3-0 and Disco

It happened. I'm old.

On the 28th I had my thirtieth birthday. Thirty was one of those mythical ages that, as a child, I always used to think of as old. If not old, then at least no fun. Thirty is the age that you are supposed to have a family, and settle down. You are less active and more responsible. You are mature. Now that I have scaled that mountain, it isn't so bad. I have tried to take the best of both worlds and make thirty my own thing, not this imagined milestone that separates the fun from the boring. I love to joke around in class with my students and scare the wits out of them on occasion (Halloween is fun here. They are jumpy!) Being here is a good representation of both worlds: on one hand I have the riskiness of pulling up roots and living in a foreign land with very little money, on the other I have enough sense to understand the social ramifications of volunteering and how, in its own way, this is a very responsible thing. Turning 3o in China was pretty good too, because I was able to miss all of the jokes and black balloons and what not, which are usually more fun for the givers than the receiver.

My grandmother's birthday is a few days before mine. I called her in Pennsylvania to wish her a happy 84th birthday. She was pretty surprised to be getting a phone call from China. It was great to talk to her and I hope that I can carry myself through future years with as much grace as she does. At thirty years old I am not too proud to say that she is still a role model for me.

The big day was pretty relaxed. Shell and I went to Tianshui to meet Ben and Kristen, our friends from the north (Dingxi and Lanzhou cities, respectively.) It was their first trip down and we had a nice relaxing time together. We went DVD shopping and came back to Cheng Xian to hang out. They had to leave pretty quickly, but it was great to spend my birthday with them.

In China, it is Halloween evening. From my experience, the Chinese are both puzzled and fascinated by Halloween. There isn't really a holiday that is the same here and they have had many questions for me about it. Try explaining this holiday to someone who hasn't heard of it before. It is a tall order. So, in many of our English classes, we have been focusing on Halloween. All of this culminated in a big Halloween bash thrown by the English Department. Everyone dressed up in costumes (I had a large piece of white muslin cloth that I draped over myself. I was a very frightening ghost, when I wasn't bumping into things.) Before the festivities started I (well, ghost-me) would creep down the aisles of chairs and then jump out at the students and yell. They would squeal and run away. Fun stuff!

I had the honor of starting the evening by explaining a little of the history (yes!) of the holiday and then we watched The Corpse Bride. The students seemed to like the movie. After that, all five of the foreign teachers got together, turned out the lights, and told a spooky ghost story. One person told the story while the rest of us jumped out and yelled throughout. Again, there was much squealing and laughing. We played a few party games, had some karaoke, and a dramatic performance of Shel Siverstein's The Giving Tree. Then the whole place erupted into a big Chinese disco dance party! Students poured out and started jumping around wildly, pulling teachers, friends, small woodland creatures, and inanimate objects onto the dance floor. It was great and we all had a blast.

Pics

Photo 1: Taken in the new park in Tianshui. Babies are usually frightened by or curious of me, so they usually don't smile very much. This one hammed it up for the camera with his big, bad, butterfly balloon.

Photo 2: Spooky me at the Halloween party. In case you are wondering, that is a candle in an orange. Sometimes things are lost in the translation I guess.

Photo 3: Photo of Ben and Kristen in Cheng Xian. This was taken on the bridge in the middle of town.

Photo 4: I'm a spooky ghost! I couldn't wear my costume all of the time because it was hard to see through the fabric in the dark. I fell down more than I normally do.

Photo 5: This is Summer, one of my students in the "canteen" (cafeteria.) I surprised her while she was eating so I caught her mid-giggle.

P.S. Shell and I have a Skype-in number now. What is that, you ask? It is a local phone number that forwards calls to our computer here in China. Essentially, you can call China for free by dialing a local phone number. You can email me if you would like the number.

Chinglish: Part 1

Chinglish, a portmanteau of the words Chinese and English, is an English pseudo-dialect heavily affected by Chinese grammar and accent.

For Chinese-speakers learning English, Chinglish may also be viewed as a pidgin, referring to the type of English that they use while learning which falls somewhere between their native Chinese and fluent English, and is therefore undesirable. The use of the term "Chinglish" can be viewed by learners as either an insult or a joke.

With that said, it is nice to occasionally have English signs available, even if they are in Chinglish because we, at least, have a chance to figure out what is going on. There will be more Chinglish posts in the future as there seems to be an inexhaustible supply of it.

