East is Relative

Today’s ten thousand things

- Today, I went to Changde with Nevill (one of the Chinese teachers) to see Avatar. Sadly, they were only playing the dubbed-in-Chinese version, so I didn’t understand any of the dialogue. But it was an interesting experience to watch a Western film without understanding the words (unlike watching Chinese kung fu movies on buses without understanding the words). I understood the plot, all right. In fact, it was so simple and, frankly, predictable, that it bored me quite a bit. The movie was really pretty to look at, but man, am I tired of war movies where the bad guy just keeps coming back, against all odds, to fight the last battle with the good guy. It’s gone from feeling epic to feeling like, “OH COME ON ALREADY.” I was starting to pre-guess when secondary characters would die. SURPRISE ME ALREADY, HOLLYWOOD! This is why I like that Joss Whedon randomly kills main characters without warning. Because I don’t see it coming!

- On the way back from Changde, our express mini-bus, which was supposed to be non-stop to Shimen, stopped 6 times to deliver boxes to random people in slightly-en-route small towns. Nevill informed me that this is “not allowed” (read: probably illegal) in China, but the bus driver did it anyway. The driver also waited until 4:30pm to leave Changde, even though the bus was supposed to leave at 4:00pm, to try and get more people on the bus. Nevill spent most of the hour drive home swearing in English about the bus driver. He was 3 minutes late to a staff meeting because of all this craziness. Poor Nevill.

- I again succeeded in avoiding eating at McDonald’s, despite serious prodding from Nevill. I refuse to eat it before I go home, dammit!

- Nevill is pretty much a fantastic photographer with a big fancy camera, and he took some pictures of me and I took some pictures of him on our Changde adventure. Hopefully, he’ll send them to me soon so I can post them here.

- Nevill informs me that there are “many more foreigners” in Changde. When I asked how many, he said, “4 or 6. Many more than in Shimen.” There are at least 10 foreigners in Hanzhong, which is like 14 gazillion according to this scale.

- This week, I will help my students choose English names, and then tell them I’m leaving Shimen. This, along with actually saying goodbye to them next week, will be the saddest thing about my leaving, without a doubt. I’m not looking forward to it.

- My mom and stepdad will be here in three weeks and I’m totally excited! I have to plan what I’m going to do between 1/29 when I finish teaching and 2/5 when I have to be in Beijing to meet them. I can’t wait to force-feed them amazing Chinese food.

Brief injection of Confucius-related humor

I thought this comic was pretty funny. Maybe you will too. The link will only be good for a few days to a week (because comics.com doesn’t keep long archives), but if you can, go check it out.
Confucius in the morning

Google and censorship are not friends

It looks like Google might be packing up and moving on, having decided that it can’t work within the framework of China’s Golden Shield project (otherwise, and more famously, known as the Great Firewall of China, or the GFW). I’m not sure when this will happen, but given that the only way China can keep Google (which it really doesn’t want anyway) is to stop censoring the internet, it’s pretty inevitable that it will happen. That said, I won’t be able to access my gmail accounts anymore. If you need to contact me, the best (and possibly only) way to do so is through my email address at this site, which is available on the Contact page. Sorry for any inconveniences this may cause!

[ETA: If you want another foreigner's perspective on this whole thing, check out this great post at Sinosplice about how this affects China, with further links to news postings.]

In other news, my friend Echo invited me to the opening of a new restaurant, of which her husband is part-owner, last week, and I added the pictures to the Shimen photo set. The concept of the restaurant is to have all the food prepared and cooked in an open environment, on outside tables, and with windows into the kitchen, so people can see the cooking process and see the locally-purchased goods. It’s their way of being “green” and local about their food choice and process. They also have indoor “hut” style rooms with fire pits in the middle where they cook the hotpots, and the smoke from the fires smokes the meat they hang from the ceiling to be prepared later. These are “traditional”-style cooking methods, apparently. It was really interesting and the food was delicious.

I have also updated the Location map to reflect my recent trip.

Ringing in the Year of the Mood Swing in Xi’an

Laura and I arrived in Xi’an and checked into our hostel. The central heating was on and it was positively toasty in there (take this from someone who’s spent the last several months in three or more layers). We went to our room and unpacked, then reduced our layers of clothing to 1 (can you believe it?!). I went downstairs to the hostel restaurant in only my jeans and a tank top, it was glorious.

We tried to find our friend Judy by using the wireless internet and my cell phone, but were thwarted in the attempt when Judy and Matthias showed up just at that moment. Laura and I ordered dinner (OMG cheeseburger yes), and the four of us sat chatting in the lounge area next to the restaurant. Near 11:00 or so, we were joined by a British woman about my age named Amy, whose travel companion was upstairs sleeping off a really bad cold, and who had no one to ring in the New Year with. She sat with us, and at about midnight (there was no countdown and our watches all said different things), we sang Auld Lang Syne together and had a few beers.

We eventually moved to the hostel’s bar and played a dice game that you can play in most any Chinese bar or club. Amy and I chatted a lot and later, Laura stayed in the bar to hang out with a new friend we’d made, a Chinese man named Sean, and Amy and I went out to the street to buy some dumplings. These dumplings were the best baozi I’ve ever had. We talked to some local men who were also eating at the street food seller’s, and they ended up paying for our baozi. It seems silly, but finally, this was the China I had heard so much about – friendly locals, willing to chat with some crazy-acting foreigners on New Year’s Eve. This was the first in a bunch of my “Real China” experiences.

