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…