Beijinger Girl

Guiyang - the first of three

This is a long time in the making, but I feel like I should at least write a little something about my trip to Guiyang, seeing as it is the only real vacation I’ve had out of the city. I had short work-related trips to Shanghai and I went to Tokyo for a week during Chinese New Year, but otherwise, Guiyang was my only out-of-Beijing experience within China.

Let me start with some of the facts: Guiyang is the capital city of Guizhou province, a land-locked province in southwest China. Guizhou is the poorest province, and Guiyang poorest capital city of a province in China according to a very reliable source – Danny. I basically went to visit Danny, an old William and Mary friend teaching English for the Peace Corps. at a Chinese Traditional Medicine College in the city. I know some of my experiences probably seem hard-core to friends back home, but Danny has some real stories. For starters, being a Peace Corps. volunteer, he lives on a much tighter budget. He’s also had violent illnesses and several brushes with death/severe bodily injury; part of his ear was cut off when he was getting a haircut, for instance. That said, he has a relatively nice, large apartment that could only be improved with the addition of a Western toilet and a real shower. Again, what do I mean by “real shower?” His shower is a metal hose hooked up to the sink pipes and tied up by cord so that it dangles directly over the Chinese-style hole-in-the-ground toilet, dripping a narrow stream of water from overhead with nothing to show for water-pressure.

At least the water was hot.

I visited over my lengthy October Holiday. I flew into the very small Guiyang airport on a muggy Saturday morning and took a shuttle bus to Danny’s campus. After a little sitting around my pile of luggage in the southern heat and trying to tell Danny where I was with a thousand very tan Chinese people staring at my neon-white complexion, we found each other and dumped my bags at his apartment. We went to eat at a little dishes restaurant near his home where they were obviously very familiar with him and excited to see another foreigner with him. I think from about that moment on, most Chinese people Danny and I associated with during my visit assumed we were dating. He was white; I was white and visiting him in the poorest capital city in China; I clearly must be his girlfriend. It didn’t help that during lunch I realized that I forgot to pack underwear and dragged him to the nearest drugstore to purchase a pack of very uncomfortable Chinese underwear. (I think I threw those pairs away the moment I returned from Guiyang.)

I took a nap while Danny had his Chinese tutor over, but then we spent most of that evening just catching up with each other and getting dinner with some friends. Stories were exchanged. Eventually, I may type up some of Danny’s stories for the sake of everyone else’s amusement. I’m not the only person in China with hilarious shenanigans, apparently. We also graded some of his students' journals together. Of course I took this work seriously, but it was hard for us both not to stop every now and then and go, "Oh man, listen to this one..."

The next day I can’t recall getting up particularly early, but I remember taking pictures from Danny’s 5^th floor apartment of the bustling markets on the street below. I also watched an old couple wash their clothes on the roof of their concrete house with a dusty, sleeping dog sleeping in between them. I believe we did get up early enough to go down to the street under the bridge where the airport shuttle dropped me off where a couple sold freshly-fried youtiao (a savory breakfast pastry) and warm doujiang (soy milk). Danny had to teach, although it was a Sunday, because classes would otherwise be missed due to the October holiday. (This is a common theme. People may get ‘holidays’ off of work, but they aren’t really days off; they usually have to work some other day they would normally have off to make up for it. This has been the case for me, and it downright sucks.) I went along as a surprise for his kids. I say kids, but really they are only a few years younger than Danny and I and students in a university. That said, they are kids in a lot of ways. I introduced myself and Danny spent a few minutes explaining our origins in college and he went on to teach his lesson. At the end of class, Danny let the kids play a game of “ask the foreign girl embarrassing personal questions” in which I was terribly disappointed that most of the questions were relatively dull and unimaginative. However, I did briefly entertain the class with the abridged version of my dating history. The sheer number of boyfriends was enough to make me the new scandal of Danny’s college By sheer number, I mean I've had more than one boyfriend. Shocking! Danny had a second class in which I took a more integrated role as an assistant teacher in the planned English exercise, and that meant decidedly less discussion of scandal. The best part of that day was when I was traveling in the school’s elevator without Danny, and a bright-eyed freshman boy worked up the courage to ask me in his best English “Are you my English teacher?” at which I had a really hard time not laughing. Such hope in his voice! It was painfully adorable.

