just another tuesday

Class today was as usual. Morning 8:00. Got there two minutes late because I was cutting up the pieces of paper to play "taboo" with the students and couldn't find my scissors. Then I had to carry the bicycle up six flights of stairs... Oh well. I feel like most of my classes in the morning (and in the afternoon to some degree, too) don't get started until the second period. Almost all the students don't know what is going to happen in the class yet, so they don't know how to position themselves or interpret the information. I like not being predictable. It distances me from the other teaching styles that the students have gotten for 15 years. Yeah, a syllabus would be worthwhile and probably make keeping a schedule much easier, but who's really planning their timetables weeks or months in advance? Things change in China so frequently (especially plans) that it's practically impossible to follow a real strict course syllabus. I realized that very early on in my Peace Corps service.

My class is actually relatively worthless (it receives one credit point) compared to the other courses that are weighted much more heavily in terms of their credit worth. I don't mind that, really. If anything it makes my job easier as I'm not bound to really drill the students to reach some vague and meaningless goal in their English learning. Each week I do my best to present them with a new and contrasting world view, teaching style/methodology, and a fresh concept that they hadn't thought about before. I feel oral English is meant to be fun; like the jazz band part of high school where you've been in history or science or math for the last three hours and for the next period you take out your saxophone and play some hip jazz charts. I hope students come to my class with that feeling; not necessarily of fear, regret, or anger, but of relaxation and curiosity.

After class I came back home and called up Ting Ting. We decided to meet at McDonald's again at which point we hit up a small restaurant near Wu Xing. It wasn't that great, and way overpriced considering the quality, but so are the restaurants near the city center. The tables weren't even high enough to put your legs under so I had to sit awkwardly with my feet crossed to the left of my chair. I never understand why there's such a prevalence of short tables at restaurants.

We decided to hit up a movie and went to the movie theater near the clothing district. Ting Ting thought the movie would have been in English with Chinese subtitles, but it wasn't. I was actually happy about that because I've been trying to immerse myself in Chinese as much as possible lately and focusing on the movie was actually good practice. I couldn't follow much of the intricacies of the plot (it was a terrorist thriller with a super attractive female secret agent lead), but I know it ended in Kuala Lumpur and also took place in France, Italy, and Norway... I'm trying to find the name now, but can't for some reason. It's definitely not an old movie. It was pretty awful though, typical Hollywood garbage, but entertaining. At a few points in the movie, the female lead dresses scantily clad and answers the door in a towel. She asks the stranger to help her fasten the bra clasp behind her back. At this point Ting Ting asks me if this is common in your country...

Just found the name - Kod apokalipsisa. Apparently it's a Russian movie so it wouldn't have mattered if it wasn't dubbed or not. On a side note though, who the hell prefers a dubbed movie? Isn't there a good deal of acting in one's voice? Are we that of a degenerate group of people that we're not able to read subtitles? I can imagine someone thinking to himself, "Fuck subtitles, just let me listen to dialogue in my native language so I don't have to scan the bottom of the screen for a direct translation. I gain nothing from hearing the real actor or actresses voice. Please save me from this grueling mental obligation and strip the movie of any artistic quality it had previous to the butchering of the original production. I prefer images and sounds I can instantly recognize. Oh, and while you're at it, please bring me a copy of Maria Callas in Carmen (voiced over by some Chinese woman), an original Salvador Dali (painted over by some Chinese artist) and To Kill a Mockingbird (rewritten by some Chinese author)."

Here's what Pagliacci would look like:

Ugh so annoying. I'd really like to hear a legitimate argument for dubbing.

Anyway, hit up Tian Shang afterwards and met up with Julien, Durf, Sarah, Tan Ce Tian, She Jian, and the rest of the crew. Ting Ting came along for a bit, everyone had a good time dancing around. Grabbed some Lanzhou noodles and came back home.

Just another Tuesday in Nanchong.

lo que yo amo de chile

un e-mail del Victor Hugo:
-----
Hola muchachos, nunca mando ni reenvío ni pesco la verdad este tipo de cosas que me llegan, pero esta se pasó. veánlo y descubran qué clase de mierdas gobiernan este país.
http://www.coyotefilms.tv/
-----

la personalidad y creatividad de un chileno solito...

loud party remix

What a strange night...

loud party!

