Jackie Chan, Giant Hands, and the Dosey Doe

I am going to attempt to describe what I witnessed at the Guangdong International Tourism and Cultural festival that the Shenzhen Education Bureau carted us off to last weekend, but it won’t be easy. Let’s just say that floats, dancers, singers, fireworks, cars, opera, drums, giant foam hands, girls dressed as cakes, butterflies on roller blades, and Jackie Chan, among other things, were all involved.

Like everything else in China, this show was done on a colossal scale and involved massive amounts of people. There seemed to be almost as many performers as guests. Only in China, where there are 1.3 billion people, could this sort of man power be utilized just to promote tourism in one province of the country. If you watched the opening ceremony of the Olympics, you may be able to envision this show better than others. It was on a smaller scale, but it used similar techniques—huge dance ensembles set to music, lights, and fireworks with a pop singer or two added to the mix.

It was over the top, glittery, random, and so Chinese—I loved it. The cherry on top was definitely when Jackie Chan stepped out of an actual airplane that rolled onto the stage, and people dressed as giant hands with smiley faces (envision the Hamburger Helper hand) came running out and proceeded to dance around while Jackie Chan sang. To me it was utterly bizarre and hilarious, but to the Chinese people around me it was a typical show in China. Through my American lens, it was a comedic actor who really can’t sing running around with a bunch of people ridiculously dressed as giant hands, but to the Chinese people, it was a national icon singing about their country’s pride and the hands were a symbol of people working together. The song was entitled “We are Ready.” While, I had no idea what Jackie Chan was saying since it was in Chinese, from the title’s translation, I assumed it was a song about China being ready to take its place in the world. I may be completely wrong, but I think it’s as good a guess as any. Everything here is about the group, the people, the country.

The other day I realized just how much this group mentality is engrained into the people here. My school had its own opening ceremony for its sports day. The students all lined up by class and marched in unison around the track. They then proceeded to do their morning exercises in front of a panel of judges who decided which class was the best. Every morning I am awoken by kids shouting “yi (one), er (two), san (three), su (four), and the sound of the music that accompanies these “exercises.” I have never really watched these exercises until today during the opening ceremony. Each class lines up in two vertical rows (boys in one row and girls in the other row) with one head student a few feet out front. Then the music starts, and in as perfect unison as possible they perform a sort of dance involving head turning, arm waving, toe touching, clapping, and leg kicking—and that is just the first song. They then proceed to a second song that involves the girls partnering with the boys to dance Dosey Doe style. Each class performed with the other classes in their grade in front of the judges all the way down to the first graders.

My fellow foreign teacher friends and I have discussed how this marching, dancing, and chanting in unison is somewhat disturbing to us. There is something unsettling to our individualist minds to see a bunch of children marching to the beat of numbers being shouted at them over a microphone like they are in the army instead of primary school. But then I think about my elementary school experience—standing in lines to walk between classes, flag raising ceremonies, saying the pledge of allegiance, performing in school plays—and I realize that it isn’t that much different. I was once told by a college professor that schools are the most powerful political institutions because they teach children what they believe is the right way to be a good citizen. So, my students are being trained to be good Chinese citizens just as I was trained to be a good American citizen.

What a good citizen entails may be different here than in America, but the concept is similar. Teach them discipline so that later they will obey authority figures and the law. If I compare the sixth graders to the first graders I can see how six years of morning exercises has changed them. The sixth graders take the exercises seriously. They stand straight and even Dosey Doe without a smile. They depend on their student leader for guidance, and they follow instructions well. The first graders on the other hand have no idea what this exercise thing is all about, so they smile, giggle, and stare off into space. Their leader isn’t much different, maybe just calmer. Most of this behavior of course is the difference between a 6 year old and a 12 year old, but it makes me a little sad that in a few years these 6 year olds won’t smile anymore when they Dosey Doe. One thing is for sure though; I and my fellow Chinese teachers could not stop smiling as we watched the first graders do their exercises. I mean how scary can a smiling six year old with pink-bowed pigtails be? The best was the little boy in the middle who just stood there bewildered. I wanted to say to him, “Me too, buddy, me too, I have no idea what these kids are doing.” And to the little girl in the front who was completely off beat with the rest of the kids, but smiling and rocking out to the music in her own way, I wanted to throw out every American individualistic cliché I could think of—“You go girl! Keep marching to your own drum! Be yourself! Don’t become another giant foam hand! At least become a Jackie Chan!”

I am Thankful for...

This is too good not to write about.

This week I’m doing a lesson for my grade 4 primary school kids on Thanksgiving, of course, since it is on Thursday. One of my activities is called the “Thankful Turkey.” Basically I draw a huge turkey on the board with words “I am thankful for…” on its belly, and then the kids come write things they are thankful for on the turkey’s tail feathers.

The answers began pretty standard. I am thankful for my family, my mother, my father, my grandpa (surprisingly no grandma’s yet), my teacher, specifically Miss Lori, my dog, food etc. Then they progressed to things like psp (video game), basketball, and computers. Then they jumped into politics—my country, China, Hu Jintao, Deng Xiaoping (remember these kids are 10). Finally it just turned silly. I am thankful for the W.C./toilet. So overall, I think the turkey was a pretty thankful one by the end of the class.

Today after this lesson, one of the boys came up to me and proudly showed me the notes he had taken from my power point. Then he asked me to sign my name. I figured he just wanted to see how it was written. My first mistake: I signed in cursive. He thought it was so cool he wanted me to do it again. Before I had time to respond, the girl standing next to him shoved her notebook and a pen in my face. Second mistake: I signed hers as well. Next thing I knew a flood of notebooks and pens were being shoved in my face. I couldn’t refuse them after they had just watched me sign the other two, so I began a notebook signing session. Although, I could barely sign because the kids were pushing each other trying to see who could get their notebook closest to my face. In the midst of the chaos one of the little girls kept saying, “Miss Lori you are a superstar.”

After months of mentioning the fact that I now have some sympathy for celebrities who have to constantly deal with random people staring at them and taking their picture, I finally really have sympathy for them. Nevertheless, it was extremely amusing watching them struggle just to get their teacher to sign four letters on their paper. I guess I should be thankful that my students see me as a celebrity as opposed to the random person forcing them to sit in a classroom for 40 minutes. Most teachers have to work to win over their students; I just write my name. Every teacher should be so lucky.

