Day 243: Chinese English Class & A Gifted Watermelon

Nimenhao!

We had a great weekend introducing the girls to some more of Baoding.

During our adventures we found a new restaurant in the He Da (Hebei Daxue/University) alley (where our bread people are) that served what’s essentially sweet and sour chicken (plus two more dishes we ordered)!

I got to see Duncan teach a class for the first time:

And I had my first experience with a Korean restaurant when we went with the girls and Lex. I tried Kimchi, a Korean tea, a kind of potato pancakes, kimchi bread, marinated peanuts, some mysterious green stuff, and super squishy tofu all for the first time (I liked all of it but the tofu). And while everyone else ordered one-bowl dishes, Duncan and I, in the way that is quite normal for us, ordered a bit more extravagantly and got a dish called “the whole pig”. The middle of the table had a grill in it and a waiter cooked our platter of pork right in front of us. It was probably the most delicious meat I’ve ever eaten and I would go back their daily if I could afford it.

My students have been hilarious when they see Caitlin and Haley in the hallway talking to me in between classes or when I introduce them to the class. All of the students gather in the doorway to catch a glimpse of them when we’re in the hallway and once we’re in the classroom, the students are torn between being really excited about a new teacher they want to get to know and being afraid and nervous. Almost all of our classes have been better behaved than they normally are because Haley or Caitlin is sitting in the back and the students aren’t yet sure what will happen to them if they misbehave in front of the new foreign teachers.

When I introduce them to the class all of my students ask them the same few questions: What’s your favorite food? What’s your favorite sport? How old are you? But yesterday one of my sixth grade students asked me a question I wasn’t expecting – “Aiisa (Alyssa) why do you have yellow hair and your friend has brown hair?” She worked so hard to say that correctly in English that I felt bad when the only answer I could give her was “I don’t know”. But that question really highlighted a unique feature of American people. Since Americans, historically at least, are a mix of many different groups of people, our features can vary dramatically. So while we, as Caucasian Americans, expect diversity in our looks (such as brown and blonde hair, brown and blue eyes, different nose, eye, and mouth shapes), Chinese people aren’t used to that kind of variation. Almost all Han Chinese people (and many other homogenous racial groups) have black hair and black eyes. Of course they have variation in their features as well but it’s not nearly as dramatic as two white girls from the US both with drastically different hair and skin colors as well as feature variation. In the same class, many students kept asking me if Haley and I were sisters. At first I laughed at thought that it was a ridiculous question but then once I thought about it more I realized that they might think we look a lot alike as foreigners just as a lot of people say all Asian people look alike if they’re not used to seeing it. For example, when I first got here, I confused a lot of my students because I wasn’t tuned in to how their features are different but now I notice the differences in my students without even thinking about it. I’m sure they were doing the same thing I used to do.

Today I sat in on a Chinese-English class and was very impressed and interested to see how Chinese teachers teach English to Chinese students. Though it wasn’t what I was expecting, this particular teacher, I thought, did an excellent job at making sure the students really comprehensively understood the English words and phrases they were learning. Still, as in all of my classes, students tend to add an –a sound to the end of words that end in consonants. Whereas we say “park”, Chinese students often say “park-a”. I suspect that this is because Chinese language words don’t often end with a hard sound and I don’t think they even hear themselves adding the extra sound a lot of the time.

After the class Caitlin, Haley, Li Laoshi, three Chinese teachers, and I had a meeting that ended up lasting almost two hours. We spent the time giving feedback about the class that we watched along with the classes the girls have watched and then had a really long discussion comparing the two education systems. One of the things that struck me the most that came out of this meeting were the ideas of respect and educational entitlement. In China, getting a good education is definitely seen as more of a privilege and thus leads to some more respect for the teachers from the students. In the US, students often feel entitled towards their education and frequently have an attitude of “the teacher must earn my respect”. I think this combined with the characteristics of individualistic and communal societies, respectively, has a lot to do with how the students behave in the classroom in each system. Developing your individual person and asking the question “why” is a big deal in the US and while I think that is a great thing most of the time, it can also lead to students believing or saying, “I don’t see the point behind doing what this teacher says so I’m not going to”. That situation is almost unheard of in the Chinese system. Students do their homework when it is assigned and they pretty freely give the expected authority and respect to their Chinese teachers. However, when respect isn’t used to maintain the student’s behavior in the classroom, it seems that fear fills that gap. The Chinese teachers we talked to today said that they assign more homework to bad students but throughout our time here, we’ve also become aware that corporal punishment is not absent in Chinese schools and is also frequently a source of fear for these students. China, as I learned from Li Laoshi today, is actively making a conscious effort to eliminate corporal punishment from within the schools, but still seems unsure of how to maintain good classroom management in its absence.

Today has been a very educational day. Thursday I’m hoping to see some of the art classes offered at the school and at some point in the future I hope to sit in on a middle school Chinese English class and also a regular Chinese class. I’m very interested in seeing how the different classes are taught to different ages and with different subjects.

To finish the day, Li Laoshi called me into her office after my last class and said she had something to give me. Once in the office, she reached under her desk and plopped a giant watermelon into my arms. I said thank you but then asked her why because it seemed really random and she said “because you have been so good”. And then when I said thank you again she said “what do you think about the reason?” Confused, I said, “it’s very nice”. She laughed and as she walked away she just said “you can decide on the good reason!” So I said thank you again and carried my gifted watermelon upstairs with me. I think it was intended to be a gift of thanks since Duncan and I have helped her a lot with acclimating the new teachers to Baoding and the school, but I was very confused. It’s a great way to end the day though.

Next week we are going to Beijing for a few days over our May Day holiday. We’re excited to revisit some of the places we toured when we first went to Beijing in October over National Day with our friends from North Carolina. This year seems to be rounding out quite nicely.

Thank you for reading and until next time,

Alyssa

 

Day 238: Welcoming the Americans

Nimenhao!

