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Winter vacation and the Chinese New Year have passed, the weather has warmed, we have changed rooms, the second semester has started and the end of year creeps closer and closer. Challenging, rewarding, trying and always complicated, I feel that one year is not enough to get a full and rich Chinese experience. For this reason, among others, I have decided to return to China again next year as a teacher of English and American history at Nanjing University Jingling College. But before I begin my next adventure I have much to tell and much to do.
Travel
It has been two months since my I last sat down to write a report and for the first months I was on vacation. For the first week or so I stayed in Nanjing and visited with Lauren's father and brother. Soon enough, on the recommendation of several Chinese friends, as well as Professor Don Smith, I was on a 31-hour journey to Xiamen in Fujian province. Once I finally arrived, I found just what I had hoped for: blue skies, not much pollution, a nice sea breeze and lots of fresh fish.
Besides the weather and the food which, I will admit, played a part in my itinerary, I chose Xiamen for its history. At the start of the Qing Dynasty, about 1644, Xiamen was the last refuge of one of the most celebrated Ming generals and one of the foremost Chinese heroes, Zhen Chengong . As he fought furiously but futilely against the establishment of the Qing dynasty, he soon turned his sights and his sword to the island of Taiwan, then ruled by the Dutch. As the Qing squeezed him form the mainland, his perilous situation and his substantial pride led his ships to the island of Taiwan where he defeated the Dutch and drove them from the island. Today he is considered a national hero with because many Chinese look to him as a symbol of the unification between the peoples and government of China and Shanghai. Gulangyu, a small island very close to Xiamen is home to a huge stature of Chen (picture below) and I spent a whole on island and it was incredibly relaxing (Richard Nixon stayed on this island when he
visited China).
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Before I knew it I was headed back to Nanjing. Unfortunately, for the trip back, I could only find space in the hard-seat class. The four classes in the Chinese train system are soft-sleeper, hard-sleeper, soft-seat and hard-seat. Hard-seat is the cheapest, smelliest, least comfortable and most Chinese of the classes. In a hard-seat car there are usually 112 seats. However, rules are an amorphous concept in China and during the Spring Festival the rules are ignored by those who are supposed to be following them as well as those who are supposed to be enforcing them. I would estimate that we had about 140 people sitting, standing, leaning and squatting in any and all open space that could be found. A trip to the bathroom required patience, determination and balance. Luckily, I had a big, fat book that was both interesting and informative, David Halberstam's 800-page chronicle of the events leading up to the Vietnam War, The Best and the Brightest. I must have read at least 85 percent of the book on that train
ride. Soon enough-- not really-- it was all over and I was back in Nanjing. The next day it honestly hurt to sit down so I just wandered around the city all day.
I had a pit stop for about two days and then I went to Suzhou, an ancient city about three that Marco Polo once classed one of the two most heavenly places on Earth. Suzhou, a city of almost six million only three hours from Nanjing is famous for its gardens, supposedly the grandest in China, its girls, supposedly the most beautiful in China and its silks, reputedly the finest in the world
The garden were great, the girls were pretty but perhaps my expectations were too high and I don't know enough about silk to tell the difference between a high quality and a low quality product. I was very fortunate because Christy, one of my students from my weekend school lives in Suzhou and acted as my guide. She took me to all of the famous gardens as well as those that are not as well-known. We also visited a small town about one hour away from Suzhou by the name of Tongli. It was tiny and had a number of canals cutting trough the town. It was a more relaxing version of Venice-better weather, not as crowded and much cheaper. It is also home to the finest piece of pork I have ever eaten. This is not exaggeration or hyperbole but simply the truth. The meat was tender, the sauce was sweet and I was happy. Apparently, Tongli is known throughout China as the place to go for a good piece of pig.
One night Christy's father invited me to dinner. He is the former Bureau chief of the Xinhua Newspaper, the officiall and national newspaper, in Nigeria and Kenya. He has visited over 20 countries and currently he is the director of the Suzhou Industrial Park, the place where all of the American and European businesses set up shop in China. He gave mea a tour of the area and it is crazy to see all of these American companies with plants in China. It is one thing to read about the impact of China but it is another to see all of the plants one after another. In fact, Amazon.com has its Chinese distribution center in Suzhou.
I enjoyed my travels but if I stay in China next year, I will leave the country or head way out West to XinJiang province. Throughout all of my time away from Nanjing it seemed as if all of the China was on the move. Five hour lines to get train tickets and twenty minute trips to the bathrooms get old after a very short while.
New Year
And now we reach one of the reasons I decided to stay in China over the holiday: I wanted to experience Chinese New Year in a Chinese household. On Saturday, Feb.17, New Years Eve, I spent the evening with Fang Laoshi and her family. We ate and ate and ate and then all of the other family members who could not make it over called to wish everyone a happy new year and inquire about the meal we just ate. We then sat down and watched the national gala on CCTV 1. At midnight, the city exploded with fireworks. There was, however, no city-wide, organized event. Everyone one was on there own and, I have to say, they did just fine.