After classes, we went out shopping with some of Danny’s Chinese friends. We went to a classy (and I mean classy by Chinese standards) street market that was actually on a big walking overpass above a busy intersection with crude boards nailed together, which technically made the market an indoor one. I ended up getting a pair of earrings for something like 10 kuai. (Ooh, big spender!) That night we went out for Guiyang-style Chinese barbeque. The barbeque (xiaokao) dining experience is much like the malatang experience. Meats, vegetables, noodles, and tofu are set out, patrons fill a plate of their favorites, the stall operator grills them, sprinkling (drenching) them all the while in spices, vinegar and soy-based sauces, and, of course, delicious MSG. It was good, but it took some time for my tongue to stop burning. A big group of Danny’s Peace Corps friends joined us, and afterwards we went out to a bar where I learned an array of amusing Chinese drinking games. My favorite was the naughty version of rock-paper-scissors. A table of Chinese invited Danny and I over to drink with them after a while. They were trying out their English, but it didn't last. Remember that this was back in October, and my Chinese at that point was pretty pathetic. Danny and his Peace Corps buddies ended up having what I'm sure was a deep conversation in Chinese with them. I just kind of sat there and looked pretty. Danny and I split earlier than everyone else, and found out later that the girl in the Chinese group spewed everywhere minutes after we left. (Good timing!)

The next morning I woke up relatively early (considering this was my vacation), and took more pictures of the view from Danny’s window. We decided that it would be loads of fun just to aimlessly wander the city. We walked through a huge bazaar called the bird and fish market. It actually had a lot more than birds and fish, but it wasn’t very busy or bustling - I suppose because it was Monday. We meandered through the market and down to the river, which was actually quite beautiful. There was an expansive teahouse built on a small bit of land jutting out into the middle, and two lovely stone walkways along the length—one near water level, and one about three meters above that on level with the street. There were plenty of pavilion structures, tables, and benches, most occupied by older Chinese playing cards or mahjong. We stopped in a huge, expensive department store for lunch at the Ajisen Ramen (Japanese style FTW.) I remember this particular department store being perhaps the most difficult one to navigate. In fact, most department stores in China don’t seem particularly easy to navigate. Signs are vague, small, few, and not always clear. Escalators and elevators can be in very strange places, and are, in fact, practically hidden, at times. All that aside, I remember finding a knockoff version of a Haagen Dazs ice cream shop in the basement (Sandy Dazs) really hilarious. Afterwards, we walked all the way down to the ‘people’s square,’ a huge stone-paved common area with a huge Wal-Mart beneath it. Danny pointed out to me that across the street from the people’s square was a government building with a statue of Mao saluting. If you think about it, it kind of looks like he’s saluting the Wal-Mart. Hm. This particular week, Wal-Mart had sponsored a photography display; so beautiful pictures from all over the world were matted and put up for viewing in people’s square. We didn’t even get to see all of them, but it was a really pleasant surprise. We eventually shuffled underground into the Wal-Mart, where we did a little bit of shopping for our camping trip. I forget if I bought more underwear at this point. We made our way back towards Danny’s place through an underground market where I found an entire shop (albeit small) dedicated to cosplay. I actually didn’t expect that in Guiyang, so it was another pleasant surprise. With Danny’s help, we talked to the two geeky-looking guys running the place briefly about cosplay in Guiyang. I forget if I had my I-pod with me and if I showed them pictures of my previous cosplay experiences, or if I just told them about it. Either way, I think I surprised them just as much as they surprised me. We eventually went out for full-body massages at his favorite parlor. Since showering beforehand was involved in the process, we were separated into male and female locker rooms, and I’m pretty sure I scared the orthopedic shoes off of some Chinese grannies with my buck-naked white self. (It’s not like it was fun seeing them, either.) The massage was decent, except that the male masseuse, who was almost certainly younger than me, only half-heartedly ‘groped’ me. He could have at least smiled. (As a side note, of course he did not grope me, but as a full body massage, there were some awkward moments—namely when he was working on my thighs.) The whole experience cost something on the order of 45 RMB, or about $7. The establishment we went to also had a ‘third floor’ where services sky-rocketed in price, supposedly, but I wouldn’t know anything about that. Besides, if my masseuse couldn’t even crack a smile and the opportunity to even be that close in proximity a really cute foreign girl in the first place, I was certainly never going to the third floor with him. He probably chain-smoked and had diseases and only one pair of socks. (I’m not bitter.)

