Further life and times of *liltayinchina*

I’m sorry to say that I have no more news on the kidnapping that I saw yesterday. I know it seems like a harsh word, but having seen what I did, there is no other word I CAN use.

Yesterday, I left the apartment, heading for a dinner with the director of the Wuchang branch of the Department of Education, his daughter, the principal of our school, Miss Li, Eileen and Christy. On my way to the bus stop, I had just put my headphones in when I heard a loud crash. I looked to my left and saw a man standing in the tiny yard of one of the ground-floor apartments that are part of the Bao-An Gardens gated community and I looked just in time to see him scoop up a flowerpot and fling it with all of his might at the window of the apartment that the garden belonged to.

I didn’t know if I had seen correctly so I stared long enough to see a second pot get thrown through the window and then, having had enough of family disturbances for the day, looked away and stayed put. Everyone around me, however, was fascinated and curious in a “we’re safer on this side of the street, but LOOK at what that man’s doing!” kind of way. Hearing each crash made me sick to my stomach and I was thankful to see the bus pull up shortly after my arrival at the stop. I don’t know what it is about human nature, but what’s so great about witnessing other people’s sorrow? Or anger? Or madness?

On to more uplifting subject matter: I’m doing a little bit of private tutoring with the daughter of the above-mentioned director of the Wuchang branch of the Department of Education. Boy is that a mouthful! I will work with her this week and Eileen will work with her the week before we start school again. Her mother and father invited us to dinner Sunday night, mainly because her father likes practicing his English. Apparently he went to England a couple of years ago and feels he is getting rusty. He asked Mrs. Li to find a female foreign teacher who would be willing to spend some extra time with his daughter, just speaking conversationally, because he feels that her written skills are quite strong but that her pronunciation and oral skills need a lot of work.

His daughter’s English name is Ira (pronounced “Era”) and she is a truly vibrant girl. Eileen and I could tell she was a little shy at dinner Sunday night. Who wouldn’t be? She was at a table with her father, her head principal, her English principal, two foreign English teachers and a Chinese English teacher. Every time she tried speaking to one of us, everyone watched intently and her father would try and correct her or push her to say her piece in a different way.

My first session with Ira was nothing like dinner Sunday night. She’s vibrant, silly, excited, funny, jovial, kind, enthusiastic, talkative and not shy at all. That isn’t to say that she doesn’t have the best manners too. I find her to be so refreshing. She’s extremely intelligent but I can tell she likes to have fun and has a great head on her shoulders. When I asked her about friends, she first mentioned that she was jealous of me for having a best friend. She doesn’t have one because she and her friends are always so busy with schoolwork that they have little time to spend with each other getting to know each other more intimately. On the one hand this seemed a shame (and it still does) but can you imagine adolescence without the time to be petty or to worry about those who are being petty towards you?

Ira would call herself a tomboy if she knew how to. She loves sports and enjoys romping with the boys during recess. She’s tall for her age and started playing basketball recently, thinking she’d be a natural. She loves basketball and wants to try hard to get better because the boys expect her to be good and are disappointed when she shows that she doesn’t quite understand the concept of dribbling yet.

Ira talks matter-of-factly about the people in her class. The most beautiful girl in class is also kind and so the boys like her very much. The cutest boy in her class is just a little taller than Ira and is very smart. He doesn’t like talking or playing because he would rather study or read and is very serious. She tells me his English name is Curious. She likes Curious very much and slammed her face into my pillows when I asked if he was a boyfriend of hers. She sat up again, clear-faced, and said, “Do you mean a boy that is a friend or a boyfriend?” “Boyfriend” and then she repeated the slamming of the face and giggled from deep within the pillows. She came up breathless and said, “No, he doesn’t like me. But I do like him.”

Aside from Curious, Ira talks about her friend Frances and her friend Kate. Frances isn’t attractive like the prettiest girl in the class and so she wants to be smart. Ira says that all girls need “something” so that’s what Frances is working towards. She always has her nose in a book. I wonder if she chose her English name herself or if someone took one look at her and said, “Now SHE’S a Frances if I’ve ever seen one…”

According to Ira, Kate is short and fat. She gets made fun of by the boys but not in a “mean” way. Fatness in China isn’t tiptoed around like in America. And, children who to me are certainly not fat are considered so because their frames are heavier than the extremely delicate frames of the other children. (A side note here, to me, the Chinese population is as varied as the US one. You see tall and short, fat and thin, square jawed and egg-shaped faces, and skin colors of varying shades.) Kate loves to swim and Ira tells me that when Kate decides whom her first kiss will come from, she wants to take him swimming. Then, when he can’t swim and sees that she is such a good swimmer, he will be happy to know her and want to kiss her. Ira is happy that Kate has started swimming a lot. She thinks Kate will lose some weight and that the boys will stop making fun of her.

I don’t know these children because Ira and her classmates are 6th graders. Next year, they will all go to middle schools around the city. Because her father is the director of the Wuchang DoE branch, Ira most likely has her pick of any school in the district. Her father is pushing for the 2nd ranked school because it is mere blocks from our school and thus blocks from her grandparents’ home.

