Temples and Milk Tea and Yaks... Oh My!

First of all, I want to apologize for slacking on the blogging front. Teaching and traveling have consumed much of my time lately, but seeing as how the unexamined life is not worth living, I shall try to be better! And there is so much to tell! Bill is finally here (writing his version of events on www.billnature.blogspot.com). And for the first time a couple of weeks ago, we left the comfortable land of Chengdu to visit Bill's future home: Kangding.

It wasn't until we had left the city and were rumbling up mountains that I realized how limited my exposure to China had been thus far. In Chengdu, there are idiosyncrasies and inconveniences that are distinctly Chinese, but I hadn't experienced the incessant honking of cars or the insistent shouts of HELLO! or the toilet-shower combination until we reached Kangding. I also hadn't experienced such incredible mountains.

Mountains that made my neck sore.

Mountains that caused our bus to shudder when it rounded cliff-hugged turns.

Mountains draped with prayers and mist.

Kangding is tucked into the mountains like few other pockets of civilization I have seen before. Lonely Planet describes it as comma-shaped, but Bill decided it looks more like a beached whale. Either way, it's amazing. On the first day, we slept off the altitude and got a late start climbing Paoma Shan, a mountain which is accessible by simply stepping off of the main road, walking up steep stairs through a monastery, and ducking under prayer flags along the path. Bill has been practicing and studying Buddhism for several years, so he regaled me with tales about the Buddha of Compassion, the demons of Tibet, and the significance of prayer flags.

Atop the mountain, there was a newly built temple awaiting us, and a new monk friend for Bill. The scene inside the temple was wonderfully colorful and jubilant: Buddha's mother was surrounded by her hand-maidens, who were bathed in sunlight from a ceiling window. I couldn't help but notice the contrast between this space for worship and some of the stark cathedrals Luke and I visited in Spain last summer.

The rest of our time in Kangding was pretty tame. I was happy being amidst blue skies and mountains, and Bill was still adjusting to China-time and the altitude shift. For practically every meal , we had scrumptious yak meat and milk tea. We did have an eventful roller-coaster ride (referring to the emotions and terrain) in search of a snow mountain called Gongga Shan, but Bill has written a thorough account of the trip that I won't attempt to duplicate here.

All I will say about our search for Gongga Shan is that it helped me realize how drastically different traveling here is compared to anywhere else I have been. We found our driver by negotiating with shouting men from the street: tourist agencies were non-existent. The road was pothole-ridden for almost the entire duration of our 14-hour trip, so that stepping out of the van, I felt like a 3-year finally leaving her father's knee after a long bout of "pony".

The terrain of Tibet is also unlike any other area I have seen with nomads herding yak all over the countryside, and the Tibetan houses, while rustic, are painted with incredible colors along the windowsills and doors. The mountains are also painted with prayer flags and om mani peme hung. My emotions during the trip alternated between awe at the scenery and anger and helplessness at not being able to speak or fully comprehend our route. Given these travel conditions, Bill and I are going to have to get better at planning ahead... or make sure we don't leave on adventures with only a couple of days to get back to Chengdu and school.

One of the most surprising emotions of the trip was the utter relief and comfort I felt upon arriving back in Chengdu. The green taxis with pandas painted on the front were familiar friends, and I knew how to tell the driver to take us back to school. It's funny how quickly a place so foreign can feel like home. In my next post, I will try to describe more of my daily life in Chengdu and what teaching is like... stay tuned!

Jeremiah was a Bullfrog...

(until we ATE him!)

This past weekend, we celebrated Mid-Autumn Festival, or Moon Festival, which gave us teachers an extra day off and a much-needed excuse for revelry. After some thorough Wikipedia investigation, I learned that the Moon Festival is a holdover from the Shang Dynasty. After some adventurous food investigation, I learned that moon cakes are filled with a plethora of unexpected things like minced meat and egg.

The funny thing is that this weekend may have been one of the first times the folks of Chengdu could actually see the moon on Mid-Autumn night. Apparently, the skies have cleared up exponentially since the earthquake. My administrator attributes the sudden sunlight to the number of factories that were destroyed and haven't yet been rebuilt. I'm just glad that the photo-shopped clouds on the school's website haven't turned out to be entirely made up. Let's hope it lasts!

