Adaptation

One of the many upsides of working in a school all the way across the world is the holiday time.  Schools compensate for the distance by giving you longer Christmas holidays—ones where you can travel home and deal with the jet lag.  And oh, the jet lag. 

This time around, I’ve got three weeks in Michigan.  As such, I find myself in a new coffee shop.  This time an independent branch in the downtown of my hometown, recently voted America’s 9^th most livable ‘city’ by Money Magazine.   Because I’m trying to keep my acerbic nature in check, I’ll choose not to comment on this.  What I will say is, that with three weeks here, I’m trying to make the most of the Midwest bubble.

 I’ve already been to the orchestra—The DSO put on a remarkable performance of ‘Home Alone.’  With the big screen down, and the score cut from the film, the orchestra and choir played the backing music to the film along with a cheery number or two at the end.  It was beautiful.

On Sunday, the Avila women head to see the Moscow Ballet’s version of the Nutcracker.  And the rest of the three weeks will be consumed with yoga classes (some wanky, some okay), dinner with various friends, a Red Wings game and a classy NYE party in Downtown Detroit.   As I’ve been told by various friends and acquaintances, Detroit is ‘up and coming’.   The up will probably take years but I hope it gets there eventually.

Naturally, this is a good time to reflect on the term.  And if I journey back to my October post about adaptation, I am happy to report that I feel, in fact, adapted to life in China.  I mean, it’s crazy and ridiculous and completely unpredictable: 14 weeks of Mandarin lessons and I can just about say my address and the date; I’ve bought a scooter from a friend who’s now left; I’m no longer surprised by the things that anyone does.  I think I’m desensitised from the weird.

And work is remarkably okay.  I had a long time to ponder this on the 13-hour flight home.  In comparison to how exhausted I would have been on any London flight back to the US, the only signs of exhaustion I could feel were physical.  The mental exhaustion I have experienced in the last six years of my old job was curiously absent.   And then I had a think: At no point in this year have I felt that I cannot breathe, that I am struggling to keep my head above water, that I missed the scrutiny and constant poke-poke-poking of the British state school system.  I hope I do not regret writing this.  But it turns out that I, in fact, have a degree of work-life balance.

What a revelation.

It’s prompted me to really consider my options upon return to London.  I like the busy but not stressed out to the point of rage, person I have become this term. 

With that in mind, from one bubble to another, Merry Christmas.

Singles' Day and other OIC stories

Yesterday, on my flight back to Shanghai, I happened to pick up a copy of The China Daily, China's English written newspaper.  For various reasons, it's a hoot.  Check out their website for its e-edition here:  China Daily Online.

Yesterday's weekend edition hosted a few doozies, what I have dubbed 'Only in China' stories.  The first OIC:

News from Hunan:  'College men get safety advice book'

A young man's version of a security manual has gone on sale following the publication of a similar manual for young women last year.  Written by the same college in Wuchang, the manual aims to improve safety awareness and establish correct core values.  The manual outlines various scenarios and responses through cartoons and covers safety issues that young men in college may face.  Among other bits of advice, the manual advises college students to stay away from ill-behaved baifumei (which, rich, beautiful girls) and be more careful when making friends.  More than 10,000 copies have been sold to date.

I know quite a few rich, white, beautiful women who moved here to poach poor provincial Chinese college boys.  Watch out!

More poignantly, perhaps, is this OIC:

New from Hubei:  'Teacher's criticism causes girl to faint'

A 17-year-old high school girl in Wuhan fainted over her teacher's criticism, Wuhan Evening News reported on Wednesday.  The teacher noticed the girl, surnamed Xie, was absent-minded during a dancing rehearsal and asked her to concentrate.  Xie collapsed and became delirious on hearing the criticism before being sent to a local psychiatric hospital.  Xie's mother said similar things often happened to the only child.  Xie's doctor said the girl suffered from hysteria brought on by being spoiled, which triggers the disease.  

Take that, London schoolgirls! 

