Oh, China...

After a really good time of relaxation and renewal, we flew back into country today, although not to our hometown. We are in the west part of China. We have been planning for the past several months to visit a good friend in his village to meet his family. We spent a great deal of the past few weeks planning and buying train and plane tickets (as his village is about 1200 miles from where we live). Imagine our surprise when we landed in China and gave him a call to learn that he is not home, nor will he be returning home before school begins! So, here we are in the west part of China with train tickets to his hometown and no plane tickets out until 9 days later; and, yes, we already tried and are unable to change them at a feasible rate. Oh, China...

Luckily, the west part of the country is lovely with lots of mountains around. In other good news, we are not really upset with our friend, as his reason for being away from home is very admirable and exciting to us. And, as we sat on a bus getting this information by text message, we realized how much China has mellowed us. Never before, and in no other country, would we have shrugged off the news with a laugh!

Bad Manners

Last night as we ate dinner in a restaurant on campus, Matt hunched over and actually sucked some noodles directly off the side of his bowl. And it occurred to me... We've picked up some pretty bad habits over here.

It's not that these things are rude in China--they're completely normal; but in America, I'm pretty sure our mothers would be appalled. For example...

- We not only suck noodles off the side of bowls; we also slurp our soup.
- There are even times when we don't use spoons with our soup at all; we just pick up the bowl and drink away.
- When we eat fish or chicken with bones in it, we just spit the bones out onto the table.
- While waiting in line, we have no problem crowding the person in front of us so that no one else can get in.
- We also have no problem elbowing those overly persistent people who still try to cut in front of us.
- And a favorite pastime is arguing with a shop owner that her products are not only way over-priced, but also not great quality. (This is not rude here... It's just how people shop.)

10 Days & Nights

Things we have learned in this long period of endless rain:

- It's not much fun riding bikes in the rain.

- Chinese students are very kind to offer umbrellas to foreigners who are standing in the street because the pedal broke off their bike.

- Our balcony floods after about five days.

- Our clothes dryer takes about 400 minutes to dry a load of towels, which is why we prefer to use the clothes line when it is not raining.

- And, finally, if the sewer is overflowing, stay far, far away.

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.

The Other Face of China

This past week, I (Amy) traveled to a county in the southwest part of our province to visit a student's hometown. This is a part of China that will never be seen by Olympic tourists, as the "villages" near Beijing and other big cities have been tweaked to make them more "accessible" for tourists.

To give you some background about the rurality of where I went: we took a 5 1/2 hour train from Hangzhou to Lishui; then we took an additional 2 buses for 2 hours to get to the villages. The county is called Jingning and is an area populated largely by the She minority group. There are numerous villages throughout the mountains.

I was looking forward to the natural beauty and mountainous scenery, and I was not disappointed at all. The landscape is similar to the Smokies, with the addition of bamboo trees. The best part was that this was more untouched and less touristy. It was amazingly refreshing.

I was also looking forward to seeing the "real China." Many of the people in China do not live in cities like Shanghai, Beijing or Hangzhou, but rather live in small towns and villages. I wanted to see this side of life. I loved the people in the villages; it's a world where everyone knows everyone, people chat with neighbors outside after supper, kids play in the street in the middle of the village, and life is actually lived instead of rushing from place to place. However, to say the least, being there threw me into a bit of culture shock. Having lived in Hangzhou, one of the wealthiest cities in China, I was not prepared for the poverty and backwardness that is still the norm in the country. The house where I stayed was much poorer than I had anticipated, with concrete floors and walls, no running water, a communal outhouse, giant spiders and other critters. Being there, I finally understood the high stress the my students often talk about, feeling a huge responsibility to get good jobs so they can provide a better life for their families back home.

4th of July

We celebrated the 4th of July yesterday along with some other Americans (and an Aussie) by eating pizza, ice cream and Oreo cookies. Living in China this past year has made us feel even more appreciative of our country. We have learned that there are many things that shouldn't be taken for granted. Happy 4th!

Making Bread

A couple of weeks ago, I made my first attempt at homemade bread. It wasn't perfect (a little flat and funny-shaped), but it actually tasted pretty good! It was a fun adventure, though I don't know how often I'll do it, seeing as how it takes about half a day!

Eating Frog

We didn't intend to order frog at one of our favorite restaurants earlier today. We were actually really excited about getting our favorite dish of sizzling beef, which tastes amazingly like steak fajitas. Unfortunately, we never can remember the Chinese words for this dish; today, we suffered the consequences.

The funny thing is that about 5 minutes after we ordered, I saw the waitress grab a frog (yes, a live one) out of the aquarium and take it to the back. We'd never seen a live frog at a restaurant but commented that someone must like it, though.

When the waitress first brought out the dish, we still didn't put things together. It certainly wasn't beef, but that was all we knew. I dug into our veggies and left the meat to Matt because it looked fatty and bony. After a few bites, Matt suddenly looked up at me and announced that he thought it was, in fact, us who had ordered the frog. And after inspecting it closer, it was confirmed. You could even still see its green skin. After this, I certainly couldn't eat it, as pictures of Mrs. Davis' biology dissections kept coming to mind.

While Matt ate a bit of it, I don't foresee us ordering frog again anytime soon--not intentionally anyway!

Speaking Chinese

Lest the title of this entry give you the completely false impression that I (Amy) can, in fact, speak Chinese, let me explain more. Since about month two of living here, my vocabulary hasn't really increased too much. I know what is necessary to shop, travel and eat. Beyond that, I speak so much time speaking English that there's just not much time for expanding my Chinese vocabulary.

However, I have become quite good at making people think that I speak Chinese. Today, for example, I wandered into a cosmetic store. I really just wanted to browse, but the sales people here are unbelievably good at sales pitches. Normally, I just say "I'm just looking" or "I don't speak Chinese" and they leave me alone... Not this lady, not today.

After finally convincing her that I was just looking, I made the mistake of asking the price of something. She told me the price, and then proceeded to tell me why I didn't want this brand anyway, but another more expensive brand. I should have told her that I don't speak Chinese. But I didn't. So she continued to talk and talk and talk. For 10 minutes, she spoke to me in Chinese. At first, I tried to get out of it, but after about 2 minutes, I realized that there may not be a way out without completely embarrassing her (very bad China manners).

Amazingly, she had no idea that I was only understanding, maybe, 1% of what she was saying to me. So, each time she paused, I gave an answer to her question, and apparently, it made sense to her because she would nod her head and continue. I think she was trying to sell me a facial or a makeover. Either way, when it seemed that she had finished, I reminded her that I was just looking. And I left the shop feeling pretty proud of my ability to fake Chinese.

I learned a very important lesson today: NEVER go to the supermarket on a Chinese holiday. Apparently, that is how at least 5 million of the 6 million people of this city celebrate Tomb Sweeping Day.