Upsidedown and Backwards

Monday, July 19
Today we started our career week unit. This goes better with our motto, “You are the builder of our dreams; you are the master of your destiny,” more directly than biomes or world cultures. We have been told that the Chinese parents are extremely interested in the career topic. As far as we understand, Chinese children usually have very little choice of careers. They often have a responsibility to their family to find the highest paying job, for example. At the same time, they take high-stakes tests at certain points during their schooling which determine whether they can continue on in certain educational tracks which limits their job choices.

One of our Chinese teachers, when asked how Chinese people decide on a career, said that the parents really decide, but they do discuss it with the child. So we are having our students take the Holland Codes Career Inventory, and it is unclear to me whether parents think this is great because there is a shift towards greater personal choice in this generation and this economic level (apparently our camp is kind of expensive), or if the parents think this is a great tool to more effectively guide their children on a career path. I am imagining scenarios lilke, “Remember that test you took when you were ten? It says you are supposed to be a _____! Of course you cannot change!” I’m not sure this will work as well cross-culturally as we hope.

I also am not sure how it will work well because what we are supposed to teach in a week would normally be done over a much longer period of time. And also, as the performance teacher (even though performance is language-based and pictures are critical for teaching second languages), I received a very small set of tremendously useful career pictures to have in the room—six pictures including explosives operative (the dynamite makes this one pretty clear), environmental analyst (a person looking at the dirt they are standing on—that should be easy to explain), and auto mechanic and a conductor. My family is full of excellent auto mechanics, but it seems like it may not be the first choice for striving parents who tend to be managers, doctors, and according to my students, “do computers.”

My roommate Patti, who is the performance teacher for the next level up, received mime and blacksmith in her small set of pictures.

I seem to be making a habit of getting involved in projects that have more vision than effective or even realistic implementation plans. Americorps and my semester in Czechoslovakia, among others, had similar issues. It is making me think that perhaps my next career can be as a professional troubleshooter. You run me through your venture and I will tell you what is wrong with it.

Of course, everyone says, but aren’t the children great! Of course they are cute and great and all. Here is a picture of me and A1, the youngest and least experienced English speakers of the group.

However, individual teachers making up for the dysfunctionalities of any educational system is not a viable long-term plan.

In other news, Ann and Susan and I went for a great walk after dinner. We wandered down a street we had never been down before. We saw groups of men playing cards on the sidewalk and lots of babies. We found the new police station and a lottery storefront. We had cookies at a bakery and found a pharmacy with many things labeled in English, but of course not the things anyone was looking for. We could have gotten ground up starfish or rattlesnake, if we’d wanted it, however.

Where the street dead-ended, there were many people gathered around the entrance to a building. We peered up a very steep flight of stairs into a bright, shiny stall-type mall building! We walked up to poke around. More clothing in the asymmetrical, layered, light-weight style that I am very enamored of here—we had to look more. I tried on a dress that was too small, which is usually the case here. Then I tried on a light jacket that fit! The tag said 128 yuan (about $20), so I reached for my wallet.
“No, no!” said the three store clerks. (Three store clerks in a store about the size of my bed, by the way.) One pulled out the calculator and typed in 100.

“Fine.” I said, pulling a 100 yuan note out of my wallet.

“No, no! Now you!” said one clerk, and pushed the calculator at me. I could not have it for that price. I needed to pay them less, apparently. I typed in 80. These people were too nice—I would have paid the higher price, and I didn’t feel good about trying for half price. Though I guess they could have bargained back up.

“Oh, OK.” 80 it was. It kind of sounded like they were disappointed we weren’t going to bargain more, but they all had the most friendly smiles. It was confusing to me.

I walked down the hallway to find Ann and Susan. They had tried to pay full price for a box of tea, so the clerk insisted they take a free tea steeper.

Puzzling, but fun. As we walked home, we paused at a corner to make sure we were going the right way. As we are becoming used to, an English-speaking person rushed up to us to see if could help in any way. This time it was a man who was not actually Chinese. He sounded like he was probably from France.

Susan was thinking that she will try to be more conscientious at home about helping lost tourists. They probably will be more difficult to identify, though. People are definitely reacting to our confused looks, but we are already sticking out pretty dramatically. Shenzhen is a rather new city, full of transplants from all over China, but it seems that everyone is terribly friendly.

