A Year of Firsts

Everything in China has been a little bit of an adventure and stufffed with firsts from first time being hit by a moped to the first time wading through buckets of live frogs and turtles in a Chinese grocery store. The end of my tenure as an English teacher in Shanghai (and my temporary disappearance from the blogging world) is the beginning of a five-week trek through China with two of my closest childhood friends.

I never realized what I have already grown accustom to until I saw my friends experience it for the first time: the hard beds; the power structure of Right of Way going from biggest to smallest so pedestrians are defintely at the bottom of the food chain; the poetry-worthy deliciousness of street food like xiao long bao; the distaste for forming lines and fondness for shoving; and the absolute insanity of Shanghaiese taxi drivers.

After 50 hours in Shanghai (in a hectic whirlwind that they probably don't remember in their jetlagged stuper) we headed to Yangshuo. Completely bypassing the city of Guilin, I led my friends to one of those odd places commmon in China: a modern art sculpture garden in the middle of nowhere among the unusual mountains of the area. The park was completely empty except for us and dozens of diligently working gardeners.

The village of Yanghshuo has some of the most breathtaking scenery in all China. Tree-speckled mountains pop out of the earth like multi-shaped mushrooms while every sliver of semi-flat land is used for argriculture. I've been here before, and I love the slow pace of the countryside so I arranged a stay in a blink-and-you-will miss it village outside Yangshuo. My friends knew we were staying at a 'farm, but I'm not sure they were expecting freely roaming chickens, sun-baked brick structures that were identical to the home the chickens picked to roost, and wood everything that never fit or closed quite right. Oh, and mosquito nets draped over the beds. The inns were rustic, and I loved it though we weren't expecting an additional cabin-mate in the form of a four-inch long hunter spider, which would rival Roadrunner in a foot race.

Yangshuo morphed into a number of firsts for me the second time in the area. I went rock climbing for the first time. I spend the majority of my time hugging the mountain face as tightly as a sailing mast of a hurricane tossed ship. My legs are covered with bruises to prove it. I did strike up a conversation with a New Zealander while I was stuck about seventy seet up. Turns out he was also a teacher in Shanghai. Funny where you meet people. Regardless of his advice though, I still couldn't get pass the slight overhang above me and slipped. I figured I shouldn't let the professionals holding my rope get too bored since they seem to be able to manage their duties of anchoring the rope and talking on their cellphones at the same time.

In the evening we took a sunset hotair balloon trip, which was the first for both of my friends. We had a little trouble taking off as we hit and almost knocked over a structure on stilts in a rice patty. We also had six people crammed into a basket that could comfortably fit four so that our balloon operator sat on the edge of the basket (half the time also on his cell phone). In addition, the burners were very low so that everytime the operator turned them on, I felt the little curls on the top of my head melting. We were told we had the second best balloon operator in China so I wasn't worried.

Eventually we did make it completely over the top of Moon Mountain and witnessed some of the most unbelievable views. If Doctor Seuss and the location selector of Lord of the Rings combined talent, they might have the right amount of quirk and eye for beauty to create the army of droopy, pointy, and floppy mountains in Yangshuo.

I've ridden in a hotair balloon before, but this experience was the first time we almost took out a water buffalo when we came to a bouncing stop in its muddy pasture.

With our first leg of our trip in China successfully completed, we are leaving the countryside of Yangshuo and heading to the sever, middle-of-nowhere Chinese countryside of Longji Rice Terrace. The rest of the trip will be all first for me.

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…

Video Diary Tiger Leaping Gorge

Last night after my mandatory weekly massage (only in China), I decided to go through the often spastic and always amateurish videos that I shot while trekking Tiger Leaping Gorge in Yunnan. I learned a couple of important facts:

1. I have absolutely no future as a videographer
2. I sound like a 14 year old girl on film and say “So” and “Now” why too much
3. Ryan Seacreast’s doomed first season sidekick is a sharper commentator than I am.

Still, the videos are somewhat amusing and do capture the challenges and quarks of adventuring in a place light-years from Disney’s Epcot.

I will say that I got better as I went along, but if you experience vertigo or seasickness, you might not want to watch. Heckle at your leisure. Note: As part of the Great Firewall of China, I cannot view these videos on the blocked blogspot site. I've been told that they appear in backwards order, so watch the last one first. I will switch them when I find roughly 14 hours to wait for them to load.

Baby Mania

Babies! Everywhere are babies! I knew coming to China would be a huge cultural experiment for me; however, I didn’t quite expect to leapfrog life milestones in my personal social ladder.

I hear rumors of people my age actually married and starting families, but the vast majority of my friends are spouse or significant other free. Most of my closest friends are still on the “Look, I just bought matching dishes” level of their game of life. A few are experimenting with cohabitation, but that degree is as far as it goes; no little pink or blue pegs are in the back of their little plastic car (refer to Life board game if confused).

