even more fun with food

I had silkworms at dinner tonight! They're really squishy and almost creamy on the inside and the outside has the texture (is that the right word?) of a thin shell. I only ate one, but I did get it down. The exoskeleton was the hardest part to make myself swallow. I talked a friend into trying one too and he spit his out. Eek!

legit writer

I used to really enjoy writing in high school, but I kind of stopped after that. I never kept a diary or anything, but writing helps me sort through things. I think my mom always thought I'd be an English teacher or something, though "I'm moving to China to teach English" might not have been the I-told-you-so moment she hoped for, lol. I've really enjoyed blogging though (in case it isn't obvious from how prolific I've been since starting this).

While I was in Tianjin a friend of mine suggested I write for work too. He introduced me to a friend of his that is a contributor to an expat magazine there. She told me they were looking for a contributor in Tanggu and hooked me up with her editor. The April issue of the magazine was already in the works then, but I chatted with the editor, sent her some samples and now I am officially writing a full page section entitled "Chinese Whisper" for JIN Magazine each month! My focus is helping foreigners adjust/adapt to life in China with a humorous spin. The magazine is no western magazine, but hey, it's a start. The unfortunately thing about this is that the magazine is in Tianjin, and I now live in Songyuan, but I feel like I can fake it for a while.

I submitted my first piece on Monday and I'm quite excited :)

communist heat & schools

In Chinese apartments (and businesses I've recently discovered), you do not have any control over the heating unless you buy a stand alone unit. Most places are heated from the floor, and whoever controls the temperature (the government? hooray for Communism?) usually keeps it reasonably warm. The heated floors are pretty nice in theory, except that the Chinese don't really enjoy them, because they wear sandals in the house.

I was slow to follow this custom at first, but the more I'm here and see how much dirtier everything is than in the States, the more I don't even want my socks on the floor. Mops are used to clean floors, then hand railings. Maybe the rag that cleans the floor of a restaurant will clean a table afterwards. They probably won't use any kind of soap. Squat toilets, while great for someone that hovers over public toilets anyways, mean that you're standing in a lot more pee than in your average western bathroom. So your shoes are a lot grosser. So yeah, the sandals are clutch.

Turns out though, April first the heat in Songyuan was turned off for the year. And then it snowed. Twice. It's not too terribly cold inside my school because there are so many people there all the time. There are stand alone heaters as well, but I don't think we turn them on. Neither The Crack Den nor Crack Den 2.0 has a stand alone heater, which definitely means they're colder than I'd prefer, but not cold to the point that I wear my winter coat inside. Where you really notice is in restaurants that don't have stand alone units and the schools we're judging the contest at. The schools. Are. Freezing. It sucks. I can't imagine how the kids can focus.

Granted, I can't imagine how the kids can focus anyway. They go to school at 7am and leave at maybe 9pm. On my way to dinner tonight our taxi hit traffic because of parents picking their kids up outside of a high school at 9pm, no joke. Some of them have school on weekends too. And on top of all of the in school hours they still study like mad. I'd go crazy! I'm not sure how all of it works though; I have a few tutoring students that spend all day at my school Monday through Friday, with different tutors, and just learn English. They don't even go to their actual Chinese high schools. Seems like that shouldn't be quite legal. Truant much?

Even with all the in school hours, they do have sports teams, no clue when they have time to practice. They don't have any of the clubs or other extracurriculars that western schools do though.

random pix: from public schools

Yeah... what he said...

Yay for Chinglish.

What is going on at this school that they need a smoke stack???

zai jian Crack Den

Yesterday I finished class at 5pm to find my school's caretaker waiting to rush me home to move. I had absolutely zero notice that it was going to be moving day, so my stuff was definitely not set up for quick transport. The caretaker brought an older gentleman from Singapore that teaches English as well and two young, male Chinese TAs to help move me. My replacement from Tianjin, who is in town for the Happy Songyuan English Speaking Contest, also came along, as she was moving into The Crack Den for the remainder of her visit.

It was a crazy scene there with four men I barely know manhandling all my stuff and throwing it into whatever bag was closest to them, just to get it moved asap. I'm talking shower stuff, groceries, dirty laundry, everything. The caretaker sitting on my obnoxious, purple crocodile suitcase to zip it closed was priceless. My Tianjin replacement was just watching and I'm sure being thankful it wasn't her stuff getting tossed around.

My bags are not small, but these frail looking Chinese men lugged them down four flights of stairs into the van. Luckily my new place is on the first floor and near The Crack Den but definitely a quicker walk to school.

