Buddha and Hotpot

I had given up. I tried to wait out Blogger and see if they would get the glitch fixed, so that I could publish pictures on the blog. I told myself that if they didn't have it fixed by Wednesday I would publish here and use Photobucket to show my photos. I even created an account. I logged on today and Blogger was playing nice! Apparently they fear me...Blogger punks.

Anyway, here is a link to my long-overdue site visit pictures on Photobucket.

Now, for the new stuff.

We have had an eventful week. First, on Friday, our host parents took us out to see some sites in Chengdu. We had a fine time and were able to see some of the best the city has to offer. We went to a riverside tea house and played Fight the Landlord (a Chinese card game) for a few hours. On occasion, while you are sitting, a person will come by and offer to clean out your ears, right there on the spot with a little brush and other scary implements. One came by me and kept insisting that she wanted to clean my ears. After I told her no a few more times she left. I guess my ears just looked extra dirty! I asked my host mom about it and she cryptically replied, "Some men like to have their ears cleaned." Her tone suggested that it was not appropriate, so I dropped the issue.

What do the following things have in common?
Cows
Ducks
Chickens
Pigs

If your answer was that they are all animals whose innards I have eaten, you are correct!

After the tea house we went to hotpot. Hotpot is a special dinner in China. There is large metal bowl placed in the middle of the table. In the bowl is boiling water and an array of spices (very, very hot spices) and flavorings. You order your food and it is served to you raw. You place it in the boiling water to cook/marinate/infuse-with-spicy-death until you feel that it is safe to eat. Then you take it out and dip it in a combination of sesame oil, chili oil, vinegar, and garlic to cool it down (and get it even spicier) before you eat it. You can have it without spice too and our family was kind enough to have a combination hotpot with no spices.

On came the food! Lamb! (good) Potatoes! (good) Lotus root! (good) Tofu! (good) Cow stomach! (what?) Pig brains! (WHAT?!?) Duck esophagus! (Come on!) Chicken stomach! (They have stomachs?) Duck blood! (Why?!?)

It was a culinary adventure to say the least. I was game though. Much like the hotpot, I too, was feeling spicy. My favorite was the cow stomach. It had these grey bumps all over it (Maybe Mrs. Blakely knows what they are,) but it was good. The duck esophagus was a bit stringy and my least favorite. The brains were okay. They were a bit mushy. They may have been overcooked.

The next day several of us boarded a bus and went to the city of Leshan, which is the site of the world's largest Buddha statue. It is 223 feet tall and began in 713 AD. To give you some perspective to how great an accomplishment this is, consider that this is several decades before the reign of Charlemagne in Europe, and Christopher Columbus was -738 years old. The Buddha was carved out of a cliffside where three rivers converge to protect vessels from harm. The photos I put here don't do it much justice. It is an amazing spectacle to behold and I would recommend that anyone who comes to China should see it.

At the site of the statue we were also able to see the burial catacombs of the wealthy citizens of the Qin Dynasty (221 BC - 206 BC). Burying people in the cliffside was a fad during the dynasty. Many people were buried with replicas of their rooms to help them further in the afterlife. Historians were giddy because they were able to get a partial snapshot of Qin dynasty life by looking at the relics left in the tombs.

We walked further, over an intricately designed footbridge, to a path that led us up a mountain. We hiked to the top where we found a Buddhist monastery. There we saw monks working and and people praying. We were encouraged to respectfully look around the buildings and grounds. There were several temples, gardens, classrooms and a hall that contained statues of hundreds of prominent Buddhist monks. It was one of the things that I don't think I'll ever forget.

We are doing fairly well and we are gearing up to leave for site soon. We are constantly fed new information on how to survive and stay warm during the winter in China. With all of the heat it is hard to believe it will ever get cold but I am sure it will. We try to have fun during the off times. Our latest pasttime is playing stickball on the third story roof of a building here at the college. We came across a bamboo stick and some tennis balls. Combine that with a linoleum rooftop with just enough coal dust sprinkled on it to make it feel like you are playing baseball on an ice rink and voila! Instant fun! It becomes a cross-cultural extravaganza when someone hits the ball over the edge. All of us crowd to the edge and yell down to passersby to throw our ball back. When they are successful we give them an ovation. You haven't lived until you have played roof stickball.

Take care ya' nerds.

P.S. If you prefer the Photobucket way of posting pictures I can do that instead. I can post more pics but the captions will be short. Let me know which way you prefer.

Picture 1: Steve and I next to the Leshan Buddha. There is a staircase that winds down the cliff. You can tell how tall it is by comparison with us.

Picture 2: The Buddha from lap level.

Picture 3: Some relics in the Qin Dynasty catacombs

Picture 4: The bridge over the river which leads to the monastery.

Picture 5: The monastery grounds.

Picture 6: Inside the monastery, this is the bodhisattva. The arms represent the bodhisattva's ability and willingness to help other people.

The Blogger punks messed up again so the last two photos along with the rest in this post are at this link.

