Greetings from Bethany! Thanks to Talin, I was able to set up a proxy that allows me to post my own blog again. Three cheers!

Last week the Chinese Government funded a trip for foreign teachers to take them around the province of Fujian. In usual Chinese style, I was told at the last minute, and given no information on where we were going or what I should bring. However, it was free, so I figured why not?

We met at a hotel in downtown Fuzhou and got on a big bus with very large leather seats. That was my first clue that this would be a nice trip. I was a little late getting there because the traffic was so bad, so I didn't have time to meet anyone before we left and I ended up sitting by myself for the first leg of the trip. But after that, I made several friends and had a great time trading teaching stories with other teachers.

Here is a picture of me and Alyssa, a girl from Arizona. And then one with Dave, from Canada. Yes, we like to try on funny hats. (I actually bought the cowboy hat.) As much as I love Chinese people, it was nice to be able to speak fluently in my own language for a few days.

We went to a pants factory in Quanzhou. There were 800 girls on each floor of this building, and they had to make a few thousand pairs of pants each day. The workers live in little dormatories right next to the factory and work 6 days out of the week. Our guide said these factory conditions were excellent compared to other factories he had visited.


We also went to a museum that mainly featured Taiwan, and how it was culturally and historically a part of China. There was a pretty fountain in front of it.

The coolest part of the trip were the Hakka houses, also known as Tulou. These structures are centuries old. They are built defensively, with only one entrance, and no windows at ground level. Each round house is several stories high and holds dozens of rooms. Two or three extended families might share one house. Inside, the courtyard is open to the sun for them to do their cooking, washing, getting together, etc.

Some Hakka houses are still used in the traditional way. But richer families have begun to move out in favor of modern accommodations. The ones we visited, while still occupied, had converted to tourism for their livelihood. The courtyards were jammed with souvenir booths.





We visited at least 5 different Hakka houses. Some of them were very close to together. Here is an image of a complex taken from above. They told us that NASA took satellite pictures of these structures in the 60s and took them for missile silos. Apparently caused them some serious concern. I think its hilarious.

Last week one of friends (English name Larry; Chinese name Zhang Min) invited me to his parent's house for dinner. He goes to FJUT but, unlike most students, he is originally from Fuzhou. His parents went all out with a fancy traditional Chinese meal.

At a Chinese dinner, there are several dishes, and no one gets their own plate. You are supposed to just eat out of the serving dish. They rotate the dishes reguarly, so that everyone gets a taste of everything.

This dinner featured steamed crab, large crawdads, pork dumplings, sweet potato puree, meatball soup, boiled yams, chinese cabbage in garlic, fish, fish ball soup, and fish head. I accidentally sampled the fish head without realizing what it was (it must have come from a very large fish and it was well disguised by the decor). As I chewed, I thought "yuck, this fish tastes awful and it hasn't been cooked very well." Then they told me what it was, and I realized I was chewing on fish brain. I almost threw up but I managed to convince my hosts that it was just something caught in my throat. Not to fear - most of the food was delicious beyond words. I ate til I was stuffed and had to protest against their entreaties to eat more and more.

Larry's mom is at the end of the table here. Dad corner left. The rest are cousins and friends. Larry is out of frame, but you can see his arm in the middle there.

Larry and Jessica (one of the cousins) also took me sight-seeing in an old part of Fuzhou. Fuzhou is an ancient city (like all Chinese cities, I suppose). Each generation just builds on top of the old one. Here's a picture of me at what, for centuries, was the "wealthy" part of town. It's been restored to look as it did in the 1700-1800s. One piece of remaining wall was from 1000 AD. I tried to take a picture of that too, but it didn't turn out very well.

Hi everyone! I realized I've never shown pictures of the area where I live, so that's what I'm going to do right now.

FJUT (Fujian University of Technology) has two campuses seperated by an hour's bus ride. I teach at one (the new one, which is still being constructed) and live at another (the old one, which has been around for hundreds of years). The old campus is near the heart of the city in Cangshan District. To reach the school, you must traverse down either New Student Street or Old Student Street.