We both had such a great day today! The new teachers from WKU (Haley and Caitlin) got here late last night and we’ve been helping them get settled and adjusted all day today. It’s been so much fun to be able to pass on all the things we’ve learned onto them.

I didn’t teach classes this morning so I got to sleep in and enjoy my coffee before heading down to a meeting with them and Li Laoshi to discuss their teaching arrangement. It’s been an interesting experience realizing how much we looked like them (all wide-eyed and slightly frantic) during our first days here and comparing that to how we are now. By comparing ourselves to them (representing our past selves) we are beginning to see some of the personal growth we’ve accomplished during this adventure. We seem much more laid back, accepting of going with the flow, and actually quite competent and capable (at least we seem that way). And while we’ve been interacting with other Americans more consistently than we’ve done since we were actually in the States, I’ve also discovered that my natural inclination to talk fast hasn’t disappeared out of disuse (I almost always speak slower English when talking to Chinese people so that they can have an easier time understanding me) and is just as expedient as it always was when speaking to native English speakers. What a relief!

Now that we’re with people that don’t speak Chinese, I realize just how much Chinese I do use on a daily basis and that, considering the relatively little time I’ve actually spent studying the language, I speak much more Chinese than I’ve been giving myself credit for. Even Li Laoshi commented on it today telling me that I have learned a lot of Chinese very well for the short amount of time I’ve been here and that all my pronunciation is correct (that’s quite an impressive statement, I think, considering tones and pronunciation are most of the difficulty with Mandarin).

My classes the past two days have been going really well also. Yesterday, my entire P5-1 class stopped class and applauded me when I wrote the Yuan character (元) on the board (they must think I’m simple-minded) and today my J1-6 class cheered when I walked into the room. When I asked them why (because I was really confused why one of my worst classes seemed so happy to see me), they told me they thought I wasn’t coming back to teach them and they missed me. That’s definitely one-way to make me feel all warm and fuzzy. To add to it, that class was the most engaged in my lesson they’ve been all year and I even got “beautiful” drawings of their friends from two of my boys in that class.

Another girl, from my J1-7 class, drew a picture of me that I think looks a lot like me. She even got my dimple!

After classes I was able to have several conversations in English and in Chinese with some of Duncan’s third and fourth graders and even some of my fifth grade girls surprised themselves when I asked them what they were doing and they responded with words they learned in my class this past week (like “drawing” and “painting”). It was a very rewarding teaching day, for sure. One of my favorite things about working here is and has been interacting with the students. Whether we’re being silly in the classroom by deliberately confusing he and she (as some of my seventh grade boys did today) or one of Duncan’s students is proudly telling me his name and age because he learned how to in class, interacting and relating with the students is definitely one of the best highlights to this job and this year.

Impromptu Gangnam Style dance party in one of Duncan’s classes:

While I was teaching my last class, Duncan and the WKU girls went with Li Laoshi to explore the arts classes available to students in the afternoon. Unbeknownst to us this entire year, it turns out the Baoding Bilingual School offer 49 art classes including drawing, dancing, singing, calligraphy, stone carving, stamp making, and musical instruments classes, plus more. They only saw the “traditional” Chinese arts classes today, but were thoroughly impressed by the quality and variety of arts education offered at this school. It was an eye-opening experience and Duncan came back telling me that this is probably one of the biggest reasons the Hebei Baoding Eastern Bilingual School is consistently rated the number one boarding school in Hebei Province. As different of an experience this has been to what teaching in the US would be like, I have learned so much about education, students, teaching, and myself throughout this process. And despite any complaints I’ve voiced along the way, I’m so grateful I’ve had this experience teaching abroad and I’m honored to have been a part of this school and these students’ lives.

Martial Arts/Wushu:

Stone Stamp Carving:

Traditional Chinese Calligraphy:

Music time:

Paper cutting:

Drawing of the school and paper cutting:

To top off the past two happy days, we found a new street food vendor making magically delicious sandwich things. These unique creations are made up of freshly baked bread with sausage in it, eggs, and fried hot dogs all made on an outdoor grill, of sorts. I definitely need to get a picture of the creation process but for now, here’s a picture of the final product:

We had the first heavy rain of the year last night and it made the air refreshingly clean and moist – a welcome change from the arid, dusty air we’ve been used to.
I’m done for the week and have a short week next week. We’re planning to join the girls on a traveling expedition sometime in the near future. We have a few days off for May Day in a couple of weeks so we’ll probably be venturing out again then. Since we’re going to help them meet their travel goals, we’re may not be visiting Shanghai again and may, instead, be visiting Xi’an again. We’re happy to visit pretty much any place we’ve been so far and having accomplished all our traveling goals, we’re more than happy to add our knowledge to their experience.

It’s been a lot of fun talking to people other than just Duncan (no matter how much I enjoy talking with him, I’ve had only him to talk to extensively for the past eight months and some new faces and voices is a welcome change). We’re really happy that the other teachers are here and we’re looking forward to their month with us. It should be quite an educational experience for all of us and I, for one, couldn’t be more excited!

Thank you very much for reading and until next time,

Alyssa

 

Day 236: The Countdown Begins

Nimenhao!

We’re officially in the final stretch of the year! With 55 days left until we’re back in the States and less than 50 days until our contract is over, we can see the finish line growing ever closer. And to celebrate, we got a real rainstorm today (if you call 2 minutes of rain a true rainstorm). It was very exciting and made us realize just how dirty everything was. We’re so accustomed to seeing everything – bikes, cars, people – covered in dust and grime that after the rain we were astounded by how shiny everything appeared. I guess that’s one of the many things we’ll be getting re-accustomed to once we’re back in the US. And, to also signify the beginning of the end, the two new teachers from Kentucky will be here tomorrow! We’re super excited to meet them and share this experience with them for a month. My students are also looking forward to having and getting to know other meiguo laoshi (American teachers).

