Thursday, August 16, 2007

Leaving China

This morning I was reading an English language daily newspaper before I started yet another round of hand laundry when I came across an article about an American businessman being awarded honorary Chinese citizenship. He is 46 years old, the head of China Corning. He was educated at Oxford, and has lived in China since 1996. He was instrumental in working to remove the institutionalized children of Shanghai into foster care, and it was for this work that he was being honored. They had a photo of him in the paper; he is still youthful looking, with the unlined skin of a lifetime spent indoors.

The hotel we are staying in is filled with people traveling on international business. There are Thais, Koreans, Indians, Americans and South Americans here. I am not in business; I have spent fewer than two years of my whole life working for private enterprise. Seeing these people, I wonder if I’m sorry I did not try harder to gain fluency in a second language as a young adult and break into working overseas.

Most of the business travelers I see in this hotel are men. I learned quickly as a Rotary Scholar back in the early nineties that success as a woman in the international business community would not come as easily as for a man. I spent four years as a greatly outnumbered female in Navy avionics in the middle eighties, it was enough.

This Christmas we stayed with my first cousin in London. He is a geophysicist, and he and his family have lived in Venezuela, Pakistan, Malaysia, Canada, and now London. They live the corporate expatriate life, their children attend first class international schools, they have built a life where they move every few years. My cousin tells me that a few of his peers are now women, and their husbands the trailing spouse. It is a sea change from twenty years ago.

I have a good friend who changed careers from journalism to Wall Street in her thirties. She spent about five years flying back and forth to Hong Kong from New York every month, which sounds exciting, but actually became a grind over time, and as a single parent, she loathed the extended time away from her child.

It is all but impossible to analyze the path not taken. We leave tomorrow to spend two days traveling to pick up the threads of the lives we left behind when we came to China. The things I will miss are intangibles. I have loved living in the same room with the kids, loved having them physically close to me so much. I will miss teaching, although I have a tendency to try too hard to put old heads on young shoulders. I will miss the novelty of living in a place so unlike my home in Tallahassee. I will miss China as it was in this moment, for it is changing so quickly that every visit will be different.

Before we left home I read a children’s book about a family that makes a medical mission to Nepal. The book said that there was a saying in Nepal that, “You will not change Nepal, Nepal will change you.” I don’t know that China has changed us, we certainly have not changed China. We perhaps have a little more perspective; I think that Sarah particularly has gotten something from this trip.
Originally I made arrangements for this journey so that James could have a period of language immersion to help his speak better Chinese. It turned out to be an experiment in teaching for me, an opportunity for growing independence for Sarah, and incidentally language immersion for James. It has been well worth the journey. Thank you for sharing it with us.

Aquarium

Doing business in China is sort of complicated. A foreign operation cannot appear one day and set up shop, a joint venture is required, with substantial Chinese employment and ownership. There are two world class aquariums in Shanghai, one is a Singapore joint venture, the other a New Zealand joint venture. We went today to the New Zealand one, which was very good, and well geared to families. It was situated in a large park that had pedal boats (called “foot-powered”) and little rides, and a big aquarium.

The aquarium was almost entirely underground, much of it underneath a small lake. Once I let go of the claustrophobic feeling, it was very nice. It had a shark tunnel and a shallow reef with waves, and a deeper reef with enormous sea turtles, and James got to feed turtles and we saw a shark go poop. There was a beluga whale show, too, but it was not very impressive to those of us who have visited Sea World. It was super expensive by Chinese standards; it cost $40 for the three of us to visit. Having grown accustomed to $2 each for suppers and 40 cents each for bus rides, paying theme park prices is traumatic.

I think the Aquarium is making money, it was a weekday and they seemed quite busy. The tanks and equipment looked first rate, and although the entrance fees were low by Western standards, the labor costs are much lower here. At the hotel we are staying at, there are lots of foreign businessmen checking on China investments. I talked to a guy in the elevator today who had to get more pages put in his passport; he’d traveled so much overseas.

5 Star Hotel

We are here serendipitously, as we were supposed to leave with the group on August 15, but the travel agent made a mistake with our ticket arrangements, so we are paying only half of a discounted rate to stay at a five star hotel. I have never stayed anywhere this nice before and it especially nice to stay in an American hotel after a month of struggling to speak Chinese. Here every staff member speaks English, and every staff member has been so pleasant to us, even though we are patently not their usual customers.