So that leads me into the entry that I intended to write for Thanksgiving:

10 Things I’m Thankful for while here in China:

1.) Chinese hospitality – I have never met people who are so willing to go out of their way to help you (note the earlier entry about Autumn, the Chinese girl who helped me buy a bus ticket). They are so hospitable that they make the Southern United States look lame. They willingly share everything. If a teacher in my office is eating fruit, she offers me the biggest piece. If I go out to eat with a Chinese person, I never pay no matter how much I insist. They really know how to take care of their guests.
2.) Skype – yay for technology that allows me to communicate with my family and friends at home. I couldn’t have done this 30 years ago, and for those that did (like my dad when he went to the coastguard), I commend you.
3.) My Students – Yes, there is the occasional bad kid, but for the most part they are great. Since I teach primary, the kids are at the age where they still love their teachers, and they haven’t reached the “I’m too cool for school” stage. They say hello to me everyday with huge smiles on their faces.
4.) My Chinese dictionary and my Chinese speaking friends – Hand motions only get you so far.
5.) Cheap prices:
a. Bottle of Water – 2.5 Yuan ($0.37)
b. DVDs – 10 Yuan ($1.50)
c. One hour Full Body Massage – 48 Yuan ($7)
d. Hair cut, style and massage – 40 Yuan ($6)
6.) Bargaining - There is nothing more satisfying than realizing you have power over the salesperson. No fixed, cold, unflinching prices here. Here it’s “give me the price I want or I walk away,” and it is always satisfying seeing the defeated salesperson run after you saying “Ok! Ok! I give you!”
7.) Crazy random fashion – I think you can wear anything here in any combination and no one will look at you funny—stripes and plaid, stockings as pants, glitter on everything, furry vests, boots with capris, shirts with misspelled English words—you name it they wear it.
8.) Nap time – I get off of work at 12:00 and I don’t have to be back until 2:30. My contact teacher informed me that this time is for eating, resting, and taking naps. This is brilliant because it makes the second half of the day so much better.
9.) Eating Family Style – There are no individual meals here. Someone just orders several dishes for the whole table, and we share. This eating style is good for several reasons: a) food variety b) you eat smaller portions (also because their dishes are smaller) c) for indecisive eaters like me, you don’t have to decide on one dish.
10.)Translation Funnies – I could make a fortune correcting English grammar, spelling, and syntax on Chinese business and government signs. We foreigners here in China affectionately refer to these translation mistakes as “Chinglish.” Not that I can blame the Chinese for these mistakes since they are attempting to use English—a gesture I appreciate, and since I know the languages are so grammatically different. Someone just needs to tell them not to trust translation websites. But until then, I plan to have a blast collecting pictures of various signs such as “Fire Fighter Jury Exciter Lamp” and “Here Contes All People’s Caze.”

10 Things I am now thankful for in America:

1.) Freedom and democracy – I am thankful that we have the ability to vote for our president. During the election, so many Chinese people around me were talking about the election as if it were in their own country. Most wanted Obama to win. For them our election was much more exciting to talk about than their own because the result all depended on the people. During their election, as my contact teacher pointed out, they don’t care because all they can do is “find out the result.”
2.) Diversity– I am now thankful for the variety of everything in America – food, people, backgrounds, TV shows, movies, etc.
3.) Schedules, appointments, and Calendars – I never thought I would miss these things, but when every answer you are given begins with a “Maybe” and may or may not be true, it starts to get a little frustrating to someone who plans her calendar months in advance. Here in China, make sure you write every appointment, deadline, schedule, etc. in pencil because it will most likely change at least two times before it comes to pass.
4.) Paper Products – I’m all for saving trees, but I miss not having to remember to bring napkins, toilet paper, and Kleenex everywhere with me.
5.) Public Bathrooms that don’t require you to squat – Let’s just say that when you’ve walked around all day on the hot China streets eating the not so digestible food, the last thing you want to do is use the disgusting public bathroom that requires you to use every last ounce of energy in your already aching quad muscles to squat over a hole in the ground. Enough said!
6.) Clothes Dryers - (and clothes washers that work) – My clothes are now twice their original size, and they have not smelt clean since I wore them the first time. I am now in a desperate search for a belt to hold up my pants and some Febreeze to take away the lingering musty/sweaty smell left from hand-washing and air-drying.
7.) Not feeling like a celebrity – As stated above, I completely sympathize with celebrities now, as I have to deal with people staring at me, taking pictures of me, and yelling “hello” everywhere I go.
8.) Meat without Bones – Every piece of meat I’ve eaten here seems to be from some mysterious part of the cow, pig, or chicken where there is mostly bone and a little meat. I have no idea what they do with the nice cuts of meat—the filet, the pork loin, the chicken breast, etc. I know forks and knives aren’t the forte here, but I will use my hands if necessary, people! Everyone already spits bones all over the table as they eat, so I don’t think a nice chunk of meat is too much to ask for.
9.) Space – Stores are the size of closets. Classrooms are the size of a typical U.S. classroom but with 60 people. Buses are always packed. Cars are everywhere. People are everywhere. I need a big open field.
10.)My Family – This is my first Thanksgiving away from home, and while I usually am not that excited about a day spent entertaining younger cousins, recapping a year in one dinner conversation with my relatives, and trying to ward off boredom and sleepiness after dinner, I wish I could this year. I, of course, miss the food, but I find myself missing the little things I never noticed before. I miss the feeling of being surrounded by a group of people who love you just because you are a part of them. I miss seeing how much my younger cousins have grown and changed over the past year. I miss commiserating with my sister when we get bored. I miss sitting on my Papaw’s lap like I’m still ten years old. I miss all of these things, but I am thankful that I am not there this year because now I realize just how important these things are to me.

These lists may be random, but they are all the little and big things that first popped into my mind when contemplating what I am thankful for. It doesn’t take long to think of something you are thankful for, but it is interesting to see how your situation changes what you are thankful for. Ultimately I’m thankful for this experience in China. It has given me the chance to change and broaden my perspective so that I can be thankful for all the things I’ve taken for granted over the years.

China Loves Food

I wrote the following entry my last semester in college as I was preparing for my year here in China. Since it is almost Thanksgiving in America, I thought this entry on food would be appropriate. After living here, I have found that it is mostly accurate in defining the Chinese relationship with food. Now, just so you don’t think I’m being lazy by inserting this old article, after being here for three months, I do have some observations to add on to the end of this entry.

"Fashion is in Europe, living is in America, but eating is in China"