The weekend began with a feast of delicious Sichuan dishes literally stacked one on top of the other because there wasn't enough room on the table. Then, our teacher contingent filed into a posh, silvery living-room-style private Karaoke (or KTV) room. It was one of the teacher's birthdays, so we sang our hearts out... privately... there wasn't the same humiliation factor that there is with Karaoke in the States; in fact, the Chinese teachers, who are usually very quiet in school, suddenly turned into Rockstars. I got to learn a lot of new Chinese songs and see some scandalous Chinese music videos. Of course, when my turn came I opted for that good old American sing-along: "You've Lost That Loving Feeling".

On Saturday, my friend Courtney and I ventured into the city to see Jin Li street, which is a "restored" ancient street. It's all old architecture and gray brick, and as soon as you walk inside, there's a Starbucks on your left. From Jin Li we met up with our new Chinese friend, who turned out to be a chef and took us to one of Chengdu's premiere hot pot restaurants. We let him order, and here's what turned up on the table:

Cow stomach
Goose intestines
Rabbit tongue
A squashed bullfrog, still whole, still looking about with its eyes
Seaweed

I ate everything except for the rabbit tongue, and I am very, very proud.

All's Well!

I've gotten a few concerned emails after the earthquake hit this weekend, and I just wanted to let you all know that I'm fine! The earthquake was outside of Chengdu, and we didn't feel anything except for maybe some psychic disturbances. Thank you for your love and concern... let's pray that folks fare similarly well in the wake of Gustav.

I'll post about some of my hilarious kids once I have a bit more free time. Quick preview: we had students draw "life maps" and then stand up and tell the class something about their life. One kid stood up and said, "I want to go to university of America because I'm not fat in America. Here in China, everyone thinks I'm fat, but in America, I'm just normal-sized."

He's right. Half of the teachers can't even buy clothes here because there are no "foreign" sizes. So much for superior education or academic aspirations: you gotta learn where you can fit into the clothes!

Delectable Diction

This year, I will be teaching 7th, 8th, and 9th grade for a grand total of... 12 students. Yep, after the earthquake last year, half of the families packed up and went home (back to South Korea and Pakistan and Australia and the U.K.) The school is still transitioning from this loss of students as well as a switchover in management. It's possible that more companies will open up over the course of the year and bring in more foreign students, but for now, here's the breakdown:

7th grade - 2 students
8th grade - 5 students
9th grade - 5 students

We had our first two days of school this week, and I got to meet all of the kids. They're awesome. I first realized just how awesome they are when I explained the "Delectable Diction" wall, where they can post words from their reading, words from everyday conversation, and even random words they find in the dictionary. The words are on index cards so we can move them around like Magnetic Poetry. My 7th graders pored over their dictionaries and came up with words like "mugwump". My 8th grade future doctors added hyper-opia and hydro-phobia. The 9th graders wanted to know the longest word in the English language. They crowded around the computer (as much of a crowd as 5 kids can make) and giggled at all of the Wikipedia entries about long words. It was like a dream.

Of course, there will be challenges. The administration wants all of the students to prepare for an IB program when a lot of them are still struggling to learn English. I have a wide range of skill levels in my class even though there are so few kids. But, I'm also really excited about what this diversity will conjure up in terms of discussions and compositions. The students' first journal was to write about their Name, and many of the students wrote about how their English name was chosen by an elementary school teacher. They talked about how frustrating it is when English-speakers can't pronounce their Korean or Chinese names. Some said their name denotes birth order and means nothing more than "second" or "third". I am going to learn so much from these kids. I can't wait.

The Acorn and the Oak Tree

Earlier this week, a mosquito whispered in my ear as I was trying to fall asleep. He cooed, "What are you doing here, sweet-smelling white girl?" My air-conditioner rumbled, someone else's water trickled down the bathroom pipes, and he kept on asking, "Why did you come? What's here for you but whistling mosquitoes and inscrutable sounds, wide-eyed child?" I almost let him get to me. I almost gave in to his relentless questioning, threw my covers back, and spent the night trying to come up with an answer, but instead, I turned on a light to distract him and reclaimed my rest. After all, school started this week, and I needed my energy. I didn't have time to ponder such existential questions as What am I doing here?

He made a good point, though. Lately, I have been a bit murky in the head about my goals here. Although I have begun setting up a life, it is in some ways a strange copy of old routines. I make tea and cook eggs. I plan lessons and go for runs. I listen to NPR. At the same time, there are unexplored parks and temples all around, and everywhere I go, there are new smells and strange streets and unidentified meats (ahem). When I think of what I am doing here, it seems a strange mix of settling in and adventuring, and I feel almost certain that neither will ever be done.

