back to school

This week was the first teaching week since the earthquake two weeks ago. It was difficult to get started again. I was tired and lethargic through the first class, and I had really no reason to be, either. I hadn't taught for nearly 13 days and for some reason in class I had to summon up my energies and get through it.

McDonald's is back open again. The last time I was downtown (last Saturday) it was at night and the McDonald's, typically open 24/7, was closing down at around 9:00.

There was an aftershock this afternoon while I was teaching class. I was staring at the class watching them do group work when all of a sudden the class erupted in a bloodcurdling shriek. Two boys jumped out the window and bolted down the street. I didn't even feel it. I took the class outside for the remainder of the class time which fortunately was only 20 minutes.

I decided to close the blog for a bit out of fear some of the posts on here might be interpreted as too controversial at a time when foreigners and negativity were heavily scrutinized. I suppose in the end I was overestimating the influence of this blog, but I can't help but think that someone within my immediate community checks this ever so often. Saying the wrong thing, or saying something that could be perceived as negative, especially during this recent period, could get me in some trouble.

More stories soon.

serious

This morning Sarah sent me a message saying there were crowds gathering outside the McDonald's protesting the fact that the company hadn't given enough money for earthquake relief. The people had apparently dispersed by the afternoon, and there were a number of guards present afterwards.

BeiHu park is full of tents and other makeshift camping setups out of the fear of major aftershocks reported by the government media. It's almost ridiculous at this point, you really want to go up to some of the people and ask them what they're doing.

I met up with Julien and the other PC volunteers at night to say farewell to Nanchong's only Frenchman. We decided to go to unimart and purchase some ice cream, and passed by McDonald's on the way there at around 10:00. There was already a large group of people assembled outside the main entrance. Most of the 100 or so people gathered were in their 20s and 30s, and stood around talking and looking inside the restaurant. McDonald's had apparently been closed earlier in the day because of the protesters preventing workers and patrons from entering, and the lights were still off from before.

A McDonald's employee had put up two posters near the front doors illustrating how the company had actually donated quite a bit of money for earthquake relief efforts. At some point in the day someone had broken the main McDonald's neon marquee above the front doors and pulled the promotional posters off the walls. There were guards and cops around the crowd to make sure it didn't happen again.

The protesters (I guess you could call them that) weren't really doing anything. There was a bunch of standing and talking, but very little action. When the four of us arrived, we were immediately surrounded. We asked questions about what was taking place to a Nanchongren who's English was fairly fluent. Eventually someone made a very direct comment that because we were Americans we probably had lots of money; forget the fact that we were Peace Corps volunteers making less than the person who shouted at us.

In any event, we decided to leave after that comment seeing as there were people around who were clearly itching to get things started and being present only made it more likely we'd be put in a precarious position.

warnings

There was a warning broadcasted on the radio and TV last night that said there was a great chance of a serious aftershock in or around Nanchong. People again streamed out in hordes, occupying open spaces around the basketball blacktops and along the sidewalks near my house and the teaching buildings.

Apparently the Peace Corps had caught word of the warning and informed our school's foreign affairs office, who then forwarded the message to Ashley and me. I was encouraged by friends to spend the night outside, and even scolded by the local shop sellers that I shouldn't go back to my house. Ashley decided to come over to my house because all the other people in her building had vacated it to sleep on the street, and eventually we were able to convince Bo Tao to do the same. Li Jia Li was too afraid to come with us, and decided to stay near her house sleeping next to a guard station at the middle gate.

Needless to say, there was no earthquake, and all the paranoia-like fear that pervaded the campus yesterday has passed. The aftershock warning continues for the remainder of today, and classes have been canceled... again... I haven't taught now in over a week, and I feel as if I'm starting to lose track of where I am in relation to the end of the semester, especially in terms of what I have to do to finish/wrap up my classes.

