Friday, October 31, 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Flying a Kite in Tiananmen
So there he was, staring right back at me and the rest of China. Perched above the gate to Tiananmen Square, with a smug smile on his face, and that ridiculous haircut he had in his older years. I had just exited the subway station with Warren, Mary, Bridget and Ian, and that was the first thing I saw when I looked across 长安街, the 8 lane street bustling with cars. Mao Zedong’s portrait seemed to be watching everything that was going on. But I ignored him, the group had plans to find and fly a kite here. We asked a street sweeper where we could buy a kite, and she pointed us away from Tiananmen. Then she went back to sweeping the streets, using that oversized broom common to all sweepers. She started walking away her orange construction worker jacket failing to assimilate into the crowd. The scratching sound of the broom’s straw rustling against the ground as it pushed leaves and other less pleasant items to the side. But the sound was lost among the countless people. We even stumbled across other waiguoren, some were fat, older American men, walking hand in hand with a Chinese girl, others were just tourists, and I hated how they looked at us and grouped themselves with us. We are not just visiting, we are not depraved middle aged men... well maybe a bit depraved, but that’s not why we came to Beijing. We live here. We are Beijingren. After walking down the left side of the boulevard that Mao overlooks for ten minutes, we began to get frustrated; there were no kites anywhere. So we asked a guard. He was wearing that grey-ish green military suit and hat. He stood as rigid as a plank of wood, his posture stuck out amidst the slouching that walked around him. Even if he hadn’t been in uniform, I’m fairly certain I still would’ve been able to tell he was a guard. But we asked him where we could get kites. He said kites weren’t allowed to be sold at Tiananmen, but people still sold them anyway. Today was different, though. There was a meeting of some political sort inside the Square, so there were guards outside to prevent any bad face, which apparently meant stopping the people on the streets from selling stuff. So asking him where we could get a kite, he pointed us in the direction we had just come from. Mao just looked at us and kept that smug smile on his face. Stop mocking me. We walked on, crossing Changan Street and found a kite store down a semi-busy alleyway. They had all sorts of amazing kites, it was a Golgotha of kite animals, all hanging, dead, crucified even, waiting for someone to buy and then revive them with a strong wind. Dragons hung limply in the middle, turtles were turned on their back so that the shop’s owner could show off the moving limbs, snakes jaws hung loosely, birds roosted on shelves and rafters, and then there were just plain old kites hidden behind a nest of bird kites. They were poorly decorated, eyes drawn on, and the rest was cheap plastic and balsa wood, but 15 kuai is hard to argue with, so we now had our kite. A little red thing, balsa wood glued to the plastic and remnants of glue turning the plastic a darker red than the other spots. We walked back to Tiananmen and were getting ready to fly our kite, when a person in street clothes, perfect posture, came up to us and told us we couldn’t fly a kite here. There was a meeting going on inside. Yep… I was right; I could tell a guard apart from the rest of the crowd even if he wasn’t wearing a uniform. Mao’s expression was ever the same, and I scowled and pointed my finger at him. My fellow kite flyers pretended they didn’t know who I was momentarily, and then we went off trying to find a way around the rules. There’s a small park… if I can even call it a park, next to Tiananmen Square. A small stream doesn’t really flow, as it does lay stagnant, through this “park.” There are trees and the wall to Tiananmen Square on the far end. Best of all, there were no guards, not even those perfect postured “vigilantes” prowling around. Just old men doing Taiji, young couples trying to find a place alone, and there was even a couple that had just been married, walking along the bank of the stagnant stream in full wedding garb, smiling. The younger couples looked enviously at them. Someone was getting lucky tonight and it wasn’t them. Except for me saying, “Zhuhe nimen,” as we walked past the newlyweds, I ignored the rest of them. We got the kite up, but it kept crashing down. Occasionally Ian, Bridget or I would keep it up for more than 2 minutes, but we could never get it close to Tiananmen. So we teamed up. We were going to fly it over that wall, even if it was just briefly. I had to, just to get back at Mao’s smug smile. As individuals are skills were poor. But as one, we became an unstoppable kite flying force than almost amounted to the skills of one elderly Chinese kite flying man, that Jamie, Gavin and I had stumbled across the last time we tried to fly a kite. But this team we had now got it up above the trees and we ran with it to the edge of the wall. Some of the old men practicing Taiji stopped and looked at us, smiling and laughing. The kite continued to go forward and then started crashing faster than America’s economy… or at least as fast as it sounds like it is over here. The kite barely made it over the wall. I had accomplished my goal, and I was happy, even though the whole point I was proving was immature, selfish and pointless. The kite got stuck and we couldn’t get it back, so we cut the string, leaving a memento inside the square. The old men laughed at us and told me that’d he teach me to fly a kite sometime. We walked out of the park, Mao’s smile didn’t seem so happy anymore, more solemn than before. I started heading back into the subway when I looked up and saw another kite flying above Tiananmen Square. It hadn’t just been us and I suddenly didn’t feel so guilty for breaking the rules. I walked down the stairs and went back to the adventure of the subway.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Cha Lou Going (rough draft)
One of my discoveries around Beijing that other students now capitalize on was the 茶楼, cha lou, or tea house called Happy Time Coffee. Its hunter green bricks break the monotony of the shops along Xinjiekouwai Dajie. The windows are blocked off with bamboo-esque screens, and floral curtains. Zhengming, or Gavin, and I went there to sip tea and chat with other cha lou goers. We pushed the plastic flaps, signature of every restaurant in Beijing, aside. They were once clear, but the air quality has turned them brownish, so they hang down from the top of the doorway like a grass skirt. And just like a grass skirt, Zhengming and I were excited to push it aside and get in. Right at the entrance, there is a small Christmas tree, sporting some Chinese Christmas decorations such as lucky cats, paws raised as if to greet me when I entered. A hostess counter is to our left, but nobody is there. The hostess was dozing off in a worn, warm colored couch for this visit. The whole ambience in the cha lou is different from the busy streets of Beijing. The honking is drowned out, people aren’t in a hurry. Everyone just relaxes. Smoke hangs in the air like the smog outside, but it doesn’t have brutal rays of sun shining through it that make eyes water just looking at it. The lighting is dim and each booth has beads hanging at their entrance, giving off a faux privacy feel to them. A Chinese couple was “snuggling” together over in the corner booth; their tea wasn’t steaming anymore. “Fuwuyuanr!” Zhengming and I both said at the same