Walk the Walll

This past Friday, we joined with our foreign friends and local volunteers in Hengyang on a walk across the city to raise money for orphaned and disabled children in China. We were told to be at the starting point at 7:00 a.m. My team-mate and I, having remembered waiting around the previous year, decided we'd go a little later. Good thing too since the walk did not start until about 8:45. (See people standing around)．　

About 2 of us were assigned to each child. We were to encourage them, give them water, and be attuned to if they needed to rest for a bit. I was matched with an 11 or 12 year old girls (let's call her Raven) that has a lot of energy but is not able to talk.　

She was really excited at the beginning of the walk and kept trying to let go of my hand in order to hold everyone else's hand. "She's really obedient," the carers all reassured me in Chinese. But she made me a little nervous because it felt like she was trying to "escape." After about one and a half hours of being the sole person responsible for Raven(the other partner left me,) I recruited some help and was able to walk freely and take a few photos of the walk.
A few moments before I took this photo (above), the man and the lady in the tights get-up behind him were both snapping photos of us foreigners. I was starting to get annoyed so I pulled out my camera and returned the favor. The lady was embarrassed, the man ate it up as you can see.

Dorm visit

There’s been some hints that a blog without photos is simply not that interesting. I personally don’t agree, but I’m not going to let my thoughts get in the way of posting a few photos if it means people will continue to be interested in life here. This entire semester has been so exciting in many ways that I haven’t done a good job of conveying it here probably because I’m busy with the excitement of it all that I don’t always have time to digest it here.

But let me digest with you all for a moment. The past 3 days, we’ve been on a holiday to celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival. On this festival, people give each other moon cakes, eat round foods like pamello, lotus flower, and jujubes, have a big meal with family, and take homemade lanterns outside to look at the moon. For the foreigners, the result of the holiday is usually a fridge full of moon cakes. But this year, I found a way around this unfavorable result. I asked some students after class what I should do with all the extra moon cakes I received. “Share them with us!” they responded. And so I did. I set a time to visit some of the girl students in the dormitory and told them I’d bring my leftover mooncakes.Among about 8 girls, they ate 5 decent sized moon cakes. I was impressed.

As you can see from this photo, the way to eat the moon cake, is to cut it up into small pieces, inserting a toothpick into each piece. In this way, a person can try several different flavors of mooncakes.

Some other highlights of the dormitory visit included looking at some photos from their recent climb to the Mountain and listening to one girl play Chinese songs on her guitar while the others sang along.

As I　headed out of their dorm room and down the stairs, I noticed that about 6 pair of feet were following me. "In Chinese custom, we escort our guest to the door,” said one of the students. "Okay, that's kind of you," I responded. And even though some of them were in their PJ's, they even walked me to the gate of their dormitory. "Alright, that's good enough" I said. You have treated me very kindly.” And indeed they had. They had　whole-hearted welcomed me into their dwelling place, invited me to come again, and insisted that if I ever needed to buy anything in Hengyang, I should call them.　

Chinese Apartment

Since getting back this school year, I have added a few additions to my apartment. It's taken me awhile to get these pictures hung, but the result is so satisfactory. Whenever I open my door now and see the photos, I feel as though I'm entering a true home.

This second addition is a little herb garden right on the window sill of my kitchen. The herbs include cilantro, parsley, basil, and chives. You can see that when this photo was taking, the basil was really kicking some butt. Since then, the other herbs have also really sprouted. When I see the pots with their green vegetation, I feel the pioneer spirit within. Although I may never use these herbs, it's so fun to have real green plants in the house.

I also have a small wish list for my apartment. The first is for the lighting. I'd really like bright lighting, but the brighter bulb does not fit into the light fixture, so I have to use duck tape to keep the light from putting too much weight on the fixture. (duck tape has a limited life in this humidity.)