There was a lot of shopping this weekend. It began Friday night, when Mr. John the tailor met us at our hotel to see about making custom clothes. I gave him a very poor drawing of a crazy blouse with a lot of asymmetry I have had in my head for a while, and he says he can make it. I can’t wait to see it materialize!

Then, Saturday morning, a large group of us took the bus, then the metro to downtown Shenzhen to the Dongmen Market area. All together, the trip took over an hour. On the bus, we happened to meet a woman who spoke English very well and was going to the same place! This was comforting, since we weren’t exactly sure where we were going, or how the metro ticket machines worked. All of this turned out to be pretty clear, (the bus line we were on ended right at the metro station, for example) but it was nice to have her guide us anyway.

Once we left the metro station, we split up into smaller groups, thank goodness. Trying to navigate anything with a group of 12 people and no leader is pretty difficult, much less crowded, unfamiliar markets when no one really has any idea what is going on and the signs are mostly only in Chinese. My roommate Patti and I went with Susan, a retired teacher and administrator from Carlsbad who travels for much of the year. Susan is not very good with directions, but she’s great about walking up to people and finding out information, whether they speak English or not.

Outside the shops in Dongmen. Yes, I am standing next to a turtle with a dragon's head!

The markets are buildings filled with small stall type shops of similar type things. One area (sometimes a whole building, or a floor, or a hallway) was all clothes, another bags, another electronics, and so on. (And shops is really too strong of a word.) The first thing I bought was an Asian/80’s style tunic shirt with superfluous zippers. I was a little too excited about it, and paid full price—40 yuan, or about six dollars. If the salespeople don’t speak English, they tell you how much things are by showing the numbers on a calculator or their cell phone. When I started to walk away from the next thing I was interested and the lady waved the calculator in my face, saying “How much? How much?” I remembered this was the place to bargain. I typed in half the quoted price, as recommended in the guide books, and we went back and forth.

Then we figured out that some places don’t bargain. The only way I could tell for mostly sure was if I tried to walk away, they either follow, yelling, “It’s beautiful. OK? OK,” or they ignore you. Also, if a price was posted or marked, which it usually wasn’t, then it seemed pretty firm.

As the day went on, we found a few places that let us try things on, though most did not. Even though they stretched out the waistband as far as it could possibly go to show that they can even get big enough for us giants, it became quite clear that I should not buy anything I could not try on, since nearly everyone in China really is smaller than me. (Though, from the looks of some of our students and some people I have seen on the streets, even Chinese people may be trending larger.)

The Hongchi craft center was a very interesting place. It was mostly toys and junk on the first floor, but the second was mostly jade and pearls, which they would string for you. Unfortunately, by this time we were pretty dazed and overwhelmed, so we just wandered past table after table of jade and other beads. Now I wish I had had an interesting piece or two strung. Sorry Mom and Katie. (Susan and I nearly went back on Monday evening, but it’s an hour and a half each way, and we just couldn’t muster the energy.) At the end of this floor, we also stumbled upon a tea tasting at a tea shop. Surrounded by bricks of pressed tea, the proprietor brewed tea, then poured some out on to small statues, stirred the tea, then poured some more out, repeating this many times until it was ready to drink.

After a long day navigating a maze of shops and buildings, we were ready to head back to the metro. As we stood on the corner, trying to triangulate our position based on McDonald’s and KFC, hoping we were looking at the ones marked on the vague map in Patti’s guidebook (there seemed to be more of these fast food places now than when the book was printed), a young Chinese couple saw us looking confused and ran up, asking, “Can we help you?”

The Chinese seem to either not walk anywhere, or they believe that we cannot walk anywhere. We told them we wanted to get to the Metro station. Our conversation was a little awkward:

“Oh. That is not close. Where are you going?”
“We are going to Shekou.” (That is the suburb where we are staying.)
“That is very far.”
“We know. That is why we need to take the metro, and then the bus.”
They eventually sent us in the direction I thought we needed to go anyway (!), but they were quite worried we would not get there, so they wrote in a note in Chinese characters for us that says, “Please tell me how to get to the metro station.” They were so friendly!

We got about a block away from them and saw the first of the most helpful signs I have seen in China yet, green circles with the metro symbol, with an arrow pointing one direction! There was one every block! We didn’t even need to use our note. By the time we got home, I felt like I could get almost anywhere in China! Well, at least back downtown again.

Even though I had to go through customs to get to Macau, it was such a touristy place that this day felt like the first day I was really immersed in China. There are certainly other ways to get to know a country besides shopping, but as a whole day where I spent the majority of it outside our hotel, our chartered bus, and the company of all the rest of the teachers, it felt dramatically different.

