Lindsay and I were asked to be in a documentary about the famous writer Pearl S. Buck. We spent 4 days on nearby beautiful Lushan Mountain filming it with a rag-tag, though highly qualified, filming crew. We didn't have any speaking roles, as the documentary will be in Chinese, but it will feature scenes of Lindsay and I walking around as Pearl and John, her first husband. Our myriad and deep acting abilities can be seen in breathtaking scenes such as "Pearl and John walk down a road", "Pearl and John shake hands", and the timeless classic "Pearl and John sit on a rock." Let me tell you, even though we don't have any lines in 'la filme,' both of us were incredible. If you could win an Emmy for "Best Actor in a Chinese TV Documentary under $300", Lindsay and I would definitely be in the running. From me picking golden wildflowers for her, to us pointing at a distant and curious mountain, to me stroking her hair ("USE TWO HAND TOUCH!" our director instructed me in this scene, obviously trying to conjure stylistic allusions to other great directors like Wes Anderson and the late Kubrick). our "silent but deadly" acting was not only poignant, but revolutionary. Honestly, I see myself as a later Johnny Depp, or possibly a young Marlon Brando, maybe even a Jimmy Stewart of the new generation. Lindsay also had a lot of solo scenes, performing vast and heartfelt silent monologues that some critics have said touch "not only the heart, but also the innards". In my opinion, her best scenes (also to be nominated for Emmys) were "Pearl types on a typewriter", "Pearl reads a book", and who could forget the tear-jerking "Pearl walks up steps."

Also, while on Lushan, another film crew spotted us foreignors working, and recruited me to be in another documentary. This time I played a man named John Little. From what I understand of John Little, he was kind of a jerk and a sleazeball. He bought up pretty much all of Lushan Mountain for peanuts, tried to exploit and missionize the locals, and then rented off the property to Europeans at a huge profit. Still, that film crew seemed to think of him as some sort of business hero. In any case, I got to play this winner. It really allowed me flex my acting range with such gripping scenes as "John signs paper" and "John points at map." Even better, I got to sport a huge fake moustache! Once again, my acting skills were impeccable-- imagine a cross between Robert DeNiro's breakthrough performance in Taxi Driver and Leonardo DiCaprio's in What's Eating Gilbert Grape?.

Pretty much, Lindsay and I will be rich and famous from now on, so we probably won't be able to talk to all of you former friends and money-grubbing relatives anymore. We'll be much too busy with important famous-people things now that we're going to be on TV. After all, we've already been paid a whopping 25 US dollars for our four days of labor. Great Wally-wood here we come! You can catch our work next month on CCTV4, China's international channel, if you have satellite. Otherwise, I'll upload the video as soon as I get it.

Until then, make sure to check out the Photo Gallery which has more photos of the whole experience. I even took the time to photoshop them to fix the color and lighting and all that! You can find the recent ones here.

Here's a less sarcastic recount of the event that I sent out in a mass email that also has a recount of the hellish train trip we went through in order to begin our lustrous acting careers. If you're on the mass e-mail list, here's your second chance to print this out so you can later say, "I knew Chris and Lindsay when they were just starting out! Now look how rich and famous and gorgeous they are!" Also, if you want to be added to the mass email list, just drop me an email and I'll add you. I feel bad just adding people as it might be kind of a nuisance.

Anyway, here's the last email (with some editing):

After picking Lindsay up last Thursday, we had to leave Guangzhou the next day to make it in time for the shooting of our premiere television roles. Since I knew Lindsay would be super tired, I decided that we should ride in luxury and I splurged on buying us tickets in the "soft sleeper"-- an equivalent to first class on a train. Lindsay's flight had been ok, and I had made my way to Guangzhou with little hassle, and our train ride back to JiuJiang started off great. However, this run of good luck was not to last.

As I said in my last email, we were trying to make it home to JiuJiang by Saturday, so that we could go and be in a television program. When our train broke down early in the morning on Saturday, we began to worry. We were trapped in the middle of nowhere, albeit in a nice air conditioned sleeping car, for what ended up being around 5 hours. As our scheduled arrival time in JiuJiang-- 11 am-- passed, we started to get a bit antsy and worried that we'd miss our great oppurtunity. Finally the train started running at around 1 pm, though already 2 hours past when we said we'd be there. We'd be late, but at least things were going smoothly again.

It was then that the air conditioner cut off. It had been a little bit cool in our private little car, so we thought that they were just regulating the temperature-- but over the course of about an hour, the temperature in the train climbed around 15 degrees to 90 (according to lindsay's clock-thermometer). The problem with the sleeping cars is that since they are normally air conditioned, the windows are impossible to open in case the air conditioner decides to stop. The temperature in the train car was exactly like a car parked in the summer with all the windows shut. After an hour and a half, when the temperature passed 104, we were covered in sweat and almost passing out from the stagnant heat. Lindsay did eventually fall asleep almost 6 hours later (possibly from the extreme heat) right as the air conditioning came back on. But by then it was already night outside and we were already drenched with sweat. We had now thoroughly missed our meeting and had blazing hot salt rubbed in as well.

As Lindsay went to sleep, I went out of our little private car towards the dining car. Upon opening our car's door, a plume of smoke wafted in, choking and asphyxiating me. The dining car was ON FIRE. I still don't know what it was that was on fire, but something synthetic and oily in the kitchen. It smelled terrible. Even now, I have a gasping cough, am sneezing, and my lungs feel like they're stuffed with embers. I'm sick as a dog, and I'm convinced that it was from being hit full blast with that smoke almost 4 days ago.

All in all, this train ride from Hell lasted 30 full hours. It was a trip that was supposed to have taken only 15. If we would've bought the cheapest seats, it wouldn't have been so bad, because we could've at least opened the windows. We'd have missed our meeting, but at least we wouldn't have had headstrokes and asphyxiation.

Anyway, we arrived too late on Saturday-- (about 1 am Sunday morning) to have any chance to call the CCTV guys about the documentary, and we were really worried that we had missed the oppurtunity. But then, 5 hours later (after about 4 hours of sleep) our phone rang, and they did, indeed, still want us to do it!

