This sums up so much

Here is a picture of Xiyangyang and HaiTaiLang (Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf) at Zhongshan Park last week.  Allie and I wanted to take a picture with them but it would have cost us a whopping 10 kuai to snap a photo with my favorite Chinese cartoon characters.

Then we turned around and saw them on a smoke break and being served strawberry ice cream by some little fellow extortionist.

My First Communist Holiday

Taken from The China Daily, "Model workers' receive honors in Beijing"

This weekend is the Workers' Day Holiday and we have Monday off from school.  Many other businesses and schools are closed between 4-5 days and I feel pretty ripped off.  This is not celebrating my labor, Communist Party.

I have also changed my weekend job schedule and now teach on Saturday mornings and afternoons, leaving my Sundays free (yippee!).  Otherwise, I've been pretty busy this week listening to my students' midterm exams, meeting with real(?) Canadians, and pretending I am in America by sitting at Starbucks.  Nothing terribly interesting, but I am also really tired right now... yawn.  Goodnight, residents of the free world.

The good and the bad

Follow-up to the Day of Mourning

As usual, the Chinese government always manages to make even the most solemn of days and turn it into a propaganda campaign.

Domestic media coverage has been tightly controlled, with reporters instructed to focus on the heroism of rescue workers and to avoid stories about the thousands of Buddhist monks who dug through debris or handed out food from the trunks of cars. 

(The New York Times' article can be found HERE.)

I'm not shocked that they did this, but I am still embarrassed and saddened that this happens in a country that I am living in and helping to educate.

In an interview on Wednesday, Woeser, an influential Tibetan blogger who is in frequent contact with people in the earthquake zone, said several monks told her that they had been ordered to leave Jiegu in recent days, although such accounts could not be immediately confirmed. 

Whenever the Tea Party "activists" or any other similar protest group in America claims to be suppressed by the government, they should be reminded that in other corners of the world there are more drastic measures taken to suppress any unsavory opinions and viewpoints.  Being in China (both times) has made me really proud to call myself an American and proud to be living in a country of freedoms.

OMG RU 4 REAL?!?! NOWAI

I taught my students slang this week using dialogues that Matt and I co-wrote this weekend.  Here are the dialogues that they had to read:

(calling on the cell phone)
A: What’s up?
B: Not much, you?
A: Nothing really, just hanging out with my friends.
B: Oh that’s cool.
A: Hey wanna meet up after class?
B: No, I can’t. I’m swamped with homework.
A: Bummer. I want to go to the new coffee shop. Catch you later!/ See ya!
B: Alright, later!

(at school after a test)
A: How was the test?
B: Oh my gosh, I think I bombed the writing section.
A: Seriously? You’ve been studying your butt off!
B: Yeah, I totally froze and forgot everything.
A: That sucks.

(after seeing a movie)
A: That movie was awesome!
B: Yeah it was pretty tight. / Yeah, it was really legit.
A: What did you think of the actor?
B: I thought he was really hot.
A: Truth, but the dialogue was pretty lame.

After hearing 55+ students repeat "that sucks!" and "seriously?" I realized that I might be teaching them to sound like valley girls and bros.  I nevertheless found this pretty funny and I think that they had fun learning more informal words rather than stuff from a formal textbook.

I also taught them about IM (they knew we didn't use QQ but thought we used MSN... weird, right?), AIM and Gchat.  I also listed out some nice little words for them to use when IMing me or their friends, such as nm, brb, h/o, ttyl, gtg, thnx, and jk.  Many of the ones that they use online are numbers.  For example, they type 886 because the numbers "ba ba liu" sound like "bye bye le."

What was even better was when I drew an upward arrow to explain the levels of laughter online.  I listed the ones I use most frequently: hehe, haha, HAHA, lol, lmao, and lmfao.  They have all sorts of weird ones here, including "嘻嘻“ (sounds like 'shee shee') which is somewhere between haha and HAHA to them.

One of my students was IMing me tonight and actually typed "ttyl" to me and I was so excited that he (a) remembered what I taught her on Tuesday and (b) put it to good use.  Success!  Being a teacher means finding fulfillment in the little things like this.