And possibly, my favourite for its sheet capitalistic streak that mimics every American holiday but isn't afraid to stand up and say it:

Record 'Singles Day' online sales expected

This year's 'Singles Day' shopping spree, which happens on Nov 11, is expected to generate record levels of online spending according to the latest market predictions…The idea of Singles Day was first dreamed up by the recently floated e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd five years ago to encourage people without partners to comfort themselves with some retail therapy.

That's right folks, don't have a husband, partner, lesbian lover?  Go buy some crap and feel happy that you're all by yourself.  Alone.  Drinking wine and nibbling corn cakes in your underwear.  

Seeing that my boyfriend's practically two continents away, Kim and I have decided to frequent Carrefour and participate in their buy three bottles, get three free wine sale.  That's got to be better than poor Wan Lijie, 29, who's: 'determined to stick to a sensible budget [and buy] daily essentials such as toothpaste, tissue and laundry detergent.'  

In fact, maybe we'll find her in Carrefour.  Maybe she can join our wine party.  

Beijing

Amongst other you're moving to China advice I was given, the most astute has been 'the sky is never blue in China.'  Shades of yellow, grey, even green, yes but that's all.  Nowhere is this more true than in Beijing, the country's capital.  Its geographical position ensures it has cold, harsh winters that start early and end late.  And because the Chinese are a little bit more than superstitious about the cold, heaters, and therefore coal factories, work overtime to heat people's homes.  But houses are tile-floored and insulation is sparse so the coal factories work even harder.  Pollution in Beijing in the wintertime is unbearable, so I've been told.

Imagine my surprise this morning when stepping out of my Beijing hotel room after a three-day IB training course and into a crisp, blue, autumnal sky.

As it turns out, the government has the ability to control the colour of the sky.  Our visit coincided with the annual APEC Conference, a gathering of the Asia Pacific region's governments, with a goal of fostering stronger economic ties between the countries.  And because of this rather prestigious gathering, the government decided upon a few drastic measures: 1. close all schools and public offices and give everyone a week's holiday to get the hell out of the city.  2. limit the cars on the road by only allowing odd number plates on the road on one day and even numbers on another 3. shut down all major factories.  And this trifecta of wisdom (control?) sent pollution levels plummeting to all time lows.  Where in else in the world could a government make this happen?

All in all, Beijing surprised me.  It was the Chinese city I was expecting when I moved here--bright lights, easy to walk places, accessible public transport.  Granted, I didn't see all that much of it.  We spent 8am-5pm for three days of a conference at WAB, the Western Academy of Beijing, a school so impressively sprawling, it's got its own cafe.  With an indoor river. And a waterfall.

But in the downtime, I made friends with two girls from a school in Cambodia and we made it as far as: the Irish pub across the street; Sanlitun; Gui Jie--a street crammed with Chinese restaurants serving Beijing duck and langoustines.

 Of course, we found apt signage:

Gui Jie was crammed to the rafters with Chinese people waiting patiently outside restaurants that were crammed to the rafters indoors.  People were wrapped up tightly in layers of scarves and coats whilst sitting on stools munching on sunflower seeds and discarding the shells in spitfire fashion.  An automated LED number system indicated to them when their table was ready.  Considering that in most everyday situations the Chinese don't wait very patiently, the food must've been good.   

 On the end of our last evening, we even found a bowling alley in our hotel.

As for the major tourist sights, those'll have to wait for next time.  

Friday Night Lights

I happen to date an Anglo-Italian who, for since as long as I've known him, has had an obsession with American culture. In fact, his opening 'line' when we met was--'Oh my God, are you American?'  Paul's persistence paid off--after I rolled my eyes and sent him away, he came back seven songs later, dance moves in hand.  The rest, as one says, is history.

Fast forward to my brother's wedding at the end of October.  It was the first time I'd been in the US in the autumn for years and Paul's first.  Between rehearsal dinners and family events that overtook a four-day-trip to the states, we managed to sneak out for a cheeky hour of the high school football game.  It was like walking out of my parents' house and straight into my past.  Considering my family doesn't trust me with their cars and we got dropped off at the gates, it was uncannily like my high school days.  