They picked us up at our home, drove us up there, bought us food, and put us in a nice hotel-- all paid for of course! The shooting ended up lasting about four days (we got home today). I played Pearl Buck's first husband, John Lossing Buck, and was dressed in a hideously small suit. Lindsay, of course got to play the lead role of Pearl as a young lady in her 20s. She too had a terrible costume, complete with modern J. Crew sandals. The costuming was pretty bad, and from the filming, it seemed like the director was trying to turn it into a cheezy love story between Pearl and her jerk of a first husband. After reading the intro and first chapter of her biography, her life was nothing close to a "love story," especially with John . Nevertheless it was fun.

There were plenty of experiences along the way. Of course, our filming and our costumes attracted many tourists (Lushan was full of tourists at the time, anyway) who stood around and gawked, and some of the courageous ones took pictures with us (like one would do with Mickey at Disney World). The most annoying group of tourists was this one group of Britons and Americans who gawked and made fun of us. Lindsay thought they assumed we were religious fanatics because of our costumes, but then our camera crew came up, and we left, to their bewilderment. Whatever or whoever they thought we were, they were unseemly, hyperactive, and rude.

Anyway, my favorite part of the trip was getting to meet China's premiere Pearl S. Buck scholar, Liu Haiping. When we met him, we mentioned that we were very interested in Pearl S. Buck and were reading her biography. "Oh, are you reading A Cultural Biography of Pearl S. Buck by Peter Cann?" Dr. Liu asked.
Why, yes! We were!
"Oh, that's a wonderful book. I just translated it into Chinese, and Peter Cann is a good friend of mine."
We were floored. Over the past few days, we had become enthralled with this book and the well spoken biographer. To meet a man so close to the author was amazing (we even found his name listed high in the acknowledgements!) With further conversation, I was enchanted by Dr. Liu. Not only is he one of the smartest and most well spoken people I've ever met, but he has degrees from Nanjing University, has post-doc work at Harvard, and has studied/taught at numerous others. He's been, and taught, just about everywhere in the world and he had a great sense of humor. He was on Lushan doing the interview for the documentary- "the expert". He might just be one of the greatest , most brilliant people I've ever met in my life, and I hate that I only got to spend a couple days talking with him.

Anyway, when I was finished shooting for the Pearl S. Buck documentary, another film crew who happened to be on Lushan at the same time came up and asked me to be in their documentary as well. This time, I played a missionary named John Little (Li dali is his chinese name) who ended up buying most of Lushan and renting it out at high prices in a business venture. He seemed like a total jerk to me, but the Chinese filmmakers seemed to like him because he was business-minded and helped develop the place. I just thought it was exploitive. In any case, in that film, I had to wear a big fake moustache and sign papers, and then in another segment sans moustache pointing at a map. All in all, it should be pretty hilarious.

Well, the documentaries should be edited and ready to air in about a month. You can watch it if you have access to CCTV 4, China's international channel. There will be no English (just Mandarin talking over our acting), and we won't even be listed in the credits, but we should be plain as day in both documentaries, being tired looking white people in ill-fitting costumes. After I receive my DVDs, I'll make a digital copy of it them you can download off my website.

Anyway, it's midnight here, and I'm pooped after a long long long weekend of traipsing around wearing uncomfortable clothes and filming all day long. Not to mention, I'm still sick as a dog from the train. I'm off to get some much needed rest! Sorry for the long email, I thought some of you might like an update on your WORLD famous friend/relative over here in China!

Over the past few weeks, I think I've had some pretty interesting lesson plans. The past two weeks we've talked about the history of western music. We began in 1905 with Scot Joplin and ragtime and worked all the way up to today. The main idea of the lesson was that music in the west doesn't just come sporadically, but is linked to the types of music that came before it. For example, rock and roll came from the blues and R&B music, which came from gospel, jazz and folk, which ultimately came from ragtime, etc. etc.. Over two weeks we talked about around 20 different genres of music everywhere from jazz to hip hop to punk to disco. We listened to about 35 songs from different genres, and I think I did a pretty good job of linking the types of music to one another. A few of my Chinese friends who are interested in American culture came and sat in on the class as well as Max (another Chinese English teacher). They both really enjoyed the lesson and liked hearing all the different types of music.

However, for the most part, the students in the class weren't that interested. Out of almost 40 songs and 20 totally different genres, I swear to God the only thing they liked was Pop music from the 90s. Out of all these types of music, Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys was the only thing they wanted to hear more of. That's because that's the only music that comes over here--kiddie pop. Now I didn't like everything I played for them (disco, pop, and heavy metal, especially), but I at least could listen to it with an open mind and in the context of where the music was coming from. Yeah, yeah... different culture and all, I know, but it's really frustrating that the only music that translates over to China and gets listened to regularly is some of the most shallow, simplistic, meaningless music throughout the entire history of music. Hearing 60 Chinese kids sing along to "Hit me baby one more time!" is really creepy and disheartening.

There's a real "group think" mentality with music here. "THIS is what is played on the radio, so this is good music. I have not heard this on the radio, so I do not like it." In fact a few students, when asked what they didn't like the other non-90s-pop music, even gave that reason: "It's not on the radio." Now this happens in America too, I know, but this group think musical taste seems much stronger here, and you see it not only in music but in other areas of the society as well. One of the hardest things to do is to get my students to express their own opinions about things. They can make statements of fact with little problem: "Jazz was popular in the 1920s." But getting them to think critically and assess information is like pulling teeth.

"What music did you like?"
"I don't know."
"Surely you liked something you heard? What music do you want to hear more of?"
(looks at friends... thinks for a second.) "Pop music!"
"Ok... good. What did you like about the pop music you heard?"
"...It is on the radio?" [this is a real conversation from class]

This is the difference between my friends here and the vast majority of the other students. They can engage critically with information they're presented with. For example, Max's favorite music was pop music, too, because he was more familiar with it, but he also said he liked it because it was fun, you could dance to it, and it was generally happy. He also could hear the similarities between pop music and other types of music like disco and even jazz that he really enjoyed. Though he was not familiar with the music he could evaluate each genre in terms of what he liked about it and what he did not like. Most students just could not do this, despite being able to speak very well about facts. A few of the students in each class could think independently this way and could evaluate the music and what they liked outside of "this is on the radio, so it's good music" and I think they really got a lot out of the lesson. But the vast majority were unable to do this and just bided their time until I played something they had heard on the radio. I didn't expect them to like everything, but they were merely ambivalent towards everything but what the radio had told them was acceptable music.

This might be different at better schools and in bigger cities, but this is constantly one of the biggest frustrations with my jobs-- trying to get students to express an opinion or hold a viewpoint about anything.