I am slightly embarrassed in my Wal-mart clothes and my $10 haircut. People here are dressed expensively. Most of them are here on business, they do not have kids in tow. The prices for everything are stratospheric. Internet connections are $18 a day so we’ve been waiting to find an internet cafĂ©, but the neighborhood is too upscale to have one. The breakfast buffet is $29 (we get two breakfasts a day included with our room price – the third person has to eat at McDonald’s – we take turns).

But it is splendid. We ride up and down at night in the glass elevator. We hang around in the lobby and listen to the live classical music. We swim in the fabulous indoor pool and wrap ourselves in the luxurious towels. The staff is outstanding. The room is so clean it’s seems brand new. There is a fresh carnation in our bathroom. The maids give James candy.

James and Sarah are ready to go home, but as long as we’re here, I’m not sure I’m ready to go.

Shanghai

Nanjing was a backwater of 5.4 million people. Shanghai has 13.2 million people. Real estate is world class, with world class prices. The skyline is truly phenomenal, but the infrastructure still needs some work. And the air, the air is like Victorian England, virtually black with soot.

I’ve heard of people flying to Hong Kong to shop, and you could do the same in Shanghai, if you are not a large person or if you like you suits “bespoke” (tailor made). There is more stuff to buy here, from fine silks to cheap souvenirs, than I have ever seen before.

The city is going continuously. Last night we could see someone arc welding in a building under construction at 10 pm. The traffic is snarled all the time. Fashionably dressed people walk down the streets as quickly as New Yorkers, marching past impoverished street vendors trying to sell watches to passers-by.

I was surprised to find so many beggars in a Communist country. I mean, considering the significant downside of Communism/Socialism, the upside should be that there is care and feeding of the underclass. I had to physically remove an old woman from my person the day before yesterday; she was that aggressive about separating me from some money. It is not like India, where you can be swarmed if you hand out a rupee, but it can be intimidating. Fortunately, they do not seem to target children, although today I saw a man demand that a little boy waiting in line for the aquarium finish his water, so the man could collect the bottle to sell for recycling.

Sarah loves it here, she loves the fabulous architecture of the skyscrapers, she loves the fashionable clothes, and she loves the momentum of the city. She loves New York, too. James mostly loves the hotel we are staying in, which we could never ordinarily afford, but we got a discounted rate, and the travel agent paid for half of that, because of a problem with our airline tickets. I must confess that I am quite taken with the city, for all of its glaring faults, as it is wildly dynamic.

Chinese Beds

Chinese beds are not like American beds. They are hard, impressively hard. In Nanjing, Sarah said that it was like there was no mattress and we slept directly on the boxspring. In Suzhou, we had beds with a mattress and boxspring, and on top of the mattress a board had been inserted in each bed, sewn in and covered with a mattress pad under the sheet. It was better than sleeping on the floor, barely.

One of the other teachers told me she put the comforter on the bed and slept under her dress. These are some hard beds. My husband would be delighted. Sarah says that one of the things she is looking forward to most is her pillowtop bed at home.

Monday, August 13, 2007

The Gentlemen Hotel

We are currently ensconced in the very swank Gentlemen Hotel in Suzhou. We got here because last night's hotel was not very swank. It was sort of the opposite. The bathroom had so much mildew my kids refused to take showers. The cot James was supposed to sleep in smelled so bad he slept with me. A young woman down the hall was awakened by a large rat falling out of the ceiling and onto the floor next to her bed. The rat then ran into her bathroom.

The staff seemed relatively unperturbed by this turn of events. The young woman said she thought it seemed that there were people running in the halls, but once the rat fell through the ceiling, she realized it was rats running. She and several other people left the hotel for another place to spend the night. The kids and I slept through the entire event.

However, today, after discussions between the university and the travel agency and the local tour guide, tonight we have lovely accommodations. We live in fear of where we'll wind up staying in Shanghai tomorrow night, but that's a problem for another day. Tonight, we are staying in a stately converted old fashioned British men's club, complete with card room.

