animated, beautiful little faces of the children I've come to know and love, I realized that it is going to be difficult to leave. I know I have given these kids a gift by being here to encourage them in their quest to learn English. But they have given me a much greater gift in the love they have shown me in so many ways.

Halloween Party

2008-11-05T07:52:00.004-05:00

On October 31st we treated the 4th-grade kids at the "English Corner" lunchtime session to a Halloween party. By we I mean myself and my new co-volunteer, Yalda Gaffari. Yalda is a young woman from Holland whose heritage is Iranian as her family (parents and two siblings) emigrated to Holland when she was four years old. She is a really nice person and we get along very well. She, like most volunteers, will be here for four weeks so she will actually leave a week before me.

The Chinese kids know very little about Halloween because it's not celebrated here. We wanted to do a really fun event with costumes and maybe a haunted house, but the lack of available Halloween costumes and supplies in Shanghai made that impossible. But thanks to the "care package" that Grace, Michael and Barb Bilancioni sent me, we did have some cool plastic spiders (which we hung from the light fixtures) and several halloween balloons to decorate the classroom. Yalda and I bought pumpkins (yellow, tall variety that turned out nicely) at the local market and carved them in our rooms the night before. She had seen jack-o-lanterns before but had never carved one. She drew the faces and I cut them out and I think we enjoyed it as much as the kids.

I put together a quick Powerpoint presentation to show the kids what Halloween is about and Yalda came up with a game where the kids have to pick up a pumpkin seed (by inhaling through a straw) and carry it the length of the room. We tried to get the kids to understand how to run a relay race but the language barrier and their excitement turned the race into chaos. But they had fun with it and that was what counted.

Then we had the kids wrap each other as mummies using toilet paper. They had an absolutely wonderful time - I can still hear them laughing. Some of the fun is captured on the video below.

Special Friend Guoming

2008-11-05T00:33:00.010-05:00

After I had been here about 3 weeks, I began to notice a young teacher whose great sense of humor was apparent despite his difficulty with English. This was Yao Guoming, the school's computer administrator and teacher. His strong interest in learning English and my interest in learning Mandarin brought us together and over the past 6 weeks, we have become good friends. Guoming is another island native and lives near the school. He is married and his wife Zhou Hai Qin is a doctor and a clothing store owner. Their lovely daughter Yao Yun is a second grader and one of my students.

Guoming's understanding of written English is pretty good but he hasn't had much opportunity to practice his speaking or listening skills. So I can help him a lot just by chatting with him, which we do whenever we can (meaning we both have a free schedule and I have enough energy.) He's a very good teacher too and has helped me with my Mandarin. Unfortunately, I have simply not had enough time and energy to take advantage of this rare opportunity. I have discovered that preparing and delivering what I hope to be quality English lessons has been mentally and physically exhausting and have consciously made learning Mandarin a lower priority.

The video below documents a very nice Sunday afternoon/evening I spent with Guoming and his family, learning about Chinese cooking. I had a lot of fun watching the food being prepared and even more fun eating it. Guoming is a great guy with a wonderful family and I feel lucky to have him as my friend. We intend to continue our friendship and language lessons using the internet when I return home.

Special Friend Karen

2008-10-31T02:15:00.013-04:00

There are several people who have made my stay in China a very special time, starting with my wife Grace, who fully supported my decision to spend 3 months in this faraway place. And, of course, there is Jessie Duanmu, whose company made this all possible. At the school, here on ChangXing island, I have had the good fortune to be assigned to work under the guidance of Karen Yin. Although Karen has been teaching only a couple of years, she is an extremely good teacher who works long hours and cares deeply about the children. Prior to her teaching career, she worked for a foreign company in Shanghai and that experience brought her English proficiency to a very high level.

Her experience and talents make her a logical choice to serve as an advisor for foreign teachers and the school is wise to use her in that capacity. But what makes her really special is her open-minded curiosity about other cultures and the way she genuinely cares for people. She has taken very good care of me, watching to be sure I understand what I need to, that I have everything I need, even cutting my class schedule back a bit when she noticed I was looking pretty tired :-) And, of course, she has reached out to me as a friend, inviting me to her home and to her parents home for dinner. The video below highlights some of the special times we have spent together.

Karen was born and raised on ChangXing Island and has watched it grow dramatically in recent years. She and husband Gu Chao, another island native who works for the ChangXing municipal government, have a lovely apartment in northern Shanghai, not far from where the ChangXing Island ferry docks. They live there on weekends and have a smaller place near the school where they stay during the work-week. Tao and Karen are lovely people and I feel fortunate to count them as my friends. I hope very much they can come and visit Grace and me at some future time.