time. The dozing hostess, stood up, yawned and asked, “Ji wei?” “Liang wei.” And then she walked us to the booth, holding aside the ruby red beads and let us sit down. The chairs are heavily cushioned, and the other side of the booth didn’t even have chairs. There was just a couch. Two Chinese high school students were studying across from us at a table. Their book’s say “GaoKao Preparation.” They looked nervous, putting their whole future into that one test. Some say that the Civil Service Exam that was abolished in 1905 evolved into the GaoKao. The GaoKao is the Chinese equivalent of the SAT, except it, more or less, decides your life. On the days of the exam, hospitals preemptively post ambulances outside of schools so that students who pass out from the stress are treated immediately. Because no one wants another Hong Xiu Quan. We paid our 18 Kuai and the fuwuyuan brought us the menu. A small square book, green and had pictures of tea that somehow made ordering tea one hundred times more exciting. I ordered the usual, mango green tea, Zhengming got wulong cha and some suan nai. I passed on the suan nai this time. Kidney stones aren’t exactly the most desirable outcome of the dish. The hostess came back with our complimentary snack bowls. One has pumpkin seeds, chestnuts and orange gummy slices. Not exactly the pretzels and peanuts and other chex mex foods back home, but it went surprisingly well with the tea. Another couple came in and grabbed the booth behind us. They whipped out a laptop and start watching the third “Mummy” movie. Our tea arrived, and we started a small conversation with our fuwuyuan. My cup was full of orange liquid, a mango fragrance erupted from the cup, but there were no signs that this was actually tea, so I ordered wulong tea , just like Zhengming, so I wouldn’t feel guilty for drinking my faux tea at the cha lou. His tea cup looked as if they dropped the whole tea plant in there; roots and leaves and stems floated, sank, mixed and steeped in his cup. He took a sip, and the leaves got stuck to his lips and hugged his teeth, giving him a hillbilly smile. I looked around for potential talking buddies, but everyone was preoccupied, so I enjoyed relaxing and took in my environment. The table was made of whicker, a glass top that has seen too many spills. Chinese good luck charms, hung over most of the booths, their red tassels hanging down from its red wooden diamond adorned with golden Chinese characters for some chengyu. An occasional crosswind through the building made the tips of the tassels dance like a willows branches from a slight breeze. Zhengming and I kept ordering new teas and sat there, blowing the steam away to fool ourselves into drinking more boiling tea. Eventually our tongues were so burnt that we lost all gustatory senses. This is when we tried to say our goodbyes but failed because we couldn’t understand each other through the temporary lisp of a burnt tongue. We spent an hour and a half there, simply sitting and sipping tea. No chatting with locals and cha lou goers this visit. But the nice thing about the cha lou is you don’t have to accomplish anything. You leave there feeling refreshed because you took the time to relax in a city that never seems to stop.
Monday, October 27, 2008
爸 (Ba)
1962. The baby boom is over, the fifties have past, a cold war “isn’t” being fought, a space race, a cultural revolution and my father is born. My host father that is. In a town called 沈阳, Shenyang, in China’s northeast, 叶志刚, Ye Zhigang was born during The Cultural Revolution. Famine struck all of China. People with hu kou’s in the cities were given liang piao, or food stamps, every month to redeem for 30 jin of rice. A jin is just barely over a pound. And the food stamps would be redeemed for that much in the city. If you were in an outlying town, 27 jin, further rural areas, 25 jin, extremes, even less. People experienced hunger. Not that hunger that you hear from an elementary schooler as he returns home from school saying he’s hungry. Hunger. The type of hunger that makes time stand still and fights break out over half a slice of bread. This was when my father was born. He lived through it. And throughout it all, he retained a sense of optimism, go-with-the-flow-ness, tolerance, and surprisingly a sense of humor. He’s a short Chinese man, even by Chinese standards, he’s energetic, his short curly black hair sticks out among crowds. His face looks young, except for the deep creases under his eyes, bags that give away all that he’s seen and has to carry with him in his mind. He sees where China is going and he likes it. He said, “Mao san shi fen bu hao, qi shi fen mamahuhu,” or Mao was 30% bad, 70% meh. He doesn’t want Tibetan independence for the sake of the Laobaixing. He’s trying to learn English while I’m trying to learn Chinese. He works long hours and comes home and tolerates me butchering his language. He speaks with an accent not of this earth, as if you were to take a Sichuan accent and a South African accent, (if I were to guess on that second part,) and throw it together. A character, that’s how I’d describe him.
My first day off the plane, I looked at the mass of Chinese people waiting to find their new family member, that vestigial organ to their family. I heard mutterings in Chinese, “All Americans look the same. How are we supposed to find our student?” And then like a ninja, Ba was standing next to me, slurring his tones together and not pronouncing the “h” in “zh” sounds. He grabbed my bags, put them aside and then whipped out his camera from a pouch that he was wearing like a necklace. These pictures were all reminders of what a 12 hour flight and time difference can do to my appearance. We walked home. He was taking 3 steps to one of mine. The hutong that I was going to be spending the next year was lurking around the next corner. The road was intolerably narrow, and cars almost hit me with their side view mirrors, (they would eventually hit me later,) using their horns as freely as Americans would use their bicycle bell. The sidewalks were crowded with “Glad” trash bags, and were an ancient stone color. Old men sat on overturned buckets, playing Chinese Chess, xiangqi, directing every bit of anger at their opponents move into the board. The circular pieces clack-ed against the wooden board. Older people stared at me as we walked down the road, some of them spitting, but Ba led me onwards, to the house, ignoring the old folks looks. We turned the corner and then I saw it for the first time. A tan building, with a stucco front. Cars and bikes parked behind the gates that enveloped the small compound. A small garden with three trees struggling to grow, their leaves a sickly green. A few stray bikes hid under their branches. Ba led me up 5 flights of stairs, carrying himself with the strut and swagger of an important official… or something important. The flight of stairs was white, and shoes left their mark on the floor and in some places, the wall. Each door reminded me of a solitary prison cell. He opened his door, and we walked inside, showing me all that he overcame, showing what he had, all in that grin he had on his face. I looked in the house, behind the façade of the emotionless exterior and saw a house… no a home. Cherry wood floors, some art adorning the walls, wooden wainscoting, mind you it only came up to my ankle, but it was still there. Flowery curtains blocked the sunlight. This was it. He might have come into this house with the redistribution of wealth, he might’ve come to it through marriage. He might have even owned it before then, I don’t know, but he still made it his own.