Overall, the thing which struck me most after walking around the city all day was how some areas of the city were so very crowded and dirty and simply in utter disrepair – the very scene you would imagine for a poor, industrial city - while others were actually very nice, clean, modern, and even impressive. There was also a lot of construction. My feeling was that, while Guiyang may technically be a poor city, it is certainly experience rapid development and modernization. I’d love to go back in a few years and see how much progress has been made.

We went out to dinner with more Peace Corps people that night, took pictures of dog meat being sold on the streets, had a great conversation about the Chinese squat, followed by a squatting competition. Back at Danny’s place, we watched the fun family classic film, “Teeth.” I think we tried to watch a pirated copy of “Ponyo on the Cliffs by the Sea” (which was an adorable new Studio Ghibli movie), but the quality was terrible, there was no English or Chinese subtitles, and while I could understand about half of the scratchy Japanese dialogue, Danny was a little lost. The clear solution was to watch a horrible, hilarious movie about… well… let’s just say you can IMDB the movie if you really want to know, but I don’t recommend it, and, in-fact, would advise against it. However, it certainly brought me back to my freshman year of college, when Danny and I lived in the same dorm and had all sorts of adventures and antics—most involving him buying me hot dogs at the Wawa under threat of bodily damage or humiliation.

That was the first delicious slice of my Guiyang experience. More will come soon.

Status Report

Last month I was busy mimicking a plague victim; I had an intestinal infection that destroyed my life for about three weeks and put me out a few thousand yuan. I finally wound up in the hospital for a day where they stuck me with needles and prescribed disgusting black ooze (traditional Chinese medicine) as well as a week off of work. I generally feel better now, but at my check-up this past week, the doctor warned me that I really need to take it easy for a while and prescribed me more TCM. It’s difficult for me, because I finished my online classes and the warm, dry weather we’re experiencing in Beijing most days (permitting varying levels of air quality doesn’t kill the mood) has me itching to just get out, walk around, shop, see things, and meet people.

The city has changed too. Most of the autumn and winter I recall the streets and sky seeming relatively grey. I may have said something similar in my last post, but along with the warm weather, everything seems to be coming to life. Restaurants have set out tables outside on the sidewalks, and people crowd them on nights and evenings to the point I have difficulty navigating through them. Side streets that were relatively lifeless a few months ago are now full of street vendors, construction projects, and all sorts of goods. You can buy anything as common as fruits and vegetables, clothing, shoes, toys, household items and tools, flowers, DVDs, and toys to the more upscale or exotic products such as animals of all kinds, jewelry, Chinese artifacts, Buddhist relics, and an array of electronic goods. This excludes, of course, the perpetual presence of street foods like malatang, barbequed meat, stinky tofu, sweet popcorn, and various fried breads and egg products. In the past two months or so, fruits have been particularly prolific in the markets. Around April or May I started noticed small mangos and freshly cut pineapples being sold everywhere. More recently I can barely walk 20 feet down a sidewalk without running into someone selling watermelons or huge bunches of bananas. I’ve even noted an increase in the appearance of foreigners in my relatively Chinese neighborhood. I’ve even made a number of Chinese friends (but it helps that my Chinese has improved greatly over the past several months.) I know this may sound crazy, but the warm weather seems to have made people more outgoing and friendly towards me. A few months ago, I was used to people just pointing and calling out “laowai.”

As for me, I was bogged down with work and study up until mid-May, after which I promptly fell deathly ill. The city has been blooming all around me, and I’ve been stuck at home studying, throwing up my internal organs, and recovering. I’m trying hard to be a good kid – I try to get a lot of extra sleep on the weekends and eat healthy food and take all my medicine - but I’m finding that not even high levels of stress and crippling illness can stop me from having shenanigans.

This post should serve as a personal status report. With any luck, I’ll have some more interesting topics expounded upon in the next few hours. I have the perfect soft armchair window-seat in the Starbucks a 30-minute walk from my house, and just plain spite for covetous strangers will not allow me to get up until either I am about to starve to death or my bladder explodes. In other words, I should be typing hopped-up on caffeine for another few hours.