We’ve been solidly in the routine since my last post that, though we’ve been happy, has left me with little to write about. My lesson this week has been about the United States (in preparation for the new teachers) and has led to some very interesting situations in the classroom ranging from my students being very impressed by my ability to write the RMB/yuan character (元) on the board to a student’s exclamation that President Obama is black to my acting out cowboys to give them a stereotypical understanding of Texas. Clearly, it’s been a multi-cultural week in my classrooms. But while my students have started asking me why I don’t study harder to learn Chinese because tones are “so easy, teacher!”, I impressed Li Laoshi and Duncan with my Chinese language ability the other day when we were all just hanging out talking. That was an exciting and motivational experience, for sure.

This week, we also got a “special friend price” (discount) from a noodle shop we frequent and our bread people gave us an extra-special twisty bread thing for free. Additionally, QLH got some new drinks (that may or may not be the same drinks they had over summer last year – we don’t remember) that are delicious and magical.

Special bread:

Also this week, Kuai Long (the motorbike) got its seventh flat tire in a month and we finally were able to replace it with a new tire (rather than continuing to patch it). Though the rim was a little bent, hopefully that’s all been fixed and we won’t be walking our bike around town any more.

I also got an important lesson from some students in my “international” class about Chinese education. According to them, Chinese education is essentially composed of five things/focuses (this is how it was presented to me):

1) Moral education
2) Intelligence
3) Physicality
4) Moral education
5) Physical labor

I’m not sure what the difference is between moral education #1 and moral education #4 but they did explain to me that moral education in schools is important because most parents don’t like religion and expect the school to teach their children this subject (I’m not sure what they teach though). Intelligence is measured by scores on standardized testing to get into middle school, high school, college, and beyond (these students did recognize that few Chinese students have well-developed imaginations because of this intense focus on testing and competition but brushed it off by pointing out to me that students that show potential in the arts go to an arts school and likewise with sports). Physicality, though not defined to me, I assume means physical education much like is in the US with PE classes and extracurricular sports. Physical labor is literally chore-work. It is the students that clean the classrooms, sweep the walkways, scrub the bathroom floors, garden, weed, plant trees, etc. The children at school make up the majority of the maintenance crew and janitorial staff. When I explained that students do not do that kind of “physical labor” in the US, my students were genuinely astonished. “Who keeps everything clean, then, if the students don’t do it?!” they asked me. I was surprised to hear that this kind of “physical labor” is considered an important part of the Chinese education system (I assumed it was a way to save some money on the school’s part). But my students seemed equally confused when I tried to explain critical thinking to them (even with the aid of a Chinese-English dictionary).
Whereas some idioms, interestingly enough, are exactly the same in Chinese and in English (for example, “bite the dust” and “tip of the iceberg”), there are also some definite differences in linguistic and cultural expressions that are as frequently unexpected as they are assumed. This is just another example of how interesting comparing and contrasting American and Chinese cultures has been for me during this year. I just love thinking about and noting how people from all over the world can relate in some ways and learn from each other in other ways.

We may be making a trip to Beijing again within the next month (partially to take the new teachers but also partially because we’ve literally been to all the places on our list that are convenient for us to get to without a car or a Chinese guide). Datong is eight hours on a regular train one way (which just doesn’t seem worth it to me), Zhangjiajie is truly out of the way to anyone without car, and Huangshan is a day-long journey one way on a train with the need for several hours of bus riding after that. We’ve seen all the big places on our list though, so I’m not feeling like we’re missing out on anything from our decisions. It just means we will do less traveling this semester to new places. Turns out there’s a five-hour bullet train ride from here to Shanghai so we may have to head back to that mega-city to round out our year in China (since that’s where the whole adventure began).

Thank you for reading and until next time,

Alyssa

Introducing the new “Honda Fit” – Chinese edition:

The back of a cardboard recycling truck in Baoding:

My initials permanently engraved in a cement sidewalk in Baoding, China:

 

Day 231: Worldly Realizations

Ever since I was younger and started become aware of social problems and the real world started to creep into my periphery, I have not been thrilled with the US. Throughout the later years of high school as I was planning my adult future and immersed in college searches and the question “what are you going to do with your life”, one of my main focuses was on getting out of the country. First I had elaborate plans to join a dance company in Europe. When dreams of a dance career ended, I directed my dreaming energy into plans of going to University abroad. And even though I happily found myself at a university within the States, I dreamed of studying abroad (whether it be a month, a semester, or an entire year). But three years went by along with graduation and I hadn’t strayed from America. But I did continue to entertain hopes and fleeting visions of graduate school in Europe and future jobs in Australia.

But while these dreams persevered, my disillusionment with the “great” United States of America increased. Though certainly not planting the seed of disillusionment and my intolerance of the public’s misplaced American pride (in my opinion), many classes and discussions with colleagues throughout college solidified my skeptical beliefs about the majesty and flag-waving of the US. Upon graduation, I was emotionally done with the never-ending battles over welfare, political sides, gun rights, abortion and sex education, the place of God in schools, the rights of the military, the NSA, structural racism, political correctness, and what seemed to me to be completely unfounded claims of greatness by the American public. I completely understood why so many people in other countries around the world aren’t too fond of these arrogant people called Americans.

And all of this partially fueled (I see now) my quick latch onto the idea of moving to China. I’d never had any particular interest in China (at times I’d even been heard to make the exaggerated claim that “I’ll never go there!”) but it seemed like an adventure, an opportunity to learn and grow, it offered a job and travel opportunities, and it was a chance to live, once and for all, out of the country. So it may not be that far of a stretch to say that I entered China with grandiose dreams of perfection to make up for where I thought the US was lacking.