Paul was over the moon.  With a spirit akin to Christmas morning and the first day of holiday combined, he bopped to the music of the band, marveled over the community spirit and tried to pretend like he knew what was going on on the football field.

Because donuts were not an option.

For me, minus the glasses, braces and bad hair, it was like no time had passed.  The band played the same fire up tunes, had the same order of songs, marched off the fight song whose words I still remembered.

In formation.

The cheerleaders did the same flips, cheered the same cheers, tumbled their way dizzy.

And it was kind of glorious.  Don't get me wrong, you couldn't pay me enough to go back.  But nostalgia reminded me of the grand adventures I had in my teens and the friends I made in the process.  For Paul, he could put an understanding to his reformed band geek girlfriend whilst celebrating all things Americana.  

Oh, where does the time go? 

Shanghai to Michigan and back

In the last week or so, my brother got married, I flew home and back on two 13-hour epic journeys, had a mini-journey with Paul to high school Friday night lights and discovered some Shanghai joy.  Namely, in the shape of a handmade boot shop that houses the handmade boot man who is going to replace a beloved, but crappy, pair of boots from New Look with a pair of genuine dead cow leather ones.  I don't claim to be congruent in my vegetarianism.  

Now that I'm on the other side of jet lag, I’ve slept a lot this weekend and am backdating my blog posts from my half term travels.  Check out: Chengdu, Pandas, Xi’an.  More to come.  Look back!

Adventures in Vegetarianism

China is a country big on its meat so the concept of 'vegetarian' strikes many as rather odd.  Pescatarian is a bit more understood but only just. And ordering food can be a bit of a nightmare when even the most vegetabley of dishes comes adorned with pork--pieces, chunks, sauce.  Fortunately, I'm not the world's best vegetarian.  I've taken to picking through and around the meat pieces.  I must also say that I am partial to the odd dumpling with residue, as such.

But all this meat must make its way to your plate in one way or another.  And this is where the market comes in.  These markets are dubbed as 'wet markets' and sell produce that needs to be watered down to stay fresh--fruits, vegetables, fish and often, meat. The prices are cut rate, the produce is a much higher quality than that of what's found in local grocery stores and it's all very 'fresh'.  In the context of China and meat, fresh means stick-it-in-a-bag-alive-and-clobber-it-over-the-head-when-you-get-home.  Wherever possible. If you're feeling a bit squeamish about it, the kindly market attendant will do the killing and clobbering for you.

Overall though, I must respect the Chinese culture of meat.  First of all, there's no dressing up and euphemising what goes into dishes.  The language calls it what it is: niurou,  yangrou, zhurou--cow meat, sheep meat, pig meat. And when the Chinese kill an animal, they eat all the parts of it: feet, beaks, intestines.  There's a pragmatism in this and though I doubt it's in reverence for the animal, I prefer to see it this way.  Let's respect you cow, sheep, pig by using all parts of you.

And when I say everything, I mean everything:

And Western non-standard animal foods are fair game.  This is difficult to digest (pun intended?) for many (read: me) but, again, I will have to respect other cultures' rights to eat what they wish.  For the most part, the pickings were pretty standard.  But then we got to the turtle, snake, bullfrog section.

I'll be honest.  We struggled.  We tutted over the turtles with the thoughts of buying a load to liberate them into the city's sewers.  But in the long run, that only works in fictional children's television shows and so we walked on. 

October happens to coincide with hairy crab season and people buy them by the boxful:

I can't say I understand all the hype but in big, small and hairy, they get consumed.  

In Sichuan province and further afield, langoustines get boiled in a spicy sauce and covered in sichuan pepper--an herb that has numbing properties.  Three langoustines in and you can no longer feel your tongue or lips and drinking a glass of water becomes remarkably challenging.  

 Suffice to say, the market is not always a pleasant experience.

 But in a country of 1.6 billion, the Chinese have figured out how to divide those loaves and fishes.
                                      
And they're pretty happy about it.

