9 Feb 2010
Here I am in ShanDong, in a small village whose name is so long no one has bothered to tell me what it is. I arrived yesterday on a sleeper bus, which has got to be one of the best inventions ever. The vertically stacked beds don't take up much more room than seats, and they are certainly more comfortable than sitting up for 20 hours.
My friend, host, and translator is a twenty year old boy named Xu Chao. Xu Chao is not technically one of my students, but he is eager to learn English and he frequently helps me do things in Fuzhou. I am staying in his famliy's house. Xu Chao has two sisters, but they are both married and have homes of their own. I call his mother Ayi (auntie) and his father ShuShu (uncle). We do not understand each other very well, especially since they speak the local language - a ShanDong dialect instead of Mandarin.I have a room with a bed and a space heater and an electric blanket. That is good because it is very cold here. Ayi handstitched a quilted Chinese coat that was waiting for me when I arrived. It's a bit snug, but it fits good underneath my other apparel. All together, I have on 4 layers of pants and 5 layers of shirts, including my puffy marshmellow coat. I do not intend to take any of them off the entire time I am here! It's reported to snow soon but it hasn't yet.
The house facilities here are fascinating and old-fashioned. The middle of the house is an open courtyard. In the back are the living and sleeping rooms. On the side are the kitchen, bathroom, and storage areas. There are two dogs that stay in the courtyard. One is so young it still needs its mother to breastfeed it. It sleeps in a shallow box and is too little to climb out by itself. The mother dog belongs to a neighbor, but she visited last night and fed the puppy.
[This is "Block Dot" (Hei Dian), the older pup. He loves me and chases me around wherever I go.]The kitchen features a large wood-burning stove. Last night Xu Chao and I started the fire for dinner by sitting next to it and feeding dried corn husks and small sticks into the little entry. There is an air pump built into the stove that you can pull out to fan the fire. The concentrated heat boils a large sealed pot of water above. It took half an hour of tending the stove before the kitchen was ready for cooking. The really cool part of this setup is that the excess heat is piped under the ground into the parent's bedroom and released into a special kind of bed that they have. This keeps them warm and toasty on cold nights!
The house uses a traditional Chinese squat toilet. So you don't sit on anything - you just hover over a hole formed in concrete . Chinese people think this is more sanitary than sitting down and I tend to agree - especially when you're dealing with a latrine. They keep a bucket of water with a ladle nearby to "flush" your waste down the slanted hole into the yard. Here is a picture of the toilet, and here is the place it comes out. Apparently they use this to help fertilize their crops! There is plumbing for a cold water sink and shower during the summer, but during the winter the pipe freezes solid, so if you want to take a bath you have to pay for one in a nearby town. But they do boil water constantly to have it on hand for washing, cooking, and drinking. It feels a bit like camping. I would be perfectly happy except for the cold, but I'm trying to keep busy enough not to think about it.
Yesterday, we went for a walk around the village. It holds about 500 people and you can circumvent it in a matter of minutes. The cluster of buildings where people live is surrounded by fields and orchards. There are stacks of corn stalks everywhere that people use for fuel, or to cover their vegetables to keep them from freezing. The type of crops that his family grows are so varied that Xu Chao can't name them all. Almost all of the ingredients for their food come from their own land and animals.
[These fellows are roasting peanuts and sunflower seeds for the festival. People serve them between meals, as if everyone wasn't stuffed already!]During our walk, we passed the local women washing their clothes in the stream. The water looks pretty clean, but it must be very cold.
Xu Chao has been trying to teach me Chinese. I am going to see how much I can pick up while I'm here.
___
10 Feb 2010
(By the way, today is my sister Rachel's birthday. Everyone wish her a Happy Birthday!)
Today some village men came over for lunch. Xu Chao said his dad wanted to show me off. I'm not sure what they thought of me. After "hello" and "thank you" in two languages, we reverted to staring at each other.
The lunch was different from other Chinese meals I've seen in that there was very little eating accomplished. The village men just wanted to talk and drink their rice wine. Only once in every five minutes would they reach down to pick at one of the seven vegetable dishes. They also smoked cigarettes, one and two at a time, in between bites. The conversations were animated, and revolved around prompting each other to drink more. Apparently it is a kind of game in China. Everyone takes a sip at the same time, so whenever someone raises his cup, the rest have to follow suit. Xu Chao and I left them after about an hour, but they continued to sit there and talk for quite a long time.
[This is the village graveyard. The yellow paper is supposed to represent money, which they burn to send to their ancestors in the afterlife. ]
___12 Feb 2010
I woke this morning to a winter wonderland. It snowed about a foot last night and it's still snowing now. I sure would like to go out for a walk or to build a snowman, but right now there's a strong wind blowing. It's raising the chill factor to past tolerable outside of sheltered doors. I just sit immobley in front of this space heater.
___
13 Feb 2010
I have never eaten so well in my whole life as I do here. They insist on giving me three meals a day; it would be better to call them feasts than meals. It's part of the New Year holiday spirit to cook and eat all day. All of the food is delicious beyond words, and everything is something I've never tried before.
Southern China has no concept of bread, but Northern people cook dumpling bread without sugar that comes very close to real bread. It was wonderful. I didn't realize how much I missed eating bread.Yesterday ShuShu killed a rooster for lunch. I had never seen an animal slaughtered before so I went to watch. I thought he would just cut the head off, but instead he slit the throat and drained the bird's blood into a bowl. When he let it go, the rooster flopped around for a while before it died. It was rather gruesome.
I am sure this rooster's fate was humane compared to most of the chicken that we eat in America. They genetically engineer those poor things to be so fat they can't walk and then they stuff them into dark cramped houses until they're mature enough to eat. At least this rooster had a decent life. He made for an excellent meal - tough and flavorful.
Last night the power went out just as the family was preparing for dinner. It was pitch black inside and we had to eat by candlelight. I was worried it might stay off for a while, but it came back on during the night.
Today is New Year's Eve, a special day for everyone in China. We are going for a visit into town and then we will do some "New Year's activites." I don't know what that means yet.
[This is an offering to the Money God. It sat on the porch for 15 minutes, but when no Gods came to claim it, Ayi cleaned up the dishes.]___
14 Feb 2010
Today was the first day of the year of the Tiger. I learned how to say Xin Nian Kuai Le, which means "Happy New Year."
Yesterday we put up squares of colored paper all over the front door and the courtyard doors too. This was funner than it sounds; it reminded me of putting up Christmas lights. I was especially satisfied because it meant that I finally learned the mystery of the Chinese door paper. Most houses in China have "poems" on their doors that they never seem to take down. I had always wondered why and what they meant. It seems that every New Year they cover last year's old paper with new shiny paper. It stays there all year, through all weather, until it is faded and colorless. So the door looks very fresh and decorated right after New Year.
The paper is adhered by nothing except some flour and water mixed into a paste. The words and placement of the papers is important, but I don't understand the significance of each piece. Xu Chao's family actually has several houses in the village, so we got to go around and repeat the decoration more than once. Afterwards, we went around and saw the decorations on all the other houses - from the grand to the humble. I saw Xu Chao's aunts, uncles, and grandfather, and the house where he lived as a child. On New Year's morning, small children may go around to the houses of all their elders and receive Hong Bao - presents of money. Too old for that now, we just payed visits of respect.
Today ShuShu tried to get me to eat some insects, big fat moth larva, which he bought especially for me. He says they're one of his favorite foods. I was hesitant until I got a look at them, and then I politely refused. My mental prejudices are stronger than my stomach. I don't think ShuShu was overly disappointed. I got the feeling that people around here refuse also.
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