Friday, November 27, 2009

时间过得真快!这是我在这儿的第二个感恩节!

Picture yourself cozily snuggled under the covers Thanksgiving morning.  You stayed up well past midnight baking pumpkin bread, and are infinitely proud that it didn't burn in the toaster oven.  It's 7 am.  Even the rooster who is about to become someone's dinner hasn't stirred yet.  He's saving his voice for the first glimpse of our mutual friend, the sun.  As you rest deep in the folds of your pillow the sound of a cell phone begins to disturb the silence.  One eyelid cracks open but you decide the phone is too far away to bother turning off.  You'll just go back to sleep and pretend that the day started peacefully.  Dreams begin once more to flit across the screen in your head.  That's when the sound repeats itself.  It rises from a mere nuisance to a genuine annoyance.  Mentally you calculate the amount of effort required to shut the darn thing off.  Deciding once again that the effort is not worth the reward, you put another pillow over your head.

Another hour passes with you caught between blissful sleep and vexed awareness.  Every couple of minutes a new text message has sounded bringing you to the brink of despair, but then the cell phone reaches capacity and overloads its ability to receive new messages.  You breathe a prayer of thanksgiving and snuggle deeper under the warm layers.  Then the phone comes to life again.  This time someone is calling you.  Wondering why people must rise so early when sleep is a perfectly attractive alternative, you subject your toes to the cold floor in search of the source of all your frustration.  A bright and entirely too cheerful voice greets you from the other end, inquiring as to whether you will be teaching class that morning.  Trying to put every ounce of sleepiness into your voice you croak out that, as you pointed out in class numerous times last week, there will be no class because it is a holiday.  Just like you wrote all the way across the board in an effort to avoid this very situation.  Hoping the student will feel bad for waking you up, you yawn in the middle of the sentence and trail off at the end.  She seems to get the idea that there will not in fact be class that morning and you hang up and jump back under the blankets, only to discover that all the warmth has fled during your brief absence.

Purposefully ignoring the ten or more text messages wishing you a happy Thanksgiving day, you make your way outside to greet the rooster who has finally realized his calling in life and is cheerfully crooning his own death march.  You wander down the row of farmers, perusing the array of vegetables spread out on the ground.  A pumpkin catches your eye, along with some eggs that are destined to fulfill their higher purpose of making enjoyable food.  Too tired to bargain earnestly, you give the farmers a bit more than average for their wares in a gesture of generosity on such a special day.  You spot sweet potatoes farther on, and eye them expectantly.  Just knowing that these things are going to complete all of your culinary longings in a few hours makes your stomach leap with joy.  You bargain for the sweet potatoes, all the while wondering just how to say 'sweet potato' in Chinese.  Little did you know that you were going to have the chance to learn the word for good later that day.

You return to your kitchen and begin packing up every possible ingredient or tool that could be needed to prepare a tremendous feast, and cart it over to your friends, Zagg and Shmelizabeth's house so that you can cook together like a real family.  You correctly assume that this will stave off some of the longing for your own family and make the holiday seem festive.  When you walk in the door at Zagg and Shmelizabeth's the fragrance of holidays washes over you, brightening your mood as much as the table full of snacks that await the hungry cooks.  Tears well up in your eyes when you spot cinnamon rolls, the one thing you had mistakenly assumed you'd have to live without this year.  Sighing with deep satisfaction you add your meager snacks to the collection already laid out.  Zagg and Shmelizabeth are already elbow-deep in flour as they work to prepare a feast that will probably go down in the history books as one of the greatest.  You roll up your sleeves and join the fray eagerly.

It's only a few hours before the first morsel is scheduled to be eaten.  You've been busily mixing and boiling and measuring and singing.  It's time for the sweet potatoes to achieve greatness.  You start to peel one and disaster strikes.  Your eyes must have gone bad.  The sweet potato is strangely white under the layer of mud.  Frantically you peel some more.  The potato somehow managed to morph from a sweet potato into Mystery-Vegetable-39.  You've never seen such a deceitful root.  Lamenting loudly that there will not be sweet potato casserole for Thanksgiving dinner, you guilt Zagg into buying some of the non-mutant variety while he is downtown purchasing 'Turkey' (which oddly resembles six tiny chickens).  He graciously agrees and sets off in pursuit of these very necessary food items after you look up the proper term for sweet potato so that no more mistakes will be made.