Loud party.. TONIGHT.

Also ran in the "sports competition" this morning the 100m, and didn't finish last wooh! I didn't Zhu Bin though, which was a disappointment. Ashley did the javelin and shot put. For some reason the people doing the javelin don't run when they throw. They stand stationary and hurl the javelin as if it were a chopstick.

That's all for today.

loud party

Went loud party shopping today. Hit up Xi Men market for some odds and ends to add to the costume. I'll most likely be going to Chengdu on Friday to get my camera back from the DHL office. It'll be, good god, the third week in a row I'll be going to Chengdu. AND I'll be going the week after as well. I need a camera though seeing as the pictures from the loud party will be well worth the trip. The Nanchong folk have abandoned the rules of secrecy in the hope of defeating the Chengdu-ers in the costume contest. Winner takes home a big bag of chocolate peanuts from Chuan Bei. I'll also be performing a new trick I've been working on. I definitely shouldn't have hyped this trick up as much as I did, but it's pretty cool, even if I may say so myself. Part of the trick will be dedicated to my parents for sending me the materials, as well as Pinball (my American cat who recently passed away) because he definitely would have enjoyed watching this. Xiao Qiang actually liked it too much and messed my first attempt up.

Xiao Qiang zui jin shi zai shi tai tiao pi le! The little bastard meows all the time at night, has been scratching up my screen door. Today I came back home and found a snickers bar half-eaten on the floor of my apartment. I thought cats and dogs couldn't eat chocolate, but this one can. There are chocolate crumbs everywhere. At least he's got good taste.

Tomorrow is the "sports meeting" at Xi Hua. I don't think I've ever done a long jump in my life. I can rock a 100m pretty solidly (I think), maybe 200m as well.

Showed a number of different movies to my classes this week seeing as their probably all fretting about the TEM-4 on Sunday morning. Rushmore, Mean Girls, and Rocket Science were among the three I showed this week. One student put her head down during Rushmore. Who falls asleep during Rushmore? I lost a lot of respect for this person; not that I had a lot to begin with, but you probably know who he or she is. If you don't, ask me later.

Ugh, I STILL have yet to transfer over the website from Xi Hua Online to the school servers. I've been sooooo out of it recently, interested in other things (ie anything other than work, really) and a lot of my obligations have taken back seat. Bu hao, phil, bu hao..

sundays

Got back from Chengdu last night. Instead of hitting up Tian Shang as usual (there was some party there last night, which means no dance floor and millions of people), decided to meet up with Ting Ting. It was about 10:30 when we finally got together at McDonald's. Got a medium #6! Halfway through the meal, Ting Ting's dad showed up and we ended up talking. I couldn't
understand much of what he was saying through the heavily accented Sichuanhua, but no worries, it was a great time nonetheless.

He wrote a number of Li Bai poems on some of the McDonald's napkins in beautiful calligraphy. He wrote them in traditional Chinese poem format. Top-to-bottom and right-to-left with the author's name and a message in a smaller font on the left of the poem. 

For example:
m    11  6 1
m    12  7 2
m     13 8 3 
m    14  9 4
m  15  10 5

m being author's name and personal message. Each message was for "Mei guo peng you an wen".

side note: Just finished watching "Jumper" what an awful movie...

Anyway, on Thursday there was a speech contest for non-English majors (biology department) which I attended as a judge. I like going to see these things, despite the bad reputation they have for being boring and incredibly repetitive. Usually when you're a judge you get a little present, not necessary, but a nice perk for being there. They are also a curious little parts of Chinese culture you can pull from each speech.

The topic for this last contest was "The Olympics". Here are the speech names (spelling errors not corrected):

The Olympic Companion I Go
What Can We Do for the 2008
The Hreo of the Olympic
Color the Olympic
Go with Olympic Game
(First five speeches part of the group entitled "Olympics Come to My Home")

On Our Way to the 2008 Olympic Games
My Dream of2008 Olympic Games
OLympic Games and Me
Something in My Mind
What Shuld We Do About Olympic Games
(Second five speeches part of the group entitled "Be Going on of Olympics")

Let's Hold Together
Under the Blu Sky of Beijing the Capital of China
Time For Action
Olympic is Coming
The Olympic Chang Us
(Third five speeches part of the group entitled "We Meet in Being Jing 2008")

Almost every speech mentioned the motto of the 2008 Olympics: A green, high-tech, people's Olympics. There was a clear emphasis on the "green" aspect of the Olympics, and many contestants called on other students to be more responsible when it came to throwing away garbage, turning out the lights, and recycling plastic bottles.