He does a good job at covering up the past, but it comes through occasionally. Something that I wasn’t aware of before my arrival in China was how much we waste. I was eating a meal he had prepared one Saturday afternoon. I finished up and was about to thank him when he said, “Eat it all.” I looked at the bowl and said, “I did.” He looked extremely frustrated. There was some grayish water at the bottom, (from the pot he cooked it all in,) some meat chunks and a few pieces of lettuce. He told me to eat it all again. I looked down at it and gulped before choking down the appearance. After I did that, he was all smiles and back to happy-go-lucky Ba. I can’t do him justice in words. We use circumlocution to learn new words in the others languages. He’s open and talks about rough political issues in China, but the one thing he strays away from is the American election. But I’m okay with that. I came to China to learn about China and he’s taught me as much as any language teacher I’ve had yet. And he’s not just nice to me, he rubs off on everyone. Chris and Gavin agree, though they’ve spent varied amounts of time with him, that they love my dad. And I love him too. He’s like my second father.
My first day off the plane, I looked at the mass of Chinese people waiting to find their new family member, that vestigial organ to their family. I heard mutterings in Chinese, “All Americans look the same. How are we supposed to find our student?” And then like a ninja, Ba was standing next to me, slurring his tones together and not pronouncing the “h” in “zh” sounds. He grabbed my bags, put them aside and then whipped out his camera from a pouch that he was wearing like a necklace. These pictures were all reminders of what a 12 hour flight and time difference can do to my appearance. We walked home. He was taking 3 steps to one of mine. The hutong that I was going to be spending the next year was lurking around the next corner. The road was intolerably narrow, and cars almost hit me with their side view mirrors, (they would eventually hit me later,) using their horns as freely as Americans would use their bicycle bell. The sidewalks were crowded with “Glad” trash bags, and were an ancient stone color. Old men sat on overturned buckets, playing Chinese Chess, xiangqi, directing every bit of anger at their opponents move into the board. The circular pieces clack-ed against the wooden board. Older people stared at me as we walked down the road, some of them spitting, but Ba led me onwards, to the house, ignoring the old folks looks. We turned the corner and then I saw it for the first time. A tan building, with a stucco front. Cars and bikes parked behind the gates that enveloped the small compound. A small garden with three trees struggling to grow, their leaves a sickly green. A few stray bikes hid under their branches. Ba led me up 5 flights of stairs, carrying himself with the strut and swagger of an important official… or something important. The flight of stairs was white, and shoes left their mark on the floor and in some places, the wall. Each door reminded me of a solitary prison cell. He opened his door, and we walked inside, showing me all that he overcame, showing what he had, all in that grin he had on his face. I looked in the house, behind the façade of the emotionless exterior and saw a house… no a home. Cherry wood floors, some art adorning the walls, wooden wainscoting, mind you it only came up to my ankle, but it was still there. Flowery curtains blocked the sunlight. This was it. He might have come into this house with the redistribution of wealth, he might’ve come to it through marriage. He might have even owned it before then, I don’t know, but he still made it his own.
He does a good job at covering up the past, but it comes through occasionally. Something that I wasn’t aware of before my arrival in China was how much we waste. I was eating a meal he had prepared one Saturday afternoon. I finished up and was about to thank him when he said, “Eat it all.” I looked at the bowl and said, “I did.” He looked extremely frustrated. There was some grayish water at the bottom, (from the pot he cooked it all in,) some meat chunks and a few pieces of lettuce. He told me to eat it all again. I looked down at it and gulped before choking down the appearance. After I did that, he was all smiles and back to happy-go-lucky Ba. I can’t do him justice in words. We use circumlocution to learn new words in the others languages. He’s open and talks about rough political issues in China, but the one thing he strays away from is the American election. But I’m okay with that. I came to China to learn about China and he’s taught me as much as any language teacher I’ve had yet. And he’s not just nice to me, he rubs off on everyone. Chris and Gavin agree, though they’ve spent varied amounts of time with him, that they love my dad. And I love him too. He’s like my second father.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Cheap Thrill Subway
Biking into a strong headwind, I pulled over, huddling for warmth inside my hoodie, locked the bike on the side of the road, and walked into a box of a building with 100’s of other people, while 100’s others came out. It seemed completely impossible for that many people to be coming from a building that small. But I walked in, knowing full well that this was the subway station. I ran down the seemingly endless flights of stairs and hit the bottom eventually. Going left with the flow of Chinese, I cut in line, like the rest of the Chinese, bought my ticket for only 2 kuai, (that’s about 20 American cents,) swiped my ticket, and the metal gate that has replaced the turnstile in Beijing, opened up, like something from Star Trek, and I entered the “real” subway station. A place bustling with a wide array of people, where you look at every single one of them and wonder how they could possibly be in such a hurry. A place where the sounds of voices echo in the parabolic shaped roof and the screeches of stopping cars and an omnipresent voice saying, “Zhuyi Anquan,” among other phrases, all meld into one sound. A place where I’ve spent many hours, but still somehow manage to get on the wrong train. I wait for barely a minute before I push my way into a crowded car and wait for the doors to close. They do, and a distressed face looks through the window at me, who just barely made this train, and all I do is look back, completely apathetic, like the rest of the Chinese. The sudden lurch of the car makes me brace my legs and everyone leans against it and then back into a normal standing position. I strike up small talk with the person whose face is crushed against my shoulder blade, “Jintian zenmeyang,” and every time I do this, they all respond with the same thing, “Good. You’re Chinese is very good!” To which I respond, “Ni shuo cuo le.” Or, “You spoke wrong.” And every time I say this, they feel like I, too, am Chinese and start talking openly with me. Denying a compliment is seen as polite in China, it is part of a ritual, and rituals are something that Chinese do very well. Some of them might seem completely ridiculous, like how they are super neat about everything in their house, or how they follow rules laid down by the government to a “T” or simple conversation habits like this. There’s a reason though, a pretty damn good one in my mind. 