At the end of class last week, I gave them a very simple homework assignment. Write what music you liked and what music you did not like and tell me why and why not. It was four sentences at the very most, but only 8 students out of 60 something today turned in the assignment completed. Four more turned in a sheet of paper that just said "I don't know."

Perhaps my students later in the week will have done better with this assignment, but today was just terrible. First was the homework assignment that no one did. Then I gave a brief vocabulary quiz that I had told them about a hundred times last week. Despite my telling them, repeatedly, before the quiz that there would be NO TALKING and no cheating, the very first thing they started doing when the quiz started was talk and cheat. The crappy thing is, I can't really do anything about it. Almost every person in the class is cheating somehow, no matter what I do. I have no idea how to fix this. I have to give them grades somehow, but it's not fair to the students who did study and really tried hard, and didn't cheat, to be graded the same as the kids who were getting help all through the test. Even taking up the quizes was nearly impossible! No matter how many times I told them to turn in their tests, they wouldn't. They kept copying answers from friends and working on the quizes. Even though I told them that if they didn't turn it in right then, then they couldn't turn it in at all, I still had students bringing in obviously plagiarized copies of the quiz in the middle of my lecture and even at the end of class. If it's like last semester, I'll even have people bringing me copies of their quizes next week. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! This can be so frustrating! I'm seriously considering moving to a better school. About maybe 2% of every class actually cares about learning English and really tries. Everyone else is there to be entertained by the foreignor or to talk to their friends. If I ask them to do any work or anything scholarly, most students roll their eyes, sigh loudly, and generally act like I just took a shit on their desk. And what's even worse is the maybe 6 to 10 students in every class that actually want to be there have to be hindered by the people who really don't care at all. The good students aren't necessarily the best speakers, but they're trying hard and I feel so horrible for wasting their time by having to deal with the fifty other miscreants in the class.

I know this is just a long tirade, but I am so frustrated right now with student apathy (why do they even come to class?!?!); bad, childlike behavior; cheating; and just teaching in general. Trying to teach people who don't want to learn is the most futile act on Earth, I think, and unfortunately part of my daily life.

Anyway on a better note, during the second part of class today, I lectured about the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s. The students who are trying to listen and learn (a lot of students come in and go to sleep before the lecture even starts) are really interested in this and are really inspired by Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King (the two people I focus on in the lecture). I play a recording of MLK giving his "I have a dream" speech and then we talk about what it means and the words he used. They love it! However, this can be a difficult class for me because it's hard to make the distinction that there is still racism in America but it is not as awful as it was during the Jim Crow era. It's hard to find a middle ground with this without them thinking that America is just this terribly racist place or that we have solved the problem of racism altogether. One student asked me during the lecture when I was showing pictures of demonstrations and segregation, "Do you hate black people too?" In the end, though, I think they finally got a realistic picture of racism in America, that most people, black or white, are deeply offended by racism and are concerned about fixing the problem. Most importantly, I think they understood my point about the Civil Rights Movement: that individuals can act directly to fix injustice in a corrupt system. It's one of those classes where I can get the students to cry--twice in this class! The first because of Rosa Park's bravery and demand of respect, the second after they find out that MLK was murdered after having affected so many great changes in America.

Anyway, maybe today's class was just one of the "bad ones" I get sometimes. Perhaps tomorrow will go much better. This is usually what happens. One class is terrible, the next is wonderful. I really hope this is the case. If not, by the end of the week I'm going to be ready to explode if I keep having to deal with this! I do have good students who try to speak and listen and try to articulate their opinions, it's always just the minority of students.

Oh my God! I didn't think that I'd ever read these words printed in an actual, non-fiction, news source. ...Form the NYtimes:

At first I thought I had gone crazy, was reading the onion, or perhaps drunk. Alack! No. It's a real quote! Just not really how it sounds, of course--he's just trying to spin some good PR and provide some "solid management" to yet another one of his acquired failing companies: Iraq (a subsidiary of Halliburton and Arbusto). Now that he's "pre-emptively" invaded a sovereign country, murdered thousands of innocents (American and Iraqi), and screwed international relations between us and every other counrty on Earth (including our allies)-- now it's time for Patience, Diplomacy, Negotiation and Compromise! Maybe he was just being funny and intentionally ironic. Ha! Good one, Bush!

Let's just watch all the P.D.N.C. (as I like to call it) that he gives to Iran in the coming year until it becomes fully Incorporated. Maybe we'll have another "Shock and Diplomacy" or a new "Operation Compromise."

Takin' it back to '04:

Ok. I admit it-- I added that last bit myself... but I'm sure that's what he meant!

See this and the other original SeXXXy W Girls pics here! Spicy HoTT!

Classes started this week after our month long break for spring festival. My new schedule has me teaching every day starting at 8 am. I haven't woken up this early every day since I was in public school. As you can imagine, I was not very happy. However, I am adjusting really quickly, and am even starting to enjoy waking up with the sun. Plus, I'm done working every day by noon, which is really nice. Nevertheless, I'd still rather work all afternoon and sleep all morning. Old habits are hard to break.

This semester, I've added a lot more structure to my classes, and even already have them all planned out. This week, after going through the rules of the classroom and my little pep talk about relaxing and having confidence, I told the students that we would be learning English by studying Western culture and history. I gave them some examples of the classes we'll having: history of American music, from folk to hip hop; civil rights; the 1960s; politics and government; American sports- baseball and football (they don't have those here at all); and food. The music class should be a ton of fun for both me and the kids. We'll get to listen to a lot of types of music (arranged chronologically and by genre) which they should really get into; they really love listening to the tunes. The civil rights should also be "fun". It's one of those classes where I know I can get 'em to pay attention by telling dramatic stories about civil rights leaders. I foresee lots o' tears. Plus, they have virtually no idea what the civil rights movement was, and even refer to black people as "negroes" sometimes--they just don't know better. I decided to teach about American government and politics because it's something I'm interested in and I need to bone up on my history. They really got into learning about Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson last semester, so I'll teach along those lines, giving histories of famous presidents and politicians. The sports class is purely for them, I really hate both football and baseball; but these kids love sports. I will teach them how to play baseball and football (actually, I'm not too sure myself about football) and we'll watch some of these sports on the computers. In the food lesson, I'll get to use my anthropology training (oh my God, my degree is useful!) to explain how food has different cultural meanings around the world. We'll compare different standards of what is acceptable as food (using a lesson from my very first cultural anthropology text book!). We'll talk about what function these standards serve and why different people form their standards of acceptable food the way they do.