The frequent mention of the environment is pertinent on a number of levels. Perhaps the most positive sign is that people on a micro in Western Sichuan are beginning to really pay attention to the environment and understand some of the ways to improve the increasingly moribund environmental situation in China.

I think it's easy for the environment to be targeted in China because the problem and solution are easily laid on the shoulders of the people, rather than a centralized authority. One can blame themselves or their peers much more easily for the ruined environment than the government or a governmental policy. Chinese people certainly has no lack of history when it comes to targeting
their peers when they think they've done anything wrong...

plazas

Met Ting Ting for dinner yesterday. I wish I could take some pictures but my camera is still MIA. If it's not here by this weekend I'll get another one, as the Nanchong contingent will be hitting up Chengdu again to visit Sarah in the hospital. I need to have one for the loud party. Absolutely necessary.

Anyway, before dinner, I suggested walking around Bei Hu park. My suggestion was apparently ridiculous for a person like myself to make, and she called me an old man. I remember back in Chile when going to the plaza de armas or somewhere in Santiago or Talagante was cool. People went there just to walk around or hang out. If anything, the central plaza was a place for young people to meet or hold some celebrations during various festivals; not an activity restricted to old folk.

The loud party is next weekend the 19th. People advised to wear their loudest, craziest costumes. Anything you would never wear on a daily basis is acceptable. People not wearing costumes will not be admitted. It will be the greatest party we've had so far. More later.

My kid could paint that

Just finished watching My Kid Could Paint That. An interesting documentary. Starts out really optimistic, but it's pretty clear that by the end the film maker realizes the whole thing is some varying degree of fraud. It doesn't go as deep as I would have liked it to into any definite conclusion, but still a good watch nonetheless for 6 kuai (80 cents).

April Fools

Haha...

I got a text message from Sarah yesterday morning saying:
"I don't think I can go to the club tonight, I'm in the hospital"

And I initially get really worried, what's wrong with her?

Then I realize OH it's April Fool's. She's just joking around. Why else would she mention the fact that she couldn't go the club. Not true.

I send her a message back saying, "I'm coming downtown to see you, which hospital are you at?"

No answer.

I send her another message, "I'm downtown now, where are you?"

At this point I expect her to admit the April Fool's joke and tell me not to come, at which point giving me the win, but she replies finally, "I'm on my way to Chengdu, I need surgery."

I think, So! You want to one up me on this one now? I then answer her, "Are you serious? I'm canceling my classes to come up and make sure you're ok." This will get her now! She'll have to admit the joke.

She sends me a message back, "I'm at Hua Xi hospital near Aaron's school."

I answer her, "I'll be there in three hours, can I bring you anything?"

She replies, "Thanks. Maybe a book or something."

So at this point I've also told Ashley about what's happening and she agrees that Sarah's just joking around. We decide that Ashley is going to call Sarah from a public phone and pretend to be the Peace Corps medical officer and ask Sarah what's wrong in order to get her to admit that it's a joke. Ashley and I figure it's the knockout punch we need to end this.

Ashley calls Sarah on her cell phone and they begin talking. Ashley's voice is dead on and I can't help but laughing. She keeps her cool pretty well though; definitely believable. Ashley asks Sarah who's at the hospital with her. Sarah says that Dr. Gao and Dr. Jo (the PC medical officer) are with her. Ok, so we figure the gig is up and that Sarah probably knew it was Ashley. We conclude that there's no way though that Dr. Jo was with Sarah at that moment though.

Ashley decides she's going to call Durf and just make sure everything's ok. I say goodbye to her and go back to my house for a pre-class xiu xi. I get a phone call a few minutes later from Ashley explaining that Sarah's in Chengdu and is going to get some surgery done within the next couple days. Durf is surprised that we have not left for Chengdu yet.

Oops.

We're going on Friday morning to see her.

unblocked!

Blogspot's finally been unblocked and I'm able to post again. For the longest time I was unable to get into blogspot AND blogger. Since coming to China I'd been able to get into blogger (which allowed me to post but not see the blog), but not into blogspot. Since January or so access to both had been restricted. Anyway, here's the first post in a long time.