On the Way to Adaptation

Today is the fifth of October.  Today I am wearing shorts and a long sleeve shirt—the sleeves are rolled up; the sleeves are a ruse.  I’m inside Costa Coffee, which is currently blasting the air conditioning because it’s hovering between 26-28 degrees Celsius outside.  Summer weather, really.  And I have a nostalgia for home.  Not an aching, urging, blatant one.  More a gnawing sense of deprivation—one part need for autumn, one part need for being understood, one part missing the people and places I know and love, the people who know me and get me. 

I’ve been told this is normal.  It’s a dip in the graph of the experience of expat life as illustrated in an apt article found here: While You're Away

I think I'm in the midst of the upcurve of culture shock and coupled with: pictures of CMU homecoming weekend on Facebook; the impending plethora of crap this work week promises to be; and the fallout of the end of a week of holiday, I was always bound to feel a bit meh. 

Sometimes it's hard to actualise that every day in a foreign country is not an adventure and that real life gets in the way.  I must remind myself that I am allowed low moments in the far flung adventure I signed myself up for.  

Fortunately, my fabulous friends help me put things in perspective.  My good friend Ian recently emailed and, to paraphrase, reality checked me: 'Just think what you would have said to me in this email if you had chosen to stay in your old job??’ 

This is true.  I don’t regret this decision.  Most days, I’m a little bit in love with it. But not like I thought I would be.  I’m not an international school lifer, not at this point, anyway. I finally, finally, finally, have an acute sense of home.  This ‘home’ isn’t my home country but nevertheless, it’s my chosen reality.  I miss London—snuggling up in pubs, ridiculous accents, students with bad attitude, even the rain.

Possibly it’s everything I did in the lead up to leaving.  In my last six months in London, every weekend was a mini-adventure.  Walks through Brixton and Tooting, ukulele shopping in the East End, sushi on the 48^th floor of a building in the city. I was a tourist in my own town. But it was easy to do and I’d like to believe I’ll continue on upon my return to Blighty.

Don't get me wrong, London's just as broken as everywhere else—wankers on Boracles with severe, trendy haircuts and entitlement to match; handbag stealing petty criminals; spending too much money on things that are half the price in the rest of the country; maniacal bus drivers who head-to-toe soak walkers by barreling through puddles at 45mph.  There were some real low moments.  But I love it.  And it took going away to recognise.

If absence makes the heart grow fonder then okay London, I get it.  I love you.  

Notice You, Noticing Me

Friendly or otherwise, most countries have a word for their foreign visitors.  In Ghana, we were referred to as ‘obruni’, direct translation: white person.  In Thailand the person who looks like they could be of some kind/any kind of European descent (or just non-Asian) is a ‘farang’.  Here in China, laowai is the colloquially segregational term used to distinguish the difference. Tranliteratively, us laowai are ‘old or always outsider.’  And maybe we're not old, but we often struggle to blend in. 

I’m lucky in the fact that my hair is dark.  But I can’t hide my hips (ie. I have them), my feet (bigger than the average lady’s), my double eyelids (again, I have them), my lack of Mandarin (trying, honestly).  Less subtly, I can’t rock hair bows the same way a Chinese girl can and on a humid day, my hair does this curly frizz thing that no stylish, well-put-together Chinese girl’s does. You can't have it all.

In Shanghai, the hub of international business, our laowainess is largely ignored.  People are used to us here—we’re no freak show.  The odd tourist on The Bund may look fascinatedly at you and smile in your direction because they’re probably from the countryside.  But that’s it. 

So Xi’an and Chengdu were a bit of a surprise.  Between the five of us, as the shortest, darkest member of the group, I blended in the most.  But I was travelling with: Carla, the token ginger girl; Kimberley, the tall Canadian; Aine, the blonde Irish girl; Nathan, whose distinguishing feature was that he was a white man travelling with four white(ish) women.  There were stares, gawks, not-so-clandestine photos snap, snap, snapping away.

The sight of the white people eating, resting on the metro, having a conversation sent people all a flutter.   Note, not everyone.  But enough people to know that when you looked up, you’d often be staring into the eyes of an entire family scrutinizing your day’s fashion decisions, skin care regime.

