Honoring Traditions: The Dragon Boat Festival

Last weekend was Dragon Boat Festival and what better way to celebration the protest-by-drowning of a national hero than dressing up in ridiculously gaudy headscarves and attempting a time-honored Chinese sport!

My dragon boat experience can be broken down chronologically of Chinese eccentricity and general mismanagement.

5:30AM: I woke up at an hour that should be reserved for soldiers, mothers, and other combat professionals.

6:30AM: Those reckless enough to attempt dragon boat racing headed downtown towards coffee. Funny, how I didn’t start drinking that potent life-support elixir until I move to a place that requires a taxi to reach.

7:50AM: Packs of expats converged on the Portman Ritz-Carlton, the designated meeting spot. Somehow sculpted mash potato mountains and strategically blinking lights used for alien communication should have somehow been involved in this process. It might have been more successful.

8:10AM: People in pastel pink appear among the crowd carrying cryptic signs that read “Bus 2” and “Bus 7”.

8:17AM: After realizing that we had to approach each bus representative to determine if we were on their list, we waited under the sign for Bus 6 until everyone else figured it out and debated what concentration of “expert” the stragglers were that they were able to receive their Chinese residency visa.

8:37AM: On our bus we are given event t-shirts, which turned out to be XXXL white polo shirts with the sponsors’ logos ironed on the back.

8:50AM: After the amused furor over the polo shirts died down, we were given our matching team zebra -print silk scarves.

8:52AM: We spent the next twenty minutes acting out every possible technique to wear our team colors: Hee Haw neckerchief; Rosie Rivet bandana; bee bop pony tail tie; train robber face mask; blind fold...

9:15AM: After passing buses with Team Sorbet Swirl and Team Tiny Pink Flowers, we decided to embrace the zebra.

9:17AM: The method of zebra-pride is finally decided: ode to Olivia Newton-John headband in “Physical”.

9:30AM: We reached the combination of Disneyland and Waco compound where our race was held. Boating mass chaos began.

9:48AM: Mass chaos continues. Boat leaders were frantically waving flags while nobody paid attention. Life jackets were donned that were either too large to fit the person or too small to keep the wearer afloat. Olympian-sized female rowers were scared out of the canal.

10:28AM: The schedule said that we would be learning the traditional techniques of dragon boat racing. Who knew Richard Simmons got his moves from the exercises involved in warming up for dragon boat racing. I discovered a copyright infringement lawsuit waiting to happen.

10:40AM: Laurel and Hardy and The Three Stooges could learn something from our disorganized organization in lining up in two straight, balanced lines before actually stepping into the boat. Eighteen completely clueless novices with bright yellow life jackets and paddles pulled and jostled each other forward and backward in line.

11:15AM: We finally jumped into the suspiciously flimsy and nervously old wooden dragon boat. Somehow we manage to accomplish this feat without tipping and without sinking.

11:17AM: With a fellow teacher’s ten-year-old cousin manning the oversized drum, we practiced the highly complicated paddling procedure while not knocking anyone overboard or unconscious. Dragon boat racing is literally sprinting in a canoe. The object is to paddle as hard as possible as fast as possible. Ideally, the drummer keeps the beat to let the paddlers know when to dip the oars, but in reality we were all at the mercy of the person four inches in front of us and four inches behind.

11:28AM: DRAGON BOAT RACE BEGAN!

11:36AM: The race ended.

We didn’t win, but the German team was really scary and big. While I do not have professional dragon boat racing in my future, the event was another in a long line of quirky Chinese adventures.

Postal Penance

When I was twelve and spent most of my free time falling out of trees, I never thought a time would come when I would long for the simplistic chores of doing dishes and racking leaves…

Then I became an adult. Suddenly, I had to deal with flat tires and health insurance benefits...

Then I came to China…

If you can image Alice stepping into Wonderland to find the Mad Hatter is her financial advisor organizing her 401k and the Queen of Hearts is the medical expert offering the same cure for every malady, you would have a decent understanding of the lack of rationality that accompanies even the most mundane task in China.

One chore in particular will be the source of nightmares for years after I leave the Middle Kingdom: the Chinese post office.

After lugging twenty pounds of silk scarves and wooden chopsticks down the uneven and mo-ped-infested sidewalks, I step into the Chinese Post Office. For a country that does not support organized religion, the dark, stone-floored alcove of the Post Office could almost be considered hallowed ground. And I am the mischievous alter boy approaching the disapproving priest after slipping AC/DC lyrics in the hymnbooks. I receive that warm of reception.

I drag (or shove across the slippery floor) the over-stuffed IKEA bag, and the effort puts me in the submissive position of practically bowing to the scolding and sweating post office worker glowering from behind his barred window.