Frances lent Ira a copy of Pride and Prejudice, a translated copy, and we talked about it yesterday. She loves Darcy and thinks that Elizabeth is a lot like her. She doesn’t like Jane because no one knows what Jane is thinking and this can create problems for people. Ira says she has a hard time keeping her feelings to herself and likes the idea that she is like Elizabeth.

Yesterday, after we’d been chatting for a little over an hour, Ira stopped meekly and asked in the softest voice, “May I ask for your email address.” When I said yes, she jumped up, gave a wallop of a shout and clapped her hands excitedly. I wrote my address on a slip of paper and handed it to her. For the next twenty minutes, I watched amused, as, unbeknownst to her, she crumpled and folded the paper between her fingers while she spoke excitedly. At one point, she got so excited that she crushed the piece of paper into a small ball and then noticed it in her hand. “Oh I’m SORRY!” she shouted. Laughing, I suggested that she put the paper ball in her bag for safekeeping.

I feel like it has been so long since I was around a child of this age. Ira is 12 but at times I feel she is much older. Occasionally, she won’t be able to think of something in English and she’ll mumble in Chinese to herself under her breath. She sounds so much older when she speaks in Chinese. But, I never once think about her Chinese-ness when we’re conversing. She’s really a delight to be around and I’ll miss her when Thursday comes around.

We’ve planned to go to the movie theater at the end of February when she’s having her time with Eileen, so that will be fun. She also promises to bring Curious, Frances and Kate in to visit often next term. Before she promised, she asked skeptically, “Does Mrs. Yu sit in your office?” (Mrs. Yu is the youngish Chinese co-teacher who teaches Ira’s class with Lisa.) “No, she sits in the other office with Lisa” – again, Ira jumped up and walloped happily. She then promised to visit and to bring her friends to meet me.

With each experience the school gives me, my goodbye in July seems to be getting more and more difficult.

Posted by liltayinchina at 06:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

In all my life I have not been prepared for what I just witnessed. Even now, I can hear that the struggle is continuing outside my window. It is a beautiful day in Wuhan, my windows were open and I heard the desperate screams of a small child. I looked out my window to see a man and woman struggling to get hold of a very small boy. From the beginning, I could see that though the woman did not want to give up, her strength simply wasn’t a match for the man’s. The woman bit the man’s hand and then, I saw the man raise up his hand and strike the woman, not once, not twice, but repeatedly. In the face, he hit her, he kneed her in the stomach, all the while, as the boy screamed and choked on his fear. Even though it could have been blind rage, what man rears back before hitting a woman? What man tries to throw all of his energy into it? He didn’t just want to scare her; he wanted to debilitate her. I have heard that in situations like these, lookers-on will not participate or get involved. They won’t call the police, assuming that others will. In this case, I couldn’t call the police. Even if I knew the number, what would I say when they answered the phone? How would I explain? But I couldn’t just stand there and watch from my window high up. I shouted over and over, “Stop it! Stop! Don’t touch her!” but it didn’t faze either of them. It seemed as if the man was consumed with hatred and couldn’t see beyond it. I threw a bottle from the window hoping to get his attention and to show him the useless cell phone in my hands, as some sort of threat, or at the least to remind him that he was shaming himself in public. Neither he nor the woman noticed. Finally, a man ran up to the aid of the woman. He put himself in between the two. The man wouldn’t give up his fight, and kept slapping and hitting the woman. She held her child close to her and shook all over. She was trying to talk to the man and was calm at first but her words grew in anxiety and frustration. The man who intervened managed to keep them apart just long enough to pull out his cell phone and make a call. I couldn’t watch anymore and sat down to write this with a heart still pumping, a stomach gone, and fingers almost too furious to type.

It is calm now. It is back to a beautiful day and only moments ago, I watched as the man got hold of his son again, threw him into the front seat of a car, ran to the driver’s side, got in and locked the doors. The woman tried to pry the door open, seeing her son on the floor and only a thin piece of glass separating her from him. The man who had intervened helped an older woman, now at the scene, pull the woman away from the car so that the man could start it and turn around. I couldn’t see the woman’s face, but even from behind, the traces of tragedy were apparent. Her whole body moved as if any reason for existing had been taken away. She moved her hands from her sides to her mouth to her sides, as if not knowing whether or not to stifle her distraught sobs. She crumpled on the curb and waited for the car to drive past. The man turned his car around and drove slowly past, seeming to almost stop as he came to the fallen woman. As he had driven by my window, I noticed the boy on the floor of the passenger side, his face stunned, relief that the fight was over.

I’m reading a book right now about a woman who lived in China during the turn of the last century. She was a devout Buddhist and used to pray to Buddha to be reincarnated as anything but a woman. I wonder, if this woman were living today, would she make the same prayer?

The sun is shining; my curtain is lifting slightly every now and then from a gentle breeze. It is one of the nicest days in Wuhan since my arrival in August. A man just whistled past my window and a bird is sitting in a tree across from me. Tell me? How can the world have not just stopped cold in its tracks?

Posted by liltayinchina at 02:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Well.