I'd also really love it if I did not have to flush my toilet by pulling up on a chopstick . Up until now, my team-mate has helped me fix the toilet, but the problems have become too serious for even her. The toilet is now having internal problems allowing a small amount of water to constantly trickle within the bowl. In Hengyang, it's difficult to find someone who knows how to fix western toilets since most of the toilets here are squatties. But I believe in miracles, and I will not lose hope for what my toilet can become.

Okay, I don't want to come across as complaining about my apartment. I'm balancing the good with the bad. In general, I feel so blessed by this apartment.
We talked about Home this past week in our sophomore classes. I wrote that for me, home is where I can let my hair down and put my feet up. Here in this apartment, I can very comfortably do both.

When the Roll is called up Yonder

Grandpa, today a thought of you made me dig out the hymnal and sing a few songs of praise. I can still hear your voice, strong, clear, beautiful. Your mandolin snugly in in front of you, your harmonica propped just so. You've practiced the music, you've rehearsed the words, you've tuned the instruments, it's your time to let the Father shine. To open, you might start with "What a friend we have in Jesus," and instruct the audience to join you for the chorus. Then of course, you would share about your two best friends, Jesus and Grandma. And you would tell the audience that when you leave earthly friends, you don't have to worry because you know the mighty friend is waiting for you up yonder. Which would lead you into the number, "When the Roll is called up Yonder." Well Grandpa, it looks like you already beat us to yonder, and I'm trusting that all your mornings are breaking, eternal, bright and fair.

A post about JAM

Sometimes when I miss home, I like to eat jam. The connection between jam and home is a bit vague, but I think it's because of all the delicious strawberry rhubarb jam that mom makes. Since rhubarb grows like a weed in our hometown, we never have a shortage of it and keep a stash in our freezer. When we run out of jam, we just make some more by stewing frozen rhubarb, sugar, and jello mix in a ridiculously over-sized pot.

We will order!

Last night, our team invited some of our teacher friends out to a restaurant to have a meal. Since we had done the inviting, we also planned to do the treating (as in we would eat the bill.) With this in mind, we wanted to make sure we got some of our favorite dishes at this higher scale restaurant. At the beginning, it looked like we would be able to order without any outside influence. My team-mate and I hovered by the door with the torso sized picture menu. We had spotted a couple of options right when our Chinese friend waved us over and said, "Let me help." "No!" I screamed in my head. I was selfishly not ready to sacrifice this chance to eat good food in exchange for eating donkey, frog, and other strange spicy meat. I realized at that moment just how selfish I was. What does it really matter if I have to eat ambiguous meat products for one more meal? It was a humbling realization.
Fortunately though, through another passing of the menu and some aggression on my part, we were able to reclaim ownership over the ordering. We successfully ordered a few sweet dishes and some mild vegetable dishes. And, our friend had only ordered 2 dishes that were questionable: pig stomach and chainsaw chicken, both of which were not too bad. He got his pig stomach, we got our sweet, fried bread. I guess we all won, yet I am still haunted. I'm haunted by life here. I'm haunted by how life here draws out my baseness.

Letters to people in Chinese Supermarkets:

Dear Cosmetic Floorworkers,
Just because I stand and look at a product for longer than 5 seconds, does not mean that I want to a) know more about the product, b) hear about a cheaper product or c) have you apply some of said product to my arm.

Dear Beef Hackers,
Your stainless steel table stands in the middle of sausage racks and fruit stands. You chop ribs and divide stomach on demand. I wonder if anyone has ever explained to management the benefits and necessity of refrigerating raw meat? I watch as the meat turns a brighter shade of red under the Hunan humidity and my passing gaze. Today, I think I will buy chicken, frozen chicken.

Dear Fish Tossers,
When you toss fish from one smelly tank to another in the middle of the grocery store, the water from the diving fish splashes out and hits unexpecting customers in awkward places. Is this tank water clean? If we look at some of the fish already floating belly up, we might suppose otherwise.

Dear Pig Foot Torchers,
Who did you double cross to get such an unfortunate job at the supermarket. Who thought up the job of torching the legs of pigs? What is the purpose? And why must you do this job in the corner on the floor in the supermarket?