Just got back from dinner and KTV with a couple people I met at McDonald's at 1:30 last Friday. It was a weird initial encounter at McDonald's. Our usual group (Sarah, Durf, Xiao Zhao, Jason) and I were hitting up a post game run. While I was ordering I noticed a guy next to me looking at me uncomfortably. He would tilt is head over quite conspicuously and then glance back at the menu on the counter when I looked back over at him. Usually when people do this they want to ask a question and it's a good sign for me to start a conversation.

At this point in time though it was a tad bit late, and I was tired and not in the best of states. I normally engage anyone who gives me the curious glance-over, but at 1:30 in McDonald's after going to Tian Shang, I just wanted some food and a bed. I knew it was inevitable; people that do the glance-over more than twice usually have a high level of curiosity and will probably not let you go without asking some questions in simple Chinglish.

It started with the typical "Where are you come from?" Before I could answer I made my order and the guy was absolutely amazed I spoke Chinese. Now don't get me wrong, I'm confident about my Chinese now, especially when it comes to small talk, but I'll reiterate that 1:30 at McDonald's after Tian Shang made me feel shaky. We started to have a conversation then about what I was doing here and how much money I made etc.. All the usuals.

Enter cute girl and other guy. After ordering and answering a few of glance guy's questions, a quite attractive girl and some other guy also came up and decided to ask their own series of questions. So there I was, in a circle of Chinese people at 1:30 AM after coming from Tian Shang, and suddenly I had to kick up my brain into professional-Peace Corps conversation mode. Eventually I was asked for my phone number, at which point it occurred to me that I should probably give these people a fake number, except that cute girl was pretty cute, and all three of them weren't obnoxious or anything, so I decided to stick to the real one.

Anyway, cute girl called me on Monday and asked me if I had any free time, so I told her Wednesday I did. To tell you the truth, I actually didn't remember exactly what she looked like, except I'd put some money on the fact that she was probably Chinese. Anyway, we decided to meet at the McDonald's again. --Would this be another medium number six???-- I met her and she assumed I wanted to go to McDonald's to dine on fine American cuisine. I asked her if she wouldn't mind going to Yi Dian Wei, one of the nicer restaurants in Nanchong that serves some interesting Chinese-style dishes with some Japanese/American ingredients (I think...) Anyway, she was down. I almost went into McDonald's and got the medium number six for nostalgia sake, but I thought better of it.

The meal wasn't bad. I had thought it would be awkward, and actually I had half expected our meeting to be a repeat of when a girl called me and it turned out to be a 11-year-old, but it was cool. Got the usual bullshit out of the way first, then just joked around. It reminded me a lot of Chile in a way, going to a restaurant with some random person and speaking only a few words in English. Halfway through eating at Yi Dian Wei, other guy from McDonald's came and sat down with us. Turns out the guy wasn't her boyfriend as I had initially thought, but a close friend. She referred to him as "Xiao Di Di". Xiao Di Di is actually a slang word for penis, so when I explained why I had started laughing, they also thought it was quite funny...

After dinner, they had planned to go to other guy's friend's birthday party at a KTV joint near Wu Xing. Haha, I should say again that I have probably spent less than thirty minutes with these people all together, but yet it seemed perfectly natural for me to go with them to other guy's friend's birthday party. Why not? First we stopped over at Hao Li and picked up a cake for the friend. The full cake was ready in about ten minutes from ordering to leaving. Icing, message, decorations on top.. everything in ten minutes. I remember having to wait a day or so to order a cake in the US...