Beautiful West Lake, Hangzhou

2008-10-29T01:11:00.005-04:00

Last weekend, the school gave me Friday off so I could spend a three-day weekend in Hangzhou. Famous for its scenery, most notably that in the vicinity of West Lake, Hangzhou is the destination for millions of domestic and international tourists. I enjoyed the weekend, primarily for the scenery I encountered on the walkways surrounding the lake and while visiting some of its small man-made islands. But I must admit that staying in a very nice hotel was a big part of the fun. I enjoyed a large and luxurious room, my first western-style breakfasts in two months, and a shower with water pressure to spare. Getting to Hangzhou from ChangXing island is a bit tiresome (about 6 hours each way, much of it standing on the subway,) but I'm glad I took the opportunity to see it. The lake is quite beautiful and the grounds around the lake are very well-kept, making it a delightful place to spend some time. The highlights of my trip are shown in the video below.

Birthday on ChangXing Island

2008-10-24T05:06:00.011-04:00

If you watched the video about the trip to Xitang, you know I celebrated my 59th (60th by Chinese reckoning) birthday on October 14th. On Tuesdays, I have only a single class to teach so it's usually a quiet day. I had my camera with me in hopes of capturing some of the relaxation exercises done every day during the first 5 minutes of this period (10:10 to 10:45). As I filmed in the hallway before entering the classroom, I became aware that at least some kids knew it was my birthday. As I entered class and began teaching, it was obvious that this was common knowledge as I was surrounded with kids wishing me well and giving me hand-made birthday greetings addressed to "Teacher John."

The video below shows that this birthday, spent so far very from home, was a very special one. It was my dear wife Grace who made sure that Jessie, head of the volunteer teacher program in China (and my good friend,) knew about the birthday. And it was Jessie who (after orchestrating a special surprise for me in Xitang) made sure that Karen Ying, my teaching advisor here at school, knew about it. And it was Karen who spread the word to other teachers and students and arranged for a special office party celebration. Karen has done so much to make my teaching assignment a wonderful experience. She has guided me in curriculum choices, ensured a manageable schedule for me, served as my translator for communicating with the non-English speaking teachers and administrators, been a wonderful role-model for me and encouraged my development as a teacher, and included me in her social life, introducing me to her husband, family, and friends on several memorable dinner occasions (more in a future post.) I consider myself lucky to have been assigned to work with her and cherish the wonderful friendship we have developed.

Thanks also to Guoming, who filmed much of the office party and has become such a good friend as we have tried to help each other learn the other's language. He has also made a special effort to make me feel at home on the island - I'll have more about that in a future post too.

Volunteer Outing to Xitang, Ancient Water Village

2008-10-20T23:02:00.021-04:00

On October 11th, all seven current volunteer-teachers in Shanghai and Suzhou were treated to a special outing by Jessie and her staff. Our destination was the ancient water village known as Xitang. There are many such villages within easy travel distance of Shanghai (see my previous post on a visit to Tongli.) The name water village derives from the waterways running through town that give the town a unique character. Xitang lies in Zhejiang province, dates back to the “Warring States” era (221 BC) of Chinese history and has many historic buildings preserved from the Ming and Qing dynasties (1600s-1900s).

The video below is somewhat self-explanatory but let me provide some context. Jessie and three staff members led this little expedition, which included train, bus, and taxi segments. Tom is a 4th-year college student working full-time for Jessie for college credit. Jessica is a full-time business student in her final year working part-time for Jessie. Sarah is a former volunteer and works part-time for Jessie. She is a Leeds University student and is currently studying Mandarin at a university in Shanghai. The volunteers you will see (besides me) are 1) Martin and Kaye from Australia - Martin is a retired teacher and he and Kaye have been teaching in Suzhou, 2) Rita from New York City, a graduate of NYU who back-packed through Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia with her boyfriend prior to arriving in Shanghai , 3) Anna, a nice young lady from Germany who is teaching in Shanghai for 3 months, 4) Jacqueline, another nice young lady from Germany teaching in Shanghai (some Chinese folks think Jacqueline and Anna are sisters (even twins!) but they really don't look much alike) , and 5) Nadine, another young lady from Germany who has been living in China for at least six months and can speak fluent Mandarin (very impressive!)