Tomorrow I will go see the cherry blossoms downtown with my friend Allie.  Hopefully I'll also get to meet up with Anna, a Polish girl I have met at my Chinese school, and go out.  I love warm spring weekends. 

Identity crisis, the sequel

Today at lunch I met a Chinese English teacher who teaches most of my classes Hotel English.  He was really nice even though his English was spotty and probably worse than my Chinese.  I was glad to meet my Hotel English counterpart and I think he was glad to meet me because my students had been telling him about me.

I asked him what they thought of me, forgetting how blunt the Chinese can be at times, and was told that some of the students think that it is a "pity that [I] am not a blonde eyed, blue haired American girl."

Well, um, gee, thanks for the compliment?  

I understand that the students would ideally like a "blonde eyed, blue haired American girl," but I'd like to think that after my students' initial period of time when they were trying to figure out what exactly an Asian-American was, that they now see me as an American.  At the beginning, it was almost as if I was a lost Chinese girl who was shipwrecked on the far away island of Singapore, was shipped to America in a box by accident, and has finally returned to the motherland, the Middle Country, the Peoples' Republic of China.  Now my students forget I actually speak Chinese and have no questions that I am American.

At first I was asked things like "Why is your hair black?" and "Are your parents Chinese?" which seem pretty obvious to us, but to many Chinese people there is no concept of the hyphenated Asian-American.  I thought most of my students had gotten over this by now.

I guess they haven't. 

I'm giving my students the benefit of the doubt, though, since I do have so much direct contact with them and face-to-face time with me speaking American English and absolutely no Chinese.  The way I walk, dress, hold myself, and even write my number '6' (a constant war between me and my students) is completely different.  Maybe it was just this one teacher who did not expect the 'foreign teacher Alison' to look so Chinese.  Perhaps he himself has more prejudices than my students and would not learn English from me, but rather a white person even if they are an uncaring and overall crappy teacher.

These are the frustrations I have faced almost every day here.  I am an Asian-American.  I am Chinese.  I am a U.S. citizen, have voted in the past two elections, hold a drivers license, and have completed thirteen years in the American educational system.

The thing is that China is so very homogeneous.  There may be fifty-one minority groups, but most (92% according to Wikipedia) of the people you see are Han.    There is no Korean-Chinese or Canadian-Chinese.  Only Chinese.

The plus side is that there is a word in Chinese "华人“ (overseas Chinese) which indicates I am of Chinese decent, but my family settled in Singapore all those decades ago.  Step one, check.  Step two is to explain how I can be both American and Chinese at the same time.

Cue shrill sound of a bomb dropping and exploding.  

And that's where the logic ends.  So here I am, somewhere between fully American and fully Chinese to the, um, real Chinese?  Cool.  Thanks guys.  I appreciate it.  I'm just going to continue to teach you American English with some hopes that you too one day will go to America, and possibly even have your own little Asian-American children yourself.  That will be the day.

Have yourself a very China Christmas

The idea of Christmas exists in China and the Chinese are all very aware of the holiday.  However, it's like if you hyper-secularized what we have in America and called it a holiday but didn't give anyone any time off.  I know that in America it has become a secular holiday, but here it is even more so because there is no context or deeper meaning (even if you don't believe in God, you still know why we have Christmas).

There are random Christmas decorations in shops, restaurants, and even my gym, mainly consisting of "Merry Christmas" signs, Christmas trees, and cut-outs of Santa.  It's mainly because of the fascination with anything Western.

Here is an article from the People's Daily, everyone's favorite English propaganda paper, about the growing zeal for Christmas in China.

Alison, what did you do this fine Christmas Eve? 

Oh well, gee, I'm glad (maybe not) you asked!  I taught two classes, ate lunch at the cafeteria, then wrote my final exam for my students which starts tomorrow.  Then I ate Japanese food with another teacher and topped that off with a McDonalds hot fudge sundae.

Tomorrow I will be teaching one class and giving them part one of their final exam as a Christmas present.  This will be followed by Skyping family and friends and possibly going downtown for a little taste of home. 