The new place is bigger, especially the bathroom, which was my main issue. I have some shelving in my wardrobe, which is great and a bigger bed too. The bed is actually a Chinese version of memory foam, as opposed to the hard-as-a-board-we-don't-use-springs mattresses in most places, which is nice too.

I am actually fully unpacked now, for the first time in China! Very exciting for me. I'm trying to get rid of one more bag of stuff, which will bring me down to three huge bags to check when I travel and a large carry on. It's a lot of stuff, but not when you consider the fact that it's everything I own. Lots of the younger foreigners still have stuff at their parents' homes, but mine lived across the country from me when I left, and my stuff really wasn't worth shipping. All I have left in the States is my bike, my tent and my sleeping bag. It's weird, but I have so little stuff now and it still feels like way too much.

Back to Crack Den 2.0 though. The only really kind of eh things about the place are that there are no light fixtures, just the light bulbs in the ceiling, which definitely makes it look Crack Den ish, and then the spiders. I've only seen two so far, and they're just daddy long legs, but there are spider webs in all the corners and stuff.

Still, it's a huge upgrade. And I'm already so much more comfortable here. Pictures to come.

Happy Songyuan English Speaking Contest

My school has partnered with the government of Songyuan and a local tv station to hold the first Happy Songyuan English Speaking Contest. The contest will run for about three months and is open to Chinese of all ages, from primary school up through adults, separated in age based brackets. We'd all heard rumblings about the contest at school, but no one really gave us any details, until the first round of the contest began on Monday. And turns out us foreign teachers are all judges.

The contest sounded like a really cool idea at first to promote social growth and English speaking/awareness in Songyuan. Upon further consideration, it's totally just a way for my school to recruit more students and make more money, but props to my school owner for having the connections and wherewithal to pull it off. The first round has around 6,000 contestants from what I've heard. Each contestant will receive a follow up call from my school trying to enroll them based on judge comments (so comments from the foreign teachers at my school).

We actually had to bring in some teachers from a nearby city that work for a friend of my school's owner to judge the first round because there are so many contestants; the other teachers are essentially on loan to us. We also brought my replacement in Tianjin and another teacher from out there in to help judge as well.

The materials for the contest, including the signup sheets, have photos and bios of some of us teachers I was surprised to find. I can't read my bio and haven't had the whole thing translated, but someone told me it mentions that I was the head of the school in Tianjin. Helllloooooo resume builder, lol! Oh, and they made us all business cards, with just our first names, and none of our contact information, just the school's.

On Monday, we had to be at school at 6am to take a one and a half hour bus ride to the location of one of the first rounds of judging on the outskirts of Songyuan. There will be three rounds of the contest, each about a months long.

For judging, they put each foreign teacher/judge in a classroom with a Chinese tabulator. Contestants come in one by one, the tabulator asks their Chinese name, matches to their registration forms and cards (complete with photos), and asks if they are ready. Then they give their speech. For the first round each contestant is supposed to have written a five minute speech about basically anything (topic is "My..."). After the speech, we ask them a few questions. We judge based on grammar, pronunciation, fluency, accuracy and stage presence and then give comments. They are not penalized for being under time. No one has come close to going over yet.

The first day of round one judging, we had mostly middle schoolers from a rural area of Songyuan, and the speeches were just discouraging. In total I think we judged about 900 students that day, and there were two speeches that we heard over and over again, almost verbatim.

"My family. We are a happy family. There are three people in my family. My mother, my father and me. My mother is a teacher. She is a very good teacher. My father is a doctor. He is very busy. I am a student..." etc.

"My friend. I have a friend named _______. She is very cute. She has long, straight, black hair. She has big eyes, a small nose and a small mouth. She likes the sing and dance..." etc.

Of course there were variations and some standout students, but for the most part, they all read almost the exact same speech and has slim to zero idea what they were saying. We would ask questions like, "What does your mother teach?" and get, "Yes" as an answer. For some of us, the Chinese teachers from the school would stand in the room and it became obvious that they were coaching the students on what question we might ask and telling them how to respond. Ugh.

There was a reporter from the tv station at the first day of judging and she interviewed me, so I might be on the Chinese news (yay CCTV!). She asked how students in that area were performing and I felt bad being honest, but they told me to, so I tried to put a positive spin on it and say that many students needed a lot of work but there were a few excellent contestants.

I didn't take part in the second day of judging, but I did in the third, and we had all high school students. They were more in the center of the city and much, much better. I did get many speeches on the same topic ("My dream..."), but all were obviousl written by the students. Except the one contestant I had that got up and just read the lyrics to Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On." My first question was, "What is your favorite movie?" Made me laugh.