As this year draws to a close, I find myself reflecting on the experiences we’ve had and the ways I’ve grown more and more frequently. I’m certainly more patient and tolerant and less quick to judge. I have accomplished my goal of becoming less emotionally reactive to less than positive situations. And I have learned a truly significant and life-changing lesson about what it means to be part of the ostracized minority both in appearances and in cultural differences. All of these experiences I believe have shaped me into a more thoughtful and empathic person along with grounding in me the importance of a well-rounded education.
We have had many times more positive experiences than we have had negative experiences, but we have certainly learned the most from our negative experiences. And I seem (surprisingly enough) to have become an adult (of sorts) during this year in China. One of the biggest components of that to me is my disillusionment with perfection. I’ve always been a perfectionist (I blame ballet for that, for better or worse) and I left the US and entered China seeking perfection. And I have not found it. There are astoundingly beautiful places in this country and more history than a single person can possibly wrap their mind around, along with many, many cultural differences that make me smile foolishly and love life. But living here has also allowed me to intimately see the shortcomings of modern day China, leaving the country far from perfect. My unofficial (and certainly mostly uninformed) opinion is that the lack of critical thinking is negatively affecting almost every aspect of modern-day Chinese culture. Without a doubt, it’s certainly the biggest problem in the education system, but we can see the effects in almost everything. And whereas traditional China could be characterized by honor, respect, and the importance of community, modern-day China could be characterized by how those qualities are quickly fading and being forgotten, especially in the younger generations (that have been named by some “little emperors/empresses”.

Realizing that China is no closer to perfection than the US is, along with my burgeoning awareness of global politics, has led me to the conclusion that nowhere and nothing is perfect. Each place has its own problems and if I’m picking what problems I want to deal with, I think I’m going to choose the United States where I’m also blessed to have a fairly high standard of living, good education, independent thinking, freedom (though China is definitely not without its own freedoms), and the protection of the military available to me simply because I am an American citizen.

Other people after an experience like we’ve had this year may not come to the same conclusion, but that’s partially why an extended experience abroad is so important. It forces you to question every aspect of life as you’ve known it and become aware of the things you’ve taken for granted and be grateful for the things you have or don’t have. When thrown completely out of your comfort zone, and if you have the mind to succeed and follow through with the commitment through the challenges, you (or at least I), are able to come up with original and experientially-founded conclusions for how you/I feel about things that may or may not have aligned with how you/I felt prior to coming here. And that’s probably one of the biggest ways I’ve changed during this time. My view of the world has changed shape and I’ve accepted perfection as an inspiring nonexistence.

And though China will certainly hold a special and memorable place in my heart for the rest of my life, for the first time, I can honestly say I’m proud to be an American.

 

Day 229: Is She Beautiful?

Hello!

We’re back from a wonderful weekend in Beijing and another day of teaching has already passed. Friday afternoon after Duncan’s classes ended, we set out on a bullet train and were in Beijing by 2 pm. We decided to stay in a different hostel this weekend (partly for adventure and partly out of booking necessity) and so we wandered our way through the chaos of the Beijing subway system and found ourselves amidst the mazing hutong alleyways of Ancient China. It turns out our hostel (Kelly’s Courtyard) is hidden away down own of these narrow streets and (without even a sign to let you know you’re ringing the correct doorbell to the door you’re warily standing in front of) is a traditional Chinese house converted into a small but comfortable hostel. The hostel advertises itself as a “family” but how it should be advertising is as a home away from home. They let you take what you want from a snacks counter and a refrigerator stocked with drinks of all sorts (so long as you go by the honor system and write it down); the internet is fast and consistent; the rooms and the accompanying private bathrooms are the cleanest places we’ve seen in China (we truly felt clean for the first time in months); and the rooftop terrace is an excellent place for reading (Game of Thrones, at the moment) while sun bathing (though I’m sure my paleness did more reflecting than absorbing).
My favorite thing about the hostel though was the silence. As soon as you enter the hutongs the sounds of various motors and their horns quickly dies away and as you delve deeper and deeper into the alleyways, you begin to be able to hear your own thoughts again along with each step taking you deeper into the maze. Once we were in the hostel, however, we actually felt compelled to whisper so as not to disturb other people or, more likely, be overheard (such a conundrum is a rare find, indeed, in a country exploding with people and lacking in privacy). But the quiet was magnificent and desperately needed.

We spent the majority of our weekend either basking in the sun on the hostel’s roof terrace or traversing the city either on the subway or through our wanderings. We also sated our appetite for Western food by enjoying burgers, Papa John’s Pizza, and even some German food in the embassy district (a truly amazing part of the city and one that I would gladly revisit). We even hate some nicer Chinese cuisine than we usually do on the roof of a restaurant near Nanluoguxiang. All in all, the weekend was exceptionally relaxing and just what we needed for a weekend away.

Hutong:

Have you ever seen a better feast? Behold, Excalibur! (That’s really what it’s called:)

Today, I taught seventh grade and began my classes by letting them know about the schedule change their about to “endure”. Two seniors from Western Kentucky University are coming to the Baoding Bilingual school next week to spend a month getting teaching hours before they graduate while experiencing life abroad. From what we understand (because we’ve been told very little), these new teachers will be in our classes with us and will be our assistants/co-teachers for the next month. In almost every class I said, “next week there will be a new teacher from America”, the kids responded with “where are you going?!” After I explained to them that I will still be here and I don’t go home until June (their confessions that they’ll miss me warmed my heart for sure), it went about like this:

Student: Boy or girl?
Me: Girl
Student: Is she beautiful?
Me: I don’t know.
Student: Is she your friend?
Me: No.

Student: Where is she from again?
Me: America.
Student: Where are you from?
Me: Meiguo (America in Chinese)
Student: What’s her name?
Me: I don’t know.