Peace Apples

Another thing that I discovered last week is that Chinese people gift each other apples for Christmas.  They gift wrap them in cellophane and ribbon and present them to their friends, coworkers, and teachers as presents.  This is because the word for apple ( 苹果 ping2guo3) sounds like the word for peace (平安 ping2an1).

Misconceptions galore

This week I had to explain to my students that we don't give apples as presents and explain who Santa is because they see him all the time (圣诞老人, literally "Christmas old man").  They didn't really know the story of Santa except that he gives everyone presents on Christmas.

I also taught the kids several Christmas songs these past two weeks.  First I taught them "Jingle Bells" because all they knew was the "Jingle bells jingle bells" part and then they just kept repeating that throughout the song.  This week I've been teaching them "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" and "Deck the Halls."  I knew they wouldn't do it, but no one sang "Fa ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra."

So that is my little Christmas from over here in the Middle Kingdom.  Merry Christmas to you and your family and may it be filled with love, good food, and a healthy new year.  Be thankful for your family and don't forget to think about those who cannot be home for Christmas -- not me, but the soldiers around the world.  And now from the city I miss desperately...

圣诞快乐！

Chinese Internet: FTW or FAIL?

I tried to google "freedom toast" this morning and was stopped by the Great Firewall.  Apparently they have no tolerance for quasi-politically correct breakfast foods.  I decided that this is a good time to address the limitations of my internet connection in China.

Proxy servers

There are many proxy servers that work here, the main one being HotSpot Shield.  Unfortunately this does not work for Macs and will probably be the only moment that I wish I had a PC.  It's only a fleeting thought though and I immediately go back to being a Mac fanatic.

I use a proxy server and a web-based proxy server to access Blogger and Facebook, although I cannot post anything or interact with Facebook in any way.  It's pretty annoying, but has forced me to email people a lot more often than just doing the random 1-3 sentence post on walls.  This is a big plus, I guess, because email is much more thoughtful and personal than a Facebook message.

Blocked Sites

So how do I know if something is being blocked from me because of the Firewall?  Basically, when I try to load a website, my browser gives me the error message that says "Page has taken too long to load" even though it had only taken one or two seconds to get to that page.  Alternately, the website just never fully loads and the browser stays in the thinking position for a while.

Google images is interesting because sometimes the thumbnails show up, and other times they don't.  Then there's also the possibility of when you click on a thumbnail that you want to see, you'll get the browser error message.  This used to happen to Flickr two years ago, but that issue seems to have been resolved. 

The list of blocked sites

- Facebook
- Youtube
- Blogger (anything .blogspot.com)
- Google's Picasa
- Google image search
- sometimes Gmail goes out for a few hours, but is usually restored within the day.  This has only happened once this time.
- and growing...

China vs America

I am sick of being asked the question “Do you like America or China more?”

I swear, every other Chinese person I meet that is not a student or teacher asks me this. I’ve been asked by bus drivers, fruit stand sellers, jian bing guo zi makers, cab drivers… the list goes on. Call it a cultural difference, but it’s just annoying right now. I don’t think anyone in America would ever ask a foreigner a question like this.

Which leads me to think – why am I getting defensive in the first place? Granted, I do like China, but more in a sarcastic ‘oh-hey-I-got-dust-in-my-face-and-I’m-kind-of-sick-but-I-still-think-this-is-fun’ kind of way. I’ve discussed this with my fellow Sinophiles and we actually have concluded that none of us actually likes China. We’re not quite sure why we’re back here either. It’s not like you can actually be excited about squatty potties, getting shoved onto buses, and children wearing assless pants. Anyone saying that they actually love China is either completely out of their minds or has just convinced themselves that they love China so that they don’t run around screaming in the streets about how crazy their lives are.

Also, when you gather a bunch of China kids in a room the first thing we talk about is how sick we got. I mean, besides the ‘oh hey where were you? Did you like it’ sorts of questions. This always devolves into pretty horrific stories about how sick we got in China. For me, I tell my Shanxi province 4- day bus trip sickness story… oh man, it was bad. Ethan and Andrew were worse off, actually.

Anywho…

I began to appreciate America a lot more when I was here in 2007 and have no problem saying I am an American now. Nevertheless, I always tell the Chinese people that I like both countries so that I don’t get (a) ripped off, (b) dropped on the side of the road, or (c) lectured in rapid-fire Chinese.