The next day, I went downstairs to get some breakfast after a horrible night’s sleep. The hostel really was overheated – what had felt like a great opportunity to wear a tank top and jeans turned into a horrible night’s sleep in a seriously dry and hot room. This was the only downfall of the hostel – everything else there was perfect all weekend. It turns out, the week before, they had needed that heat because it had been 20 degrees or so colder, but we had balmy weather (I went out without a coat again – in north China!) and it translated to excessively heated rooms. Anyway, I found Amy again, as well as Kate, her previously-ill travel pal, who was feeling better but not stellar. Laura, Judy, Matthias, and Graham (another nearby Buckland teacher who was in for the holiday) went to lunch with the Buckland rep in Xi’an (whose name is Frank), but they were going for some kind of Tibetan fish, and as I don’t like fish and still felt horrible from the bad night’s sleep, I decided not to tag along.

Instead, Amy and Kate and I went to the old city walls (the south gate is about 2 blocks from the hostel) to try and do as much sightseeing as Kate’s cold would tolerate. We jaunted about the city walls for a bit, and then Kate decided she wanted to try and see the Bell and Drum towers. We stopped off at the hostel to unload a few layers because of the beautiful day, and then headed out again. We took a bus to the Bell Tower, where we were crammed in like sardines. A really nice woman with fantastic English started talking to us and asking us a bunch of questions, and she gave us the name of a Muslim dumpling restaurant (they serve a different kind of dumplings called jiaozi) to try once we got near the Drum Tower. She was really polite and curious and we talked about all sorts of things (like the fact that taking tourists to stores or factories to purchase things after a tour is really annoying and ruins the tour – she brought that one up). She gave Amy and Kate some advice about going to see the Terra Cotta Soldiers, and then we all got off the bus near the center of the city.

We walked around the pedestrian underpass to get to the Bell Tower, decided it was too much to pay Y40 (Y80 for both) to get into the Towers, so we settled on taking pictures from the outside. When we got to the Drum Tower, we asked someone for directions to the Muslim restaurant the lady had suggested (right next to the Drum tower is a huge Muslim quarter, it’s a really interesting market area, and the Great Mosque is there), and he walked us almost the whole way there (leaving his girlfriend behind eating ice cream, haha). He was so nice to walk us all the way to the street the restaurant was on, and he spoke a little English, so he tried to speak English to me, then I tried to speak Chinese to him, all as we were walking through throngs of people.

We found the restaurant and got a table and ordered some kind of tea (that probably had jasmine in it, even though we’d asked for one without jasmine since Kate hates it), and ate some dumplings. Sadly, they weren’t anywhere near as good as the street dumplings we’d had the night before, and Amy vowed to get Kate some really good ones later that night. Even though we’d felt like we were not going to make it most of the day, we decided we still had some energy and wanted to walk around the Muslim quarter some more. We walked through the market area and I bought a few shawl pins and some folk art, and a new purse. Kate and Amy had been stopping in a few shops to buy some purses and weren’t getting the bargaining results they wanted, so we kept going and looking for other places, and I eventually got sucked in and bought a bag that, at first, I didn’t like the pattern of. I talked the lady down to Y75 (about $10.92) for a bag that’s a knockoff of a $50-$70 bag back home. I really do like it, though, and once I got it home, I liked the pattern better (once it wasn’t sitting next to different bags in patterns I really liked). This is the danger of making friends with fellow shoppers. Enablers!

After the Muslim quarter, we caught a little motorcycle-driven rickshaw (called a Tuk-Tuk in Vietnam, but I don’t know what they’re called here), and got back to the hostel. I met up with Judy, Matthias and Laura for some great dinner while Amy and Kate went back to the hostel. After dinner, we found them again, and a few of us played a card game Kate had brought called Fluxx. Later, Alyssa (another one of the Buckland teachers in Hanzhong) got to the hostel with her Mom, and Alyssa got in on the card game while her mom talked to Laura for awhile. After the card game, I walked out to the street with Alyssa and her mom (who were heading back to the hostel they stayed at), and got myself some more baozi after they left. I walked back to the hostel, chatted with some people who were also eating out on the street, nearer to the hostel, and then went to bed.

The next day was my birthday! Laura wanted to head to the Muslim quarter, so she went off and did that while I stayed in – the over-hot room had made me feel like crap again when I woke up, so I sat downstairs, caught up on some emails, ate a Western breakfast (including cereal and milk – I know, I couldn’t believe it either), and generally relaxed. Judy came by right before lunch (it was her birthday too!) and we chatted for a bit and then she and Matthias went for her birthday lunch (of Japanese food!). I did my laundry (not the best idea for a day I was supposed to go out and have plans, but oh well), and just after I got out of the shower, I got a message from Kate saying she and Amy were having a bad day and they wanted some good company (but that they’d settle for me, haha). They had been planning to go to the Terra Cotta Soldiers that day. I found them downstairs in the hostel lobby – Amy’s wallet had been stolen on the bus and the two women had spent all day being dragged around by shady Xi’an cops who didn’t help them at all. At least Amy had been able to call home and get her bank cards cancelled, but that’s terrible. I’d had people tell me to be careful about my wallet before, but never knew anyone who’d been pickpocketed.