乱, (Luan,) is chaos. The Chinese want to get rid of any possibility for a reason for luan to erupt. If you’re a Chinese person in your 60’s or 70’s, you’ve seen a lot. A country turned around, split, divided, controlled, famine, war, cold. If you’re in your 90’s then you would’ve seen an entire system of ruling that lasted 5000 years come to a close and the uncertainty of what the future will hold, as well as everything previously mentioned. They just want something that is predictable, something that won’t result in chaos, like so many things that happened in China’s recent past. And if I lived through all that, I would be pretty meticulous about all that too. But I digress. I finished up my conversation and looked out into the darkness surrounding the tunnel. A green light would flash by. And then a moving ad would show up through the window and I knew the station was near. I looked at the map and sighed. This wasn’t a line change station. The cars slowed, the people lurched in the opposite direction, and then righted themselves. The doors opened, and the sound of another subway station entered the car with 16 more people. I was really glad I’m not claustrophobic, and bided my time for the next 5 stops, waiting for my stop. My stop came and every single person got out. It was a bottleneck effect. I pushed my way through, and was finally out of the car, my destination waiting about 100 feet above. Walking up the stairs, (the escalator is slow,) I saw the rays of sunlight shine down through a window and lit up the top of the stairs. I jogged out and was on my way, huddling for warmth in my hoodie once again.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
An Overabundance of 7 Year olds
There is a point on extended trips where a person’s morale falls low. At SYA, they call it the wall, a point where everything falls to pieces, or at least seems that way. But I don’t want to call it the wall. I’d prefer to call it an overabundance of Chinese 7-year olds. Yes, this is my failed attempt to try and teach English at a migrant workers school. Migrant workers schools don’t really have an American counterpart. They are for the children of rural families that moved to the city to make money, but can’t attend normal schools because they lack a hukou, or a registration of their birth and current existence, from that city or are lacking a hukou at all. Hukou’s are used as a form of social security and due to the one-child policy, having more than one registered child loses the benefits of the social security. Of course, in rural areas, the more children a person has, the more he ensures his own, “Social Security,” by having people to fall back to when he grows old. These children that come to the city live rough lives, having been uprooted from the green, ever changing fields, which only represent work to them, and have been placed in an unfamiliar city shrouded in smog. But something about teaching them, maybe it was just a bad day, maybe they crushed my confidence, and my soul along with it, I don’t know, but I do know they brought me down.
***
I got on the bus to the migrant school with the other students planning on teaching, and the usual bus going crowd at Beijing. I sat down next to Chris and Li Laoshi. Chris was teaching 5th graders and I was teaching 1st graders. Li Laoshi was just bringing us to the school for the first time and that was it. And as we drove the thirty minute bus ride to the school and started losing room for mobility, Li Laoshi asked us all if we had prepared our lessons. A gasp in unison erupted from us. They weren’t giving us the material we had to teach? That’s not good. That feeling when your heart feels like it stopped treading water and just sinks for a few seconds hit me hard. And it looked like everyone else felt the same way by the looks on their faces. Chris whipped out some candy and came up with an idea to reward good work. Everyone else started to come up with ideas for their classes and I just drew a blank. I kept trying to think, but the “ABC’s” song kept running through my head. I looked out the bus window and saw the grandeur, the beauty of the Beijing I came to know slip away. It was replaced with a very concrete, grey, square feeling area. Run down shops, and fruit carts with broken wheels littered the sidewalks along with an abundance of trash. The bus stopped and Li Laoshi ushered us off the bus in a line to start our teaching careers. We walked 2 minutes ‘till the giant gate of the school loomed in front of us; it’s bronze bars sticking out amidst the ocean of grey around. We walked in and there were a lot of kids. I can’t even think of any other words to describe them than “a lot.” All of them looked at us, and then began a mad dash towards us. All of them looked different, their clothes, their hair style, their height, their weight; an adorable mass of children swarming over their “Teachers.” I looked up and realized the school, was grey like the rest of the area, dust carpeted the ground, and the only distinguishable features were the red characters on top of one building and the wooden basketball hoops. But we kept walking towards the principal’s office. He introduced himself as Wu Xiaochang, or Principal Wu, told us how much he appreciated what we were doing and how the children loved SYA student teachers from years past. He looked tired, wearing a tattered blue suit, grey hair speckling the front of his receding hairline and he tried to put on a smile for us. He proceeded to say there were only 430 kids at the school, from pre-school to 9th grade. The biggest class was the first grade class with 70 kids. My heart felt like it wasn’t just sinking anymore, but actually drowning. I was expecting maybe a small class of 18 kids, sort of like Peter Hessler’s description of teaching in Fuling. Of course that was at a college. They led us to the rooms and I walked in. 140 eyes looked at me, all passive like an elephant’s eyes. The teacher left and I was left alone in the front of a classroom of 7 year olds, no plan, no idea what to do, but slowly feeling those soft elephant eyes change to lion’s. So I introduced myself.
