Can't keep me quiet...

Recently the network access to Blogspot was restricted, hence why I haven't posted anything in several weeks. Even so, I found a way to get this through.

My regular lessons ended today, the next two weeks I'm going to spend giving my students their finals.
(Translation: I will shortly be engaged in 235, 3-minute conversations that will chew up the next two weeks of my time in listening, and perhaps an extra week for grading).


A recent event of note: My colleague Richard held a concert where he performed with a traditional Chinese music band and a Jazz band. For my part I served as one of the three MCs (and unfortunately I am at present unable to post any of the pictures from the show on this site - you can however see them on my Facebook account).


In other news I've made plans to go traveling in Southern China once I'm done giving and grading finals. As it stands now I plan to be gone for around two weeks, flying out the fourth week this month, traversing the region by bus and on foot, and returning by train when it's all over.

I'll follow with details later.

(Traditional) First day of summer, really feels like summer

When January 26 rolled around it was "traditionally" considered the first day of Spring. However that day there was rain and snow and no real feeling of transition out of the bleaker aspects of winter. May 5 was "traditionally" the first day of Summer and indeed that's what it felt like.
The weather has turned quite nice lately: sunny, warm, and thankfully not yet humid. However it has precipitated an increase in the quantity of insects, and the mosquitoes are back in full force.


Two nights ago my friend Jia Jing and a friend of hers needed to take photographs of peoples' hands doing "rock, paper, scissors" for the purpose of making a poster for an upcoming sports meet.

She decided to take pictures of hands of three different skin colors so she and her partner could sell the event as being all inclusive.
I don't know who did the "scissors" hand (might have been her or her partner). I got my friend Frank (a med student and friend who lives just across the road) to do some hand poses as well (he's the "rock"). And looks like my "paper" hand is what made the final cut.












Yesterday I met with a group of sophomore English majors that wanted to speak with me to improve their conversational abilities. They decided to take me on a walk up the mountain (the first time I've been up there in several weeks). I thought it was great to get away from the hustle and bustle of life on the campus.
The change in my behavior was quite palpable. Up there, after a brisk walk, and a nice comforting sit on the rocks I felt my mind settling down, and my thoughts becoming still. I just looked out over the hills (it was a very clear, sunny day) felt the gentle breeze, and spent some time just breathing.

When I came here in August the temperature actually wasn't as hot as it is now, but the humidity was more intense at that time so it actually felt hotter. Now it's a lot like a Southern Oregon summer: sunny, hot and dry, but with a gentle breeze to keep you at an ambient temperature.


Next week I have an oral test in Chinese, so I need to study up some this weekend when I find time in between personal apartment maintenance and class preparation. I don't know what my grade is in the class (probably not very good) but at this point I'm more concerned with how I do on the HSK standardized test near the end of June.

Still not easy cooking...

... and now it's Passover.

Once again I come upon an important traditional Jewish holiday and find myself in a place where I have no access to the traditional foods that I would buy for such a celebration. Thus it falls to me to make some of the food as best I can.

Today it's matzo.

Using the same flour that I used for making dumplings I mixed flour and water together to form a soft dough, tore it into pieces the size of hacky sack balls, then used my rolling pin to flatten the balls into large flat pancakes.











I experimented with two methods of making the bread, and both methods took only a matter of minutes.
The first method was to coat a wok with some peanut oil and fry the bread almost like a breakfast pancake. This method produced bread that was much chewier than normal matzo, but for some sections had the same slightly charred taste that I associate with the Manischewitz® brand of matzo.
The second method I attempted was to place a piece of dough on a plate and run it through the microwave for almost ten minutes. This produced a very thin, golden colored bread that was crispy and rather delicious, though admittedly nothing like the store bought, truly kosher, matzo I typically eat for Passover.













