random pix: awesome pants, noshery & real Chinese stuff

You know you want these. If you notice just behind the USA ones, they make them for Brits as well!

I love this.

Beautifully hand carved piece in a hot pot restaurant near my school.

Did you know they grow rice here?

recent Chinese conflicts

China's conflicts with nearby countries have been an increasingly popular topic of conversation here lately. Among other incidents, most talked about last week was the group of Chinese fisherman in the Yellow Sea that killed an ROK official when a group of them were stopped and detained.

This week, the big news of course is regarding Huangyan Island, off the coast of the Philippines. Most Chinese I've talked to seem rather ambivalent about both, but we've actually felt some unexpected effects of this here in Songyuan.

There are three Filipino teachers at my school. One is something like the VP and has been at the school for three years, the other two are a couple that have been around about the same amount of time. They aren't treated quite like foreigners from the US, Canada or Europe, they're like a cross between us and the Chinese. It's somewhat related to the fact that English is not their first language, their accents are a bit off and they aren't seen as being white enough. There are even one or two schools they cannot teach at because of their nationality.

That number actually increased this week though. A few schools have said they cannot teach there because of the conflict over Huangyan Island, and our school owner has said there are a few he won't send them to for safety reasons.

The Chinese are definitely a bit brainwashed to believe whatever the government says, but I couldn't really hazard a guess as to the percentage of people that actually have malicious feelings toward these teachers just because they're Filipino.

In discussing both of these incidents with my students though, they have made a point to mention the US's involvement in them. They see us as a force at the far root of the Yellow Sea incident and they anticipate building ill will towards the US over the conflict with the Philippines because the US is backing them.

day trip to Changchun

I had an accidental day off last week, so a Chinese friend and I took a day trip to Changchun. The boss of the oil company that I tutor was out of town on a business trip for two weeks and apparently my school didn't know since he was still on my schedule, and my other tutoring student was scheduled with someone else. I had never been to Changchun, which is the closest big city to Songyuan, so an adventure was in order.

We went to Jing Yue Tan Forest Park first. When we first got in it seemed really big, but all man made. It was reminiscent of the aquatic park I had been to in Nanjin, Tianjin. Pretty, but disappointing if you're expecting some real nature. After wandering around for a bit though, we discovered the real lake. There are a bunch of small, man made ones that are meant to look nice near the entrance of the park, but as you get further in you find a large natural lake, forests, hiking trails, places to camp, etc. This park also has the highest point in Chanchun, and a really good view of the whole city.

In addition to the usual park amenities, it also has a driving range, a bath house and random carnival type games and activities. My friend and I did the thing where they strap you into the harness and you're attached to rubber bands on tall poles, jumping on a trampoline, bouncing and flipping. Tops of fun. They can mechanically adjust the tension on the rubber bands, so the workers were grabbing my harness, bouncing me crazy high and then flipping me. I was flying around like a rag doll; it was so much fun!

After the park we went to explore the actual city. Changchun is kind of great; it's pretty, has a good variety of food, good shopping, both traditional Chinese and western influences depending on the area you're in, not a bad spot at all. We had Italian food for lunch, made an actual Italian man, and Indian food for dinner, made by actual Indian people. It was definitely nice to get some variety in my diet!

This is what happens when I let a Chinese saleswoman dress me.

The crappy thing was that after a few hours my neck started to kill. And then my shoulders. After a while I couldn't turn my head or anything and I was in tons of pain. As fun as it was, I got the worst whiplash ever from that rubber bandy thing. My friend was freaking out, trying to convince me that I needed to go to the hospital to get x-rays. This was the day after I had gone to the hospital, so there was no way I was going back, but I knew it was just muscle thing; it was hard to explain that concept to my friend. We drove back to Songyuan that night, I popped a couple of muscle relaxers and decided to deal with it the next day. Regardless, all in all, it was a nice little day trip!

sand castles

I've been a bit mystified by the construction techniques since I arrived in China. Not that I really know anything about construction, but it definitely seems quite a bit different. As I mentioned in my posting about the mall with the laser tag and such on the fourth or fifth floor, things here are not built to last. They throw buildings up really, really quickly and within a year there are huge cracks in the walls and whatnot.

This junkyard looking area is the beginning of an apartment building. They cleared it in one day. Put up a brick wall around it the next day. Covered the bring wall in mortar towards the end of that same day and dug whatever holes they needed to start putting the building up.

This seeming shoddiness of the construction is exaggerated by the inefficient use of manpower as well. For example, the mall across the street from my school is really new (maybe a couple of years old only) and has some nice tile work on the ground surrounding it. Last week I noticed a huge pile of sand outside, and in China, sand equals construction. Later that day they started chipping up bits of tile all around the mall. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the tiles, China is just always trying to create jobs and find SOMETHING for people to do, so they paid men to chip up perfectly good tile and then relay it. Which made it seem like something was wrong with the tile (shoddy construction), when in reality nothing was. This is similar to what was happening in one of the photos I posted from the other mall referenced above, a man was chipping up tile just to put it right back where he pulled it up from.

 

The sand really is the most confusing part though; what they do with all of it?! There are just mountains and mountains of sand anywhere they're building or fixing anything. They don't have big dump trucks either, they bring it all in in bags and then when they're finished they bag up the extra by hand and take it out again.

This is the remains of a huge pile of sand that went going up to an 11th story apartment that is in the final stages of building, being finished.

They use a big metal bin and a man powered pulley system to get the sand up to high floors. You can kind of see the bin next to the building about midway up.

When they are going to renevoate a space or knock down a building to put up something new, they don't bother to clear the rubble or remains of the old construction, they build right over it or maybe push it to the corner, it's kind of nuts. Granted this is all observations from smaller cities here, but that's most of China.

Why did they tear down the roof in this one section of a strip mall that's getting remodeled? Who knows.

Tons of trash and crap still in this space in the same strip mall that's also getting remodeled.