Happy Father's Day! And Happy Birthday, Daddy!

Trying to appease the masses

Okay, I think it's needless to say I've been busy. I know some of you are thinking, "How hard can it be to write a little about China everyday?" Trust me; I'm so busy I sometimes don't have time to shower. (Eww) It's okay. That's only slightly an exaggeration. Every time I want to post, I think about other work or studying I could and should be doing.

Nonetheless, I'm here to tell you that this weekend I've been uploading a ton of pictures and videos that I will link when I am done. I may also write a little bit about each little experience I've had in the past two months - there have been many - but I probably won't write to my usual degree of detail. (I know, I know, I'm wordy.)

I thought I'd entertain you all with a story about yesterday. This is what I would say is fairly typical on my days off.

Ever since it started getting warmer here in Beijing, businesses have been having all sorts of specials and promotions, and some businesses have had smash-band grand openings. Some places have stayed low-key, but I have noticed new furnishings or decor as I pass by. Shop renovation has been a big thing in the past month. Flier distributors are proliferating. I even got a green (which is actually quite brown) bag from a salon I never go to near my kindergarten. It feels like the whole city was hibernating during the winter, and just now everything has come to life.

So it's hard NOT to notice the new businesses. As a result, I've been a little more experimental when I venture out at meal times. Yesterday, I noticed a new malatang restaurant very close to my apartment complex, and decided to try it out. Malatang is kind of like a 'choose your own adventure' food. In some places, you take a basket and choose from an assortment of vegetables, meats, and tofus on skewers, as well ad bundles of different noodles, fill your basket, then hand it to the cook, he cooks it in a huge wire mesh ladle in a boiling soup mixture, which is supposed to be quite spicy (and full of delicious MSG), though spiciness varies from place to place. Then, they hand it to you in a bowl and might add some of the soup mixture to it, spicy oil, and garlic. These establishments are usually fairly clean and indoors, although not always very tasty. They may also have a menu of other items (blasphemy!) Other places, you just sit down at a large rectangular table with other guests, and the soup mixture is bubbling away in a large pan in the middle. In these cases, you just tell the attending cook what you want, he plops it in the pans for you, then takes it out for you when it's done. Usually these places don't use bowls, but metal plates covered in clean plastic bags. (Actually, you see this at a lot of outdoor food stalls in China, and many cheap malatang places are outside, or housed in what Westerners might refer to as rusted-out sheds and lean-tos.) Of course, there are those who will just poke through the pans on their own and take out whatever looks done an interesting instead of waiting. You add your own garnish at these places. Everything is charged according to skewers. Most of the time, skewers range in price from .5-1.5 RMB, depending on what they contain. Meat and mushrooms are usually the most expensive. I usually stick to vegetables and tofu as it is. In other words, malatang is a great way to eat a lot very cheap. It's also great beer food.

So I decided to try a new malatang restaurant. It was actually rather late in the afternoon, so I caught them when they really didn't have many things out. (There was no tofu. I almost died.) But I took some vegetables, small pork-filled dumplings, and noodles anyway. The shop people themselves were sitting down for a big lunch together. Long story short, they asked me all the basics (the questions I get all the time); where are you from? Why are you in China? Do you like China? Do you like Chinese food? Do you think America is better than China? The thing is, if you answer these questions right, you can get free things. You may not believe me, but it's true. If you can answer all of these with relative ease in Chinese, and say the right things, most Chinese shop people will like you, and want you to come back. (I once accepted a free massage from a hair salon.) Yesterday, I got a free can of coke with my lunch. I was also introduced to the shop owner's son, and promptly told to talk English at him. I gave his kid an English name. (This will also win you brownie points with Chinese people. They love native speakers giving their kids a 'real' English name*) I named him Jack. I asked him how old he was (10) and put a sticker on his head. (Carrying stickers for children wins you tons of brownie points.)

Anyway, I may or may not go back frequently. They didn't have tofu when I needed it most! But I will probably go back every now and then to see how Jack is doing and to try to finagle some free malatang.