I didn’t have to dig very deep in Chinese culture to realize the importance of food. Americans are very good at eating a lot of food, but for the Chinese food is more than just something to satisfy hunger or pleasure. Food for the Chinese is symbolic; it is emotional; it is ritualistic; it is curative; it is spiritual; it is even political. Food cannot just be eaten; it must be eaten the right way. We talk about the need to eat healthy in America, but the importance of food to one’s health is almost a form of religion in China. After reading numerous articles about food in China, I now understand what my Chinese friend here at Centenary meant when she said that in China, food is eaten mainly for its nutritional value—the more nutritious, the more of a delicacy it is. When she was describing this concept she mentioned two dishes which fall into this delicacy category: shark fin soup and bird’s nest soup. I didn’t quite understand at the time why these two dishes were seen as particularly nutritious until I ran into this statement in Kathy Lin’s article about Chinese food and culture:
“Chinese culture believes that "yi xing bu xing," which means by using any shape or part of the animal the same part of the human body can be replenished and strengthened. For example, shark fin soup and bird nest soup (bird's saliva) is served to replenish strength and increase appetite, crocodile meat strengthens the bronchia, dehydrated tiger testicle increases stamina for men, while monkey brains add wisdom. These foods are considered to be delicacies and tonics.”
From my American perspective, I don’t know if replenishing my strength and appetite is worth eating bird’s saliva. On the other hand, at least the Chinese have a practical reason for eating what they eat whereas many Americans just eat because it tastes good, which sounds indulgent and unnatural.
There is another Chinese food concept that meshes a little better with my American background and that is the idea of a balanced diet. Of course, balance for the Chinese is at a whole different level than the idea of balance found in America. Central to the preparation of food in China is the idea of balance between Yin and Yang. Kathy Lin says in her article:
Chinese culture believes there is a positive energy and a negative energy in the universe. "Yin" represents negative energy and "yang" represents positive energy.3 They have to be equally balanced to create a harmonious and healthy state, otherwise, conflict and disease will be created.
The result is that Chinese food is often a combination of both sweet and spicy elements in order to promote balance. Also similar to this idea is the “division between fan, grains and other starch foods, and ts’ai, vegetable and meat dishes. To prepare a balanced meal, it must have an appropriate amount of both fan and ts'ai” (Chang). The Chinese believe that the balancing of these elements is not only essential to physical health, but also mental health. Eating food the right way leads to healthier and happier lives and relationships with those around you. Kathy Lin points out that the “Chinese not only enjoy eating but believe eating good food can bring harmony and closeness to the family and relationships.”
This statement about the importance of food to family reminds me of a 1994 movie I watched directed by Ang Lee, an Academy Award-winning film director from Taiwan, called “Eat, Drink, Man, Woman.” The opening scene of the movie takes place in modern Taipei, Taiwan, in the home of an older man who is meticulously preparing a traditional Chinese meal. Later, we discover that he is a former master chef and a widower with three grown daughters, and this meal is in preparation for their dinner together. However the dinners are not scenes of harmony and closeness that they are supposed to be. The father, Chu, has begun to lose touch with his three grown and mostly independent daughters, which is symbolized by the fact that he has begun to lose his sense of taste as well. The dinner, as a result, reflects the disharmony within the family. With age, the loss of his wife, the growing independence of his daughters, and the failing health of his best friends, Chu begins to question the foundation of existence—love and food. He says at one point to his best friend, “Eat, drink, man, woman. Basic human desires. Can't avoid them. All my life, that's all I’ve ever done. It pisses me off. Is that all there is to life?” The result of this loss of faith in food, family, and love, is reflected in the meals he prepares.
Another theme that adds to the disharmony in the family is the clashing of the traditions of the past and the modernization of the present. Chu lives in a traditional courtyard style home that is rare among all of the new apartment complexes where most of the younger generation lives. His daughters, who are part of this younger generation, especially represent this modernization. The oldest daughter has become a Christian, a recently new development in China. The middle daughter works at a big corporation, and is in the process of buying her own apartment. The youngest daughter works at the fast-food chain—a far cry from her father’s traditional Chinese restaurant. Despite these differences, between past and present, however, there is a sense that the younger generation still values the cooking traditions of the past. This is represented in the middle daughter, who loves to cook just like her father. By the end of the movie, through her love of cooking and her love for her father, she is able to bring back his sense of taste with her soup. She discovers a balance between the old and the new, and finally brings the family into harmony once again. More than half of the scenes in the movie involve food, and the movie begins with food and ends with food. There is no way to overlook the importance of food in Chinese society after watching this movie.

References:
Lin, Kathy. “Chinese Food Cultural Profile.” Ed. Nadine Chan. Harborview Medical Center/University of Washington. Seattle, 2000. 1 May 2008. .
Chang, K.C. Food in Chinese Culture: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977. 1 May 2008<>.

After living here for three months, I have seen proof of this obsession over food. One of the first compliments I received from the other Chinese teachers at my school: We like you much better than last year’s teacher. You eat Chinese food. She did not like Chinese food. We all like you very much. So, I passed the likeness test with flying colors because I could stomach seaweed soup, oily vegetables, and unknown pieces of chicken. That is the power of food. Next I learned that “Ni chi le ma?” (have you eaten) is a common greeting akin to the American “how are you?” because it just a manner of checking up on how you are doing. It doesn’t really imply that you want the person to go to dinner with you if they have not eaten; it is just a way to check on a person’s wellbeing. My Chinese class teacher informed us that not too long ago, probably during her grandparents’ generation, many people in China were starving. So, to ask someone “have you eaten (today)” was a way to check up on them.

My Chinese class teacher also informed us as we were going over the “at a restaurant” chapter of our Chinese book that “Chinese people eat anything that walks, swims, flies, crawls…we eat everything.” I don’t know if this stems from the starvation factor, but I sure hope so. Why else would you eat a dung beetle or stinky tofu (trust me you never want to smell the stuff)? Of course there is the “it’s good for your health” explanation. I hear it everyday. Eat your seaweed; it’s good for your skin. Eat the pig feet; they are good for your complexion. Eat the bitter melon; it keeps you from getting sick. I could go on, but I will spare you. Every single dish has some sort of health explanation behind it.

The average Chinese person may not preach about balance and the yin and yang of food, but they all have the staunch belief that all Chinese food is in some way beneficial to your health. As for Western food, they see it as junk food that is bad for your health because their concept of Western food is McDonald’s and KFC. Junk food or not, McDonald’s and KFC are on every street corner, and Chinese people love them. I guess everyone needs to be unhealthy every once in a while.

I thought about what Chinese people would think of the food we brought for our potluck Thanksgiving dinner Sunday night. Would they think it was health food or junk food? Would we pass the yin and yang test? I think probably not when I envision my plate full of mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, bread, green beans, turkey, cranberry sauce, macaroni and cheese, cookies, cheesecake, ice cream…and I don’t remember the rest. Since I’m in China, though, I would like to pretend that each dish has its unscientifically proven benefits. Let’s see, WWCS? (What Would the Chinese Say?)…eating mashed potatoes is good for your teeth, sweet potatoes are good for your sore throat, stuffing is good for your stomach, green beans are good for your hair, turkey is good for your skin, cranberry sauce is good for your complexion, macaroni and cheese is good for your immune system, and eating cookies, cheesecake and ice cream is good for your big toe. Whew! I don’t know how they come up with so many health explanations. That’s probably why half the things I eat are good for my skin and the other half are good for my hair. Sadly my hair and skin have not miraculously changed since eating seaweed soup three times a week.

So maybe our Thanksgiving food would not pass the health test, but I think the Chinese would understand the gathering of a family over a big meal. We are alike in that way. We both know that good food brings people together. So all of you back home make sure to chow down on your turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce over Thanksgiving dinner with family and friends while I sit down to my pig feet, rice, and seaweed soup with my fellow Chinese teachers.

Hong Kong and Back

After the chaos, some order was nice.

I went to Hong Kong this past weekend and witnessed people waiting in line and people obeying traffic laws. I saw efficiency everywhere from the metro design to the layout of buildings and restaurants. There were even more people and more crowds in Hong Kong than in Shenzhen, but the rivers of crowds moved seamlessly. I felt less need to push. I was free to just flow with the crowd.

The crowds were also filled with foreigners. I didn’t go a single place where my friends and I were the only foreign faces in the crowd. This meant no leering, no staring, and no pointing. I threw my self-consciousness away and soaked up every moment of anonymity with joy. Finally, I thought, freedom from my foreign face.

These two freedoms from chaos and conspicuousness had their price, however. With order comes rules, and at times I found myself frustrated with their abundance. Why do I have to wait until the light says I can walk when there are no cars coming? Why can’t I eat or drink on the metro? I missed the freedom to bend the rules in chaotic Shenzhen. Even conspicuousness has its benefits in Shenzhen. Conspicuousness sometimes brings privilege and ease. Our foreign faces bring us attention in Shenzhen, but they also bring us help. If we look lost, people notice. They also help us easily find each other in a crowd. We were no longer special, and therefore on our own.