Photo Problems

Okay so there seems to be a problem uploading photos for those of us using FTP blogs. My host mother has given me a package of yak meat jerky that has kept the enraged Ross-beast from emerging and solving this problem with brute force or a surgical strike...

...for now.

I am crafty and nimble. If this doesn't work, I have other tricks up my sleeve.

There will be pictures. Oh yes. There will be pictures.

Do you know the way to Tianshui?

Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood.

- Daniel H. Burnham

So we're back from Cheng Xian in Gansu province. To get to Cheng Xian from Chengdu is a 16 hour train ride and then another 2 hour car (or bus) ride after that. The train ride was long but tolerable. You see, most people in China travel by train rather than by plane. When riding the train in China you have a choice of 4 different accomodations: hard seat (the cheapest, an uncushioned seat,) soft seat (several hours in a train can be hard on the ol' caboose if you get my meaning,) hard sleeper (one of 6 beds crammed into a tiny area. Despite what the name implies, there is a mattress. Hard sleeper is the most common choice,) and soft sleeper (4 beds in a room with a closing door. For the fancy well-to-do clientele.) We rode hard sleeper as we are not fancy.

If you look at a map you'll see that the distance between the two cities isn't all that far. The problem is that there are so many mountains that there isn't a direct route. As it was, we went through several tunnels on our trip and yet we still wound around mountains all day long. Even so riding the train isn't the worst way to go. You can kick back and sleep or read or go to the dining car. The only problem is that it is time consuming.

Several of us went down to the dining car to play cards and maybe have some food. At the start, the waitress and staff seemed not to care for us very much. They refused to talk to us, serve us very much and they told us to go away. We ordered some food and started being friendly with the staff and they had a change of heart. By the end of our journey the waitress (who the rest of the staff referred to as "Little Fatty." She wasn't offended by it and even answered to it. Hey, that's China!) and the staff were playing cards with us and giving free advice and free food. Perhaps they came into contact with some other foreigners who weren't very kind. Either way, the wounds were healed. Score one for the Peace Corps!

Cheng Xian is pretty remote, but despite that it is a very nice town. I tried to get an estimate of the population. The closest that I could get was that the city and surrounding county have about 200,000 - 250,000 people. That is about the size of Boise, except the city has far fewer buildings and businesses. Most people who live outside of the city are farmers who go into town for business. Speaking of which, here is an interesting fact about China: with 1.3 billion people, it is the largest country in the world (as I'm sure you know.) The thing is that China manages to feed the entire population (very well too) using just the 17% of land that is arable. How? Well one very convenient solution is night soil.

We will be the first Americans to live in the city. There are a couple of VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas - the British Peace Corps in this case) volunteers and there are a couple of Amity Foundation (a Christian volunteer group) volunteers on the way as well.

The folks at Longnan Gaodong Shifan (Longnan Teachers College) have set us up with a very nice apartment and they have been very kind to us so far. We are on the 6th floor on campus, so work will only be a short walk. Many people in the U.S. would be envious of such a commute. I will teach several sections of Oral English to start. I may try to get a U.S. history or U.S. culture class next semester. We'll see how it goes.

Our week there was pleasant. We were able to see the town and relax on our own for a bit. I was able to read two books during the week. If you need a history fix check out The Devil in White City. I started reading it before I left but was never able to get too far into it. Now I wish I had. It is about the 1893 Columbian Exposition Fair. So much happened there to shape the U.S. It is astounding. For those of you out there with a more macabre curiosity (Ashley B.) there is a serial killer involved too. The best part about it (the book, not the killing) is that it is all true. The other book I read was A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby. It wasn't too shabby either.

All of the travel that we have gone through in the past two months really makes me think about the notion of what home is. Anyone who has travelled often in their lives can probably tell you home isn't as much about where the place happens to be as much as how you feel when you are there. In my opinion, if you live in an area where you feel that you are safe and also a part of the community, the feeling of home develops rather quickly. If you stay bottled up where you live, you are more likely to be homesick for the past and, therefore, miserable. If you have a change in your life, make the best of it. Don't dwell on the way it "used to be." Maintain your old connections but forge ahead and make new ones too. I just thought I'd share.

Peace out baby!

Photos: We are experiencing some technical difficulties. I'll add the photos as soon as I can.

Panda-monium!!!

First of all: three entries in three days. Who loves ya baby? Don't get used to this. We'll be out of town for all of next week and there won't be much communication so I am keeping up while I can.

You may have read in the newspaper or saw on the news that there were twin pandas born in China a couple of days ago. Chengdu is the home for the world's largest panda breeding center. A few of us were able to go out and see the site (Michelle couldn't go because her class was doing something else, but I am sure they will get over there before too long.)