With two burners, one toaster oven, and three cooks the food takes longer than expected to come to completeness, but eventually everything is spread out in a glorious display before your eyes.  Zagg came to the rescue, and the sweet potato casserole was finished in the nick of time, along with a variety of other things, the likes of which you may never see again in this life.

Everyone sits down to give thanks for the happiness that awaits them.  It is decided that each person will tell what they are thankful for, but you find that when your turn comes you are so overwhelmed with thankfulness, not a single word squeaks out.  You try repeatedly to tell the other people in the circle how much they mean to you, how they are the most wonderful people you've ever been blessed enough to know.  Every time you try to say these words nothing is able to come out of your mouth, but abundant moisture escapes your eyes.  After causing all the females in the room to produce waterworks too, and making the only male as uncomfortable as possible people begin to realize that you are not going to be able to formulate a complete sentence for a long time, and they commence eating promptly.  You shrug and try to show your gratitude through your appetite.  You never manage to tell your friends that they are what you are grateful for this year.  That without them so much sunshine would be missing from your life.  That they have blessed you beyond measure.  You want them to know, but can't express yourself without crying.  They are not just friends, they are family.  You have so much to be thankful for.

"Oh to grace, how great a debtor
daily I'm constrained to be.
Let thy goodness, like a fetter
bind my wandering heart to thee."

 

Saturday, November 21, 2009

星巴克星冰乐咖啡

Before I came to China I had never...

the list of possible endings for this sentence is nearly infinite.

I've never felt fat before in my life.

Then along came China.

The last thing I was expecting when I sat on that flimsy little red stool was for it to splinter into dozens of tiny pieces and deposit me unceremoniously onto the cold, hard floor.  I am glad there was a large, mirthful audience there as witness to my obvious obesity.  Most of the Chinese girls I'm acquainted with seem to suffer from near anorexia and now I know why.  It's because the chairs are designed to hold exactly 40 kilos, and not a fraction more.

You may wonder how I got to be the
rotund woman I am today and I'll tell you exactly where the blame should be placed.  On the shoulders of the foreign affairs office at Three Gorges University.  Every year they give the foreign teachers a box of moon cakes for Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节, which was October 3rd this year), while knowing full well that we all hate them.  Even Chinese people don't really like moon cakes.  They just eat them because that's what you're supposed to do on Mid-Autumn day.  I was looking forward to my giant box of moon cakes again this year, just about as much as I was looking forward to my overnight stay in the Lodi train station.  Then...in a surprisingly wonderful turn of events our school blessed us with gift certificates to Eliville instead of moon cakes!

Eliville is the glorious location of the things you see in this picture, and I finally got around to cashing in my 100yuan gift certificates today; since Thanksgiving is this week I figured I might as well get in the gluttonous mood ahead of time.  So rather than mysterious, strange-flavoured round "cakes" I got to enjoy chocolate cake and a frappuccino.  Which is why the stool collapsed under me to the delight of my friends.

Now the sun is shining so I believe I'll go run off some of this extra weight in a game of football!


"When I first open my eyes upon the morning meadows and look out upon the beautiful world, I thank God I am alive."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Monday, November 16, 2009

这个周末 下雪啊!

It's started already.  The cold has crept into every nook of my not-so-well insulated apartment, causing me to groan and grumble with each draft.  I was so appreciative of the change in temperature for a solid week, and proud of my tolerant attitude to boot.  Now that the arctic weather has made itself at home I'd rather uninvite it.  From here on out it's going to take much more willpower to muster up a pleasant disposition when I have to brave the elements in order to go to class or find food.

