Will's Birthday and Nanjing Friends

Nanjing is like my home away from home (from home). We had three weeks of VIA in-country cultural training and language classes there, and they city is really awesome. In my opinion, it's not as crowded as other cities in China and the people are nicer. Also, three VIA vols and all my friends from training are there. Anyway, so I went back two weeks ago for Will's birthday. It was SOOOOOOOO fun! :) The night before his birthday, we went to all-you-can-eat Japanese food and we combined to eat 21 dishes, I think. It was Benihana style, with the chef right in front of us cooking special for us! We had steak, unagi, shrimp, scallops, beef wrapped around mushrooms, more steak, lamb, and then of course sushi, sashimi, miso soup, curry stuff, hand rolls, tempura, the usual. I had six orders of sashimi, tuna and salmon. The night was amazing. Best meal I’ve ever had in China by FAR. Oh yeah, and it was all you can drink too! But we didn’t drink very much cuz we wanted to taste our food. Haha… I did try sake for the first time ever… I was disappointed. Haha.

This is Wang Dong and Weng Fei. They were two of the language partners that VIA hooked us up with back in August. What started out as set-up conversations quickly developed into some awesome friendships. There is a crew of like 6 guys who all study/live together at Nanjing Normal University and are going next year to the University of Maryland to study law (I might be off on this). They have all graduated from really good schools across China already. They’re SO SO SO SO awesome and teach us lots of cultural stuff. They hang out sometimes with Will when I’m not in Nanjing, but they always make it a point to get together when I’m in town. :) It’s SOOOO FUN! We go out to eat and just sit around and talk stories for hours. In Chinese! Before, I wasn’t following a lot of it, but now I can! They speak English really well too and can explain stuff to me if I don’t get it. :) In the picture above, we are going out shopping for food for Will’s, Wang Dong’s, Weng Fei’s, and Yun Feng’s (another language parter) birthday celebration. It was SOOOOOOOOOOO fun! Everyone made a dish – Wang Dong made these Coca-cola chicken wings that were ono, Yun Feng made this steamed rice with ono sauce and veggies inside thing, Will made CHEESEBURGERS (WOOOO!) on this mini bbq grill thing that they bought before (SOOOOOOOOO ONO! And we got to eat the leftovers the next day too, haha!). This picture is all of us cheers-ing (ganbei! 干杯!) and that's Will's supernice apartment.

SOOO, in China there is a tradition where you always cake the birthday boy/girl (as in, eat your cake, save your frosting, and then smack the birthday boy/girl in the face!). It was SO hilarious – Will wasn’t even suspecting it, and someone came up from behind him and got him SOOOOOOOO good. J And then everyone started caking everyone and I ran away to finish eating my cake (no like waste you know!? also so no one would cake me). I came back to take pictures and I thought it was over and I was safe and then I turned around, and Wang Dong was coming at me. hahaha… I turned my head and took the cake straight in my ear/hair. What a mess… haha… but then after we all washed off (just stuck my head under the shower) and it was fine. J Cleaning up the next day was not that fun, but Will did most of it, so yeah. Sucks that since the get-togethers are usually at his house (it’s a nice house), so he always has to clean. Oh well.

Then we all went to KTV (karaoke)!!! It was so much fun! J We sang songs in English and in Chinese and everyone had a good time. The cool thing about this birthday party was that there were an even number of Chinese people and foreigners, and so we did a lot of talking both in Chinese and English. I am really happy that we’ve made some Chinese friends and that we’re not just hanging out with Americans, cuz that would defeat some of the purpose of coming to China. We all struggle a lot with whether to hang out with Americans just because it’s easy and semi-fun or to stretch ourselves and maybe have to fight through awkwardness to hang out with Chinese people. I am really glad that Wang Dong and co. have turned out to be such good friends of ours. They are so much fun and this night of a million birthdays was amazing!