*There are, indeed, unreal English names. Some of the better ones I've heard are Little Rice, Circle, Ice Cream, and Lucifer. These are almost always names Chinese people pick for themselves, either because it's a direct translation of their Chinese name, or because they think it sounds cool.

February - Full of Festivities

First, I'd like to say hello to all the new readers. I really am making an effort to update, if not frequently, at least more regularly. Thanks! I enjoy the feedback, and it makes it worth writing everything up.

The first week of February was actually fairly lonely. I went back to work, but many people in Beijing were still at home or visiting with friends for all of the Chinese New Year celebrations. Nonetheless, the street scene was a much rowdier one than described in my January post. Firecrackers were set of in the streets, parking lots, sidewalks, and parks everyday from about 8 A.M. to 10 P.M. Less considerate parties would set them off either earlier or later. At lunch break and in the evenings, it was nearly impossible to walk outside and not see some fireworks bursting in some corner of the sky. The sound was overwhelming. I felt like I couldn’t escape the explosions, and I feared for any older people in my neighborhood with weak hearts. The culmination of the celebration was on February 9^th, the lantern festival (yuanxiaojie). It’s technically the last day of the Chinese New Year. Without knowing anymore than what the teachers at my school told me, you’re supposed to write good wishes on a lantern and hang it up that night. Here’s the wiki article in case you demand better than my poor description: Lantern Festival

There was an astounding cacophony. I thought I was living in a war zone! Especially in the evening, the streets were full of people each aiming to set off their own string of firecrackers and those gathered to look on the fireworks displays of others. The skies were full of flashing lights in every direction; booming and banging everywhere I turned. The smoke was so thick that it stung my eyes, and I could even smell it. The explosions reflected off of the thick smoke screens, making me feel completely surrounded. Late that evening and early the next morning, the streets and sidewalks were coated thickly in singed red paper. Workers were sweeping the debris in huge piles that looked like raked leaves. It felt very strange to simply be an onlooker of all of it, going about my normal business

After that day, it seemed everyone trickled back into their normal routine in Beijing.

On a side note, I found out the next day that an excessive fireworks display on the lantern festival had actually set a famous and expensive CCTV building on fire. I have a picture I took about a week ago when I drove by it in a taxi:

While not really a part of Chinese New Year, we also had Er Yue Er this past Thursday, February 26^th. I believe it’s another festival related somehow to the New Year. On this day, everyone should get their haircut unless they have the Chinese zodiac sign of the Dragon or the Snake. Dragons and Snakes are not supposed to touch any sharp objects on this day, such as knives and scissors. It’s bad luck. True to custom, everywhere I walked Thursday, I peeked into the hair salons, and they were all packed. I felt a little bad for my hair stylist friends, who probably were on their feet all day, but I also know that the influx of business must have been nice after a month of many locals being out of town. Business was generally pretty slow in my neighborhood during February. Being an Ox girl myself, I got my bangs cut.

I shouldn’t forget the latest and trendiest festival in February: Valentine’s Day. I honestly wasn’t sure what level of involvement to expect from local businesses, but Valentine’s Day seemed like it was fairly well recognized, and a big deal in terms of a money making scheme. Oh course the foreign businesses (such as Dairy Queen and Pizza Hut) were decked out for the day, and had special products for the occasion. Chinese businesses also wanted in on the action, though. Several places were selling special arrangements of expensive flowers and candy. Ironically, it was impossible to find actual Valentine cards. On the actual day, I spent my evening with my very good friend, Dawu. He’s one of my hair stylist friends who doesn’t make a lot of money, and is very much a boy from the country. He’s not very worldly. He admitted he didn’t even know it was Valentine’s Day and that he’d never celebrated it before. He was very bashful. It was adorable. We went out for dinner at a Jiaozi restaurant (Jiaozi are the Chinese dumplings Americans refer to as potstickers.) We both ate about 25 Jiaozi and went to a newly opened game center near the metro station. Walking around the streets proved and interesting journey. There were street merchants hawking all variety of flower arrangements. There were roses in various wrappings, some in different colors and some with glitter. There were so many vendors that we ran into one every few steps. The pressure was certainly on for any man walking with any woman that night. Once safely in the game center, Dawu preferred playing the basketball game, which seems to be very popular with many Chinese, and I played a little House of the Dead 4. I made him hold my purse while I was shooting zombies. A few Chinese people stopped to stare at me, and I even had a Chinese guy come up and start playing with me. That was about the time I let myself run out of credits and left with Dawu, leaving a very sad Chinese gamer. We went back to my apartment and watched appropriate Valentine’s Day movies: 300 and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In total, I got flowers from 3 boys: a bouquet from the police officer that helped me after I was pick-pocketed (which was very nice and appreciated, but a little awkward,) Dawu’s younger co-worker, Dongya (my little brother), and Dawu. I actually felt really bad, because I know how much they make and how much flowers cost. I think I appreciated them more, as a result, though. It was incredibly warm and sweet of all three of them. And honestly, I don’t think there was a strong ulterior motive on any of their parts. They all know I get really homesick on holidays. I turned around and bought them chocolate, which I delivered the next day as a thank you.