Another new thing this semester that I should have been doing since day one is that each week I'll give a vocabulary and grammar lesson. The grammar lessons will be short and relatively easy. This week we learned parts of speech-- nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions. They did pretty well with this, and knew most of it already. The main, confusing "core" of the lesson was about prepositional phrases and how they behave like either nouns, adjectives or adverbs. It took them a while to really get it, but in each class there was one of those good feeling "teaching moments" when you can actually see them start to understand. Also, each week we'll learn 5 new vocabulary words. Here's the kicker, I teach three of the words (usually words about the lecture we're having), and two students will teach the other two words to the class. Most students seem to dread this part of the class, but I think it should be fun and a good way for me to learn some Chinese vocabulary since they'll be translating the words for the other students. This term, I've also got an actual grading plan for the students and can explain exactly what they'll be graded on. I didn't have that last semester and giving grades was really difficult (and highly subjective). This semester will be much better and much more fair to the kids.

After my first week of classes, I'm feeling pretty good about this semester, even if allmy classes are at ridiculous o'clock in the morning.

In the News...
I wasn't feeling very good this afternoon, however, when I got back to my apartment and checked the news. First, there was this article in the nytimes about the Christian/Muslim rampages going on in Nigeria:

Bodies Burned in Open After Nigeria Riots Kill 146

After reading about Nigeria, I moved on to this article about the complete political breakdown in Iraq and continuing violence, counter violence, counter-counter violence and so on there between the Sunnis and the Shiites. All I have to say about that is "Mission Accomplished!" ... right?

So much violence in the news recently. It's really disturbing. After perusing the NYtimes, I decided to bop on over to China Daily to see what news they were reporting. Let me tell you, the good folks at "China's largest English language newspaper" are into some hard hitting reporting. You thought the Nigeria and Iraq articles from NYtimes were hardcore, just check out the dirt the Chinese press can dig up. What a scoop!

Now that's what I call journalism. Perhaps the NYtimes should take a lesson from China's leading English language newspaper.

Actually, maybe they really could. Though often not as informative, or really "news," like NYtimes, at least after reading China Daily I don't feel like jumping out the window. In fact there's something kind of endearing about China "no free press" Daily. Yeah! Spitting is really gross, and people here do it all the time and everywhere too--inside, outside, in Lindsay's shoe (true story). I'm glad someone's saying something about it! It is "mad"! And that Premiere Wen... He's just a good ol' boy at heart. He knows what he likes and he sticks with it. I can identify with that. I wore the same pair of flip flops every day for like four years, rain or shine. Also, I had a voodoo doll once. I remember when that "horrifying" trend hit America when I was a kid! Not to mention the "Wall of love" which is really cute no matter how mixed up the image of a wall as a symbol of love is!

You see! Reading the news doesn't have to be frightening and disgusting and violent like the crap those guys over at NYtimes are trying to push! Who needs in-depth coverage of politics or foreign affairs. Investigative journalism just stirs the waters, right? Maybe the US media should just take a cue from the Chinese media and only report nice, safe, inoffensive, inconsequential fluff.

Oh. Wait.

From CNN.com

Here's a cheezy animated .gif I made so you can experience your very own perpetual Chinese New Year. Just like the fireworks in China around the festival, it just doesn't stop. I took these photos from the roof of our hotel. The awesome size and noise can't really be shown in the tiny little animation. One day, someone will invent some great device--a picture showing actual "motion" and emiting the accompanying sound; a device that can "record" events as they really happen--but until then, I guess I'll just have to animate digital pics by hand.

This is probably all over the news in the states, or it should be. When I first saw it on nytimes.com, I thought I was reading The Onion. No, apparently this is true-
Cheney shoots fellow hunter in mishap on a Texas ranch.

Boy, I bet his face is red! The vice president's, that is, with embarassment (not the lawyer, whose face would be red from a gun shot wound given by the Vice President). Perhaps Cheney-Bot's visual input sensors are starting to fail. It has needed a tune-up for awhile, and you know how these malfunctions always happen at the least oppurtune moment. You snap a fan belt pulling onto the interstate; blow a tire when you really need to be somewhere quickly; your Cheney-Bot's visual input sensors go on the fritz when he goes on a hunting trip with an elderly lawyer. Perhaps this will help the anti-gun control nuts out a bit. Remember, guns don't kill people, shotgun wielding vice-presidents almost do.

In other news, Yahoo, Cisco, Microsoft, and Google are meeting with Congress this week to discuss their roles in China. Yahoo and Google and Microsoft are all censoring search results and their various blogs over here. Yahoo has even helped lead the CCP to some arrests for people speaking against the government. Cisco on the other hand spends its time devising how to censor information on a macro-level, using their servers and routers to develop the great firewall of China. You can't see it from outer space, but in China, I'm slammed against it with about 1/4 of all websites I try to visit. Let's read! From nytimes.com - Yahoo Grapples with Online Rights

What bugs me the most is how they cast their decision as an inevitable or victimizing one-- "even when it is forced to violate those beliefs by laws in China." Bullshit. I'm sorry, but, bullshit. Yahoo, google and Microsoft all chose to open their own Chinese domains. All of their services were available here before this, but as a tactical decision to more accurately target an Asian audience with their advertisements, they decided to open their very own .cn domain. They were not forced to develop these domains by "Chinese law." It's an attempt to reach whatever marketing demographic they can with "relevant advertising" even if it means cutting them off from actual information.

From nytimes.com - So long, Dalai Lama: Google adapts to China

From China Daily - Germany's gay zoo penguins still fending off female advances

From The Age - Rampant manhole theft in China

Spring Festival is the ultimate holiday here in China, equal or greater in scope than Christmas (Hanukah, Kwaanza...) in the West. In fact Christmas, so salient in both the Western year and in Western culture, is only selectively celebrated as a trendy novelty mostly used by department stores to sell products (actually this is pretty similar to the West, I suppose). The big holiday here comes between one and two months later during the Spring Festival or Chinese New Year, which officially occurs on the first new moon and ends fifteen days later on the full moon. However over the course of the month surrounding this festival, most of China changes dramatically. Seemingly every person in China uses this time to return to their laojia (hometown) to spend time with their family. Local restaurants and shops close and travel becomes nearly impossible. On any given day in China, there are at least 40 million people traveling by train (a statistic I've seen in a few places, but still hard to imagine). During the Festival, this number can be doubled as all trains are completely filled and some over-filled with people. Carrie found this article about the correlation between adult diaper sales and Spring Festival travel in China.