I’d assumed they’d want to stay back in after having been out all day, but as Kate pointed out, they’d really spent all day in cars, so we headed back out to buy our train tickets to leave Xi’an and to shop a little more in the Muslim Quarter. We stayed in contact with Laura and Judy for most of the day to decide dinner plans, but we ended up heading back and eating at the hostel after all. There were 7 of us in all eating for mine and Judy’s birthday, and we had some good Chinese food and some good Western food and in general enjoyed ourselves. Laura bought a cake for each of us (a small cake) and we ate that before we ate dinner (good way to do it for your birthday, I think!). After that, people headed home or to bed; I said goodbye to Amy and Kate because they were going to try to get to the Terra Cotta Soldiers again the next day and my train left in the afternoon, so I assumed that was the last I’d see of them. Laura went out to a club with Sean (the guy we’d met on New Year’s), and Judy and I stayed up a bit to chat, and then I went to bed.

In the morning, I packed up all my stuff and checked out, but left my backpack at the front desk. I went out to the Sha’anxi Museum, not to actually go in, but to find a market nearby that Kate and Amy had found. I ended up walking all over the south end of Xi’an trying to find this market, and when I did find it, I didn’t much feel like shopping all by myself, so I gave up and headed back for the hostel. When I got off the bus, I saw a Baskin Robbins – by now, you know my chocolate ice cream obsession – and I stopped to get a scoop.

After that, I walked to the pedestrian underpass to cross the street. Just as I was coming out of the tunnel, I felt a distinct tug on my bag. I knew I hadn’t been close enough to the wall to brush against it, so I turned around and I saw a guy with a black H1N1 mask and spiky hair kind of look at me. I quickly checked for my wallet, which was still there, and found the side pocket on my purse open and my camera missing. I think this guy was really young and really amateur, because he didn’t make a run for it right away. All this had happened in a split second or so, but he hesitated. He had seemed like he was going to try and get lost in the crowd of people walking past us, but I had already caught him and he didn’t really commit to running off. I turned back to him, walked to him, and kind of tapped him on the arm, and I said in English, “Hey, give me back my camera.” And he did. He just took it out of his pocket and handed it back.

A lot of circumstances conspired to make this all possible – he hesitated, it was bright outside, he didn’t make a run for the pedestrian tunnel, he looked young and a little scared (what I could see of his face, anyway, with the H1N1 mask on), and I caught him right away. He was kind of scrawny, and I’m – well, I’m not, so he was probably scared I’d tackle him or something. Plus, my camera is really kind of old and crappy anyway, so I’m sure he couldn’t have gotten much for it. If he had been bigger, or older, or had made a concerted effort to run off, I wouldn’t have done anything but get angry.

But, hey, everyone! I stood up to a pickpocket and got my camera back!

After that, I went back to the hostel, got directions to a nearby restaurant and ate some delicious green beans (*obsessed*), before heading to the train station. Conveniently, Amy and Kate were eating at the McDonald’s across from the train station, so we met up one more time for a last goodbye. I got on the train into my soft sleeper compartment (they’d been out of hard sleepers), and made my way back to Changsha, where I uneventfully got on a long-distance bus to Shimen and got back to the school on Monday evening.

In all, Xi’an is my favorite city in China so far. I absolutely loved it there, and I am so glad I’m moving very close to it. I plan on spending a lot of weekends there – it’s so cheap! Only Y160 bus round trip and Y50 at the hostel! I guess that’s how much it costs to get to Changsha, too, and it’s the same distance away from Shimen as Xi’an is to Hanzhong. Xi’an is just beautiful and filled with amazing food and so much to do – I’m definitely more enticed to go there than anywhere else.

In other news, I’ve updated the photos with all of the rest of my Yangshuo, Hanzhong, and Xi’an pictures (I don’t think I brought out the camera even once in Changsha). I’ve also added a list of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites I’ve visited (none in China yet) to the About section. I’ve also added some travel quotes to the sidebar and rearranged the sidebar a bit to what I think suits the site’s purposes best.

I think I’m going to keep this blog up after I’m done in China to document all my travels, domestic and international. There’s so much I want to see and do, and east is always relative on a globe.

A/N: I should also add that the reason I called it the Year of the Mood Swing is because since I’ve been back in Shimen, my culture-shock-induced mood swings have been kind of off-the-charts. I was really glad to travel in China, and now that I’m stationary again, it’s quite a big let-down. I just realized I didn’t explain the title in the post, sorry about that.

Between the holidays in Hanzhong

I’ll break this story up one more time so that the posts are a little easier to digest. This one is about what I did in Hanzhong before getting to Xi’an. Once I got to Hanzhong, I went with Laura to her school (soon to be my school) because she was running out of time before class; my train had been late. After her afternoon classes, we walked to the hotel and checked me in, and then called Corey (the guy I’m replacing) to meet us for dinner, and we had some really great sweet & sour pork. I must say, I really did make a damn good dish of sweet & sour pork in Yangshuo; Laura and I tried the dish in several restaurants from 12/29 until I left on 1/3, and some were great, and some were so-so, but mine was awesome. After dinner, Laura and I went to the Baskin Robbins, as I was bound and determined to eat chocolate ice cream my first day in Hanzhong. After that, we went to a local bar that’s a few blocks from the school, and met back up with Corey, and met Matt (a different one) and Meghan, two American teachers at a different EFL school in Hanzhong. We all had a great time and the guys got up to toast a bunch of Chinese men sitting behind us, which was kind of hilarious, then I went home, while Laura stayed at the bar and Matt, Megan and Corey went to a club someplace.