Shuzhou is great. It is called the Venice of China, because of its historic use of canals. It has something like 130 bridges in the city spanning these little canals. It has lovely temples and the famous "Humble Administrator's Garden," which is a World Heritage Site consisting of 6 hectares of Zen garden. I also love the sound of Humble Administrator, and have decided that I'm going to see if my office will change my title.

Shuzhou is a historic city with low rise requirements, so although there has been plenty of construction, it is not full of high rise buildings. It has been a silk producing area for a couple of thousand years, and today we visited a silk factory and James and the other children were given silkworm cocoons, complete with dead moth. They told us that there is 1500 meters of silk in a single cocoon.

The food was spectacular today, I must have eaten 8 different kinds of vegetables, 2 kinds of fish, 3 kinds of tofu, 2 kinds of duck and watermelon. Maybe group tours aren't as bad as I thought.

Sunday, August 12, 2007

The Student Dormitories

The undergraduate dormitories are 5 story concrete monoliths with no redeeming architectural value. They are strictly utilitarian. There is an attendant at the door to keep members of the opposite gender out, the building is locked at 10:30 pm each night.

There is no elevator, the first room I visited was on the fifth floor. Down the long corridor of doors, each room has an electrical meter. Each room is given a certain amount of electricity per semester, overages must be paid for.

Students sleep 6 to a room, which is about 12 feet by 15, not including the bath. You enter the room, there are two sets of bunk beds on the left wall, six lockers and a set of bunk beds on the right. There are two desks running down the middle of the room. Quarters are tight, even slight Chinese girls have to push in the chairs and walk sideways to get to their beds.

The ceiling is high, so the beds are higher than in the west. You can sit up easily in your bunk bed. The mattress is the depth of an exercise mat, and sits rolled up at the end of the bed. The beds are covered with mosquito nets. There is no air conditioning.

It is still instantly recognizable as a girls' dormitory room. Doors have posters on them, there are stuffed animals on the beds, and the pillows have feminine pillow cases. There is the detritus of female life lying about, make-up, pink notebooks, purses.

The bathroom is just beyond the beds, running the width of the room. On the left is a large, sort of trough like sink, which permits hand laundry to be done in the room. On the right is a combination toilet/shower room with a door. The toilets here are squat toilets, the shower in the dormitories is just a shower head in the small room, the whole room gets wet.

Beyond the bathroom is the balcony, where laundry is hung out to dry. In some dormitories, there are no balconies, and students erect racks outside the windows. There it is best to be on the highest floor, so you don't have higher floor laundry dripping on top of yours. For a time during exams this spring, it rained so much for days that no one could dry their laundry and everyone was running out of clean underwear.

If you have ever lived shipboard as an enlisted person in the Navy, you will understand the closeness of the quarters here. There is a new dormitory building going up right now, one that will have air conditioning. The incoming freshmen in 2008 will be housed in it. We American teachers have a feeling that upperclassmen will not be very happy about that.

Summer temperatures in Nanjing are even hotter than Tallahassee, daytime highs are often in the high 90s or low 100s. The students bake in these little rooms, and spend as little time as possible in them. Those who can possibly leave school and spend the summer at home do so to avoid the heat. Of course, most of my students didn't have air conditioning at home, either, but at least at home they didn't have to share a room with 5 other people.

Group Tour - Day 1

I have heard about group tours but never actually been on one. Sarah went with her school to New York City last year, but when I was young I didn't travel with my school and I was never on any sports teams that went anywhere together, and when I was in the Navy, they just loaded us up and went, we didn't stop and look at anything.

My friend Grace used to like group tours and went on her first group tour in 1930, and her last one in 1991. Based on my now vast experience of one day with a group tour, I don't think I'll be doing this for 60 years. It's, um, dull.

We hauled our luggage out to the bus for an 8:30 am departure, and of course someone was late so we had to go back and find her. Then we traveled for a while, and stopped and we all herded out and went to the bathroom, and then travled some more.

We arrived a Wuxi in the rain, and went to lunch at a place with a bunch of tour buses parked out front. The food was pre-ordered for us, which was fine, it all just felt a little sterile. We had a guide for the afternoon, and we went to see a park that had previously been the country estate of early 20th century Chinese industrialists, and to a pearl factory, and to a temple. But it was too much for the kids, James fell asleep on the bus and missed the temple, and our resident four year old stayed awake but melted down during the temple visit.