Have I got a story for my faithful readers. I'm too worn out for the details at this moment and am one eye-blink away from deep sleep, but let me give you a taste of my day…In fact, I'll just leave you with the ending:

I'm standing at the gatekeeper's door here at the branch school where my apartment is. In one hand, I've got my useless cell phone - the money ran out on it on Thursday and I've been too sick to try and get more time for it - and in the other hand, I'm clutching a large, blue, transparent plastic bag with an x-ray of my chest inside, clearly visible from the outside of the bag.

I have just made it home from the hospital where - details to follow tomorrow - I was told I had a minor infection of the lung and was given antibiotics to clear it up - and upon arriving at the gate, I notice that I am without my keys. Suddenly, I remember giving them to Eileen so that she could unlock the office door at school and look for the record book of her various trips to the hospital thus far. She forgot to return the keys to me. I have reached my point - and you'll understand further tomorrow - and try as best as I can to explain my missing keys to the keeper. He calmly feigns ignorance at my plight. Instead, as I watch helplessly from the door, he shows his young son how to carefully place chopped-up fish parts into a simmering pot in the center of a table in the guardhouse.

I think it was after watching seven chunks of fish being maneuvered into the pot that I finally lost all control of my sensibilities and went into a bit of a crying fit. He didn't know what to do then, realizing that he could no longer ignore me. Luckily, I was able to give him the number of Winnie who was with Eileen at the time and they came home quickly and I entered my room, took the first dose of antibiotics and passed out for five hours. I'm only up now to wash my face, brush my teeth and say, "Good LORD, what makes me travel?"

But in all seriousness, I'm doing much better and now that I've had a blood test and it came up negative for anything serious or bizarre or previously unknown to me, I feel much better and am looking forward to kicking this infection in the rear before my big trip next weekend. TGf-X-rays, right?

Posted by liltayinchina at 12:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I’m writing to you during a break in flu-like symptoms; a break caused by some Robitussin my mother sent me after witnessing a nasty, nasty cough during her stay over Christmas. I ache all over. I’ve never experienced aching like this. I’ve tried looking up potential illnesses based on my symptoms, but that whole internet self-diagnosing thing leaves much to be desired since symptoms described are totally vague and overlap in a variety of illnesses. What I can tell you, is that something is inside of me and it isn’t happy. I’ve got serious fever, serious body aches and chills, an intense headache that is camped out behind my eyes, and a throat-drying, yet mucous-pulling cough that shatters my head every time I have to clear my throat. Not to mention, my typing speed and usual lack of mistakes has been replaced by the blunderings of thick, shaky fingers.

This morning, I had a dream that I was tossing and turning in bed with all of the above-mentioned pains and then I woke up to a brain-splitting headache. I took two Excedrin Extra Strength pills and then, when I finally got out of bed and took a shower, I was sweating and coughing the beginnings of another bad hack. So, I took some long-acting Robitussin and started to feel nauseous, dizzy and fuzzy in general. I know you shouldn’t mix medicines and, in fact, just finished reading a chapter in a book about the BS of daily life (I’m too ill to try and explain that any further and will let you look up the book if your interested: Your Call Is Important To Us by Laura Penny…) and this particular chapter illuminated some of the falsities involved in the Pharmacopia (I think that’s Penny’s word) world…falsities that, unless you’re feeling HORRIBLE, would scare you into paying closer attention to the pills you are a’poppin’ to cure all those terrible aches and pains.

I digress.

Anyway, I got to school and was feeling really, really horrible. A lot of my pins reminded me of a terrible headache, but I was feeling like I would pass out at any minutes. Classes started getting cancelled left and right – only two more days of school left now – and I spent most of the morning with my head on my desk.

I guess I shouldn’t continue to sidestep the point of this entry since who knows when I’ll start feeling horrible again…Basically I’m getting pretty scared. I feel like I’ve been sick since September and it doesn’t look like my “illness” is going to let up any time soon. I’m about to go on a no small trek down south and am feeling like my health is going to seriously affect that trip. But, my alternatives are just as frightening. I completely trust Chinese doctors with their own population and with the situations that drive them to prescribe the regimens they do, but in terms of me and my body, I really don’t like the idea of being a pin cushion every time I feel ill like this. And, since I have no idea what I’m suffering from and can’t seem to explain it in as much detail is needed, if I did go to the hospital tonight for some sweet, sweet relief, the nurse would sit me in a chair in a room of forty other patients, most of them smoking in the closed, hot confines of the room, and they’d stick an IV into my arm full of an antibiotic cocktail.

Both Eileen and Colin have had pretty bad experiences with this antibiotic cocktail – bubbles in the tubes, blood flooding into the bag, track marks from seven and even nine recurrences of the regimen – the list goes on and on.

All I’m trying to say is that the population is suffering from a variety of terrible illnesses and the best way to treat them all quickly is to keep the antibiotics flowing in the blood stream. Who knows, maybe one visit would cure me for the rest of my stay in Wuhan. Or, what’s more likely, I could start suffering from worse and stronger bugs and not have any relief when I really, most need it.

Obviously, I don’t know what I’m talking about and I’m blissfully grateful for a moment of respite. I just really, really want to get better before February 3rd. I also should mention that I might be suffering from food poisoning. I ate some green onions in my noodles last night and read that flu-like symptoms often accompany food poisoning. The one problem with this theory is that I’ve got this blasted cough also. ACK!

