guavamama's TravelStream™ — Recent TravelPod.com entries

guavamama's TravelStream™ — Recent TravelPod.com entries TravelStream™ news feed for member guavamama on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/guavamama en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Tue, 17 Feb 2009 11:29:21 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com Wo bu ming bai! — Kaifeng, China http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1189230540/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1189230540/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1189230540/tpod.html Tue, 17 Feb 2009 11:29:21 -0500 The Asian Odyssey

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Kaifeng, China

    After months of anticipation, stress, delayed flights, missed connections and final goodbyes - I'm finally in China. So much has happened in the past two weeks that it's already an overwhelming experience to answer the question"How's China?"    Stepping off the plane in Beijing, I expected all five senses to go into a state of shock and to feel slightly incapacitated with sensory overload.  My head whirled on the plane with imaginary visions of this strange new language swarming around me, the weird smells accompanied with the fabled gobs of mucus covering every surface.  But the Beijing airport is the most boring and mundane place I have ever been.  So when I got out of the car in Kaifeng, my senses were immediately slammed and I was left overstimulated and numb.      Kaifeng is a riot of sound, people and dirt.  You enter into full battle mode when you walk past the South Gate of Henan University (Daxue) and onto Minglun Street (Jie).  There you fight for your life against bikers, mopeds, sanliuchi (three-wheel truck taxis), buses and foot traffic.   This life and death battle is only complicated by the small problem that you bring everything to a standstill because you are clearly not from around here.       I will have absolutely no fear of traffic by the time I return to the States and won't flinch at any car on the wrong side of the street.  Here, being on the wrong side of the street is the norm.  After we attended our required medical exams for our residency permits, we were joking about how our bus driver might or might not have been drinking the distilled ant and snake liquor at lunch.  If he was, we wouldn't really be able to tell  - everyone seems drunk as they drive.  (Not really Mom and Dad, they're just a little crazy.)    China's notorious pollution is definitely present, although we are told that Kaifeng is a much cleaner city than others.  Erin, Max and I have only seen blue sky once or twice in the past two weeks we have been here, most of the time it's hidden behind the thick smog that envelopes most of the country.  But I'm glad I'm living in Kaifeng because the city protects me from seeing most of China's ridiculous and unfettered construction. During the Song Dynasty, Kaifeng was the center of Chinese civilization and that was probably the last time the city had any sort of glamor.  Thus, Kaifengers have developed this deeply intense obsession with the Song Dynasty(which you know, ended while most of the Western world was still in its barbaric stage) and the city has prevented any sort of large building or construction project within the city walls.   City officials fear construction may damagethe ruins that are buried underneath the city.  But it's not the picturesque image of traditional China many people come looking for as most of the current architecture was built in the 1980s after the Reform and Opening. Yet I already love the city's connection to their past and how buildings and their surroundings have character and adhere more to the standards of ancient Chinese architecture than other places.     This love though, was undiscovered until we left the city to go to Zhengzhou for our medical tests.  Zhengzhou is perhaps the most soulless, faceless and infuriating city I have ever seen.  It's all large, uninspired, and unoriginal chunks of concrete skyscrapers, with most of them currently under construction.  Once you leave the city walls of Kaifeng and creep closer to Zhengzhou, the constant stream of people is replaced by a sea of metallic cars and large concrete slabs that have eaten up a large portion of the surrounding farmland.    I was extremely glad to return to Kaifeng, where there is no distinction between private and public life - it all happens on the streets.  The streets play host to restaurants, family meals, games of mah jongg and Chinese chess, haggling and shopping, services like bicycle and watch repair are rendered and yes, even small children going to the bathroom.  The activity on the streets of Kaifeng and how people blend their private lives together with the public sphere makes the city perhaps the most organic place I've ever been. Because there are so many people constantly on the street, it seems like everyone looks out for the other people in the neighborhood.  The vendors have their friends and are anxious to talk to new people.  And we've already established a home-away-from-home in thisfamily-run Muslim noodle shop.  We can't really speak to the family yet, but we're working on it and we've established a great communication system with them based on body language.  Also, the fact that they have pictures of their food is a bonus.    My standard of living is quite high for the city and my apartment is quite comfortable.  I feel guilty about the quality of my apartment and how much I'm getting paid compared to Jackie Chan, the worker in the International Office and to Old Man Tank Top, the man who is in charge of locking the gate to our apartment complex at night.  These two men do a lot for us and our living situation far exceeds theirs, even though they do so much work.  The inequality between our salaries and theirs is disgusting.  But yes, our apartments are in a gated community and Old Man Tank Top locks the gate around 9 to 10 p.m. so if we're out later, we have to hop the gate.  Last night was the first night that we've ever been in that situation.   When we got to the top the spikes no longer looked so nice and innocent but screamed "death-in-a-chinese-hospital-through-tetanus-infections" sort of way.  We're trying to devise a way to create a makeshift ladder or perhaps we're going to buy a heavy-duty rug we can throw over to avoid puncture wounds.      Other than coming equipped with spikes of death, I have a couch and a huge bed so if anybody wants to come visit, please feel free!  I also have a shower, bathtub and a real toilet, so trust me, if you're in China, you're going to want to stay with me.    The first week of classes went well and if I had to generalize one thing about my students it's that they are CRAZY about English.  I have never seen such an obsession with a language and their eagerness is entertaining and overwhelming.  It's also intense to teach so many students at once, especially students who are looking to you to greatly advance their English skills. Most of their essays they turned in during the first week were written in a hilarious pleading tone because they have a large exam coming up in November. Their scores on this test will affect their chances to apply to jobs in the United States after graduation next year.  The pressure to meet their expectations makes me nervous about how I will be as a teacher because I do want to help them, but working in the Chinese education system is going to pose great problems for me as a teacher and as someone who isused to a completely different style of learning.  I'm teaching English majors in third-year writing and also first-year conversation classes.  The first-years don't start classes until the 19th because they are currently in mandatory military training.      I don't really understand how the students choose their English names.  In this one class, I have a group of students who make it impossible to do attendance according to the seat chart.   The order of their assigned seats is: Seven, Davids, Smith, Panda, Apple First, and Mike.  In other classes I have some Babbys, some Cherrys, Sum, Looking Clouds, Lee Moon and some other great gems.  The girls pretty much either like female names from the 1950s or porn star names.  Although Max takes the cake with his student named Christ.  I have a class where a lot of people don't have English names so they want me to come up with a list of names - I can't decide if I should make a completely ridiculous list that would be entertaining to me or if I should make a legitimate list.  The chance to mess with these kids is just so great and tempting, I can't decide.  But I'm excited to teach and I thinkthis is going to be something that I really enjoy doing, once I actually figure out an effective way to create lesson plans.  And hey, at least I'll have some really entertaining essays to read throughout the year.
]]> The earthquake — Kaifeng, China http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1211001000/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1211001000/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1211001000/tpod.html Sun, 04 Jan 2009 18:18:18 -0500 The Asian Odyssey