The evening meal was also in a place that seemed to cater to groups, with pre-ordered food coming out quickly and efficiently. The hotel is next to the train station and we've been advised to stay in our rooms and not venture out as the neighborhood is dangerous. This experience is not making me feel like I'm part of the culture. Or maybe it's just the rain.

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Leaving Nanjing

This morning we are packing up our things to take a group tour with the other teachers for a few days, ending in Shanghai. We don't want to leave. I came expecting that we would all be sick all the time, probably with ghastly illnesses that would give us liver damage. I thought the food would be toxic, the air poisonous, and my children snatched and sold as slaves.

Okay, I was wrong.

We are leaving a world where teachers are viewed as valuable, really valuable members of society. Where people take a couple of hours in the middle of the day to eat with their friends and families and rest before returning to work. Where people gather in squares in the evenings to socialize and dance.

One night, ballroom dancers were out in Times Square, dancing to Chinese music. James and I went out and danced with them, and I hope I always remember the strange tones of the Chinese music, the dancers box-stepping, and James and I dancing in the dark.

Two of my students burst in on us the night before last, while I was typing in my pajamas. I made them wait in the hall while I got dressed. They had come to bring us more presents and to give lengthy advice about what to see in Shanghai. I didn't expect to make friends here, or that young people would be so polite to a middle aged woman, so open with an unknown teenager, or so truly kind to a little boy.

The food is fabulous, rich and varied. As my Chinese is about as competent as my Urdu, we often think we are ordering one thing and get another. This is because of the tonal nature of Chinese. When you say the syllable "ma", depending on which of the four tones you use, it means mother, horse, numb or scold. For adults with non-tonal languages, this means you are misunderstood. A lot.

The food is always good, even when we don't recognize what it is. I must tell you that the Chinese food you get in Chinese restaurants is not what I am eating here. It seems unfair that France gets all the credit for great food, eaten happily with friends.

So I had trepidations for nothing. I am leaving with a satchel of unused drugs, the kids and I having taken nothing more than pepto-bismal since we left home. Sarah wants to come back and teach herself. James wants to live here.

I came, but I never expected to be so happy here.

Climbing Purple Mountain

Purple Mountain is only about 2 miles from the University, and many people get up very early and climb up the mountain, which is about 1500 feet high. James and I got up at 5:30 this morning and met one of my students at 6 am. My student told us it would take about half an hour to walk to the mountain, and an hour to walk up. James was complaining bitterly, so I decided the better part of valor was to take a cab to the foot of the mountain and then walk up. The cab took us to a different part of the mountain than my student was familiar with, and between the unfamiliar paths and an eight year old in tow, climbing up took a little over two and a half hours. All of the paths were very rocky and large portions were very steep. We arrived at the top to discover we could have walked the whole way on a road. My student said, somewhat sheepishly that when he walks up, he walks up on the road.

Having half killed ourselves walking up, we took a cable car down. I will say that both going up and coming down, that the view was spectacular, it looked like downtown Nanjing was springing up out of the forest, and there were wide swaths of bamboo forest. It was just lovely, but incredibly hot. James had a collar of salt around the top of his shirt, he sweated so much. The knees of my pants were wet.

We couldn't get a cab at the foot of the mountain, they were all full, so I took my first bus ride in the Nanjing on a 1Y (no air conditioning) bus. James kept singing "Jingle Bells," to the great amusement of my student. We arrived home at 10:45 am, hot and tired, but with an enormous feeling of achievement, even though many people in their sixties passed us on the trail.

Friday, August 10, 2007

Last Day of Class

Today was my last day of teaching. James helped me haul a gallon of water, an electric tea kettle, instant coffee, milk, cups, a spoon and cookies to school so that I could give my class an American coffee break today.

One of the other teachers loaned me some menus, and we played restaurant today, too. In China, tax is included in prices, and there is no tipping, so they find calculating how much they owe in an American restaurant very confusing. I went over and over it with them. They also found restaurant ordering counter-intuitive. In this region of China, several dishes are ordered and shared with the table. They know in the United States people order food only for themselves, but they find it peculiar. Only two people in my class have ever used a knife and fork to eat.