Pic 1: A notebook cover. Nearly every notebook has little cartoons and confusing English sayings on them. I'm not sure this officially qualifies as Chinglish but it is *very* Chinese. We have a few floating around here. I liked this one in particular because the number 12 IS sweet.

Pic 2: Picture taken from a moving bus. I couldn't find the in way.

Pic 3: Taken in a hospital. You can probably figure it out with that clue.

Pic 4: This is also taken in the hospital but the meaning is much more vague. Do you get it?

Pic 5: Wicket = ticket window

Pic 6: Where exactly would I keep my morder if I had one??

Pic 7: Nobody likes craffiti anyway...

Pic 8: This is for the guys out there. Are your lips chapped? Are they sunburned and tender? Fret no more because Ice Love Men's Lip Balm is here! And how about that cowboy!

Xiongmao

So my hit in the face resulted in a couple of small black eyes (Xiongmao is Chinese for "panda." I am half xiongmao right now.) and a sprained wrist that has 1/3 of my hand a gross purple color, I still can't type very well so I'll briefly tell you about my friend, Pierce.

Pierce is a Chinese-American from Ohio. His family came from Taiwan to the U.S. and he speaks fluent Chinese. His Peace Corps time is a return to his roots of sorts, and he has family near Shanghai, on the east coast He has invited me to his village early next year and I look forward to going. Here is some writing from him about his trip to his home village over the October break for his great-uncle's 90th birthday, and some of his family history. If you want to get a window into what "real" China is, it is an amazing read:

(A warning to younger readers: Pierce uses some colorful language. In the interest of literary integrity I have left most of it in. I hope you are mature enough to enjoy it! I unfortunately had to edit some parts of his letter. I hate having to do it but cultural sensitivity is very important and I don't want to cause an incident.)

the house is at the back end of a small village with a nice but filthy pond on one side and glistening rice fields on the other. really a beautiful place. the house itself is a concrete stalinist monolith but makes up for its sheer ugliness by being surround by nice weather, nice air, and general a nice atmosphere. once over the initial suprise of me being there (they didnt know i was coming), everything 'settled' down into more or less a controlled whirlwind. my great uncle's birthday celebration involved a two day affair. the first night only family was invited and numbers were kept at a manageable 6 tables (or 60 people). dinner was served and i sat with relatives in my age bracket, mostly 25-28 yr olds. and i got to watch and laugh as they all got drunk off not-that-much beer. conversation was interesting though, the younger generation in china has a much much different view of the world and of history than the older generations. it will be an exciting time when these kids come into power. i was also treated to my uncle's drunken attempts to relive the glory of his younger days. now well over 50, he got PISS drunk off of BaiJiu (literally translated as white licqour, a potent ass chinese spirit) put his arm around me and preceded to give me a run down on an inter-village basketball game he played when he was in his 20's. i mean, he was animated, making dribbling motions, reliving the game like a chinese marv albert on ESPN classics. everywhere the world is the same. you put his ass in texas and he wouldve been telling me about the state chamionships they lost at the last minute cause Boobie Miles got hurt.

the next day was where the real fun began though. they woke my ass up at the crack of dawn cause thats what country ppl do all around the world and served me these gellatinous balls with some weird vegetable wrapped in the middle. definetly not the best breakfast i've ever had. after breakfast a marching band/dancing troupe came in setting off fireworks, banging gongs and generally creating a defeaning ruckus. these old ass ladies dressed in pink with flowers in their hair pranced around like little girls, singing off key and concluded their fine performance by straping paper mache horses to their torsos and doing a horribly unsynchronized dance. the best part was the conductor who was dressed in a mismatched suit in the heat, waving a baton around like he was fighting off barbarian hordes with the most serious expression on his face i'd ever seen. everyone else is laughing and having a good time and youd think he was coordinating both open heart surgery and having planes land at the same time.

lunch brought even more people, this time 12 tables or 120 people though it was more relaxed than the previous night. no drinking, and eating noodles. its a tradition in china to eat noodles on someone's birthday, the long strands representing a continued long life. so when eating you cant bite them in half, gotta grab a mouthful and slurp em all down. made for some serious (and loud) slurping action.

dinner was the real fun. the cooking crew that had done both lunch and dinner previously suddenly trippled in size and so did the number of guests. 30 tables, and 300 people packed this small village house, spilling onto the crop-laying patio, along the tiny road and into 3 neighbors' houses. the liquor was pouring and general chaos reigned supreme. it was a hell of alot of fun though. everyone was pouring shots for each other, handing cigarettes around, children were screaming and women were bitching at their husbands to drink less. not much more you can ask for in a banquet. i was a designated helper, and was allowed to serve cake (which was cut into huge slices and placed on each table in the middle and eaten with chopsticks chinese style which humored me to no end). so i went around dropping cake off and drinking a shot with the men at each table when i got there. and once people figured out i was from america they all started shouting the same questions at me and trying desperately to fanagle a way for me to sit at their table. really makes you feel special when that happens.