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Kaifeng, China

    I'm used to bizarre events happening daily in China.  Whitney Houston blaring throughout campus during lunch time, Old Man Tank Top fashioning his garden plants into Olympic rings or elderly people flocking to a stand to receive frying pans - these things all seem normal and logical to me now.  Sort of.  So when my apartment started to shake last week, I didn't think anything of it at first.       I was in my living room getting ready for my brother and sister's visit when my living room door started to bang back and forth.  When I felt the couch begin to sway, I looked outside to see if maybe the University was doing some type of construction work on the apartment below me.  And then I started to feel really, really drunk.       Erin, Alex and I ran outside.  Standing in our courtyard, watching the trees sway with no tangible wind was disconcerting and surreal.  It's a scary thing when your feet are firmly placed on the ground and you can do nothing to make it stop moving.  Watching Max's clothesline bang against his patio windows, we adjusted to the world-is-a-carnival-funhouse feeling and began to feel nauseous.  And then it stopped.  We laughed off the shakes and headed back to our apartments, not knowing the horror that was quickly unfolding throughout Sichuan.       Watching things develop in this country after the earthquake has been an equally strange experience as the actual tremor.   Throughout Tuesday afternoon the only reports we found were news stories stating that only four had died and hundreds were injured.  There was no indication that the death toll was going to spike up from 4 to 9,000 in the matter of hours and has been increasing ever since.       2008 has not been a good year for China and for Chinese people, and this earthquake may only portend of more bad things to come.  According to Chinese superstition, earthquakes are the beginning of awful, destabilizing events.  Over the past few days, my students have grown increasingly anxious and nervous about the state of China and more importantly for them, the state of the Olympic Games.       In 1976 there was an earthquake in northern China that killed a quarter of a million people.  Later that year, both Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai died and there was a peasant uprising.  This year there were several smaller earthquakes along the Tibetan plateau.  In March the protests began.  There's an article on the New Yorker's website by Peter Hessler that briefly touches upon this. You can check it out here.        But China is doing a great job of mobilizing people to help out with the relief work.  Students are filling up classrooms with donated goods they will send to Sichuan as well as collecting money and running blood banks to help.  It's reassuring to see all of my students rallying behind a cause that will have positive effects, instead of rallying around ardent, almost-scary nationalism.        Some of you have emailed me asking what you can do to help.  My answer - help Myanmar.  China is doing a great job of taking care of itself, but has completely ignored the devastation in Myanmar - even before the earthquake.  Most Chinese people don't even know what Myanmar is.  This is frustrating because the Chinese government is one of the few governments in the world that could pressure the Junta into opening the country for relief.  So please, if you want to do something, help the Burmese.
]]> getting my bourgeois on. — Shanghai, Shanghai, China http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1208611740/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1208611740/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1208611740/tpod.html Wed, 07 May 2008 05:17:29 -0400 The Asian Odyssey