Old Student Street is an average of 5 feet wide and a quarter of a mile long. It is stuffed to the gills little shops and shoppers. I took these pictures in mid-morning, which is the slowest part of the day. At rush hour or during peak shopping time, this street is so crowded that walking down it is like standing in line at the supermarket.

New Student Street is a little bigger (never gets less than 7 feet wide) and this is the route that vehicle traffic takes. Look at this picture. A bus goes down this street every 15 minutes. Can you imagine? A full size bus! I don't know how the incoming buses coordinate with the outgoing buses so they don't run into each other, but they seem to, somehow.

Despite the bustle below the school entrance, the atmosphere in campus housing is quiet and relaxing. There are numerous gardens with places to sit and enjoy a sunny afternoon.
This is the fifth floor of my apartment building. My door is the 2nd from the end.

Back to (School) Work

Hello folks! This will be a hodge-podge entry. My camera had been busted in one way or another for the past month, but I finally got it working again. School is in full-swing. I have about 200 students altogether. I tend to give them too much homework, and then I spend all my time grading it. I'm having a great time though. I think I have the best job ever. I seem to have bad luck with pets. I don't want to get into it because it makes me too sad, but after I lost Silas I got a 3 month-old kitten named Percy. Sadly, he passed away last week. In memory of my poor cat, here are two pictures to show how cute he was. Percy was extremely interested in the toilet. He liked to jump up to the rim and hang there, staring at the mysterious water. I think he wanted to get a drink, but he could never quite reach it.

In other news, I finally got a new lock on my door. A nice fellow came over and worked on it all morning. He had to take the old one out with an electic saw and weld the new one onto the metal door.
He did this without a mask or equipment of any kind. He didn't even wear shoes! I sneaked this picture of him from my living room.

Next week is a major holiday in China. It's both the autumn festival and the 60th anniversary of the Chinese Republic. Traditionally people eat mooncakes (a kind of fat little cookie) for autumn festival. My boss came by and dropped off a fancy box full of mooncakes as a gift. See the picture? Each of those little containers holds its own individually wrapped mooncake. We get 8 days of vacation time for the holiday, but oddly enough, the school wants us to "make-up" part of the lost class time on the weekends. So I'll be teaching my Thursday class on Saturday instead. I don't know why they bother having vacation time that they have to make-up. But Chinese people can be strange.

Touring Xi'an and Shanghai

Hello everyone! Sorry for the very long break in posts. The Chinese Government is at it again. They're afraid someone will say damaging things about them in their travel memoirs so they've blocked the country's access to blogspot. I am therefore getting my parents to post this for me. If they do a bad job, please, blame them.

Things have been pretty good in China. First semester over and done with, most of my students passed okay! This July, I wandered out of Fuzhou and met my parents in Xian. There we saw the famous Terracotta Warriors. They did not disappoint: 100s of individually sculpted statues depicting an entire army (each soldier modeled after a real person), from general, to archer, down to the last horse. These were buried thousands of years ago by an emporer who wanted a grand escort into the afterlife. Very benevolent of him - it seems the previous emporers buried actual soldiers. It was rediscovered accidentally in the 70s by some workers digging a well.

Dad and I tried to climb Hua Mountain, a famous Chinese mountain that supposedly has some daring exposure in the last leg of the climb, but we never got that far. We (er...especially me) got wasted by the endless set of stairs and had to turn around in order to meet our deadline for our meeting with Mom. The surroundings were pretty, but the trail was really crowded. A lot of people left padlocks with a red ribbon tied to it on the trail for luck. The last thing we did in Xian that's worthy of note is rent bikes to circumnavigate the ancient city wall. We only had 100 minutes to make 17 kilometers, but we did it!

Next we took a train to Shanghai where we were anxious to see the eclipse, but alas! It rained all morning and the sun was blocked by clouds! It did get suddenly very dark for about 5 minutes at about 10 am, which was pretty cool. I got sick with the flu and stayed in the hotel for this event, but my parents assure me I didn't miss anything.