The Three Musketeers (Me, Jenna, and Nhu)

When I first heard there were gonna be three girls at this post (there is usually at least one boy), I was like darn because I get along with boys so much better, in general. But after being here a while, I’ve come to know and love Nhu and Jenna. They’re both really great girls – super supportive and understanding. We all have each other’s backs. We’re all pretty silly together (lots of girl-on-girl action jokes, haha). We had to take some random pictures around the school for something that the school wanted, but we took some goofy ones as well. :)

Seriously, I couldn’t ask for any two better partners. Maybe it’s because it’s Thanksgiving time and I’m feeling in a love-y mood, but I am really really thankful for both Nhu and Jenna. Jenna likes to cook and in general plays the “mom” role. She just whipped up the best Thanksgiving dinner -- with mashed potatoes and my Granny's yam recipe and everything (without access to an oven or microwave or normal ingredients). She's a vegetarian and humanitarian in general as well. Jenna’s apartment is also the general hang out spot for all of our student friends, just because it’s way more PIMP than ours.

These pictures below are taken by the basketball courts, where it says on the wall “Make Ouyang Yu Famous … Train the Students First Rate”. I thought our school was crazy the first time I saw this. But it’s just the Chinese way. There are like motivational sayings all over campus. Like in the cafeteria, in HUGE letters on the wall it says 尊重他人就是尊重自己 (zunzhong taren jiu shi zunzhong ziji), meaning like to respect others is to respect yourself. It’s cool.

Nhu is awesome. She and I make a good complentary team, as she likes cleaning and I don’t. I like taking out the trash. :) Man, I have to get on that; it’s piling up. Haha. Other than that though, she’s helping me stop caring so much about what other people think and to stop thinking that people are judging me all the time. It’s actually really good to be here in China to learn that lesson, because everyone stares at everyone. It’s part of the culture. I do it, too. Haha. And so it’s like whatever. Really, people are just curious. And I like talking to them! :) But about other people too, I am working on just doing what I want and not thinking so much about what other people will think about me all the time. It’s good. :)

For Halloween, we all dressed up. It was awesome. Jenna was a rock star, I was Maggie Cheung from In the Mood for Love (google images it, she’s a Chinese actress and in the movie she is like a 1930s Shanghai woman or something I forget), and Nhu was the grim reaper with a scary mask. We reserved the media room especially for that week (we usually teach in a more ghetto classroom with just a chalkboard) and we taught an awesome Halloween lesson together (Nhu and I). It was so fun! We told scary stories and taught the kids “Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat, if you don’t I don’t care, I’ll pull down your underwear!” … haha… that went over well. :)

Jenna did my hair and makeup – it took like an hour. She has a background in stage makeup, so she was on it. The hair was the main thing. That whole thing was so teased and hair sprayed up because we don’t have a curling iron here. It was ridiculous. But I did get one good picture of myself that day. :)

The Past Couple Months...

Sorry I've been MIA for a while on this blog, but I'm back! Here are some of the things I've been up to for the past couple months, as well as comments on what life is like here:

This is the three of us (Nhu, Jenna, and me) at the Hengyang County Foreign Teacher’s Appreciation Banquet, which was on September 24^th. Nhu and I had to sing two songs IN FRONT OF EVERYONE – Right Here Waiting by Richard Marx (Wherever you go, whatever you do, I will be right here waiting for you…) and 月亮代表我的心 (Yueliang Daibiao Wo de Xin), an old Chinese song that you can youtube if you want to see how it sounds. The music was all off and we came on after this really awesome Chinese woman singer and it was just the most embarrassing thing ever. But we got through it and everyone laughed and told us we were good sports. Other performances included a mime show, a bunch of foreigners singing another song, a soccer demonstration (lame), a Beijing Opera changing faces one man show, violin, and some ghetto hip hop dance that was really scandalous, haha! These little girls presented the flowers to random foreigners who won awards.

