Mom Q&A

This blog post is mainly answering a pile of questions my mother sent me for the blog!

1. Do you speak Chinese much? 

Not as much as when I was a student. I speak Chinese on a daily basis, mostly to get around; I’m the only expat at my school who speaks enough to carry on a decent conversation. When I use Chinese at work, I’m mostly instant messaging (QQ-ing) my colleagues at work. Their English is good, but they tend to prefer when I answer in Chinese or help translate, so I usually type Chinese to them.

2. How is your Chinese coming along? 

Intellectually, my Chinese sucks. I really haven’t had time to study Chinese like I did in school, so I haven’t really picked up much vocabulary and have definitely forgotten some. On the upside, I’m really good at getting by in daily life now and my listening comprehension isn’t bad.

3. How well do your students speak English? 

It varies depending on the student. A couple of students really struggle to understand me even when I keep the English pretty basic, but those students are the ones who struggle in class, too. Some students are pretty fluent, to the point where I keep forgetting that they don’t know metaphors or slang and have to explain myself. Most of the time, the students understand me best when I use basic English mixed with SAT words.

4. Did any get accepted by early action? 

We don’t find out until early December. Don’t worry, if we have any students accepted early action, I will be REALLY excited and post it here.

5. Is it competitive to get into your school? 

Extremely. Most of my students have to get into Tianyi High School first. Tianyi High School is one of the top schools in Wuxi and a prominent school in Jiangsu Province. Tianyi usually only accepts students with the highest Zhongkao (high school entrance exam) scores in Wuxi.  After entering the school, I’m not sure about the process for entering the AP program, but I do know that most of our students score pretty well on the English exams in the regular Chinese curriculum.

6. Are the kids there from prominent families? 

Most of them are children of wealthy or influential people. Some of the parents are government cadres; others are wealthy businessmen. Our AP program is very expensive, but we still have a few students who are not from wealthy or prominent families.

7. Are any of your friends Chinese, or are they all ex-pats? 

I hang out mostly with expats like Claire, but I’m friendly with some of the office staff and like to go out with them sometimes. Phoebe and Sarah, our center coordinators, are really great people. Western bars tend to have pretty high prices that often shut out the Chinese staff, unfortunately.

8. Do you miss anything from home? 

Yes! Mexican food. Lactaid milk. Bagels. Good bread. The ocean. The mountains. Being able to speak English and be understood by service people. Being able to find something in grocery stores. Knowing about the quality of items…Let’s just say I’m a mite homesick right now. I miss the US, but I really seriously miss California right now. I would be so happy to be in LA or San Francisco for a couple of months.

9. What do you like best about being there? 

I love being able to go shopping and find good clothes for rather inexpensive prices. I get a good mix of Western and Chinese food – yay xiaolongbao (soup dumplings)! I live across the street from where I work, which means I need to leave about 10 minutes before work starts. I love the view from my balcony, too! On clear days I can see for miles.

10. What is your daily routine? 

7:05 am – turn on the heater because it’s cold!

7:15 am – scramble out of bed and into clothes, snarf down some breakfast, out the door usually around 8 am

8:15-8:30 am – arrive at work

8:30-11:35 am – read essays, catch up on work, organize work life

11:35 am – lunch (free at the school canteen!)

1:15 pm-5:15 pm – meet with students, read more essays

5:15 pm – get off work (unless work is crazy, which means I could say until 10 pm)

5:15-??? – go home, hang out, whatever is happening that evening

11. Weekly routine? 

Monday and Wednesday are random plans or “in” nights, when we just all return home, maybe do a local dinner. On Tuesday we (usually me, Dominique, Shaun, Claire, and Tim) go to Havana, an expat bar downtown. Thursday is dumpling and maybe a movie night. Friday night we all go out to [insert bar here]. On Saturday I usually hang out with Claire, go shopping, or watch a movie during the day. Saturday nights are mostly easygoing. Sundays are my “catch up on life” days. I do laundry and grocery shopping most of the time.

12. What things about China make you laugh? 

Most of you know that in LA I had some kind of road rage. I have that here, too…because cars like to drive down the sidewalk and ignore pedestrians and ridiculous stuff like that. Watching a car on the sidewalk try to get down a curb is hilarious, especially if it’s something like a Smart car.

There are a lot of small kids in China, especially in my complex. A lot of them are completely adorable, though some of them are shy. They nearly always put a smile on my face.

