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.

dirty bird doctor

An experience I definitely don't recommend is going to a Chinese doctor. I needed to go the other day (Mom, I'm fine, don't have a heart attack) and it was not in my top 100 most fun things ever.

Obviously that's a thing I needed a Chinese person to accompany me for. Unfortunately, about 20 of our 25 Chinese TAs at my school left at the end of last weekend to go back to university in Changchun. The ones that are left are all people I'm not exceptionally close to, at all. My Chinese friends outside of them are my students (who I didn't want to take) and males (who I also didn't want to take). I looked at the schedule, sucked it up and asked one of the girls that seemed the most relaxed to go with me on a morning I knew she didn't have to work.

There are a zillion hospitals and clinics here; generally unless you have a cold, you need to go to a hospital. I asked a friend for a recommendation, so we went to the hospital for the oil company (the "Oil Hospital"). You never make an appointment to see a doctor here, and you don't use your insurance either (not sure why I have an international health insurance policy at this point...).

When you walk in, you go to the registration desk, tell them your name, age and the department that you need. They give you a small booklet, which serves as your chart. They have no permanent record system and they don't ask for any id or even your last name. After that, you take your "chart" to the checkout counter and pay for it (three yuan). Then you go up to whatever department you need and wait to have your initial checkup.

chart!

checkout counter

Initial checkup equals you and whoever else feels like wandering in talking to a doctor/nurse/who knows? and describing what's wrong in a room with other people doing the same. Then they tell you what you need to do (e.g. tests, actual physical exam, etc.), print out something saying as much and you take that down to the checkout, pay again (my exam was 20 yuan) and bring your receipt back up for whatever you need. If you have an exam and then need some tests like I did, you get a printout, go pay (three different lab tests came to 195 yuan) and do some more running around. There also seemed to only be maybe one or two hospital staff working each department. And this was a big hospital.

As far as cleanliness and privacy go, forget about it. For any tests, you carry the samples around yourself. I definitely saw people wandering around with slides smeared with bodily fluids on them completely uncovered, so that if they fell or bumped into you, whatever was on their slide would get on you. Ick. The whole place was dirty, per China standards, and don't even think about going in the bathroom. Which naturally had no soap. Or tissue. In retrospect, I'm honestly not even sure that my exam doctor wore gloves.

The exam rooms are lockable, but nobody really does lock them, and when the doctor goes in or out, they just leave the doors open. I saw more than a few strangers' downstairs mixups (yes, that is a Might Boosh reference).

I ended up with two prescriptions (no pills, apparently they hate the easy way of doing things), that cost me 295 yuan. Once they explained everything, I definitely knew I didn't need nearly as much as they gave me, but whatever.

So that was that. Hopefully there will be no rinse and repeat in this case.

fortune teller

I was out to dinner a few weeks ago with a group of student from my Oil Adults 2 class, and one of them mentioned that she was wearing an amulet from a fortune teller (can't for the life of me recall how this came up). Apparently if something bad is going on in your life, a fortune teller will write you a good luck charm that you tie into your underwear and wear around every day. Naturally what with this being such a foreign concept, I wanted to go so my student took me earlier this week.

The fortune teller works out of her home. She has been doing this many, many years now and is known for it in the community. All of her clients find her by word of mouth and she is quite busy.

My student translated for me and took notes in Chinese so I could have someone else re-translate for me later if I wanted. The fortune teller asked my birthday (lunar) and the time I was born. I had to ballpark on the time (morning?) and I may have completely made that up, so who know how much that screwed the pooch on my fortune. I don't really believe in the whole deal anyway, so I'm not too worried about it anyway, I just wanted to do it for the experience.

After she calculated my lunar birthday, she just ran through my life chronologically. She asked what I wanted to know about and I said my career, my student also threw in a bunch of questions about my personal life as well for good measure.

The gist of it is as follows... the next two years are going to be kind of crappy. Not super terrible, not bad enough for her to write me an amulet, but not good. In two years I will marry a man that is tall and most likely foreign, maybe Chinese. He will be very successful in business or maybe in the government. It won't be anyone I know now. We will have two children, a boy and a girl. 

In two years I will also experience a turning point (one could infer that this will be the whole marriage thing but who knows). After that, life will be great, I'll have a career in technology and will be very successful. Nothing too crazy or notable throughout, just an overall good life. If I stay out of the US it will be even better.

I asked about my parents and my brother and had to give their birthdays as well. Got some good and bad details there. Nothing crazy surprising.

My student also had her fortune told. The most I caught there was that she will have a child (a boy) at 43. She is currently in her late 30's and already has an eight year old daughter.

The whole time we were there, other people were in the room. A woman that I'm assuming was the fortune teller's daughter was in the room and then another woman that must have been her next appointment joined as well. I asked my student about the lack of privacy on the way out, and she said that the Chinese think that since they don't know the other people they don't care what people hear about them.

The whole thing was pretty cheap, only 30 yuan. The cost depends on what you ask and what they do; it can be upwards of 150 yuan. I might go again to another fortune teller that reads tea leaves or coins, we'll see. Overall the whole thing wasn't very impressive.

playing outside & street markets

Now that the weather is warming up, people are getting outside a lot more. You can see big groups of people congregating everywhere. Kids play games, old men sit around and play cards, old women play mah jong, people dance, companies have meetings outside, it's great!

The street markets are open now as well. These are a great place to see all kinds of awesomeness. There are day markets and night markets. The night markets are kind of ridiculous because they are not very well lit, so you really can't see what you're buying, but you can hang around them and have a beer. Both day and night essentially have the same stuff. Booths with clothing, food and utter randomness. From booth to booth there is a lot of the same stuff, a lot of designer knock off stuff and a lot of stuff with terrible English. I'm always on a mission to find the worst possible English. Everything at the markets is super cheap, but you have to haggle. The vendors tend to love haggling with foreigners, so it's a lot of fun.

One thing at the markets that just makes me sad is the boxes of chicks. Men dye baby chicks to make them cute so people want to buy the for pets. When you buy a chick, they put it in a small plastic bag for you, just like any other purchase. Even when you can't see the chicks, you can hear them cheeping from far away. One of the other foreigners in town saw a child buy a chick last week and immediately use the bag to beat it against the ground and kill it.