[Here they scoffed a bit at how little information I have and they seemed perplexed that we don’t know each other since we’re both from the US. Some students wanted me to go into detail about where we’re both from within the US but in general the conversation continued like this…]

Student: TEACHER! I want a boy teacher!
Me: Why?
Student: We like boy teachers.
Me: You don’t like me?
Students: No!! We like you very much. You’re very beautiful. Boy teachers are fun!
Me: Am I not fun?
Students: NO! You are fun. We want boy teacher. Why does the other boy teacher here not teach us?
Me: He teaches the little children.
Students: Who is the other boy teacher here?
Me: That’s my boyfriend.
Students: GOOD JOB, TEACHER! GOOD JOB! (with winks and thumbs up)
Me: Why do you want a boy teacher?
Students: Boy teachers are handsome and good looking.

So there you have it. Male foreign teachers are handsome no matter what they look like and girl teachers are good if they are beautiful. Welcome to teaching in China.

Other than my lesson in students’ teacher preference based on physical appearances, I had a proud moment regarding my Chinese. I was helping one of my (historically rowdiest) classes with their English homework when one boy didn’t understand what “without” meant and why that was the answer to the question instead of “with”. I was able to explain in Chinese that “with” is “有／you” in Chinese and “without” is “没有／meiyou”. He understood immediately and I was able to demonstrate some useful Chinese under my belt. Happy day!

As for the rest of April, I’m calling it no work April. We didn’t work yesterday and Duncan doesn’t work next Tuesday. Next week the two foreign teachers come in and they’ll be in/half-teaching our classes so they can get their degree-required teaching hours and they’ll be here until mid-May. The week after the teachers get here I work one day out of the entire week and the last few days of April and the first few days of May might also be exams for the students/holidays for us. Combine all of this and it looks like I won’t be teaching full weeks of classes by myself again until the last two weeks of our contract in which we’ll have to administer tests and then we plan on spending the last class partying and hanging out with the students to wrap up the year. It’s a silly schedule but as I’m enjoying my students more and more with every class I’m beginning to be sad I’ll have to leave them. It’s hard to believe this year of adventure is quickly drawing to a close.

But it’s not over yet so thank you for reading and until next time,

Alyssa

A picture of Duncan from one of his students:

 

Day 224: QQ & Chinese Parks

Hello!

It’s Thursday morning and I’m officially off work until Tuesday! Coupled with no work on Tuesday this week, and I’m on a (broken up) six-day holiday! Apparently, this weekend is Tomb Cleaning Festival (“a very important traditional Chinese festival”) but we didn’t find out about this until Monday afternoon. We were going to take advantage of this break by going to Datong to see some more grottoes, but because of the late notice, we were unable to buy tickets. After a ticket search to go to Huangshan, Hangzhou, Xi’an, Chengdu, or Shangahi that ended up with almost every single train in China completely sold out for this weekend, we managed to get tickets and a hostel to spend the break in Beijing. We’ve been to Beijing several times now and we’ve done most of the big touristy things there are to do there, but I’m sure it will be a good weekend (though almost certainly a crowded one) nonetheless. If anything, it will be a nice change from Baoding.

Baoding, however, has been much better recently. The smog hasn’t been bad and we’ve had many warm spring days. The city even seems to be enjoying the warmer weather (though we do continue to see the most masks worn on the clearest days and the fewest masks worn on the smoggiest days – go figure). Apparently, Baoding as a city has taken on some new project to try to beautify the city and thus all week we have seen city workers planting row and row of plants along the streets, trimming dead limbs off of trees, and even planting new trees here and there. Last week, the school cut down a whole bunch of trees in the courtyard (under the false pretense that they were unhealthy) and this week they have replaced the felled trees with new young trees with twice as many. All of the flowers are blooming and the school even hired workers to wash the outside of the buildings and windows (truly making a remarkable difference). Yesterday afternoon we even saw the kids playing in the courtyard among the flowers in what appeared to be some of the only free time we’ve ever seen these students have. Springtime seems to be making everyone happier (along with making the driving worse, for whatever reason).

Monday classes were trying this week but my Wednesday classes more than made up for it. My fifth graders are almost certainly my favorite grade as a whole. Every class I walk in to the students swarm me and try their best to tell me little tidbits about their lives in an amusing string of Chinglish. I’ve had students tell me all of the video games they played over the weekend, that they helped their mother cook dinner, that they played with their new baby brother or sister, and even when they moved into a new house or went on a trip to visit extended family. Sometimes, the highlight of their weekend (and probably the following week) is when they get to tell me that over the weekend they went to KFC, went shopping, and then went to the WC (how all of China refers to the bathroom).
At one point this week, I was attacked with hugs in the hallway. As I had about seven children clinging on to me in some way, about twenty more of them were trying to tell me all about their friend’s new shoes which turned out to be Heelys (those tennis shoes with wheels on the bottom) and he proudly slid around the hall and into the classroom as the bell rang. I thought it was super fun and now I want some too!

Also, in “interactions with my students” news – I got a QQ. For those of you that don’t know, QQ is one of the main social networking apps in China and has at times been called Chinese Facebook. In reality, it’s nothing like Facebook and almost exactly like (by which I mean, definitely the exact same programming as) AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) from pre-Facebook times (back in those prehistoric days when MySpace and Neopets ruled). All year I have had students come up to me and ask if I have a QQ and finally, this semester, I decided to get one while inspired by the thought that I could keep in touch with some of my students come time for my US return. I was hoping to keep it kind of on the down low but once one student got my QQ, the entire school inevitably had my QQ id. Ever since I decided to enter the Chinese online social scene, I’ve been getting “friend requests” almost continuously from random people between the ages of 11 and 14 that I can only assume are my students. Some times they send me a picture of themself with their English name and what class they are in and I can remember them really quickly, but other times I get a student (whose name is in Chinese characters) saying “Teacher. Do you remember me!?” and then if I say no they’ve gotten upset. (I’m sorry; I just don’t know all 1500 of my students’ Chinese and English names.) Their English is not as good as it should be (considering the high emphasis on learning English and their years of studying it in school) but I’ve enjoyed the little bit of communicating I’ve done with some of them so far. One of my sixth graders wanted to tell me about MH370 and the “first lady” while another student wanted to tell me about their favorite band. Last night, another one of my students added me to a class chat on QQ (group messaging) which was quite an honor but also quite baffling considering they are all using Chinese internet lingo and when I tried to use Google translate to figure out what was going on, I’d effectively already been bypassed by another 100 lines of colloquial text blurbs. Regardless, I’m excited to talk to my students outside of class and in a more natural setting. Potentially, I’ll be able to inspire them and teach them more English through QQ than I ever could in a classroom. And at the very least, they’re all super excited that their wài jiào teacher from America accepted their friend requests on QQ (I remember the feeling when someone I looked up to or was older than me added me on Facebook – I can pass it on).

