"Figuring it Out & Giving Thanks"

So it turns out being a teacher and living in China is more tiring than I anticipated. For some reason whenever I thought about what it would be like to a teacher, I always imagined myself in a classroom being creative, witty, caring, authoritative—basically the guy/gal in one of the TFA promo videos (yes, I'm bitter they didn't let me in). What the promo video doesn't show is what goes into making that happen. 

Syllabi, lesson plans, vocabulary lists, and a host of other things that seem about as mundane as they are vital to conducting an effective class; these things are hard. That might not make that much sense and maybe they're not for other folks, but I've been having to make them up as I go. It has definitely been a very unglamorous struggle too; involving copious amounts of google, textbook reading, and staring at the blinking cursor of a depressingly blank word document. Two weeks into my teaching debut and I'm starting to figure it out, but it's going to be a long process. 

Changing gears, I would like to say Chinese people are great. Obviously someone reading this is going to be like "oh yeah? what about…" I don't care. I have been consistently moved by the hospitality shown to me not only by my friends and co-workers, but by strangers and shop-owners. This hospitality far exceeds ogling the hairy white guy on the street, or snapping a not-so-discrete photo of him with a cellphone. I'm talking about inviting me to sit and join them for tea, while they go about their business. No nagging questions, not asking for money, or sticking me with the bill later. I'm sure that I'll have a bad experience sooner or later, but it will be an exception to the rule. 

This was the sentiment that guided my decision to spend thanksgiving with my Chinese friends and travel to a nearby town, Luoyang, rather than go to a local expat meet-up. I wanted to give thanks with the folks who have been giving so much. Before this post gets too long / emo-esque or preachy I'll stop. 

Thanksgiving Dinner. Turkey was Cow Stomach. 

White Horse Temple, Buddhist Temple in Luoyang.

Luoyang Snack Street and our local host. 

Accidental trash-stick sculpture. I'm artsy. 

This is all over China, I mean everywhere.
So much construction is going on. 

"Good Old School"

Aside from a rather inappropriate portion of donkey meat over last weekend, I haven't eaten anything particularly unusual recently. In fact, this past week on the whole has been pretty straightforward. Not in such a way as to be boring, but rather in a way that is steadying. It was my first full week in the class room; and while I am continuing to make up my syllabus as I go, I feel like things are coming together. Classes are productive, students are behaving (and hopefully learning), I'm falling into a rhythm—the ebb and flow of life in Zhengzhou. 

With some money in my pocket from my most recent paycheck and some free time early in the week, I bought a bicycle. I could've purchased a much cheaper/run down bicycle as there is no shortage of those for sale, but I chose to solidify my friends and family's suspicions that I am indeed a hipster. I bought a fixed gear bicycle. I've been using any chance I can get to cruise around ZZ and am starting to not only get the hang of, but also to appreciate the simplicity of life on a fixie. Admittedly, it's not all milk and honey and I've had a few close calls (definitely glad I got a front brake). Still, I'm glad I bought it and my students and coworkers think it is pretty cool too, so it's become a conversation piece. 

Beanie + Black Skinny Jeans + Fixie = Hipster

My other adventure this week was to the Henan Regional Museum, which is only a few minutes down the street from where I live and work. It's free for foreigners and I'll definitely be getting my money's worth during my stay in Zhengzhou. It's not very large, but the exhibits are well done and informative (and more importantly have English translations). It'll take several more visits for me to appreciate the grand history of China, but a more immediate pleasure was the ancient music concert. Everyday the museum has a short concert where performers use actual ancient instruments (one of the drums is 2,000 years old) to perform traditional music. It was well worth the visit. 

Ain't No School Like the Old School

Similar scene minus the red light. 

"Dino Eggs"

My Chinese tutor back in the states told me about 皮蛋 (pi dan) before I left for China, and it sounded pretty cool. It's a chicken egg that by some traditional Chinese magic/trade skill is caked in mud and tea leaves and then cooked in such a way that it becomes like a hard boiled egg that is translucent. Sounds kinda cool right? I mean just look at the thing, it looks like a dinosaur egg!