The next morning, I woke up and was soon picked up by Nancy, another teacher at NDFZ, her husband and her son. We went to her grandfather's house across the river and a forty minute driver north. Although his house was close to the city it was like visiting a different time. I soon learned that the house was over 120 years old and her grandfather, who is 93 and smokes like his life depended on it, had lived there for his entire life. The floors were concrete and the only heating came from a coal oven. There were about twenty family members over and I soon found out that while there was lots of food to be had, there was more drinking to be done.
It was a great few days and I am happy with my decision to be in China for the New Year. However, I was shocked to see how quiet things became over the celebration. The streets were empty, the restaurants were closed and the construction had stopped. The entire city and I am sure nearly the entire nation closed up shop and took a few days off. If you do not have the fortune to be invited over to a Chinese household for dinner or the foresight to stock up on provisions you would be in a real pickle. It was a lot like preparing for the big blizzard: get food and get movies and prepare to hunker down for a few days.
I was also very surprised when the fireworks kept going for days and days. Every night, as the sun went down, the fireworks shot up. Walking in the street became a hazard as I would round the corner and be greeted by an explosion on the sidewalk.
An Unexpected but not entirely Unwelcome Move
I think it was the Thursday night after the New Year when the city was still sleepy and silent that I was informed we would be moving out of the rooms on the 17th floor of XiYuan, the traditional home of the Grinnell Fellows. I had suspected our time in XiYuan might be coming to a close because, when I returned from Suzhou right before the New Year. The building was dark, empty and imposing. I had to argue my way in, showing the guard me key and insisting that this was my home. Eventually I prevailed but I found that XiYuan had been shut down and there was no laundry service and no hot water.
After about a week, an attendant knocked on my door and told me that I would be moving out tomorrow morning. SO much for giving me a heads up! In general moving sucks and this was no exception. Over the twenty years of the Grinnell College Nanjing Fellowship, the rooms in XiYuan had turned into a small storage facility and I had to throw out nearly everything.
Our new rooms are just next store on the 10th floor of the new dorm for foreign students, Zeng Xian Xi. While I had no problem with the old rooms, I do like the new ones very much. We each have our own private, Western bathroom, the building is centrally heated, I get about three times as much natural light and I fell like I am living in a small hotel room. Even better, with the move my chances of dieing in a freak elevator accidentally have declined dramatically!
Teaching
After a month of vacation and a week of inertia during Chinese New year, I was very happy to get back to school at the end of February. For the second semester Lauren and I switched classes. I do miss my old students, by the end of last semester we had gotten very close. However, after three weeks of the new semester, I am starting to get comfortable with my new students. Except for some dark days in middle school I always really loved going to school. Even now, when I am on the other side of the world and the other side of the classroom, going to school still puts me in a great mood.
I spent a lot of time the past several weeks trying to establish a unifying theme for each of my classes. For Junior I classes I am going to work around the idea of "Imagination." For the Junior II classes I am going to stick to the last semester's theme of expressing yourself because it was effective and enjoyable for the students. For the Senior students I have finally decided on "Problem Solving." For all of my classes I really want to get them talking more, stringing more sentences together and forming more complete and detailed thoughts.
I am still enjoying teaching at the British-American school on the weekends. It gives me an opportunity to create some more challenging lessons and, thanks to the smaller group, do things that I couldn't at school. In the middle of March I did a lesson on the Ides of March. I gave a lecture on the history of Caesar's murder, we watched some clips from the TV show "Rome," I introduced some new words like conspiracy, ploy, tyranny and covert and then we played the game Mafia. It went over well and everyone enjoyed themselves.
The students at this school are mostly graduate students and young professional looking to improve their English and they have become some of my best friends in China. We go out to dinner often and I have gotten to know them all very well. It had been one of the unexpected benefits of the extra teaching.
More than anything, my experience in the classroom led me to accept the job in Nanjing University next year. I look forward to new students and new challenges and I hope that I can learn as much in my second year as I have in my first.
Other Peculiarities and Potential Points of Interest
I find my self increasing absorbed in Chinese culture, which is a good thing. As I sit writing this report I am listening to Chinese pop song ???? (Don't want to grow up") that is bad in the best way.. I should add that it is on repeat.
With my ever improving Chinese skills I find my self watching more and more TV programs that are not great entertainment but they are good for immersion. I am also playing a lot of Chinese chess with my students during lunch. At the moment I am a fairly weak player and have trouble seeing the different moves and potential combinations on the board but I hope to be good enough play and gamble with the old men who sit on the street and play chess all day.
Finally, as strange as it seems, I see myself drawn to Latin these days. For Christmas, I got a Latin grammar book and I have been working my way through it fairly diligently. I usually work on it for an hour a day at night before I go to bed. In a way, it is very comforting to have this companion from the West as I pass my time here in China. As I was thinking about returning to China next year I came across a sentence that nudged me toward my decision: "Iam veniet tacito curva senecta pede."
Already bent old age will be coming with silent foot. A hair on the dramatic side but the idea still stuck with me. As one of my good friends Wesley Barber famously said, "You gotta travel when you're young." Living at China has been challenging and occasionally frustrating but always fulfilling. I hope it will be the same next year.
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