So we got to KTV and went in the room. Initial surprise of the foreigner is clearly visible. People are shy and awkward, some not making eye contact at first. Cute girl (Ting Ting) instructs me to sit down. I stand and greet everyone then take a seat. I hear people asking if I can speak Chinese and what I'm doing here. (That second question is actually quite legitimate, probably couldn't answer it myself). I get some phone call from my counterpart teacher saying there was a basketball game tomorrow. Oops, I got class. Can't go! (What a bummer... not!) Ok, thanks for letting me know. (Why couldn't she let me know about the Bolivian ambassador coming? THANKS Xi Hua Wai Ban...). Get back into the KTV room, toast a few times. Instructed not to drink so much. Instruct cute girl that a few mini glasses isn't much. Initial surprise has for the most part dimished. Offered cigarette. Turned down. Cute girl toasts me with Pepsi; she doesn't drink. People passing around a clear glass plate with stuff (yeah you all know what it is) on top. Cute girl says I don't want any, says that stuff is bad. Stand up to answer another phone call from counterpart. Told when every future basketball game is. Return to KTV room. Sing Yue Liang Dai Biao Wo De Xin with cute girl. Few claps. I go to bathroom, come back. Outside of the door, cute girl explains she wants to go. I say it's ok, we haven't been here that long. People come out of the KTV room and ask what's going on. Cute girl says I want to go. I think WTF? She says we'll dance for a little bit, then leave. We get back into the KTV room and two guys have taken their shirt off and the strobe light is on. Cute girl gives me evil eye for some reason. I ask her if she wants to go. We dance for two minutes then exit. Other guy comes also. Where to?

We hit up McDonald's as the only open place we can sit down and chill. It's around 11:00 at this point. I offer to pay for McDonald's as it's the equivalent of the American embassy. I'm not sure if they understood the analogy, but I'm denied anyway AGAIN. We sit around and talk for 45 minutes and then leave. They come with me back to Xi Hua (for who knows what reason) and pay for the entire taxi to my door.

A fun time...

thinking back

I was recently going through these old pictures from Chile in 2005 and I stumbled across one that was taken of Karina, myself, and some morning TV host that did a brief show at estacion central. You had to eat some CRAZY food that wasn't revealed to you until after, and hesitantly I took a bite. It ended up being silk worms, but in retrospect, after being in China, there's nothing I wouldn't eat. Hell, silk worms dipped in la jiao sauce are appetizers here. I've had pig brain, cow stomach, duck intestine, just to name a few (countless times). Silk worms?? Don't make me laugh, Chile...

Meanwhile in Nanchong, we've recently become stars at the new local club Tian Shang Ren Jian (a piece of heaven). We're pampered and attention is lavished on us by the staff. Oh, but how can we ever repay them for such a service? We dance around on the lighted stage for ten minutes, then return to the bar and resume being pampered. It's a tough, tough life.

It's actually quite fun doing this. Certainly being the center of the club isn't something most people are accustomed to. Chinese people can't dance as well as those in Latin America, and most of my moves, moves which I predominantly learned when going to "el establo" or "calle suecia" or "providencia" in Santiago have paid off innumerably. I've really discovered there are only a two kind of Chinese dance moves:

-The circle: The circle isn't bad. I shouldn't badmouth the circle. It's just when a few people hold hands and awkwardly raise their hands up and down not even in sync with the rhythm, it can get old quite fast. It's incredibly popular though, perhaps because you're there with your friends and no one is really sure what to do or how to act.
-The rock: I think the rock is perhaps most popular with the girls. I see a few guys doing it occasionally, but the rock is much more common with the female clubbers. It basically entails a girl with hands clenched, arms unextended, head shaking back and forth, hips moving ever so slightly. If you can imagine one of those boxing puppets that kids play with just sort of jerking from side to side, you've got the rock.
-The punch: The punch is the rock's younger sibling. It's the same body stance as the rock with fists clenched, but instead of keeping the arms stationary, they extend outwards in a punching motion. It's not a full punch either, it's just a casual half-uppercut. Right hand goes out on the up beat, left on the down beat and so on.

The whole club scene is different to begin with, too. I mean most people in the US go to the club to meet new people, have some drinks, etc... In China, the club is a place you go with some close friends, largely stick to yourself, most likely not dance, and leave before 12:00. Now, I should mention this is Nanchong, Sichuan province, not Shanghai. It's even different in Chengdu where clubs stay open until 4 or 5:00. It's not uncommon though here to see a group of guys sleeping on the couches or looking bored while observing the other people. I think KTV is still the predominant choice in terms of late night entertainment where you go with a small group of friends and get a private room where socialization with the unknown is kept to a minimum. With the birth of Tian Shang Ren Jian, the club scene in Eastern Sichuan takes a dramatic step in the right direction. Or perhaps it's westernization that's taking a step forward... Whether or not it's in the right direction is up for debate. I believe it is...

exams

It's exam time here. I never really noticed it until this semester but in all of the trash cans around campus there are these super tiny slips of paper, maybe one inch by one half of an inch long. The Chinese characters written on the paper are tinier than I can even describe. I tried taking some pictures of the ones I found around the teaching building, but they don't do it justice. I definitely couldn't write English this small. Some good cheaters out here...

ok, back

So nice to be done with the day. On Tuesdays I teach four one-and-a-half hour classes from 8:00 in the morning until 5:40 in the afternoon separated by a three hour break for lunch and whatnot in the middle of the day. Exhausting...