But YES I do like America more. The country where I can drink water without boiling it (debatable in DC, actually), find toilet paper in the stalls, and have uncensored internet. End of story. Stop asking me, Chinese people.

PS: Sorry about the lack of posting. My proxy and internet (and gmail!) was on the fritz this last week. Happy belated Thanksgiving!

Beijing Weekend

I made a weekend trip to Beijing and it reminded me how much I enjoy that city, but at the same time, made me appreciate Qingdao a little more. Beijing fascinates me because of its history, sheer size and population, and the multitude of things to do and eat. At the same time, it is so jam-packed with people constantly shoving and pushing that it can be overwhelming. Nevertheless, I miss it a lot and had a great time this weekend.
I went with another teacher, Jenna, to visit my good pal Charlie who has been living in Beijing since February studying Chinese and will finally be returning at the end of December. The rest of us thought he might never return!

It was really nice to get out of Qingdao because it is such a smaller town over here. I feel like I’m going to run out of things to do and see soon. I’m already kind of over the “scene” and fear the day when I run out of things to do on the weekends or foods that interest me. Anyway….

Jenna and I took the bullet train to Beijing and it was really cool. It was completed before the Olympics and has made the ~888 km trip under six hours long. The train went up to 243 km/hr at some points and was just amazing to watch out the window. It also had airplane-style seats and tray tables, which was nicer than Amtrak!

After dumping our stuff at Charlie’s apartment and leaving him to take a phone interview with the States, Jenna and I went to Lush in Wudaokou for dinner because I was really craving their foccacia sandwich, which turned out to be just as good as I remembered it!

Saturday we got up early and went to meet my old teacher, Linda, at Peking University. The campus is beautiful and is possibly one of my favorite spots in Beijing. Imagine going to a campus that looks like this:

Then we headed over to 789 Art Space which is actually located in an old factory center that has been converted to several art spaces. It’s a really great location and has some really interesting pieces to look at.

We then went to the famous Wangfujing Snack Street, where you can eat things like, seahorses, scorpions, and starfish on sticks. I stayed with fresh made fishballs and a delicious skewer of octopus tentacles, my favorite!

On the obligatory tourist destinations, we visited the Forbidden City, which never fails to amaze me because of how intricate and HUGE the place is. It’s really a trek across the thing and I can only imagine those poor guys running around the place with cymbals and stuff (I have a very Last Emperor imagination, ha).

Tiananmen was overrun with 60th anniversary propaganda, including giant pillars depicting the fifty-one minority groups as cartoonish dancing figures. It’s not exactly what I would consider pretty either.

There are also the giant screens on the Square, playing a rolling loop of inspirational music, dancing people, and panoramic scenery from around the country. Oh and don’t forget the recap of the 2008 Olympics Opening Ceremony. Happy 60th Birthday, China.

I also made an obligatory Silk Market trip on Sunday and emerged with these goods: a grey Jimmy Choo hobo purse, Longchamp purse, LeSportsac satchels, Black boots, and a scarf. Not too bad but I was definitely restrained. I really want a Mulberry purse next time I go back!

Food post next time… yeah go ahead and laugh at me always taking pictures of food.

Why is there always a line?!

Saturday evening I tutored Helen, a 14-year old girl who is the daughter of my program director's friend.  I'm still not sure if private tutoring is allowed, but I'll take it since they pay me and it came from the director herself.  More about this story later, it's actually quite funny.

Wan Sheng Jie (万圣节）

Halloween in China is when the Americans all get dressed up and go to expat bars to pay for overpriced alcohol and/or cover charges.  This being said, it is a lot of fun.  When I was in Beijing, we forked over 100RMB for tickets to a sold-out warehouse rave party downtown.  It was a blast and I don't know if I'll eve be able to have a better Halloween.

This being said, my expectations were pretty high and I just had to get over myself and realize that I wouldn't be able to replicate the Beijing experience at all.  Costume shopping proved to be difficult but I managed to throw together the Chinglish version of an 80's costume, complete with bright purple tights, a horrible purple scrunchie, and my own Chucks.