Being on our own wasn’t so bad though. Order in the form of the extensive metro made Hong Kong easy enough to navigate, and Western comforts like air-conditioning, Western-style toilets, Starbuck’s on every corner, spacious department stores with Western sizes, and shops with bagels, scones, and sandwiches made up for any losses.

Most of our frustration was due to our own bad planning. It took us half the day on Saturday to actually begin our activities. We came with way too many people—there were 10 of us at one point. So, the first half was spent getting through customs, exchanging our RMB for Hong Kong dollars, meeting up with one of our friends who had forgotten her passport, and finding a hostel to stay in for the night. Finally by about 2:00 we were ready to sight see. Most of us, including myself, were immediately distracted by the abundance of shopping and headed to H&M in our excitement at finding Western sizes. The crowds, long dressing room lines, and the price of the clothing deterred me from buying anything, but a few of my friends managed some purchases.

Another annoying factor in our planning was the fact that only one of us had a Hong Kong cell phone SIM card. So we had no way of contacting one another if we got separated. This turned out to be a problem in the huge H&M store. We had set up a time to meet with our non-shopping friends at a certain metro stop, but the combo of shopping, crowds and our lack of knowledge about the city delayed our reunion. So, another wasted hour later we finally regrouped and headed to dinner and the outdoor markets.

The outdoor markets include rows and rows of outdoor stalls adjacent to jam packed neon lit streets. The neon lights were so bright it looked like day and gave the crowded streets a strange electric quality. People looked like 3-D computer projections with the brightness setting too high. After sauntering along the neon-lit stalls for an hour or so, we still hadn’t had our fill of the lights and headed towards the bay to watch the lighting of the skyscrapers, which begins every night at 8pm. The buildings across the incredible skyline light up in unison while symphonic tunes played over a loudspeaker near a huge courtyard lined with Hollywood boulevard style stars in the sidewalk overlooking the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront.

After we had our fill of lights, music, the skyline, and pictures in front of a Bruce Lee statue, we headed back to our hostel to change our clothes for a night on the town. Our friend Serena, who has lived in Hong Kong before, took us to a street filled with bars which were overflowing with foreigners. She took us to a great bar with live music that we recognized (yay, no more techno!). So, we happily danced the night away.

The next morning we headed to a temple to “shake sticks,” as Serena calls it, and get our fortune’s told. You take a cup filled with flat bamboo sticks that are each numbered. Then you kneel on a mat in front of an altar, along with the fifty other people lined up in front of the altar, and think hard about a question you would like to ask the soothsayer while shaking the cup until a single stick falls out. The number on your stick is the key to your fortune. Once you have your number you return the sticks and head to one of the hundreds of booths with soothsayers sitting behind them.

We finally decided to stop at a booth with a cute old lady sitting behind it. We soon found out she had been fortune telling for 60 years. She pointed to an old photograph of her mother and grandmother sitting at a table on the street. They had also both been fortune tellers, and the bench sitting near her booth was the same one in the photograph that her mother and grandmother’s customers use to sit on while getting their fortune’s told. Serena served as our translator, and one by one we told the old lady our numbers and our questions.

My number: 78
My question: Will I/Should I work in China next year or will I/should I go home to America?
Her Interpretation: You are very stressed and worried. You need to relax, travel with your friends, and go with the flow (Some story about Confucius was told here but it was lost in translation).
Her Prediction: You will never make a lot of money, but you will be happy.

Great, I thought, she unfortunately confirmed what I already knew. I was secretly hoping she would give me an answer like you will stay in China and make a great fortune or you will go home next year and find happiness. Instead she had to be so realistic and inconclusive. Keep in mind that the other three girls who got their fortune’s read asked similar questions, and she didn’t tell them they were stressed or would never make much money. Oh well, at least she didn’t say I would be poor and unhappy. It could be worse.

With our fortunes read, we felt it was time to go back to Shenzhen—back to the chaos of China, back home. It’s funny to think that Shenzhen feels so much more like home than such a Westernized place like Hong Kong, but it is true. I’ve grown accustomed to the chaos, the inefficiency, the randomness that is Shenzhen. It gets on my nerves at times, but I am glad that I live in Shenzhen and not in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is too normal, too ordered, too much like home. I wanted something different, something to make me stronger, something that would force me to understand another culture, and Shenzhen provides those needs. Shenzhen is China. Hong Kong is something else.

Missing America

Some days there is only so much pushing, staring, honking, leering, and talking you can take before you secretly wish you were on a remote desert island as far away from China as possible. Yesterday was one of those days. I was tired of the crowds and the struggle. I was tired of pushing my way onto the bus only to be leered at by two men sitting a few chairs down from me. I was tired of racking my brain for the little Chinese I have learned and then shouting it over the blaring Chinese pop music just to order an 8 oz. cup of coffee at the little shop near my Chinese class. I was tired of the steady stream of non-pedestrian-yielding cars as I tried to cross the street on the crosswalk. I was tired of trying to find food that did not involve noodles, rice, KFC, or McDonald’s. I was tired of China.

Maybe it was the presidential election that made me suddenly long for America. Yesterday, I listened to the results on CNN’s website on my laptop in my office. Children were screaming as they ran past my office door, the teachers were chatting loudly in Chinese at the desk next to me, and the bad internet connection wouldn’t allow me to see the video. I pressed my earphones to my head and listened anyway trying to imagine myself in my living room with my parents watching the television in anticipation and later discussing the results. I even miss American television. I’m tired of the two English channels here that play brainwashing music while showing “splendid China” every ten minutes instead of commercials. So strangely enough, I even miss our commercials. At least some make me laugh. I’m tired of the one news show that comes on in the morning hosted by the same Chinese man whose voice I have come to despise.

I miss the diversity in America. I miss the choice. I miss walking down the cereal aisle in Wal-Mart. I miss arguing in the car with my family over whether we want Italian, Chinese, Mexican, BBQ, steaks or seafood for dinner. I miss seeing black people, Asian people, Hispanic people, and white people standing in line at the supermarket. I miss driving my car wherever I want, and I especially miss driving alone in my car on the open road with my music.

I also miss privacy. I miss public bathrooms with separate sinks for males and females. I miss restaurants with booths. I miss people who know that it’s polite not to stare or to ask you personal questions like how old are you, do you have a boyfriend, and how much do you weigh. I miss early morning runs without cars and thousands of people. I miss my house and its quiet neighborhood.

Even after being tired and missing all of these things, I tell myself not to despair. It is only the day. Tomorrow will be filled yet again with millions of Chinese people, but it may be different. Maybe tomorrow I will laugh at how ridiculous Chinese people are sometimes, or maybe I will suddenly understand why they do what they do. It’s just part of adjusting.

My Date

While sitting at my desk last Friday casually checking my email before I headed off to enjoy some rice, mystery soup, and oil-laden vegetables for lunch, two of my 6th grade boys poked their heads in the door and said “May we come in?” I was startled to attention by their use of English because most students who come to the door yell something phonetically like “bo gao,” which is something akin to “may I come in,” and they are seeking permission from the other Chinese teachers, not me. This time I realized they used English because they wanted to talk to me. I motioned them in, probably with a not so pleasant look of bewilderment upon my face, and prepared myself for…well, I had no idea.

