Costumes and Charades

I think I scored some cool points with my students this week, giving them candy and letting them wrap their classmates up in toilet paper finally let them see that their uptight American teacher could let her hair down and still try to teach them something.


Or at least in my idyllic little mind that's how I feel like it went. It's all a part of my charade of being an educator. 


For the most part my students are my favorite part about this place. At least 50% of them adore me and the other half either can't understand me or just don't care. I've won over almost all of the girls, except for one who is hellbent on finding a boyfriend. The boys are trickier, the studious ones seem to like my classes, but if their friends don't care it's not cool for them to care either. Ugh. It's the same story in the United States with any age group, and it's frustrating.


I'm getting a little bit better at classroom management, showing those boys who think they can walk all over me whose boss. They're the same age as me though, so it's weird having to lay down the law. 


I ate lunch with one of my students the other day and asked a million questions about her life outside of the classroom. She likes computer games and KFC -- a lot. From my observations in the cafeteria, she also really likes her boyfriend, who is a student of mine in another section. (I swear, I'm not a creep, it's just easy to pick things out on the smallish campus). 


Her boyfriend has a VIP membership to the school gym, which Alex and I paid a visit to on Friday.  (Asians love the VIP status. More on that to come in a later post...) Anyway, the gym smelled like no gym I've ever smelled before, and I've smelled some rancid ones -- six years of hockey trained my nose well. It felt like the kind of place I could catch athletes' foot in just by looking in the mirror.


Needless to say, Alex and I will not be getting VIP status at that gym. We checked out the neighborhood Best Western fitness facilities today and opted for a membership there. It has a sauna, yoga and dance classes, and smells nice and fresh. Also, it's open late which means Alex and I can still work out after we put in our 12-hour days at school.


Well I'm off to a Halloween party. I don't have a costume, but I just happen to be dressed head-to-toe in navy blue, so I guess I'm a blueberry?

Big Box stores inspire insanity in China too

Alex and I like to say we're zebras in a lion's den here, and on Tuesday I was like a mangled zebra just waiting to be consumed.


Since it's Halloween week, Alex and I bought candy for our combined 350 students. We're also having our students build a mummy from toilet paper then make up a story about the mummy's life. 350 kids worth of candy and toilet paper is a lot of goods.


Thankfully this twas an inexpensive idea, but it was unbelieveably inconvenient. I went to Vanguard, China's version of Wal-Mart (except 85x louder with a minimum of five advertisements blaring throughout the store). Alex was teaching, so I made the journey by myself. In addition to the classroom things, I had to buy some mops and brooms. Dust collects quickly here with the wind and pollution.


There I was, the little laowai with her arms loaded down with two large grocery bags of candy and cleaning supplies, one mop, one broom, and two giant packs of toilet paper. I walked the half a mile home and struggled to keep everything in my arms.


I set off two scooter alarms from whacking them with my broom and countless people stopped to stare or laugh at the blond girl who bought more than she could carry. 


Halfway home I had only one thought in my head, "you climbed a mountain with cinder blocks over and over and over in Guatemala. You've got this." At least when I had the cinder blocks, I was carrying them up a mountain to build deserving people a home and I had a team of other people carrying the blocks with me. 


This time around I found myself on a busy street in China carrying a bunch of cheap goods (Made in China, Consumed in China) that will be wasted away within a few days.


Hopefully my students like the mummy activity, I'll try take some photos if they aren't too shy. 


I said it week one and I'll say it again, the 90 minutes I have each class are the most fun and easygoing 90 minutes of my week. Yes, it's exhausting, but I really am loving this teaching gig.

When everything is out, you gotta take it in

****Disclaimer: this is by far the longest blog post I've ever written, exceeding 1,500 words. The day was so epic and extraordinary it demanded so many beautiful words. Also, this blog is best enjoyed by listening to this song, which pretty much describes the state of my strange, strange life.****

“Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it.” – Jules Renard.

Some days in China are more extraordinarily ridiculous than others, and the day we went to the World Expo was certainly one of them.

The day started out with no water in our pipes. We had lost it the day before and only realized it after sweating like mad from P90X. Tired, greasy and smelly we crawled into the 12-passenger van.

We escaped into iPod land for the three-hour trip. The four year old in the back wouldn’t stop screaming and the woman in front of us threw up in a grocery bag at one point. I have never seen someone vomit so nonchalantly, I had my earphones out at that point and wouldn’t have heard it had I not been watching her.

Sunday was the final day for the general public to visit the Expo, so it was even more chaotic than usual. More than 600,000 people passed through the same entrance and security gates as I did.