Even in the States I’m completely oblivious to how the ratio of bulk weight to plane fuel costs affects delivery rates and the current state of transportation routes in Nebraska. Whether my package ends at the proper location in a fanfare of logistical efficiency or whether the withering remains of cookies I was trying to send to the next town is left jostling in the back of a donkey cart somewhere in the Balkan region, I leave to the whims of the post office worker. My policy is to answer “yes” until the security questions are reached, and then I answer “no”. I don’t ask questions. I don’t try to think for myself.

When I step to the Chinese Post Office counter, the self-determined underappreciated worker rattles off a series of questions in Chinese. Even in English I would still have to translate the comments into carrier-service-ignorance English. “Yes” and “No” answers no longer mask my incompetence because I suddenly have options like “Air” or “Land and Sea”.

The customs declaration comes next. China doesn’t ask whether anything dangerous or illegal is in my package; they look. The pre-packed, taped, and wrapped boxes of the US postal service is not possible in China. Besides the postal worker going through my keepsakes, all the Chinese citizens fortunate or unfortunate enough to be in the post office that day get to inspect exactly how many cashmere coats and corny Chinese t-shirts I’m sending home as I transfer from the IKEA bag to the provided teal box. Folding is definitely not practiced at the Chinese Post Office.

After my box is wrapped in enough tape that it would survive a nuclear apocalypse, the alter boy scolding comes with the price. Eighty percent of Wal-Mart comes from China, and Achaean battleships and Spanish Armada combined could not possibly rival the commercial Sino-American network, yet many silk purchases at the fabric market dissolve as I hand over a large stack of pinkish bills.

I practically skip out of the Post Office like I’ve just been released from a falsely accused prison sentence, yet in my back of my mind I know that yet another dreaded chore is waiting: the Chinese bank.

Synchronized Kleptomania

I brought it on myself. On Friday the student who managed to steal the dry eraser markers from my fleece pocket and put them in my hood complained because someone put paper balls in his hoody. I told him it was payback, the class had a laugh, and we kept going with our lesson.

The problem arose when the majority of the class, who did not know about their classmate’s pickpocket achievement, started to scheme. When collectively focused on a single task, I fully believe my students have the ability to solve the American national debt crisis, eradicate worldwide illiteracy, or detail a step-by-step process for colonizing mars in a color-coded, cross disciplinary, alien culture sensitive plan.

Unfortunately for humanity, the students only really come together to pool their deeply creative genius for one purpose: to prank their gullible English teacher.

The reference on Friday got them strategizing, and they put their plan into action today.

Completely obvious, I gathered my grammar book, literature book, grade book, notepad, dry erase markets, red pen (for grading), blue pen (for writing names since writing names in red ink is taboo in China), office keys, “Mad Bluebird” thermos with cold water, and my camera and headed for class.

Their plan wouldn’t have been as successful if I didn’t take my camera. Since I was taking pictures of all the students individually for a creative project we are developing, I didn’t keep my eye on my supplies as well as I should have.

As an ode to earlier, the first item that went missing was the dry erase markers. After retrieving them from a giggling student, I turned around to find the eraser gone. Students like to throw the board erasers behind the air conditioner unit. As I was checking behind the Aircon, the eraser magically reappeared on my desk.

I went to point out something in the literature book and found it gone. The book weights twenty pounds so how did they get it off my desk so stealthily! I checked with the hoody culprit. He just chuckled deviously and held up his empty hands. The front row was also clean. Somehow the book made it all the way to the back of the room.

After fetching the book, I went back to the front of the room and reached for my bird cup, but the thermos wasn’t there. My camera bag popped up before I realized the case was missing except instead of the camera on the inside, I found an IOU.

The students then launched Phrase II. “Are you missing something?” asked the kid who cried when he got a ‘C’ on his math test.

“Is this your pen?” said the student who begged for a copy of the Bill of Rights even though I told her it wasn’t going to be on the test.

They were all in on it!

I thought I was in the clear when the jokester class left and my next English class entered until the Taiwanese student who will either be a famous comedic actor or an infamous bank robber approached me with a solemn face. He stuck his arm out in front of me with my keys dangling from his fist.

One of my officemates had been in the office been periods so I never realized that I didn’t haven’t my keys. The students had handed them off in the hallway during the break.

That means I was facing a cross class prank!

Of course, the second class wasn’t as gifted of thieves. One of the tifecta didn’t realize that my thermos actually had water in it. When she passed it over her head, she turned it upside down and was drenched.

This effort of theirs completely upstages their April Fool’s Day joke when they slowly but uniformly moved their desk forward until I was squashed against the dry erase board.

I’ll have the final laugh though. The pictures I took today are for a presentation I’m showing both classes. I took about five pictures of each student, and I’m going to use the goofiest, most awkward picture of each of the mini miscreants.

Hehe hehe he…