Despite this, or possibly not fully believing the horror stories of travel in Spring Festival China, Lindsay and I booked a "Sleeper Bus" to carry us to Shanghai. The sleeper bus is by far the best way I have ever traveled. A by-product of frequent long distance travel in China and little interest in expensive flying, the large sleeper bus is filled with a three rows of thin beds equipped with blankets pillows, reading lights, and most importantly a semblance of privacy by the way the beds staggered. In a window-bed, you feel like you are flying, relaxed over the road that whips by. It was quiet, clean, private, and quick taking only ten hours to reach Shanghai. Compared to our hellish trip back, the sleeping bus felt like Hermes himself were whisking you "as fleet as thought" to your destination on his winged feet. (couldn't come up with a better metaphor for that one, and I'm reading Hamilton's Mythology right now)

Our arrival in Shanghai was all excitement. Most people spoke English (except the ones you really needed to communicate with, we later discovered), menus were all multi-lingual, there were Mexican, Italian, and Middle Eastern restaurants in heavy supply not to mention English bookstores, movie theatres, and a plethora of Western products (cheese and booze, especially). During the first few days, I reacted like most local inner China residents-- at the sight of a foreigner, I couldn't help but gawk; "what is she doing here? How weird." Additionally, not being stared at constantly by everyone around me felt like I was given a sort of public freedom that I hadn't felt in months. We saw the usual Shanghai sites: The Bund, the Pearl Tower, the awesome Shanghai Aquarium (pics). We did the tourist thing during the day and at meals discussed how cool and easy it would be to move to Shanghai to teach. A sentiment we later changed after we felt trapped by Shanghai's inescapable urban-ness, and its lack of a traditional, cultural "soul" (a charge made not just by us, but by our Lonely Planet guide, a few internet sources, and an actual Shanghai resident we met). In any case, we still enjoyed a "Western" break after almost half a year in China. Lindsay enjoyed the (literally) hundreds of Starbucks and being able to see King Kong on a big screen, something we just can't find a match for in JiuJiang.

My favorite part of the trip was our visit to Dongtai Lu, an antiques shopping street near the down town. Not only were the antiques, most from the middle twentieth century, little historical reminders of that otherwise missing "soul," but also of the way business was conducted on a daily basis not even 20 years ago in Shanghai and the rest of China. There were installed booths with merchants hocking old propaganda posters, antique watches, translations of Mao's Little Red Book, art, ceramics, and all sorts of interesting "bric-a-brac." The expected method of transaction was haggling. Where the dealer starts at a ridiculously high price and you at a ridiculously low price. The end result is compromise and mutual satisfaction (I felt pretty good, anyway). In Streetlife China (Cambridge U. Press, 1998. Thanks Carrie!) Michael Dutton describes these hutongs, or merchant packed shopping streets) as a disappearing aspect of Chinese street life, but previously the modus operandi of Chinese economic exchange. He says that these alleyways and their method of trade are being replaced by consumer-friendly department stores and mega-shops, and that these hutongs are widely "best forgotten" amongst Chinese entrepreneurs. This is a gross simplification; his reasons why this is happening and the implications of this are very interesting, but irrelevant just now. In any case, this seems to be the case all around China. Up until we arrived in JiuJiang, the streets outside our school would be packed with merchants selling fruits, veggies, meat, and various goods. At the same time as our arrival, though, a new mayor in JiuJiang decreed that all commerce must be done through registered, place-bound shops. People say that the streets are much cleaner now, and the consensus seems to be that this was a good move-- the appearance is one of being more developed- I do wonder about what happened to the previous merchants, though... Anyway, Dongtai Lu was really great, and I was able to find two really cool watches (the wind up sort) that I interchange. I realized later, that if I were more venture minded, I would've bought tons of stuff and hawked it over e-bay at a huge profit. I could've bought a 1940s self winding Omega watch for just 200 yuan (it's surely worth much more than 20 bucks). That sort of thing is not my strong suit, however, and I think I'd feel a little guilty, in fact.

Anyway, after our first week in Shanghai, we were ready to leave (and running out of money) to return to JiuJiang. Little did we realize that sometime during our first week in Shanghai travel throughout China had become nearly impossible in China. There is no centralized organization for bus, train, or plane travel within China, thus at one train ticket agency, you might be sent to a different one that might have tickets, bus stations are the same. You can use a travel agent, but the travel agent is usually next to worthless. He may sell train and plane tickets, but not bus and boat. One might take a credit card, the next no. For one week, we bounced around Shanghai searching (sometimes in vain) for other ticketing agencies. We would wait an hour in line only to be brushed off. We tried everything. bus, train, plane, even boat (up the Yangtze), either never finding the correct place, or being told that it was impossible, or one time even being told that we did not want to go to JiuJiang because it is small and there is nothing there.
"I know it's small, but I live there" I told the overweight agent who had not even looked on his computer to see if anything was available.
"No, no. Not good city. How about Beijing?"
"No. I LIVE in JiuJiang. I need to go back there. I took a bus from JiuJiang to Shanghai. Is there a bus that goes back to JiuJiang?"
"You don't want to go to JiuJiang. There no bus station. How about Guangzhou?"
I had left from JiuJiang's bus station just a week before. "OK, fine. Can you see if there is a train available for JiuJiang?"
Without even looking at his computer he replied, "HAHA! There no train station in JiuJiang. It small city! Nothing there! You don't want go there."
At this point, my head exploded into a thousand pieces. Not only were is there not a bus station or a train station in JiuJiang (there are both), but he was so certain that it was a place I did not want to go, he wouldn't even check his computer.

The week following this incident was filled with the same infuriating misadventures. Some agents wouldn't even talk to me, others could not grasp that I wanted to go to JiuJiang city, not JiuJiang Street in Shanghai. Even with a map of China, pointing at JiuJiang City, some tellers thought I was just mistaken and really was just trying to get to the downtown street. "You don't need a train to go there, you can take taxi or I can arrange tour bus!" No amount of pointing or slow explaining would convince them that I wasn't just a lost tourist. I guess it was nice that so many people spoke English, but it was wasted on the fact that most people really didn't use it to communicate. Most people could speak English, but not really listen to it. I can't complain too much, their English was better than my Chinese, and this is China, not an English speaking country. I would just rather have there be no communication than this one-sided, assuming communication.

