7 am Jams

I went to a Chinese funeral several months ago and now a Chinese funeral is happening right outside my second floor window.

The family mourners are dressed in white hats, sacks, and shoes.

It is a colorful occasion. People bring paper mache animals, towers, houses, cars, DVD players, TV's, clothes, shoes and big round paper floral arrangements that remind me of the flowers they give horses at horse races. They must burn enough goods so that the one in heaven will have a nice comfortable afterlife.

It isn't the gifts that make this particular funeral memorable.

No it is the music. There is a live band of traditional Chinese instruments right outside of my window including a singer with a microphone. Plus every instrument is hooked up to an amp.

At least this morning, the music started out relatively peaceful, a pretty funeral song with lots of somber horns. Umm... but just now the cymbals and the blasting toy like horn just started.

I wonder if this is going to last ALL day.
Today is my day off.

Teaching in China

In Chengdu during summer training, experienced volunteers and staff would tell us scenarios to prepare us to teach Chinese students. I got the impression that students were shy, would not volunteer answers, would not raise their hands, would not understand our American teaching methods of student centered learning rather than the Chinese way of teacher centered lectures.

What did I find?

Well students will not ask questions when I am standing in front of them on the stage at the blackboard. They will ask if I am walking around the classroom.

Students will not volunteer information individually unless I call on them directly and then most of them will answer in low voices. They will answer as a chorus, shouting out their answers when I ask a question. It is impossible to understand the 20 voices all answering the same question in a sporadic manner.

Students love to draw posters! We drew characters from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, from TS Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", and made posters about slavery while studying Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Students have done wonderfully presenting poems to the class explaining the literary terms and the difficult meanings of poetry written in difficult language.

They love role plays and acting!

They had a blast making a board game about Oliver Twist, having a Pride and Prejudice cocktail party where they had to find a suitable fictional husband or wife, learning how to do dance moves from the Jazz age of The Great Gastby, learning poetry by singing the ballads of "Auld Lang Syne", and writing their own stories about why they are in the snowy woods of Robert Frost.

After the Chengdu training, I would have thought teaching Chinese students would be like pulling teeth; however, they are so creative. It is what makes 10 hours of being with them per week bearable. I would have gone crazy if I had to lecture for 10 hours a week.

A Few Days Late

Caitlin created a feast.
I was the errand girl/bus boy.

She cooked a pumpkin pie with a vegan pie crust, stuffing, a chicken, green bean casserole with homemade french onions, gravy, mashed potatoes and coffee. I went shopping for the drinks, the deep fried chickens, and made a cucumber salad. Plus I washed the dishes.

I am stuffed.

It was fun having a very American meal with six Chinese friends. It was the first time for some of them to use a fork. I didn't realize how different we Americans eat a meal. We pass dishes so that each person can serve themselves using a serving spoon instead of eating directly out of the dishes with chopsticks. We fill our plates instead of having a bowl full of rice and a bite size portion of food. We have salt and pepper on the table. We eat bread with our meals. We drink coffee and eat dessert instead of eating a piece of fruit.

The food was very American but it wouldn't have been Thanksgiving if it was just me and Caitlin eating the Western food. What made it like a holiday were the friends. Conversational music is what a holiday is all about. Now don't get me wrong the food also helped.

Turkey Day in China

Today I got a text from my students, "Hello Jen. Is today Thanksgiving Day?"

I knew Thanksgiving was coming up, but I had forgotten that it was today. Caitlin and I are going to cook a traditional Thanksgiving meal on Saturday for a couple of our Chinese friends. Living in another country, it is easy to forget the specific day of a holiday. Since we don't actually get any of our holidays off, holidays turn into weekend celebrations.

Tonight, we decided to go out to eat to celebrate. We went to the all you can eat buffet that is 30 RMB ($5). They have plenty of dishes to choose from, cold vegetable salads, hot dishes, soups, hot pot, plus appetizers like popcorn, dried kiwi, cake with sprinkles. Also, you can drink all the beer you want.

It was a disappointing meal.

My favorite tastes of the evening were the lime juice, the hot coffee, and the 5 different types of green vegetables that I could cook in my hot pot of boiling broth.

Other volunteers are celebrating Thanksgiving together; however, we are FAR from other Peace Corps volunteers (PCVs). The closest volunteer is 8 hours on a grueling bus ride and the PCVs in Gansu aren't even celebrating Thanksgiving there which means we would have to travel even further. It isn't worth it to have two days of hard travel for one day of eating celebration.