“Wo jiao Shi Laoshi, keshi zhe shi wo zuihou de zhongwen juzi. My name is Mr. Weiser.” I suddenly felt incredibly old. Mr. Weiser. That’s my dad’s name. I’m still in high school, I thought. The class room was small, probably 10 feet by 25 feet. Or at least it felt smaller with that horde of children in there. The windows were barred, like a prison. There was nothing on the walls, except for two black boards, one in the front for me to use, and one in the back, that had a flower and Winnie the Pooh drawn on it. Using my board, I wrote “A,” “B,” and “C” on the board and asked them to say them. 70 incredibly high pitched voices all screamed “A,B,C!” Except “C” was wrong. They said, “TSEE” and I tried to correct them, using my hands as two different sounds and then connecting them, like those commercials, and that one thing on “Sesame St.” “Suh” and “Eee.” “C.” They mimicked my every action and sound, but that was the last time they listened. The back began to get rowdy. The front tried telling me something, but I couldn’t hear, and the room got progressively louder. One little girl, wearing a pink shirt which said, “I’m Tubby,” came up to me and told me to hit the desk with the stick to get everyone’s attention again. I grabbed the stick and slammed it on the desk, while yelling, “ANJING!” A giant thwak erupted through the room and it all went silent. I used my stick, which I went on to call my cane, (only because it helped me hobble through class,) to point to the previously written letters on the board. I asked the left half of the room to say it, then the right half. I realized that I couldn’t use any English. They didn’t understand one bit of it. Understandable, considering they lived in the countryside for most of their young lives, but I didn’t know enough of the words needed to teach a language in Chinese. So I began to say simple things like, “Left side, stand, say this,” point to a letter, “the other side was better, keep standing.” This kept them entertained for 15 minutes but then they got more and more out of control and my cane, started losing its potency for quieting them down. One kid even began running on top of the desks. High pitched talking came from everywhere, desks screeched as they slid against the floor, chairs rocked, and amidst it all, the sound of sobbing came from somewhere. “Shei zai ku yaaaa?” I asked, then everyone looked in the back to this small boy, buzz cut, white shirt with the English words, “Be My Slave,” on it, sitting with tears on his face. The class rebelled. They stopped listening; I grabbed a teacher walking by the classroom, asking her simply, “Bang wo.” I didn’t even care if this was the right way to say it or not, I just wanted help. She was a petite woman, but she came in and commanded them into submission. I felt awful. I couldn’t even control 7 year olds. Today just wasn’t my day. It started off bad, and this just made it worse. The bell rang, and they all screamed, “XIA KE!” and I was glad. Those were the 40 longest minutes of my life. Ok maybe second longest 40 minutes of my life, but I lost all faith in myself. One of my ambitions before this experience was to become a teacher, but this destroyed it. It made me despise teaching, and gave me great respect for those who do. Those kids all left saying good bye. It was the last thing I taught them. I hadn’t completely failed. I left and met up with Chris and the others. They were all talking about how well they had done, and I just stood, emotionless, resenting myself for volunteering to teach these kids. Everyone just talked about how much they had taught, how they had struggled and prevailed and how they felt better for it. I felt the exact opposite. That grey compound was sucking the remaining bits of optimism from me. And then it happened. My fountain of optimism dried up. Depression hit me, and I needed time to myself. I hopped on that crowded bus, hoping for a seat, but standing cramped between sweaty business men, wearing knock off Italian suits. Getting home 30 minutes later, I waited out the bad feelings, checked off Teaching from my list of things to do before I die, and got to studying.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Food
Food. It is the staple for life. But America is fairly spoiled when it comes to food. They never really had experiences like the Chinese. During the cultural revolution, there was a famine that claimed the lives of millions of people. Just to survive, they began experimenting with all sorts of culinary venues that would make half the world cringe, such as insects, snakes, starfish, sea horses (which are apparently an aphrodisiac according to the salesman,) grubs, etc. But the foods are actually edible. If you let your gag reflex stop you from eating, you'll miss out on some of the most amazing foods you'd never thought you'd eat. This is my story of Wangfujing and everything you wish would stay under the rocks they started from.
***
Cabs are always interesting. Sometimes you get a quiet cabbie, other times, you get a talkative one, while other times you get a quiet cabbie who is just waiting for you to talk with him. My cab ride over was the latter. After bonding with him as we sat in traffic for 53 minutes, and slowly feeling my pocket become lighter with every passing minute, I arrived. Stands and booths as far as the eye could see down the road. It was ridiculous. The lights overpowered the banks they were temporarily set up in front of. The uniform of the workers were the same. An army of red aprons, red visors and white shirts, all yelling at the passer-bys in Chinese and broken English, "Zhe ge hen hao... ayaaa, Haixing hen hao chi! you buy?" They were ferocious, yelling and screaming at me. Luckily I met up with some friends, and we embarked on our "disgusting" culinary odyssey. Bridget and I first bought our fairly squeamish friend some noodles. But noodles... They're too normal, I can have those anywhere. We decided to start from the far end and work our way down. Now I'd like to describe the smells. They stick to you as the day goes on. At the end of the day, if you sniff your shirt, you think to yourself, "That actually describes my day pretty well." But I digress, chou doufu, which literally means, "Stinky Tofu," assaults your olfactory senses. It brings tears to your eyes, it burns your throat. You want to die. And then you walk 30 feet through the smell and see that smells origin. Tiny pieces of doufu. There's the smell of a bay, cooking meat, fruits, and other things that I can't describe and only wish I never smelled, mixing together with the chou doufu to make up the most bizarre smell I have ever experienced in my short 17 years of life. But at last, Bridget and I braved through the smells and arrived at a stand selling starfish. I handed over 20 Kuai and ended up with a starfish on a stick. The whole thing. It just sat there, dead as can be, but I ignored the fact that these are the garbage disposals of the ocean, eating practically every dead thing that falls within reach. I ignored the fact that they can turn themselves inside out, everything I ever remembered from middle school biology classes, and stuck it in my mouth. I bit through the leg. Chewy, like a very gamey fish stick. But it was good. Eating that, attracted a crowd of Chinese and Waiguoren alike. Oh look, those Americans are eating, "Hen chiguai de dongxi." Moving on, we came to the Scorpion stand. Well mainly whatever insect you could imagine, but i had my mind set