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Shanghai, Shanghai, China

So I realize this is a bit of a cop out, but this is what you get for the rest of my time in Shanghai - pictures.  My schedule has just been too crazy with visits, future visits and the end of the school year coming...uh, now, for me to go into a lot of detail for you.  Enjoy!
]]> The country bumpkin heads to the big city. — Shanghai, China http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1208959980/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1208959980/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1208959980/tpod.html Wed, 23 Apr 2008 10:25:09 -0400 The Asian Odyssey

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Shanghai, China

    For the past two weeks, all I've heard in my apartment is "Jia you! Jia you!" During every free moment outside of classes, all of HeDa was prepping for its annual sports festival with departmental sports scrimmages and cheerleading contests. And since the field is directly behind our apartments with their paper thin walls, we had a crash course in Chinese cheering.  Jia you is apparently the only fighting cheer in Chinese.  And we heard it non-stop. On repeat. Every day.       The Sports Festival is an annual event that hosts such testosterone-fueled sporting events like sack races, 21-legged races, and jump roping.  Sack racing - it's kind of a big a deal.  One of Max's students told him that their department has won the sack race for the last fifteen years and they were feeling the pressure last week to live up to their title.  And unlike Beloit, where the big, ok, only, notable sporting event of the year is the somewhat irreputable intramural ultimate Frisbee championship, HeDa has their more legitimate soccer championship.  Sadly, the IM teams here don't have names like G-Spot Tornado, Fresh Undies or Alma, Michigan.  Rather, their teams are called Mingsheng Foreign Language College Team, Chemistry Department Team, and the HeDa Foreign Language Team.        This year, the Sports Festival has become a bigger deal than in the past because it's the school's only break this semester.   Because of a change in national law this last November, there is no longer a week-long May Day holiday, leaving our students without a break in their second semester.  So HeDa improvised and gave the students Thursday and Friday off for their Sports Festival.  And since I was having dreams at night where the only thing people said was Jia You, I decided that it was time to truck it out to China's original city of sin - Shanghai.           Buying my ticket at the last minute, the only hard sleeper I could get was a train that arrived in Shanghai at 5 in the morning.  After navigating around China's Grand Central, I arrived in Shanghai's still asleep downtown as the sun started to rise after a rainy night.   I took advantage of the barren streets in China's most populous city and made my way to the Bund. Logic and previous experiences with Chinese tourists told me that in a few short hours this stretch along the Huangpu River would be claustrophobic hell.         Before the start of "New China," the Bund was the first glimpse of the city as foreign passengers and people entered the city on boats from the Yellow Sea. Now, with the advent of planes and trains, the Bund is no longer the glitzy gate into the Shanghai for visitors.   Its larger purpose now is to serve as a stark contrast as Shanghai's 'shameful' foreign concession history against the ultra-modern, ultra-metal and ultra-grimy skyline of the Pudong Special Economic Zone across the Huangpu.       Walking along the Bund's river promenade, buildings that defined Shanghai and modern Chinese history through the 1920s and 1960s flanked my right.   I walked past the old Customs house with its Big Ben-inspired belltower. Red Guards removed the face of the clock during the Cultural Revolution and installed giant speakers to broadcast Communist propaganda.  The clock's face was only restored in the 1980s when Queen Elizabeth II visited Shanghai, but the speakers still remain.  There is the Peace Hotel, the Ritz Carlton of pre-Communist China and the site where the Gang of Four staked out their operations and implemented the Cultural Revolution after the Communist takeover.       In front of it all, Shanghai was waking up.  The river promenade was full of old Shanghairen exercising and flying kites as street cleaners hosed down the dust and dirt that settled during the night.  Groups of elderly Shanghairen would run in a quick shuffle across the promenade, greeting and waving to a busy friend or two flying kites.  Running from one end of the promenade to the other, the groups shuffled pass ballroom dance and taiji (tai chi) groups or old men taking their caged birds out for some fresh Shanghai air.         A small group of men, with hand-rolled cigarettes and sitting stools in tow, converged from all sides of the promenade into the middle, grabbing and shaking each other's arms in greeting.   They were laughing and smiling these big, goofy wrinkled smiles at each other, showing off their missing teeth or exchanging cigarettes.  These two men on the side looked at each other and before one greeted his friend with a hearty "Hullllllo!" and a slap on the back.  The other man doubled over in laughter and it was such a genuinely happy moment, I couldn't help but smile.             Separated from the Bund by waters of questionable content and coal barges is the Pudong Special Economic Zone.   Pudong is one of China's first experiments in capitalism with 'Chinese characteristics' (ie, dog eat dog) and has transformed from a swampy collection of peasant houses to a miasma of concrete and metal.  Until very recently, Pudong was home to the world's highest concentration of construction cranes.   It's such a sharp contrast and clear divide - the Bund vs. Pudong.  On one side you have a dirty, twisted, history of foreigners exploiting Chinese.   On the other side is where you come to make it or break it in the New China with an ample amount of Chinese on Chinese exploitation.        Then I wandered into the Shanghai Museum and thought that I was being stealthy or just damn lucky for not paying for an entrance ticket, but later I found out that earlier in the month it became national practice to remove museum entrance fees.  Which I think is necessary because most Chinese museums aren't worth the ticket gauging.        But the Shanghai Museum is a different story.  Everything that is written about this museum is true; it's the most comprehensive collection of ancient Chinese culture I've ever seen.  Most museums I've been to boast and say, "Oh, look at our pretty shard of Tang Dynasty pottery."  But the Shanghai museum is says "Look at our entire pot of Tang Dynasty pottery and then look at these other pots from 13th century BC, bitch."   Generally I would say that you can only look at so many pots, statues, paintings, and carvings before you start to think "yeah yeah, big deal."  But what's impressive about the Shanghai Museum is a) how well-marked everything is.  The museum is impressively devoid of Chinglish, b) the depth of the exhibitions and c) how well preserved everything is.  There isn't a single piece in the museum that only warrants a shoulder shrug of recognition.  The display cases are full of creations where every little swish, line and swoop can be seen. There are things that I made last week and they're already looking more weathered than the displays at the Shanghai Museum.       After the SM, I met up with my couchsurfing host, and his curious elderly neighbors, at his apartment complex in the French Concession.  His friend across the alley was gone that weekend, so I had the keys to her entire apartment.  Their apartments are traditional shikumen houses, housing units built by the French in the early 1900s.  After the Cultural Revolution the giant houses were divided up between families, turning each floor into a single family apartment.  The families share the staircase and the kitchen while keeping the original structural integrity of the apartment.  In the several rows of houses that make up his apartment complex, Ben and his friend are the only two laowai.  The rest of the apartments are inhabitated by elderly Chinese that have lived in the apartments since they were divided up.  Plus, his apartment complex was right off of Huaihai Zong Lu, Shanghai's answer to the Champs-Elysees in Paris or Avenue Louise in Brussels.  Basically, it was like I was staying at an apartment near Central Park and Fifth Avenue in New York City for free.  It was the perfect spot to explore Shanghai.
]]> feeling my fingers again — Kaifeng, China http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1208921880/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1208921880/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1208921880/tpod.html Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:02:59 -0400 The Asian Odyssey