Student 1 – skinny, glasses, adorably nerdy, quiet temperament but always tries to participate in class, beats himself up when he doesn’t know the answer
Student 2 – short, shouts answers in class, always moving, always trying to help, talkative

Student 1: Hello Teacher. Are you busy on Sunday?
Me: (I could say yes because I have to tutor, but they are trying so hard I can’t say it) No, Only at 2:30.
Student 1: Would you go hike in Lian Hua park with us on Sunday?
Me: (how adorable) Sure, what time?
Student 1: (consults with student 2 in Chinese) 10:00.
Me: Ok.
Student 1: Meet us at the, the, the front…
Me: gate
Student 1: yes, gate. The school’s front gate.
Me: Ok. What are your names?
Student 1: I am Thomas.
Student 2: I am Daniel.
Me: Ok, see you at 10:00 at the school gate. (Oh, what have I gotten myself into? But they are so cute and brave to come and ask me in English to go with them. There is no way I could have turned them down. Oh well, it should be an adventure.)

They walked away with huge smiles on their faces, and all I could do was chuckle and turn to my contact teacher next to me and shrug, “I guess I have a date on Sunday.” She laughed. Of course we didn’t have long to laugh because a minute later we were interrupted again by Thomas, Daniel, and a third boy following shyly behind them.

Thomas: Miss Lori, may he come too?
Me: Sure, what’s your name?
Third boy: Smart
Me: Ok…Smart (me laughing inside at the irony of “Smart” picking a not so smart English name), I will see you Sunday.

So, Sunday rolls around and I am greeted at the gate by not three, but four boys. Thomas is carrying a little canvas sack with music notes all over it, and Daniel is carrying a backpack loaded with waters on each side. Smart, well, he’s just there, and the fourth boy seems to be a good friend of his.

Thomas: Miss Lori, have you eaten breakfast? (This kid is more considerate than most men my age.)
Me: Yes, I have (probably should have lied to make him happy).
Thomas: Oh, well we have food if you are hungry (apparently inside the music note sack and the backpack).
Me: Ok, well maybe later in the park.

It soon becomes apparent that Thomas and Daniel are the leaders. Thomas has the best English and does his best to talk to me whenever possible. Daniel’s English is not too far off, but he is too busy trying to figure out the way to go and things for us to do to talk much. Smart and unknown fourth boy with no English name are just along for the ride. Our journey to the top of the park’s hill is a mix of the four boys jabbering away in Chinese and me wondering if they are talking about me, Thomas asking me questions and then translating for the others, Daniel making comments in English but mostly getting distracted by the other boys, and me every once in a while self-consciously wondering what all the Chinese people around me must be thinking when they see this random, adult, female foreigner walking around with four Chinese boys.

We finally make it to the top of the hill in the park, push our way through the crowds, and squeeze ourselves onto a shaded bench to munch on our potato chips and candy the boys brought for our snacks while admiring the forward marching statue of Deng Xiaoping. Daniel manages to find a woman to take a picture of all five of us near the steps of the statue. (Daniel is wearing the blue shirt. Smart is wearing the white shirt. Thomas is in the orange and white striped polo, and no name fourth boy is in the black shirt). Amazingly, she happened to be an English teacher at a very good middle school in the area, and deduced that I was a foreign teacher. I have to say that I was somewhat relieved to know that our quintuplet didn’t look so strange to her. I kept thinking how odd this situation would be in America. Students would never ask their teacher to hike with them in the park, and if they did, their parents would probably not approve of them asking; and as their teacher I probably wouldn’t think it would be a good idea to agree. There are just too many liabilities in America, but in China no one cares about liabilities. There are just too many people to worry that much.

Liability free, we then headed down the hill to the lake where we were greeted by more throngs of people, a choir singing somewhere in the crowd, and dozens of hungry coy fish being fed by the other half of the crowd not watching the singers. The boys decided feeding the fish would be fun, so they bought some overly priced crackers from a nearby stand. We fed the gluttonous fish to our hearts content, and then headed around the lake to hunt for small fish or snails to put in our empty water bottles (Daniel’s idea). I gaily followed along feeling like I should be in a Chinese version of Tom Sawyer. A few snails later, I mentioned that I needed to get back to prepare for my tutoring and Thomas dutifully rounded up the crew for the trek back to our neighborhood.

On the way back Daniel, unsurprisingly got distracted by a stand selling bubbles, which he bought, and which I thoroughly enjoyed blowing for every child that passed by us. The boys were all amazed at my bubble blowing skills especially when I taught them you could run or twirl in a circle with the mouthpiece and bubbles would come out in the dozens.

Bubbles aside, we made it back to our neighborhood relatively fast. We were almost home, when the boys insisted that they wanted to buy me a present. I refused. They insisted. So, we ended up at a little bookstore in my neighborhood. They went inside. I was forced to sit on a bench inside. Twenty minutes later they emerged with a wrapped box about the size of a coke can. They told me to wait until I got home to open it.

I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that my curiosity got the best of me, and I could not wait to get back to my apartment to open the present. What would four Chinese boys decide was an appropriate gift for their teacher? Once inside my apartment I quickly but carefully took off the wrapping paper, on which they had written their names. Under the paper was a box with hearts, and inside the box with hearts was a ceramic bear holding a heart and sitting in a chair with a heart shaped picture frame attached to the top. After my initial “what is this?” reaction, I couldn’t help but think how perfect it was. It is so Chinese in it’s combination of cuteness and tackiness. It is so teacher-ish , maybe kindergarten teacher-ish, but teacher-ish nonetheless with its bear and rocking chair. Finally it is so adorable knowing that four boys, who spent their day catching fish and snails, picked it out for me. I chuckled at the thought of the four boys standing inside the bookstore pondering the gift options and deciding on this heart-bear picture frame. What a conversation that must have been! The gift was the perfect finish to the awkward, but ultimately fun and enlightening Sunday morning.

My Proud Teacher Moment

In preparation for an inspection by the Public School Bureau officials this Monday (October 27th) students and teachers alike have been dusting, sweeping, cleaning, primping, pruning, washing, wiping, and tidying the entire school so that it is picture perfect for the inspectors. This included filling up the empty bulletin boards around the school. My contact teacher, Elli, decided, without my knowledge, to have her 5th grade students draw pictures over the weekend of what they learned in my class that week.

I had ambitiously tackled “taking care of the environment” as my lesson plan that week after I listened to several students list “rubbish” as “something you can find at the beach” during my previous lesson on different types of environments. Surprisingly the kids were really interested and, with a little translation help from Elli and a great recycling song by Jack Johnson, they got the more difficult concepts like pollution and recycling.

I’ve discovered pictures and live props are marvelous things with these younger kids. I may have shocked them a little with pictures of an oil covered duck and a deformed turtle with a plastic ring around its shell, but any time I can get a “waaaahhh” out of my students at least I know they are paying attention (n.b. waaahhh = wow). They also loved my homemade recycle can especially when I threw my iPod, my cell phone, and my camera into the recycle bucket to demonstrate the recycling of electronics. For some reason they are amazed every time I pull out some sort of electronic. It can’t be because they’ve never seen it before because electronics are everywhere here even if they are knock-offs. I think maybe it’s the fact that these things make them realize I am human even though I am a teacher and a foreigner. I had a similar experience when I showed them my suite case, a t-shirt, a pair of shorts, and my tennis shoes when I did a lesson on travel. Although my clothes received a laugh instead of a “waaahh”, and I don’t really care to know why for reasons of self-confidence.