The next day, Laura taught, and I meandered around Hanzhong a little, ending up in the coffeeshop in the center of the town and trying to chat online with my parents, but failing. Laura and I went for some really awesome spicy noodles near her school (I know where I’ll be going for lunch every day), and then I went back to the hotel while she taught her afternoon classes. Can you tell the theme of this vacation was relaxing? Even though I spent a lot of time sitting around doing nothing in Shimen in the weeks prior to my trip, it’s somehow different to relax in a different town. I didn’t feel guilty about it, and I didn’t feel like I was a shut-in. Also, my toes were still sore, so I didn’t want to over-do anything (though most days I did over-do it and my foot was aching for most of my trip).

After Laura’s afternoon classes, we went to the local nail shop to get a manicure – Y10 to get my nails trimmed and my cuticles fixed, and I told them no nail polish this time (though I’m starting to regret it because my nails are peeling a bit – guess I’ll have to get a clear coat next time). We walked all over town trying to find a jeans store (mine are drastically too large now) to no avail. We ended up hopping on a bus and getting some delicious food, including the best (but not the spiciest) Kung Pao chicken I’ve had so far in China, and some AMAZING green beans. I have become obsessed with spicy Sichuan green beans. I cannot stop eating them. It’s ridiculous. I try to tell myself to vary the diet when I go out to a restaurant, but invariably I break down and order the green beans with whatever else I’m eating.

That night, Laura and I tried to find an internet cable to use to hook my computer up to her internet – her wall cable is about 6″ long, so I couldn’t plug my laptop into it. After getting help from Laura’s friend Tiger, who’s a university student in Hanzhong, we bought the cable and brought it back to Laura’s apartment – only to find out that there wasn’t an internet plug. Instead, the internet was wired into the room from a different building in the nearby courtyard. So, being the kind and wonderful soul she is, Laura offered to pull her desk away from the wall and help me set up my laptop on the floor, which we did. She set me up with some good pillows and a handwarmer while I sat on the cold floor and then she and I talked to my mom and stepdad for a bit. We’re still trying to arrange our plans for their Spring Festival visit, but with Christmas and my traveling, we’ve barely had a chance to think about it, so we didn’t get much accomplished.

After that, I went back to the hotel and slept soundly. The next day, I checked out of the hotel, and went back to the coffeeshop where I got a decent wifi signal and randomly caught my friend Steven online! He’s been so busy with his first teaching job that I really haven’t talked to him in months, so the fact that we got to talk on Skype for so long was awesome. Of course, it just made me miss him more, as will happen, but regardless, I’m so glad I got to talk to him. After that, I went back to Laura’s apartment at the school and I ate some of our dinner leftovers from the sweet & sour restaurant. Then we ran to the bus station and bought our tickets, went back to the school for Laura’s last afternoon class (during which I did some lesson planning, but not much), and then took off for one last Baskin Robbins trip and the bus to Xi’an.

The high-speed bus to Xi’an is 4 hours, which is apparently an upgrade from the usual bus, which is 8 hours. I was having a hard time figuring out how exactly that worked out until we were going through our 4th or 5th through-the-mountain tunnel and I realized that the high-speed road goes through the mountains instead of around them.

The drive to Xi’an is, in a word, astounding. When you’re not in the tunnels, that is. The mountains and gorges are beautiful, even in late December. There were winter springs running through the mountains everywhere, and lots of precariously-placed villages on the edges of the mountains. I can only say that I am so thrilled to be going to the Sha’anxi province next term; there is just so much to look at. Anyone who has spent a lot of time in my part of Hunan would understand – even though there are mountains here, they’re small, they’re gently sloped instead of steep, and they’re just not very much to look at. Of course, my first non-Shanghai-airport-hotel look at China was Yangshuo, so I’m a little biased. But the Sha’anxi mountains are just breathtaking.

We pulled into Xi’an well after dark (and the bus was roasting by this point – too much heat, and we’d had to stop at a closed tunnel for about 15 minutes at one point), and hailed a cab to our hostel just inside the old city walls. The really funny part was when I said to Laura, “Hey, you’ve been here before – let me know when we get near the old city walls. I want to see if we can see them at night.”

These walls? A little hard to miss.

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of my trip, complete with warm weather, gallivanting Brits, birthdays and pickpockets, whee!

Christmas in Changsha

My Christmas in Changsha was pretty laid back and relaxing. Matt arrived on Christmas Day and we had Pizza Hut for dinner, then headed to Folk Bar for some drinks. Aimee called and said she and Craig were at a club sort of nearby; the bartender at Folk Bar, whose name is Jimmy, wrote the address of the club, and Matt and I went over to meet the other foreigners. I only stayed for one beer, then headed back to the hostel.

In the morning, Matt and I woke up early enough to go to Shaoshan, Mao’s birthplace…and then…er…we didn’t go. Matt hadn’t realized we would be out all day, and when it came down to it, I didn’t want to be out all day, either, so we just asked for our money back and didn’t go. I will make it to Shaoshan if it kills me yet. Matt walked around town for most of the day. I met a woman from Texas named Andrea, and she and I went out to buy train tickets and get lunch, then we ended up spending most of the day at the hostel. It turns out, 12/26 is Mao’s birthday, so it would have been a really good day to go to Shaoshan, but oh, well.

When Matt came back at night, we went for Western food at the Jono (a Western chain in China), and I actually had a steak. Let me repeat that: I ate a steak. And it was pretty good. Nothing like a skirt steak back home, but still good. After that, Matt and I trekked to the DVD store in the rain only to find it was closed, and apparently Craig and the other foreigners weren’t going out that night, so we just lamed out and went back to the hostel.