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Kaifeng, China

I don't know when it happened, but it did.  The government-regulated heat in our apartments was turned off.  We were too busy throwing our windows open and spending most of our days outside to notice.  Spring, and real, sticky, suffocating heat, has finally returned to Kaifeng.  We knew we had officially put the hardest months behind us when the old man who religiously plays badminton outside of our apartments began to don his barely there sports shorts and sleeveless badminton shirt.  Spring had been decreed. My first day of spring and the beginning of a new chapter in my life in China was the first day I stopped wearing my thermal underwear.   It was the best day of my life and the most self-conscious.  After wearing my thermals religiously for several months, I was happy to shimmy out of the now perpetually smelly and tattered things and bid them adieu.  But throughout the whole day, I kept suddenly looking down.  I had to make sure that I was actually wearing pants because it felt like I was wearing nothing. Teaching was awkward as 'Oh god, my pants!' suddenly flashed through my head while speaking mid-sentence. Maybe it's Stockholm syndrome, maybe it's the euphoria of finally being released from my apartment and being able to explore Kaifeng again, or maybe it's legitimate, but Kaifeng is really beautiful in spring.   Max and I have started riding our bikes with our boombox in tow, etching out new boundaries, neighborhoods, and areas in our mental maps of the city.  We've unearthed new parks, markets, and favorite places as we scandalize and delight Chinese people with our music and a bottle of pijiou or two.  I'm falling in love with Kaifeng again and it makes teaching seem even more worthless.  I'm as distracted and apathetic about school and learning as my students are, which in a way helps.  It doesn't make me feel so bad that I would rather be outside than teaching business memos.   And based on the listless attitudes and faraway stares every HeDa student has, I guess I'm not the only one.
]]> the other song dynasty. — Luoyang, China http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1207361880/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1207361880/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1207361880/tpod.html Tue, 22 Apr 2008 23:02:09 -0400 The Asian Odyssey