I guess I should finish off with the promise that I’m fine, really. I just am tired of these constant aches and pains. I felt like my legs were being pulled apart as I tossed and turned about three hours ago. It took me five minutes – seriously – to get out of bed when I finally felt sane enough to read the backs of the medicine to chose the best one for my current symptoms.

Some of you might understand the graveness of the situation with this one fact: I’m actually watching the Lord of The Rings – voluntarily – RIGHT NOW! Now you know that there’s something SERIOUSLY wrong with me!!!!

Anyway, like I said before, I’m venting. I’m tired and ill and wanting to be better and seeing no end in site. I’m sure I’ll be better tomorrow and so don’t worry, just tell me whether I should research Tuberculosis any further. As we know, I’m impressionable in all of the wrong ways so it might be a bad, bad idea.

I should go pass out now.

Blorg.

Posted by liltayinchina at 07:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Being a judge is really hard work. I can’t help but feel that every decision I made last Monday was somehow arbitrary and a little unfair. For the most part, though, my results were in sync with the winners and there were five judges in all, so I guess it’s just a feeling…

I know you’re all anxious to hear about how the foreign teacher’s performance went, so I’ll skip everything for now and begin with the ending of English Day 2007. After the last student performance and the last question and after all of the points had been tallied and the prizes awarded, it came time for closing remarks. They were made and then Winnie, who was host of English Day 2007, introduced the foreign teachers and told the audience that we had a special surprise for them: We were going to sing!

Twelve of the fourteen foreign teachers marched dutifully onto the stage, though maybe only two of us even like to sing in public and that’s only if alcohol is involved. The music started, and, what do you know? Mr. Negativity came sauntering up to the stage, front and center, as if he had planned to participate the whole time and his delayed entrance was all part of the act. I had noticed him wavering – he was the Canadian judge and as the American judge, I sat next to him through the whole event. I heard later from another source that what finally did it for him was his students in the row behind him egging him on to join in and to be a good sport and sing with us. Apparently my other source gave him a slight jab after our song was through, attempting to put him in his place. The long and short of it, though, is that for all of his complaining and dramatics, he came up there and made a fool out of himself in the name of continuity. And fools we did make. None of us had practiced. Lisa and I were in the front row – being the short girls that we are – and someone handed her a microphone. She thrust it in my direction and so I pretended to sing into it, though I knew better than to actually make sounds into a microphone. We got through the song and the children laughed a lot at us and it was splendid.

The school did a fantastic job of prepping for English Day and it went smoothly and was a lot of fun to witness. I was especially surprised at the types of pieces the competing students chose. One girl told about the life of Helen Keller (from Alabama, thank you very much), and a boy reenacted the “I Have a Dream” speech. I listened to him practice it in the office for three weeks. He listened to a recording of MLK Jr. giving the speech and at first, tried imitating King’s very specific sound. Listening to a small 11 yr old Chinese boy imitate Martin Luther King Jr. is something else. Luckily, a foreign teacher tactfully hinted that it wasn’t sounding appropriate or sincere and worked with the boy  and his co-teacher to help him develop his own style. The final product turned out to be a great success and my favorite of the entire show.

Unfortunately, I’m feeling all worded out tonight and don’t feel that continuing about English Day will do it any justice so I’ll leave off here and ask that you look for the pictures from English Day (up any day now on the flickr page) to get a feel for it through images. I’m looking forward to a break and some traveling in the coming weeks – only two more to wait now!!! I think it will do me good to get out of Wuhan and see some other parts of China. I’m also looking forward to seeing a friendly face and doing some traveling with a good friend. I hope January is treating everyone well out there. And, for those of you in Seattle, we got a big snow day here too! So I know what ya’ll are going through (sort of, not really : )

Zai jian!
~Lillis

Posted by liltayinchina at 07:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Several entries have been long overdue these days, but it’s the end of the term and school has kept me very busy. Also, I’ve been recovering from a series of illnesses and can say that this weekend is the first time since before Christmas that I’ve felt quite myself.

And, since it is the end of the term, I’d like to tell you about my last class with K3C – one of my two Kindergarten classes. I don’t think you’ll be able to believe it. Even now, after a week has passed, I’m still in shock when I close my eyes to think of that last 35 minutes. It was a riot. A true riot, in the exact sense of the word, I believe.

Class with this group had been deteriorating for a while. In fact, by the time that I no longer had two co-teachers, but just the one young girl who speaks no English, class had gone from being a pseudo-learning experience to an out and out play session called, “Let’s give the young Chinese teacher a break and let the children use the foreigner as a chew-toy-slash-giant doll-slash-scratching post”. And I enjoyed every minute of it; though I think this new role could be the culprit for all those extra illnesses I’ve been fighting recently.

So anyway, I arrive at class on that last day armed with two sheets of small multi-colored stickers. One sheet was full of red, orange and green apples that said things like, “I heart China” and “You’re sweet!” and “Awesome!” on them. The other sheet had smiley faces in all different colors with different expressions on their faces. I had brought the apple stickers to class the week before and it had seemed to work in keeping the children quiet for five seconds longer than usual every time we did manage to get them to settle down. On this day, however, the stickers created even more of a distraction.