The 27th, Matt left and I went out to find a China mobile and add more money to my cell phone (AGAIN – oy). This time, I brought the receipt from the last China Mobile with me and they didn’t ask me any questions – they just used the information again. It was actually pretty convenient; it’s like I’ve learned a new trick. I walked around Changsha a bit, until my still-injured foot couldn’t handle it anymore, and then I went back to the hostel and ordered dinner. I ate in the hostel and used the extra time to catch up on internet stuff. While sitting around the fire the hostel has in the middle of the lobby, I started talking to one of the girls that was sharing our dorm. Her English name is Chloe, and she’s from Guangzhou. She works for General Electric and she loves to travel. I really had a great conversation with her about traveling and China and working and lots of things. We exchanged emails and promises to visit each other in our travels.

Later that night, I met a guy named Aaron. He’s from the US, but I can’t remember where exactly, and we made a plan to go out for Sichuan food the next day before I left for Hanzhong. In the morning, I checked out and left my bags in the hostel’s luggage room, then went with Aaron to get this food, which was very different but delicious. We walked to the McDonald’s and had a coffee. I still refuse to eat McDonald’s until I get back home – I had a bad experience in Greece, and besides, the last food I ate in the US was a McD’s breakfast at the airport, and I’d like my first airport food in the US to be McD’s, too. I’m so weird like that, where I have to set up these strange rituals.

Anyway, after that, Andrea and I caught a cab to the train station since our trains out of Changsha were leaving at similar times (I think mine was three hours later, but I would have had nothing to do but sit around somewhere else anyway). Andrea had asked the hostel staff to bring her bags to the cab, and they had apparently forgotten one, so she called them to get them to bring it to the train station and it got there with enough time for her to make her train. I sat in the train station and read River Town by Peter Hessler, which ended up being amazing. I finished it on the train on the way to Hanzhong, where I arrived on December 29th, ready to drop off some of my stuff to the new school and prepare for New Year’s. More on my trip later, I’m a bit tired of writing for now.

Well I’ll be damned

My knitting was delivered to me (for Y20) today by a man I’d never met. Ellie, a member of the hostel staff, came with me and helped me pick it up so I could find the guy alright. Everything was there. I couldn’t be happier.

In other news, one subject I’ve refrained from writing about, in order to avoid complaining too much, is my co-teacher at Shimen. An incident has occurred this week that has spurred me to re-think this policy, because there’s an important lesson here for anyone who is considering taking the path I did. John is another American, 50 years old, and moved here after his small tomato farm in Wisconsin experienced a bad crop season and stopped being profitable. In recounting my issues with John, I am going to attempt to be as unbiased as it is possible to be (not very much, I’m sure – this is a very personal issue).

John and I have not ever really gotten along well, but personal differences aside, this wasn’t a huge issue (or at least, not one that couldn’t be solved with a rousing complaint session to my mom over Skype). This week, that all changed. We’ve had our disagreements in the past, but my 17-day vacation has apparently been a last straw situation. John agreed to cover the 5 class days I was going to miss to take this vacation. In fact, John was the one who informed me about the students’ exams so I could leave for my trip early and add extra days to my trip. But while I was gone, he started to ask for extra pay for covering my classes – all well and good and within his rights.

Two days ago, however, I got a phone call from our helper in Shimen telling me that John was demanding 17 days pay from the school, since I was gone for 17 days; a far cry from the actual 5 days he was covering, and brutally unfair. Originally, Buckland had divided my salary by 30 days per month, and was going to dock me 5 days worth of that pay. When I called Buckland to sort this issue with John out, however, they informed me that they’re going to divide my salary by class instead of by days – John is teaching 19 of my classes (I teach approximately 60 a month), and as such, I’m going to lose 1/3 of my monthly salary to him. I called him to discuss the issue (specifically to ask why he hadn’t talked to me about money before I left) and ended up getting screamed at, called a selfish brat, told that I blame other people for my problems, and in general verbally abused – this is actually quite typical behavior for John, but this was a last straw for me as well.

A large part of why I want to leave Shimen is because John is the only other foreigner in town and we don’t get along well. Herein lies the larger lesson. As in any population (a college class, a workplace, a hobby club), personalities differ between all members. In an extreme situation, such as traveling to a foreign country where you don’t speak the language to live for a year, these personality differences are also stretched to the extreme. I have found this to be true not just of John, but of many of the foreigners I have met in China.

In the case at my school, John and I are both strong-willed and opinionated. I’m trying to learn the language and adapt to Chinese culture as much as I can, but John has decided not to learn the language, hates Chinese food, and according to most of his complaints about our school’s situation, hates most of Chinese culture and largely thinks the Chinese are out to get him or trying to “screw him over”. I’m here to travel and see the country; John has said on many occasions that he’s here to avoid the bad economy in America and is actively trying to find a young Asian wife (he’s traveling to the Philippines over Spring Festival to meet several young girls he’s talked to on the internet). Obviously, neither of us really respects the reasons the other is here, and as such, it is not surprising that we don’t get along.

Other foreigners I’ve met run the gamut from people who are constantly positive about Chinese culture, language and history, to people who are obviously unhappy in China and are frequently very negative about everything to do with Chinese culture. In a different vein, many foreigners are inwardly or outwardly hostile to other foreigners – especially in Yangshuo. There, foreigners will blatantly stare at you (likely because they are surprised at how many other foreigners are there), or they will completely ignore your existence and won’t return passing smiles or will avoid eye contact at all costs. Some foreigners are here to rock climb and think all other reasons for coming to China are inferior. Some foreigners marry Chinese people and only associate with Chinese people. Some marry Chinese people and still only associate with foreigners.