A look back at what's been going on, this last week I taught nearly double my normal class load so I could request leave from April 9th - April 18th. Hence I've spent the past week teaching most mornings, often changing lessons one period to the next to take care of each class, and juggling these commitments with my recent drive to seek out grad schools and the necessary steps needed to prepare for applying.
The reason I requested more than a week of leave (something I'm told no foreigner has been given before) was so I could go to Beijing this Thursday afternoon and meet with Uncle Mike and Aunt Susie and we could all travel to Xi'an (西安), Shanghai (上海), Suzhou (苏州) and Hangzhou (杭州). Having brought Mike's book with me on this trip, I thought it a good idea to lend it to my colleague 薛菲菲 so she could have an idea of who I'm off traveling with.
Admittedly the book centers around Mike and Susie and their experiences backpacking, but I thought it fitting for the occasion.

Two weekends ago I went with two of my students, and the father of one of them, to a very nice park in the city. Here's a sampling of what I saw.
Even a cloudy day couldn't damage the beauty of the flowers here.































The weekend prior to that I went to watch a piano performance at the Music College. Being that I have the musical ears of King Midas (ears of an ass), most of the music sounded beautiful to me, and none gave me the impression of being particularly gifted or stirring. However I was in the company of a very experienced musician who was quick to point out who had talent.
My newest colleague and friend Richard Pearl (himself a famous banjo player of several decades, http://www.richardpearl.com/) noted that one girl (a sophomore, pictured below) had the most talent of anyone in the competition.

Making food is hard... to... do

With all of the street food I've been eating I fear I may start to get fat before much longer. A colleague of mine even said my face already shows some signs of added weight. So I figured I should try my hand at some home cooking.

After eating these really delicious rice and chicken filled dumplings in the street shops I decided I'd try making them myself - though I had no recipe.

I made rice, mixed in some fried chicken,








...and used flour and water to make dough and wrappers like I would for regular 饺子.




















My kitchen hardware does not include a rack to steam things on, so I had to jerry-rig a steamer by placing some chopsticks in a pot of water and suspending a plate of the dumplings over the boiling water. In the process of steaming, the water in the pot completely evaporated and the chopsticks got a little charred - fortunately I wasn't using any of the chopsticks I brought with me, only the ones left over by the last tenant.


The dumplings I made weren't like the ones on the street, for one thing the dough I used resulted in a thick cover - also the filling I used did not have as much sauce, so the taste wasn't as strong. Good news was I could eat the filling with or without being steamed (or boiled as I later tried) in a wrap of dough.

与时具进

(keeps going, and going, and going...)

The days have gotten longer, the weather a bit warmer and brighter, and all in all things feel more alive.

For several days this past week there has been sunshine in the afternoons and such a rise in temperature that one can go outside without wearing a long-sleeve shirt. I took full opportunity of such breaks in the weather to sit out on the grass and let the sun wash over my whole body.
After being wrapped up tight for the past few months, and going through such a lull in activity it felt like near-hibernation, the joy that these afternoons brought me is beyond my grasp of any language to express.

Besides that I've been going to the alley of small food stands called 小吃街 near the medical college almost every night for some time now. I've had a variety of foods including 鸡肉泡饭 (chicken soup with rice), 宫爆鸡丁 (Kung Pao chicken), 大排面 (pork and noodles), 蒸饺鸡丁 (steamed chicken dumplings) and 肉菜蒸饺 (steamed meat and vegetable dumplings) to name a few.
Every night I try to get something new, and it seems almost impossible for me to get something that isn't delicious.


An interesting addition to the ensemble of crazy things I've seen here - Disney has decided to grace our small corner of China by sending its mascot

Where have all the blogposts gone?

(Dr. Nick Riviera style [Simpson's])
Hi Everybody!


Wow, 3 weeks now since I last put something here.
There's been a lot of restructuring and preparation going on here - new semester, new plans and designs, some total overhauls, and going to classes on top of it all.

First I'll start off with a picture of myself from the start of the term (nearly 2 weeks ago) after I went to barber shop and said "帮我理的越短越好". This roughly translates to "the shorter, the better".









Reactions have been mixed in regards to this change - some of my students giggled when they saw me like this, some of my colleagues thought I pulled it off quite well, and some asked me if I'd lost weight.
I took this picture two weeks ago and I still look pretty much the same.