The people here have panda raising down to a science. Check this out. For 1,000 kuai (about $120) you can hold/hug a juvenile giant panda and have your picture taken with it. Now, I don't have the money to throw around that way, so I didn't do it. There are around 1,000 giant pandas in the world today. Imagine holding one. You could put the coolest MySpace picture up ever! They have red pandas that you can hold as well for 50 kuai. I was going to do that but I guess they had the day off or something. It was blazing hot today but we still had a good time. If you have any questions, just post them on the blog here and I'll answer.

Here are some photos:

1. This is mischief panda. He was sitting there in his air conditioned cage when a worker walked by. He stood up on the bars and reached around and knocked a sign off the wall next to him. The worker yelled something at him but he didn't care. He's a panda! He can do what he wants!

2. Doesn't it look like he is waving?

3. This is what the baby pandas look like. I took a photo of the real babies in their incubators but all you could see was a little white blob sticking out of a blanket. They seem to be small and rather rat-like.

4. So I was about three feet from this panda. At the San Diego zoo you can get about 50 feet or so from them. Cool eh?

5. The last one is a red panda. They were wandering all around a big paddock. This one crawled up and worked it for the camera.

6. I filmed a little panda clip just for you.

And the winner is...

...us! We were placed at the Longnan Teachers College in Cheng Xian, Gansu. Here is a map of Gansu, if you would like to see where we will be. For those of you out there who have Google Earth, here are the coordinates: 33 44' 28"N, 105 43' 14"E. It is at the southern edge of Gansu near where Gansu, Shaanxi, and Sichuan all meet.

We had a big ceremony and played "flower and drum" to determine who would find out their sites first. Shell and I were among the very first to be named. We were told that our apartment is very nice and is on the campus, which is in the middle of town. I have an address here but there is something odd about it so I will post it as soon as I get more information. We will leave via train on Saturday to check it out for a week.

It is a relief to finally find out. We celebrated by playing basketball at the university and we'll all get together on Friday too. Good times!

What?

Model school is done. It is a good thing. Because I have taught before, unlike many here, I didn't really have a problem making a lesson plan or teaching for the first time. Don't get me wrong. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, the ideal teacher and I can always use more practice. This is particularly true in a place where I have much to learn about the culture. You may not think too much about it, but nearly every place treats the education of youth differently. There are different expectations, teaching styles, pressures and concerns. Here, in China, the differences are quite extreme. Here I am a "Western Teacher." The model school helped me learn about these differences and for that I am grateful. The teaching part was easy, but it took some of my focus from language study which is a MUCH more pressing concern. That is why I am glad it is done.

On a different front, tomorrow we find out where we will be living for the next two years. All 58 volunteers (we lost three) will gather again from the different colleges to find out. This is exciting news here. Imagine not knowing where you will live until a few weeks before you go there. We could be placed so far from another volunteer that it takes a two days to connect or we could be placed in the same city. It might be a large and wealthy community or a small and poor one. Perhaps it is a graduate-level college or it could be a junior college. All of our questions will be answered tomorrow. This means we will have a new address for regular mail too. Next week are site visits. We will visit our new homes and speak with our waiban (pronounced WHY-bahn; the foreign affairs officer) at our new college.

The week wasn't quite as crazy as last week, but still busy. We went on another field trip to a farm/resort place to play mahjongg. They had these electronic tables that shuffle the tiles and place them in perfect rows for the players as they played. I felt fancy.

Later in the week we went back to the train station. Most of us will be leaving Chengdu on Saturday via train. This is where we will go. Most of us will travel together and it will take about 1 full day to get to the place where many of the volunteers will be. I had better get used to the train rides. Those and buses will be my life for awhile.

Beyond that, we have been working hard. Language is four hours every day. It is a lot to cram into your head in a given day and many volunteers (myself included) can burn out from time to time. There comes a time that one cannot process any more new information and the brain sort of raises a white flag. When it happens you drift off and think about food or movies or home or puppies for awhile. The teachers are pretty sensitive to it and when they see the glazed over look on our faces we get a break. That is also the reason we get a field trip in now and again. Still, we all wonder whether we will become fluent or not here. It is a real challenge.

Our teachers have been teaching us many new Chinese games such as Chinese chess, Mahjongg, Fight the Landlord and others. I was happy to finally have the opportunity to help Wang Laoshi (my teacher) learn how to play chess. He seemed to be very interested in the game.

When we have evenings off we meet together to hang out, play poker and socialize some. It is a good way to unwind after a stressful day.

We are doing well and are looking forward to big changes soon. Take care everyone!

Photos:

First we have some students in my oral English class. We were talking about dating and they were drawing what they thought an ideal man/woman was.

Second is my putonghua (Mandarin) teacher. He is a good guy. Behind him is the train station terminal.

Third is a street here in Chengdu. This is where many of the merchants work. You can see the many people (they are everywhere we go) and bikes here.

Last is a couple of kids playing in a box. They are children of merchants. They must've found this box and thought it would make a great playpen. While the parents worked all day, this is what the kids do.

Finally, I have uploaded a quick video of a street here in Chengdu. It is a bit blurry and quick but if you play it a couple of times you'll see everything. Enjoy!