I guess my point is that foreigners in China are a mixed bag of extremes – and I wonder where my place is on that scale. Of course, we always view ourselves as normal and judge others based on that – I’m sure I’m a weirdo to all the foreigners I’ve met. But anyone who reads this looking for information about what it’s like in China should know this – many of the foreigners here are extreme in one way or another, and it can make for a very interesting or a very stressful experience. It is highly unlikely that you will find someone exactly like you that is in the country for the same reasons and gets you perfectly. You’re more likely to meet similar-minded people at home, I think.

Regarding changing schools – I am, in fact, leaving Shimen in January. My term is over January 29th, and then I will move to Hanzhong, where my friend Laura teaches. Her co-teacher, Corey, is dissatisfied with Hanzhong, and will be trying to find another school, so his position has opened up and I have been approved to go there and teach with Laura. Laura and I get along very well, and there are other foreigners in the town, and a university, and several historical and natural sights in the area, and it’s 4 hours from Xi’an. The school itself is in the middle of town, and it’s a 3-minute walk to restaurants, supermarkets, coffeeshops, etc. Laura’s school doesn’t give them 3 meals a day (which is part of the reason I think life is so isolating at Shimen; I don’t have to leave the school for almost any reason, and it’s easy to become a shut-in), so I’ll be forced to go out to the street, order food, practice my Chinese, etc. There are several possibilities for Chinese lessons in that town, and there are places to go and hang out, with foreigners and with Chinese people. All signs point to a much more fulfilling experience there.

I had refrained from posting about the school change, too, because my school doesn’t know I’m leaving yet, but now I’ve been told by Buckland that it doesn’t matter if they find out. I apologize for how much this has been a rant, but I think it’s important to recount all of my experiences.

Further adventures in Yangshuo

And adventures they were!

Wednesday, I planned to ride my bike to Moon Hill, about 8km outside of Yangshuo. By lunch, I hadn’t left yet, so I ate lunch at the Buckland cafeteria with a bunch of teachers and students. I decided to take Y100 out of the bank in case I couldn’t make the bike ride and needed to take a cab back (plan for every eventuality). So after lunch, I rode from Buckland to the nearest Bank of China branch, only to discover my Bank of China ATM card was missing. Panic ensued. I immediately rode to the West Street Bank of China (the one I usually use in Yangshuo), and sure enough they had it – but they wouldn’t give it to me without my actual passport (I usually prefer to keep my actual passport locked up in my hotel room and carry a copy with me), and they weren’t interested in the three or four other forms of ID I had. So I had to bike all the way back to Buckland to get my passport, then all the way back to West Street to pick up my ATM card.

I’d like to pause here to say that only I would leave my bank card in the same ATM twice, several months apart.

At this point, I was tired of biking, so I looked into renting an electric scooter; in the end I decided Y80 was too much to pay for a few hours ride, and the ladies behind the counter weren’t very convincing when they said, “Oh, I think it will go all the way to Moon Hill. I’ll give you a ticket to Moon Hill right here.” When the “will the electricity last that long” conversation turns into a “here, buy another thing I’m selling” conversation, I’m out.

So I biked the 8km after all, and when I got there, I was tired, but not exhausted. I paid Y15 to get in the park, and looked at the entrance. I wasn’t looking at the circular-shaped hill that I’d come here to see, oh no. I was looking at a long set of stone stairs. I’d assumed that the circular opening Moon Hill is famous for was on the ground. It’s quite a steep climb. But I’m stubborn and decided to climb the stairs to the top.

All the way up I was following these two Chinese men who tried to talk to me, but were speaking way beyond my capacity. Behind me (and quickly overtaking me – they passed me about halfway up) were a group of French tourists. I had to stop about every 35-45 steps to catch my breath, and near the end, they were a bit wonky and shaky. One of the places I stopped had a bunch of really awesome graffiti carved into the bamboo at the side of the stairs.

And at the top, it was beautiful. Seeing all the karst mountains shrouded in mist was completely worth it. It took me about 35 minutes to walk up all the stairs to the top. I have heard you can climb all the way to the top of the circle, but I’ve also heard it’s a hard climb, so I didn’t really want to give it a try.

I started down and quickly realized that going down a flight of stairs requires your toes much more than going up it does. By the time I got to the bottom, my injured left toes were screaming at me. I’m thankful that pedaling a bike really requires more of your heels than your toes, or I wouldn’t have made it back without flagging down a bus. On the way back, I almost passed the Big Banyan Tree park without stopping, but I decided that I might not be in Yangshuo again, so I’d better go look.

The Big Banyan Tree is a tree that was planted in the Shui dynasty, about 1400 years ago (according to the park signs), and I wanted to see it. To be fair, it wasn’t worth the Y20 to get in (maybe they charge you less at Moon Hill because you have to hike to see it!), but I’m glad I went to see it anyway. There was a weak display of what I think are some Shui totems, and a “natural art museum” that was actually a bunch of gemstones, and oh by the way, you can buy them. The park was disappointing – there was a pretty river with a bunch of bamboo boats in it, but not really something I’d want to do by myself. I also could have walked across a bridge to get further in the park and see more scenery, but I would have had to walk through a tent-city of a bunch of stalls selling merchandise and stuff, and with my toes in so much pain, I didn’t want the hassle. So I biked back to Yangshuo and took a well-earned shower.