So Elli shows up Monday afternoon with a stack of pictures the students had drawn about “taking care of the environment.” She told me that she thought I had taught a great lesson, and wanted to depict the lesson on the bulletin board for the government inspectors. I could care less about government inspectors, but I was so excited that she thought highly enough of my lesson to assign her students homework pertaining to it. I am not allowed to assign homework or give grades, so it was a real reward to see the students put so much effort into what they had learned.

I don’t know if they will retain this information or put it to good use, but at least they have seen the pictures and heard the words associated with taking care of the environment. In fact, in some ways I believe China is doing a better job than the United States in their efforts to protect the environment. Most of these changes are recent and due to intense world pressure, but the changes are visible. For example, you have to bring your own bag to the grocery store or pay extra for the plastic ones. You also have to bring your own toilet paper and napkins to public places and restaurants, and it is rare to find paper towels to dry you hands off after washing them in the bathroom. Another example is that almost all Chinese people turn off their air conditioner when they are not in their houses. One of my friends even got laughed at by her Chinese coworkers when she mentioned that she left hers running all the time. In the stairwells of most public buildings the lights do not turn on until it senses motion, and the escalators do not move until someone steps onto them. Finally, there are almost always recycle cans attached to the trash cans.

These are just a few small examples of the good things. The bad things, however, are just as noticeable if not more noticeable. There is trash everywhere! I can hardly go anywhere without seeing trash on the ground, and although there are recycle cans next to the trash cans, I think most Chinese people just throw whatever they want into both. Also, although the stores decrease the amount of plastic bags they use, the products they sell in the store are sometimes ridiculously wrapped as to use as much plastic as possible. For example, I bought a pack of hard candies near the checkout. I had to unwrap the outside layer of the tubular package, then unwrap a second layer of clear plastic, and then unwrap each candy individually. By the time I finished that pack of candy, I had enough plastic to make my own plastic bag. Another obvious pitfall to the environment is the number of cars everywhere. Every Chinese person does not own a car, thank God, but the number who do own a car is growing all the time. It’s still not as bad as the U.S., but there is potential for disaster.

I hope that disaster is avoided in the future by knowledgeable citizens who understand the impact of their actions on the environment, and I guess in a small way introducing ways to protect the environment to 600 primary school students is a start. Although, I can’t see the future, I can see that bulletin board and hope.

A Collage

In this blog I promised to reflect on the culture and the people here in China, and I don’t believe I’ve lived up to that promise yet. It’s so easy to get caught up in the day to day surface activities of my own life here because everything is still a novelty to me. Just this past week I tried something new almost everyday:

Monday: Badminton with some teachers at my school; Muay Thai (Thailand style boxing) with a friend
Tuesday: Tai Chi followed by a game of Ping Pong
Wednesday: Indian food in China
Thursday: Making dumplings (jiaozi) for the first time; Eating and making my dumplings with a Chinese family at their home
Friday: Nothing new except the new Chinese words I learned in class
Saturday: BBQ Chinese style with some newly made Chinese friends
Sunday: Going to the beach in Yantian

All of these activities offered a glimpse into Chinese culture, and I have not failed to notice. I have just failed to piece together the significance of these glimpses to me as a foreigner, an American, a fellow human being, an outsider trying to become an insider.

All I have now is a collage to offer of these random glimpses that I have caught as I’ve wandered and bumped along on this journey. Here are just a few from last week.

***

Mid-day heat on the way to Chinese class in downtown Louhu, I see a woman sitting on the ground, baby in her lap, picking out scraps of food from a tilted trashcan and eating the scraps piece by piece.

Late night, sitting in a bus with Autumn, my new English-speaking Chinese friend, after a day of wandering through “The People’s Park” and cooking BBQ with her friends: We talk about jobs. I tell her that I would choose family and friends over my job. She doesn’t understand. I tell her I would also choose a job I believed in over a job that just made me a lot of money. She doesn’t understand. I use a plastic surgeon, who makes his living telling people they are ugly, as an example of a job I could never do despite the good money. She doesn’t understand. She says she wishes she had my eyes and my nose. She doesn’t like her own.

Noon, I’m walking through the crowded streets of Dongmen—the discount shopping district in downtown Shenzhen. I clutch my bag close to my body as to avoid being easy prey for thieves. My friend Meaghan and I wait at the bus station for the number 103 bus to the beach. The 103 comes. It’s too crowded for us to squeeze onto. Luckily another 103 comes minutes later, and we even manage to grab a seat for the 40 minute ride. I look out the window at the crowds pushing their way into various shops. My God, I can’t believe this is a communist country with its hordes of shoppers and shops.

Later on the bus back from the beach, Meaghan and I stare out the window at more masses of people. Meaghan: “There are so many damn people here.” I agree. Then we hypothesize that much of Chinese culture is shaped by the fact that there are so many damn people. Meaghan: “Democracy could never work here. Can you imagine 1.3 billion people voting?” Me: My mind flashes to Orwell’s 1984 and the term “groupthink,” then to Mao, then to a comment made by my contact teacher Elli—“We don’t get to vote. We just watch what happens on our television.”

Wandering through “The People’s Park,” we come across a huge bust of Mao Zedong in a red and green pagoda. People are taking pictures by the statue. I think, why not, it seems like a very Chinese thing to do. I ask one of Autumn’s friends—Mabel, a soft-spoken Chinese girl with glasses—to get in the picture with me. First words out of her mouth: “I don’t like Mao.” Suddenly I feel ashamed. “I don’t like Mao either,” I say. We take the picture anyway.

Early morning, maybe 7am. I’m awoken by a jackhammer and a drill somewhere in the vicinity of my apartment. I fall back to sleep somehow. I’m startled out of a deep sleep again by the sound of a jet engine flying over my school. I have the unsteady notion that it’s a fighter jet and my stomach twinges with fear. Half awake, half dreaming I imagine a sky full of fighter jets like an old World War II movie clip. Suddenly I’m awake, and all I can hear is the drill.

1 pm: I’m lying on the rocky sand beach under a hazy afternoon sky. I glance around at the other people on the beach. I see a few men wearing bathing suits, but most people are fully clothed. Then my glance falls on a middle-aged Chinese man about 100 meters away sitting with his wife and child on some steps. In the next moment he has a camera to his eye pointing it directly at me and my friend Meaghan as we lie on our towels in our bikinis. I look away and pretend not to notice. Meaghan waves. I wish I had her bravado. Then again she’s been here for a year, and she’s learned to deal with the attention in her own way.

Around 10am, I walk into Starbucks for some coffee. It is filled with Westerners. I pretend not to notice them, and they pretend not to notice me. No matter how hard I pretend, I can still feel their presence. My coffee is ready. Real coffee is a nice break from the instant stuff. I walk out of Starbucks and back into China.

Standing in the Metro waiting for the train, I notice a middle-aged white man—balding, slight pudge, glasses, plaid shirt—with his arms around a Chinese woman. This sight is nothing new. I see it all the time—a white man, a Chinese woman. I think about how I never see a Chinese man with a white girl.

Speed walking through the metro station in my workout clothes trying to make it to Muay Thai class on time, a young Chinese guy walking towards me suddenly ducks down right in front of me and walks knees bent with his hand held over his head making fun of my height. No doubt my short workout shorts make me look even taller than normal, but really, was that necessary? I’m torn between bewilderment and anger. I suddenly wish I knew some curse words in Chinese. I don’t, so I ignore him and anxiously anticipate the two hour Muay Thai boxing session.

