In Chengdu

We arrived in Chengdu on time and the driver from The Loft Hostel had no trouble finding us. While we, technically, only registered for two nights, we got closer to three nights of use. This is because once we got in to the room, we both, promptly, went to bed. While lights out, on the train, was at 9:30pm; things only started to quiet down about 10:30pm. Even then, there was the constant boarding and disembarking of passengers through the night. Then, about 4am, the crew started bumping around. So, when the lights went back on at 4:30am, most people were already up and awake. This made for a pretty fitful night of sleep.

After getting properly rested Zeneta and I got up and went for a walk to the Peoples Park. This park featured a memorial to the 1911 revolution and is a major attraction of Chengdu.

We spent a couple of hours walking through the park and seeing most of what it featured. I say most, not all, because as we were leaving we were approached by Tray Lee, an independent guide (or, from his card, Cultural Interpreter & Ticket Agent) , who pointed out to us that we had missed the Bonsai Garden. We then spoke to him for a while longer and he made an effort to spark our interest in the Sichuan Opera.

Of course, he was selling his services as a guide to the opera. The opera was something that Michelle and I had wanted to do on our previous trip to Chengdu; but, we ran out of time. This was still something I wanted to do and Tray Lee's offered price was less than the price of the trip offered by the hostels (90RMB verses 120RMB). He added to the pitch by claiming that the performance we would go to was the afternoon performance, not the evening performance He claimed that the evening performance was intended for tourists, while the afternoon show was for the Chinese. He stated that he would sit behind us and insure that we fully understood the performance.

I was noncommittal in the park; but, when I returned to the hostel I did a search on him on the Internet and found a lot of good testimonials. I then sent him a text message, which he promptly replied to, and we were set with an activity for the next afternoon.

Normally the hostels have their own restaurants; however, this ones was under construction. So, Zeneta and I set out to find the restaurant that the hostel was trying to steer us toward , The Woodfish. Because of the large amount of construction going on, most of the street signs were down and while the directions included the instruction to go down four streets before turning, at one point, the question has to be asked; precisely, what constitutes a street? Is it a street if it wide enough for a person the squeeze through, what about wide enough for two people to pass? Possibly, it is a street if it is wide enough for a car; but, does it need to be wide enough for a car to pass another. Of course, street can mean any of these things, depending on the mood of the person who is deciding what a street is.

As I am sure you can see, we did not find The Woodfish on that night. That was not a problem. we went into a cafe that, surprisingly enough, had an English menu. Other than having the names, or brief descriptions, of the food in English the cafe was entirely Chinese and served a variety of local dishes. I ordered several items and we did not finish all of them. I have to say that some of them we only tasted. All done though, it was still less than the bill would have been at a western restaurant (20 RMB). We than headed back and turned in early, seeing as we had a full schedule for the next day.

To Chengdu

(Pictures will come later, I am writing, and posting this, in a Hostel In Xian)

Zeneta and I are finally on our vacation. We started a bit late and the first leg did not go as planned; however, it worked out. And, for a bit more information, I am writing this on my new toy.

Zeneta and I had listed a number of items that we were interested in doing at the beginning of winter vacation. However, there were a number of limiting factors, Then, both I and the
dog were sick. The dog being sick is an issue because I was not willing to leave Gao Jing in a position where she was trying to both deal with a sick puppy and prepare for her exams. My illness was just a cold; but, I was not interested in traveling while under the weather.

once we were all better Zeneta went to get tickets. The problem was that the tickets were not available so I quickly came up with two alternate itineraries. The first alternate was a no-go; but the second worked.

The plan was to go to Chengdu then Xian. The reason for Chengdu was simple. It was to see the pandas. Getting to Chengdu involved taking the D train to Hankou, or, what most people think of when they think of Wuhan. The second leg was a twenty five hour ride from there to Chengdu.

The stop in Hankou was an eleven hour layover. We had some concern because, while we were coming off of a D train, the next leg was hard sleeper. Very simply, we did not want to spend the eleven hours in a hard waiting room. Well, I had no real trouble getting them, the functionaries at the train station, to let us in the soft waiting room, which was, albeit poorly, heated. This lasted for several hours. we used the, clean, if Chinese, facilities, enjoyed our tea, I plugged in my PDA and charged it while reading a book on it.

Then, about midnight, the soft waiting room closed and they sent us to another room. This room was not bad and was not excessively crowded, like the hard waiting room would have been; however, like the hard waiting room, it was very cold. To put things in perspective, it was well below freezing (apx. -2c) and all the rooms, but the soft waiting room, do not have doors. They open directly to the outside. As stated, we were cold.