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Luoyang, China

    Henan is often (or really, always) overlooked as the cradle of Chinese civilization.  But there is nowhere else in China where such a concentration of former dynasty capitals, ruins, and historical markers exist as there is in Henan.  It's one of the reasons why Henanren are so proud of their province, even if most other Chinese people look down on it, calling it backward and the people 'crazy.'     We've pretty much explored what the Northern Song Dynasty, our one true dynasty love, has to offer us in Kaifeng. So Max, Ben and I hopped on a hardseat to Luoyang, the seat of that other Song Dynasty - the Southern Song.  We don't like them very much.  They took our glory and created a crap cuisine.     Dynasty allegiances aside, Luoyang is an alright city.  It's larger than Kaifeng and is more developed, but with that comes more bathroom tiled buildings and higher prices.  Most of the sites lay outside of the city, which is actually for the best because it takes you away from all of the traffic and people in China.  Well, as much as you can get away from that at a tourist site.  But one thing the city does offer is the Southern Song's water banquet.  It's Luoyang's famous food like our nightmarkets, spicy peanuts and baozi. It's named the water banquet because it's served 'as fast as flowing water' and because of the 20 course meal, 18 of the courses are soup.  For those of you who haven't been to China, there is one very important thing you need to know about food.  The grossest imaginable meals ever known to man are the Chinese breakfast, dessert and soup.  I try to avoid them at all costs.       And the water banquet is the worst possible manifestation of the latter.  We had almond glop sludge soup, vomit soup, dead frog floating soup, spongy meat soup, and 14 other types of soups in the same vein.  The two non-soup courses?  Cold meat slices and garlic gelatin slabs.     It was awesomely terrifying and hilarious.     The waitstaff was really confused when the three of us didn't touch much.   Instead of eating with gusto like the people around us, we let our table brim with hot, cold, and tepid bowls of goo.  We watched our table jiggle for a little bit before we ordered a pan of jiaozi.   Our waitress just looked at us, then at our table and finally back to us as Ben and I smiled sweetly at her as Max squashed the garlic jello in his fingers.     So, in terms of cuisine, the Northern Song kicks the Southern Song's ass.  Northern Song, 1. Southern Song, 0.  And yes, we were keeping tally.     The next day we headed over to the White Horse Temple and the Longmen Caves.  The White Horse Temple was built when the Song Dynasty moved from Kaifeng to Luoyang and is supposedly one of the oldest temples in China. We were there on Tomb Sweeping Day, so it was full of Chinese people worshipping and paying homage to ancestors.  It's this huge expanse of stone walkways, temples, and goldfish ponds.  There weren't very many monks walking around and the only ones we saw while we were there were in a rather out-of-the-way garden patch, taking care of their crops.  But the gardens within the temple grounds were gorgeous and made the trip worth it.     On the complete other side of the city are the Longmen caves - Henan's claim to fame on UNESCO's World Heritage Site map.  The series of buddhist caves were carved into the side of the soft rock found along the Yellow River - soft enough for easy carving, strong enough so people could dig durable homes into the rock.  The caves were a lot larger than I was expecting.  After going to Gongyi, I thought the statues and caves would be similar in size, but I was blown away by Longmen's enormity.   Both in size of carvings and the amount of people packed into the viewing areas.       Many of the statues have been destroyed, kidnapped, or shot by fanatical Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution or looters, hacking off heads to send to museum display cases around the world.  But overall, with the prices and the large crowds, the caves just weren't worth it.  Gongyi was much more impressive.  It was cheaper, no one was there and you could walk inside of the caves.  In Luoyang everything is roped off to protect the caves structural integrity from the hordes of tourists flooding it every year.  But hey, it's China. There are a lot of people here.  I just gotta deal. In the end, Northern Song 2, Southern Song 1.  Boo ya.
]]> You say, I say, We all say. — Kaifeng, China http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1207983540/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1207983540/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1207983540/tpod.html Tue, 22 Apr 2008 03:41:00 -0400 The Asian Odyssey