***

Just from last week, these images have stuck in my mind as possible pieces to a larger puzzle that I hope to put together down the road. For now, though, they are just images collaged in a haphazard manner on the wall of my mind.

A Breath of Fresh Air

Before coming here, I watched a few documentaries on the people and places in China, and reverberating in my mind since watching those films was a majestic scene of mountains with ribbons of rice terraces that made the mountains look like luxurious green and gold staircases to heaven. Of course, this image is all I could remember. I had no idea where this terraces actually existed, only that they did exist somewhere in China. Give me a needle and a haystack any day! So, a few weeks here and I had already pushed this image to the back of my mind figuring that it would be some time before I figured out where to find these rice terraced mountains.

So you can imagine my delight when, after talking to some newly made British friends during my holiday in Yangshuo, I discovered that these same long lost rice terraces were only a three hour ride by bus from Yangshuo! My friends and I immediately booked a trip with a local travel agency for a day trip to a town called LongJi in Longsheng County northwest of Yangshuo and its neighbor Guilin. I know little about it besides the brief brochure I grabbed at the Yangshuo travel agency and a few barely comprehensible comments made by our Chinese tour guide making her best effort to speak in English while we bumped along in our bus to LongJi.

I do know from these two sources that the terraces were constructed during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1386), and that LongJi is home to the Yao ethnic people. From my tour guide I think I learned that the Yao women are famous for having a Guinness Record for the village people with the longest hair. Apparently once the women reach a certain age they never cut their hair again. Single women must wear their hair up and wrapped around their head; married women can wear it down if they wish, but most don’t because it would be impractical; and pregnant women wear their hair in a special square-shaped bun placed just above their foreheads. The women are also famous for their communal hair washing in the river. The strangest thing I think I learned from my tour guide is that pinching a Yao person’s back is a no-no for both sexes because for men it means that you intend to marry them and for women it means that you must stay and work for the men. I am not taking responsibility for the accuracy of this information since I had a hard time understanding my tour guide even when she tried communicating simple things such as “because of holiday traffic the bus ride may take five hours instead of three” because it came out more like “maybe boose wide fi houws beca hole-i-day cas an twaffic.” I can’t complain because her English is way better than my Chinese, but that didn’t make communication any less difficult.

The bus ride to LongJi was one of misery because it did take us five hours instead of three because of the holiday traffic, but it was worth all five of those hours. LongJi was a breath of fresh air from the sometimes kitschy Yanshuo with its crowded streets full of tourist shops and restaurants, and it was especially a breath of fresh air from the concrete, tile, and glass industrial feel of Shenzhen. Like everywhere else in China during the National holiday, Longji had its fair share of crowds, tourists, and tourist vendors; but once you walk past all of this chaos at the bottom of the mountain and climb the hundreds of stairs it takes to get to the top, you emerge in a peaceful, simple setting painted by the natural brown of the wood-framed houses, the gray of the stone-lined walkways, the yellow of drying corn, and especially the autumn-gold of the rice terraces. Every once in a while a red lantern or a red banner splashes into the scene and reminds you that you are in China and that Chinese people actually live in this natural painting, and then suddenly you actually see a Yao person walking down the street or standing in the doorway and the brilliant blues, reds, pinks, and purples of their clothes provides a shocking but satisfying contrast.

A painting would not do the place justice, however. I loved the camp-fire smell of the burning bamboo as the locals slowly roasted the hollowed plant, which they would later use to cook their famous bamboo chicken. The smell drifted easily in the high altitude’s light air and constant breeze. The silence seemed to be a sound itself after the constant noise of the city. The noise that did exist consisted of a few chickens walking around under the wood houses, some small streams running down the hills, and the occasional passerby. Finally, the feeling that no painting or photograph can ever capture no matter how hard artists try, is the breathtaking vastness when looking out from the top of a mountain over the scenery below. I found myself breathing more deeply; then came the dizziness as I tried to absorb the scope of the view in front of me; and finally the feeling of clarity arrived, and I felt like I was a part of the scene.

For the first time I felt like I was finally in the China of my imagination—the China that has formed over the years in my mind as I read books, watched movies, and heard stories. I was finally able to link a picture of China that existed only in my head to the actual sights, sounds, and feelings of something real. It is not that Shenzhen does not feel like China. It does with its street vendors selling food that only Chinese people would eat, its huge neon billboards with Chinese characters, and the millions of Chinese people chatting in Mandarin around me. But LongJi gave me a sense of history that finally grounded me in the Chinese culture in a more intimate way than any Chinese modern city could ever hope to do.

I Left my Heart in Yangshuo

Before I left for Yangshuo for the week long National Day holiday, I was told by various veteran foreign teachers that it was beautiful but annoyingly touristy. I was told that I would be bombarded by foreigners from all over the world who would think they knew everything about China and the world just because they had spent a few weeks travelling in various locations. I was warned to avoid these people and to stick to the outskirts of the city where I could experience Yangshuo without the foreign contamination. I thought this was strange advice since I myself am a foreigner, as are my advisors, so I ignored it and booked a hostel in the heart of the city right across from the infamous West street—a place filled with tourist-trapping shops and Western style restaurants.

I had my doubts about my Yangshuo decision since I had experienced some hostility towards other foreigners the weekend before when a few of us gathered in Nanshan for a friend’s birthday. Nanshan, a district located about 30 minutes to the Northwest of my location in Futian, is home to Sea World, Subway, Papa Johns, TCBY, and loads of ex-pat families. It has a Disney World feel with its brick sidewalks, amusement parks, and themed Western restaurants from Mexican cafés to Irish pubs. When I arrived in Nanshan near Sea World and the location of the restaurant where we were celebrating my friend’s birthday, I was shocked by the number of foreign faces I saw everywhere. It seemed like every fifth person was a foreigner, and instead of feeling comfortable with the familiarity of other faces like my own, I felt a little hostile. I was so used to being the only foreigner around that I began to feel territorial. Their white faces meant that my white face was not as unique or as valuable. I was just normal again, and I’m somewhat ashamed to say I didn’t like it. Even if the stares do get annoying, they have become a part of my identity here, and losing that identity was an uncomfortable feeling.

My feeling of uncertainty, however, was soon outweighed by my feeling of excitement as I heard stories of Yangshuo and the surrounding area as one of the most famous areas in China celebrated for centuries by poets and painters. Apparently several U.S. presidents have visited the area, and the famous Li River (Li Jiang) and the unusual limestone peaked mountains are even pictured on the 20 Yuan bill. On the map Yangshuo looks relatively close to Shenzhen. It could still be considered South China when looking at the Chinese map as a whole. So I was a bit surprised when I found out it would be at least a ten hour bus ride. The size of China never ceases to shock me. I think all these years I have grown up with the subconscious impression that China and the United States are relatively the same size, but now I know just how skewed my world vision was by my American-centro thinking.