Dear workers who weigh vegetables,
You are not getting paid enough. The groups of 20 to 30 people all waiting, yelling at you, pushing each other, shoving stalks of green onions, bags of apples, and bunches of cauliflower unto your scale. They are all waiting, but not in anything that resembles a line.

Dear Chinese Grannie,
If you have enough energy to push me in order to cut in front of me and my friend in the check-out line, then you have enough energy to move your frail little body over to another line or to get behind us and wait your turn. And in case you think that because we are foreign faces, we are mute and incompetent, you are wrong as you found out yesterday.

Dear Chinese Supermarket,
You can keep your yogurt, butter, Maxwell instant coffee, chicken breasts, Nestle soft-batch cookies, Italian noodles, and peanut butter. For all the great things you offer us, sometimes I would do better to ignore your temptations and stay far away.

A Lesson in Chinese Ideology

About 3 days ago, I met a Chinese friend of mine at McDonald’s. This friend is very interested in all things related to politics, government, and philosophy and is studying for his Masters in Beijing. Somehow, right from the beginning of our conversation, he started to share about the Cultural changes that happened nearly 50 years ago in China. I was surprised by his openness in acknowledging some of the bad things that happened during that time. However, he clearly articulated his respect for several ideologies that Chairman Mao brought to the Chinese people. Specifically, he respected the following three beliefs:

1. “People can conquer nature.”
“As humans, we can change nature by building dams and rerouting rivers,” said my friend, “therefore to a certain extent, we can control nature.” My friend admitted that while people cannot always conquer nature (as when floods and earthquakes devastate whole villages and cities), he pointed out that it’s the spirit of the belief that is encouraging.
2. “Truth has to be found in practice.” or “To experience is to believe.”
This belief was used during the cultural changes to rationalize sending university students into the fields to learn the “truth” of what it meant to be a peasant.
3. “We should respect facts.” (Ideology as inferior to facts)
In response to this, I asked my friend if the facts lie to us or if they change with time? My friend emphasized that sometimes the truth is hidden behind the facts for example when the facts only refer to a certain time or place. This conversation led us to the discussion of truth where my friend pointed out “There is no absolute truth.” It took me awhile to explain to him how that sentence on its own could not be a logical statement, but we got there.
After we had talked about these heady topics and several other off-shoots of them for almost 2 hours, it was time to go. “But we haven’t even talked about life,” said my friend. But for me, I had learned more about life and perspective of Chinese people than I often learn in an entire semester.

Top 9, Bottom 3

Sometimes, I have so many life events pass in the span of a short 10 days that I don’t make time to update the blog. These past 10 days have been one of those spans of time. But lest people give up hope on checking the blog, I want to give you a brief update of what life has been like. So, I copied a friend’s idea and am listing below the top 9 (positive) and the bottom 3 (negative) things that have happened. Why 9 and 3 you might ask? No particular reason except that the “top” things are a number significantly larger than the “bottom” things therefore conveying my optimism of things past, present, and to come.

Top 9
1. Arriving safely in Beijing to my friends’ cheerful greeting at the airport.
2. Staying with my friend and enjoying the comforts of good conversation, coffee, and a soft bed.
3. Finding my apartment in the relatively same state I left it in.
4. Being impressed with the power of the air conditioners in said apartment.
5. Rediscovering good books and clothes in apartment.
6. Getting to teach freshman students as sophomores.
7. Taking goofy photos with our team around Hengyang.
8. Organizing life (that masquerades itself in papers, books, and expired food products).
9. Eating ice cream while discussing theology with a Chinese friend.

Bottom 3
1. Eating Hunan food—why can't we be friends?
2. Going to the post office—need I say more? (See previous post)
http://chinatripchinatripchinatrip.blogspot.com/2009/07/quick-run-to-post-office.html
3. Being pointed at and talked about everywhere we go.