Anyway, with the help of a new Shanghai friend, Carol. We were able to get tickets for a train to Nanchang (nearby JiuJiang). As we walked in the door, they made the "extra" train available. By the time we had left, they were almost sold out of tickets. We had hit a critical one hour window and had train tickets leaving that night! To repay her kindness, we attended an English Corner that she organized. We were expecting the usual stolid stares and inane "where are you from?" questions. But actually the adults at the corner were incredible speakers, interesting people, and great conversationalists. They were all young professionals working with English speakers in some way, and just wanted to practice. It was great.

The later train ride home, however, was not great. The rural travelers on the train resumed their habits-- spitting everywhere, staring, and the like. The worst were these two kids-- I guess about six and eight-- who would come, stare, look in our bags, sit on our beds, picking their noses and wiping their sticky little candy fingers all over everything. Even when they lost interest in staring at us, they still made their little camp right outside our booth just in case we did something strange or foreign or unusual. They finally went to bed at 2:30, giving us some much needed privacy, silence, and darkness. They woke up again at 6 am, though, and immediately resumed their positions right outside our booth, now equipped with all sorts of little electronic noise makers. The worst of these noisemakers was a fake, hot pink cell-phone that made different noises, but especially this one siren like noise, that managed to be louder and more grating than a real police siren: "BEEEEEEEEEEEE dididi BOOOOO BOOOOOO". The kids loved all of the different buttons with their different noises, each annoying in its own way. Their favorite, however, was that one most annoying, long noise. They would push each button in turn, relishing in the moment when they could make that one fatal, mind shredding noise. Then, not to be cheated, they would push that button again before working their way through the other 9 slightly-less-annoying noises again. They played with this cursed cell-phone, to our dismay and increasing frustration, for about 3 hours. I finally was able to sleep again at nine, when the kids went back to their own bunks, but was awoken just a couple hours later when they returned and began shrieking at one another. The game seemed to be "who can make the most grating, loud, shrieking noise?" Finally a fatherly figure man walked up to them. "Finally!" I thought, "He'll take the kids away so they'll quit staring at me, or get them to be quiet." Instead however, he leaned his head back and "HOOOOOOOIIIIIIIIIIICCCCCCKK" forced up a huge ball of phlegm and, "Wack!" spat it on the ground outside our bunks. Then he noticed the foreigners, said something to the kids (check it out! a foreigner), then sat down. A sticky kid clambered onto his lap, and the whole family now started to stare at us, intermittently making comments about what we were doing (reading, annoyed at our audience). After thirty minutes of staring, the smarmy father began to get bored--the damned foreigners weren't doing anything crazy or entertaining. He looked at the small table he was sitting at, noticed the child's toy cell phone, and picked it up. "BEEEEEEEEEE dididi BOOOOOOOOOOO BOOOOOOO."

Twenty hours later we arrived in NanChang, and finally found a bus to JiuJiang. Total time to get from Shanghai to JiuJiang: twenty-two hours. As long as it took us to get from Little Rock to China.

Since then we haven't ventured away from the safety of JiuJiang, and not far from the safety of our apartment. The campus where we live is absolutely dead. At night it looks like some post-apocalyptic wasteland. One of those eerie places like Dogpatch where people should be but are disturbingly absent. Most of the shops are closed, including my 3 yuan dinner place, so I've been cooking a lot (which resulted in me hacking off a good quarter of my left index fingernail while cutting scallions). Outside, in the not so deserted rest of JiuJiang, fireworks are pretty constant at all hours. There are three favorite types of fireworks here it seems.

1) The noisy ones. Fireworks in China are very similar and sometimes the same as fireworks in America. The difference being that there are a lot more of them here and they are usually quite a lot bigger. Case in point, the noisy firecrackers. You know how you can buy those little strips of firecrackers in America. Imagine one of those a couple hundred feet long with firecrackers the size of the infamous m-180, interspersed with larger firecrackers the size of a small stick of dynamite. That's what they use here. You can buy coils of varying sizes from about one foot in diameter to about 5 feet. The most expensive one that explodes for a good 10 minutes and is really loud costs about 200 yuan or about 25 bucks. At midnight on the Lunar New Year, thousands of these roles went off around the city creating a cacophonous, yet somehow unified single explosion that lasted for about an hour. Experiencing this is surreal. There is layer upon layer of mini-explosions that build up into an indescribable constant sound. In fact, traditionally, this sound is supposed to scare away a "man eating" God who visits on the New Year.

2) Roman candles. Same as with the firecrackers, they are much bigger and much more spectacular than the little duds you get in America. Many of these are as big around as a small tree (yet still held in the hand) and produce a "kick" similar to what I'd imagine a shotgun would. The result is really beautiful. Not too mention dangerous, probably the best part about them.

3) Those big flowery ones. You know... the type you see at a City's fourth of July festival. Except not just cities buy these, but anyone who wants to create a massive explosion in the sky. You can get a sixteen shot multicoloured bouquet for 100 yuan, and this is quite common. In fact looking out my window right now, two weeks after the festival, some guy is shooting one off two streets away (it explodes at eye level with my window, very pretty), and further in the background, someone across the lake is shooting them off. In America, we DO have "Artillery Shells" that mimic those flowery explosions for sale to the public, but these are much grander than artillery shell.

All in all, the fireworks are really pretty here and still very common, even weeks after the festival. They can get pretty annoying though, when they go off at all hours of the day and night, but hey, if it keeps away man-eating gods, then fine by me.

One crappy thing did happen here, though, over the past few weeks. In order to be able to bring their company to China and develop its image here, Google has decided to comply with China's internet censorship laws. This means that, even when I visit Google's American site, my searches are filtered through its Chinese site. If I try to search for, say, "Taiwanese independence," Google shuts down altogether for 15 minutes. The list of triggered words is pretty long, so far, and unendingly annoying. I was really mad when they started censoring Wikipedia altogether (presumeably because of its factual information on Tiananmen Square), but now this could be even worse. What really gets me is that google willingly censored itself. A far cry from their mission statements of promoting the spread of information across the globe, and preventing information control (they changed their website shortly after all this). I guess it's good they didn't give over the search information the government asked for, but come on, that wasn't that bad. It was anonymous and couldn't be linked to anybody. This censorship is bad not just for me but for the Chinese people who used google as well. One of my students said that he used google because he could get it in Chinese and it didn't censor results like chinese search engines did. Now, he says, it is just like all the other Chinese search engines. I think Google has really stabbed itself in the foot on this one. There's no appeal to use Google China now for most Chinese citizens.