 In Chengdu, a 50-something man took to following us through the central square.  In front of the world’s largest statue of Mao, he feigned a series of photos of the Chairman.  It was believable until we turned the opposite direction and his tripod followed.  And followed. And followed. 

And every time we turned to wag a finger in his direction, he turned like a puppy that thinks that if you can’t see him eat the rubbish out of the bin, then there’s no way he possibly did it.  There's  an acute lack of object permanance. Or maybe this country has no shame when it comes to photographs.


He finally took it one snap too far so I begun to wage war on this one-man paparazzi.  Iphone in hand, I stared our voyeur down and began snapping back. He smiled.  I smiled.  And I continued snapping.  He stopped, briefly.  And then in a venture of defeat, he sort of slinked away, tail between his legs, as such. 

Victorious, we ambled slowly away taking in the splendor of the square.

In our wake, a familiar snap, snap, snap returned.   Our friend was back, this time with more camera-wielding friends of his own.  Lesson learned: in China, some things are not worth the fight.

Chengdu…The Pandas!

It is possible that in the giant panda, the world has found a species too stupid to maintain its own place in the world but entirely too cute to let eat its way into extinction. 

And I can remember reading an article with my students by Chris Packham, a BBC nature show conservationist who argued that pandas should be let to die.  My girls were up in arms—How could we? Why would we? That’s just cruel!   

But then you’re presented with compelling evidence: pandas survive on low calorie bamboo, the equivalent of a human chewing on celery, only celery, for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day of its life.  In order to get enough nutrition, a panda must eat for 10 hours a day.  And even then, it’s so exhausted from eating, it must sleep afterward. 

Or this: on average, pandas get their Marvin Gaye on for maximum of three days a year—their fertility and sexual desires peak at a ‘meh, I can’t be bothered to run away from this other bear kind of looking at me’ just once a year; and even then, a panda pregnancy is so volatile that doctors cannot measure whether Ting Ting or Tian Tian is pregnant until it actually gives birth.  In fact, a recent CNN headline reads: ‘Panda May Have Faked Pregnancy for more Buns, Bamboo.’  Not that I blame the girl, I’d probably do the same for some good Chinese buns.  And I suppose it shows a certain kind of ingenuity, but still.  

I’ll end on this fact.  Let’s say a panda eats enough bamboo and does have enough energy to get in the mood and the pregnancy sticks, as such.  Well…panda cubs are born so tiny that, often, the mother accidentally smothers her young by sitting on the barely larger than pupae sized cub. 

Folks, I think pandas win the Darwin Awards of the animal kingdom. 

And still, they’re so stinking cute we tourists (and nearly half the population of Chengdu) pay 100RMB (£10/$15) to flock to the Chengdu Panda Research and Breeding Sanctuary.  Willingly.  Freely.  And commence to snap at least 200 pictures throughout the palatial zoo/park in a short period of time. 

Panda babies, panda kindergarten, panda adults in various states of nap, red pandas.  Followed by panda paraphernalia.  The panda is China’s big business.  And I loved every single second of my experience there.

And I’ll do it again.

Chengdu pastoral

Walking around Chendgu was such a delight.  Maybe it lacked that huge megalopolis vibe or possibly we had the perfect combination of great weather and great experiences.  Regardless, things were uniquely China there.  

Highlight of the quirky bits of Chengdu proper:

Deep fried crab legs on a stick, not really worth the effort:

Heads of…?

 From our hostel:

 Pagoda in the garden of a famous ancient Chinese writer whose name escapes me:

 Aubergine--grilled and fried and ladled in grease.  But the most delicious thing I have ever tasted:

 Sometimes stereotypes exist for a reason:

 Sichuan cooking class and the big knives!

 Evening chanting at Wenshu Monastery.  It took us an age to find them but was totally worth it:

 

 Chinglish: 'The Italian thick taste is thicker.'

 In the Tibetan quarter, which just turned out to be a series of Tibetan shops.  But the colours were nice:

 Laundry day!

 What to do with an old cruise ship? Turn it into a block of flats, of course:

 Jealous of the Chinese ability to sleep anywhere and everywhere:

Love, love, love Chengdu.