Aside from removing natural insulation from my scalp I also tackled the problem of the floor in my apartment. I don't know if the last guy living here was just as much of a slob with the floor as he was with the fridge or if the seals between the tiles in the floor are starting to degrade, but there has been crust in the spaces in my floor tiles since before I moved in here, so I decided before classes started that I would do something about it.

Here's what my floor looks like after putting up all the chairs and using a kitchen counter cleaner in the cracks - it's an improvement I assure you.








And here is the room in its present condition.









And here's the kitchen in IT'S present condition.










This (not so) little guy I found near the steps leading up to my apartment and I'm not sure whether to be simply sad that the poor guy is dead, relieved that it's definitely not in my room, or wary that there's now a confirmed possibility that there could be others near about.









This week I finished looking through my students' holiday journals, and after reading their stories, seeing where they're strong and where they need some work (as far as writing goes) I have a number of plans for what to teach them in the coming weeks.
Next week - review of past tense.

This afternoon and tomorrow morning I have to listen to some make-up final speeches from several students that didn't pass last semester's final exam. One of the students is sick and in hospital, so I'll test her when she gets back.


In other news we have a new colleague working at City College to replace Carl and Willamin (who went back to Canada and are now teaching in Harbin). His name's Robert, he's from the U.K. and he's been teaching in Zhejiang Province for six years now.
Hearing that really made my six months look small and unimpressive by comparison.

My colleague Riz recently loaned me a book written by Dr. Vince Jacobs of Linfield College - the first foreign teacher in Wenzhou (1990). I've only gotten through the first five or so chapters, but they've only covered the first couple weeks he spent in China and it's hardly even mentioned Wenzhou.

Reading about his travels made me think about what I'll do this summer - where might I go and what would I want to see?
So far I'm thinking I should go to Xi'an (西安) if only to see the Terracotta warriors (I came all the way to China, can't very well go without at least catching a glimpse). I'd also like to see the gardens in Suzhou (苏州), the karsts in Guilin (桂林), and a trip back to Dali (大理) for a week or so would be AWESOME!

I think about all of this now because after winding up with essentially nowhere to go during winter vacation I figure I should get on the ball with arranging trips before things start getting booked up.


Classes are going better this term - yesterday I clocked the time I gave students for conversation (I have a stop-watch this semester) and found that I gave them a full 50 minutes of conversation time out of 90 minutes of class.
In addition to timed intervals I'm also using the journals as attendance tools and group organizers. Now the students have to call out names in English and don't keep interacting with the same people all the time... it's going good.


Oh, and the last thing to add: I enrolled as a student in a Chinese speaking and listening class at the International Cooperation College. So now, as it was back in the undergraduate days last year, I'm officially both a teacher and a student.

Last time I had this setup both pursuits weren't totally complementary (teaching was in more general science, learning was in evolution) but they were still in the same overall focus and language. Now I teach one language while I learn a very different one.
...not as easy as it sounds.

我的生日 - 自己的新开始

In the last several weeks I've been witness to the declarations of 2 New Years, and though for each of them I made resolutions to change things about myself and how I live here, none of them made much of an impression on me. That is not to say I didn't have a wonderful time with my friends, the celebrations were loads of fun, but for me they were rather arbitrary - we had fun for the sake of fun. Nothing in my world came to an end and nothing new came into being.

However, my own birthday (February 5th) was different.

In the past couple years I didn't think much of my birthdays. I don't drink except with friends and at people's houses, and only at their insistence, so my 21st wasn't anything profound, and when I turned 22 I was working as a student-teacher and living with two roommates who both had very busy schedules, so celebration didn't really enter into my thoughts.
...plus, in general, I prefer a life with minimal possessions, so I'm usually not big on material gifts.

This year I found myself far from home, no family around, friends all busy, and my apartment practically devoid of food, so I spent the day looking up recipes and going to the market and the open-air grocers to get food and equipment.
So there was no preparation for a big celebration, no intense socialization, most of the day I spent by myself. And even though I only turned one day older I knew it was a day that was more MINE than any other day in the year.