The rest of the faculty from the van ran off to do their own thing, so Alex and I sought out an English map and looked for any open areas in the crowd. Pushing and shoving our way through the sea of bodies, we finally found a boulevard that led us to the Asia and Middle East sector of the Expo.

Being the political geeks we are, Alex and I couldn’t help but analyze the national pavilions.

Since when did Qatar or Myanmar (Burma) have enough money to build a fancy building at the expo? Shouldn’t that cash have gone to oh, I don’t know, food, medicine or clean water for their citizens?

We wandered back towards China and the long Expo Axis – a giant organically flowing corridor that spanned the middle of the expo grounds. Inside were a number of shops and restaurants.

We were beat down from the crowds and frustrated by all of the cultural barriers of the past few weeks, so we did the most cliché American thing we could think of: pig out on a Hawaiian pizza from Papa John’s and wash it down with a Starbucks’ Frappuccino.

The pizza was tasty – though the crust was impossibly thin and there wasn’t the yummy garlic butter that comes with the US-version. Oh well, beggars can’t be choosers. We were the only Americans in the restaurant, and many of the Chinese people were using their forks and spoons like chopsticks to eat their pasta and fries from the pizza place.

Starbucks was even more bizarre. It was located in a chaotic, pop-music blaring Tea House/Doughnut shop/Coffeehouse combination store and offered food items like a curried puff pastry, “New York noodle” (with steak), and a plethora of rice and beef dishes.

The actual coffee menu was severely limited, and we settled on a mocha Frappuccino. Extraordinarily sweet and satisfying, the drink accompanied Alex and I on our way to the Europe and Africa portion of the Expo.

We followed the raised walkway to try avoiding the crowds but were still really tired. We sat down for a rest two-thirds of the way to the end, near the Canadian pavilion. Downtrodden and sleepy, we sat staring off into space on a bench. A couple from Ottawa who were on tour in China for two weeks quickly joined us.

After a few moments of small talk, we looked up to find ourselves surrounded by eager young Chinese teens.

“Photo??” they asked. Before we could answer, a boy shoved his way in-between us and wrapped his arms around our shoulders. All I could do was laugh and throw up the peace sign. Then two girls joined in. The scene attracted some older Chinese folks who eagerly grabbed their cameras to have a chance to take a photo of some young Americans. At one point there were at least five cameras snapping at us.

We got up to escape the paparazzi, but it was only temporary. I lost track at counting how many people shot videos on their cellphones and took photos of us as we walked by. (Mind you, we were not showered and were wearing baggy, dirty clothes).

We started singing “Party in the USA” to try overcome the sheer awkwardness of it all.

Once the walkway ended, we decided to walk street level back to the China pavilion. We passed by Russia, Slovenia and South Africa before stumbling upon a Moroccan musical performance. Live drums and guitars and plenty of dancing.

This was probably the 26^th moment of the day in which Alex and I turned to each other and asked, “Look at our lives, what are we doing??” (We actually have the statement down to a look now because every single day offers up so many bizarre moments).

Approximately 20 minutes later, we were walking in front of the very hip-looking Latvian pavilion when we noticed “The Flying Daiquiri Bar.” It was 2 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon at the World Expo in Shanghai, can you think of a better time for a Daiquiri? I think not.

As Alex ordered her mango drink and I my mojito, two middle-age Irish financiers started chatting with us. They asked us what we were doing in China, whether we were enjoying ourselves, and how we felt about Obama.

We’re not really sure what their job was at the Expo, but they asked us if we wanted to check out the show upstairs in the Latvian pavilion before the rest of the crowd entered.

Oh what the hell, as if the day could get much more random.

They showed us to the elevator that took us to the third floor. Before getting on, we saw the crowd of 200 or so people waiting anxiously to go exactly where we were headed.

The Latvian pavilion was designed as a cylinder, and the entire outermost covering is colorful theater gels cut into 6-inch squares – from far away, it looked like a giant tube of glitter. In the center of the cylinder is a wind tube that people can fly around in. It’s like a skydiving imitation machine.

Someone was practicing in the tube when we got off the elevator. The pavilion was completely empty asides from five t-shirt vendors. We stood in awe of our strange luck, and bought cheap t-shirts to commemorate the moment.

Then the crowd poured in. Alex and I stood in the background and watched as nearly every single person in the pavilion raised their digital cameras and let out “oooh’s,” and “ahhhhs,” in unison.

We escaped before the show ended.

It’s strange to think that most of the fantasy, fun-house national pavilions will be disassembled before we leave this country. China’s will remain a permanent fixture.