It was a fun night overall and the other teachers and I had a good time dancing and drinking those overpriced Tsingtaos.  I actually said "真的吗？！" ("Really?!?!") to the bartender when he said my small bottle of Tsingtao was 30RMB.

Sunday Adventures

The other teachers and I stay at a hostel when we go out in the city over the weekend because it is only 25RMB for a bed there and it is about 45RMB to take a cab back to our school.  Plus, this way we can wake up on Sunday and do more adventuring downtown before taking a bus back to our school.

Sunday morning I got up and walked down the alley from the hostel to get a yummy 包子 for breakfast and the lady let me take a picture of her.

I like her veggie and egg baozi's a lot and she also does a pretty great youtiao (fried dough).  I enjoy walking around alley markets because there is always so many things to look at, like live seafood, fresh vegetables, and made-to-order food.

I also walked over to the Old German Cathedral, that was built in the early 20th century by the Germans (Qingdao was a German colony until the Sino-Japanese war), destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, and rebuilt in the 80's.  I also attended Catholic Mass in Korean, complete with drum performance right after communion.  It was an interesting experience!

I also went to TaiDong, a shopping center in Qingdao and bought some things, mainly at Wal-Mart, funnily enough.  Jenna was with me and we had a conversation like this:

Jenna: You know what shopping in China is like?  Black Friday.
Me: Or preparing for the zombie apocalypse.
Jenna: Yeah, you know, there's people pushing and shoving... terrible lines... and even worse service.
Me: Yeah, it is pretty much Black Friday every day.  Why are we here again?

This is a picture of Tai Dong street from the escalator (yeah, not kidding) bridge that connects it to the other side of the street.   There are just so many people in China it never fails to amaze me.  I forget that there are 1.3 billion people in this country and they have to be somewhere.  This means more of everything: hair cutters (at least 2 on each block), mini-marts (probably 3 on each block), cell phone stores (5 on each block), restaurants (oh man...), and shoe repair men/ ladies who etch sparkles on your cell phone (everywhere).  I don't think I will ever get used to the sheer numbers of people here. 

As you can see, I have a proxy server that allows me to post to my blog, finally.  I no longer have to pay Matt in Chinese jiao (10 cents) and day old rice to post for me.  

Man man shuo! Speak slower!

I have now completed my first full week of teaching English classes. I have eight classes each week and every one is a different section of students. I have them for 1.5 hours with a 10 minute break in the middle. Each class has about fifty students, but this tends to be around 51-53 students each period.

My English name is…

Some of them have English names already, but there were also some classes that I had to name. I would list a bunch of names on the board and they could pick one, find one on my sheets, or think of something on their own.

Most popular names: Lily, Anna, Eileen, Selina (singer from S.H.E), Mike, Jack, and Tony.
Strangest/ funniest names: Snow, Rain, Santa, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tracy McGrady (I have several), Kobe (I have many), King (as in James… I have three of these).

This never ceases to amaze me.

And so on…

Teaching is fun so far though. The second class we are doing some dialogues and going over the pronunciations that confuse the students. Then I went over things like nicknames, how to pronounce the Boston Celtics, and taught them some college- related vocabulary.

When they list their hobbies (or any sort of list, actually) I can say that most students end their sentences with “and so on…”

For example, “My hobbies are to read books, sleep, play basketball…. And so on.” (a lot of them list sleeping under hobbies too!)

I started keeping a tally for one girl and she said it three times in one dialogue.

Another odd thing they all say is when they begin their little dialogues, they all start it with “Very pleased to meet you/ very pleased to meet you too.” Who says that?! Even more, which English book here taught them?!

Explaining Halloween

It was fun to explain Halloween to them, but I had a lot of problems explaining what a ‘costume’ was. Firstly because they mixed up ‘custom’ and ‘costume’, but mainly just because it is too weird for them to imagine. Surely they now think that all Americans are totally crazy.

I also told them about carving pumpkins, telling ghost stories, spiders and bats… it was fun and they were getting kind of scared since the electricity was out on campus. Then the wind blew and the door to my classroom flew open and the girls squealed! Fortunately the lights came on in the late afternoon so I hope no one had nightmares.