on scorpions. Bridget shelled out the money for this one, and we got two sticks, three scorpions on each. They had all their legs, their tail and everything that makes them so scary. I started to wonder why I wouldn't touch bugs when they're alive, but they're perfectly ok to eat when they're dead. Of course my mind doubted myself for a moment. How did they catch these things? Didn't Indiana Jones say small scorpions are poisonous? How did they get on the stick? But I ignored the history of all these bugs and ate them. Eating scorpions is a tricky ordeal, one that experience teaches how to eat. Bite that bloody stinger first. The first one I ate, somehow stung the back of my throat. Of course it was surprising, especially with 8 legs brushing up against your tongue, but no matter. CRUNCH. Salty, crunchy, kinda meaty-esque, but all of it was amazing. It was better than most of the things I'd eaten back home. It compared to a filet. I'm drooling just thinking about it. Walking hardly any further down the seemingly endless row of stands, we stumbled across Silk Worm Pods. Slightly envious that my friend Chris had already eaten some, I pulled Bridget over and bargained for some. I'm an awful bargainer, so I ended up letting her do most of it. She just adds -Aaaa to the end of every sentence and the cooks' hearts melt. Apparently I'm not that cute. *sigh* So we got a stick of Silk worm pods. I bit one and pulled it off. Now, for some reason my mind started thinking of it when I bit it in half. "Oh. MY. GAWD! These are larvae in here, that are getting all over my mouth." But it didn't gross me out. It was hard to explain; I think it was excitement, but then I tasted it. They made it Spicey and every single larva tasted like crayons. Spicey crayons are not a delicacy. So I ate two. For photo opportunity's sake. Just so I never have to eat them again. The snake stand beckoned us. I stood there and just stared at all the "Chuanr" or meat on a stick. There was beef, chicken, sheep, kidneys, praying mantis looking shrimp things, mussels like you've never seen before and snakes. The whole snake. Looking back at you, with its soulless eyes, it's mouth agape, and a stick piercing it's whole body, as it snaked back and forth through the stick, (forgive the coincidental pun.) Bridget worked her bargaining magic and got the price down to 7 kuai. So the guy started making it and he then tried to kiss Bridget's hand. Then seeing us bargain in chinese with him, he began to say in chinese, "Oh you are americans, you have lots of money, the snake is thirty kuai." I began to tell him, in chinese, "America's economy is awful at the moment, our stock market crashed terribly," (yes I finally got to use that useless phrase I learned back home,) "Plus we're students so we don't have much money anyway." He didn't like this, and started yelling really loudly. This drew a crowd. It felt as if the whole market was staring at us. They began to talk, "Look at those Americans, they've been eating all this weird stuff." But the salesman was about to threaten the cops on us, when we ran. Probably not the most tactful thing, but we got away. Passing through a crowd of people, all of them talking about how we were those "brave Americans" who were eating the gross stuff. I felt that I was getting yet another dose of 15 minutes of fame. But Bridget and Mary had to go to their dinner with their host families, so I was left on my own now. Having learned how to bargain from watching Bridget do it, I went to a different snake stand. This guy I just decided not to bargain with and pay the full price. A group of British teachers came up to me and said, "Oh 'allo there, are you that crazy american that's eating everything. Everyone's talking about you. Can we film you eat whatever that is, cause we don't have the balls to do so." So I got my snake, Head and everything, and ate it. The skull was the worst part, cause I didn't realize it was there. The fangs shattered and went straight into my tongue. After uttering a slight profanity, I finished. The Teacher then asked me to say hello to his elementary school class. "Hallo, elementary schoolers! Sorry I swore in front of you." I decided that I was going to go get a sea urchin. They cracked it open and gave it to me. It was awful. That's all I can say. My stomach was telling me to stop, so I walked to the street, got in a cab, and headed for home, content with my experiences in the Wangfujing Night Market. The lights faded to nothing as we drove off through what felt like Beijing's Times Square. Tomorrow morning, the stands would be gone. Everyone would pretend that that never happened. But I know, that I'll never forget it. Nor will my stomach... or my host families toilet.
***
Cabs are always interesting. Sometimes you get a quiet cabbie, other times, you get a talkative one, while other times you get a quiet cabbie who is just waiting for you to talk with him. My cab ride over was the latter. After bonding with him as we sat in traffic for 53 minutes, and slowly feeling my pocket become lighter with every passing minute, I arrived. Stands and booths as far as the eye could see down the road. It was ridiculous. The lights overpowered the banks they were temporarily set up in front of. The uniform of the workers were the same. An army of red aprons, red visors and white shirts, all yelling at the passer-bys in Chinese and broken English, "Zhe ge hen hao... ayaaa, Haixing hen hao chi! you buy?" They were ferocious, yelling and screaming at me. Luckily I met up with some friends, and we embarked on our "disgusting" culinary odyssey. Bridget and I first bought our fairly squeamish friend some noodles. But noodles... They're too normal, I can have those anywhere. We decided to start from the far end and work our way down. Now I'd like to describe the smells. They stick to you as the day goes on. At the end of the day, if you sniff your shirt, you think to yourself, "That actually describes my day pretty well." But I digress, chou doufu, which literally means, "Stinky Tofu," assaults your olfactory senses. It brings tears to your eyes, it burns your throat. You want to die. And then you walk 30 feet through the smell and see that smells origin. Tiny pieces of doufu. There's the smell of a bay, cooking meat, fruits, and other things that I can't describe and only wish I never smelled, mixing together with the chou doufu to make up the most bizarre smell I have ever experienced in my short 17 years of life. But at last, Bridget and I braved through the smells and arrived at a stand selling starfish. I handed over 20 Kuai and ended up with a starfish on a stick. The whole thing. It just sat there, dead as can be, but I ignored the fact that these are the garbage disposals of the ocean, eating practically every dead thing that falls within reach. I ignored the fact that they can turn themselves inside out, everything I ever remembered from middle school biology classes, and stuck it in my mouth. I bit through the leg. Chewy, like a very gamey fish stick. But it was good. Eating that, attracted a crowd of Chinese and Waiguoren alike. Oh look, those Americans are eating, "Hen chiguai de dongxi." Moving on, we came to the Scorpion stand. Well mainly whatever insect you could imagine, but i had my mind set on scorpions. Bridget shelled out the money for this one, and we got two sticks, three scorpions on each. They had all their legs, their tail and everything that makes them so scary. I started to wonder