This is me holding my wannabe hamburger that I was really excited to eat, but ended up sucking really bad. Hahahaha… In my town, we get teased a lot --- like we get our hopes up about stuff only to have them come crashing down. And that’s okay, that’s life. Man, I was so excited for this hamburger. My town has no Western food whatsoever, but on this day, Nhu, Jenna and I were in the next town over, 30 minutes away, and it’s bigger, and we thought maybe they would have a good hamburger. TEASE. Oh well, though, it wasn’t bad, actually. :) Other teases in our everyday life include the school telling us we can get paid on a certain day, but then the office being closed; that we have a holiday on a certain day, but then the day getting changed after we have already made plans (:( Indonesia); people saying they will come visit us but then plans falling through; our families sending us packages but then them taking forever to get here or the post office not being open or something; the electricity going out in our apartments; tons of last minute changes and random decisions; and the list goes on. It really isn’t bad, and we’re getting used to life here, lowering our expectations, and just going with the flow. It is what it is. :) I'm happy I'm here. :)

This is me playing basketball against the army! WOOOO! I am fouling someone, as usual. J Haha… the guy in the yellow is like the Kobe of our team. He’s really good, but when he’s on the court, the offense is stagnant. This is the second game that I played against the army. We lost. Bleh. Oh well. I had two points. :) haha… I am getting more and more out of shape. All my muscles are shrinking – I can tell by the way my pants don’t fit and even some of the other clothes that you sent me that used to fit. Eh well. :(

These are some of the English teachers at our school after the Halloween party that we put on. Nhu, Jenna, and I organized a party (read: 320 students in an auditorium where everyone had a numbered ticket and if their number was called they got to come up and play a game). I emceed and it was SOOOOOOOOO FUN! We set up games like the balloon stomp (balloons around kids’ ankles and they went around stomping them and the last person with an un-popped balloon won), three-legged race, rice sack relay (like potato sack, except here it’s a rice sack haha), etc. It was soooo fun! :) All the kids had a really good time, and we gave out candy and prizes. The teachers said it was a lot more orderly than last year and that they felt it was more successful. Here at OYY, everything is compared to previous years (it was kind of strange at first to be here with all of the expectations that everyone had because of the past volunteers – like in Mexico, I was the first volunteer the community had experienced, in Yunnan last year, I was the first – but now I’m used to all the references), so it means a lot when the teachers or students say that we’re better than previous years. Haha…

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I love you like mice love rice.... NOT!

We have a rat problem. We have had rats in our apartment since the day we showed up. So far, our efforts to get rid of them have consisted of wishing and hoping that they’ll leave, mentioning the problem to our waiban (who responded that we should jump and shout and scare the rat into never showing its face again), and begging the PE teachers to help us (they said they’d come, but they haven’t and it’s been a week). We have kind of just gone with it, settling into a sort of peaceful coexistence with the rats. They don’t touch our food, and they only hang out in the living room (we don’t hang out there). We’ve seen like at least one every other night, but, like I said, they have their territory and we have ours. It was a stable equilibrium situation.

Tonight, we set a trap. It is a humane one, or at least it said so on the cover. It is a little plastic rectangular prism with a swinging door, and we put a cracker with some precious peanut butter (hard to come by in China) in it, and left it along the wall in the living room.

Disturbing the peace = bad karma.

Two hours later, as I was watching I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry on my computer instead of doing my Chinese homework, I looked up to see a mouse. Not in the living room. BUT INSIDE MY BEDROOM. SCURRYING VERTICALLY DOWN MY CLOSET DOOR. Which is like all the way inside my room. To get to the top of the closet, you have to go through the entire room, walk over all my clothes on the floor, trip over my computer and phone cables, hop onto my backpack, and up my curtains. WHAT THE HECK!?

I screamed. Long and loud. It’s hilarious that I thought I could kill a mouse. At Jenna’s behest, Nhu and I also went after one the other night with a book. We felt brave. HA! I fled the scene. I covered my stuff, took my pillow and my computer and left. I now reside in Nhu’s room.

I AM SURE THAT IT IS STILL INSIDE MY ROOM. I didn’t see it leave.

If you have any recommendations, I would really appreciate hearing them. Nhu thinks I have to empty my room, and look for the rat. I don’t particularly want to find it. Worst comes to worst, I will live in the computer room. Anyway, the plan right now is to go away for the weekend and hope that the rats are dead and the holes plugged when I get back.