I venture to China and suddenly babies are among us. One of my coworkers has a one and a half year old, another has a one year old, and a pair of married teachers just had their first child two weeks ago. With the surge of diapers, squeaky toys, and incidences of Peek-a-Boo also comes previously unknown baby decorum.

Baby Wisdom #1: Baby’s First Birthday is a right of passage for the parents even more than the oblivious baby. Guest should bring cameras and be prepared to capture every even potentially adorable moment even if all that is successfully snapped is images of baby with his finger up his nose and parents making odd horse lips while speaking to the baby.

Baby Wisdom #2: Beer is an acceptable addition to Baby’s First Birthday and is greatly beneficial for keeping the non-married guys from bolting in terror in a baby-overdose.

Baby Wisdom #3: Do not bring anything around the baby that you actually want to keep: soccer balls, shining objects, keys… What baby wants, baby keeps.

Baby Wisdom #4: Baby showers are like reliving my eighth birthday all over again. The party was equipped with matching plates and napkins, pastel colored decorations, and party games. I was left wondering where the Strawberry Short Cake of my youth was hiding.

Baby Wisdom #5: Paper plates are a constant source of entertainment and embarrassment like when a room full of thirty woman are asked to place the plate on their heads and blindly draw baby. (Wisdom learned here: avoid paper plates.)

Baby Wisdom #6: A newly discovered way to pick out a “keeper” is to throw a baby in the mix with a Wii and see which ones captivates his attention. When the new parents brought their baby girl to a BBQ last week, most of the guys were too absorbed in the Wii to notice if even a tornado ripped through the campus. The girls swarmed the baby for the first viewing…I should say all the girls and one guy. Of course, he and his fiancé are already considered the next parents-to-be up to plate.

Baby Wisdom #7: The only motivation you need to never EVER want to have children is watching Ricki Lake’s documentary The Business of Being Born. With all the talk about babies lately, four of us though it would be an interesting way to spend an evening. I watched the horror movie The Descent the night before and think that movie is less terrifying. When footage of a C-Section flashed on screen, three of us reacted more violently than during any slasher flick. We screamed and covered our eyes.

I was expecting culture shock and unknown nuances when deciding to sojourn to China, but what I didn’t expect was that part of that social imbalance would come in pint sizes with dimply cheeks and contagious giggles. Babies…

Waterlogged

As soon as the weather began to warm, a new inflection struck the middle schoolers. Every once in while a student walked passed with wet clothes clinging to him while his squeaky tennis shoes left little pools in his footprints.

Of course when questioned on the cause of his recent sogginess, the student always swears that he (it’s always a he) was sweating while playing basketball, spilled a drink, or fell in a puddle and rolled…repeatedly. The waterlogged students keep to the unspoken code of adolescence and would declare any farfetched possibility but never the truth.

I stumbled across near contamination in March. I typically return to the middle school early after lunch. As I cut through a small stripe of trees between the building and the basketball courts, I heard the distinct voice of a middle school boy saying, “Wait! It’s a teacher!”

The middle school students are near constantly planning, performing, or covering up some sort of devious activity; I just needed to figure out what they schemed this time.

I kept walking casually until I reached the corner of the sidewalk. I paused behind a tree and waited for the students to emerge from their hiding place. Before long I saw a middle schooler’s head peeking out from the third story window. Without warning, a red water balloon appeared cradled in his hand. It hung suspended for a second before plummeting to the sidewalk nearly taking a local school student out in the process.

I raced into the director’s office to inform the assistant director, who is the Mr. Wilson to the collective Middle School student body’s Dennis the Menace. I have never seen an administrator run that fast. His hatred for the water balloon skirmishes rank just a little below the teacher inspired rubber band war of earlier in the semester. By the time he reached the third floor, the culprits were gone.

Yesterday the scattering of spontaneous soakings turned pandemic. With only one period left to go in the week and all their monthly tests over, the boys of my larger English class decided to commandeer the garden hose behind the cafeteria for an all-out water war.

If Shanghai runs low on water in the next week, the officials just have to sop it out of my moderately submerged classroom after the teenage sponges decided to ring all their clothes out in the middle of English class.

One hyper-prepared and over-protected homeroom teacher brought clothes for her student to change into while two other students fought for the prime spot by the Aircon to dry off in the breeze. My British student begged to be allowed to stand for class in his thick British accent because his jeans were soaked and he couldn’t sit down. Friends lent jackets so their compatriots wouldn’t freeze in the air conditioning. Shirts, shorts, and boxers (yikes) were draped over chairs and empty desks. Combs came out so all the boys could fix their previously meticulously spiked and gelled hair.

Fortunately, since the students took their English monthly test the day before, we were just watching a movie. Still, my English class crumbled to summer camp status because of something as unassuming as water.