There were a number of memorial services downtown that I was able to see at night after I finished my office hours. Some were more organized than others, but all were in central places with various candle arrangements spelling out 5/12 or "zhong guo".

repeated movies

Things some actors are good at:
Ending in a bus -> Dustin Hoffman
Saving a child -> Clive Owen

everything back to normal

Some of my junior students from last semester with whom I had become close friends stayed at my house the past two days because they had been locked out of their dormitories. A few of the undergraduate dormitories had apparently been damaged slightly and the school, instead of providing alternative housing for the student body, had promptly shut the doors and denied access to anyone attempting to enter. The junior friends of mine had called me and asked if they could stay at my house, a first floor apartment, and of course I agreed. Their options were to either sleep on the street in a makeshift tent with a rice-paper tarp or sleep on the couches in my house.

They were still very concerned about the possibility of a second earthquake, something that I had to dispel numerous times over the past couple days. Many students were afraid to stay in their off campus housing unless they were on the first or second floors because living any higher up would certainly mean their demise in the event of a repeat quake. Li Jia Li perhaps was the most scared of them all; she refused to sleep in her third floor apartment building, purchased sticks of incense to burn at Qing Quan Si (Buddhist temple in Nanchong), spent one night with a blanket in an internet bar chair, and seriously considered flying home to JiangXi province (a four hour trip) to escape the ensuing aftershocks.

An additional wave of panic came when a number of people (who knows who started this?) reported they had seen snakes and rats around Nanchong and predicted that there would be another earthquake soon. The logic, indeed flawless, was that animals have some uncanny sense to perceive impending earthquakes, and that the presence of snakes and rats was somehow a harbinger of an enormous aftershock that would soon take place.

Downtown Nanchong is absolutely normal. You would have never known there was an earthquake at all just from looking around the city. There's no damage to any of the buildings, stores are doing business again, and there are no rescue or assessment crews around. It seems almost as if the craziness of the rumors and borderline paranoia is limited to the student body on campus; understandable, though. Fear spreads pretty quickly when the population has limited access to information and the outside world.

Another big rumor yesterday was the water shortage. I got a call from the waiban explaining that there had been some large chemical factory northwest of Nanchong that was destroyed in the quake. As a result, the water of the Jia Ling river had been contaminated and the water supply in Nanchong was going to be hopelessly limited for an unknown period of time. One hour? One day? Who knew for sure. People started buying bottled water as if the impending blizzard were going to trap as all in our homes for weeks. Crowds thronged around bicycle trucks and pushed and shoved in order to pick up the ever precious case of bottled water; the life source when Y2K hit... I mean the earthquake, oops! (this picture here is from later in the day. earlier there would have been 20 people around these cases of water.)

Needless to say, there was no earthquake, and although I had calmed and comforted the students staying in my house last night not to worry, they still wore their jackets and backpacks to sleep just in case. Class was held as usual this afternoon, except for teachers with classes in the C and D buildings (such as myself) because of minor superficial damage to the roof tiles.

Without downplaying the tragedy of WenChuan and the other parts of China where there had been serious damages and losses of life.. let's get back to reality here.

camping out

The earthquake started when I was at home at around 2:30. I was sitting in my big chair that faces the window when it began to shake. I initially thought Xiao Qiang was scratching my chair so I hit the padding a few times to scare him away, but when he didn't stop I got up to push him away. It didn't occur to me it was an earthquake until I saw the cat cowering in the corner and the windows in the apartment building across from me waning back and forth.

Last night was the most peculiar thing about the earthquake. Clearly no one in Nanchong had experienced anything like this. Understandably it was quite a shock. When I went to go meet Li Jia Li at the middle gate of the school, students were already leaving their dormitories in hordes and flocking to the playgrounds, stadium, and streets. Most of the people I had talked to explained they were afraid their dormitories would collapse when the next earthquake struck, and had taken to the streets to sleep.

It was actually quite funny, really. It was as if there had been some enormous war and people were forced out onto the streets, forming makeshift refugee camps wherever there was open space. Everyone and their grandmother (literally) was outside last night, rolling out his or her bamboo mat on the ground, a pillow, and a blanket. Out near the dormitories in er qi there was hardly any place to walk around. People stayed up to all hours of the night, some playing dou di zhu, ma jiang, or just talking. Most of the stores never closed (especially those near my house and the middle gate), selling drinks, crackers, and other items that people needed. When I checked the store closest to the middle gate, almost all the drinks and ice cream had been sold and the boss was holding a large plastic bag full of money. Along the street towards the teacher's apartments, people had taken their cars out of the garages, parked them near the stadium, and passed the night sleeping inside. Even I was out there for a bit before I convinced Li Jia Li it was ok to go back inside. Another minor shake that lasted a few seconds took place around 5:00 and we immediately ran outside, but quickly decided to go back indoors when the tiredness hit us again.