I told them that if all else failed, to bring their own chop sticks, since they would not be available at most restaurants in the U.S., but that many American foods have to be cut up before eating because they come in big slabs. I told them that the rice is the same as in China at Chinese restaurants, but it is not free (it is generally a free side dish in Chinese restaurants). I told them it is very cheap, though.

I felt like I did not have enough time to tell them everything they needed to know, that I didn't have enough time so that they would have an easy time if they spent time overseas. I did tell them over these three weeks that if they ever spent any amount of time overseas that they should learn to cook, since food that I have had here is not readily available in the U.S., and eating strange foreign food day after day, week after week, is hard on body and soul.

Two of the girls had embroidered a picture of a baby sleeping on the moon for me, another girl gave me two basket-woven fish in lucky colors (the lucky colors look remarkably like the garnet and gold of FSU), one of the boys brought some little Snoopy statues. One of the girls brought Sarah a trinket. They were all very kind and Sarah and I left them our e-mail addresses and told them to write.

I wish I had been a better teacher for them, brought them further, faster. I did the best I could, and they were extremely kind to me, and also very good to my children. We had a quick lunch with my class monitor before she left to catch the bus to her home town. James cried all the way through lunch and would not eat. He does not want to leave China, and he did not want my students to leave. I find that funny, because he spent the months before we came saying that he did not want to go to China.

Thursday, August 09, 2007

Times Square

Near our campus based hotel is a large square near the University’s auditorium. In the center of it is a huge sundial that children like to climb on. We call it Times Square. In the evenings, people come out into the dusk, and children roller skate, and people stand around and visit, and the place is quite crowded until late. During the day, when the temperatures can reach 40 degrees Celsius (which is so hot I refuse to convert to Fahrenheit, for fear I’ll have heat stroke just thinking about it), the place is completely deserted.

Sarah says she has seen ballroom dancing there in the evenings. James has played soccer with some little kids there. It is a gathering place without any commercial activity, just a large open area where people gather.

It is very different from the crowded streets here. There the stalls are crammed with items, things spill out into the sidewalks. People chop vegetables, play Chinese chess, and wash their hair on the sidewalks. Often the sidewalk is full so you have to walk in the street, where you are in constant peril from bicycles, motor scooters and cars.

Surprisingly, there are trash bins on every corner. There are people who come around and go through the trash and take out everything that can be recycled, the paper, the plastic bottles, and the aluminum cans, and pile it up and haul it off to be sold. Nanjing is a wealthy city, and many people have cars, but working people still use bicycles. So you will see someone with their bicycle balancing a 4’ x 4’ x 4’ pile of cardboard on the back of their bike. I see workmen carrying 12’ of pipes on their bicycles. Sometimes I even see fruit vendors with a sort of scales around their neck, and balanced on each side at the end of a chain, a pile of fruit.

Streets here are much less sanitary than at home. People are out in the streets, hacking and spitting, dropping their gum, babies are peeing on the side walk in their split pants. It is an adjustment, but I have a high tolerance for dirt.

In the evenings, there are just as many people in Times Square as there are in the streets, but without the stores, and bicycles, and motor scooters, it seems very different, sort of cheerful and safe and slow paced. If I could stay up later, I’d spend more time in Times Square.

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

The Delicate Question of Taiwan

"Because Taiwan is historically part of China, and other countries are interfering with our discussions." "Taiwan won't cooperate, because Japan and the United States are supporting its position."

These are strong words for a society that is generally very mild and believes strongly in "indirect communication." So I told them we would engage in a "thought experiment" where we would talk about what would happen if China just let Taiwan be independent.

The immediate response was that then many groups would want independence, like Mongolia and Tibet. I said, fine, continue with the experiment, what would happen if you let everyone who wants to become independent. I told them about some of the very small nations in the Carribean.

The reply was that if every province becomes independent, then China will be full of warring factions, as it was historically. Small countries will have multiple parties, and they will war among each other, and political parties will come to power based on the strength of their militias. I reminded them that Europe spent a long time as warring factions, and has only recently emerged as the European Union. Chinese factions do not have a monopoly on past bad behavior, and China has the kind of strong cultural and economic ties that bind a country together.