Potty Tales

HONG KONG

So I have this problem. I don’t like taking dumps where people can hear, see, or smell my doodoo. That just bothers me. I know that they know that I go doodoo, but I don’t want them to have to experience it first hand. Other people are totally cool with it, and like talk to you while they dump and you hear it plop. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that—I admire those people and think they’re hella brave—but I just can’t do it. So I usually hold it. Until I’m dying. Then I find somewhere else to go. If worst comes to worst I ask them to wait outside or go do something else for a while. I kind of have the same problem with peeing, but I don’t really care as much (although I avoid having other people hear/see me pee when possible).

I was staying in Hong Kong for the night with Nhu, Joyce, and Vedita getting our Z visas so that we could work in China. We were all cramped into this piece of shit hostel and I was staying there illegally (like I didn’t pay for an extra bed, I just crammed in with Nhu and slept in the crack next to the wall).

So I had to take a dump. We had a private bathroom, but it was like right there with a little mini-fake-door that you could hear through and definitely smell through. So then I felt bad. So then I went looking for a public bathroom but I couldn’t find one. I did, however, pass a wide open door to a room that looked empty. I figured no one was staying there for the night and so I could use the bathroom and it would be fine. So then I went in, closed the door, locked it, and did my business. Halfway through I heard people outside the door and got nervous, HELLA nervous because if someone came in and yelled at me I was in a very compromising position. What was I gonna do in the middle of taking a dump? Luckily, no one knocked on the door. So then I wiped, etc and tiptoed out, only to see an Indian guy sitting at an official-looking desk right outside the room (the desk I had somehow neglected to see in my earlier excitement in finding a free, private toilet). “Hi,” I said. “Hi,” he said back, with a highly confused look on his face. And then he started to say something else but I bolted. I didn’t just walk fast, I booked it. R-A-N RAN.

Later that night I walked by his room again with Nhu (he was sleeping on the floor halfway in his room and halfway in the hall --- sketchy place I’m telling you) and I told her the story and, in the most Nhu-like manner, she was like, “DUDE, that guy is the manager! You just took a dump in the MANAGER’S room!!!” Yeah, just another day in the neighborhood.

SHENZHEN TO ZHUZHOU (HUNAN)

We were on the worst train in the history of the universe. No air, no sheets, only grass mats for beds, everything was hella dirty. Oh well though, no worries, right? Just wait it out, it was only a ten hour train. Until I had to go to the bathroom. Don't worry, only pee this time.

So then usually train bathrooms aren't really that bad, you just have to worry about the train stopping suddenly or moving a weird direction cuz you don't want to fall in there. GROSS.

This one, though, had a unique problem. There was a pipe that had burst and fresh water (as fresh as it could get in a bathroom on a train in China, I guess) was pouring onto the floor of the bathroom. I was like, gross, and so I went to the other one. Someone had barfed in there. GROSS. Chose the lesser of two evils and decided to brave the flooded one. It wasn't bad because I had shoes, so, no worries, right?

Wrong. I took one pant leg off, squatted down, everything was cool. Until I felt something distinctly cold and wet slap my backside. EWWWWWWWWW!

There was a mop hanging on the back wall of the bathroom (which is like a 3 ft by 3 ft box), and presumably people had used it to mop up the floodwater in the bathroom. Every time the train shifted directions, the mop would bounce off the wall and slap me in the butt. HAHA. I couldn't move because I was peeing, and so I just took it. In the butt. From a mop. (Relatives: I'm sorry, but I couldn't resist the joke). Anyway, it was soooo gross. Every time the train moved, just *SLAP* *SLAP* or a light *slap*. Haha... ahhh China. :)

"We know that no one here is really free"

I just had what was probably the most interesting spontaneous cultural exchange of my life. This is straight from my journal. I haven't had time to edit it, and my internet time is just about to run out, but it was amazing. Definitely the most meaningful conversation I've had in China, and it took place on a hard sleeper from Beijing to Shenzhen (I was so devastated that my phone didn't work, but I am actually really happy that it didn't, because this is what I got to experience):