It is all right. I don't mind. I have celebrated Thanksgiving in different ways depending on the country. In Guinea I rode 5 hours by bike to Labe to celebrate a feast with the Fouta PCVs in the Peace Corps regional house. It felt more like the Fourth of July than a winter holiday as we barbecued meat on the outside grill. In Burkina Faso, I rode 2 hours by bike to the neighboring city of Kaya to celebrate with some PCVs. We cooked in three different houses and even had a HUGE turkey. Now in China, with Caitlin's microwave sized oven and her two gas burners, we will cook a feast of delicious treats.

It does feel like the holiday season here though. It is cold.

Food

Because of a recent gift, I have realized that I miss cheese and peanut butter. I didn't know I missed American peanut butter with its extra sugar . I knew I missed cheese. Every time I would go into Ouaga or Conakry, I would buy some cheese and my mouth would die from the flavor. Here in China at the nearby big cities that I can travel to, you can only find soft spreadable cheese.

At the end of January I am coming home to the tastes of the USA. I think I will live cheaply on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches along with ham and cheese. I only get like $12 per diem.

Living in China, I get a huge variety of food and don't miss food as much as I did in Africa. Here I can buy like 70 apples for $2. In Africa, one apple cost $1 and you could only buy them in the big city. The apples were imported from South Africa. Here students go out into the country and steal them off the trees.

At home, I hope to make dumplings for everyone. Dumplings are tastier than toe, an African staple.

Weeks without

Internet in my flat has been down.
I don't know when it will be back up.

My Flat

Sit, watch, listen, type
Cold impersonality
Human turned robot

Sleeping in till 8

I am a morning person and feel something is wrong. I am not waking up at 6 am these days.

In Africa I would wake up at the crack of dawn with the sun as it peered through my straw mat walls and mosquito net hung outside. School started at 7 am, so I had to be up. Even on the weekends I was up before 6 am. Sometimes I even had my hand-washed laundry up on the line and a pot of beans cooking on the stove by 7 am.

Here in China though, I am having trouble getting up. There is no sunlight and it is cold. I sleep inside with the morning light shut out by the curtains and anyways the sun doesn't rise very early here. It is only going to get worse. I doubt it will be as bad as Seattle though. And thank goodness the sun does come out everyday.

Tell a Story

If you were to play the game where one person starts a story and then the next person continues the story and so on, where would you begin? Where is the setting? Who is the story about? What conflicts would happen?

Tonight I played this game in the Treehouse, an English resource center, with Chinese freshmen and sophomores. They loved it. They hung onto each other's words, quiet until the next part of the story was told, bursting into laughter with each funny turn, sighing with compassion when things took a turn for the worse.

I started the first story with, there once was an American. I was hoping the story would continue into China with the American coming to visit. Instead the American turned into a fat president who was chased by a fat dog that was owned by a beautiful women ending with the police capturing the dog.

The next storyline was started by a student. A long long time ago, there was a monk in a temple. Whenever he hit the gong a tiger would appear. Then the tiger turned into a beautiful women who fell in love with him; however, it is forbidden for a monk to marry, to drink alcohol or to eat meat. Even with the pressure of his mother who was very angry at him for not marrying the woman, he did not give into temptation. It turns out this woman was a princess from heaven who rewarded him with a job in heaven where he lived happily ever after.

I would have never started a story with a monk or a temple. It is fascinating to me how different our stories are because of the different cultures we grew up in.

Homecoming Week

The college I am teaching at has about 10,000 students with an old campus and a new campus.

I am on the old campus and am happy that I don't have to commute the 30 minute bus ride to the new campus that is isolated on the outskirts of town. The old campus is right in the middle of "downtown" Qingyang. Everything I need and want is in walking distance, even the yarn store and the big outdoor market. Right outside the back gate there are a line of street vendors selling candied fruit on a stick and fried sandwiches filled with potatoes, eggs and whatever else you may choose from a smorgasbord of choices.

This week I haven't had to teach two days because there has been an old campus Sports Meet and Chorus Competition. On the old campus there are five departments: P.E., Chemistry, Physics, Music, and English. Each department recruited a team for the Sports Meet and students competed in Track and Field events hoping to bring glory to their department, competition in the name of friendship. And what do Caitlin and I do? We teach the English students a cheer:

u-g-l-y, you aint got no alibi, you ugly, yeah yeah, you ugly
m-a-m-a, we know how you got that way, your mama, yeah yeah, your mama
d-a-d-d-y, you dont even know that guy, your daddy, yeah, yeah, your daddy
c-u-t-e-, that’s the way you wanna be, like me, yeah, yeah, like me
c-o-u-s-i-n, thats the only place you’ve been, yeah, yeah, your cousin
n-a-s-t-y, thats why go home and cry, you nasty, yeah, yeah, you nasty
b-u-t-t, thats the way you look to me, butt ugly, yeah, yeah, butt ugly

Yep. It's a fun cheer maybe not so appropriate for a Sports Meet in the name of friendship. We rationalized though that most of the students wouldn't understand it anyways even though all students have been learning English since primary school.