why I wouldn't touch bugs when they're alive, but they're perfectly ok to eat when they're dead. Of course my mind doubted myself for a moment. How did they catch these things? Didn't Indiana Jones say small scorpions are poisonous? How did they get on the stick? But I ignored the history of all these bugs and ate them. Eating scorpions is a tricky ordeal, one that experience teaches how to eat. Bite that bloody stinger first. The first one I ate, somehow stung the back of my throat. Of course it was surprising, especially with 8 legs brushing up against your tongue, but no matter. CRUNCH. Salty, crunchy, kinda meaty-esque, but all of it was amazing. It was better than most of the things I'd eaten back home. It compared to a filet. I'm drooling just thinking about it. Walking hardly any further down the seemingly endless row of stands, we stumbled across Silk Worm Pods. Slightly envious that my friend Chris had already eaten some, I pulled Bridget over and bargained for some. I'm an awful bargainer, so I ended up letting her do most of it. She just adds -Aaaa to the end of every sentence and the cooks' hearts melt. Apparently I'm not that cute. *sigh* So we got a stick of Silk worm pods. I bit one and pulled it off. Now, for some reason my mind started thinking of it when I bit it in half. "Oh. MY. GAWD! These are larvae in here, that are getting all over my mouth." But it didn't gross me out. It was hard to explain; I think it was excitement, but then I tasted it. They made it Spicey and every single larva tasted like crayons. Spicey crayons are not a delicacy. So I ate two. For photo opportunity's sake. Just so I never have to eat them again. The snake stand beckoned us. I stood there and just stared at all the "Chuanr" or meat on a stick. There was beef, chicken, sheep, kidneys, praying mantis looking shrimp things, mussels like you've never seen before and snakes. The whole snake. Looking back at you, with its soulless eyes, it's mouth agape, and a stick piercing it's whole body, as it snaked back and forth through the stick, (forgive the coincidental pun.) Bridget worked her bargaining magic and got the price down to 7 kuai. So the guy started making it and he then tried to kiss Bridget's hand. Then seeing us bargain in chinese with him, he began to say in chinese, "Oh you are americans, you have lots of money, the snake is thirty kuai." I began to tell him, in chinese, "America's economy is awful at the moment, our stock market crashed terribly," (yes I finally got to use that useless phrase I learned back home,) "Plus we're students so we don't have much money anyway." He didn't like this, and started yelling really loudly. This drew a crowd. It felt as if the whole market was staring at us. They began to talk, "Look at those Americans, they've been eating all this weird stuff." But the salesman was about to threaten the cops on us, when we ran. Probably not the most tactful thing, but we got away. Passing through a crowd of people, all of them talking about how we were those "brave Americans" who were eating the gross stuff. I felt that I was getting yet another dose of 15 minutes of fame. But Bridget and Mary had to go to their dinner with their host families, so I was left on my own now. Having learned how to bargain from watching Bridget do it, I went to a different snake stand. This guy I just decided not to bargain with and pay the full price. A group of British teachers came up to me and said, "Oh 'allo there, are you that crazy american that's eating everything. Everyone's talking about you. Can we film you eat whatever that is, cause we don't have the balls to do so." So I got my snake, Head and everything, and ate it. The skull was the worst part, cause I didn't realize it was there. The fangs shattered and went straight into my tongue. After uttering a slight profanity, I finished. The Teacher then asked me to say hello to his elementary school class. "Hallo, elementary schoolers! Sorry I swore in front of you." I decided that I was going to go get a sea urchin. They cracked it open and gave it to me. It was awful. That's all I can say. My stomach was telling me to stop, so I walked to the street, got in a cab, and headed for home, content with my experiences in the Wangfujing Night Market. The lights faded to nothing as we drove off through what felt like Beijing's Times Square. Tomorrow morning, the stands would be gone. Everyone would pretend that that never happened. But I know, that I'll never forget it. Nor will my stomach... or my host families toilet.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Knowing Exactly Where We’re Lost
I wouldn’t call this getting lost. We knew where we were and exactly how to get back home, but we didn’t end up where we wanted. My friend Gavin and I biked for almost two hours in pursuit of Donghuamen Yeshi, (东华门夜市,) and some interesting culinary delights. The sky was darkening fast and the moon struggled to watch us through the smog enveloping the city as we stopped our bikes in front of Tiananmen Square. Behind us, lights blazed through the smog, leaving streaks of light suspended in midair like children’s mobiles, buildings changed colors, stores blasted music, and people chattered. In front of us, Christmas-esque decorations adorned trees, going down an avenue as far as the eye could see. All of it, the city, the ambience, everything, was stunning, truly stunning, but this was not the Donghuamen Yeshi and we were hungry. How did we get here?
***
After an ordeal and a half with a side-of-the-road bike repairman, Gavin and I were ready to hit the streets. Stomachs grumbling we set off “south,” unaware of what was to come. Biking is always a trip. Every time I get on the incredibly uncomfortable seat of my bicycle in Beijing, I feel my imminent death right behind me. And it’s exhilarating. Weaving in between other cyclists like a choreographed dance, dodging cabs that seemed to appear out of nowhere, speeding through lanes of traffic and everything else that can’t be predicted are all part of the biking experience. The Beijing residents looked at us, two white American teens, biking in their hometown as if we were Chinese. I tried to hide among the fellow bikers to avoid their stares. We biked onwards, our legs getting a little tired, so we decided to stop at a mall. Walking into that building felt as if I had just stepped back into America, and I began reverting back to my American self. The mall was filled with big name outlets I’d never heard of. It had marble floors, glass window fronts, everything that I remembered about malls back home. This American self had an urge for the arcade. We rode three escalators to the arcade floor, and started playing games. We laughed and chatted in Chinese. “Easy 2 Dancer” caught our attention, and we jumped on it. It’s a dancing game, but it also incorporates moving your arms under sensors as well. To put our performance bluntly, we were horrendous. Stepping away from that arcade game and turning around, we saw a small crowd of Chinese teens. All of them looked at us incredulously. Waiguoren in our arcade and speaking Chinese? Gavin and I saw that look and began speaking with them about nothing in particular. We were showing off and breaking a stereotype about foreigners at the same time. We walked out of there beaming. Indulging in comforts and pushing our comfort zones, all in the same room. We began to get excited over the foods we would never eat back home but were on our way to go consume.