We did some shopping and saw a show, but mostly I was pretty sick in Shanghai so I lounged around the hotel quite a bit. The best part of the trip was getting to hang out with my parents. When it was time to go, Mom and Dad left for the airport, while I was off to take the train back to Fuzhou. However, on my way to the metro station, I accidentally left my luggage in the taxi. This was very, very sad. I lost many of my most valuable possessions, including my journal and my computer. I missed my train in order to stay in Shanghai another couple days trying to get my luggage back. But no such luck. The taxi driver is a thief!

I love you all! (Even if you're just some schmo I don't know who decided to read this.) Assuming this works, I will post like this again soon!

Gu Mountain

This Friday was "May Day," the Chinese equivalent of Labor Day, only more widely celebrated. For the occasion, one of my students, a girl named Melly took me to Gu Mountain, a smallish kind of mountain on the edge of the city. I doubt it would be secluded in any event, but apparently everyone takes their friends and parents and cousins to climb "mountians" on holidays. Imagine Disneyland on a Saturday afternoon of a four day weekend; then multipy that image by two. The 2000 meter walk to the peak was more like standing in an interminable queue. Here's a picture of the trail that gives you some idea (but believe it or not, that was taken during a lull).

The weather was good though, and we got a pretty good view of the city.

Here's a picture with me and Melly. Isn't she cute?

We met a bunch of her friends, none of whom spoke any English. My Chinese is sufficient to say hello and what's your name, but that's about it. However, they gave us lunch and one girl offered me three different types of nuts. Then they played a game that was so interesting I have to describe it to you.

They formed three lines with any number of people in them. We had about 25 people, and there were usually anywhere from 1 to 11 people in a line. One person was the policeman and he/she would pick any line she liked and those people would count off: yi, er, san (one, two, three)... Then she would ask the first person, "How many people are in your family?" The first person could cite any number he wished and everyone in the line over that number had to leave and run into another line before the policeman could tag him. Apparently, this stems from the government trying to control population - if your family has too many people, you get in trouble. If you got caught, you became the policeman, kind of like tag. I knew just barely enough Chinese to get by in this game, but it was really great!

I have to show this because it's kind of funny. We were taking pictures (of all the people I played the game with) and I got my friend to take my camera up there for a group shot. But somehow she got it stuck on video mode. "Bethany, it doesn't work!"

Adventures in Teaching

Last Saturday, I taught an extra class to some Chinese professors who were interested in English. They brought a camera and took snapshots during the lesson. I had no idea I looked so funny while I was up there teaching.

Look Dad! I showed them the coupons!

In other news, I got sick for a few days, but it's passed over now. I feel ready to take on the world again. I just gave my students midterm exams and now I have to sit down and grade them all. Ugh. At least I was smart enough to make them multiple choice.

Forest Park

This Saturday was a holiday for the Chinese. It's called "Tomb Sweeping Day," and its pretty much just what it sounds like. You go and clean your ancestor's graves. Anyone some students (not mine, but attendees of FJUT) invited me to go to Forest Park for the day. Thier ancestors were buried too far away to visit easily. So we just played around. Here is a picture of me standing next to a 1000 year old tree. ...Also some turtles.

We rented a boat and rowed out on the lake. We had a race and my boat won the first time, but the second time we came in last. I guess we used up all our energy.

I have to go write a mid-term for one of my classes now. Fun fun.

Odds and Ends

I have good news and bad news.

The bad news is that I got in a traffic accident while riding the city bus and broke my leg. The good news is that I'm writing this on April Fool's Day, so I was just joking.

My cat is so strange. He likes to sleep under the covers (never seen a cat do that before) and he always talks with his mouth full, That is, he meows for me to feed him, and when I do, he doesn't stop meowing while he eats. Only of course it comes out rather strange, a sort of - megreeeoow. I am trying to teach him to use the toliet instead of his litter box. Amazingly, it seems to be working. I might have success in a few weeks.