Last night I went to the Chorus Competition. The auditorium was filled with students. Attendance was mandatory for Freshmen and Sophomores. Each department had a choir of about 100 students singing two songs from Chairmen Mao's era. In between each department's performance while students left and filled the stage, there were solo performances of singers and electric traditional instruments played to the background of that cheesy New age like electronic music that is created with a keyboard.

This week has been like homecoming week where any student who wants to gets to participate in singing and sports. It isn't just the elite athletes or the best singers who get to participate. No. It is anyone and everyone. Instead of a spirit of individualistic elitism, it is a spirit of community coming together to create well-rounded students. The college provides opportunities for students to study and learn academic subjects as well as opportunities for the spirit.

I live here.

I live on the second floor of teacher flats.

My living room is full of conveniences.

I would rather live in a terrace where this is my view.

A modern flat or something more simple?

I live in an on-campus teacher flat. It is roomy with many modern conveniences; although, these days I sit in my flat feeling cold. The heat won't be turned on till November. I need to buy more layers, a couple pairs of pants to wear under my pants and a couple pairs of shirts and vests to wear under my big sweaters. I really need to buy a jacket that stops the wind. I am busy knitting and crocheting hats, scarves and gloves. My next project will be socks.

I like this modern flat, but honestly I would rather live in the country, in a farming community with a well and no electricity. I would rather live in this home that is carved into the wall. Maybe I can buy one for my retirement.

Culture Shock

I didn't get much of a chance to be in the states after living in Africa for two years. Two weeks stateside isn't long enough to feel the culture shock between West Africa and Alabama.

One of the biggest culture shocks I have had living in China these past few months is men and women talk to each other. In Africa, men gathered in gossip groups with men. Women gathered with women. In China I find it weird seeing men and women having dinner together, find it weird to see young people going out in mixed gender groups. I find it strange to see men taking care of babies, taking little children out for walks, holding children as they pee into the street.

Actually though I don't talk to many men here in China. In Africa, I talked more to men than women because men spoke French while women only spoke local language. Here though I talk mostly with female students. The English department is saturated with females. There is like a 5:30 ratio of men:women in the English classes.

Other than this, there hasn't really been a big culture shock. I do find that I am really disconnected to US culture. It seems like a culture from long long ago.

I love sports

The skies were blue.
The wind was strong.
I went to the tan track.
Lanes had been carved into the hardened mud.

Groups of students had gathered for PE lessons in Kung Fu, volleyball, Tai Chi, gymnastics, and track and field. I found the English major sophomores who were going to learn Tai Chi. I moved energy along and against the wind. I was soft and slow.

Next week I am going to be the wind.
I will join the Kung Fu students.

American?

I am Chinese.

The Chinese say, "You look like Chinese."
Foreigners say, "Wow you speak English really well."

I just have to face the music that I am Chinese.

Verb tenses?

Written in chalk upon the ground, at the busiest intersection of the city, written both in Chinese and English, a young woman was asking for money to pay for school tuition. With her head bowed, she was kneeling on a cushion in front of her beautiful handwriting holding a pile of cash. A curious crowd had gathered to read. It felt old and traditional. It felt honorable.

Ball Hogs

I have been playing basketball with people from the English department. It has been years since I have touched a basketball. I am surprised that my body remembers how to dribble and how to shoot. It is like riding a bike. I just need to fine tune some of my skills.

I really like playing with the Chinese students, teachers, staff, and workers.

They are not ball hogs.

I was afraid that being the only girl out there I would never get to touch the ball. But they are NOT ball hogs. Even the worse player on the team gets to touch the ball. It makes basketball super fun!

Of course I haven't played with a group of seriously competitive players; however, my three point shot is coming back. I might soon be able to compete against the best. I definitely have the experience of looking at the court. I tend to be really good at assists since the players are not the best defensive players.

Tomorrow I will be up at 6 am to play basketball until 8 am. Basketball has become my new addiction.

First Week Observations at Site

Students wake up by 6:30 am and fill the sports terrain. Imagine thousands of students doing morning exercises for five minutes.

Students then go fetch hot drinking water from pipes that run along the buildings. Imagine them carrying brightly colored thermoses.

Students recite their lessons to trees before class. Imagine our trees being the smartest ones.

Students pay about $1 to use a public shower that is in a separate building from their dormitories. Imagine that on a cold winter day.