Let me give you some visual cues so that you can try to put yourself in my shoes: throughout the term, I taught the K3C class on the third floor of the Kindergarten building in what I assumed to be an old music room. I sat up against the wall on a small wooden stool and the children would cluster in rows in front of me on even smaller plastic stools. My stool sat right next to a keyboard that the co-teacher used to play the melodies for songs I taught the children from the book. She also used this keyboard to quiet the children down if they became to excited or started attacking me (mostly hugs or sticking fingers in my mouth or up my nose.) Along the far wall opposite my small stool is a large mirror and there is an old metal bar along the mirror that looks like it could have been used for stretching at one time. Now however, the bar is no longer attached to anything and causes the children to fall into the mirror every time they touch it or come near it.

The room doesn’t have a heater in it and so I always let the children sit very close to me because when we’re doing songs or chants, they like to run up excitedly and touch my face or try and put their hands under my coat and squeeze my belly. I’m still not sure what that’s all about, although my 1st graders try to do this too. I’ve gotten to the point where I tuck all of my layers in now because if a stray hand gets farther in without my initial notice, they don’t touch skin and I can manage to get away before they’re yanking my shirt up and out. If anyone has had experience with this kind of thing and small children, enlightenment would be most appreciated.

On the last day of class, my co-teacher wasn’t even paying attention to me or the children. She kept taking out her cell phone and text messaging people. I assume this is what she was doing because she was punching keys for most of class and often smiling to herself as if she were communicating with a person she liked very much.

So it was me, and several rows of giggling, smiling, sweet, loud little Kindergarteners. We were huddled very close and I tried doing a few of the songs and chants we know: “Ring Around the Rosy”, “One, Two, Buckle My Shoe”, “Round and Round the Garden”, “Rain, Rain, Go Away”, and on and on and on…but the children were just too excited. One boy whom I like very much kept jumping out of his seat and shouting out in hysterical laughter, doing a little mini-run in place, and sticking both of his hands out as if he were going to explode with excitement. He kept coming up and hugging me really hard and faux-fainting on my lap. Many of the children would catch his enthusiasm and try to repeat his movements, ending up in a child-puddle on my lap and feet. I love encouraging them and this makes them have fits of excitement that usually send my co-teacher into the fray to settle them down. But, as I said, on this day she was otherwise occupied.

Then I made the mistake of pulling out the sheets of stickers and it was like being at a feeding frenzy. Little hands started trying to tear the sheets out of my hands and if I aimed my stickered finger in the direction of a student, three hands would try to rip it off and keep it for themselves. I managed to get them to sit quietly long enough to get a sticker on each student’s forehead but then they wanted more and more and more and little hands were yanking at my arms trying to get my finger to land a sticker on them. I actually heard threads ripping in my coat sleeves on more than five occasions. I tried standing and was knocked backwards and into a huge stack of small plastic stools and I suddenly had an image of Gulliver being tied down by the Lilliputians. I imagined being knocked unconscious and waking up on the floor, my face covered in apple and smiley face stickers.

When I ran out of stickers, the students begged for more activity so we played the 5 Little Monkeys game. It’s a simple game, really. I choose five children to be my monkeys and then I repeat the rhyme of the monkeys jumping on the bed and tap one student each time I say that one little monkey fell off the bed. These little creatures started actually coming up with strategies of how to remain in the game in order to be the last monkey and we had a lot of fun playing it all term. By this day though, I was the only one chanting and the children were all being monkeys and it was frenetic and fun and my heart was overflowing with admiration for all of my tiny little students. I felt very sad after class was over and the students pulled me in all directions to introduce me to their parent or grandparent who was waiting outside to take them home. The funniest part is that I’ve been seeing these children twice a week for three months now and not one of them remembers to say “Hello” or “Goodbye” to me outside of class. I don’t mind at all, though. I just love that I accidentally got the chance to have playtime with these little people and get paid for it.

I’m not sure if they’re doing Kindergarten again next term, and I’ll be sad to see it go. I really did fall in love with my students and that last day was a foreboding indication of the kind of sadness I’m in store for come June. How can I possibly say goodbye to my 1st and 2nd graders at the end of my year here? Luckily, I’ve still got five and a half more months NOT to think about it!

Posted by liltayinchina at 07:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Remember how I mentioned an English competition and that I was going to be a judge for said competition? Well you wouldn't even believe the drama circling this event. No, seriously, you wouldn't.

First of all, the competition was postponed due to a panic between the head principal and Mr. Ye's boss and our big, big boss: Mrs. Li. Apparently, at the final dress rehearsal, it was deemed insufficient in terms of glitter, glamour, flash, finesse, and panache. You know, in Chinese terms and terminology. (Um, terms meaning something other than terminology here...I'm hopped up on cold medicine! Leave me alone!)

So, I mentioned everything that was a part of the original program, but since then, my poor students, the ones that are just presenting a song and dance routine, have been practicing over and over and over again, in the cold, on the weekends and during their lunch periods every day to get the exact look and feel the leaders are going for. Of course, the Chinese co-teachers are worn ragged about now, and us trying to prepare for English finals only a week away. I’ve already missed more than two classes, and Julia more than four since this thing got off the ground.