I felt myself reborn, recharged, I had energy that had been lacking for months, and though it was a cloudy day I felt warmer and more content than I had in nearly all of the days of winter that preceded it.

I'm still behind in lesson plans, my Chinese is still quite weak, and my cooking alone is no where near adequate enough to keep me alive. (Electric burners are better than nothing, but a stove with an actual flame would do such wonders).
At last I feel like I have wherewithal to MEET these difficulties.

...kinda wish I'd had it when the vacation started nearly a month ago, but I guess things happen at their appointed time, neither after or before.

我的虹桥的休假

After looking at some possible tour groups and the airfare to fly to and from 哈尔滨 it's become quite clear that a trip that far north just isn't in the cards this vacation. It's probably for the best, I feel cold as it is, and without a person from the area as a guide I don't think I would be able to really enjoy the experience.

So instead I went for another adventure a little closer to home:

Several weeks ago I got to go to 文成 to see Jada's hometown, go hiking and just get away from the city for a while and see something new.

(虹桥)

These last few days I got to have another experience in a non-urban setting.
Though more than an hour away by long-distance bus it's still (surprisingly) considered a part of 温州.

Hong Qiao (虹桥), which if translated directly equates to "Rainbow Bridge", is the hometown of my friend (薛菲菲) Fay's grandparents (they actually live in a smaller village a ways away). So I stopped by for a few days, met the 薛 family, learned how to play 麻将 (majiang - really popular game that uses tiles), traipsed around, watched some movies and met several people.
Good times.

Their house (indeed their whole village) was up against several beautiful hills, so within a few hours of arrival I expressed interest in hiking. The following morning, Fay's grandfather (爷爷) arranged for a van to take us (him, Fay, Fay's cousin and myself) up behind the hills to 白龙山 (White Dragon Mountain) where we could walk around and visit the many temples that dotted the mountain face.

I learned an expression in the course of the hike:
上山容易，下山难
Meaning "up the mountain is easy, down the mountain is hard". I may have disagreed with that statement if I had had to climb all the way up the mountain to begin with, but since we only had to reascend after going through a couple, small valleys I found it very apropos.

One thing that was quite remarkable was whichever temple or shrine we stopped at, Fay's grandfather was immediately able to strike up a buddy-buddy conversation with the tenants. I wonder how many times he's been up this way.































Aside from hiking mountains and visiting temples I also got to go to have a celebratory lunch in Fay's mom's home village.

We were served a local wine and lots of food, and as family rule dictated, Fay had to go to each person at the table we sat at and propose a full, personal toast.
Apart from us there were about 10 people eating our table, and those guys went through hard liquor like you wouldn't believe.
(I was a little concerned about Fay's dad getting sloshed since he was the one driving all of us home later).

I couldn't understand a word being said. The dialect here is incredibly strong... so's the wine for that matter... but it was a good party, and afterward I went walking through the streets and played ping pong with a random guy in his garage.

Fay's great-grandmother (grandmother's mother - 奶奶的妈妈) turned 95 on the 2nd of February, and she had a party with many grandchildren, but it was strictly family only, so I left that day and took the bus home - overall it was a grand trip.

春节, 新年快乐!

When I first came to China (5 months ago), Julie and Mu took me to a restaurant (东北一家人) in downtown Wenzhou that had traditional food from their home region of China. For the Mid-Autumn Festival I visited an adjacent, similar restaurant (东北一家亲) with my hosts, as well as Jada and Ben, and I've wanted to go back for months.

These last few days I've eaten at both places and I actually got a little tired of it - such rich and delicious food loses its magic if you eat it three days in a row.


Besides food there have been other celebratory events. In the evening on 1/25/09 there were fireworks going off all over Wenzhou. Below is a video I took of the cityscape from Julie's balcony.



The amount of fire-power you're allowed to make use of is really astonishing:
After having dinner in the restaurant one night we stepped out and got to the opposite sidewalk in time to watch a group of kids light off a 5-meter chain of firecrackers in front of the restaurant. Small pieces of exploded material were hitting my jacket from more than 7 meters across the road, and the noise was deafeningly loud!