Students were surprisingly enthusiastic when I asked them to draw one of the Chaucer Canterbury pilgrims. Imagine a classroom of 37 students filled with oohs and aahs when I pulled out the colorful markers.

Students share a computer screen with one other student in the technological learning lab for the audio visual class. Imagine students wearing bright colored booties to keep the lab clean.

Chinese American in China

Throughout my life I have been a minority.

In high school, my brother and I were the only Asian Americans. In college, I was the only Asian American living on campus. In graduate school, there were a lot of Asian Americans, yet I still felt like an outsider. Even if I look like other Asian Americans, I am not in touch with my ethnic heritage, my ethnically labeled culture. I was raised in a white American family, as an adopted Chinese daughter.

In Africa, I was the foreigner who got many stares and an occasional, "Hee haw." It was a greeting that became popular due to a West African comedian and a song that says hello in like 100 different languages. "Ni hao" had become "Hee Haw;" although, in Dakar, because of the many Chinese merchants, "Ni hao" was correctly said.

It is a confusing conundrum for me. I look Asian but I am not Asian. I have lived in many environments where I am the only Asian, where my uniqueness comes from the color of my skin and the blackness of my hair. But that physical label doesn't really say anything about me.

Now I am in China. I am Chinese in China. I look like everyone else. I am Chinese until I open my mouth. Even when people especially the older people hear my terrible Chinese, they hold fast to their idea that I am Chinese. Younger people nod in understanding when I say I am American Chinese. They are more aware of the huge population of Chinese in the USA.

Here in China, walking around silent, I am not unique unless I wear an African outfit, then I get stares like back in America when I shaved my head and dyed it pink. Walking around anonymous, part of the crowd I feel a sense of belonging, a sense of community rather than being an outsider. But as soon as I open my mouth, I become a curiosity and a center of attention. I become the outsider.

So who am I? To Chinese, I am Chinese because of my physical features. To Americans, I am Chinese American because of my cultural upbringing. To myself? I am an American who cannot run away from her skin color and it is my physical features that confuse me the most.

I was hoping to find answers in China.
Instead, I only find more questions.

How do I connect to my ethnic heritage? If I start acting Chinese, copying the customs and mannerisms of the population, will I become Chinese? Where do I belong? I often struggle with the idea of wanting to belong yet also wanting to be different, to be that outsider who is unique but who also has a community. Yet in my search for community, I instead find the solitude of an outsider.

Maybe the answer is as simple as, I belong with my own personal community of friends who don't think about my skin color or my cultural background. They just see me, their friend.

As a roamer from country to country, from culture to culture, I am a chameleon who can change to fit into my surroundings. Even if it may appear on the outside that I fit in, that I am the green of a tree or the brown of a wall, I am a lizard on the inside. The question is who is that lizard?

2nd Day in My New Hometown

After a two day car trip about 17 hours of driving through beautiful China on its new expressways that cost like $20 at various tollbooths throughout the three provinces Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Gansu, I finally arrived at my new home.

Instead of a dead campus, it has come alive with students, vegetable and fruit ladies, plus thermos bottle and plastic goods merchants and all of the street food noodles and stuffed thick pita bread sellers. All of it is right outside the back gate of my campus which is about a 5 minute walk from my 2nd floor apartment.

My PC site mate fixed a lentil soup for dinner and then we went for a walk, the busyness of the campus street died pretty quickly as we marched past the gate welders and the carpenters. Walking in what we thought was a square block, we learned it was a triangle as we surprisingly ended back where we started. The street had become filled with bright costumes, girls in white tutus and big green feathered headbands or big sunflowers attached to their fronts. We followed the parade of girls into a stadium filled with dance troupes, a huge outdoor stage setup along with stage lights and a huge TV screen. My site mate attracted many of those cute girls who speak more English than we speak Chinese. They asked, "Will we play hide and go seek with them?" We learned that they were practicing for a big show that will be happening the day after tomorrow.

My new city is a crowded place with a small town feel. Community is right outside our gate and people are curious about us wanting to get to know who we are, wanting to help us with whatever we may need.

I am also excited because I have been seeing little boys running around in TaeKwonDo uniforms and at the stadium that is right across the street from our campus' back gate, I saw big posters advertising TaeKwonDo. I sure hope they have classes for women who are my age. The biggest challenge will be to communicate how much lessons cost and how many lessons there are per week.

I am only teaching 10 hours a week of American and English Literature. I have a lot of free time and will be able to participate in many fun activities. I am hoping to take up piano again. The music department is on our campus as well as the chemistry department. I have been invited to give a few lectures on chemistry.