Yesterday as we were riding along Dongfenglu (one of the main roads in Baoding), I was reflecting on things China has that are better than in other parts of the world and as we passed one of the most happening spot on our side of town, I settled on parks as a good example. Parks in China are such happy places that could frequently be described as beautiful outdoor multipurpose centers. In parks, older people gather to play Chinese checkers, Mahjong, and other card games. We’ve seen music lessons taking place as a whole group of friends practiced playing the erhu together. And almost every park in China is filled with dancers of all different varieties around sunrise and sunset. Yesterday, as we rode by, I saw men exercising by swinging chain links around their bodies and whipping giant whizzing tops to keep them going. There was what Duncan and I call an “old people playground” filled with people of all different ages exercising by swinging from monkey bars, stretching, and climbing all over this “fitness” play set. Grandmothers tasked with babysitting walked around with their friends while watching their grandchildren interact with other kids and teetering on wobbly legs. Some people were just sitting on benches enjoying the nice weather while others were hollering across the way at their friend who they’d just spotted on a bike. I even saw one man just staring at a tree. In some parks you’ll find young couples enjoying a private and quiet moment together as they hide in the darkness, and other times you’ll see friends practicing roller blading or kite flying while they listen to music. Some parks even have vendors that can sell anything from high-powered laser pointers and giant stuffed animals to sweetened pineapples and kebabs. And as we saw in Chengdu, sometimes parks are even places to set your adult-child up with a date. And when you compared this image to parks in the US filled with joggers and anxious parents, it’s easy for me to see why parks in one country are literally and figuratively a central part of life whereas parks in the other country are quickly fading away or frequently deserted.

Though I’m looking forward to our return to the States, I am going to miss how easy it is to hop on the bike or take a walk just a few minutes into town. Even though we certainly don’t live in town, a convenience store, restaurant, coffee shop, grocery store, and mall are all within distance of a short and (if the weather’s nice) pleasurable walk. It’s nice that a stroll in the park is just a couple blocks away and is safe and filled with life even after dark (indeed it’s busiest time). And upon further reflection, I believe parks may well be communal modern China at its best.

We’ll soon be off on another adventure around Beijing so thank you for reading and until next time,

Alyssa

 

Day 220: Western Qing Tombs

Hello!

Reluctant to wake up early over the weekend, we nevertheless did so that we could go on a grand mini-adventure! Greeted by a choking wall of white smog that made it difficult to even see the next door building, Enkui and his wife picked us up early yesterday morning and we headed to the Western Qing tombs about an hour outside of Baoding.

It was quite an interesting adventure because of how different it was from the seven months we’ve been here. First of all, we were traveling by private car and got to take the highways (all toll roads), we experienced filling up at a gas station (where the attendants fill up your tank and gas is measured in liters per 100 kilometers), and we had Chinese caretakers that ushered us around the tourist site. We were essentially Chinese tourists  (rather than laowai) for a day. And it was great!

As a UNESCO World Heritage site, the mausoleum complex is remarkably big and really can only be explored by car and with the help of a local guide.  In all there are 78 royal member buried on the grounds comprised of four emperors of the Qing dynasty and their respective royal households including family members and concubines. We didn’t see all there was to see but after several hours of exploring and wandering, I’d begun to lost count of how many tombs we did see. One of the most striking things to me is that there are farmers and other villagers living basically in the complex. The tourist sites (such as the tombs and the temple) are all guarded and you can only get in with a ticket, but immediately outside the walls there are families living in old servants buildings and their own homes. Even the building the emperor used to change his clothes in at the entrance of the mausoleum grounds is now home to a farmer (a fact I found astounding since I got fussed at for walking on the middle path of the road where historically only the emperor was allowed to walk).

You can definitely see the resemblance to the Forbidden City in Beijing:

Look at the remaining original paint! Also notice the three languages on this stele – traditional Mandarin, Manchurian, and Mongolian:
 

Inside one of the emperor’s tombs (the only opened tomb). I felt like an archaeologist in this. Definitely in both of our top three best things about the day:

A tomb surrounded by a remarkable echo wall. It was so much fun listening to our friends whisper hello to each other from across the courtyard thanks to these phenomenal acoustics:

The day was filled with speaking in Chinglish, laughing, and hanging out with our friends and it was absolutely magnificent. Even though we originally hadn’t wanted to get up and go, I’m so glad that we did. It was an excellent way to spend a Saturday and welcome in the spring.

Today, we woke up and the smog was all gone. The weather has actually the best we’ve seen this year and we celebrated by going outside in short sleeve shirts without jackets, eating pizza and ice cream, getting coffee, wandering around a park and then going shopping in a new grocery store where we found peanut butter, fruit and M&Ms!

It’s hard to believe we’re already halfway through this semester and we’ll be on a flight headed back home in only 71 days. But as the weather gets nicer and nicer, we get more excited about what’s left to come during this grand adventure in the Orient.

Thank you for reading and until next time,

Alyssa

 

Day 218: Spring in Baoding

Hey everyone!

It’s been a difficult but routine week here in Baoding filled with chainsaws, early morning wake-ups, negotiating relationships, and another flat tire on the bike.