Looking back on it, February was a very festive month. Nonetheless, I feel like I was actually rather bored and alone for most of it. That may sound depressing, but it was fun to watch.

Welcome Home: We're not going to make this easy for you.

Well, I got back from Tokyo last night. I lugged my huge suitcase through the Beijing train system and eventually got them safely back to my apartment, then went out for dinner. Upon paying for dinner, a man pickpocketed my wallet. Now, before you react to that, keep in mind that I just got back from Japan. I had very little Chinese money in my wallet, and I had taken all my Japanese money out and put it in another pocket of my purse on the plane. My passport was safely tucked away elsewhere too. So otherwise, this man stole my wallet which had a paltry amount of cash in it. It also had my Chinese Union Pay card and my Bank of America card, neither of which I was very worried about: he didn't know the pin number on the Union Pay card, and the BoA card has my picture on it AND he doesn't know my pin. The wallet did, however, have the slip of paper that said I'm registered to live in Beijing which was issued by the police. The minute after the pickpocket left the restaurant - when I the restaurant manager realized what had happened, there was a moment of "What do we do" before the manager called the police to come take my statement and help me out. Three officers came, the manager briefly gave them his description of the incident, then went back to work. One of the officers spoke some English, and he asked "Well, what can I do to help?" It's a fair question, I guess. He helped me block my Chinese card, then they took me to the station to take my statement and figure out my registration card. I actually have to go back to the station tomorrow to finish that up, but it's pretty much taken care of. I will also get a new Union Pay card in about a week, and I'll eventually get a new BoA card (it actually doesn't take priority - I have more saved in my Chinese account.) In the mean time, I can exchange my remaining Japanese Yen for Chinese Yuan, and live off of that.

I mean, sure I'm mad my wallet was stolen, and I'm aggrivated that I have to deal with getting new cards and all of that, but it was certainly and experience. I was able to meet most of the guys working the night shift at the local police office, who were really nice to me, and I was able to take a ride in a Chinese police car. In fact, I kind of got the sense that the officers that helped me hope they get to see me again sometime. The one who spoke English seemed to keep hinting: "Wow, you live pretty close! I didn't know! Maybe you could help me with my English." There was a certain sense of excitement for them: it seemed to me like I was the first and only foreigner that had passed through their doors, if only in recent memory. It's kind of nice having an entire Chinese police office fussing over you. I would have paid as much as was in my wallet just for the experience.

It was an interesting welcome.

Xin Nian Kuai Le!

Outside everyone is excited. It's Chinese New Year, and with few sad exceptions, many people are happy to be going home, away from the troubles and stress of work. Vendors are selling everything from paper decorations to plastic lanterns, red clothing and house decor (like pillows and tableclothes), to fireworks. The past week I've been scared witless several times by the sudden, earsplitting sound of firecrackers being set off in the streets at all times of the day, but I have also been awed glipsing, at chance, at unscheduled fireworks displays in public areas throughout the neighborhood. Just this evening, I was walking home from dinner when I saw severl professional-looking fireworks set off right across the street from my apartment complex, and I couldn't help but giggle. Red and glittery gold paper and plastic New Years decorations are everywhere to be seen, finally replacing the unprecedented Christmas displays. Some businesses are closed, and others have been packed to the brim this past week. Most of the children didn't even come to my class this week, because of the New Year, but a few others came every single day, despite the New Year. It's been crazy. so here I am, in my freezing cold apartment, wearing new, red "good fortune" socks and underwear I bought for less than 10 RMB at the local Wu Mei, contemplating the future of this blog. My sad theory is that, while I have not had classes this past month, once classes start again and I'm too busy to post regularly, I will post more. Don't ask me how that works.