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Kaifeng, China

    As the youngest child, my family can tell you that I know a thing or two about whining when I don't get my way or I think I'm being treated unfairly.   Now that I've grown (am growing) up, I like to think that I've moved beyond my whining stage, even though something slips out every now and then.  But what's happening in China takes whining in a direction that I'm not used to or necessarily comfortable with.       I wasn't worried about the Tibet and Taiwan issues when I came to China.   The plan was to keep mum on everything and feign innocence if asked (another trait I picked up as the youngest child).  And that was working out.  I skirted a few awkward issues last semester when some of my students wanted to write research papers on Taiwan and what they gave me were pages upon pages of propaganda.   Or when I showed a Chinese person where Kaifeng was on my Lonely Planet map and he verbally attacked me, wondering why Taiwan was a different color on the map (because it's listed as a different country, which is why the China LP is "banned" here) and why Tibet was a different color (altitude variations.   He didn't buy that argument even though it's true.).  But I got out of those situations rather cleanly.   Then March came around.       When the protests in Lhasa started, things didn't change at first here.   Since we're essentially blind, deaf and mute, we were unexposed to the initial conversations, or probably more likely, outrages, occurring around us.   We couldn't broach the conversation with our students because we didn't know how we'd be treated since we're the 'dirty' Westerners.   We already take a lot more liberties in our classes than party officials probably like, and prompting the Tibet issue we know is a definite no.  Wanting to know what everyday Chinese people thought without creating problems, we found our information from the China Daily, China's largest English daily.   Consequently, our students read this paper religiously.        Like every source of media in the world, the China Daily is riddled with its own problems.  Yet, with the advent of the Tibetan protests and the Western media's portrayal of the events, the China Daily's forums have been turned into one big whine-fest.   The forums make it seem like the Chinese are the skinny nerdy kids at school who've been stuffed into a locker by the big kids one too many times.  But here's the thing - I'm not saying China's whining is completely unjustified.  Until recently, they always have been the kids picked on on the playground.  They have every right to feel extra-sensitive to how they are perceived and treated around the world.  And yes, there are some major problems with the Western media reporting.  At the same time, I'm troubled by the Chinese's lack of self-awareness when it comes to their global position.   There doesn't seem to be any shift of mentality in China to accompany the shift in reality.  China's a burgeoning global power.  They have a vast army, prepped and ready to go.  Their economy is soaring and the world depends on China to make it go round.  They have clout.  They don't need to harness the mob mentality whining chorus to make their point.  One blogger on a China Daily forum started to touch on this, saying, "China has started and must continue to be bold and transparent .  Tbt and the minority tribes in China have been treated more favorably than any other  equivalent minority and natives anywhere in the world !! Why is China not out there trumpeting and shouting from the hill tops . The infrastructure expenditure in transport , education , welfare , medical treatment is second to NONE . If there are a handful ( or even hundreds ) of rent-a-riot mob causing trouble in their brutal ways , let the world in first chance to see and assess the crime. China must learn to be world savvy and sleek . One of the first thing to do is to be believable".        And now Kaifeng, poor and isolated from most of the development that is drastically changing China's physical, economical and social landscape, is starting to feel the effects.  Right in my classroom.  Yesterday Erin told me how the class we share came into class, wanting to be let out early.  The reason?  So they could go to the New Campus to fundraise money.   The money would then be spent on Chinese flags to send to Australia, bolstering the Chinese supporters for the Olympic Torch.  Then they unfurled this giant banner they made that supported the Han Chinese actions in Tibet.  Our student Ricki asked Erin what she thought of his addition to the poster, a chunk of photographs that said Tibet IS, WAS and ALWAYS WILL be a part of CHINA.       Today, as Max and I walked back to our apartments from lunch, I noticed a bunch of my students from that class reading a bunch of signs along the pathway.  This is nothing unusual since the pathway is always smothered in party slogans and advertisements for campus clubs.  But as Max and I got closer, we realized it was the banner that our students had made.        The banner was a lot larger than I was expecting and connected together the riots, the CNN issue, and the Olympic Torch protests.  I was completely floored.  And disturbed.  The banner made both Max and I uncomfortable.   It feels much more like a manifestation of physical anger and rage against the West than a political protest.  Maybe I feel uncomfortable because I know my students don't see a distinction between a criticism on their government and themselves.  For most Chinese, if you criticize one Chinese person, you criticize them all.  And I can't help but wonder, do they see a distinction between me and what they put on their banner?  That scares me a little since in the end, they aren't protesting their government, they're protesting the West.  And as one of five Westerners in the city, that anger's focused a little too closely.
]]> Hutong Clan — Kaifeng, China http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1206439680/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1206439680/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1206439680/tpod.html Sat, 12 Apr 2008 06:30:06 -0400 The Asian Odyssey