Beat down and worn out, we left the Expo nearly an hour before we had to return to the university van. We weren’t hungry, but we needed a place to sit, so we found a dumpy little restaurant.

The entire wait staff was eating since it was 3 p.m., and middle-age men made up the sparse local crowd. We were instant curiosities.

“Hello!” “America good!”

Ugh. We just wanted to sit.

Within a few seconds, we had three waitresses anxiously waiting to find out what the laowai (foreigners) wanted. Frustrated and plagued with a communication boundary, I managed to order Alex and I a bowl of dumpling soup to share.

Once the food arrived, cell phones and cameras emerged once again. We could almost read their minds, “Wow, the laowai are using chopsticks! Oooo look at them eat!”

I was tired of constantly having my photo taken and never reciprocating. So I asked the staff if I could have their photo. They shyly giggled and agreed.

Then one of the men, who had four stubs of brown teeth, walked over to us. He asked us in Chinese where we were from and what we were doing in the country. Thankfully, nationalities were one of the lessons I had actually covered in my Mandarin lessons before I came to China. I told him that we were teachers from the United States.

He raised one hand and said “China,” raised the other and said “United States,” then he grasped his two hands together to signal international cooperation. Once more, a scene dripping with international relations irony.

It was finally 5 p.m. and time to go; Alex and I were anxious to drive back to Hangzhou to shower, sleep and prep for Monday’s classes.

Then China threw us one of its sucker punches.

We learned we were going to a restaurant in Shanghai to join university officials and a former Director of China Programs from the University of Minnesota for dinner. All we could do was deliriously laugh when we found out about it.

An hour later we rolled up to a fancy hotel and were quickly ushered to one of many private rooms. The table was a large circle and the 16 or so attendees shuffled around chatting. Alex and I were the first to be shown our seats and we happily sat while everyone mingled.

Finally everyone sat down and the cold plates (appetizers) were brought out and set on the revolving center of the table. A while later the hot dishes came out.

We were treated to a traditional banquet style dinner – complete with toasts every few moments and our first taste of baiju, rice liquor that is as strong as Everclear. To make a good impression and save face, Alex and I ceremoniously took a shot. Well, we divided one shot into three different toasts. The alcohol burned all the way down and continued to burn for minutes afterward.

The men were throwing back baiju like their job. Yet again, Alex and I found ourselves in a surreal bubble. We were not even remotely hungry and somehow managed to hide the fact that we didn’t eat much at the meal.

Once all the food was finished, we were offered cigarettes. We told them we didn’t smoke. Alex said she had asthma.

“They are the very best tobacco in all of China. One pack costs $10 US dollars. You must try.”

We kept saying no. They kept insisting. Finally we agreed to share one. All I could hope was that my fake drags looked at least a little bit authentic…

At last the shit show of a day came to an end and we rolled into Hangzhou around 9:30 p.m. Our apartment had water and our decidedly uncomfortable beds felt more welcoming than ever. Night was the yin to our yang of a day. Harmony was once again restored.

NIght out

After an unimaginably exhausting week of classes and make-up courses, Friday posed a welcome promise of relieving stress through some drinks at expat hangouts.

We tried desperately to nap before going out  since our schedules aren’t conducive to much rest during the week. We each spend three to five hours teaching every day; the rest of the time is spend prepping or finding time to work out.

6 a.m. – alarm rings

6:50 a.m. – board the bus to the university

8:20 a.m.  – Alex, myself, or both of us teach

11:30 a.m. – finish teaching; eat lunch

1:30 p.m. – teach again

4:40 p.m. – finish teaching

5:00 p.m. – find dinner

8:00 p.m. – arrive home after an hour-long public bus ride

Day after day, that’s what we do. Add in the sheer difficulties of living and functioning in a nation in which we’re incapable of communicating. Our brains are punching us from the inside out after 15 hours of consciousness.

Friday night we dragged our zombie selves out of the apartment to meet Jen at a bar called Maya. It is owned by a guy from New York, and the burger fryer is from Boston. The bar was unusually quiet, Jen said, which was fine by us since we were so tired. Over a couple of pitchers of mango daiquiris, we lamented about our students and told random stories about our lives.

A Chinese girl named Jessie asked to join our table, she was friendly and unusually interested in me. Alex and Jen continued talking about life in college and I got my teacher face on and conversed with her about advertising and media (she wants to be a graphic designer).

After Maya, Jessie showed us a different bar that was nearly empty. She left us there and Jen, Alex and I bellied up to a Singapore Slinger – quite possibly the most disgusting cocktail I’ve ever had. Gin, brandy, Contreau and cranberry juice filled a pint glass topped off with a swirly straw. Disgusting.