At dinner, we eat family style at a round table with a big lazy susan tray in the center. We never order at our hotel’s restaurant, they just start bringing the dishes they are serving that night, usually around ten different ones. They are getting to know us and bringing more vegetables and less meat. We haven’t seen pig knuckles since the second night we were here! For some reason we do not yet understand, rice is usually served at the end of our dinner, after we have finished our vegetable or meat dishes. And often, something sweet and dessert-like will come somewhere in the middle. Last Thursday, they brought out delicious fried dough to dip in sweetened condensed milk, then another vegetable dish, and some rice a bit later. We amused ourselves greatly by joking, “Eat all your donuts, little Chinese children, or there’ll be no rice for you!” or “Finish your dessert, or you’ll go to bed without any rice!”

I’m not actually sure why they still bring us any rice at all. But it wouldn’t be so funny if they stopped.

Sunday, July 18
Today we spent the afternoon at an attraction called Splendid China/China Folk Culture Villages. (see here) It’s a cross between Epcot Center, Colonial Williamsburg, and China. The Folk Culture Villages has buildings and people in costumes from different ethnic groups around China. Ostensibly, it’s a cultural preservation attempt. Unfortunately, the bulk of the information written about the different areas was not translated from Chinese, so we felt we could have gotten a lot more out of it if we knew what was going on. The shops were filled with cheesy “Chinese” stuff rather than interesting folk art. We heard there was a zip line, but we couldn’t find it. There were many opportunities to dress up in fancy ethnic costumes, however only Patti was determined enough to do that in the sweltering heat. I just couldn’t bear the thought of enclosing myself in heavy, sticky long sleeves, even with a fan blowing right on me, even for the best picture in the world. It was a hot and humid day.

The Chinese teachers to whom Patti showed this picture immediately recognized this outfit as that of the Emperor's Daughter.

Splendid China had miniature versions of 81 major cultural or natural scenic spots.

Today I walked the entire length of the Great Wall, visited the Yangtze Gorge, saw the Terra Cotta Warriors, the Temple of Confucius, the Leshan Grand Buddha, and many other Chinese highlights that I had never heard of before. I also visited a grove of trees planted by the most famous people in the world, including the Prime Ministers of Poland, Cote d’Ivoire, and Ecuador.

The Terra Cotta Warriors are probably much more impressive in non-miniature, but there were a few life-sized examples. I used one to try to make up for the apparent shortage of Chinese acrobats, since I had not seen any yet.

I finally got to see a few acrobats when we went to the stage show in the evening. Oriental Dress at the Impression Theater was an elaborate costume drama, “a poem of Romantic Stories, A Ceremony of National Splendor.” It was the most elaborate costume drama I have ever seen, and perhaps the only drama I have seen about costumes. It started out with dancers in nude leotards posing behind a scrim, then went on to include lotus headpieces, umbrella-shaped hats with beaded curtains, sleeves four feet longer than your arms, skirts that stuck out a foot from their waists, pants and breastplates that make the wearer look like a yak when they get in the right position, showgirl feather contraptions fancier than any in Vegas, and much more.

Note to Adelaide, if you’re out there, the Shimmy Sisters might want to consider performing with live white peacocks perched on your heads.

The show also had a blacklight butterfly scene—I didn’t know Technomania Circus had an international following! (For anyone reading who doesn’t know, we created a similar scene in a show we did in San Diego 8 or 9 years ago.) And, apparently the culturally historic music of Tibet is techno. There was also a beautiful tissues act—a duet where the partner wrapped the silks around the flyer. It was very tender, and was a great way to solve the problem that apparatus often has where the performer spends a lot of time tying herself up and a very small amount of time actually performing in an interesting way. We later found out the tissues act was telling the story of the woman in the moon. A husband and wife were going to take medicine to live forever together in the moon. A trickster (maybe) came along and stole some of the medicine. Somehow the woman still drank it and now she is alone in the moon and the man pines after her forever.

It was so hot, sometimes it was just grueling to be entertained in this way. But I guess we saw China in the way China would like us to see it. I am still wondering if this really is the ethnically traditional interior of a mountainside dwelling in a rural area.