It was a bit of a relief to get on the train. At least it was heated. Both Zeneta and I had top bunks, which I have talked about before. Further, we were on opposite ends of the car. However, we both, quickly, went to sleep.

As usual, the trip itself was uneventful. The next day the lights were turned off early, about 9:30pm, because Chengdu was the end of the line and it was scheduled for 5:30am.

dinner... with extra smoke

I realize that this is a bit out of sequence; however, seeing as I am back in Xinyang I decided to write about it for a bit before returning to a recount of our short vacation.

It is still snowing here; so, that makes about two weeks of snowing. Of course my bicycle and scooter are under a bump in the snow. The result of this is that I do not expect to use either of them in the immediate future.

Yesterday I got a call from the office informing me that I had a package and, of course, they also wanted me to come by to pay the power and water bill from last month (apx. 368 RMB). So, I bundled up and put the sweater, harness, and leash on Wa Dou and walked over. They have impressive bars on the floor that the Foreign Relations Department has occupied, of the new building. However, the latch requires no key on the inside and with just bars, it is a simple matter of reaching through and opening the lock.

Well, the package was the Ubuntu http://www.ubuntu.com/ disks that I had requested. Ubuntu is a popular, free, distribution of Linux. I requested the disks on their web page and they sent them to me at no cost. Now that I have a second university computer here in the apartment, I was thinking of trying to see if I could get it to connect to the network.

After that I wandered across the street to the café. One can quickly see that even the Chinese consider this to be cold because a lot of the shops that cover the sidewalks, bike lanes, and spill out in to the street, are gone. Of course, the ice is pretty thick, making walking a bit rough.

When I went toward the café, the first thing I noticed that not all the doors were open. Normally, in China, the doors are left wide open for air. The next thing I noticed, when entering, was the fire. This building has no fireplace. Instead of a fireplace a fire had been built in a large, low, metal pan and consisted of a couple large lumps of coal with wood put around them. No, there is no chimney, this is part of the reason that the doors need to be left open, even in winter. I still smell the smoke...

It is times like this that one regrets not having a camera with them. I also noticed, while eating my meal, a mother pulling her children down the side walk on a wooden sled. After finishing, having some food prepared for Zeneta, and arranging some deliveries to my flat, Wa Dou and I wandered back.

End of fall/winter 2007 Semester

The semester is now at a close. Some of the teachers have left, several to never return. Zeneta and I are planning our vacation. And, the snow has started to fall.

This is pretty much the end of the semester. I have given my finals and am, nearly, done grading papers and submitting my grades. The final was pretty subjective; so, what I am grading on is: first, did they answer the question, and second, can I make any sense of the answer. This can be phrased as, did they clearly state a position and support it. This is being graded quite loosely because the Chinese method of education assumes that there is only a right answer. It is not necessary to say why it is right; because, it is right.

This, of course, tests if they understood the question. Because I sometimes speak in obtuse circles the questions were reviewed by several teachers, all of whom used the same questions. We did this to insure that the questions were simple and clear and that we, the foreign teachers, were providing some level of consistency.

I also did something that I have done with some of my classes before. It is a much harder assignment than it seems, both for me and the students, because it tests reading, comprehension, vocabulary, and speaking.

I gave them, in pairs of two students to one story, newspaper shorts. These are short two to three paragraph stories from China Daily, the official English language news paper of China. The assignment is to discuss the newspaper story with their partner, using as much English as possible, and prepare to tell the class about the story. I will then find a way to force both partners to speak during the presentation, usually by asking a question or by just asking if there is anything more that the other partner can tell me about the story.

This is a lot of work for me because I, first, must know enough about each of the, over fifty, news stories to both ask questions and lead the presentation; let alone know if they have interpreted it correctly. I must also move to all of the pairs of students (and with classes that often exceed eighty students, this involves a lot of moving) and check to see if they have any questions about the article or the words in it. I then put some of the words on the board, really a projector, as it is easier for the students, in the back, to read. Those words, or phrases, such as, "stock trade," and ,"obstetrics," would then be explained to the class. While I realize that, ideally, the articles, at this point in the class, should not include any new educational material, the use of authentic material, for exam purposes, almost guarantees that there will be some new words, or uses of words.

There were a couple of surprises when I used this exercise. This is the first time I have used it as a general exercise; as a result, I was not prepared for some of the issues that arose. The first thing that surprised me was that the Chinese students have no sense of world, or even national, geography. By this, what I mean is that the students were, at many times, unable to even identify the names of the Chinese Provinces and Autonomous Regions as being places in China. World geography left the students batting a total zero; they simply have no idea where the countries of the world are (on a different exercise, when I asked some students where Europe was, they had pointed to Canada). I was told, by a student several years advanced from them, that this is a result of the "memorize it and forget it" approach to education in China.