I just finished reading the book Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. It was a treat for myself from one of the English-language bookstores in town, and though it sounds cheesy, it is actually full of wisdom and has been a wonderful companion for the past week. It also gave me an excuse to put off reading the Arthurian legends I'm supposed to teach my 7th graders, but that's another story. I thought one of the last passages in the book was especially apt for my time here:

My thoughts turn to something I read once, something the Zen Buddhists believe. They say that an oak tree is brought into creation by two forces at the same time. Obviously, there is the acorn from which it all begins, the seed which holds all the promise and potential, which grows into the tree. Everybody can see that. But only a few can recognize that there is another force operating here as well - the future tree itself, which wants to badly to exist that it pulls the acorn into being, drawing the seedling forth with longing out of the void, guiding the evolution from nothingness to maturity. In this respect, say the Zens, it is the oak tree that creates the very acorn from which it was born (439).

Right now, I feel very much like the sapling. There are so many things I want to see and do, and I am afraid to blink and miss them. At the same time, I know that there is a future self there, watching, observing as I make choices that will take me closer to who I will be. I think that living in a strange land for a while will help me get there. I think teaching in a school full of interesting, diverse kids and a supportive, caring staff will help me get there. I think there will be many adventures (especially when Bill gets here!) For now, when I feel like a scared sapling, I will try to remember that I am in the shadow of an oak that is waiting to be.

Hot Pot-errific!

If you are a new arrival in Chengdu, the first question everyone asks is, "Do you like spicy food?"

"I'm working on my spice tolerance," I shrug in response, which inevitably leads to the next question:

"Have you tried Hot Pot?"

Hot Pot is a standard of spiciness everyone here understands. It is a spicy that surpasses the maximum number of chili peppers punctuating the menu of an Indian restaurant. It is a spicy that pierces and numbs your tongue all at once.

It is a spicy that I have survived. Oh yes.

I went with a couple of other teachers, another American and her Kiwi fiance, for an authentic Hot Pot experience. We slogged through the rain toward a well-lit, crowded restaurant filled with wooden tables, wooden benches, and aromatic cauldrons in the center of each table. The waitress led us to a table where the previous diners' broth was still bubbling like lava in the huge, metal pot. Luckily, my friends knew how to ask for the "yin-yang" version of Hot Pot, which has one spicy side and one side with a milder soup.

The waitress brought us our ying-yang pot, complete with a fish head floating on the top, and she turned on the propane stove underneath it. While we waited for the broth to heat up, we selected skewers stacked with dumplings, eggplant, quail eggs, various meats, and potatoes. We dipped all of these in the soup and waited for the flavor to sink in.

Like many experiences in China, it wasn't as bad as it sounded. My mouth went numb pretty quickly after eating the skewers out of the spicy side, but there was a coconut beverage that helped cut the spice. I don't know how much I enjoyed the meal, but at least I can claim to have survived the ultimate spice test.

Later in the week, I got to go to a Fish Hot Pot restaurant where we picked a live fish from a tub for the chef to slice up for our stew. At that restaurant, we had plates full of ingredients rather than skewers, and we got to add our own spice to our individual bowl. They even threw in long strips of dough that turned into noodles in the broth! Once it starts getting cold, I'll probably opt for Fish Hot Pot more often than not, but the yin-yang spicy stuff was definitely an experience.

My Chinese Physical, or Assembly Line Medicine, or Want to Trade Pee?

"Cheers," said one of the South African teachers as he got in line behind me holding his pee cup. It was a long line, and no one was really monitoring what people were doing with their uncapped urine samples. Oh China.

Even though I had gotten gobs of medical work done in the States (an EKG and chest Xray), China wouldn't accept the paperwork. So, I hopped in the school van along with a few other teachers to go get another so-called physical. Pretty much all medical work in China is done in the hospitals because clinics are so expensive to maintain. When we walked inside the hospital lobby, it felt more like a bowling alley than a medical facility.

I went through the lobby line and was handed my application form and a sheet of bar codes. This bar code became my identity as I passed through the blood sample line, the urine sample line, the ear and throat line, the chest x-ray line, and the sonogram line (no idea why I needed a sonogram). At each of these stops, they stuck the bar code on my sample and the next person in line stepped up. During the ear and throat check-up, everyone in line watched as the doctor told me in English, "you have dirty ears".

The whole thing was pretty surreal. I wondered if the final step would be packaging me and sticking a bar code on the outside. I felt that much like a commodity. Bedside manner doesn't really exist in China, but at the same time, they were able to "process" a bunch of people in a short period of time. I decided to ponder our countries' healthcare differences during a nice hot shower back in my apartment.