This morning I noticed small white crystals gathering on my coat, before they had quite grown into full-fledged snowflakes, and someone above has been spitting them all day, but they seem to have prematurely fled their cloud homes, and are all melting before they reach the ground.  At least it's an attempt at snow, which has only increased my holiday mood.  I'm more than happy to be sitting in my cozy jia (home) with a steaming cup of tea and a burning candle that hints at jollier days to come.

Our benevolent university invited the foreign teachers on a weekend outing to some "scenic spots" this weekend, and never wanting to miss an opportunity for adventure I bravely signed up.  We did stop at some interesting places Yichang boasts of, and thanks to my handy dandy travel card, entrance was free.  I won't pretend to remember the names of all the places we stopped at, nor would you understand them if I did.  The first morning was so cold I was reprimanding myself continually for agreeing to go, although we did see some interesting things.  Once sight in particular that stands out in my memory was a cave that seemed to go on forever.

We descended countless stairs into the heart of the mountain, deeper into the cave than I thought possible, until I felt like I was in a scene from the Lord of the Rings.  At the very bottom, the cavern opened up to reveal an underground lake, and we got in boats that threatened to tip us with the slightest shifting of weight, and rowed to the other side of the mountain, where we came out a tiny hole opposite where we started.

Sunday morning we stopped at the most highly anticipated site of the trip, Chaibuxi, where we hiked around what was supposedly a beautiful gorge.  Since we were in a cloud, the visibility extended about 20 feet in any given direction and I cannot be counted upon to verify the authenticity of the photos advertising its beauty, although I suspect they have been photo-shopped generously.  This much I can say:  I can vouch that it is a foggy, cloudy place; and therefore mysterious in its attraction.

Our friend in the foreign affairs office had sent us a detailed, descriptive, and mendacious itinerary, telling us that we would be stopping at "Place 1" at 10am, "Place 2" at 2pm, etc., and falsely leading us to believe we would arrive home by afternoon.  I don't know why I'm regularly surprised when time schedules mean absolutely nothing in this country, but I was fooled yet again by their deceitful ways.

We stopped at a middle school in the countryside past Yidu to donate some gym equipment, and of course such generosity necessitates a long, drawn-out ceremony in which all parties involved say lots of complimentary things about each other, pose for pictures, and everybody gets to benefit from the frosty wind turning their limbs into icicles.  After such compliments were paid, we were invited as foreign experts to spend 40 minutes with a class of 12 year-olds, which we were completely unprepared for thanks to the predictable lack of warning.  So Jessica and I taught our class to sing "You Are My Sunshine" and I have to admit, it came close to making the whole trip a favorable affair.  They then taught us a Chinese song (两只老虎) and surrounded us like teenage girls at a Miley Cyrus concert, trying to get autographs.  I've never felt so much like a celebrity in all my life, nor had so many notebooks and pens shoved in my face at one time.

We finally got back on the bus and aimed it towards Yichang again, well past our originally stated arrival time.  As our bus trip stretched on for months...I mean hours, I passed the time by staring out the window and playing Name That Tune on my iPod.  As long as I live in China I'll never tire of looking at the patterns created by the terraced fields in the mountains.  Farmers here take advantage of every inch of ground available to them, inadvertently turning their fields into a work of art.  As rain-streaked as the windows were I'm afraid I can't provide proof, but believe me when I tell you they were exquisite.


"One can solve a math problem. One can contain a chemical reaction in an equation. But one never 'gets' beauty - one stands (or falls) in front of it astonished, amazed, open-mouthed, speechless, and humbled."
-Brian McLaren

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

今天是十一月十一号,光棍节

Sometimes I'm quick to point out the faults I see in China but I'd like to be equally generous at pointing out the virtues.

In America we have this awful excuse for a holiday known as "Valentine's Day" which is actually an excuse for girls everywhere to demand absurd presents from their significant other, and get irrationally upset when their expectations are not met.  It's undeniably annoying, and not just for single people.  My miserliness may be more extreme than most, but I feel safe in saying that the consumerism attached to Valentine's Day has blossomed out of control.  People are expected to spend more every year than they did the year before and the limits seem boundless.  It's sickening.