So, one eleven hour overnight sleeper-bus ride later (an experience worth writing about itself), three friends (Megan, Shedisha, Ranjana) and I arrived in Yangshuo at dawn just in time to watch the sunrise above the village and the limestone peaks. While trying to find our hostel, we wandered around the town for about forty-five minutes avoiding a Chinese man trying to sell us tour guide services, grabbing some steamed buns (mantou) from a street vendor, and taking in the sleepy town before its streets filled with tourists. We finally stumbled across our horribly named hostel—Yanshuo Senior Leader International Youth hostel—a name I and nobody else who stayed there could ever fully remember. It’s a charming place with an eclectic international feel—colorful throw pillows and couches, exposed brick and wood trim, and handmade signs and notes left by former lodgers.

By the time we arrived at the hostel it was about 7:45 am, so we dropped our suite cases off at the hostel, headed back onto the streets to purchase our return bus ticket from the ticket office that opened at 8am, and looked for a real breakfast. On our way to the bus station we phoned one of the CTLC program leaders who had brought another group to Yangshuo as well to see what he was doing for the day. He said he was taking the group mud-caving. Anything involving mud and a cave sounded like a splendid idea to us, so after purchasing our bus tickets we proceeded to the nearest shops to purchase mudding apparel. We succeeded in bargaining for some Teva sandals, which are probably fake and which we probably still got ripped off for despite our best bargaining efforts. Next we purchased the Chinese version of men’s bathing suits—something akin to volleyball shorts or really short biking shorts—to avoid ruining our own shorts. Tops were a bit harder to find so we risked our own swim suit tops for the occasion.

Bus tickets, tevas, and swim suit bottoms successfully bought, we made the exquisite discovery that they serve Western style breakfasts in Yangshuo. After weeks of eating noodles and rice porridge for breakfast, I’m not ashamed to say that it was wonderful having bacon, eggs, French toast, and real orange juice. I never realized until this trip just how much I miss Western food. I’ve never considered myself a picky eater, but, while Chinese food isn’t bad, it doesn’t have the same variety as Western food. Eating Western food that we cannot find in Shenzhen became one of our main activities in Yangshuo. While there I ate two burritos (Mexican food is by far the hardest type of food to find in China), a hamburger, a banana crepe, and apple crumble. We were not totally taken in by the Western food. We did sample the local beer fish, which is one of the most famous dishes in the region. Although we did pass on the stir-fried snake, fried rat, and dog stew, which were the most expensive dishes on the menu.

Our tummies satisfied by our Western breakfast, we purchased mud-caving tickets from a local tourist agency called Fairyland Travel with the help of an excellent, English-speaking, Chinese tour guide whose English name is Jack and whose adorable dimple-cheeked daughter shyly smiled at us while we made our transaction. I won’t go into the details of our mudding excursion except to say that if you have never hiked through a cave to bathe in a huge puddle of mud the consistency of melted chocolate, you haven’t lived.

Mud-caving was one of three travel agency planned excursions that we ventured—the other two being a white-water drift and a trip to the Longji rice terraces. When I say travel agency, I don’t want to give the impression that we found some professional agency to help us with planning. Travel agencies in Yangshuo are like Starbucks in New York, they are on every corner and every street, and they are all offering different versions of the same thing. The difference is their prices vary depending on how much they think they can rip you off without you protesting, and the equality of experience is not guaranteed. We planned this trip Chinese style meaning we had no plan and decided moment by moment what we wanted to do next. So, we left our fate in the hands of these travel agencies and the advice of those we met along the way.

One example of this advice came the first night after our mud-caving adventure while we were at a little bar called The Blue Lotus. We met up with a couple of friends from the other CTLC group in Yangshuo. By coincidence, one of our friends, who is British, bumped into another British guy who actually lives in his town back home and works for his mother, or mum as the Brits say. So we all got to talking and soon found out that they are teachers as well but in Guangzhou. They told us about an excursion they were going on to the Longji Rice Terraces in a couple of days and the travel agency where they booked the trip. The next day we booked the trip with their agency, and two days later we were on a bus with our new British friends to the terraces and my favorite excursion of the trip.

Another example came when we were getting some tea at a little restaurant that same night just before we headed to the bar. We started talking to our waitress, a beautiful Chinese girl named Sunny, who spoke decent English, and we found out that she had just moved there to practice her English and take classes at the University. Thirty minutes later we had Sunny’s cell phone number, and she had ours so we could contact each other once she got off work. True to her word Sunny called us and we met her and some of her friends at a bar where she knew the owners and could get us free drinks. A surprise that shouldn’t have been a surprise considering it was Yangshuo, was that one of Sunny’s good friends was a French girl named Lindsey who also lives in Yangshuo. Lindsey was incredibly nice and danced the night away with us. Our British friends joined us again later that night completing our international party.

After that first night, I no longer feared the foreigner contamination. I embraced it with open arms. It was amazing being in one town in China and having so many nationalities converging to enjoy the same sights and sounds of Yangshuo. Yes, Yangshuo may now be more like an international backpackers’ paradise rather than a small Chinese village, but there is something surprisingly beneficial about this new identity. I never experienced the old Yangshuo before it was overrun by thousands of tourists, Western restaurants, backpackers, and street vendors, and I’ll admit that it was extremely frustrating sometimes trying to squeeze my way down West street that was packed shoulder to shoulder with other National holiday travelers. However, there was also something comforting seeing people from all over the world struggling down the same streets in the same pursuits of simple pleasures like eating, drinking, and shopping.

We all were there to see Yangshuo, but we were all there to see each other as well. I can’t count the number of times Chinese tourists asked to take pictures of us, or better yet would randomly photograph us or start video taping us. One girl with me was Indian-American and another girl with me as Jamaican-American, and they were an especially hot commodity in Yangshuo. Chinese tourists were constantly throwing their babies at them to hold and take pictures with, and grown Chinese men would stare and start photographing them as soon as we passed by them. My other white friend and I were not as interesting since there were numerous other Europeans and Americans there, but many Chinese liked taking pictures with all four of us since we represented several ethnicities.

Our differences also helped us to make friends. We returned to the Blue Lotus one night for dinner once we discovered they also served burritos, and while eating dinner a group of Chinese people sat down beside us. After we ordered our food the waitress told us that the owner wanted to buy us free beer. This offer of free beer had already happened to us once already when we were at one of the dance clubs on the first night. We had no idea who the beer was from, but we assumed the owner because as soon as we arrived and started dancing loads of other Chinese people started coming in and dancing with us. So, again, we weren’t sure why, but we accepted the free beer as a means of introduction. We quickly realized the owner was one of the men sitting next to us in the Chinese party. Soon, as he poured us our beers, we were all talking in the little broken Chinese we knew and the little broken English they knew. We managed to introduce ourselves and tell them that we are teachers in Shenzhen. They managed to get across that the three of them besides the owner were just visiting Yangshuo. A few minutes later a pregnant woman arrived who knew the group sitting next to us, and she spoke English extremely well. We found out that she actually lives in Yangshuo and she studied English in the University. She translated for a bit, and before long we were all playing a popular Chinese game found at almost every bar similar to the card game bullshit but with cups and dice.

I love the fact that in Yangshuo your differences make you more appealing and actually bring people together instead of pulling them apart. There are very few times and places that you can find so many different nationalities sitting at the same table laughing and enjoying each others company. Yangshuo is the ideal microcosmic world without the politics, the wars, and the focus on cultural differences. If we all could look at the world like the people in Yangshuo look at themselves, we would see that we are all equally visitors and hosts who just need to buy each other a beer once in a while.