She is from the northeast of china and she is of Manchu descent. She went to university in Shanghai and her name is Huashan*. She has high cheekbones and a quick, big-gummed smile that transforms her face in a second, she laughs a lot. Her Manchu family name is Hualali, but they made her family change it a long time ago. Because the Qing dynasty was a Manchu dynasty when it fell in 1911 or 1913, the Manchus were made to suffer terribly in the modern period. Their culture has been all but wiped out. They're language is quickly disappearing, people have been killed for speaking the Manchu language. During her university days, Huashan herself was summoned to the police station and questioned harshely after she went to celebrate a Manchu holiday. She is so brave. She was raised in a small town and never had any wish to go abroad, but when she went to university she did want to go but there was no money. and she would like to work in Beijing but its hard so she works in Shenzhen. She would have liked to study Manchu culture in university but there are no opportunities for that, and she had to study English lit and American lit and she hated it, she said there was not even one author that she liked. Not even one.

She mentioned something, when we were talking about censorship. She said that on June 1^st, in the town of Xianmen?? There was an uprising, a protest, the government had wanted to push through some chemical programs that would make all the babies of the town die, that would make all the women not able to become pregnant, that would make bad things happen, and the people of the town protested. This was a big deal in and of itself as protesting is illegal in china. and it was all over the news for a day and then all the sites were blocked, it was all gone, and no one knows what happened to these people, to this town. No one knows. She knows that the government went ahead with their chemical plant and assumes the leaders of the protest were punished. She doesn’t know what is happening now.

So first I was talking with the Hunan guy (I met him the night before, really nice) and she was interpreting. He asked about the iraq war but I didn’t understand about what exactly and so I couldn’t answer and them two got into a conversation. But then later I asked her what he had asked and then she agreed to translate between the two of us. He had said that he thought the iraq war was bad and now Iraq was a mess and …? and I explained that most Americans disagreed with the war and that we had gone in because of the WMD that were not there anymore. And he said that we were just looking for an excuse to go in and destroy Saddam Hussein and I said that yes, many people think that this president bush was just trying to end what his father started, and that it is interesting that we didn’t try to take down any other regimes (Iran, etc.). he said that we are very arrogant (implied) because we are people’s friends when they help us but as soon as they don’t we are their enemies and we attack them. I said that we are very sorry that we are there and for what is happening but its hard for us to get out because we don’t want to fail. We don’t want to leave iraq a mess. We don’t want to fail. And he said this is all so reminiscent of the Vietnam War. And I agreed.

Then we talked about what Americans think of china (more specifically, he asked if we fear their militarization). and I said that we fear them, but that we don’t really know much about their militarization, that we mostly just fear their economic rise will threaten our own status, and that we fear the fact that their government has so much power. And that the government could control what the people knew, etc.

And then we talked about China. And capitalism and socialism. And he asked what I think is better, capitalism or socialism. And I chose my words carefully and said: capitalism is the most efficient way of producing wealth, but socialism brings that wealth to more people, and so I think a combination of the two is best. And she agreed. Later she said that the educated people in China know that the system they are living under is not socialism. He said that he thought there could never be democracy in China and that the best way of government for China is one strong person, like Mao. And I agreed that there should not be democracy in china right now but that in the future when more people are educated that it could be possible. I disagreed that the best way of government was one strong leader because there was such a high possibility of that leader being bad, or turning bad over the course of his/her rule, because power can do that to you. I mentioned states in Africa and I mentioned checks on power and accountability and that these things were necessary. And then they talked for a long time, discussing something, I didn’t understand. Later I found out they were arguing about the Cultural Revolution, and he was defending it to the death. And she was coming from the majority POV, that it was a mistake, that Mao and the Party had made a mistake… but the guy kept going on about how it was mao who started it yes because there were some people in the party he wanted to get rid of but that it got carried away and then other people in the party kept it going and it got out of his hands and then it got out of control and it wasn’t his fault. But if he was in power then it was his fault. And he compared it to Iraq and how it got out of control. And I was like yes, you can compare it to Iraq. But most people think that Iraq was a mistake and they hold President Bush responsible—it will be the only thing he is remembered for—and that you cant really compare it to the Cultural Revolution because the levels of people who were killed is so different. Millions for the Cultural Revolution!! And she agreed with me but he was still like I had family die in the Cultural Revolution and still I believe that Mao is not to blame, that it was on the whole not a horrible time, that some people died but not too many.