However, where I have not been updating my blog in the last month or so, I have been out living.

Proof is in the pictures:

Kamizilla's Photos

In albums 40, 41, and 42 I have pictures from Christmas, New Years, and my trip out to Mutianyu - part of the Great Wall.

Enjoy. I'm off to Tokyo for a week to meet up with MY family. With any luck, I'll have time to work on my multiple update projects in the airport.

At least I have really cool socks and underwear.

The New Diggs

I have a few pictures up on my photobucket account: it's basically some pictures of my neighborhood and some of the friends I've made with the entire staff of a local hair salon. I love boys who spend more time on their hair than I do.

The New Diggs

Moving Shennaners

Okay, so to recap, I had to move. Technically, I didn’t have to, but not moving wasn’t a great option. Basically, the school I was set to teach in was undergoing a remodel. Indefinitely. Of course, having me twiddle my thumbs up in Haidian didn’t make anyone happy – not Red, Yellow, Blue, the Chinese company I don’t technically work for, but kind of do: not Scholastic, who signs my paychecks: and certainly not me. Even though I wasn’t teaching didn’t mean I didn’t have to work, and it was a lot more draining to have to run all over Beijing every other day to different locations depending on where the company needed or wanted me to go ‘assist’ or ‘observe.’

I started looking at new apartments in the south Chongwen district before the October holiday, but I ran into many of the same issues that I did the first time I went house hunting. Despite the craftiness of the two agents assigned to me, they were pretty good guys, and, after looking around a few days, they actually tried to find me apartments according to my specifications or ones they thought I might like that were still in my price range. I still see them occasionally (They live in my neighborhood. I totally bug them whenever I need help.) I didn’t find a place before the October holiday, but needed to, and did, only a few days after my glorious return from Guiyang (around October 9th-10th). It’s ever so slightly more expensive than my old place, but the location is good and convenient to my new work. It’s also bigger and newer than my old apartment. The apartment complex is a little more ‘upscale,’ but I’m not sure how I feel about that yet. I think it really said something good about me to the locals when they saw me walking into the older building in the down-to-earth neighborhood in Haidian everyday. Of course, my apartment in Haidian was rather nice, but it was definitely older. My new apartment is almost too much for me. It’s like a middle-class gated community. There are some definite perks. The neighborhood is composed of some 15-story apartment buildings surrounding a decent-sized courtyard with a man-made pond with a walkway resembling a dock. The pond connects to a small man-made brook that weaves through the courtyard. On the other end is a small pool with large rocks in it. Colorful fish normally swim in the brook, but it was drained and the fish all relocated to the dammed up pond in preparation for the winter. There is a small community of neighborhood cats who hang out behind the same building everyday. I have joined the ranks of apartment dwellers that pat them on the head and bring them scraps of food. The courtyard also contains exercise equipment and some ping-pong tables. There is a convenience store right next to each of the gates.

In contrast, the road I live off of is mostly older buildings and apartments and less upscale, and all around smaller and dirtier than my old area. A lot of locals give me these knowing looks as I walk through the gates to the apartments everyday; something to the effect of, “Of course the foreigner lives there. It’s nice, and she can probably afford it.”