The following day I have another 8 AM class and a lecture in the afternoon, but compared with Tuesday it's a breeze. Thursday I feel is my most relaxing day. Office hours at 9:30, two classes in the afternoon, and an evening lecture. The lectures I'm giving are part of my class on American culture which is the third leg of a class consisting of a broad overview of culture, British culture, and my section.

I absolutely love giving these lectures as opposed to my oral English classes. In those classes I never feel I can really grasp what the students will latch onto or really enjoy participating in. I'm always having to come up with these weird discussion activities that direct the students to interact with each other and then with me and then back with each other again. It's especially difficult to try and monitor 45 20-year-old students at 8 AM who look like they just rolled out of bed.

Anyway I really enjoy giving these lectures because I can really just put on a good show. And I use the word show because that's exactly what I'm doing. I'm not forced to do these stupid games or design inane conversation activities. I get on stage, load up my powerpoint, and expound on American culture 90 minutes. It's exhilarating, really, to see 200 students in one classroom listen intently about the rise of racism in the post-bellum South. I had the chance to observe the previous two teachers who taught the first two parts of the course, both of whom will remain nameless. They are great teachers, knowledgeable in their fields, but their presentation was amazingly uninteresting. They stood for 90 minutes, perhaps shifting their feet a few times, reading almost word for word from a powerpoint with black text on blank white slides, complex vocabulary words, and obscure cultural concepts. In some ways I'm the one eyed man in the land of the blind, but I put everything I have into the classes and I know it shows.

The last class I covered the 1800s in America, focusing on manifest destiny, the Civil War, and immigration/America as a melting pot. I could have done a lecture on each one of those topics alone but seeing as I only have four more classes and I know the students are more interested in contemporary times, I'm hurrying through the early American years. The first lecture I gave on Wednesday was a bomb (though still better than the other teachers if I may say so) as the electricity was off (some generator was blown or something, the entire campus was dark) and I had to talk for 90 minutes about the 1800s with only some chalk. The following day I gave the same lecture to the other half of the junior class and completely rocked. Singing "America the Beautiful" (again, to a class of 200+ students) and throwing different colors of chalk into a big metal bowl and stirring it up might have been the highlights.

Other highlights:
-Mass groaning upon viewing a picture of Chinese workers on the Transcontinental railroad.
-A student coming up to me (actually my fault on the oversight) after class and saying that one of my slides had a picture of the Hong Kong flag and not the Chinese flag. I had just copied and pasted different flags and made a compilation. Stupidly one of the flags I chose was the HK flag. I was advised that HK was part of China. I advised that I knew and apologized.
-Shocks and gasps at pictures of KKK members marching near the Capitol building.

Tomorrow I'll be tackling the early 1900s and up until WWII, and in the next class the civil rights movement and transitioning into the present day. I wish I could teach the class again next semester, but alas it's only one semester.

About 18 people came to my office yesterday, more than there were enough chairs for, and people were even turned away. It was the most people I've ever had at office hours, and we played some interesting games that I need to remember to write down so I don't forget them. Good fun though.

I'll be updating more frequently now that my computer seems to like blogger.com... We'll see if it lasts...

jenga

playing jenga... will update soon.

Hanoi

Will be back in Nanchong soon. Posting from the airport in Ho Chi Minh City. Cambodia and Vietnam have both been a blast. More later.

peacecorpsjournals.com??

For some reason I've been getting a lot of hits from a site peacecorpsjournals.com. I'm not sure who runs the site or how this blog got listed there, but I'm up on the top of the list for the moment under China PC blogs. Not sure what people visiting this blog expect to find, but if anyone has any questions you're welcome to e-mail me at parnheim-at-gmail.com...

welcome to the working week

Week one down, 16 more to go. They say the second year of PC service goes faster than the first, and going in with a burst of confidence has seemed to make all the difference in my classes. This semester I'm teaching seven sections of oral English and two sections of American culture. Luckily for me I've moved away from the juniors and now exclusively teach the sophomores. There's a new PC volunteer coming soon and I'll be starting up xihuaonline.com again in a couple weeks.