Then we stopped talking to the guy and we just started talking to each other. Feel kind of bad that we just started leaving him out, after he was so nice to be and hooked me up with the girl.

Huashan said that the Chinese educated people know, they realize the hypocrisies and that they know. They don’t agree with the system and they don’t allow the government to tell them what to think. That they know that the government censors their internet and that they are not free. She said this: “we know that no one here is really free.” But at the same time she said that nothing would happen, no rebellion would happen, unless something horrible happened, unless people were so repressed that they had nothing else to do, nowhere else to turn. The Chinese government is really good at making people feel content, and also powerless, at the same time. So that way, they discourage rebellion. She said that now there is a class of people in china that is rich and they are the ones that have the ability to change the system, and that they are accruing power and the government has to listen to them soon but that they cant do anything until something big happens. And that she has given up on the poor people, they cant do anything, they have to rely on the middle class and on the upper class to lead them. She says she believes in them. But I asked what their hope was, what they thought the government should be, what she was really supported, and she said she doesn’t know, exactly, and that something would develop maybe as the time went on and as it became necessary. I thought this was really dangerous, that the Chinese people might move from this current system to something that was maybe worse.

She said that the Chinese educated people are just content. They realize the disparity but they feel like they cant do anything about it. There are just so many people. They are each just one, the educated people are such a small portion of the population. But they are the only ones who realize that they are not free. And many of the young people want to get out. The ones who have gone abroad realize. They realize the world is different from what the party tells them. They know. But they are still powerless to spread the word. It’s all so much bigger here.

When we talked about the right system of government for china, she kept mentioning the concept of a “healthy government” no matter what it was, capitalist or socialist. And that china now kind of has a healthy government, kind of doesn’t. but as long as its not BAD BAD then no one will do anything about it. I said maybe when the economic bubble bursts… and she said that actually china has a different way of calculating statistics than the rest of the world and the 10% growth rate per year is grossly overstated. That yes they have had massive growth but that it definitely hasn’t been 10% per year. And that educated people know this.

Corruption: we just talked about how all the Chinese think that the entire Chinese government, every single Chinese official, is corrupt. That they are just taking the money that everyone is working so hard to make and when they have enough of it they run away abroad with their wives and children. And we were trying to think of ways around it, I talked about Africa and examples of countries there and explained Larry Diamond’s concept of accountability to her, but even she said that there is supposed to be some oversight committee, but when they are paid by the Party how can they be any different from the Party? Yeah man. I see that.

I told her that Americans’ view of Chinese people is very positive. That we think they’re hard working and smart and quiet. We’re afraid they’re taking our spots in universities and in jobs and stuff but that they are the model minority. She said that she heard that we don’t like them. But I honestly don’t think that’s the case. She said that the Chinese people are taught from a very young age to hate the American government, and while they know that the American people are different from the American government, part of them unconsciously hates the American people.
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Okay, that was the journal entry. I'll post my reflections and stuff later...

Welcome to my blog!

I'm not really sure how this blog is gonna go, but I just wanted to welcome you, and say thanks for visiting the site. A quick explanation of the address: eyeofthelaohu. In Chinese "laohu" is how you say "tiger," so when "eyeofthetiger.blogspot.com" was taken, I figured this was the next best thing. I've been in Asia for almost a month so far, and have so many awesome adventures to tell you about. Most of my pictures are up on facebook and/or costco.com under my mom's account, but I'll put select ones up on this. Mmkay, that's it for the intro, but I'll post an entry as soon as I come back to this SWEET wireless internet cafe. I miss you all!