Sunday we went out for lunch with Enkui and his wife and niece and ate at a great restaurant that was “American” themed. The food was essentially Chinese American food that wasn’t fast food. This means we had a Chinese cuisine variation on wings, beef tips, roasted potatoes, green beans, bananas and coconut covered in marshmallows, and lots and lots of garlic. It was great and since it was cheap and close to the school, I can see us going there again on our own. The best part of the whole experience though, was this monstrosity outside the restaurant:

‘Merika!

Classes were as scheduled but the students were difficult for both of us this week. We came out of classes just exhausted from trying to maintain focus or manage the classroom effectively. I suspect a lot of the misbehavior and general rowdiness from the students came from their inability to play outside this week seeing as the smog has settled back in again with alarming intensity.

And though the trees are transforming into bright greens and the flowers are beginning to bloom around campus, we were also introduced this week to how Baoding prepares for Spring.

Piles of plastic on the road:

No more trees and concrete destruction on campus:

But despite the frustrations, I had some good moments with my students too. One eighth grade girl that I’ve been convinced since the first week of school hates me, wanted to take a picture with me this week and was super excited to talk with me when I was wandering around campus.

When I asked one of my seventh grade boys who is usually very good in class why he wasn’t participating, he told me he was sad because he was having “woman” troubles (his friend made sure I was certain to understand by writing “woman” at the top of his paper and pointing and nodding with a slight frown). I found this whole situation (not to be degrading) adorable and I really wanted nothing more in that moment than to know the details of his first heartbreak. But treading the line between helpful and embarrassing (which has become a pretty much constant thought when interacting with my middle school students, especially considering Chinese students are more likely to be embarrassed by nothing by a magnitude of about 1000 compared to American students) contained my curiosity and now the world will never know the drama involved in his first love. Though I am routinely observing that Chinese men are not masculine (compared to American standards of masculinity), I appreciated this boy’s willingness to be transparent and honest with his emotions rather than trying to hide any sensitivity under the pretense of “being a man”.

Some very happy fifth graders:

And at the end of this frustrating week (really just more China fatigue largely fueled by the absence of clean air and sunlight), I am happy when I reflect on my personal growth so far during this adventure. I set out at the start of this year, with some clear goals relating to how I interact with the world around me and I think I’ve made some great progress. I have never been one to be characterized by patience, but now I would even go so far as to describe myself as a patient person. I have become remarkably good (for me) at talking myself out of negative emotional reactions to situations and circumstances I have no control over, and despite (or maybe because of) all the challenges and trials that I have had to get used to as a part of life, I’m much more tolerant, my expectations are more malleable, and I’m more grounded in the present. I’m amused that it took me coming to China and experiencing the most substantial culture shock of my life to make progress on life-long goals of mine, but at the end of the day, that’s why this type of adventure is so valuable. We’ve both been forced to adapt and learn and grow and live outside of our comfort zone and that has inevitably shaped us into new persons that will carry on through the rest of our lives better by having learned and grown from this experience.

Thank you for reading and until next time,

Alyssa

 

Day 211: Publicity Stunts with Kites

Another week has gone by and as it has passed spring has moved back in and warmed our hearts. Seriously, with the warmer weather and blue skies, we’ve not had to dress in half of our closet to go outside, we’ve been able to bask in the sun for the first time in what feels like a lifetime, and the smog has been pretty much nonexistent this week. We can finally breathe!

This week was kind of strange in that I only taught Monday, Thursday, and Friday and Duncan only taught Monday and Tuesday, but it was a good week nonetheless. My students were great. We had a lot of fun reviewing what they’ve supposedly learned thus far this semester and even my eighth graders were the best they’ve ever been. I definitely think the change in weather has something to do with the improvement in everyone’s mood.

Today we started the day by going to the kite celebration the elementary school hosted to celebrate the first day of spring. All of the students at the Baoding Eastern Bilingual School have been making, preparing, and practicing flying kites all week to get ready for the celebration today when parents were allowed on campus and the students showed off their mad pom-pom skills and kite-flying (aka kite running). Though it became pretty clear we were invited primarily as a publicity stunt, we had a lot of fun watching the kids run around with their parents and their kites and their excitement to see us made us look really good in front of our bosses (well, Duncan’s kids’ excitement made him look really good in front of our boss; most of my kids had to stay in or go back to class before I got a chance to say hello).

I don’t have any social commentary tangents to go on today so I’m going to include some pictures I’ve taken throughout the week.

Spotted on the wall in the middle school hallway:

Bike queue at a cross-walk during rush hour traffic every single day:

In the midst of the chaos:

Some more “inspiration” found on a bulletin board at the school (who wrote this?):

We are staying in Baoding this weekend to enjoy the nice, smog-free weather and to do some spring-cleaning in our apartment. Our next trip will probably be to Datong to see some more grottoes but we haven’t decided when we want to go yet. Maybe we’ll go on our next long weekend.

As always, thank you for reading and until next time,

Alyssa

 

Day 206: Laowai at the Longmen Grottoes

Nimenhao!

We’ve returned after our trip to Luoyang and – I never thought I’d say this – we are happy to be back in Baoding.

We arrived in Luoyang on Friday with high expectations after a four-hour bullet train ride only to have them crushed pretty much as soon as we stepped off the train. First, there was no hostel ride at the train station to take us to the hostel (a free service advertised on their website and on Hostelworld and despite two emails requesting a pick-up) and so with both of our phones with dying batteries, no clue on how to say or write the hostel’s name or address in Chinese (we discovered there’s very little English in Luoyang), and relying on the bus information we read online (we didn’t know whether it would be correct or not), we found the bus stop and waited in the pushing crowds. Then, to make things worse, while we were waiting in line to get on the bus we thought was correct, an old lady (it’s always them!) repeatedly hit Duncan’s bag, tried to push him out of the way, and called us “stupid white ghosts” (which is a really terrible cuss word in Chinese meant to be as derogatory as possible towards white foreigners). So within the first fifteen minutes of our time in Luoyang we had discovered that we were in a completely different world than anything we had expected.