This week has been my first time in Chinese public schools and first time for a new bathroom experience. Girls bathrooms have trough-ish toilets! There are no flushing systems, just maybe a hose at one end. Luckily the teachers' bathrooms usually have stalls, but the students' bathrooms are just rooms with troughs around the edges and you do all your business out in the open with everyone watching. It feels like you shouldn't be going to the bathroom there. If you teach at a public school without a teachers' bathroom, you can literally be having a face to face chat with your students while you take a poop. In general though, the schools are just pretty gross. And the whole building always smells like bathrooms.

Tomb Sweeping Day

The Chinese holiday Tomb Sweeping Day was Wednesday of this week. Everyone had off work to celebrate (except for us foreign teachers, naturally). This holiday is to commemorate the dead.

Those with deceased friends or family burn paper money, and the money is said to go to the dead so they can use it in the other world. People start small fires in public to burn it, usually on sidewalks and street corners, like hobo fires. The idea is similar to the ancient Egyptian's idea of burying the pharaohs with everything they will need in the next life. China is trying to change the practice of burning paper money and move people towards leaving flowers at tombs instead, but it is a slow change. Leaving flowers for the dead is a new concept for them.

Chinese don't bury their dead, there really isn't room for cemeteries. They cremate them instead and keep the ashes in tombs/monuments, often in the same location as the crematorium.

public works follow through

This is a sports stadium (or the beginnings of one) in Songyuan. Apparently it has been abandoned for a while because something in the plans for it wasn't quite right. The government encountered a problem and just stopped working on it.

This is kind of typical for China I'm noticing. Taking the train around, you see tons of new construction that even from the train clearly has no logical plan behind it or has been abandoned. Especially roads. I've seen so many beginnings of bridges, where maybe four support pillars are started, all at different random stages of progress, and then a half mile down there will be seven more, all at different stages as well, and with no visible connection to an actual street anywhere.

I was talking to a Chinese friend about this once and he said that Chinese and the government start projects but they won't plan well and there is no system of checks and balances or follow through to ensure they finish. Bizarre.

Long Hua Temple

I went with a friend to a Buddhist temple in Songyuan the other day, Long Hua Temple (good dragon temple). All the temples I've been to in China have been pretty similar, but still very cool. This one was actually still under construction, apparently when it's finished it will be the largest temple in Jilin province. A temple isn't just one building, it's a whole compound, I think this one will have maybe ten buildings when it is complete.

The oil thing is so you remember you're in Songyuan. Or at least in my head it is.

So weird to see a temple under construction.

These were really cool, I haven't seen this yet in a temple. There were hundreds of monk statues lining the walls of the main building. Each was different and individually made.

This made me laugh. It makes sense with all the incense and whatnot, but still.

I am always looking for old, traditional things in China, and in my head temples fall into that category (or at least, they should). I have an issue with new things being built to be positioned as old (like the Italian Concession Area in Nankai, Tianjin). Coming from a marketing background I'm always just thinking they build these new things so tourists will think they are old and come and pay to see them. It occurred to me recently that temples are different though, you don't pay to visit them (for the most part). They have gift shops or whatever, but no entry fee. I guess building new temples in the old style is just one way to preserve old culture. And I am too cynical.

shanty town blizzard

It was about 60 degrees Fahrenheit in Songyuan when I returned from Korea and I was so happy; I hate the cold. So naturally, after two days we had a blizzard.

I really worry about the people that live in the shanty town behind The Crack Den in the cold weather. When I first moved in, I though nobody lived in these places, but I know from being a creeper and sitting in my place watching the shanty town that people do live there. This front place especially worries me with the lack of a roof. Even if people don't live in that one room without the roof, the rest of it has to be crazy cold as well. I'm wondering how they don't freeze to death. I saw an old woman walk up and knock on the front door the other day; when no one answered she threw a bag of food over the wall. At least someone is looking out for them, I guess?

carnival in the mall

I've decided it must be a requirement for all malls here to have something random and awesome in them, usually on the top floor. The mall right across the street from my school has badminton on the fifth floor. The one across from that, with the grocery store I go to, has a gym. The new one a few blocks away has a carnival on the fifth floor. And it is amazing. The mall opened a few months ago, so some of the foreigners and I went to play there the other day. They have everything from carnival games where you can win prizes to a haunted house to laser tag and archery.

I was a little confused there because there were people chipping away at the tile all over the place. The mall only opened a few months ago, so I'm not sure what they could have been doing. But more confusing than that was the fact that under the tile, on the fifth floor of this building, they were hitting dirt. And workers were wandering around pushing wheelbarrows of dirt, also on the fifth floor of the mall. Not to say I know anything about construction, but that makes me wonder about the building practices here, lol.