 As it turns out it is a very acquired taste. The taste is best described by the color. I ate the first one and then offered the second to my Chinese coworkers, all but one of whom said they don't eat pi dan. I can understand their decision.

I can now add pi dan to my growing list of strange eats in China. 

"Open Close, Near Far"

开封, Kaifeng, is a city just outside of Zhengzhou. It is a smaller more traditional town that is famous for its night markets, snacks, and expositions of traditional Chinese culture. Having met up with some fellow AYC-ers the week before, we decided to travel to Kaifeng this past weekend. Theoretically it was a simple affair to get there. Trains leave several times every day and make the trip in less than an hour. Buses are a slower alternative but a bit cheaper. I was all for the trains, but as a foreigner you need your passport to buy a ticket and most of us had turned ours in to get our residency permits (we'll get them back in 15-30 days). So busses it was, expected travel time 2-3hrs.

I left my school at 2:30pm. We did not arrive in Kaifeng until 9:30pm. In the seven hours between: our group got lost in Zhengzhou, found the rubble that used to be a bus station, stumbled into a Chinese drivers ed course, took a very sketchy rickshaw ride, bought over priced food, walked around,then went back and drank beer, finally got a bus, made new friends, got off the bus, drank more beer, ate dinner at the now winding down night market, and collapsed at our hostel. We also somehow managed to thoroughly enjoy ourselves (the beer helped). 

The following morning we were greeted by some less than ideal weather and a friend of mine from work, Michelle. Kaifeng is Michelle's home town, and she was nice enough to serve as our guide for the morning and afternoon. She brought us to a muslim neighborhood, where we enjoyed some scrumptious lamb stew for lunch. We then took to our feet and tried to take in the sights. Michelle offered bits of history and insight along the way. Kaifeng, it turns out, means "Open Close." This was an appropriate name, I decided, as it described the paradox of its being so near and taking so long to get to.

Abandoning the idea of paying 100 RMB to enter one of Kaifeng's famous parks which may or may not be putting on the shows that made them famous due to the bad weather, we retreated to a tea house/ cafe and warmed our bones for a bit. Here another friend from my school, Jessica, met us (She is also from Kaifeng) and arranged for a private van to take us back to Zhengzhou. No travel troubles this time...till we hit the worst traffic jam I have not only seen, but pretty much ever heard of. If it wasn't for our drivers disregard of anything resembling a traffic law we could still be at that intersection mashed between buses, cars, e-bikes, bicycles, and pedestrians. 

It was our first attempt at traveling in China and it was certainly a learning experience. The takeaway points: attitude is key, beer is very important, take trains.

Tour Guide Michelle

Rose Tea and Me

 

Try the lamb stew

Troy vs Cicada

Cicadas in their glory

*Photo cred to Percy Baker, iPhone photographer guru. 

"If It's Soft You Can Eat It."

If that looks like a bowl of cooked chicken heads...Well that's because it is a bowl of chicken heads, and I ate one of them. When I asked my Chinese dinner hosts how I should begin the process of eating this rather head-spinning Hors d'oeuvre, I was given some very practical advice that captures a very fundamental tenant of Chinese cuisine, "If it's soft you can eat it. If it's not, spit it out."

 So with these instructions I used my chopsticks and a spoon and popped one these in my mouth and went to work. With a distinctive "clink" the beak and various bones fell from my mouth into my bowl. It was not my most distinguished moment. I wasn't even that hungry and here I was acting like I hadn't seen a chicken in so long that even the head looked appetizing.

 Still, it wasn't even all that bad. It tasted like chicken, just with a texture I wasn't all that familiar with. I mean what really makes the head of the chicken any less edible than the rest of it? We suck the heads of crawfish after all. It's more of a mental block than anything I suppose, but in a country as populated as China there isn't much space for mental blocks at the dinner table. 

"Electric Thing Vehicle"

Electric-thing-vehicle is the literal translation of the Mandarin 电动车, diàn dòng che (1). In English these things are called E-bikes— and they are crazy. They take various shapes and sizes ranging from more mo-ped like, to standard scooter, to electric motorcycle.

 You don't need a drivers license to drive one as they are classified as bicycles (motor cycles are illegal within the city limits). They seem to only follow the traffic laws when it suits them, switching from driving in the street like a car or using crosswalks and sidewalks like pedestrians.