Apparently, the fact that huge investors in the school, not to mention reporters and parents will be invited to this thing and it has got to be top notch. Now, in comes the drama. (See, you thought that all that was the drama but that was just leading up to the truly absurd part of my little story…)

The school held the first-ever English Day competition in 2005 and apparently, the cut of their foreign teachers at that time was quite different from now. You see, the foreign teachers at that time, of their own volition, prepared a delightful song to sing as a surprise for the school (of course it was approved by several members of the school leadership and was only a surprise to the audience), but nonetheless, it exuded unity and a sense of satisfaction and quality. Mrs. Li wanted desperately to replicate said sense for this year’s English Day, but sadly, she’s got a sorry bunch on her hands. None of the foreign teachers wanted to participate and some have even out and out refused to participate. I see it as something we should do to show that the ill feelings among us have nothing to do with the school, but there are some who just don’t want to show any hospitality of themselves at all. In fact, it has been said on more than one occasion, rather sarcastically, “Well, SINGING isn’t in my contract, so they’re not gonna get a note outta me!”

We had already had one uncomfortable meeting where Mr. Ye, through Michael, one of the Chinese co-teachers, asked us to come up with a song for the show…to sing at the end. After that meeting, it was apparent that no one was going to do a thing and that something awkward was going to occur on the day of the show so I went to Mr. Ye and told him that the foreign teachers, as a group, were having a difficult time coming together and seeing eye-to-eye on the song-singing situation.

He called another meeting, this time with a co-teacher and without a leader present. The co-teacher, Jade, was polite and tactful and just repeated over and over, “So, what song should I write down that you all will sing at the English Day competition?” I think the low point for me was when one especially negative co-worker of mine practically spit out the suggestion that the only reason we were being asked to sing was to show to the public that the school had a huge band of performing foreign monkeys. And just as immediately, my high point came when Jade shot back, “No one in this room is a monkey, or any other kind of animal. Why don’t you look at it as an opportunity to have fun and let loose a little bit. It might do you some good.” Jade: 500, Negativity: 0.

You see, I don’t like the idea of singing any more than Mr. Negative. And no, it isn’t usually customary to make your employees sing in front of large audiences in America (unless alcohol is involved), but I’m not in America and I can take myself lightly, so why can’t everyone else? And, even if this IS a circus act and we are being paraded out as performing monkeys, at least there are children in the audience, students from each of our classes, children that will see us as their teachers that they like and nothing else. At least we could do it for them.

And we are.

Some of my other foreign cohorts put their brains together and came up with the Beatles song, “Hello/Goodbye”. And boy do I feel like I’m saying “Hello” to someone else’s “Goodbye” these days! And you know what? I don’t know why they say goodbye when I say hello, hello, HELLO!

Posted by liltayinchina at 09:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

 
My friend Mike is visiting from Seattle for the first half of the Spring Festival holiday and today, I purchased our tickets to Kunming. Well, actually, I went to the office that reserves tickets in advance, if you’re willing to pay an “exorbitant” mark-up, and handed over a down payment of 200 kuai for our hard-sleeper tickets to Kunming. In case you’re not familiar with the exchange rate, that’s a couple of pennies over $25 for the deposit. Last week at my last Chinese class with Robyn (a separate entry required to explain that one…), I procured the Chinese characters for the name of the ticket office and she told me the general location, as well as gave me a phone number. I did some planning for our trip this weekend and know that sleeper tickets can go fast, especially for the Spring Festival holiday, so I made my way into the very bleary conditions today and went in search of the ticket office. First, though, I called Robyn to see if she’d be willing to translate in case any problems arose, but she said she was busy. Then I tried calling the office ahead of time to see if anyone spoke English. Nope.

I was completely turned around when I came to the intersection Robyn told me to look out for and ended up walking up and down several sides of the street before finally walking into a Chinese Lottery storefront to ask for “pointing” directions. A woman didn’t even look up at me from the sheet of paper I held in front of her face, but went back to her computer screen and pointed towards the direction I had just come from. I continued on in the now-subsiding rain until I recognized two characters from the scrawl in my notebook. I stepped inside, after depositing my dripping umbrella at the “doorway” – several heavy strips of thick, yellowed plastic sheeting overlapping and gently swaying in the January bluster.

As soon as I stepped inside, a woman sitting behind a window recognized me as the foreigner who’d called only thirty minutes before and she motioned me over to her window. A younger man stood beside her and smiled kindly at me. She was all business. I had prepared a sheet of paper before setting out that had the Chinese characters for the kind of tickets I wanted to buy (one-way, hard sleeper tickets), the number (2), the date on which I wanted to travel (Feb. 4th), the time of day (between afternoon and evening), the city and province I wanted to arrive in (Kunming, Yunnan Province), and the fact that I DID NOT want bottom bunks, but either 2nd or 3rd level ones. At the top of this sheet of paper, I’d initially written this all out in English so that I made sure of including, in Chinese, every detail that could make the difference between an enjoyable train ride and an unpleasant one. We will, after all, be on the train for a very long time!