We continued on our bar-hopping spree to a place called Reggae bar, where we watched a belly dancer and chatted with some people from the UK. We even met someone from Minnesota who sounded like he had been hanging out with Eastern Europeans for too long and had developed a faux-accent (I new he was faking it as soon as I busted out the “Mini-sooo-tah” to which he replied “Ya shur ya betcha”).

Weird.

Our last stop of the night was a dance club called Coco. I haven’t been to a good dance club since leaving Europe, so it was a welcome surprise to hear a great DJ and have a wildly international crowd.

Chinese people dominated the bar (appropriately so) but there were people from Africa, South America, Europe, and definitely some east coast preppies from the US. Alex and I had a blast – Jen said the club was the quietest she’s ever seen it, I’m excited to see what a “good” night is like.

Each place we went, there was one consistent phenomenon: American or European men with Chinese girlfriends. I don’t think any boys looked at any of us twice that night. Which is fine, it’s just comical how often we encountered it.

The night ended at a street corner noodle stand where we pointed at vegetables and noodles as they fried it up before our eyes with a gas-burner wok that they hooked up to their bicycle when the night was over.

For less than $1 we watched as they sautéed and shook the pan that was so hot it was screaming. It was a thing of beauty. We dined on plastic tables with other Chinese night owls and caught a cab home.

China, you sure know how to dish out the random.

Scavenging in restaurants

The menu is daunting: three pages of symbols, numbers and no pictures whatsoever. Though some restaurants proudly showcase pictures of their dishes on the wall, many places don’t bother.

Alex and I had been scoping out restaurants in our neighborhood all week, and the one we chose always had a busy dinner crowd filled mostly with people our age.

We sat down at the white, plastic covered table and had two porcelain bowls, a very small plate, a cup, and large ceramic spoon tightly wrapped in plastic.

“Ni hao laowai!” (Hello, foreigners) the waitress said. “Nimen yao shenme?” (What would you like?)

We asked for a menu in English. “Meiyou,” ([may-yo,] I don’t have).

A sensationally awkward series of cross-cultural exchanges ensued throughout the next two minutes, until finally after many pointing and eating actions we told the waitress to choose some food for us.

As this was all going down, the young cooks were peeking through the kitchen window thoroughly enjoying what was happening in the restaurant.

A few moments later, our first plate came out. It was some sort of greens sautéed in garlic and very delicious. Right after that came a large sizzling tinfoil pouch. The waitress carefully opened it to reveal pieces of beef bubbling with onions in a thick, brown sauce. We washed it down with some rice.

The surprise meal was incredible. And very inexpensive, the bill came to $7.

After dinner, I wanted a smoothie. We went to what we thought was a smoothie shop, but after walking in and seeing the background photos on the menu, we realized it might be a cocktail/margarita place.

The owner spoke no English and did not offer an English menu. She started showing us vats of different colored powders and a pot of what appeared to be blueberries. I pointed at the purple powder and the berries and somehow in my babbles of Chinese told her that we wanted two drinks: a blue one and an orange one.

After powders were mixed and shots of things were added, she scooped in the blueberries and we paid for our $0.75 drink. We cautiously took a sip and happily discovered that it wasn’t a cocktail, rather it was a Bubble (boba) tea. It was a sweet tea-based cold drink (like Teaberry in Fargo). The “blueberries” turned out to be homemade tapioca balls.

Another tasty surprise. Overall success for the night.

After that experience, Alex and I have been venturing into restaurants, pointing at other people’s food or aimlessly pointing at the menu to see what arrives at the table. Everything has been fantastic – American Chinese food is nothing like Chinese Chinese food.

No fortune cookies. No fluorescent orange sauce. No egg rolls. And (knock on wood) no intestinal fist fights yet.

Address

I have an address!


Janae Hagen
c/o Lu Minjie
#280 Xuelin Street, Xiasha
Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
310018


I like gum, letters, and snack cakes.


(just kidding about the snack cakes. And gum...well, I mean, if you send some it will certainly be chewed...)


Quick update: I have a "body check" this morning to get my Foreign Expert Certificate (sounds fancy, right?) I'm prepared to throw any and all shame out the window. I have no idea what it will involve.


....And Alex and I got our teaching make-up schedule yesterday -- 17 90-minute courses plus our regular load of teaching in the next three weeks. Ugh. Another sucker punch from this place.

Up downs

China is incredible – incredibly good, incredibly bad, and incredibly bizarre. There is no middle ground.

Just when you think you’ll make it and actually have a shot at fully enjoying yourself, China throws a sucker punch to your gut and you’re left wondering what the hell to do next.