This morning people and students were still camped outside, talking and eating food. Classes were canceled for the day, so it'll give me some time to do some work on the site and whatnot. Last night was really something to see though, it was like the great Chinese camp-out.

stupid tv

to get some more information about what was happening in nanchong after the earthquake, i turned on the tv for the first time in several months. i expected to find some sort of live coverage about what was happening; maybe even some pictures of chengdu or nanchong. there were 37 channels, 6 of them repeated, 10 soap operas, 4 specials on china's history, 2 basketball games, 2 reports on the olympics, 2 news program dialogue shows, and 3 previously taped news shows. chinese media has to be the most broadly responsive and entertaining source of information available in the universe. FIRST PRIZE.

wild

just sitting around, thought they were doing some blasting nearby the house as they always do. it didn't stop though. definitely the strongest earthquake i've ever experienced, dwarfing the tiny shakes i'd occasionally feel in chile. being on the first floor probably helped, i can't imagine being some of the students stuck on the eighth floor or anything. after it happened everyone ran out of their buildings (aren't you not supposed to do that?) but so did i. i rode my bike around the campus taking some pictures. i heard a building fell near wu xing. sounds unlikely, but i'll be going downtown to see what happened there in a bit...


----> all the students came out of the dorms
















-----> everyone trying to use their cell phones.
impossible to make a phone call.

2 guys 1 girl

Weird that everything is coming to an end here...

New store on campus: 2 guys and 1 girl. I'm interested to see what it sells. --------------->

-> Chinese words to remember: cai mao shuang quan (attractive girl that knows who che guevara is)

back to some semblance of a routine

The Labor Day break was fantastic. As always with vacation time here, I planned to do much more than I actually accomplished, but it was still a great time. Met some new people, improved some old relationships, practiced my Chinese, and even got a bit of work done. All in all a satisfying break.

The bad news is that I realized today my bike was missing. I had left my keys inside my house yesterday and was forced to climb through the window in my living room. I was so happy that the window was left unlocked and I was able to enter the house that I forgot I had left the bike outside. Ashley was actually away still so if I hadn't been able to get in I would have been stuck on the street. Anyway I went to go meet Xiao Zhao today for lunch and as usual I decided to bike over, but as I looked around the house I quickly realized the bike wasn't there. I asked around the neighborhood if anyone had seen it but unfortunately it's safe to say it's gone. It wasn't even my bike either, a student lent me it a few months ago, and I promised nothing would happen to it. Some of my other students, Loopy primarily, hinted that I would either break it or lose it, but I said it would never happen. Ha. Never underestimate my power to lose something. It was a pretty poor quality bike, one that the student got for free, but I'll have to replace it nevertheless. I loved that little crap bike...

I bought a new cell phone the other day as well. I was doing a thorough cleaning of my house and had the phone tucked in under my shorts. I felt it vibrate so I reached to pick it up to see who was calling at which point I fumbled it and it fell into the well of the squat toilet, circled for a brief second and then dropped into the black abyss that is the squat toilet pipe. Luckily, someone at the last party had dropped a plastic cup into the pipe as well so the phone only entered the second stage of Chinese squat toilet hell. I reached in and grabbed it out, but it was missing its back, which cost 45 kuai to replace (the phone was only 200). I decided to pick up a non-toilet phone downtown. There were a number of sales for May Day and I got one for 400 that has a camera (won't use it) English/Chinese dictionary (doesn't work) and the greatest part: a calculator that I can punch in the dates and numbers of my last menstruation and the phone will tell me subsequent menses.

I'm thinking back to last week when, according to Sarah, I pulled off the greatest magic trick yet; the Li Jia Li Ting Ting switch. Guess it was kind of cool. They missed each other by mere seconds.