I suggested that if sections wanted independence, they could leave China over time, giving them an opportunity to build a stable government before they left, and preventing the problem of violent factions. I pointed out that if China had a vote tomorrow, only a very few areas would really want to leave, and even those that left would still have strong cultural and economic ties. Most of China wants to stay together, and it may not fundamentally undermine Chinese nationality and Chinese identity if some small sections become independent.

I do not flatter myself that anyone was convinced that Taiwan should be permitted independence permanently, but I did ask that they try to keep an open mind. And the class had a useful experience in thinking about whether the worst they think can happen is in fact the worst thing that could happen.

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

One Child Policy

My students are the product of China's One Child policy, which was begun several decades ago to control population growth. In terms of raw numbers, the policy was a success, as China's population has almost assuredly grown less than it would have. There were other countries that now have declining populations, like Japan and Italy, but they had much lower populations to begin with, and were wealthier.

All that being said, only about half of my class is an only child. Many have one sibling, one has two, and one of my students is the third of four children. It appears that there was uneven enforcement of this policy. I have been told that later born children are not even registered as births, but this cannot be so, as I have a goodly number of them in my class, and they all have identity cards. Yet it is clear from their stories about their own families and others that the One Child policy caused a lot of misery.

I see a lot of children, especially little children in the streets. They are extremely well cared for. It is well known that the One Child policy here is relaxing, and that for professionals, two children will be possible. But my students still resent the unhappiness caused by the policy. I try to focus them on the future, and point out that China, like Italy and Japan, may in the end have a falling population without a One Child Policy. Not everything has to be government enforced.

What I teach my students

The assigned textbook concentrates mainly on the problems of intercultural communication, and uses primarily examples of Chinese-American exchanges. But my students, mostly young adults between the ages of 19-21, have seen American movies and television all their lives. Very little surprises them about Americans. What they don't understand is the huge numbers of people worldwide who speak English as their second language, and the difficulties in communicating with people where everyone in the conversation is not using their native language, and no one is very familiar with the other's culture. So we're talking about that, talking about trying to think about what other people might be experiencing.

My class is mainly engineering students, but I have one accountant, and one English major. The engineers include industrial, chemical, environmental and explosives. They are, as a group, very bright, very hardworking. Their limitations in English frustrate and embarrass them, but they often do a very good job of putting complex ideas into simple language. I wish that I was an engineer, I lack the vocabulary to give them English words for engineering technical terms, and I know if they work abroad they will need those words.

In three weeks I can give them an opportunity to practice English, to gain confidence in the skills they already have, to reinforce what they already know about international business transactions, and try to get them to think a little more about what they haven't spent much time thinking about, particularly trying to communicate with a lot of different people from a lot of different countries.

Monday, August 06, 2007

Chinese Chess

While I am teaching class every morning, James goes to Chinese classes. One of the things he's learned is to play Chinese chess. It's played on a board similar to a chess board, but with some patterns on it. The pieces look like checkers with writing on them (hallmarks of a literate civilization, you don't have to be able to read to play Western chess). Instead of putting the pieces on the spaces, you put them on the intersections of the lines. The pieces move in different ways, James has explained it to me, and tried to make me play, but I don't enjoy chess, Western or Chinese, so he plays at school.

On our way to the grocery store, there is often a game of Chinese chess going, and James likes to stop and watch for a few minutes. This has attracted attention, so last night he was invited to play against another little boy, who is 11. James is 8. James lasted a long time, I was very proud of him. Various passers-by provided suggestions, even bending down and moving the pieces for him, which I gather is typical no matter who is playing.

There were five little boys watching, squatting down on their haunches, making suggestions and speaking slowly and loudly to me in Chinese, as though that would make me understand. It was quite funny.

James played soccer with a couple of boys while I was taking Tai Chi class yesterday. Many children speak a few words of English, and James now has some Chinese, so they find a way to play together. I'm happy to see him reach out to play with other kids. Sarah is thick as thieves with a number of my students, and I feel like the reason I came has been fulfilled.

I wanted to do something other than tour around and see sights. I wanted my kids to experience the culture in a way you can only do in one place. To meet other kids their age and try to communicate with them, to see and talk to people who are not exactly like them.