It’s been a month, so I like to gloss over a little, but let me tell you, finding the place and moving in was a huge, life-sucking chore. I signed the contract for the new apartment, had a lengthy discussion full of Chinese anger and dramatics with my old landlady and her two daughters (they didn’t want to give me back any of my unused rent money, even though, contractually, they had to), and packed up and moved all my earthly possessions across town in one taxi with my friends Lily and Zhang Liwei in a matter of two days. The worst part about it? The sudden move didn’t change the fact that I had work on one of those days in Daxing, which was a $15 taxi ride from Haidian, one way. It was the demo-class for my new work. That means I had to be super-energetic and teach a class of 19 children I’ve never met before without encountering any major glitches. At the end of that charade, I was subjected to a barrage of (stupid) questions from the well-meaning parents. Of course, the children were ridiculously ill behaved; their parents were there, they were totally unfocused, they were clueless and confused about the whole English thing, and they didn’t really ‘get’ that this new, weird lady with a funny face was their teacher. During the question session with the parents, one of the parents asked the requisite question about my credentials. I still felt a little offended by it, but mostly because of the way she asked; it was very round about. She inferred that maybe, possibly, I was too shy with children (which is ridiculous,) and therefore might be an uncomfortable and (inexperienced) teacher. No, I don’t have teaching experience just oozing from my resume, but I have experience nonetheless, and I trained with Scholastic for nearly two months before I actually started teaching. You try acting familiar with 19 three-year-olds you’ve never seen before in a language they don’t understand. Without knowing the children, it’s hard to know what works and what doesn’t. In fact, the first week of teaching was a big ball of awkward. It got better once the children came to know me and understand what I expect of them in class. It wasn’t happening in that 30-minute demo class.

Oh, did I mention the fact that the apartment, despite all of my new landlord’s assurances, did not come readily available with Internet? For an entire week, I was without access to, well, anything. I couldn’t do homework, regular work, blogging, picture posting, and I got behind on my lolcats. 660 RMB, a 6 day wait, and sending Liwei to harass my building managers is what finally got my internet up and working.

My current apartment has a lot more built-ins and was all around less dirty, but it still took a good month or so of cleaning bits and pieces of the apartment to get all of my things moved in and the apartment in a state of clean I can live comfortably in.

The only other major issues I had moving in were figuring out how to buy gas to keep me in hot water, and then how to actually turn on the central heating. A trip to my real estate agents (who I’m pretty sure love me secretly, despite the uncontrollable wretching) helped me figure out that I could only buy gas at the Agricultural Bank a 15 minute walk from my apartment. I suffered without heat the most of November, because I was just so darn busy almost all day everyday, and couldn’t bother. The fact that I didn’t know who or how to ask was just peripheral. That issue was also solved by drafting Liwei into battle against my housing management office. After that, I had heat. That was only about a week ago, though, and temperatures have been below freezing since early November. I’m just glad I didn’t shrivel up and die in my sleep.

That’s about everything involved in my big move to Anlelin Rd.

I still want to post about:

My new job!

New friends in my neighborhood!

The pain in the neck that is graduate classes!

Food and shopping!

Learning Chinese!

Riding the Bus!

… and GUIYANG!

Just kidding, everyone

Yes, it's been a good long time since I updated. I have been working on posts in my free time, but haven't finished any. It's not so much that my new job is too demanding or my student workload is too much, though those factors have had a significanty impact. The truth is, things have been incredibly crazy, and it's really really cold in Beijing.

Just as a quick rundown of my goings on:

I moved to the south side of Beijing

I started a new teaching job at the RYB Daxing Kindergarten

Halloween!

Another English teacher was injured by a car and is going home to the U.S. permanently next week

Two other English teachers are leaving Beijing for personal reasons

One of the Chinese teachers at Daxing was let go because of crazy circumstances. (She was incredibly irresponsible, and I personally think the kindergarten made the right decision.)

I have made friends with people in my neighborhood -sort of.

Updates should be forthcoming. I am nearing completion, but thought I'd give everyone reason to believe I'm still alive.

I'd give more of the juicy details about the goings on of the teachers who are leaving, but I do want to respect their privacy -and the company's- to an extent. I would like to note that with little exception, these things are just things that happen, and they have all happened in a reliatively short amount of time.

Despite being a little scattered, though, things are good. I really like my kindergarten. I really like my neighborhood. School isn't perfect, but I'm doing reasonably well, I think. All around, everything's okay.

Light at the end of the, you know...

Okay folks. I give you credit if you haven't given up on this blog so far. It's been nuts this past month or two, what with moving, changing jobs, and lack of internet.

The good news is that I really am getting settled into my new job at the Kindergarten and should be back on track with my graduate studies by the end of this weekend. That means I will once again have my evenings and weekends free to have shenanigans and write about them.

For now, please say hello to Mr. Goth-Emo Pear. He has been keeping my company this week, but he doesn't say much for my state of sanity.

Look out, Mr. Goth-Emo Pear! You're going to fall!