After dinner, I went down to West Street for one last night at Bar 98. I had told Yuki, the owner, that I’d come and show her how to knit in the round with 2 circulars if she bought two needles of the same size. I got there around 7pm and we sat down to a pot of tea and knitting lessons. Some of the people I’d met the night before showed up as I was eating the burrito I’d ordered (which was amazing), and I played a few rounds of pool before heading back to the hotel. I knew I was going to need a good night’s sleep before my early morning bus trip to Guilin so I could catch a 1:30pm train to Changsha.

When I got to the hotel, it was only about 11:00, so I decided to do some knitting and watch “Home Alone,” which I’d downloaded to my laptop. I’m such a sap and I totally cried at the end; I was thinking – it’s like me! My family is having Christmas without me! *nerd*

After a good night’s sleep I checked out of the hotel on Thursday the 24th, got a hug from Desta, the girl who works in the Buckland office, and headed to the bus station. I got on a bus to Guilin for Y15, and arrived about 10:00am. Perfect timing, I thought, to get my train ticket to Changsha by 1:30pm.

Well, I was wrong. Apparently, you can only buy tickets for the two trains I was planning on taking in Beijing. They’re express trains, and I guess this is pretty common, but it’s something I didn’t really know before I made this plan. I had already tried to buy my Guilin-to-Changsha ticket when I first arrived in Guilin, and instead of saying, “You can’t buy those from here,” they told me, “You can’t buy these so far in advance.” Good information, but not the most important information, right? Well, I bought a Y130 ticket that would leave Guilin at 9pm and arrive in Changsha the next morning at 6am, though I’d had reservations at the Changsha hostel for that night.

I went to sit in the waiting room and tried to go online to find the phone number of the Buckland teacher in Guilin, Daniel, to see if he wanted to get lunch or dinner. I couldn’t get the wifi to work in the Guilin train station, so I couldn’t get his number. Next, I went to call the Changsha hostel to change my reservation. My phone was out of money. Irritated and carrying a heavy bag, I decided to walk to the China Mobile I had seen across the street to try and add money to my phone. On my way across the street, my attention was drawn by a stand selling long-distance bus tickets.

I walked up to the counter and asked if they had tickets to Changsha, and they said yes. The bus would leave at noon and arrive at 6:30pm. They said it would cost me Y150. I told them I would have to go return my train ticket first, but they said they would take my train ticket as part of the payment. So I gave them Y100 and they gave me Y50 back. This is obviously Y30 short of what I expected – when I tried to get them to explain, they told me they could only give me Y100 for the price of the ticket, since they had to resell it. Well, fine. So I ended up paying Y180 for my long-distance bus ticket to make sure I got into Changsha at a reasonable hour.

I asked the people if the place across the street was, in fact, a China Mobile, and one of the ladies walked me across the street and helped me put Y50 on my phone, which was very nice of her. I ended up getting taken in a minivan with a few other people to a bus pickup point on the outskirts of Guilin, and our bus left at around 1pm.

On the bus, I slept for a bit and then cast on for a sweater and knit for awhile. A lady behind me came to watch me knit and I gave her an impromptu knitting lesson without language on the bus. She knit a few dozen stitches on my sweater, then I loaned her an extra ball of yarn and some needles and she knit herself a little swatch while we drove. I was glad to have given a fellow knitter something to do with her hands on a long bus journey. We stopped for dinner after a while and I ate some doufu, white rice, and scrambled eggs and tomato. Delicious roadside food. After that, they dropped us off for Changsha on a highway ramp. Apparently, I was in such a hurry to get off the bus that I left my knitting behind, a fact I didn’t realize until I was on a local Changsha bus.

I checked into the hostel then went to meet Aimee and Craig at Folk Bar for Christmas Eve beers. One of Aimee’s Chinese friends called the bus company and found out my knitting was in Yueyang, and she has a friend there, so hopefully we’ll be able to arrange a pickup of that stuff while I’m in Changsha.

This morning and afternoon, I Skyped with my various family members for Christmas and now I’m just waiting for Matt to arrive so we can go eat dinner at Pizza Hut. More on my further adventures later.

Yangshuo: The Return of the Laowai

I thought “The PRC Strikes Back” was too negative a title, so I skipped straight to the third one.

Things I love about Yangshuo:

• My Corona is served with a lime.
• Hearing, “Oh, you son of a bitch,” in its natural habitat: a bar-room pool game.
• The only people staring at you are the other laowai.

I’m sure there will be more, since I’m not done here yet.

I arrived on Saturday afternoon to general good weather and sunshine. Can’t complain about that. I got the key to my hotel room, provided free of charge from Buckland, and set out to find myself dinner. I ended up eating at the Global Cafe – a place I’d taken a picture of in August, but never eaten at. I ordered cheese quesadillas and some coffee, which were amazing, and a chocolate sundae, which consisted of weird vanilla ice cream on top of watermelon and apple pieces with some chocolate syrup. Not altogether awesome. That night, I went to Bar 98 (the Australian bar) and hung out with some other laowai, shooting pool and playing Texas Hold ‘Em.

When I got back to my apartment that night, disaster struck. I slipped and fell on some water on the tiled floor and banged up my left toes something awful. This put me heftily out of commission for most of Sunday. I ended up sleeping most of the day until 3pm or so, then heading out on my bike (much less painful than walking) to a nearby restaurant, where I had jiachang doufu (home-style tofu) that was awesome. After that, I went back to the hotel and chilled out again. My toes were feeling much better, but I was still sore, so I just rested.