Sometimes the expat stories are hilarious, too. One of the Dipont people I met at the very beginning, a counseling quality manager who works in Ningbo, told us a story about how he gets stared at a lot because he’s black. He said that one time he walked out of a restaurant to see a small child peeing in the street (they do it all the time) and she just stared at him like he was the weirdest thing she’d ever seen. His response? “You’re staring at me like I’M weird…YOU’RE PEEING IN THE STREET!”

13. Are the bathrooms clean?

That really depends on the bathroom. The ones at work aren’t bad; mine at home is as clean as I want it to be, except for the sewage smell that never leaves. Public bathrooms should never be entered if you dislike the smell of urine. Most bathrooms at restaurants and establishments are at least bearable most of the time.

Halloween!

China Blog 15

So my blog posts are coming more slowly. Sorry ‘bout that.

We hit the November 1 Early Action/Early Decision deadline last week. Thank goodness Helen (my boss) told us we could leave work early on November 2, since we were all so exhausted. I looked at more than 50 essays between the beginning of Monday and the end of the day Thursday, not to mention the number of students I met with.

I suppose the best upside has been the Halloween celebrations. There have been quite a few requests for pictures of me, so I have some from when I dressed up for Halloween on Saturday night. We went to Taste Bistro for a Halloween party last night; lots of delicious food and young kids running around in adorable costumes. The band played some great music, but we weren’t a talkative bunch last night and went home kinda early for a Saturday. 

Dominique went as a time traveler (note the awesome steampunk goggles!):

I went as a goth. My coworkers looked shocked when they saw the black lipstick. I couldn't find temporary black hair dye: 

A better shot of the skull scarf that I found in a store called Kawaii for 25 yuan: 

We had a Halloween party for our students on Sunday October 28. It wasn’t really a Halloween party as we might recognize one in the United States. They had stations where different clubs hosted activities, a few performances on a makeshift stage that everyone sat down to watch, and about ten minutes of dancing (boys and girls were not allowed to touch each other!) in which they did a conga line to Gangnam Style. (If you haven’t heard of Gangnam Style, you should look it up on Youtube. It’s kind of a sensation right now.)

The internet has been extremely difficult to work with recently because of a conference in Beijing. Google especially has been really hard to access, and since I use gmail for work, life has been a little annoying. Our VPNs only work part of the time right now and websites we usually rely on have been difficult to access. Hopefully it will get better in a couple of weeks, but right now getting on Facebook and Blogspot is quite difficult.

So yeah, not much to report. Life is certainly settling down and work is picking up.

Schmankerl!

Sorry about not posting for a couple of weeks (and about the lack of pictures). Last weekend was really busy and this week was fairly normal. Work has been picking up because college application season has officially begun. Early application deadlines range from October 15 to December 1, so it’s going to be kind of crazy for the next few months.

The serious highlight of these last few weeks was actually Claire’s birthday party, which happened on Saturday night. She decided to hold it at Schmankerl, a German restaurant in the middle of downtown Wuxi. The place has some pretty good Western food, a good atmosphere, and a pool table. Claire invited her staff from Wuxi #1 (her school) and I spread the word at Tianyi (my school). Altogether about 10-15 people showed up at different times throughout the night.

We all sat and talked and everyone had a really good time. I teamed up with Tim, a teacher from Claire’s school, and together we got her a nice coat from H&M that she very clearly had her eye on when we went shopping the week before. The look on her face was priceless. As soon as the opened the bag, she knew what it was. Ohhhh man, keeping that secret from her for an entire week was rather difficult. It was worth every second of her being happy about it.

Since Schmankerl has a pool table, we also played several rounds of pool. At first it was me and Shaun versus Mike and Cam, both Wuxi #1 people; we won when Mike hit the white ball in with the 8 ball at the end of the game. When Shaun and I played Tom (not Tim) and Claire, we won when Tom hit the 8 ball in early. Then apparently Shaun won another game against Tom after I left. It sounds like these guys usually are really good at pool (Claire and I both seriously need to work on it…), but the Tianyi staff just lucked out while playing pool on Saturday.

Claire and I have slowly been making friends with the staffs of both of our schools and gathering a friend group. I most often go out with Claire, Shaun, Dominique, and Tim. All five of us are the youngest staff members at our locations, ranging in age from 22 to 25. At first I was surprised that it worked out that way, but in the end it makes sense; a lot of the older folks don’t like to hang out as late as we do and some of them are married, engaged, or have families. I’m really quite happy with this small group of people.

I think my blog is genuinely starting to slow down. We don’t have a lot of non-routine stuff going on in Wuxi; my weekly routine very rarely varies. Things have settled down a lot and I’m now actually just living here. I expect I’ll have a few interesting things to talk about once in a while, such as the Halloween party, what happens over Thanksgiving, that kind of thing, but things are slowing down. In order to keep things mildly interesting, if anyone has any questions or suggestions for blog topics about my life here, please let me know! If there is something you want to ask about or if there is something that you don’t know about the culture, ask away! I’d be happy to take topic requests.