The woman waved excitedly at me for some information other than my startled and shy face. I handed her the sheet of paper and she scoffed at the English before even getting to the characters at the bottom of the sheet. The man standing next to her said, as if to confirm that she shouldn’t destroy the piece of paper immediately, “Kunming! Kunming! Ta yao qu Kunming!” The woman looked skeptically at my poorly written characters, but they were legible enough for her to get the proceedings rolling.

Granted, I’ve not had anyone read the receipt and confirm that I’ve reserved the right kind of tickets for the right day and time, but I think things went rather well. A lot better than I had expected. It’s so funny now to think of me putting off this trip the entire weekend, feeling that I’d either be laughed out of the office for a huge lack of language capability or that me not being able to speak would completely prevent me from achieving my goal of reserving the two tickets.

The sad, or at least maybe now-obvious part of this story is that I was ELATED when I left that office with a guarantee of receiving the tickets by the 26th of January and with a fixed price well within agreeable terms. It looks as if each of us will only have to pay $45 USD for our one-way trip to Kunming. I mean, I was ecstatic and proud and walking on air. Of course, my trip TO the office was a different story. It was as if I was afraid of my own shadow. Sometimes, I feel that this new shyness due to language deficiencies will have one of two negative effects on me when I return to America: either I will have become terribly shy (I KNOW! Can you IMAGINE!?!?!?!), or I will be so starved for the kind of attention and understanding of those that speak my language that I’ll be even MORE outspoken and talkative than before. (Second verse, same as the first: I KNOW! Can you IMAGINE!?!?!?!)

What gets me is that these little adventures are continually reminding me of my circumstances here and how fun it is to relish such small, seemingly insignificant victories.

And, in case anyone is interested in living vicariously during the month of February, the plan thus far has Mike and I traveling north from Kunming, up through one of the most beautiful and culturally varied provinces of China, until we reach the pinnacle of our adventure (literally and temporally): Tiger Leaping Gorge. More details to come as the planning gets more and more underway. Today was a huge step in the right direction, as procuring train tickets at this time of year can be very difficult. Although, a friend told me that the Chinese government had tried to reduce the strain at holiday times since the majority of the population is in flux and trains are the cheapest mode of transportation the country currently has to offer.

Mike leaves on the 18th of February which technically IS the Chinese New Year Holiday this year, so, I will be taking on another adventure for the second half of the month, which is, as yet to be determined.

And, one last bit of exciting news, my old roommate Bianca, who now lives in DC, has booked her ticket to visit me in May. We will meet up in Beijing, see the Great Wall, go find this hanging monastery (it’s hanging off of the side of a cliff, according to a friend), and will tour the Beijing clubbing nightlife! The fun never stops for me here in China!!!

Posted by liltayinchina at 08:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

 
My Mom was going to make a guest appearance on the blog but had too much fun while she was here to waste any of her time writing a silly old blog entry for me. (Is that a good excuse or what, Mom?) So, she compromised and posted her favorite photos from the trip on my flickr site instead. AND, she even wrote some captions to boot! Take a gander here (what does THAT even mean? Take a gander?):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ririsu/sets/72157594446308616/ 

 

Posted by liltayinchina at 10:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

PRE-SCRIPT: I apologize to any of you who know pinyin (The alphabet that allows Westerners to read and learn Chinese words and tones. Of course, I have no way of assigning tones so this really isn’t pinyin…to be super-precise). I’ve butchered the pinyin in the following post and have probably done the same destruction in posts before this one. One day, I’ll know how to properly identify the Romanized version of Chinese. Until then, please forgive my blunderings!

Now that I’ve got a full stomach and have dulled my mind with a spot of teli [or is it telly?] (HEY! I AM teaching the Queen’s English after all – that’s British English to any of you who are from a country with your own Queen and my apologies for generalizing…or something)…

…I’ll continue my story.

I had just given Teacher Jiang his money and had made my way back down the seven flights of stairs and was back on the street waiting to hail a cab WHEN, a woman next to me hailed one first. She got in the passenger’s seat and I watched as she and the “si ji” or “driver” had a lively conversation. Then I watched as she opened the door and got back out of the taxi. This being the second observation of such an act in less than an hour, I hailed him quickly, opened the passenger door as he scooted up and asked doubtfully, “Nanhu huayuan ke yi ma?” (Southlake Gardens could you?) He nodded yes, and I hopped into the back seat with all my belongings.

What a wonderful driver I had managed to steal from another woman. He spoke calmly and eloquently as he asked question after question in Wuhanese. Wuhanese isn’t THAT different from regulation Mandarin and especially with his elocution, it was quite easy to understand him. We had a divine conversation. He asked if I was having a happy week. He asked if I was a teacher and where I was from and how old I was. He looked to be about sixty and when I told him I was 26, he replied with, “Oh, good, well then I’m 30!” He asked how I liked Wuhan. He asked if I was going to live in Wuhan for good. I asked him if he knew my community in Southlake “Bao-an Huayuan” and when he said “no”, we agreed that I’d just tell him “left” and “right” when it came time to find the community. He asked if he could drive me home everyday after school. The best part about this segment of the conversation was how I didn’t know what he was talking about at first, but, with time and several reiterations of his question, I managed to understand and was even able to respond with “I have a regular driver everyday but couldn’t take him today because I had other plans”. Of course, I wasn’t able to say these words exactly, but between the two of us, we got there.