It also took me a while to explain what “Trick or Treat” meant but then they all went crazy when they found out I had brought candy for all of them. They like to applaud for things like this.

Halloween in Qingdao tonight. I am going as 80s girl in this rockin’ sweatshirt that says “Frannie says relax” with purple tights!

Best Sweatshirt Ever?

I bought this sweatshirt at a store in Li Cun, a nearby town. I bargained it down to 25 RMB and then was told I was very “li hi” (talented) at bargaining. I would have paid a lot more kuai for this shirt because it is just that great. Oh and then we got into a discussion about how I look Chinese but not Chinese. Again.

I am not a Chinese

I’m starting to get annoyed by the fact that I don’t look American enough and that I also look too Chinese. The guards at the gate always stop me asking for my student ID and then don’t really believe me when I say I’m a foreign teacher. This only happens when I am not with the other American teachers. Other professors here also don’t believe me when I say I’m a teacher because I kind of blend in with the students.

At the same time, when they see me on the street they know I’m not Chinese. I look so obviously Singaporean, or hua ren, overseas Chinese. I also don’t dress like a Chinese person and act pretty differently, even when not speaking.

I guess I should start using the big ‘c’ Chinese and little ‘c’ chinese.

I also got asked by students in both of my Friday classes why my hair wasn’t blonde. They don’t really understand the concept of being Chinese-American. It’s either you’re Chinese or you’re American. They honestly think I should have blonde hair and don’t understand why I don’t live in China or Singapore.

So on the whole, I’m having a good time here but this was just something that has become a daily struggle for me. I don’t look American enough to fully warrant myself as an English teacher but at the same time, am not Chinese enough to be one of them, obviously.

This reminds me of a quote I read when I was in high school and it said:

“For it is us, the hyphenated ones [Asian-Americans] living in the middle and getting the best of both worlds.”

Swine Flu!

Everyone in China is a little caught up about the swine flu and it’s kind of understandable after SARS. On the plane I was kind of paranoid because I was coughing up a storm after catching back-to-back colds, the latter from my adorable, yet incredibly infectious nephew.

Airport Scanners

When I arrived at Beijing and walked to the customs area, there was a medical screening area where they had these mounted thermal temperature scanners pointed at the crowd. I guess that whenever there is someone that turns up a bit in the red, they are pulled aside to the curtained medical area right behind. There was another second check where we submitted these forms that had questions like “Have you had contact with anyone with the flu in the past seven days?” and “Have you had contact with pigs?” Um, no.

My Non-Quarantine

I was supposed to be under a “voluntary” seven-day quarantine upon arrival. The other American teachers were pretty limited to the apartment building for a week, but since I arrived a lot later and the threat of swine is a little decreased, I wasn’t really quarantined and just won’t have any classroom contact until Friday. I’m very relieved to not have been!

University Gate Scanners

At the main gate to the university I am at, there are two people there with these temperature scanners. They strangely look like barcode scanners and also make a little ‘beep’ noise once they read your temperature. I tend to make a scrunched up face when they scan me because it freaks me out to have one of those pointed directly at my forehead. It’s really bizarre.

Medical Exam

I had a medical exam yesterday as a prerequisite to apply for the Foreign Expert Certificate (haha, I am an expert at being foreign!!). I had to get a lot of tests done, including an EKG, x-ray, sonogram, blood test, and physical exam. China is really thorough, apparently. So yeah… my first sonogram and first x-ray since they thought I had TB in high school. Weird stuff.

The Swine is an American Conspiracy

Apparently there is a video that is shown on Chinese flights that is basically a little cartoon about the swine. There is a visual showing the virus as arrows emanating from, oh hey, America! Forget Mexico, apparently the Swine was created by the US to take over the world. I can’t wait to see this video.

I start teaching classes this Friday, as in my tomorrow. I have two classes and hopefully have figured out a structure for the class. I got a lot of advice from some of the other teachers and basically get thrown into the fire tomorrow. And by fire, I mean a classroom of 50 Chinese freshmen in a vocational school. More details to come…

Oh and Matt is posting these until I get a proxy figured out. He’s the best, basically.