I made rice-crispie treats for my students at English corner last week. I found a box of rice crispies in the imported section of the grocery store. The marshmellows they have here are quite a bit harder and stickier than American marshmellows, but they worked alright. The students loved them.

On Saturday, the English department at FJUT organized an outing for teachers to celebrate "Women's Day." We took a bus ride for a couple hours and stopped at an archealogic museum on the way. Here is me and my friend Julia in front of some beautiful bamboo that grew in front of the museum.

At our destination, we entered a strawberry field where we were given a basket and told we could pick 1 kilo of berries for free. I declare, those were the sweetest, most delicious strawberries I ever had. I still have some of them in my fridge.

Across from the strawberry field was a potato field. Well...not really potatoes...but some kind of root or other. They were old and not good for eating anymore, but they were fun to pull out of the ground.

Fuzhou adventures

I don't yet have many pictures of me around China. So here is me at Wu Yi square, near the center of Fuzhou.


We (Gregor and I) went to a Daoist temple nearby. It's probably been there, in one form or another, for thousands of years. The ying-yang is classic, don't you think?

Last week Gregor and I got a side job recording our voices for a textbook for English-learning middle schoolers. They set us up in a fancy little studio with microphones. Paid us $50/hour, which is substantial even by American standards. I feel immortalized. Generations of Chinese children will listen to my voice! Until of course, they discontinue the textbook. While we were there, the manager took us out to eat at a "Western-style" restaurant. It was pretty expensive. All they served there was steak and some weird pizza. I had the pizza. But they did give us forks and played American music. Haha.

Silas

Two days ago I got a cat. I had been asking around, and finally a fellow teacher directed me to an older woman who kept cats and she gave me one. He is very young but not quite a kitten. I named him Silas. At first (as you see by the picture of him clawing desperately at the upper window), Silas did not like the idea of being trapped inside. Eventually I will let him go out to go pee and play about, but for now I want him to get used to the idea that this is his home. He is mostly happy now and he likes me a lot. Another few days and I will let him go out. He is the most vocal cat I have ever heard. Meows all the time, purrs all the time, usually in sync. Right now he is romping about in the wildest way on my bed. I should try to take a video of it. He is so funny.

Gregor & friends

Picture above is Gregor Henderson. He is the other foreign teacher at FJUT, and the only other fluently English-speaking person that I know of within in a thousand mile radius. Gregor is a bright, adventurous, conversable fellow from New Zealand. He arrived in Fuzhou a month before me and has been studying Chinese since then. He's now at the point where he can communicate simple ideas to the locals.

English-aspiring Chinese often meet together to practice their English in casual conversation. These are called "English Corners." Gregor and I are required to hold English corner for our students once a week. The picture here, however, is from a city-wide English corner. Gregor is in the middle there and I am in the lower left corner. The older fellow next to me is Woodrow. (That's his English name, of course; Chinese people like to assume "English names" for interaction with foreigners and also just for practice in English lessons. It's just as well for me. Chinese names are hard to remember in large quantities.) Woodrow is going to take me to Panda World next week. Apparently, this is like a zoo, but just with pandas.

Tribute to Hershey

I bought this bunny on the road near my house. He cost $2 and his cage cost $1. He was a very good bunny. I named him Hershey.
Hershey was clever; he always came when I called him. He liked to follow me around the house and sit on my feet while I worked at the computer. And he never ever once peed on me - only in his cage (and once on the floor, but we'll ignore that).

Me and Hershey.

I had Hershey for about almost two weeks. Then one day he got sick. He wouldn't budge from his cage when I tried to let him out. I knew something was wrong then because he is usually so excited to come out. Then he started having terrible diarrhea, poor little fellow. I felt bad for him, but I didn't know what to do so I patted him on the head and went to bed.

When I woke up the next morning, he was all slumped over and I thought he must be feeling worse. But when I tried to pet him, he was all cold and stiff and quite dead. I sat down and cried for five minutes. Poor, poor little Hershey. I put him in a plastic bag and threw him in the trash. Now I have no more bunny.