Today, I decided, toes be damned, I’m going into town and doing something. I went to West Street, ate a good lunch of green beans and cashew chicken, and then took a cooking class! Go me for being adventurous. We went to the market to check out vegetables and meats, and then learned how to cook Beer Fish (a Yangshuo specialty), Green Beans with Garlic and Chili, and Sweet & Sour Pork. I’m not a big fan of fish, but I will definitely be cooking the green beans and pork again later – they were very easy to cook and tasted amazing. I made my own sweet and sour sauce from scratch! I win.

After class, around 7pm, I went to dinner with Patrick and Ping, two Buckland employees. We had big giant bacon mozzarella burgers (regardless of the fact that I’d eaten about seven dishes since 1pm) and some dodgy chocolate milkshakes. We shot pool in the upstairs lounge on a fantastic table – probably the best I’ve played on in China. After that I went to Bar 98 and had some tea and read a new book I’ve started called River Town by Peter Hessler. He’s the author of Oracle Bones, another book about China I’m interested in, but so far in River Town, his experiences as a laowai teacher in a small town are parallel to a lot of my experiences; and different in a lot of ways, too. His small town has a lot more history and culture than my small town, for one. And his school’s staff went out of their way to welcome him and the other laowai teacher when they got there, something I didn’t experience.

I’m beginning to wonder if the wine-and-dine-the-foreigners experience is more likely for males than females. Part of the bonding experience in China is the social drinking of baijiu, or rice wine, and among men, it’s a competition to see who can drink the most. But it’s considered immodest for women to drink (or smoke, for that matter), so maybe the school didn’t take me out for big banquet dinners because they didn’t expect me to drink with them (which I wouldn’t – baijiu is horrifying).

Anyway, I’m really having a great time in Yangshuo – it’s an amazing place to reset. Tomorrow, if my foot is feeling up to it, I’m planning on taking a bike ride to Moon Hill, which is 8km south of town, and the Big Banyan Tree, which is near Moon Hill. Wednesday, I want to go around Yangshuo and focus on trying to get some really good pictures, and probably do the last of my touristy shopping stuff. Thursday I leave to go back to Changsha for Christmas.

I’ve uploaded new pictures under the name “Yangshuo: The Return of the Laowai,” so go check those out. They include pictures of my bruised-up toes. WARNING: I couldn’t bring myself to take pictures of the dead dogs in the market, but I do have some pictures of live animals like frogs and eels in their pools, and one picture of dead rats hanging in the market. If you’re really squeamish, look out for those, they’re in the middle of the batch.

I’ve also added two videos, one of eels swimming in their pool (whole and intact) in the market, and one of Christmas lights in Yangshuo, to the “China Videos” group, so look at those, too.

Pushing my luck

I don’t know how this keeps happening. But I won’t question it. The school has scheduled Grade 1 exams for next week Monday and Tuesday. This would mean, given Christmas, that the only day I have to teach next week is Thursday (because Wednesday is already my day off). John, my fellow foreign teacher (or, as he says, “international teacher” because it sounds better), has offered to teach my Thursday classes next week, which means I will leave for vacation on Friday night or Saturday (that is, in two days), and travel for SIXTEEN DAYS until coming back on January 4th. This will result in, I believe, only 5 missed days of classes on my part (personal days which I won’t be paid for).

Of course, it isn’t all lucky. It gives me 2 days to plan, and unless the school can front me some of my December pay (I find out tomorrow if this is possible), I’m still stuck on my Y1900 budget that I’d saved for the 11-day trip over Christmas. Of course, I have access to my money at home, but I just sent home half of this month’s salary through Western Union, about a week ago. Unfortunate timing; I could have saved some of that money, too. But schedules are often changed last-minute in China, and hey, what else am I doing? I love having the ability to be flexible – I think when I get home it will be a little shock to get back into the every-minute-is-scheduled lifestyle I had. I like it that way, actually. I like having something to do all day long. Having only 12 scheduled hours a week (15 hours if you count the two 10-minute meals I have every day six days a week) is really boring.

Good thing I have all this travel to keep me occupied! I’ll probably be going back to Yangshuo; Buckland will put me up for free, so I’ll only be out the travel and food (and the billions of touristy things I’m sure I’m going to buy because that’s how I roll). I’ll be there until December 24th, and then I’ll head back to Changsha for my aforementioned Christmas plans. After that, it’s on to Hanzhong to pick up Laura on the way to Xi’an for the aforementioned New Year’s plans.

I thought about using the extra time to go to Chengdu or Wuhan or some other place I haven’t been yet, but I think Yangshuo will be a nice re-charge in the middle of what has already been a long winter (even though it hasn’t really been cold per se). I’ve just been sitting around Shimen, only leaving the school campus when it was absolutely necessary. Part of this is because it’s been rainy. Part of it is because it’s convenient to stay on campus – they serve three meals a day (two of which I eat – I can never get up for breakfast), and if I don’t walk out to the street, I won’t buy pop, so I’ve been almost entirely pop-free for two months. Just a can here and there. This is much different from my at-least-three-cans-of-Coke-a-day habit back home. Now I drink tea with leaves and flowers in it. I don’t know if I can go back to teabags after having flowers floating in my hot water.

Anyway, good thing I started packing early when I did laundry the other day! Off I go to plan!