The freshmen students arrived yesterday to campus. They'll be spending the next three weeks doing army training before they start class officially after "Golden Week" (National Day - October 1st). It's easy to spot a freshman. Aside from the fact that they look generally younger than the other students at the school, they have that apprehensiveness and caution that you'd only expect someone leaving home for the first time to have. They tend to congregate around the middle gate standing awkwardly talking and noting as discreetly as possible that there's a foreigner standing nearby. Ah freshman year.. They'll be practicing marching, various drills, exercises, and how to fire a rifle. It culminates with a big ceremony on the track field where the students march around shouting various Chinese salutes and military leaders walk around looking impressed.

I read recently in the Peace Corps newsletter that a volunteer recently had a surge of patriotism after having served. What is there to be patriotic of today? What could I possibly be proud about in terms of the state of affairs of contemporary America? I spread an image of the US that is never represented in foreign policy nor by any of the leaders of the country. I don't hesitate to tell people what America is "really" like (interestingly enough an image of China that is rarely reciprocated). In the grand scheme of things though it's quite meaningless. Most Chinese don't walk around thinking about geopolitical theory so snap judgments about the US are all that really matter; in which case answering questions about how pretty our women are and how much money we make in a month is as patriotic as it usually gets.

back to school

Tomorrow's the first day of the new semester. I finally got my schedule today, less than 24 hours before I have to teach my first class.

pig$

Today was the first day back in Nanchong. I'll get to writing about my travels in Shandong (eastern mountain) and Shanxi (western mountain) soon, but today was worth noting.

I went to go get dinner with Jason (one of my good friends here). He noted that the price of pork had gone way up ("helicoptered" as he put it) since last semester. Meat is as a whole usually more expensive here, but nothing too excessive. Prices on the menus at university restaurants were blacked out and written over with new prices, many upwards of 20 yuan. $3 isn't a lot to pay for a well made pork dish, but given that it usually costs 10~12 yuan, a 50% increase is considerable.

We weren't able to come to a definitive answer as to what caused the increase. Inflation was certainly a possibility. The new pig virus was another, but it didn't seem like there was any sort of concern from people eating or the bosses. I asked Jason how many did he think actually knew that there was a vicious virus affected one of the biggest pork producing areas in China, and he suspected that very few had any idea. All in all some scary information. I'll be staying off the pig brain for a while. (Here's the article from the Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/16/business/worldbusiness/16pigs.html).

We also talked the role of Confucius in Chinese society. I was surprised that when visiting Qufu (Confucius' hometown) and areas around Shandong province there were so many temples dedicated to worshiping him. Confucius himself was a philosopher, not a religious person by any means. He never postulated any deities or gave any indication that he himself believed in a god. The way he is followed, however, is almost likened to making offerings at a Buddhist shrine.

What Confucius did was create a mildly successful social order that (depending on whom you talk to) had a limited impact on shaping modern China. It should be noted that Mao targeted Confucianism (among other philosophies and religions) as an outdated way of thinking and destroyed numbers of Confucian temples. I equated Confucius worship with that of Marx saying that each were respectively equally influential in their times and certainly moved Chinese society in a different direction. I argued that it would be preposterous though for me to go to a temple and make an offering or pray to a Karl Marx statue. In many ways though, Confucius is the founder of an emergent China in the middle ages and Marx is the founder of a modern China that has become emergent within the last century. Confucius lived around 2,500 years ago; will there be a Marx temple in China in another 2,400 years?

at tai'an

So we've arrived in Tai'an, home of the Tai Miao and Taishan, respectively the holiest sites of Taoism. Tomorrow we'll hit up the sites and afterwards make our way to Qufu. I managed to get the 280 kuai hotel room down to 150. The clerk actually accepted my offer quicker than I had expected, which also makes me believe I could have gotten it down even further. It's a nice room and perhaps one of the best I've stayed in China, and for 150 split between Simon and I, it's not a bad deal.

Qingdao was a unique city within China with regards to the architecture and the city itself. But more on that later. Out of the wangba and into the fire.