Now, this may appear to be a small step after six months of living in China, but, and my mother can back me up on this, it gets hard. It gets hard trying to interact when just around the corner, you’ll be misunderstood or the things being said to you, you won’t understand yourself. Usually, I try not to get into conversations but my “si ji” tonight was so friendly and so encouraging and so kind himself that it just came naturally. And, it makes sense that almost at the end of my ride he told me he had been a teacher a long time ago. I’m sure, if I’d been able to stop for a beer with him, (and if my vocabulary was much stronger) he’d have been able to tell me quite a story.
But, I want to talk a little more about the kind, big heart my “si ji” had tonight. First, we were stuck in traffic at a corner not far from my destination – maybe nine or ten more minutes, and we watched as a woman in a white coat was rejected from two taxis she tried to take. When we drove up beside her as she was walking in our direction, my driver looked back at me and shrugged and then asked through the window if she was heading towards my neighborhood. She nodded yes and he asked me, “Hao, bu hao?” (Good, not good?) and I responded, “Hao”. She got in and he introduced me as the young American teaching him English. He told her I was having a great week. He then taught her what appeared to be his favorite English phrase, “I lub dew!” She turned to me and winked and said, “I lub dew!” and I said, “I lub dew too!” Our new friend got out a few minutes later.

When we were at the Bao-an huayuan gates, my driver asked me if he was a good driver. I told him he was the best. He asked how to say, “turn left” and “turn right” and as I was trying to teach him and saying the Chinese equivalents, he would begin to make those turns. It was confusing and delightful but we finally made it to the school. I paid him and gave him the first tip I’ve given in China. I’ve tried a couple of times before – with people who I really wanted to honor in some way, but those people always took offense (and if someone can explain why it is considered “rude” to tip in China, I’d really appreciate it). Tonight, though, my driver seemed very pleased and stuck the bill I’d given him behind his photo ID, which is displayed prominently on the passenger-side dashboard.

We were both sorry the ride was over. I got out, said “goodbye” seven or eight times and then made for the gate. He made a nine-point turn backing up and when he was pointed in the right direction again, hopped out of his taxi to help me with the gate. We shook hands, bowed and shook hands again and then he said, “Now Li Li, you must GO!” and he waved, jumped in his taxi and sped off.

If only I didn’t have a daily driver already!

Posted by liltayinchina at 10:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

 
I just had one of those life-affirming interactions that give me just enough gumption to do things like uproot and move to a foreign country to teach English and learn the language. And I’m not big on adjectives such as “life-affirming” but in this case, the adjective certainly fits and thus I must use it.

I’m really hungry right now, but since the interaction just happened and it is fresh on my mind, I figure I’ve got to get it out “on paper” before doing anything else this evening.

Today was our first day back from the New Year’s holiday. Everyone, especially myself, was feeling under the weather. We foreign teachers were clouding the air with coughs and sniffles and grumbles from feeling really ill even after several days to recuperate. Even though drawing class is one of my favorite parts about my new life, I wasn’t feeling fit enough to sit in the cold and draw for two hours after a long day of teaching so I was planning on coming straight home after Kindergarten today, except, Mom bought one of my Teacher Jiang’s paintings while she was here and since he let me bring it home last Thursday, I felt obligated to pay him today. I didn’t want for him to wait any longer. You see, I know (second-hand at least, thanks to a certain Papa Bear) what it is like to live primarily off of your art and I’m sure it isn’t fun waiting week after week for the payout.

Anyway, I’m getting way off track here. So, after Kindergarten, I made my way to the street, bag lady that I usually am, my school bag full of books and Grade 1 tests slung over my shoulder, a bag full of dirty dishes (breakfast bowls, coffee and tea mugs, chopsticks, etc.) in one hand and a bag carrying my mother’s brand new handmade coat and a banana in the other hand. (Don’t worry Mom, the coat is fabulous and banana-slime free.) I had a small notebook opened to the Chinese characters for the Hubei Art Institute as well as the pinyin for the school and I was practicing what I’d say if I managed to hail a cab.

As usual, it was shift-change and I was expecting a long wait in the cold. I walked East from the school and to a street where I thought I might have some luck. A taxi pulled over for a couple just in front of me and I started scanning the street behind him. Then I noticed the couple getting back out of the taxi. Apparently, their location didn’t jive well with the driver’s plans of heading back to the station in time for shift-change. I hailed him down and he slowed dubiously, preparing for me to say the wrong direction. I told him where I wanted to go and he nodded a subtle, “get in”.

He spoke what seemed to me a very lazy and very pleasant Putong hua or “Correct Chinese language”. I couldn’t understand him at all, but this didn’t seem to faze him since he knew where to drop me off. As we approached the institute, I pulled out my wallet and he hollered gleefully, in Chinese, of course, “You know where we are! You know where we are!” I said that I did, paid him and headed up the alleyway to the abandoned building and up the stairs to find Teacher Jiang and pay him for Mom’s painting.

And this is where my story actually begins but I’m too hungry to go any further. As incentive to finish telling the story, I’m going to post this first part…surely you will complain a lot if it isn’t finished, right?

Posted by liltayinchina at 07:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)