Chinese culture, by contrast, has invented a wonderful alternative.  November 11th, because it is 11/11 has become known as "Singles Day" or "Single sticks day."  It was started by some college students in Nanjing in the 90's and has spread far and wide as a time to celebrate your single-ness.  Last year one of my students gave me a present for 光棍节, but this year I just got text messages that said things like, "happy single person's day!hope u can find your mr right soon my beautiful teacher"  People eat four yóutiáo, a deep fried bread stick that represents the four ones of the day.  Several of my students celebrated by going out to eat and making sure that each person paid for themselves, as opposed to the tradition of taking turns buying dinner.  I think I'll celebrate by living vicariously through a fictional love story created by Jane Austen.  I would not be disappointed if we adopted this festival in the West, and replaced a much more obnoxious holiday around February 14th.


"Only the deepest love will persuade me into matrimony which is why I shall end up an old maid."
-Elizabeth Bennet


Thursday, November 5, 2009

我们的小乌龟

At times my heart is touched by strange things, like the livelihood of a tiny little turtle.  Jessica and I have a turtle, recently christened Nuwanda, who brings us endless entertainment; but Yichang turned cold this week, and I started to fear for Nuwanda's life.  He looked like he was either going into hibernation, or might freeze to death in his little bowl of water, so I joked about putting him under the heat lamp in the shower so that he could feel some warmth.  After walking by his bowl a few times and seeing him pressed up against the edge with his eyes closed in what looked like desperation, I couldn't harden my heart any more.  I realize that I'm a total pushover, but I have relocated Nuwanda to the bathroom and set up an abode complete with permanent sunshine for him.  The change in his personality was unmistakable, he started swimming more, eating more, and in general looking alive.  Today was the crowning glory though, when we noticed that he was sunbathing without shame.  He stretched his legs out as far as he could, lifted them in the air, and looked as blissful as a turtle can look.


"Parrots, tortoises and redwoods live a longer life than men do; Men a longer life than dogs do; Dogs a longer life than love does."
-Edna St Vincent Millay

*There's been some debate on whether Nuwanda is technically a turtle, terrapin, or tortoise, so to avoid confusion I may switch to the Chinese: 乌龟

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

今晚我很高兴

I felt the first frosty bite of fall this morning as I crunched leaves all the way to class.  It's scent is even wafting through my apartment, because I've been snatching up every pumpkin that shows itself around the market, to ensure enough pies to last all the way through November.  The changing of seasons is sure to invigorate the most dull life, though in a few weeks I'll almost certainly be complaining about the ache in my fingers and the insatiable shivers cold weather brings.  Just when I begin to feel that life is mundane the weather shifts and sends a spark of newness through every day activities.  I'm enjoying the crispy air but to please my concerned Chinese friends, who are convinced that I'm never wearing enough clothes I've begun bundling up in lots of layers and scarves.

My bones may ache from the cold but my heart has been thoroughly warmed again and again.  Tonight I felt like I might burst from happiness as I sat around and chatted with my friends about the kind of love that would inspire someone to sacrifice their life for others.  We talked for hours about what it means to be selfless, and how we can love others more fully, and our whole group came to the conclusion that we want to do more.  To that end, we have proposed an outing or two, to a school for disabled children, and we're going to play with them and teach them English.  I hope it works out!  I've been really wanting to do something like that but didn't know how to get started.


"When God created October he said this is when we are going to play college football."
-Beano Cook
[I know it's not October anymore, but it didn't feel like football weather til just now.]

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Snail mail fails

For those of you faithfully following my blog, here is the conclusion of the package story (from Australia), as promised.  After many phone call battles with China Post and a few letter exchanges, I was able to convince them to send my package to me, from Wuhan, without charging the 1100yuan in taxes or the 3yuan/day holding fee.  There was great rejoicing.  When I got the box, it looked like they had played kickball with it a few times.  I've never seen a box so beat up, but the treasures it contained were only mildly destroyed.  It was missing a bag of coffee, three muffin mixes, and one package of brownie mix, but everything else arrived, albeit not in one piece.  Three cheers for China's mail service!


"We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong.  The amount of work is the same."
-Carlos Castaneda