Phew. That was a long update. I'll end with a link that Lindsay found. Apparently gigantic monsters are attacking Japan (again?)!

+Updated Christmas Pictures!
+Shanghai Pictures!
+Shanghai Aquarium Pictures!

It's been a long few weeks in China: grading papers (over 1300 individual sheets of paper in all!), Christmas shopping, Christmas shipping, and all sorts of hassles in between.

"Merry happy Christmas to you, teacher!"
Christmas has come to China starting a few weeks ago and reaching a pretty strong intensity this week in particular. In China, Christmas is celebrated about like how we celebrate the Chinese New Year in America--not very much, and more as a novelty. Chinese Christmas is pretty similar to American Christmas, as it is used primarily as an advertising tool for businesses to boost sales. Indeed, most businesses around JiuJiang have added Christmas-y advertisements to their stores--lots of Santa Claus pictures, though most of my students don't recognize the name Santa Claus, but recognize his picture when I (crudely) draw draw him using Microsoft Paint in our computer classrooms. As for the traditional, Christian aspect of Christmas, it's pretty rare here--just the cultural aspects of shopping and a few Christmas songs here and there. As Lindsay pointed out, nativity scenes that hang on a large Christmas tree downtown prominently feature Santa Claus hanging out with the three wiseman and the baby Jesus is absent, or put in the background with some sheep.

Nevertheless, the students are very curious about Christmas and what it's all about. I don't really talk much about the religious aspect, only mentioning that it is the day that Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus. As you know, I'm forbidden to teach about religion, and I'm not sure I'd want to get into that with them anyway. I developed a little speech about how Christmas was about giving love to other people, and illustrate it with Christmas caroling where we sing songs to our friends and family as a way of giving them music and showing love. We then learn a few Christmas carols (all secular, of course). Lindsay wrote a story for her classes that illustrated the "Spirit of Christmas" (we joked with her that the students probably think this means the ghost of Christmas--"oooooo.... the spirit of Chriiiistmaaasss.."

The big Chinese holiday (I guess sort of the "Christmas" equivalent) is Spring Festival which will be at the end of January. Accordingly, we have no "Christmas break," just the break for Spring Festival which will last a month and start (for my college) on the 12th of January. This will be a big travel month for Lindsay and me. It will also be a big travel holiday for every single other person in China's multi-billion population... great.... We plan to see Guangzhou and Shanghai, and visit many "scenic" or "culturally important" cities as pointed out to us from the Lonely Planet guide to China. Our plans are constantly changing on this though. We will definitely be at one of our friend's family's house for the day and night of Spring festival in a small village called GuiXi in southern JiangXi provence. He assured us that we will see a how the festival is traditionally celebrated. It sounds great.

Small Christmas gallery

"There is very scenery mountain in my hometown. Welcome to hometown"
When I ask my students to describe their hometown, I often get a sentence like that. We foreign teachers get pretty tired of always hearing that same sentence, but it's really true for me! There really is a very "scenery" mountain near JiuJiang! Amongst all the hussle and bussle of the past few weeks, I was able to take a trip to Mount Lushan. I went by myself as a sort of "asking for problems" decision. Lindsay stayed at home to relax and finish some shopping. I actually had very few problems, though, even with no translator and a poor grasp of Mandarin--I was pretty proud of myself, though I would've been prouder if I could actually use my Chinese better.

Anyway, the moutain was really the most beautiful and dramatic places I've ever been. The scenery and grandness of the place was a lot like the Grand Canyon (a place I've never actually been). I've often heard that the magnificence of the Grand Canyon can't be conveyed in a photograph. This is definitely true of Lushan as well. You just can't tell how BIG and dramatic everything is. Nevertheless, I took a couple hundred pictures trying.

Aside from the incredibly beautiful environment up there, it was empty and cold, which was wonderful. I saw very few other tourists and had pretty much the whole mountain to myself. On the first day, I hiked around a trail near my hotel. On the second day, my hotel arranged a driver for me who drove me to just about every single place of interest in Lushan (lots of hiking as well). Unfortunately for me I spoke almost no Chinese, and the driver knew even less English. Though we had a huge language barrier, this didn't stop the driver from talking to me and asking me questions in very quick Chinese--a phenomenon that's actually really common here, and very annoying. After eight hours of it though, I actually got to where I could get the gist of what questions he was asking, even though I didn't know what he was actually saying. It's a very strange phenomenon that happened when I was in France as well. You have no idea what words people are saying, but for some reason, you begin to understand. It was about 9 hours of total immersion, which did me some good, though it was quite annoying at the time.

The most memorable thing, aside from the extreme beauty of the place was all the steps you have to walk up to get anywhere. By the end of the day on Sunday, my legs felt like slabs of raw, tough meat. Overall, though, it was a wonderful experience and made me less afraid of travelling by myself. Everything went over well with no problems along the way, which surprised me.

Large Mount Lushan gallery

I make Chinese kids cry.
This week in class, I've been teaching my students about Johnny Cash. I got the lesson plan from this website which is a pretty "activist" esl lesson plan site. I modified the lesson quite a bit. First, I play his version of the song "Hurt" that he released just before he died. I play it and tell them not to worry about the words or the meaning of the song. Then after they've heard it, I ask them what they think the song is about (a woman leaving a man is the most common answer--they do know it is a sad song), and how old the think the singer is (40 and 50 are the most common answers). Then I play the video of Hurt. At first, they think it's funny that they were wrong--he is in fact 72 years old, not 40. To explain the video and its meaning, I give them a brief (and very dramatic) biography of Johnny Cash's life. I really ham the story up, without straying from the truth, but just making it sound very dramatic (which, in fact, it is). I then play the video a third time, so they can see the references to his biography in the video. I like to see how many students I can make cry by the third watching, and it's always a pretty good number of them with visible tears, many more choking them back.