Nanjing Part 2

Our adventure to the Temple of Confucius turned out to be just that. The map lied to us and said the temple was right by the subway stop (the subway even had signs inside!), but when we exited, we only saw lots of people and no temple. We definitely walked in circles for about 20 minutes trying to figure out where to go, when finally we just decided to follow the crowd. A few other places also had tickets and entrance fees, but none of them were the Temple of Confucius. Thank you for being so helpful, dear map.

When we finally found the temple, we also found the incredibly crowded culture fair occurring in the courtyard. Walking in the crowd involved literally walking into people, because Chinese people don’t have the same sense of personal space that Westerners do. Friends would be dragging each other along by the arm regardless of whether the person being dragged ran into a silly foreigner. 

I think this is part of the temple: 

These guys in yellow were dragging these rickshaws and would constantly be ringing bells:

Old and new, a gate at the Temple of Confucius and a 喜羊羊 balloon: 

Anyway, the sheer number of people in the area scared us away from visiting the temple, so we just kept walking around until our feet hurt. We couldn’t find the subway stop again for a good 30-40 minutes of walking, and when we did, we saw masses of people going inside, so we took a cab ride. Little did we know, we’d walked so far that we were only about half a mile from our hotel.

The next morning we decided to actually be cheap tourists who didn’t want to spend money and went to the park next to the Ming Tombs. The park itself was not terribly interesting, but Claire and I did find a book fair that had translated books, with half of it in Chinese and the other half in the original language. I purchased a book of Obama’s speeches that had been translated, and so far the translation has been really interesting. 

The gate to the park: 

 After some meandering around the garden, Claire and I decided to search out the Nanjing Museum. As with much of this trip, we didn’t actually find the museum; we found the Nanjing city wall and two foreigners who had just arrived in China to make a documentary. Except for the treacherous stairs, the wall was really fun, with some pretty nice views, including a lake and lots of traffic. Only part of the wall is actually standing; the Japanese destroyed a decently sized section when they invaded in 1937. The two foreigners were nice; one of them was Australian, but he had gone to college in Long Beach (CA, not LBI), and the other one was American. Both of them were named Josh. 

We had a nice view of a canal on our walk:

It seems like every city has a street named Zhongshan Lu. It's a main street in both Wuxi and Nanjing:

Traffic and grass from the Nanjing city wall:

 

It's a pretty broad wall: 

Behind Claire is a pretty lake, but I had to prove that we were there: 

 We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in a coffee shop and drinking rose tea before searching out some dinner. Instead of sticking with our neighborhood, we wandered in a new direction and found this really cool fusion restaurant with purple booths and lots of sparkly things everywhere. We definitely splurged and spent a lot more than we normally would, but it was that kind of place, and the food was quite good. It’s genuinely the first real fine dining place that I eaten at in China. 

Sparkly beads, a chandelier, and the weird purple sofa-booths: 

My delicious, delicious mango smoothie-thing. That mango piece on the side was also delicious:

This was mushrooms and beef in some kind of sauce with mangoes on the side. The beef was cooked perfectly:

Asparagus in (I think) pumpkin soup. Surprising, but delicious. The asparagus was perfect, nice and soft but still with a light crunch:

Claire enjoying our rare fine-dining experience:

The weirdest sushi I have ever eaten. The white sauce is mayonnaise on the salmon; the white roll has mustard. Definitely a fusion restaurant: 

That meal was our last act in Nanjing. Almost immediately afterward, we left for the train station and managed to get home.

The rest of the holiday was buckets of fun. Dominique went to Shanghai, but Shaun was in town, so he and I hung out and got dumplings on Wednesday, then met up with Tim and Claire for drinks and a doubles game of pool. (Tim is a British guy who works at Claire's school.) Tim claimed to be out of practice and then kicked our butts. Shaun put up a good fight, but Claire and I are just abysmal at pool. I guess we need to practice a little.

Friday kind of stands out for me because we spent 6 hours (yes, SIX HOURS) singing karaoke. Dominique and I arrived at 1 pm and left with everyone else (they arrived in the interim) around 7. We sang about 80 songs and I really had no voice, but it was totally worth it; the karaoke place had Hotel California, California Dreamin’, and California Girls, so I got to have my moments of state pride (and homesickness).

Then, of course, it was back to work on Monday.