Upon arrival, Xitang seemed a typical modern small town in China, but a short stroll into the old part of the city made it apparent this was a very special place. Indeed, we felt transported to an earlier time as all within our view appeared at least several hundred years old. The charm of the ancient stone buildings was enhanced by their reflections rippling in the water flowing slowly past their timeworn foundations. Graceful bridges and covered sampans added to the charm and, as dusk approached, the glistening lanterns along the waterfront created a magical effect. After a wonderful dinner at a water-side table, we enjoyed a leisurely cruise in our own private sampan. As we slowly made our way along the waterway, Jessie and my new friends surprised me with a birthday cake, brought all the way from Shanghai in Jessica and Sarah’s purse! Shocked (but delighted) that they had planned such a surprise, I greatly enjoyed choruses of “Happy Birthday” sung in three languages (English, Chinese, and German.) It was a birthday I’ll never forget and just one more example of the wonderful people and fun times that are part and parcel of this volunteer-teaching assignment.

I hope you enjoy the video. For more information about Xitang, see their official website.

Visit to "Water Town" - Tongli

2008-10-09T09:17:00.013-04:00

About two weeks ago, on the first of my 7 days off from school (yes, I know I'm getting behind in my blog posting :-), MaryAnn Lee and her son Jonathan took me to Tongli, a small town about an hour west of Shanghai known for its ancient buildings lining small waterways. This region has many such "water towns" and I have since visited another one called Xitang (I will document that in a separate post later.) It was a very nice day and, surprisingly, it was not terribly crowded, even though we were there on the first day of the national holiday week. The day was further enhanced by MaryAnn's offering use of their driver and van to make the trip, a much-easier mode of transportation than the train/bus. The following slide show gives you an idea of the sights of Tongli - my favorite part was "Suisha Garden" - a beautiful area with pagodas, koi-filled ponds and beautiful covered walkways.

ChangXing Primary School Outing

2008-10-03T23:50:00.022-04:00

This week has been very relaxing as I've been off from school for the national holiday. This holiday is Oct 1st, the day on which the People's Republic of China was formed in 1949. Apparently, three days are specified as holidays(Oct 1-3) so, in order to give everyone a full week off, everyone works the Saturday and Sunday before the holiday. So, I've been off since last Sunday afternoon and enjoying some quiet time at the flat here in Shanghai, mixing in some light local sightseeing as well. And, I'm getting the chance to catch up on the blog, posting things that have been on hold for a while.

This post includes a video of a school outing we had last Wednesday. Twice a year, the school takes all the students on an outing to the "mainland" (Shanghai) to do something fun. This fall, the trip was to an amusement park in northern Shanghai called GongQing Forest Park. Getting 500 kids from the school to the mainland and back is quite a production and it was fun to be part of it. Some of the kids don't get off the island except for these school trips so you can see why it would be so exciting to them.

A Nice Day with MaryAnn Lee and Family

2008-10-03T02:22:00.006-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I had my first visit with MaryAnn Lee and her family. MaryAnn and I worked together at Telcordia (Bellcore) many years ago. When Dow Chemical transferred her husband Peter from New Jersey to Shanghai about 18 months ago, I wished her well on her departure from Telcordia. So I knew that she and her family were here and she graciously arranged to have her entire family pick me up (in their company car) and spend a nice afternoon together. Not only was the lunch absolutely delicious (best dumplings I've ever had) but I also got to see one of my top sightseeing priorities, the Shanghai World Financial Center, which vies for the title "tallest building in the world" and which had only been only open for 2 weeks at the time of our visit. And it was a delight meeting MaryAnn's family - Peter is a very nice, laid-back guy, Jonathan a delightful second-grader (the age-group I relate to best), and the two teenage daughters, Kimberly and Andrea, lovely young ladies who may look Chinese but are so American in their speech and behavior that they made me homesick :-)

The slideshow below shows some scenes from the day. If you want to stop the auto-play feature you can move your cursor to the bottom of the picture and click on the pause button. Then you can manually page thru the slides at your desired speed.

Wonderful Breakfast Food

2008-10-02T21:58:00.004-04:00

The last two mornings, here in Shanghai near the flat, I've discovered a wonderful new breakfast option. Known as JianBing, this is what might be called a "Chinese crepe" and it is really delicious. You can get them many places from street vendors but I've tried to get mine from a store/restaurant. I was going to make a video of how they are made but I found an existing YouTube video that does a great job. So here is the making of a jian bing for your enjoyment. Sorry, the web doesn't convey gustatory or olfactory sensations :-) And, by the way, this food costs about 2.5 yuan - about 35 cents!

Commuting from Shanghai to ChangXing Island

2008-09-30T06:56:00.008-04:00

This post will try to give you a feel for the bi-weekly commute I make between the flat in Shanghai, where I spend weekends (and this long holiday week) and ChangXing Island, where I live and teach during the week. The video below is actually a composite of videos/pictures taken on several different trips (at slightly different times of day) so you may notice unusual changes in the amount of daylight between frames.