In our district there were boxes that each had more than 30 rocket fireworks going off, turning the apartment complex into a frightening bonanza of lights and explosions.
From the apartment of one of Julie's friends, where we were spending the last hours of the previous year and the first hours of the new year, the explosions were taking place at eye level not 15 meters from the window!


At night we watched a grand set of performances on TV that were bright, colorful, funny, and (for me at least) very, very confusing. Though I did get to see Jackie Chan sing, and for the first time I saw "Dashan", the Canadian TV personality who speaks immaculate Chinese and serves as the gold standard of all other foreigners in China.
(I'm not kidding, if you're a foreigner people will ask you if you know him).


Obeying tradition we made dumplings and ate them as part of a midnight meal. We also threw in leftovers from the many restaurant feasts. It's common practice to put some special somethings into just a few of the New Year dumplings before cooking them, so we can see what we will find in the New Year.

Here's a breakdown:
Coin = prosperity
Candy = sweetheart
Peanut = luck
(There was only one dumpling that had a coin, and only one with a candy, but several with peanuts).

I had to go through a lot of dumplings but at last I found one with something special (besides the delicious filling), it was the "sweetheart" dumpling. So it seems like I'm destined to find my sweetheart in the coming lunar year.
SWEET!

Jada shows us 文成

Mu and I went to Jada's dorm expecting to transport both her and one of her roommates to her hometown of WenCheng (文成), but said roommate was apparently too lazy to pack and so we left her - thought that was a little harsh.

On a hilltop near the main part of 文成 we saw a pagoda, and near the pagoda we found a tree that I was able to climb - if you've seen some of the pictures of me through the years you might notice that I occasionally find trees to either climb or at least sit in




...arboreal nature of ancestral humans resurfacing I suppose.




Lunch included some diverse dishes, but the most memorable (and among the best tasting) were the animal heads: duck (enough for one each) and pig (a half).











A little further out in the country we came to a temple where a tour guide tried to relate some story to me and I couldn't help but laugh at the futility of his efforts (bless his heart for trying).




Outside the temple we walked through a village and saw a group of kids. One girl among them kept following me, trying to communicate even though she spoke a dialect of 温州话 that was completely unintelligible to me.


Just beyond the temple grounds there was a lake that had been rendered a mudflat from lack of water, and one of the kids walked out there to scoop up fish using no more than his bare feet to walk and his two hands to fish.










We spent the night at Jada's uncle's house in a village far from 文成










and prepared our evening meal (and breakfast the next morning) with a woodfire stove.







He was a very welcoming host and it was a cozy slumber... a Spartan place, but nonetheless comfortable.
_______________________________________


The next day it was raining, so we (Jada, her niece, her friend, Mu and myself) went to a nearby temple, and in that time the rain stopped.

We trekked along a road past level fields that were flattened and flooded for producing rice,








and sampled some fruit that grew along the road much like how blackberries grow along the roads in the U.S.
Except this fruit was almost all seeds covered with a skin that was a lot like bark and could only be chewed for a faint flavor, not swallowed. To top it off, the fruits were coated with little thorns that had to be removed with our fingernails.

Next we hiked into a canyon/gorge that was festooned with vegetation on all sides of the (VERY) precipitous stairway (yes, stairs - no unexplored places in China anymore it seems).




We hiked down several hundred meters to the plungepool of one waterfall, and then another. We would've gone for the third but we were pretty tired by then. We circled around behind the second waterfall where it had gouged a large passageway from the rock and proceeded to climb out again.


...not an easy feat when it's past noon, you've gone about four hours without food, brought no water with you, and are in a place where physical exercise produces sweat that chills you to the bone.




On the way back out we walked up and over several peaks that all had names - one in particular was easy to name because it had such an anthropomorphic quality to its structure. It was called "General's Peak" because it looks like a soldier with a helmet.


After climbing several hundred of some of the steepest stairs I've ever seen (which I didn't bother taking the time to photograph - such was my desire to be done with them) we at last reached the end of the climb sometime past 14:00 and after walking back to a nearby village we stopped at their convenience store and bought a bunch of instant noodles, pears and a couple eggs and got permission to use the family's own kitchen in the back of the shop to make some lunch.