Trip to Nanjing Part 1

I know it’s been about a week and a half since I posted, but bear with me this time; I have pictures and stories.

The last two days at work last week were actually Friday and Saturday rather than Thursday or Friday; the students had Sports Day on Friday and Saturday instead of actual classes. The Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节) took place on Sunday and National Day was on October 1, so this week has been full of holidays. Schools in China have this week off for National Day; our next long break isn’t until February.

To make the most of our vacation, Claire and I took a trip to Nanjing. Getting the tickets turned out to be a challenge, since most people travel during National Day, but in spite of issues acquiring our Sunday tickets out there, the website functioned perfectly for our return tickets on Tuesday. Our ride to Nanjing lasted a surprisingly short time, just under an hour for about 100 miles or so of travel. Arriving in Nanjing was a different story. We got through the crowd and piles of people just fine, only to get into a cab and subsequently a car accident not five minutes from the Nanjing train station. Our cab driver rear-ended another car as we were driving onto an expressway; her brakes (and driving skills) could definitely use some work. We didn’t hit the other car very hard and no one was injured, not even with whiplash, but the whole process was a little nerve wracking. When two people get into an accident in China, they both get out of their cars, and if one person is clearly at fault (in this case, our cab driver), the two drivers haggle over the price of the damage and how much the at-fault party should pay – right there on the street. At the time, I had no idea what was happening and was worried about the argument coming to blows. Luckily, none of that happened and the cabbie finally took Claire and me to our final destination: Motel 168 in Xinjiekou (新街口). 

On the train: 

Seriously, every train station looks the same!

Our accommodations had one very awkward feature, given that Claire and I are friends sharing a room: the wall to the bathroom was partially frosted, partially clear glass, with the clear part right in front of the shower. This allowed for next to no privacy in the bathroom; she and I had to work out a system so we could use the facilities and bathe in private. Seriously, hotels: a clear wall between the room and the bathroom is a bad idea.

My stomach chose that afternoon to act up pretty badly, so I spent most of Sunday afternoon resting at the hotel. Claire and I started talking that night and didn’t stop for a long time. We talked from literally 6 pm to 12:30 am with only short breaks for practical reasons. It seems like we see eye-to-eye on many issues, but my family tends to hold to tradition a little more than hers, which has created some interesting discrepancies in our viewpoints. Our topics of discussion ranged from non-traditional education in the US to gender norms in China.

The next morning I felt significantly better (we slept in until 9-ish!), so Claire and I made our first real trek out in Nanjing. Our first major tourist stop was the museum dedicated to the Rape of Nanjing. We got off the subway only to find a complete dearth of signs showing where we should go. Claire pulled out her handy-dandy Kindle-based guidebook – which of course said that the memorial was closed on Mondays. Well, October 1^st was a Monday. Luckily, October 1^st was also National Day, so the memorial was actually open, which we found out when we wandered into what we thought was a park. Good signage, China. 

"So uh...it's Monday...and the guidebook says it's closed on Monday...": 

The oh-so-helpful map. Each of the dots used to be a colored label with a corresponding description on the sign above. Now they are all white, which of course makes them even more helpful:

The museum contained some images that I will never forget, including a complete skeleton with a clear bullet hole through the skull. Most significantly, I will never forget the name wall. In Vietnam War Memorial-esque fashion, someone had carved the names of the victims of the Nanjing Massacre that could be identified into a wall. All of the names were in alphabetical order. I didn’t take a picture of the whole name wall out of respect for the sanctity of the place, but I took a snapshot of a small part off in the corner. About ten names listed there have the same family name and first character of their given name. In families in China, each member of a generation traditionally shares the first character of their given name with everyone else in the generation. For example, a man and his cousin could be named Zhang Wencai and Zhang Wenfa, and they would be in the same generation as each other, but from a different generation than Zhang Xingyou if they were all from the same family. With the caveat that all of the ten names listed are in alphabetical order, all ten of the victims’ names could have come from the same generation of the same family. The implications of that are completely devastating. 

I rather liked what China had done with the memorial. I think neither Japan nor China have successfully navigated the diplomatic swamp that arose from the Rape of Nanjing, so I was definitely grateful to find a museum that seriously honored the memory of the dead rather than one that emphasized nationalistic fervor against Japan. Much of the museum promoted peace and demonstrated how extremely awful the Rape of Nanjing was without excessive finger-pointing. 

After leaving the memorial, Claire and I wandered around in the giant mall nearby and grabbed some lunch. Eventually we made it back to Xinjiekou and took some much needed naps before facing the insane crowds of National Day once again for an adventure to the Confucius Temple (夫子庙). 

To be continued…