i'll now give you a run down of the important movers and shakers. my grandfather's brother is 90 and sharp as a tack. he cant hear shit anymore and is missing most of his teeth but he is on top of everything. he usually totters around the house like a penguin generally doing whatever he wants to do because he is old as hell. his favorite pastime seems to be cornering me, speaking to me in a dialect i dont understand, not being able to hear my responses, and then slapping me on the back as hard as he possibly can. and he was the one that spotted my tattoos peeping out from under my shirt cuffs. despite what i had thought, he found them hilarious and amazing at the same time. kept trying to rub em off and laughing in glee when they wouldnt. i can only hope that at 90 i'll have the energy to giggle like that.

the next day after the festivities we visited the small graveyard nestled behind the fields. my grandfather, my mother, my aunt and my uncle (it was the first time my uncle, aunt and mother had been back to the village) all went along with some relatives from the village. the graveyard itself is a small family plot located on a tiny bump of a hill about a half mile behind the house where my great grandfather is buried. my grandfather told stories, both on the way to the graves and at the tombstones, and they got to be plenty intense.

i'll give you all a quick run down, now writing this is for me as much as for any of you, so if you stop reading here i wont take it personal. my grandfather grew up very very poor. i saw the house where he was born and he lived till he was 14. relatives lived on the bottom floor, he and his parents and 4 other siblings lived on the second floor all 7 of them in two bedrooms. the house was built in the traditional style of the times, gray mud baked bricks and traditional shingles that still reflect sunlight (those that are left). he was the second oldest, and the favorite of his mother. in fact she liked him so much that she refused to allow a distant relative living next door to adopt him (they had a son a month younger that died when he was 2) despite the fact that the family couldnt feed them all. when he told me stories of when he was young, scooping the last kernels of rice from the bottoms of buckets and going next door to secretly beg for more food. his parents were proud people, and never tolerated that though it was probably the only way they stayed alive.

my great grandfather was an educated man by village standards though not educated enough to make a living of it. as a result he never worked and instead studied in the vain attempts to become an provincial official. it never happened, he died broke. my grandfather spoke of that time fondly though. the village was tight knit and they made it through.

when the japanese invaded everything changed. my father left at the age of 14 to join the army and fled with the nationalists when the japanese took nanjing and the rest of jiangsu. he will not talk about what happened to relatives from nanjing or the village, though its safe to assume the absolute worst. they never speak of it there. the most hes ever said was that they were "bullied", and told me the story of his uncle, who had amassed a small fortune, that was forced by the japanese to hang himself. the money, consisting mostly of gold, silver, and jade jewelery was never found and most likely disappeared into the hands of japanese officers.

when the civil war erupted loyalties became split. the communists liberated the area and most of my relatives supported them. my grandfather however had risen in rank in the nationalist army and continued to fight. when the nationalists were defeated he fled along with the remainder of the army to taiwan. his family stayed. and endured. my great grandmother died of starvation in her sister's arms during the Great Leap Famine. she had grown to hate my great grandfather was thus buried on an opposite hill from the family plot.

my grandfather being in taiwan caused a world of trouble for his family. they endured 'criticisms' and interrogations everytime a letter came from him. and for nearly 40 years he was not allowed to return. he sent as much money as he could get through, and as many letters as possible though it is tough to say what got to the village and what didnt. (Sentence removed by me.) its hard for me to imagine that feelings at the time. i think that there was a real sense that the family was split and that was it. my uncle from the village broke down in tears at his grandfather's grave, talking about how the rest of the family had come home, and how my uncle from taiwan had come to see him.

my grandfather's youngest brother fought with the communists and eventually became a member of the military intelligence division. coincidentally my grandfather had a nearly identical post with the nationalists. they somehow both got posted in hong kong playing spy games and were able to meet just one time on a railroad platform. it was the last time my grandfather saw him and he died a few years later.

with china's opening in 1989 my grandfather was finally allowed to visit, and the situation has become easier in recent years. there is talk of finally opening direct flights from taipei for good, instead of forcing flights to reroute through Macau or Hong Kong.

theres far more stories from both sides of my family that are hilarious and absolutely horrible all at the same time.