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Kaifeng, China

It all started off as a joke.   When we first got here, Max, Erin and I sat around, talking about who we could sucker into spending thousands of dollars on us by buying a plane ticket to the Far East.   It was actually a really easy activity because at that time, we only had one or two friends who had found jobs after graduation.   Let's hear it for liberal arts degrees!  So we started pestering people.   And it turns out we're pretty persuasive people because the Beloit clan has been spreading its love all over the 'guo.   Also, some of you have been complaining that it doesn't seem like I actually live in China since I haven't posted any pictures of me.   Well, here you go.  I am alive and kickin' in the PRC.
]]> hop, skip, bounce — Gongyi, China http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1205586840/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1205586840/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1205586840/tpod.html Tue, 25 Mar 2008 23:30:41 -0400 The Asian Odyssey

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Gongyi, China

    There are some places that have completely absorbed in their history, making it impossible for you to ignore.  You cannot help but watch, feel and even eat it.  Paris, Rome, and even downtown Detroit with its riot-scarred buildings and sick infestation of cars are all cities where history is infused with the current.  But when you're a foreigner in China, it's sometimes easy to forget that the country's the world's oldest civilization.       And I don't think that's that weird - the country consumes the majority of the world's cement and steel (and, I suspect, bathroom tiling.  There is a weird fetish with covering buildings in tile that I've only ever seen in showers) in its quest to remodel the nation.  When people first come to China, they are confronted with the physical fact of what is going on in this country - a complete overhaul in the Chinese urban landscape and a re-focusing of what a Chinese life means.       Then there's Henan.   Dirty, dusty, dire Henan (but oh I love it for those qualities).  The province is too poor and too shackled with AIDS villages for the government to hold it in its thick fingers of cemented development.  So it does what it can by mixing its fair share of bathroom tiled buildings where cramped hutongs used to be and using its bits of Chinese history to attract tourists.        But we haven't explored most of Henan yet.  I've been giving myself the luxury of time since I thought I had it - I was here for a year after all.  But now I have something like twelve weeks left and the panic has set in - I need to see as much as I can before I leave.       So Max and I, along with our friend Edmund (Zhengzhouren), ventured to Gongyi - the burial place of seven of the Song Dynasty's emperors.  (Two of the burial mounds were either robbed or lost).           Maybe even more than Kaifeng, Gongyi is China.  The city itself gasps breaths of soot-filled air while trying to slag towards a "developed" state.  As a result, this blackened city on the banks of the Yellow River is sucking its resources dry.  It's windy and dust whips around your face and throws itself against the sides of taxis, leaving you with a thin layer of sandy film on your face and neck.  People are dressed in the practical yet drab palette of gray, navy blue and black, which is accented by the unbelievably large stacks of bricks, piled haphazardly in narrow streets, patiently waiting to be turned into a new building.      Mostly farmland, the small city's outskirts are flanked with flat beds of vegetables and crops.  But even here, where life thrives, the promise of color from life is leeched out of the ground and everything is blanched in the oppressive, all-consuming grayness of smog.  And no one seems to notice.  This is China.  If you haven't seen it, you haven't been looking.       But I refuse to believe that any Chinese city is truly ugly.  And so far I've been proven correct.  We hired a taxi and drove around farms and through the pot-holed streets, watching as flat land suddenly rose in an explosive grass-covered bump. Rounding a corner, we could see the bump being watched over by rows of impressively well-maintained statues guarding the burial place of an emperor.  Lions and sheep and former officials were permanently mandated to watch guard as carved stones, but were slowly buried underneath layers of dirt and silt blown in from the Yellow River.   They were only unearthed thousands of years later as poor farmers unintentionally excavated through thousands of years of dirt with their farming methods.   The farmer who owned the plot of land seemed completely unfazed that he had to maneuver his equipment around the giant sheep's head that poked out from his leafy harvest.  He just simply asked that we didn't take pictures because he doesn't want people coming by and trampling his crops.  Modern China seamlessly melding with its ancient history.       It didn't matter how smoggy and oppressive the pollution-filled air seemed, the Buddhist grottoes in the city were unlike anything I have ever seen.  I literally felt like I was in an Indiana Jones movie.  Buried for years underneath the fine silt build-up blown in from the Yellow River, the caves were discovered in the 1930s.  They are small compared to the giant caves of Luoyang, but apparently better because of that.  Walking inside of the caves, it was hard not to feel inadequate - not because of the size, but because I wasn't Chinese. The caves were sculpted out of bedrock and painted around 500 AD.  While my ancestors were busy picking their noses and beating the ground with clubs in their skinned clothing, the Chinese were creating works of art that literally left us speechless. Eventually the three of us had to leave the grottoes that were etched into the rock face to catch our train back to our respective cities. I'm excited to see what else I've been missing out on for the past year around Kaifeng.
]]> The Acrobats — Kaifeng, China http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1205152560/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1205152560/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/guavamama/china/1205152560/tpod.html Mon, 10 Mar 2008 08:39:16 -0400 The Asian Odyssey

