Chinese New Year

Hello! I had a wonderful time during my trip to ShanDong to celebrate the Chinese New Year. I decided write about my experiences while I was still there, so everything you read below comes direct from Northern China. Ahem, excepting this paragraph! [And a few image explanations in brackets.]

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.

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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. ]

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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.


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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.]

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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.

Chinese Wedding

My good friend and neighbor Si Jing got married last weekend and was kind enough to invite me to be her bridesmaid. I got to get out of Fuzhou and see the small town where she was from. It was a lot of fun. Stupidly, I forgot to bring my camera! I was hoping to get someone to send me some pictures from the event, but no luck so far. If I do get a hold of some, I suppose I can add them later. Anyways, I am prepared to write a detailed written description. But here is one of Si Jing's professionally-done Engagement pictures, so you can at least see what she looks like!

I learned a great deal about Chinese traditions. Luckily I had a fellow bridesmaid, Si Jing's good friend from Shang Hai, named Su Zhen, to help me at every step, and be my translator.

In olden times, a bride was given away to the groom's family upon marriage so that she no longer belonged to her parents. So they have some interesting rituals revolving around this idea. On the day of the wedding, the groom comes with an entourage early in the morning to the bride's house. To show they love her and don't want her to leave, the bride's family plays "door games," refusing to let the party enter until they have pleaded and offered presents of money. The bride's family then holds a celebration and they honor the parents, etc. Then the groom carries the bride away to his house where they have another celebration.

Nowadays, couples tend to merge Western traditions with Chinese ones, which creates a very unique, day-long ceremony. I suppose all weddings are different, but I will tell you all about his one. There were two parties held at two different restaurants, one in the morning for the bride's family and their friends/guests, and one in the evening for the groom's, each with about 200 people. Because both parties had different attendees, they were almost exactly the same.

Si Jing dressed in a white, western-style wedding dress for the first half of the party. She welcomed the guests, who sat down and started eating the first cold dishes of the meal. Then there was a ceremony, conducted by a person who in Western ceremonies would be called the minister, but who acted more like a game show host, and whose duties were hardly religious. He spoke through a microphone, had the bride (Xin Niang) and groom (Xin Lao) introduce themselves, and prompted clapping from the audience after every sentence.

Then the parents came to front and sat while the couple kneeled before them and offered them tea. As a bridesmaid, I had the special duty of standing at the front of the room and presenting the required cups on a tray for the offspring to present to their parents. Afterwards, I presented the rings for the bride and groom to give to each other. Then they asked me to stand up with the microphone and sing a song. I did one in English and one in Chinese, which they liked. I think everyone got a kick out of having a foreigner at the wedding.

As I said, there were two such identical parties, and for the second ceremony, they didn't want to remove the rings they had already exchanged, so instead they put on new ones. Thus they had two sets of rings!

It was more playful, and more gaudy than I expected. There was a light show and a bubble machine and canisters of pop-up confetti flying everywhere. While we ate, they played techno music, the kind with heavy bass.

Si Jing changed into a red dress after the host excused her, then she ate quickly, and went about the room playing hostess and indulging in party games - drinking games mostly. Chinese people like drink and to toast each other, and many came over to say "cheers" with me. I complied with a cup of orange juice. Xin Lao (the groom) went around giving cigarettes to all the men. Luckily, women in China do not traditionally smoke, so I did not have to refuse any such offerings.

In between parties, they had the Chu Fa (bride-leaving ceremony), where Si Jing was carried away from her parents' house. The bride had to leave at a predetermined "lucky time," 4:10 precisely. Only her bridesmaids occumpanied her. We left the house through a wall of firecrackers that sounded like gun fire. Not much light, but a whole lot of noise.

Someone (I'm not actually sure who, but some parents, I presume) gave the couple a big red sheet with the Chinese symbol for congual bliss, Xi, meaning "double happiness." All around the edges of the gold-rimmed symbol were pasted 100 yuan notes, splayed out in a tight fan. It was quite an impressive sight; probably representing 10,000 or more RMB. The red sheet was held up by some young men in the back of a pickup truck which headed the wedding procession through town. So everyone on the street could point and smile and say to each other: look, someone's getting married!

Si Jing also had to arrive at the groom's house at a special lucky time, 5:00 pm. The caravan of cars actually arrived a few minutes early, so the groom carrying Si Jing on his shoulder had to walk very slowly down the alley. "Three steps forward, two steps back" was the system devised to slow them down, which as you can imagine, was rather cumbersome while holding a full-grown woman. Half way down the alleyway, it was announced that time was upon them, so the groom had to sprint the rest of the way to the house. They set off another string of firecrackers at their heels.

Throughout the day, people were giving out Hong Bao, little red envelopes filled with money. They also gave me several of these envelopes, so that, contrary to expectation, and because my hosts refused to let me pay for the hotel, I actually returned from this trip richer than when I left.

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!