The bikes beckoned us, and so we went forth, feeling as if the Donghuamen night market, (yeshi means night market,) was right around the corner. Another half hour passed and we saw a Karaoke bar. Yet another thing I’d wanted to do. Skidding to a halt, and then backtracking a few feet to the Karaoke bar, Gavin and I stood outside for a second. The sun was gone, but still its rays were bending over the sky, actually arching over the buildings. The buildings had facelifts, but we could still see the remnants of the old Hutongs behind their new faces. We walked up a flight of stairs and got to the Karaoke bar. I fought off the fear of seeming totally ridiculous and did a duet with Gavin. “Take On Me,” never sounded better. Stares from people had suddenly stopped making me shrink away, and instead, I was beginning to thrive on them. Our stomachs started making audible growling sounds, so we hopped back onto the bikes and sped off. The town started to look more and more ancient, like how I originally thought Beijing was going to look like. The buildings were grey, bars were over windows, and the road was uneven. Then, as if they sprouted up out of nowhere, huge buildings, modern looking structures and everything else I remember from Tomorrow Land at Disney World were on both sides of the street. Each building was covered with tiny lights, and they displayed images, and advertisements, or they just showed colors. Dumbfounded by the sudden change, Gavin and I stopped. We asked a man where the market was. His response was slightly disheartening. “What’s the Donghuamen Yeshi?” So we asked another person, then another, and all their responses were the same. We biked to the end of the glowing lights, or as one sign said, “Joy City,” and stared at the giant wall separating us from Tiananmen Square. We sat on our bikes, my rear hurting from that awful seat, as our stomachs grumbled in protest. We weren’t going to eat scorpions or centipedes, but there always is street food. The night air was thick as it rested on our shoulders. We could see it resting there, but I stood up, shrugging off that cloak of thick, night air, and headed off for home, straight back the way we came. At least we made the most out of our failed attempt at finding it. Next weekend we’ll get there… we’re taking a cab.
***
After an ordeal and a half with a side-of-the-road bike repairman, Gavin and I were ready to hit the streets. Stomachs grumbling we set off “south,” unaware of what was to come. Biking is always a trip. Every time I get on the incredibly uncomfortable seat of my bicycle in Beijing, I feel my imminent death right behind me. And it’s exhilarating. Weaving in between other cyclists like a choreographed dance, dodging cabs that seemed to appear out of nowhere, speeding through lanes of traffic and everything else that can’t be predicted are all part of the biking experience. The Beijing residents looked at us, two white American teens, biking in their hometown as if we were Chinese. I tried to hide among the fellow bikers to avoid their stares. We biked onwards, our legs getting a little tired, so we decided to stop at a mall. Walking into that building felt as if I had just stepped back into America, and I began reverting back to my American self. The mall was filled with big name outlets I’d never heard of. It had marble floors, glass window fronts, everything that I remembered about malls back home. This American self had an urge for the arcade. We rode three escalators to the arcade floor, and started playing games. We laughed and chatted in Chinese. “Easy 2 Dancer” caught our attention, and we jumped on it. It’s a dancing game, but it also incorporates moving your arms under sensors as well. To put our performance bluntly, we were horrendous. Stepping away from that arcade game and turning around, we saw a small crowd of Chinese teens. All of them looked at us incredulously. Waiguoren in our arcade and speaking Chinese? Gavin and I saw that look and began speaking with them about nothing in particular. We were showing off and breaking a stereotype about foreigners at the same time. We walked out of there beaming. Indulging in comforts and pushing our comfort zones, all in the same room. We began to get excited over the foods we would never eat back home but were on our way to go consume.
The bikes beckoned us, and so we went forth, feeling as if the Donghuamen night market, (yeshi means night market,) was right around the corner. Another half hour passed and we saw a Karaoke bar. Yet another thing I’d wanted to do. Skidding to a halt, and then backtracking a few feet to the Karaoke bar, Gavin and I stood outside for a second. The sun was gone, but still its rays were bending over the sky, actually arching over the buildings. The buildings had facelifts, but we could still see the remnants of the old Hutongs behind their new faces. We walked up a flight of stairs and got to the Karaoke bar. I fought off the fear of seeming totally ridiculous and did a duet with Gavin. “Take On Me,” never sounded better. Stares from people had suddenly stopped making me shrink away, and instead, I was beginning to thrive on them. Our stomachs started making audible growling sounds, so we hopped back onto the bikes and sped off. The town started to look more and more ancient, like how I originally thought Beijing was going to look like. The buildings were grey, bars were over windows, and the road was uneven. Then, as if they sprouted up out of nowhere, huge buildings, modern looking structures and everything else I remember from Tomorrow Land at Disney World were on both sides of the street. Each building was covered with tiny lights, and they displayed images, and advertisements, or they just showed colors. Dumbfounded by the sudden change, Gavin and I stopped. We asked a man where the market was. His response was slightly disheartening. “What’s the Donghuamen Yeshi?” So we asked another person, then another, and all their responses were the same. We biked to the end of the glowing lights, or as one sign said, “Joy City,” and stared at the giant wall separating us from Tiananmen Square. We sat on our bikes, my rear hurting from that awful seat, as our stomachs grumbled in protest. We weren’t going to eat scorpions or centipedes, but there always is street food. The night air was thick as it rested on our shoulders. We could see it resting there, but I stood up, shrugging off that cloak of thick, night air, and headed off for home, straight back the way we came. At least we made the most out of our failed attempt at finding it. Next weekend we’ll get there… we’re taking a cab.
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