 It also seems like you can carry pretty much anything on them. Everything from a family of four, to a mobile petshop, or even a set of living room furniture. I can only imagine what the traffic police officers in the states would say if they saw one of these cruising around.

Obligatory guy in Asia riding a bike carrying way too much.

Everything but the kitchen sink.

Guy curbing his dog (and his birds). 

Three people. Two wheels. 

Minute-To-Win-It

I came to China to teach English, but I haven't had a single student yet. Instead, I was given the task of assisting the school host a halloween party. Not really knowing what they wanted or what was or wasn't my responsibility for the party to be, I did my best to make it fun and as close to a celebration we might have in the states as possible. Basically I just relapsed into my past role as an RA.

 Trying to find Halloween supplies though, was (pardon the pun) a nightmare. I live in a city comparable in size to New York; and yet, I could not find a single tube or container of face-paint. I had to email a friend who is from China (shout out to Alex Yang) to even figure out how to ask for it. Even then all I got were blank expressions of confusion or misguided tours of a women's makeup section from various shop owners.

In the end I was able to scrounge up some witch hats and capes which I could use for activities or decorations. The school actually had some stuff left over from past years which helped a lot. To compensate for my lack of decorations I decided to make the spectacle a bit more active. If you haven't seen the game show Minute-to-win-to-it, then I'm sorry. Not only because at this point you don't know what I'm talking about, but also because it just means you haven't been laughing as much as you could. Luckily for you this is the 21st century and the internet has no higher purpose than to bring you as many amusing videos as your bandwidth can carry. For those of you who skipped the links, the basic premise is to create very silly and difficulty tasks using very mundane objects all with a sixty second time limit.

For the party I set up two such challenges. One where two contestants race each other to sort 50 skittles by color using only one hand, and then another one where someone has to shake six ping-pong balls out of a tissue box strapped to their rump (this is what is featured in the second link). The other station I set up was your standard bobbing for apples. This also became somewhat of a game show though as no one had ever heard of it before and got really competitive about it. My last role was something like that of a whisk. I was charged to mix up the guys and girls and get them all dancing. This was ALOT harder than anything minute-to-win-it had could throw my way. In the end things came together quite well, the students were very resourceful in making/finding their own costumes so the face paint wasn't necessary and after some serious encouraging they all started to dance on their own (which was good cause I needed a breather!) Here are some photos that I rounded up.

Race-The-Rainbow

Classic Michele...

Baller.

Overachievers.

Witches.

Late Arrival

So I finally made it. I was supposed to be here in August...and then in September...but October will do. I'm just glad to have made it and am excited to take advantage of this great opportunity to explore another part of the world and learn a new language.

My last week or so in the states was pretty hectic and wild; so I apologize if I didn't get back to your email or phone call. I had three flights to Houston, one five hour bus ride, a flight to New York, and 20 hours of traveling to get to Zhengzhou. It's been a long road, but I'm confident that it'll all be worth it in the end. I'm getting settled now and my energy is rebounding so it won't take long for me to start exploring my new home in earnest. These upcoming exploits should make for some more interesting updates than this one so stay tuned! 

Below are just some snapshots from journey and my first glimpse of Zhengzhou. As glad as I was to finally arrive I was certainly caught off guard by the pollution. I thought I was ready. I mean I knew it was coming, but I guess I just didn't know what it would really be like. As it turns out, smog is just like a giant dust cloud (dust = commercial exhaust) that hangs there. It's a haze between you and everything else. To be honest, I haven't seen the sky or a cloud since I've been here—Just gray haze. "How do people breath this stuff?" They just do, it would seem; and for that matter so do I now. I was very conscious of it the first day or so, but it's becoming just an unfortunate part of the landscape. If there are side-effects, they don't seem to be immediate so I guess I'll just have to wait and see. Clean air has definitely become one of my biggest motivations to explore some of the more rural and remote parts China.

Not a bad view for a last look at Manhattan.

Beijing's never ending airport. Terminal 1 of 3. 

The center of my school's campus. 

Neat, but not quite wheelchair accessible.

Just in case you didn't get the idea...

Thats not fog.