As the video shows, we have mainly been taking a taxi from the flat to Wusong terminal. This isn't too terribly expensive ($20) given there are (were) two of us to split the cost. But now that Monica has departed, I may go back to the slower, but cheaper, method of using the Metro (subway). I've been able to minimize what I need to carry between the two locations into what fits in a backpack so it's not nearly as bad as our first trip where we were lugging large suitcases around.

As you'll see, the sections of the Huangpu and Yangtze rivers we traverse are not what I would call scenic, the water is always brown and turbulent and the surrounding area has no hills to enhance the horizon. These are definitely "working rivers" and the sheer volume of traffic on them is quite impressive.

Near the end of the video, you'll see the massive ship-loading equipment along the shores as we approach the ChangXing Island dock. These cranes/booms are built on the island by a company called ZPMC (see more at this link.) At the eastern end of the island, there is a new ship-building factory. These two companies account for a large percentage of the island's population, which is now more than 120,00 - not many years ago it was only 20,000.

Volunteer Teachers' Flat in Shanghai

2008-09-25T04:08:00.011-04:00

Events continue to occur at an un-bloggable pace - yesterday we had a school outing in which 600 or so of us took the ferry to the mainland, then buses to an amusement park. That was definitely a blog-worthy event but it will have to keep for a future post.

This post will highlight my weekend living quarters at the flat (apartment) in Shanghai. Jessie Duanmu, the program coordinator, operates her volunteer-teacher business out of this flat. When I signed up for the program, it was through a non-profit organization called Travel-to-Teach (T2T), based in Thailand. I’ve since learned that T2T contracts with Jessie’s company, Xu Bo Culture & Art Exchange LTD, for their China placements. As owner and manager of Xo Bu, Jessie works with many international volunteer-teacher organizations and travels worldwide to establish and maintain business relationships with them. Once I chose Shanghai as my destination, I really put my destiny in her hands as it is Jessie and her staff of assistants that have been handling everything I need during my stay here. Meeting me at the airport (flight 3 hours late!), escorting me to (and helping me check-into) the hotel the first night and to the flat the 2nd night, providing language and culture courses in the flat, offering a sightseeing tour of Shanghai, providing me a cell phone for local use (left by a former volunteer), and escorting me and my co-teacher Monica to ChangXing Island the first time: these are some of the things Jessie and her staff have done for me. They have been absolutely great help, making the geographic and cultural transition much more manageable than it would be on my own.

The Shanghai flat is where Jessie runs her business, conducts her new teacher orientation classes, and provides living space for the volunteers who need it. Most volunteers are provided living quarters by the schools where they volunteer. Some volunteers live in these rooms 7 days a week. Some, however, like those of us who volunteer at ChangXing Island, only stay in our school rooms during the week and return to the flat for weekends. I may inquire about whether I could stay on the island for a weekend, just to have more time to explore. But, in general, it's very nice to go back to Shanghai and be with the other volunteers. There isn't much to do on the island and staying here for three months without leaving would probably be a little more cultural immersion (drowning?) than I would like. And although I really like the Chinese food I've been getting (even the cafeteria, as I mentioned previously), I must admit that on two previous Fridays, Monica and I celebrated our return to Shanghai with McDonald's burgers and fries.

Living at the flat is like living in a small youth hostel. We share a bathroom, a kitchen, a TV (no programs but lots of DVDs), a washing machine, and a balcony where we hang our clothes out to dry. I'll admit that hanging my undies alongside young ladies undies seemed a bit daunting. Indeed, I decided that some of them, though still useable by "wash-at-home" standards, could not pass the more rigid, "display-to-the-world" test and have been retired for good. We are on our own for meals on the weekends and we generally either go out to a restaurant (some are very close, good, and cheap) or bring in some food. We can cook in the kitchen but I think most of us are too lazy (or unskilled and lazy, in my case) to do much other than boil some frozen dumplings or add hot water to a dried noodles (Cup-of-Soup) package.

OK, this gives you some context for what you'll see in the video. Hope you enjoy it. I certainly am enjoying living there on the weekends.