So that's it. Quite a story if you get through it. His family's story is intertwined with very important parts of Chinese (and therefore world) history.

Pic 1: A fuzzy picture of Pierce at our swearing in ceremony.

Pic 2: Pierce, me (with my bum hand), and Wondering (an English student) at the "Pink Party" we attended in Lanzhou. To get in you had to wear something pink. I wore a pink sash around my waist and pink socks. I put my sash on my head and we were all being ninjas together. I look more like a bad-80's-movie ninja.

What's Up Doc?

So I sprained my wrist and almost broke my nose (somewhere, my mom just fainted.) I was playing basketball and caught an elbow to the face, which dazed me enough to knock me down on my wrist. There was a fair amount of blood from my nose but the wrist hurt worse. It hurts to type so this'll be brief. I'll tell you all about Chinese hospitals and medicine when I am healed.

In the mean time I'll make entries using mostly pictures and stuff from other volunteers.

We'll start with a message that I received from my friend, Ben. He is living in Dingxi, Lanzhou:

Date:	Oct 11, 2006 4:24 PM
Subject	Seasoned volunteer
Body:	So since I arrived in Dingxi I have had a hard time finding salt. Plenty of monosodium glutamate (MSG), but my blood-brain barrier is thin enough - thank you very much. So imagine my surprise when I found 3 bags of the stuff under my own roof! In a related story, I have been washing my clothes with salt the last month and a half. P.S. Being illiterate sucks @%^.

Later!

Alligator River

Okay. I'm going to see if I can use my multi-continental connections to try out a little experiment. I have presented all of my Chinese students with the following story called "Alligator River":

There lived a woman named Abigail who was in love with a man named Greg. Greg lived on the shore of a river. Abigail lived on the opposite shore of the same river. The river that separated the two lovers was full of dangerous alligators. Abigail wanted to cross the river to be with Greg. Unfortunately, the bridge had been washed out by a heavy flood the previous week. So she went to ask Joseph, a riverboat captain, to take her across. He said he would do it if she would consent to go to bed with him prior to the trip. She promptly refused and went to her close friend named Ivan to explain her problem. Ivan did not want to help Abigail at all because he was very busy. Abigail felt her only alternative was to accept Joseph's offer. Joseph kept his promise to Abigail and delivered her into the arms of Greg.

When Abigail told Greg about what she did with Joseph in order to cross the river, Greg became very angry and left Abigail. Heartsick, Abigail turned to Leon with her tale of woe. Leon, feeling bad for Abigail, found Greg and beat him up. Abigail was very happy to see Greg getting his due. Many people heard Abigail laughing at Greg.

Everyone heard about what Abigail did and nobody would marry her. Finally, Ron, an ugly butcher, offered to marry her. He told Abigail that he did not love her, but he needed help in his butcher shop. Abigail married Ron.

After reading this story to the students, I asked them to rank the six characters (Abigail, Greg, Ivan, Joseph, Leon, Ron) in order from the worst person to the best person, and tell me why.

I am curious to see how the rankings of the characters by American students compares to those of the Chinese students. If I can get at least seven different responses from you, I'll crunch the numbers and tell you the average Chinese ranking of all my classes. If I don't, then I'll assume you aren't interested and bag it.

Aren't you as curious as I am?

Cheese Run

For my history students: What is the significance of October 1, 1949? If you can figure that out, then you can figure out why I have the week off!

We spent last weekend in Lanzhou (pronounced Lahn-joe,) the largest city in Gansu. I have heard that it is one of the most polluted cities in the world. (I'd like to find the list of the most polluted cities in the world. I have looked everywhere. If you can find a website with the info I'll email you a beautiful picture of me giving you a thumbs-up! That's about all I can afford.) We went up to buy some things that we couldn't get here in Cheng Xian (Cheese!). We were also able to see some friends, a little bit of the city, and an awful movie (Snakes on a Plane -- What in the world are you yahoos watching in America?? Did this movie actually make money?)

I know this is a short post, but I wanted to share some photos with you!

Photo 1: Taken in downtown Lanzhou on the holiday.

Photo 2: This is a minaret on the huge mosque in Lanzhou. I am proud of this picture. It took many tries at several different angles to get it right.

Photo 3: I was being tailed by these children as we were walking through a market area. They would giggle and then say a word or two of English. Finally, I turned around and had John take a picture of me with them. Peace sign for the Peace Corps!