Yesterday, Beth ended a meeting, and as everyone was starting to walk out, she said, “Oh, oh, wait! I almost forgot to tell you one more thing. A typhoon is coming, probably this weekend.” When pressed for more details, she said we should probably stay inside when it happens. If it happened on a weekday, school would be cancelled. She said there is often 80mph winds and water up to your knees from the rain with typhoons. “It’s like a hurricane. A natural disaster. It’s fine. I’ll see you at dinner.”

I know I have a tendency to worry more than most people, but “a natural disaster, it’s fine?!” I think, by definition, a natural disaster is not actually fine. Should I stock up on bottled water, at the least? A few teachers at dinner concluded, better safe than sorry. We’ve been advised not to drink tap water here, anyway, so it wouldn’t hurt to have a few extra bottles on hand.

I understand that typhoons are very common here. Many trees are permanently braced with bamboo poles to protect them. As I was sitting outside my sweltering classroom feeling a pleasant breeze, it made me wonder if they built our school so that the prevailing winds would go past the windows and doors rather than through them, so as to mitigate typhoon damage. Or maybe they just wanted to ensure that summer classrooms would be as uncomfortable as possible.

Luckily, Patti couldn’t sleep, and she emailed her husband, who happens to be a weather fanatic. He did some cursory research:

I’ve done some checking and I see that the storm will never rise to Typhoon status again. It barely reached  that level a couple of days ago and then dropped and will continue to drop in strength as it moves across the South China Sea. It will pass far to the south of you, probably have a landfall in Vietnam. But, I see that it has dropped your temperature into the mid 80s, which I am sure you appreciate. But, I assume it is still quite humid.

I guess it really is fine. Thank goodness for the internet.

First, it’s hot and humid. Really hot, and really humid. There’s a two-hour break in the middle of each day so no one has to do anything in the middle of the day. Businesses are still open well past 9pm so people can eat and shop after the sun has gone down. Grown men walk around with their shirts folded up so their bellies are exposed. (Not all grown men. It seems maybe a bit déclassé, like those who hang out on the street a lot.) Every time my roommate Patti and I walk out of our hotel room, our glasses fog up. This picture she took of our hotel—it’s fuzzy because the lens fogged up.

Some of our classrooms have AC, and some, like mine, have only fans. Monday, (the first day of classes) I sweat so much I was no longer sticky, just soaked. The kids are not comfortable with this either. They get very tired, and green bean soup is brought around to each class in the afternoons. It is supposed to be a traditional Chinese way to lower your body temperature. It tastes kind of good, but I’m sorry it doesn’t have a more dramatic cooling effect.
(Note from the next day: Sometimes they bring sweet mushroom juice.)

When I was packing, I had a hard time deciding if I should bring my rain shell, an umbrella, or both, since it’s monsoon season here. Thinking if it was as hot as they said it would be (90’s on average), I’d rather be wet than hot, I left the raincoat at home. I have not missed it. I’ve noticed many people using umbrellas during the day to shade themselves from the sun, but so far it only has rained in the middle of the night. Apparently it’s quite loud when it hits the windows on the other side of our hotel, but Patti and I are always surprised when we hear at breakfast that it rained again.
(Haha! As I write this over my lunch break, it has just started to rain.)

Besides the heat, another noticeable feature of China is the large buildings. There are groups of tall apartment buildings everywhere. Maybe 20 stories or more. The first ones we saw as we drove to Shenzhen from the Hong Kong airport, I thought they looked like what I had seen of Soviet bloc housing in eastern Europe. Kind of boxy and not well cared for. But, having seen many more, some are dreary and unkempt, and others are modern with interesting architecture. I’m pretty sure I have not seen any single-family homes at all, but there are clusters of hundred- if not thousand-family buildings everywhere. I’ll try to get some better pictures of them.

Gratuitous cute.

This entry has almost nothing to do with China, except that my roommate takes more (and probably better) pictures than me, so I am starting to raid her iPhoto library. This one was taken just before we came to China. She says the baby elephants at the Wild Animal Park are not to be missed.

You know how those oddly translated menus at Chinese restaurants make you giggle? Being surrounded by Chinese signs with English translations (well, if we’re lucky, they’re translated) provides many opportunities for such mirth!

However, we do have to be careful! Patti recently told me she’d found the oddest sign at school and was wondering what it could possibly be trying to say. “Every little makes a mickle.” “What could mickle be a mistranslation of? Nickel? Pickle? We finally decided to google it—turns out it’s a Scottish proverb. A mickle is like a bunch. It means something like “every little bit counts.”

A reminder not to underestimate the Chinese, perhaps.