Teaching the Wheels on the Bus Lesson

2008-09-22T08:47:00.006-04:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, it's been gratifying to see the
enthusiastic response to the music video I put together before leaving
home - The Wheels on the Bus video. It seems that all 4 classes of second
graders have really enjoyed it. Thanks to Monica, my co-volunteer teacher
from Holland, I have a video of the final class this morning. Despite having a
cold and working in miserably hot/humid weather today, I feel very good
about how the lesson went, especially compared to my first lesson for
this age group which was kind of a disaster. Teaching the second graders
is definitely more challenging than the fourth graders, given their limited English, but I'm learning! And my desire to get the kids interested has helped me overcome a lifelong fear of public singing :-) The Chinese people love to sing and are much less inhibited about doing it than most Westerners. We went to an Oktoberfest celebration in Shanghai Saturday night and it was the Chinese participants that were the first to climb up on the tables and raise their beer mugs in time with the music of the ooompah band :-)

Lunchtime at ChangXing Primary School

2008-09-20T02:23:00.010-04:00

I continue to be very busy and feel hard-pressed to find time to make updates here. But I did compile several photos and videos of the lunchtime routine at the school into the video below. The food at the cafeteria is excellent and I enjoy eating there. When I mentioned this to the other teachers, they thought I was a little crazy - come to think of it, I was the only GI who liked the US Army food too :-) Anyway, here's a little more of life at the school by way of our lunch routine.

Other noteworthy events include my growing fondess for several of the kids and some of the teachers. My Wheels on the Bus lesson was very well received - the kids seem to regard a grown man singing "waah, waah, waah" while cradling a pretend baby as both a little embarrasing but great fun. After a couple of these classes, many kids rushed to the front of the class to say "Goodbye Teacher John" and "See you again Teacher John" One young man, who happens to be a little chubby even by Western standards, is smart, fun, and charming and a favorite of many teachers. After class on Thursday, he told me he loved me (I think he meant like but I'll take either one) and that he would draw a picture of me. He gave me the picture Friday morning and it's really neat. When I get access to a scanner I'll put it on the blog here. Little things like this make the hard work that go into this very worthwhile.

On Wednesday night, I was invited to a dinner for the teachers in my office (about 8 of us) at one their parent's home about 20 minutes north of the school. I got my first chance to see a little more of the island and I noticed it is criss-crossed with canals leading to the Yangtze river, on both the north and south sides of the island. Many boats and barges inhabit these canals - I can't tell for sure but many of them might be homes as well. They are definitely picturesque but not a place most people would enjoy living, I think. I'll try to post photos in the future. I also saw some of the orange groves that the island was formerly noted for. As far as I can tell, this industry has largely been replaced by two large ship-building equipment factories, where many of the island's inhabitants work. The teachers tell me that the island's population has swelled from about 20,000 several years ago to 150,000 now. Many people have come from all parts of China for the employment.

The dinner was very nice and only one person there could act as an interpreter for me - so I spent a lot of time "listening" without comprehending (which is quite tiring by the way) but I was able to toast the host and hostess (with my orange drink to their beer and Chinese wine) and I came away with a nice feeling that they had made me so welcome. I didn't take my camera as it seemed inappropriate to be in "tourist mode" for such a nice occasion.

Next time I post, I hope to shed some light on weekend life here at the Shanghai flat. It seems the two days go quickly as there are activities planned for us and we try to do some sightseeing on our own.

Settling into a Routine

2008-09-16T18:36:00.005-04:00

Hi all - thank you so much for all your emails and comments on the previous posts. It's nice to know you enjoyed the video and great to hear from you. I am adjusted to the time zone difference now and settling into a routine. Don't have time right now to post more photos/videos so forgive me for a text-only post.

Monica and I started our second teaching week on Tuesday, after being off Monday for the Mid-Autumn Festival, a holiday which fell on Sunday but for which a day-off-work was given on Monday. As I may have mentioned, we travel a couple of hours each Friday afternoon and Sunday afternoon to move between our school quarters (see previous video) and our rooms (beds, really) at the flat in southwest Shanghai. The flat is basically a small hostel where you sleep in a room with other people and share a bathroom.

The trip from the flat to the school on ChangXing island includes a taxi ride to the Wusong ferry terminal, located at Wusong Harbor, and a ferry ride down (and across) the Yangtze to the island, not far from where the river meets the South China sea. The 45-minute ferry ride is not bad: even Monica who has a little uneasiness about getting sea-sick has been fine so far. Sometimes we're on a large, slower, boat and other times a smaller, faster boat. It's hard to see much of the area from the boat because there are so many ships in the waters. I read somewhere that this part of the Yangtze is the busiest place in the world for watercraft. I'll try to get some good video of the ferry journey and post it in the future. The taxi ride to/from the Wusong terminal takes about 40 minutes and costs us about $10 each - kind of expensive but we both think it's worth avoiding the 2-hour train ride on which you often have to stand for much of the way.