Two of my students, Ashley and Ann, came to our apartment Saturday to show us how to use the washing machine, heaters, and DVD player (all of the instructions are in Chinese). Afterwards, they showed us some cool things in our neighborhood. We had no idea that a huge fruit stand is less than 50 meters from our doorstep or that a fantastic Muslim udon noodle shop is just around the corner. For you Fargoans, this shop is like the Drunken Noodle, except homemade and authentic (for everyone else, imagine a Noodles & Co.)

We haven’t eaten at that noodle shop yet, but it looks just like the one we’ve eaten at on campus. They make their noodles in the shop and there are about 30 different dishes to choose from – averaging no more than $1.25 each. From what we’ve heard, the Muslims in China know what’s up when it comes to noodles.

After that they took us to a place to buy an English map of Hangzhou (finally we know where we live)! Then we got on a city bus to West Lake. The bus was packed and it was a fight to even find something to hold on to as the bus accelerated, stopped, and turned unexpectedly. (Definitely one of China’s punches).

West Lake was beautiful (check out my Flikr photos). We arrived at sunset and I was anxious to take a lot of photos in the perfect light. The lake itself was serene, but it was surrounded by a lot of activity.

Starbucks, McDonald’s and Papa Johns were mingling with Gucci, Prada and Ferragamo, who had invited their friends Bentley, Rolls-Royce, and Lamborghini to enjoy the lovely view of the lake.

From the lake, our tour guides took us to a bus station. We were getting off at Hangzhou Tower and they were going to take the bus all the way back to the university in Xiasha.

“This is not a time to be polite,” Ann told us. We were waiting in a queue at a gate, the gate was going to open when the bus was ready to let us in. By “queue” I actually mean a shuffling blob of people anxiously trying to get to the front.

As soon as the bus pulled up, people started shoving. Ann and Ashley kept looking at Alex and I, worried that we wouldn’t be able to push our way onto the bus in time.

They underestimated our feistiness.

We threw elbows. We were pushed, so we pushed back. We all looked like salmon trying to spawn. But we made it.

When we got off at Hangzhou Tower, we sought out a good restaurant. The tower is a massive upscale mall made up of four multi-storied buildings. Each floor had its own them: shoes, menswear, sports wear, luggage…Where was the floor of food we were promised was there?

At last we saw a restaurant. After a long, awkward exchange with the waitress, we finally figured out that it was a fondue restaurant. We were starving so we filled up mostly on the sushi and mushroom appetizers. We’re fairly certain that our pot of boiling water on the table produced stomach lining and garden variety meats. Overall, the dinner was decent – expensive, but good.

The explosions started as we were finishing our dinner. Hangzhou puts on one of the world’s largest fireworks displays every year, and Alex and I had pretty much accepted the fact we weren’t going to get to see any because we had no idea how to get to Jen.

The booms and pops sounded like they were just outside the restaurant, though. We told the waitress we wanted to watch, to which she replied by leading us to the bathroom. A few moments later she rushed back and was like “ohhh, fireworks!” and pointed to the sky.

She led us out onto the 8^th floor balcony of the building, which was filled with restaurant and custodial staff. The fireworks were being launched less than 500m away from us – essentially a front row view.

We looked around the corner of the building and another equally huge show was going off – the whole city was filled with fireworks. For 30 minutes, fireworks equal to the grand finale of the July 4 show in DC were going on all around us. The smoke was so thick that sparks were colorless near the ground.

This was definitely one of those moments that China made us fall in love.

Once the show was over, Alex and I found the floor of the shopping mall that sold alcohol and we bought two mini bottles of cheap red wine and drank it out on the street (which may or may not have been illegal).

It was approximately 9:15 when we decided to venture home.

For the next two hours we tried hailing cabs; five or six empty ones pulled up and the driver shouted, “Hello! Hahaha!” then drove off. Things got increasingly competitive and we were continually beat out by Chinese people whose addresses were more appealing to the driver.

We were tired and near tears. Out of desperation we made some friends on the street with some Chinese boys who thought we were whiney and we chatted with some Mexicans who were having the same difficulty as us.

Low blow, China, low blow.

At last we spotted a cab that the passengers were getting out of. Alex sprinted towards them and was shouting our address, I quickly followed and literally threw my notebook with our address printed in it over the passenger and to the driver. The poor guy in the front seat didn’t know what was going on, but he made sure we were the first ones in the cab.

That’s essentially how life works here – when it’s good, it’s great. When it’s bad, the challenges seem insurmountable. I’m craving middle ground, and I’m not sure I’m going to get it.