Turns out we did get on the right bus and we were dropped off right in front of our hostel after only a fifteen minute bus ride (thought it was a bus ride that was either in pedal-to the floor acceleration or foot on the floor braking). The hostel, clean and certainly suitable, was the most “Chinese” hostel we’ve stayed in. Though advertised as an international youth hostel, it’s clearly a place most frequently visited by Chinese tourists and not laowai. The girls behind the desk didn’t speak the greatest English which, though normally wouldn’t be an issue for us at all, was frustrating when she let us know that they had over-booked our room and we weren’t going to have the double room we paid for. After a bit of linguistic charades, we finally made it to our new room (a very comfortable double twin bed room) and decided to get some dinner in the hostel. We spent the rest of the evening adjusting our expectations and hanging out in the common loft area and figured out our plans for Saturday.

Saturday morning we woke up, had a good (American) breakfast and hopped on a bus to get to the famous Longmen Grottoes. We knew we needed bus 81 (which stopped right outside our hostel door) but since I assumed that the hostel people saying “cross the street” meant cross the bike lane rather than the actual street, we ended up on bus 81 going the opposite direction from the Longmen Grottoes. After taking it to its terminal station on one end of town, we realized “hey, this isn’t the grottoes! This is a train station!” and hopped on the correct bus and took it to the other terminal station. This ended up being just fine though because we got to see the city (not a city conducive for exploring by foot like we’re used to) and the weather was absolutely beautiful with blue skies, no smog, and a refreshing breeze.

We did make it to the Grottoes after not too long and instantly loved it. The Longmen Grottoes is a UNESCO World Heritage site where there are more than 100,000 stone carvings of the Buddha and his disciples within 1400 caves dating back as early as 493 A.D. Many of the statues were decapitated or otherwise destroyed during the Cultural Revolution in an attempt to get “rid of Old China” but they are still stunning nonetheless. Almost all of the bigger statues (some up to 57 feet high) are in good condition and provided an amazing example of ancient Chinese history, art, and culture. Probably one of my favorite parts of the Grottoes, however, was the thousands of teeny tiny buddhas covering entire walls and doorways. The most fascinating thing to me, though, was probably the fact that you can still see traces of some of the original paint. Just like the Greek and Roman historical sites (I’m thinking of the Parthenon, in particular) it’s hard to imagine statues we are accustomed to seeing in 50 shades of beige instead in reds and yellows as they were originally painted.

Buddha-filled holes in the hill:

Walls with tiny buddhas and original paint:

Teeny tiny buddhas:

Panorama of the giant statues:

While we were there, it was confirmed, once again, that Luoyang is not used to foreigners and so Duncan and I were asked pretty much every 100 meters if we could take a picture with someone (as usual, boys wanted pictures with Duncan and girls wanted pictures with me). At one point, there was a group of eleven girls queued up to take a picture with me and I just gathered them round for a group picture and had Duncan act as the photographer so that we could get the process over with faster. People asking for pictures has happened all over the place in China but never with as much concentration as we experienced at the Longmen Grottoes.
Though certainly very strange and something that takes a bit of getting used to at first, if people ask we typically don’t mind (though I do wonder what they are going to do with the picture of me later). But the friendliness and excitement of meeting a foreigner didn’t last long as people started trying to “sneak” pictures. This included standing right next to me (regardless of whether I was looking in the direction of the camera or not), taking pictures of us with the camera shutter noise and flash on (as if we don’t notice), and, for one girl, literally running in front of us turning and taking a picture of us as we walked and frowned at her and then running back behind us to where her friend was giggling (I considered chucking her phone in the river at that point since we would have obliged had she just asked).

After wandering the grottoes (and finding ice cream cones), we headed back to the hostel for some relaxing (by that point we wished we were invisible because the picture taking had gotten in the way of our site seeing and we’d experienced some blatantly racist reactions). But even at the hostel there was no escape. A college student from Xi’an, even after talking to me in English for a while, decided she was going to start “sneaking” pictures of me and when I held my hand in front of my face and shook my head she said “oh, but you’re so beautiful” (as if that’s an excuse for not asking) and I just said “please don’t” and we went upstairs to our room for a while. Later, once we decided it was safe to return downstairs again (and we were wanting the internet), we were sitting on the couch when another lady with a giant fancy camera lens came in and was just staring us down across the room. Even after we both shook our heads no and tried to wave her off, she kept staring at us and taking dozens of pictures. Finally, I yelled at her to stop (much like punishing a misbehaving dog) even though we were in the middle of the common room and made a motion to get up towards her. She waved at us and left soon after that (of course after pretending it was the wall she really wanted a picture of). It may sound harmless enough, but after repeatedly dealing with the rudeness of people I just want to scream “I AM NOT AN ADORABLE ANIMAL OR PLAYTHING!” If people want a picture with me I will comply if they ask, but the sneaking, giggling, and blatant treatment as if I am sub-human because I am not Han Chinese is exhausting and infuriating. Once again I am reminded that it would be awful to be a celebrity and to have no escape from paparazzi or crazy people invading your personal privacy.

Overall, our trip to the Longmen Grottoes (our purpose for visiting Luoyang) was good and I’m glad we did it even despite the frustrations of Luoyang people. Now that we’re back in Baoding and the weather is clearly becoming spring, we have been reminded that we do appreciate and enjoy this place we’ve been calling home for the past six months even if it is filled with trash and smog. We’re looking forward to the rest of our time here even more now that winter is finally coming to a close.

The next trip we make will probably be in a couple of weeks to the Yungang Grottoes in Datong, Shanxi Province. This week I hope to buy our train tickets to Hong Kong for our final big adventure before we leave the country and to get caught up on pictures and other housekeeping (online and in-home). We have a normal week of teaching ahead of us (except I don’t teach Tuesday this week) and I’m planning on reviewing this semester’s lessons before beginning more new material.

Thank you for reading and until next time,

Alyssa