Sunday, August 05, 2007

17 Tigers, 15 Bears

Today we visited a recreational area just outside of Nanjing, called the Pearl Stream. It is sort of a combination hiking, camping, amusement park with a zoo. It was not far away, only about an hour by bus. It is remarkable how the population density is very high in Nanjing, south of the Yangtze River, and becomes much lower, like the suburbs, just north of the River. The most notible thing we saw on the way was a group of beautiful Western style three story apartments, with stucco exteriors, and huge windows. There were probably 300 units spread over 10 acres and they were all completely empty. Someone on the bus said that they had heard that they'd been built, but they were so expensive that no one could afford them.

At the Pearl Stream, we walked along paved trails past the bumper cars and the roller coaster to see the source of the stream. The stream sort of seeps up from the stream bed, and people stand by the edge and clap, which makes more bubbles rise. I don't quite understand why.

We were then herded into the zoo area, and entered a large covered arena, where the stage area was set back over a twenty foot trench. We sat on plastic seats for about ten minutes, and then, from a stage made to look like cliffs, 17 tigers, 3 lions and their handlers emerged. The 17 tigers each sat on a riser, so there were two little mountains of tigers, going up and down. The three lions sat on their own risers in front of the tigers. The handlers had no whips, but they each held what looked and sounded (they sometimes rapped them on the concrete stage) like hollow aluminum sticks, about 4 feet long. they would prod the tigers with them when they weren't moving along.

The tigers walked on narrow walkways, walked around on top of huge balls, jumped through flaming hoops, and lay in a long row and rolled over simultaneously. The lions just sat there and looked lionesque. Tigers not actively engaged in tricks sat on their riser. I do not understand why none of the trainers was eaten. I do not understand why the tigers did not jump the barrier and eat the people.

We next walked past some tigers and bears on display in sort of 1970s style habitats (no bars, but sort of limited space) to a horse track, with covered stands, and a dirt track, and then a concrete track inside the dirt track. There we saw a sort of Chinese play with trick riders, who were the best I've seen since I was at the Calgary Stampede as a kid. Then they had trained bears. The bears were Chinese bears, sort of thin and their faces looked different from North American bears. They had long claws, and seemed much more stupid than the tigers.

The bears rode bicycles and balanced on balls and one balanced on a motorbike on a high wire, and a lady was suspended under neath. The bears were led around by rings through their noses. The Chinese crowd seemed to enjoy both shows very much, but I think the Americans were by and large mortified.

The hit of the day was when the kids, and parents who could not escape, rented a bamboo raft and used long bamboo poles to push up and down the stream. We had two rafts lashed together with wire, and four poles. I tried to hand a pole to Sarah, but she looked horrified, so I gave her my purse, and took a corner. It was hot, sweaty, involved several near misses of other bamboo rafts pushed by other urbanites, and was altogether a great deal of fun. The bamboo rafts were slightly leaky, nobody had a life preserver, and the water was noxious. James, because he is a boy, was jumping from one raft to the other, because he did not care that I might have to fish him out. Sarah, who has a greater sense of self-preservation, sat with the other two girls on a narrow bench at the end of the raft and looked nervous. Nobody made us sign a waiver, either. When we successfully docked after our little voyage, the other members of our group who did not go out applauded.

As we were walking out to the bus, one woman said she bet my colleagues at work would have been surprised to see me out there poling along on a bamboo raft. I told her that I spent four years in the Navy, and had done some skydiving, so I didn't think my colleagues would be particularly surprised that I could pole a bamboo raft. I was not always middle-aged.

Thursday, August 02, 2007

A night on the town

I ran out of western style provisions like cold cereal and peanut butter on the same day I had promised the kids to take them out for American food, so after Chinese cooking class ended today, we were going to head out for downtown to the big shops, like Wal-Mart and the French Carrefour. We had a short rain delay while it poured buckets for about 35 minutes, but then caught a cab and went downtown. I'd never been to downtown Nanjing at night before, with the skyscrapers and neon lights, there are squares that remind me of New York, London and Tokyo all at the same time.