The second interesting thing from this exercise was what they were trying to read into the news stories. This is also a result of the educational system and the nature of reading material for students, in China. The students kept trying to tell me what they should learn from the story in the form of a message or moral.

Almost immediately after delivering his last exam, Collin Brown, the very experienced teacher from Australia, left China for the last time. His wife, Bronee had already left, in order to complete her M.A. and the physical separation was unworkable for them.

He informed us of this the Sunday before he left, before church services. We then arranged for a going away dinner for him on Thursday. Of course, we also put in dibs for his stuff. About all I needed, that he had purchased here In China, was his laser printer. Arrangements were also made to donate several items, such as the TV and DVD player he had purchased, to the local Lutheran church.

On Thursday we all mt at the restaurant, near the East Gate, where we like to eat. In particular, Collin likes the sweet and sour pork and we have been told that it is made with chicken, not pig. The cook makes a lot of other food we like, including candied bananas. In general, it is a popular place with the westerners; even if it is a hassle to get to.

Before going to the last dinner with Collin, Zeneta, Gao Jing, He Zhi Qing , and I went to pick up my suit. Before going to the tailor, Zeneta needed to go by the Veterinarians, with Jing, for Wa Dou. As a result, I waited in the flat, with He Zhi Qing for Zeneta to call us and say that she was dome at the Vet. Well, she never did call. It seems that she had, again, left her phone behind. As a result we got to the tailor well after she and Jing had arrived.

So, instead of just picking up my suit, I was told that she had commissioned three dresses to be made. The owner of the shop still wants me to help his son work on his English over the winter vacation and has offered to make me a free suit if I can do this. His son is attending a university in another city; however, he will be back for a month as the schools release all of their students. I have told him that I will wait and see if I am in town.

At that point we caught a cab back to the restaurant and were in time to meet all of the others. Unlike the cab Mark and Joe took earlier in the same year, our cab did not get stuck, while passing a truck, in an open manhole on the sidewalk that the driver did not see because it was covered with water. There were so many things being done wrong in that last sentence that it elicited an, "only in China."

I am not sure if I will be in town because Zeneta and I have not finalized our plans for the holiday. My travels this year will be a lot less than they were last year, when i traveled with Michelle. On Zeneta's list of, "must do," things is to see the Panda Bears (xiong mao). This is best done at the Giant Panda Research and Breeding Facility in Chengdu. She also wants to go to Hong Kong (Xiang Gang) to see both Disneyland and the LDS Temple (who we have no way of contacting). However, Getting to these places is further complicated by train schedules and Wa Dou's illness.

I did not want to leave him with the girls when he was sick and that leaves us trying to get our tickets at the last moment. Further, for train rides that will take more than a day, I am a bit insistent that we travel in sleeper cars. This has left us facing a shortage of transportation. Today Zeneta and Jing will go back and try to get tickets in a manner that will do what she wants.

There is the final little thing that it has been snowing all weekend. Collin was worried that it would start snowing before he got to Wuhan, on Friday afternoon, as Mr. Gao, the head of the college was driving him there. However, it did not. It started on Friday and continued through the weekend. Wa Dou is not all to excited about the snow. He was already unhappy with the cold and the snow is, to him nothing but cold in a more tangible form.

New Year parties

Following the Christmas parties, there were several New Years parties. Keep in mind that while Western New Year has already taken place, Chinese New Year is yet to come. What is more, the school will be closed down on Chinese New Year.

As a result, we had a couple of New Years parties. The first was with the administration for XYNU and the foreign affairs office. The second was at Hau Rui.

The dinner with the administration was at a restaurant that I had been to before; however, it turned out that most of the other foreign teachers had never been to it before. As usual we went to a large room with several others. About half way through I realized that Ju Hai Ying, Mrs. Jhang, and another person who had come with us were not present. I discovered that they were eating in another room and, considering that some of our party had left, heaving plenty of room for them, found them and asked them to join us.

I ended up eating something that did not set well with me and spent the next week with a sour stomach. These things happen on occasion...

Later in the week several of us attended a New Years celebration at Hau Rui. It was in H2, the new building, on the fifth floor in the new sports room. Last year, the place that this room is now, was an empty, open air, patio.

The master of ceremonies was one of the English teachers.

Of course, the head administrators needed to speak.

The teachers chior provided the singing.

And, there was dancing.

There were also games.

The goal of this particular game was to push hard enough to pop the balloon without knocking your partner over. Near the end, we, the foreign teachers were asked to go up and sing a song for the other teachers. In all it was a good time; however, several of the western teachers were glad when it ended, simply because it was getting cold ( remember, no heating).