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Kaifeng, China

    Ok, now that I've started the third week of classes, I've begrudgingly accepted that Spring Festival has ended.  I'm done post-dating my entries and I'm back to real time.        Once you spend enough time in China, you "stop being surprised that you're surprised," as my friend Jackie puts it.  He's Chinese and most days he's surprised at the circumstances he finds himself in.  But that might be more because he's in charge of keeping us alive and receives phone calls when we're being interrogated by the PLA or when we need to talk to the Chinese police.  Like Jackie though, I've reached the point where I have stopped being surprised about the ridiculousness of my life.  But more often than not, China floors me in the most unexpected ways.         The things that surprise me the most in China are always the people I find myself surrounded by.   Most of the time, I exist in strange relationships that are sustained by the mere repetition of physical and wordless contact since my Chinese skills still leave much to be desired.   It will be a long, long time before I can hash out the dirty details of the Cultural Revolution with the old women on the corner. Or so I thought.  For obvious reasons, the person's name below has been changed.       Ever since I was little, I've had an amazing knack for falling into bodies of water.  Luckily though, that hasn't happened in China, but my cell phone decided to get in on the act and the other day, it found itself at the bottom of Longting Lake.  On a quest for a new phone, I dragged Freddie Mercury around with me all day hopping from one China Mobile to another.   While China's bureaucratic ways were bouncing us around (No no, you can't buy a SIM card at this China Mobile, you need to go to this one.   Oh, they sent you here? Well, we need a Xeroxed copy of your ID card.   No, we don't have a Xerox machine. You need to go to this other China Mobile, etc etc) we started talking about family.       As it turns out, Freddie Mercury's family just isn't any old Chinese family - it was an acrobatic circus family.     "Well I told you my family was a large circus," he said as the Xerox machine light streaked across his face.     "Yeah, but I thought you meant that it was large and crazy," I said incredulously.  "You're shitting me, right? A real circus?"     "A real circus.  They travelled all over China," Freddie continued, with a smile that didn't quite assure me he wasn't joking.     "Is your family still a circus?" I asked, completely stone-faced as I tried to read his face for the signs of a joke.     "No, they were dismissed," he whispered.     "Dismissed?" I asked, "What does that mean?"     "They were on the wrong side of the Cultural Revolution and when their side lost, their enemies dismissed them," he said as his eyes looked up from the hulk of a xerox machine.   There was no joke on his face.       Freddie's family circus was based in Henan with his mother as the key player in the ensemble.   She won several contortionist competitions and was one of the best in the province.   When things started to get rough and sides had to be chosen, Freddie Mercury's family made their decision.   They were not going to be a part of the Communist Party.   Staying together as a circus family, they also created a militia to fight Mao and the devastation from the Cultural Revolution.   Freddie's father joined the militia and quickly became one of its commanders.   After joining the militia, Freddie's father met the circus' key player - Freddie's mother, and that is how his family story came to be.         I weighed my options.  Could I ask point blank the questions I've wanted to ask for so long or did I have to tip toe around the issue?  Despite living here for over half a year, I'm still figuring out how to work my way around China's more sensitive recent past.     "Did anything bad happen besides the circus' dismissal?" I asked, deciding to plunge right in.     "My cousin, who is three years younger than my father, threw a grenade into a group of people," he said, looking forward and not making eye contact.  "Do you know about the students?  The university students?  They were the worst ones.   They would carry around the little red book and they could do whatever they wanted.   They didn't pay for anything for years.  They could go on the trains, go to restaurants, hotels, stores - they didn't pay for any of it.   People were too scared of them."     "Did anything happen to your cousin?"     "He spent a year in jail, but they had to finally release him."     "Why?" I asked, completely bewildered at the response.   I've heard a lot of things about China in the Cultural Revolution and letting off suspected agitators is not one of them.     "They didn't have enough evidence.  Everybody knew that he threw the grenade into the crowd, but nobody actually saw it."       Freddie Mercury continued to tell me things about his family.  How people would carry around guns and distrust people.   How his grandfather starved to death when he was 80 because of the horrible economic policies of the Great Leap Forward.         "So it's not just you, but your whole family has never been a part of the Communist Party...and with reason," I mumbled, rolling over everything he was telling me.     "Haha no.  We've never liked them," he said as I looked at him and thought about every conversation we've had where he distinctly separated himself from the CCP.     "So, when you guys get together do you sit around and talk about the circus and how your cousin threw that grenade?" I said, thinking about how when I visit my grandpa he'll muse over stories and memories from World War II.     "Oh yeah.  We eat a big meal at the table and then everyone talks about the circus and the Cultural Revolution.   It's what we do."     "Were you in the circus then?"     "No, I can't even do a flip."
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