I actually went over to Ting Ting's house this afternoon. I met up with her after she got back from Beijing and we went to eat some noodles at this place near Unimart. We went back to her house for a bit so I could check out her place and meet her dog (a super energetic pug that loved me more than the family). Her parents were perhaps the most spontaneously kind Chinese people I've met here. The immediately made some watered-down coffee for me and gave me a tour of the house (smelled like moth balls). It was quite big and well furnished, but still strangely designed in that Chinese-house way. The dining room and couch area, as in most houses here, is the first area you walk into and usually isn't separated by wall, it's like one enormously long stretch of hallway. It sort of looks more appropriate in my house because I don't really have a dining room, but strange when it's fully decorated and there's no transition between each section.

Ting Ting's parents asked me if I enjoyed the coffee and of course I said I did, at which point they asked me if I drank coffee in America, and I said sometimes, but in China I don't usually. Why not?
Oh, because Chinese green tea is soooo good.
Really? Let's give you some green tea, here drink this!
Ok I'll drink it! Thanks!
An Wen is really good at doing magic tricks..
Not really (ok I'll do one....)
Wow, can you do that with our cards?
Yes! Here let me do one more.

The conversation continued like this until we talked about what the parents do. They were both teachers, but now work for the Nanchong government (I'm still not exactly sure in what capacity) but I explained that in some respect I also work for my government, but I'm not as enthusiastic about the policies of mine. They explained that China also was not very good and that there are a lot of poor people. I said that in 25-30 years, China would surpass the US (a line that I've recently used a lot here - cha bu duo 25-30 nian hou, zhong guo hui chao guao mei guo. zhong guo ren min de yi bei zi yi nian bi yi nian hao le <- also a good one). They disagreed but I explained the development of China's economy is faster than the US will ever be again. It's tough to believe that people who lived through the 60s and 70s in China (Ting Ting's parents and most Nanchongren for example) would ever doubt that times have improved, and will improve, so greatly in such a short period of time.

They ended up giving me a fan that the father had painted his own calligraphy on, and a few Nanchong tourist maps that Ting Ting had modeled for apparently. Ting Ting is older than I am, and she's not yet hit that point where she's visibly aging, but the pictures of her from when she was 20 or 21 are much more flattering.

My mom would be pleased to know this, too, as an advocate against bottle feeding infants. According to the Nanchong tourist map, "Jialing River, slowly flowing down to south from Qinling Mountains breast-feeds all living things on the bank like a kind mother." It continues.... "The people of Nanchong living by the side of Jialing River for generations, suckling prime and taking nimbus widely of the mother river, create Jialing River civilization and superinduce extraordinary splendour for the Chinese nation." <-- I can personally attest to taking nimbus in Nanchong...

Waited for a while to see Li Jia Li but she was working late. She works everyday. It's sort of egregious. It's incredibly interesting seeing the differences and similarities between the two though. Can't figure out which one is more with it. Pictures of both coming soon. Ugh.. So much to do tomorrow.

Also, congratulations to this blog, which now ranks #4 on google for searches of "gap catalogue".

guevara

I would say the vast majority of people; my students and teachers included have absolutely no idea who Che Guevara is. I suppose in the grand scheme of things he's not that relevant within Chinese society, but he's definitely an important historical figure that everyone should know. Especially if you're in a communist country. Xiao Zhao can't recognize the poster on the door of my apartment as the overused image of Che with scraggly hair and the black hat, but then again she thought the capital of the US was New York. Jason knew who it was, but he's also a history major, so I'd be even more shocked if he didn't. I actually don't think I could go out with someone who didn't know even the most basic knowledge about him.

Che visited China twice, once in 1960 and again in 1965 to meet in Chairman Mao regarding trade with Cuba and the role of the Soviet Union which competed with China for influence. They're both incredibly gifted guerrilla fighters who successfully employed similar tactics to bring about the revolution. While their individual ideologies regarding the role of government (leadership and foreign policy) differed greatly in terms of how the revolutionary policies would be instituted and what role the lower class (industrial workers, peasants, farmers etc..) would play in bringing about social change, they were both essentially Marxists (Guevara perhaps more so) with a sprinkle of Lenin. On a personal level they were both members of the middle class (not a surprise for a revolutionary - who else has time to sit around and contemplate stuff?) and enjoyed discussing history and pao niu-ing... (Wow I had a lot of parentheses in that paragraph)

Wu Yi Jie kuai le...