OK, this will be brief - Monica and I meet outside our rooms to go to our breakfast place (also in previous video) at 7AM and that's in a few minutes. Monica really likes the breakfasts, which include baozi (a bread-dough like roll often stuffed with pork or vegetables) and I think they're good but I miss my cereal :) I could probably find cereal in Shanghai but keeping milk would be a problem without a refrigerator. If there's anything in the way of food/drink I miss it's cold drinks - the Chinese drink warm/hot water all day and it's hard to find cold water in the stores (not impossible though.) I've thought about buying a small fridge for my room but, so far, I've decided to avoid that expense.

That's all for now - I have 4 classes to teach today, my busiest day, and I'm sure I'll be fatigued at the end of it. It's still pretty hot and humid here and the classrooms are not air-conditioned - that adds to the fatigue factor, I think.

Life at ChangXing Island Primary School

2008-09-13T09:08:00.013-04:00

I've taken some of my photos and videos of life at school and compiled them into the video shown below. The segment of me teaching was my first class and it's kind of painful for me to watch because it's obvious how far off-target I was in the level of English I expected from second-graders. You'll notice the Chinese teacher is doing a LOT of translating for the kids. I'll be optimistic and assume this will provide a dramatic before-picture to demonstrate how much I will have improved by the time I finish my teaching stint at the end of November :-)

Later this week, I'll try to provide some photos/video about where I live on weekends, here in the west-southern suburbs of Shanghai.

Wow! This is Really Something

2008-09-12T22:02:00.002-04:00

I wonder if there is an award for most-publicized-but-least-posted blog? So much has happened in my first 10 days here that I have wanted to post. But the pace has been challenging and I have focused instead on just trying to adjust: to the 12-hour time difference; to living in what is basically a small youth hostel on weekends, to dealing with feelings of powerlessness caused by being able to understand so little of what is said; to trying to prepare meaningful and appropriate-level English lessons for 2nd graders and 4th graders (a huge difference in age and English proficiency), and to the challenge of getting back and forth between the island (school) and the volunteer's flat in Shanghai every Friday and Monday. I'm happy to say I have, so far, made the necessary adjustments. I still have a way to go before I'll feel comfortable with my teaching - I'll just assume I'll get better with time. I can say unequivocally that the kids are absolutely delightful - they are genuinely happy to have me here - walking down the hallway requires responding to many, many "Hello, How are You!"s from beautiful, bright-eyed children. (Don't worry Grace, they won't let me bring one home :-)

It also has been very helpful to have another volunteer here with me. Monica, a young Dutch woman nearing the end of her university studies in Holland, speaks Dutch, English (extremely well), and Cantonese. She also had a little Mandarin when she arrived and she has rapidly learned more - she can often order food for us in restaurants and she has limited Mandarin conversations with the other teachers here. We make the weekend commute together and are able to share ideas about teaching. She has 1st and 3rd graders (also a big disparity in abilities) and we both agree the first-graders are the most challenging of all the classes.

I must close for now as I need to teach English Corner in about a half hour. This is a less-formal class held at lunch-time and we often play a game - today I'm planning a round of pictionary/charades (combined) for the 4th graders. After that Monica and I pack and head for Shanghai - we hope to catch an early ferry so we can catch a taxi before rush hour - taxi ride takes about 40 minutes but is only about $15 split between two of us, well worth the price compared to a two-hour ride on the standing-room-only Metro. I will try to post some more detail this weekend, including photos and videos. Nothing is on the agenda except meeting my old friend Mary Ann Lee, whom I worked with at Bellcore/Telcordia years ago, and who now lives in Shanghai with her husband and two daughters. I hope to have just a little time to REST!

More later - zai jian!

I'm Here!

2008-09-02T22:22:00.002-04:00

Just a quick note to let you know I'm now in the volunteer's flat (apartment) in Shanghai. The staff and other volunteers are wonderful and accomodations fine but the combination of jet-lag and culture shock (a lot of German is spoken here as 4 volunteers are from Switzerland/Germany/Netherlands) make this all seem surreal :-) Today two of us are heading for ChangXing Island where we will teach. When I get my head on straight and have more time I'll provide more detail.

This is COOL!

Certified Teachers of English as a Foreign Language

2008-08-16T10:51:00.005-04:00

Shown here are the proud graduates of the Oxford Seminars Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) class that was held during July, 2008. Under the inspiring and capable tutelage of our instructor, Mary Margaret Blicharz, fifteen aspiring English teachers spent three long weekends together in a small hotel conference room in East Brunswick, learning the ins and outs of TEFL teaching. An invaluable part of the curriculum was the practicum, which gave each of us a chance to prepare and teach a lesson. Most of us felt a bit nervous about it but came out of the experience feeling more confident and prepared for our first teaching assignment. I really enjoyed getting to know these interesting, nice people. Their diverse backgrounds enriched the class and we developed a wonderful camaraderie in a very short time together. I wish them all well and hope we stay in touch as we fan out over the globe teaching English.