I thought I'd been very clever to take the kids to Pizza Hut on a weeknight, but there was still a line outside. You stood in line and they handed you a little time and date stamped ticket. After a while they brought us tiny paper cups of cold green tea. There is no ice in drinks here. We waited about 25 minutes until we were admitted.

Pizza Hut in China has several varieties of what we think of as Pizza, plus additional offerings for toppings such as octopus. They also offer soups, and an array of smoothies and other drinks. We had American style pizza, which was pepperoni with cheese. One of my students was with us, and received the pizza politely, but I don't think she's about to become a regular pizza consumer.

The kids raved. They've had Chinese food two or three times a day for almost two weeks now, and they thought it was the world's greatest pizza. Although the dinner at about $11 was by far the most I have spent on a meal for four since I arrived, it was worth it just because the kids were so ecstatic.

Because it is such a furnace here during the day, many people sleep for a couple of hours in the afternoons, and the streets are very lively at night. So even though we entered Wal Mart after 8 PM, it was still packed with people shopping. Wal Mart is on the second two floors on a tall downtown building. On the first floor are upscale clothing shops and jewelry stores. There is, blessedly when you are carrying bags of milk and water, a taxi stand right outside the building.

Tab, including shopping, restaurant and taxis, for this big night on the town for four people was $ 30. Because it is a weeknight, I still had everybody in bed by 10 pm.

OSHA would have a field day

Let's just say that worker safety standards are a little more relaxed here than in the United States. The building next door to us was replastered, and the workers were suspended from the roof with ropes, sitting on seats that looked like 8 x 1 x 18 boards. I saw stone cutting, with sparks flying like an arc welder, and the workman not even wearing glasses, let alone a face shield. Children sit in the back seats of cars without car seats or safety belts. It's 1965 out here.

Adults riding bicycles do not wear helmets. Motor scooter riders do not wear helmets. Nobody wears helmets. When you walk, it seems that pedestrians yield to both cars and bicycles, but I don't know what the law actually is. Bicycles and cars and pedestrians, sometimes all traveling at markedly different speeds, pass within inches of each other. In vehicular traffic, lanes are not clearly marked, and sometimes cabs work their way around buses in what can only be described as a high stakes game of chicken.

Yet, I haven't seen a car crash, or even a bike crash since I've been here. Go figure.

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Lunch with Students

This week, every day after class, we are eating lunch with a small group of students, so they can all have an English speaking lunch. We're eating at the student cafeteria, which is a high ceilinginged space with two levels of seating. You can sit eight people at a table, so with Sarah, James and me, there is room for 5 students, which means it is taking all week to eat with the whole class. The students find James's use of chopsticks very entertaining.

As all of my students are from areas outside Nanjing, and the regional cuisine varies quite widely across the country, the cafeteria makes an effort to provide selections familiar to all of its students. This diversity makes for a very wide variety of choices for a university cafeteria. The first day I was there, there were probably fifty selections

The students know some words to describe foods in English, but frankly, I did not expect the diversity and excellence of food here. It's like France. It's amazing. Today I had rice, greens, and tofu that had been flattened, rolled, sliced into pinwheels and then sauteed in spices. The food is fresh and flavorful. Outside of the Italian galley we used to eat at when I was stationed at a NATO base in Italy, it's the best institutional food I've ever had.

Sarah is very popular

With the other English teachers. They like her to come to their classes and answer questions from their students about popular culture in America. Sometimes she brings her i-pod and plays some of her favorite music for them. She and about two thirds of my class like to talk about some program called, "Prison Break" which I had never previously heard about. Apparently it is a series which can be downloaded from the internet.

Today she said the most interesting question she received was one asking if she met a Chinese boy and fell in love with him, would she stay in China. Sarah said that she was only 16 and she would have to go home, even though she was sure that she would want to stay. I was impressed with the diplomacy of her answer. My students, when they heard this, thought it was very funny that anyone would consider leaving their country to marry someone.

I told them that one of the English teachers with us was from Spain, and that she had met her American husband while at university in the U.K., and now she lived in Miami. I told them that one of the real perils of associating with foreigners is that you might fall in love with one and move far away and be very, very unpopular with your parents. They clearly found this to be a novel idea, but one worth considering. As a foreign teacher, I think it is my job to introduce novel ideas to them.