While I sat waiting for Mu to prepare lunch (no one lets me help) I watched a chicken come into the room, sit in a box on top of a table in a corner, and after a few seemingly furtive minutes, stand up again, peck at something on the table, and leave.
I discovered an egg had been lain in the box it had sat in, and the object it had pecked at was a dead rabbit.

...full of wonder this place is.

Out the other night

The teachers of 瓯江 College get together for a big dinner at the end of the semester and the start of the new year, so that was where I went on Saturday night. I sat with Helen Yang, who invited me to her home and took me to dinner within the first few days of living in 温州. I proposed a toast at two tables that evening which impressed some people and all-in-all I had a good time.
...although at the beginning I went with Helen to explore the hotel (we thought there might be a wedding reception) and there were whole tables of people in that dining room that were staring at me - if you never felt self-conscious in America, I invite you to China - wow.

Yesterday I went to Julie's place with Mu and Benja Clarke's family. We made dumplings and watched Small Soldiers and Kung Fu Panda. Of course, once those movies were over we had to deal with 3+ hours of pent-up energy from a three year old and a six year old, so dealing with all of that was an interesting experience.
Ben's plan for the vacation is to take the family to 湖北 province for about a month and spend his time practicing Kung Fu at 武当山, the mountain from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the Daoist equivalent of 嵩山: home of the Shaolin Temple (少林寺).

Meanwhile I'm still not sure about 哈尔滨, how I'm getting there, where I'm staying and all that, but the time draws close when I will have to make a decision. I think I'll go during the week of my birthday, see it for a few days, then come back before the new term starts.

I also discovered something about my age according to the Chinese lunar calendar. I was born February 5, 1986 - 3 days before the start of the lunar new year. In China that means that as of February 8, 1986 I could be thought of as 2 (I had been alive in 2 lunar years). Which means that right now (mid-January 2009) I can safely claim to be 24, about to turn 25.

In one of the Chinese classes I was taking the students opted to have their final exam at the beginning of next semester. So I now have the opportunity/burden of being able to prepare for this test, to see how I measure up to the other students. Time to hit the books.

I'm nearly finished with the last of my work now - just need to finish handwriting my class evaluations (just a matter of transcription) and then turn it all in to the secretary.

Today (星期一) is the day it will be finished!

新年

...and I forgot my camera.

Unfortunately when I got up this morning and went to campus to catch the bus into the city I forgot to grab my camera, thus I have no pictures to go with the story I have.

This morning was cold, but not freezing, and there was a fair amount of direct sunlight, so that helped makes us all feel warm later on.
The run lasted a little over half an hour, we ran as an ordered column, about eight across, teachers and students totaling somewhere close to 50. As with a lot of things I was the only foreigner involved, but it was a nice way to start the new year, running early in the morning, spending some time with my colleagues, seeing more of the city I know so little about... I think this year is off to a good start.

All of the staff from Oujiang were wearing identical clothes: dark navy blue sweatshirts and sweatpants with some white along the arms.
After the run I went to 绣山公园 above the 市政府 and climbed the hill with Faye. We were accompanied by piano music coming out of these green-painted stones...

I made a comment about how anyone who heard that story in America would think I was trippin' at this moment... I wasn't.

At the top of the hill we came across a set of triplets, two of whom had the same blue long-sleeves and inner white-wool, outer denim vest. The third one, who had a face more gaunt than his brothers, wore an ivory colored coat.

We walked from the park to the 科技博物馆 (Science museum) I was kind of happy to learn that I do sort of know my own separate language – science.
The museum was quite large and was fairly empty, but there were some interesting things of note:
- an exhibit of ancient Chinese machines for measuring the heavens and earthquakes,
- another exhibit that showed the flow of electricity as it affected water in tubes surrounded by copper wires
- and a lot of placards about the recent space launch - one of the pictures depicted an astronaut with a glove that I SWEAR showed "six fingers on his right hand"...

...where's someone who knows Inigo Montoya when I have such a great setup?


All in all it was a good way to start the New Year.