Fun with English and Music Videos

2008-07-23T11:38:00.009-04:00

I've been very busy in recent weeks taking a course in "Teaching English as a Second Language" and trying to prepare for teaching English to the kids in ChangXing Primary school. This is a challenge given that I don't know exactly which grade I will teach (1st through 5th grade are possible) or what level of English the kids will have.

MTV (Millspaugh Tries Video)

I've had a lot of fun creating music videos of some popular children's songs, on the assumption that singing will be a fun way to get them speaking English. So I fired up my VideoStudio application and came up with a music video based on the popular song "Wheels on the Bus." I used Raffi's version of the song, as my whole family has always enjoyed his music since we discovered him during my son Michael's youth. Thanks much to Jessie Duanmu, our volunteer coordinator in Shanghai, who is an experienced school teacher, for her valuable suggestions for improving the video.

English Insanity (Out-sanity?)

As my focus has shifted from learning Mandarin to learning English, it's been very interesting to consider the difficulties of our language. I think the following poem, which came from one of my course textbooks, expresses it well:

English, Asylum for the Verbally Insane
(author unknown)

We'll begin with a box, and plural is boxes,
but the plural of ox became oxen not oxes.
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,
yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men,
why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?
If I spoke of my foot and show you my feet,
and I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and whole set are teeth,
why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?

Then one may be that, and three would be those,
yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
and the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
but though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his, and him,
but imagine the feminine, she shis, and shim.

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no
egg in eggplant or ham in hamburger; neither apple nor
pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England.
We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes,
we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square,
and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing,
grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?
Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends
but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends
and get rid of all but one one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English
should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.

In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?

We ship by truck but send cargo by ship.
We have noses that run and feet that smell.
And how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same,
while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the lunacy of a language in which your
house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form
by filling it out, and in which an alarm goes off by going on.

So if Dad is Pop, how come Mom isn't Mop?

Qing nin shuo man yidianr. (Please speak a little slower).

2008-07-07T12:03:00.000-04:00

Most Chinese schools prefer to have the foreign English teacher immerse their kids in English and the use of Chinese during English class is discouraged. School administrators never require foreign English teachers to understand or use Chinese, so it's possible to get by with little or no language capacity. However, the time I'll spend in the English-only classroom will be a very small percentage of my time, apparently only about 10 hours per week. The rest of the time I'll be living and working in a community where most people do not speak any English. Communicating with the other teachers, the children's parents, and other people in the local community will most often require using the national language, Mandarin. Combine that with my main motivation for going to China - to get to know more about this fascinating country - and you can see why I very much want to learn to speak and understand Mandarin. I've been working hard over the summer months to learn as much as I can before leaving for Shanghai at the end of August.

Mandarin is not an easy language to learn, with consonants that are difficult for westerners to pronounce, grammatical rules very different from English, and the usage of tone to carry semantics (a phoneme/syllable spoken with a flat tone has a very different meaning when spoken with a rising or falling tone.) All of these attributes contribute to making the language seem overwhelmingly difficult at first. But I'm happy to report that I've already passed the stage of believing it an impossible task. I'm enrolled in a summer adult-education class at Union County College called Business Chinese. It meets every Wednesday night for 2.5 hours and focuses on very practical aspects of the language, attempting to provide enough spoken Mandarin skills to be able converse with Chinese business associates. Every week, the teacher makes us get up in front of the class and attempt speaking to each other using what we have learned thus far. Like many people, I've found speaking Chinese quite intimidating at first, knowing I must be mangling pronunciations and perhaps even saying the wrong words through incorrect tonal emphasis. But it's clear that focusing on speaking and understanding Mandarin is the most productive route for me. Most Chinese courses require that you learn to read and write the complicated Chinese characters (also known as sinographs) that form the basis for written Chinese. Our textbook does include the Chinese characters but it also presents the Chinese words using PinYin , a system that uses the Western alphabet to show how the Chinese words are to be pronounced. Learning to read and write Chinese characters would be much harder and take a lot longer than just learning spoken (oral) Chinese using PinYin. As I am developing no reading or writing capability, I have to laugh when I think that my educational goal is to become perfectly illiterate. :-)

