Factory Girls

There is a new book recently published in the States called "Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China." I've not read the book yet, but it's about the increasing popularity to leave home and move to a city where you can get a better job in a factory. By better, this means a job in which you sometimes work from 6am until 9pm, seven days a week to make a little bit of money to send home to your family in the villages.

On Saturday, I had lunch with a girl who is a freshman English major. She comes from a small village in one of the poorest provinces in China. When she was a child, her parents had a farm where they grew corn and wheat, but six years ago her father died in a car accident. After a couple of years trying to make it, they realized they did not have enough money with the father gone. So, the two younger siblings (the parents had disobeyed the one-child law in China because the two older children were girls and sons are favored) went to work in factories, which meant leaving home at the young ages of 13 and 14. My student is the oldest child and since she was closest to getting to college, she continued to work towards that goal. When she graduates, she will hold the greatest responsibility of supporting her family.

It is a sad story, but not an entirely uncommon one. Please keep families like these in your thoughts as they try to make ends meet in an increasingly wealthy China.

Voting

We got our absentee ballots in the mail yesterday. All of our mail goes to the Foreign Affairs Office on campus, then they call us to come pick it up. When I dropped by late yesterday afternoon, our officer said, "Wow, your government does a really good job to make sure everyone gets to vote." He's right; they do. What a cool place.

We are very excited to fill out our ballots and get them back to the post office today. I am just sad that the Absentee Ballots do not come with "I voted" stickers!

Christmas Prep Already?

As part of my English class this year, I am putting together a Website about the Christmas holiday; it will be a great way for me to get a lot of good information to students.

As part of the lessons, we are going to talk about Christmas as it is celebrated around the world. Unfortunately, most Chinese believe that Christmas is an American holiday that is all about getting gifts. I want to educate them on the meaning of Christmas, as well as the fact that Christmas in an international celebration.

So, if you or someone you know has lived in another country or has seen Christmas celebrations around the world firsthand, I would love to hear about your traditions. And if you have pictures, send those, too! You can email them to dunnsinasia@gmail.com.

The Performer

I have seen little of Amy this past week, as she spent most of the past week preparing for a performance honoring the 30th anniversary of the university's founding. Amy's involvement began with a simple phone call asking her to take part in the festivities, but it mushroomed into a massive undertaking with makeup and hairstyle "artists", rehearsals, and celebrity school alumni. Chinese variety shows have to be seen to be believed, suffice it to say, this performance had nine (9!!!) hosts, a traditional martial arts dance that devolved into a break dance routine, and a man wearing what appear to be gold priestly vestments from the disco era. Not really my scene, as you can probably imagine.

Amy is here performing a song called "Molihua" or Jasmine, about how her desire to pick a jasmine flower is outweighed by her fear of having people laugh at her. It actually is a very pretty song, though English translations certainly do not do it justice. That being said, she did a great job. In addition to the video, we have also linked to a collection of photos from the performance.



To see pictures of the week, click: http://picasaweb.google.com/shortames/MoLiHua02#.

Fun & Games

Finally, Amy is getting to meet her freshmen students this week. On day one, we played a game identifying body parts in English. They were pretty good, as you can see by the pictures... Except that the mouth of this guy on the left is labeled as "mouse"!

They are fun students, and we're excited to get to know them better.

We took off to Shanghai yesterday to visit our friend Bill, who works there after graduating from the university where we taught last year. It was great to see him again and catch up on life. He showed us around Shanghai and Pudong, and we got to meet his friend Susan. After sightseeing Bill wanted to treat us to a cup of coffee.

At the coffee shop, we drank, we talked, then we left--unfortunately, without Matt's bag. Matt rushed back when he noticed it was gone, but the bag was nowhere to be found. After letting the staff know and counting it as a loss, we had the idea of calling his cell phone, since it was in the bag. To our complete surprise, someone answered! It was the lady at a customer service counter downstairs in the shopping mall. Apparently, someone stole the bag, took it downstairs, rummaged through it and left it near a restroom after deciding he didn't need two elementary-level Chinese textbooks and a cheap cell phone. To say the least, we were shocked and thrilled. The two mall employees who found the bag were at the counter when we came to pick it up and asked us to write a letter of praise for their honesty. We were more than happy to do so and hope they get huge raises!

Not sure what this sign is about... We went to the Bund, and there was definitely no seagull there. :-)

It's a holiday week here in China, so it's been a little quieter than usual. Not completely silent, though. Amy started meeting with her tutor this week and is excited about learning a little more Chinese, although keeping up with Matt is pretty much a pipe dream. And Matt took a guys' trip to a nearby canal town with some good friends.