In addition to the adult-education course, I'm pursuing several other avenues for learning Mandarin. I purchased a software program called Chinese Flashcards that is great for building vocabulary. I loaded it onto my laptop (actually Grace's laptop that she has so kindly donated for this trip) so I can continue learning while in Shanghai. I've also joined a really cool web-based community called LiveMocha. This site offers online lessons in many different languages and they are very good. Another very nice aspect of the LiveMocha community is how it is designed to allow people to help each other. When you register, you indicate the language you wish to learn and the language(s) at which you have proficiency. When I registered and indicated I am fluent at English, I received a large number of "Be my Friend" requests, mostly from Chinese people interested in learning English. I've chosen three or four of these people as my friends and it's been very rewarding. Not only are they helping me with Chinese but I've found it very satisfying to help them with English. Some of their messages have been quite touching as they have expressed their heart-felt appreciation for the help given. One nice young law student in Beijing has been very helpful to me by recording audio files which I try to interpret and by listening to my own recorded attempts at Mandarin. It feels very nice to make a connection of this kind with someone so far removed from our own culture and existence. As there is such a push in China to become bilingual with English, there are a lot of Chinese people on LiveMocha that are competing for a limited number of English-speaking friends. So if you have any interest in learning another language, or in just helping someone else learn English, I would highly recommend LiveMocha. Be aware, however, that at some point, it will become a subscription-based service. At present, it's free while they test their beta (trial) version.

Finally, I have been helped by some of my local Chinese-American friends with pronunciation, grammar and other questions (you know who you are.) I'm optimistic that I will be able to have (limited) conversations with people in Shanghai who have no English. And if this isn't possible when I arrive, perhaps my own immersion in Mandarin will allow it to happen before my three-month assignment concludes. I'll let you know how it works out.

My Teaching Assignment

2008-06-24T16:55:00.008-04:00

I am now committed to volunteer as an English teacher at a primary (elementary) school on ChangXing Island, less than an hour from the center of Shanghai, as shown on the adjacent map (click on the map to enlarge, Dao is Mandarin for island.) The organization that is mediating my placement, Travel-to-Teach (T2T) helps place volunteers in three different Chinese locations, including Shanghai. I had wanted to work at their Sichuan location but the recent earthquake made that very difficult. In Shanghai, they place teachers in about 20 schools, which are located in both urban and rural settings. To learn more about a previous volunteer's experience on ChangXing Island, see Hanneke's story and accompanying photos. Hanneke is a physician from Holland who spent a month at the ChangXing school earlier this spring. Apparently, foreigners on the island are pretty rare so you are regarded with great interest by the locals. Recently, a couple of volunteers made the front page of the local paper, shaking hands with the mayor. You can read a little about the island here. There is also a promotional video on YouTube that is narrated in Mandarin. A Chinese-American friend found it interesting, picking up interesting tidbits such as 1) the island first surfaced only 380 years ago, 2) the first people moved there only 160 years ago, and 3) it was originally comprised of six smaller islands before the inter-island channels were filled, creating a single island, about 20 miles long and 2 miles wide.

There are many paid teaching positions in China, which include monthly salaries, living accommodations, and airfare remuneration. However, most of those positions require a one-year (or, at least, a semester) stay and that was longer than I wanted to be away from Grace, Michael, our kittens, and all the other things I'll miss about home - such as my pillow :-) Volunteer positions allow you to specify the length of your stay, usually anywhere from 2 weeks to a year. I also learned that some of the volunteer placement organizations have quite expensive program fees. T2T has very reasonable rates as they are based in Thailand, run largely by young people who work cheaply for the opportunity to live abroad, and keep their overhead costs low by restricting marketing and advertising to internet-only.

I'm excited about the opportunity to experience China other than as a tourist. I think the island will provide a rural experience during the week while, on weekends, I'll return to Shanghai and be with other Shanghai-area volunteers, in one of the most modern cities of the world. I'm not certain yet but I think I will have internet access in my private room at the school (they also provide all meals during the week) so Grace and Michael and I hope to use Skype to talk frequently, computer-to-computer. If that doesn't work out, there are always phone cards.

I'll be arriving in Shanghai on September 1st where I'll be met at the airport by Jessie, the coordinator for T2T's China program who has been wonderfully helpful so far. I'll get a 5-day orientation in Shanghai before starting my work assignment. The orientation includes things like Chinese culture, getting around Shanghai, and five hours of Mandarin lessons. Actually, the normal orientation is only 2-days long but I signed up for the extra three days just to give me some more time to overcome jet-lag before starting work. I will finish my assignment on November 28th and return home on December 2nd.