I guess this is pretty cruel in some ways, but it IS an incredibly sad video and song-- I cried the first time I saw it. If they cry at the end, I can be pretty sure that they were listening and understanding the biography I gave them, because they don't really cry until after they've learned about his life. Anyway, all my students are all very interested in Johnny Cash now, and really like him. They think he is a wonderful man even though his past is troubled and difficult. This, I think, is pretty true, and a good conclusion to draw about Johnny Cash.

Anyway, you can watch the Johnny Cash video here, and see if it makes you cry like it did my students.

Well, I have a class at 7 o'clock tonight, and I've been instructed to give a lecture about Christmas. So I'll try to prepare something interesting for them... I don't think I'll try to make them cry this time.

Links

+A weird optical illusion
+from Katherine: Why Japan Keeps provoking China and Why China Loves to Hate Japan
+I'm sure you've seen this already, but cool Christmas lights... (with sound)

I've developed a new system for getting my students to talk--ENGLISH POINTS! And yes, they deserve such colorful fanfare. The idea is simple, I reward the students with English Points for behaviors that are "good"-- coming to class, speaking in class, asking questions, (one student had a book about American and British customs, so I gave him 3 English points). The whole thing is pretty manipulative in a way, but damn is it affective! These students will bend over backwards to have me mark them with English points in my little book. Even my usually horrible Tuesday class was very well behaved today because I had made the threat that I can take English points away for bad behavior as easily as I give them for good behavior. This system is wonderful; too good even. Whereas getting people to volunteer to speak was like pulling teeth before, now EVERYONE wants to speak all the time. I ask a question and literally every student raises his or her hand. The trick is to constantly hand them out so that everyone gets a lot of points pretty easily. Any freshman psychology student would recognize this as a trick to motivate and reinforce positive behaviors through rewards, I just had no idea that it would work so well with such a basic, non-tangible reward with Chinese students. I think it is based on this competitive drive they have, like I showed in my last post with the basketball-spinning competition and slow bike riding competition. I should've realized sooner that all you have to do is bring that competitive drive into the classroom (though I make sure to emphasize that these points are not for competition, but to have a personal indication of their own hard work--they don't really care though: they just want their English Points). The students hate when class ends because they are out of oppurtunities this week to get English points.

Anyway, everything else is going pretty well in the JiuJiang neck of China. The fear of another earthquake is dying down or being forgotten at least. Winter moved in almost overnight two days ago and it's extremely cold. I don't think the temperature is that cold, but the wind chill makes it feel well below freezing at night. As winter moved in, so did a new wave of beggers and panhandlers on the street-- "It breaks my heart," I told my students today as we were learning idioms, because there are so many of them, and I can't help all of them. These new beggers get pretty forceful too, grabbing and pulling at you as you walk past if you haven't given enough money (if you're a foreigner, it's never enough), one woman even tried to pickpocket me, grabbing at my back pocket. John explained that many of the beggers actually work together under a boss who encourages them to act violently to get money and even to steal when possible. "They're told to harrass everyone, even if they already gave money," John explained. It's very much a moral paradox for me. It's poverty and it's sad, and I want to help, but it's really imposing on me. Not in the way that some guy washing your car window "imposes" on you, but literally imposing on me when they grab and pull at me, shouting in Chinese, after I've already given them a very good sum of money. Not all beggers are like this, though; some are humble and seem very ashamed to have to ask for money. In a rare criticism of the Chinese Communist Party, John said that this is the government's problem, and they don't do anything to solve it. Outside of Beijing, there are no homeless shelters and no relief for people in poverty or out of work. Even in Beijing, there is very little social support for homelessness. Hence in the winter when all the summer and fall farm jobs are gone, the workers migrate to the city where they are forced to beg when they can't find steady work. I asked John if he thought other Chinese people felt the same way. "Yes, but most people would not say that it's a problem with the government in public." I think homelessness is the same in America, a place where we can openly blame government or society for vast poverty, but instead, we blame the homeless individual--it's his fault, he's lazy, is the common stereotype. We might build homeless shelters or have welfare, but this does not really get to the root of the problem. Welfare and homeless shelters address a symptom--homelessness--but do nothing to cure the disease--poverty (to use a cliche). This was one of the main points of my final collegiate paper on homelessness in America. Hearing John talk about homelessness in China, under hushed English that no one could understand, made me feel bad that in America where we can really find the root causes and hold people accountable to fix the problem of poverty, we take the easy way out and lay the blame on the individual who is homeless. In China, it seems, people realize that people are not homeless because they're lazy and don't want to work-- they know it is a problem with their society, with their government; they just can't say anything about it.

Well, anyway, on a lighter note, my plan to exercise is going pretty well still. My belly has remained small and plump, which is troublesome, but it's only been about a week, so that's ok. I'm getting better at running and have a lot more stamina now. My body doesn't hate me as much for actually making it do exercise. I'll give it another few days until I look exactly like Brad Pitt in "Fight Club". I know it will happen soon.

As after Hurricane Katrina in America, after the earthquake here, people got on the ball to start helping those people left homeless. Also, as in America, this mainly involved getting together in a large group and saying nice things and telling other people to donate their money. Though the main purpose was to commiserate with the struggles of the people directly affected by the earthquake, and maybe raise some money, I think (as after any major event like this) it was also meant to blow off some steam and have some fun. All around were many signs and balloons and the like offering words of hope and inspiration (though I could not read them) that the students had spent all day preparing and hanging. Also, all over campus were impromptu competitions of varying types. One was a basketball spinning competition, another a hackey-sack competition ("I did it 103!" one of my students eagerly explained). One of the most peculiar competitions that I regret not taking part in was the slow bike racing. The idea was to be the last to finish the race on your bicycle by moving as slowly as possible, however, you must not tip over.

The festivities came as a much needed break for the students after the long weekend of sleeping (or just staying awake all night) outside waiting for another earthquake that never came. They are frightened still that another more serious earthquake will come soon.

One of the Chinese English teachers, Elizabeth, asked me if I was scared during the quake. I told her that I was a little bit, since I live on the 11th floor of a hotel. Mainly though, I was not that afraid, I explained: there was nothing I could do--I couldn't run away to safety really since I live on the 11th floor. She said that she thought many Americans would think like that (she took my "there's nothing I could do, really" as a type of bravery) because they are Christians, and they don't fear death because they will have an afterlife in Heaven. I was slightly taken aback. Well, yes, I agreed, the Christian religion does teach us not to fear death because of an afterlife. Earthly death isn't really death in Christianity per se. In reality, though, I explained, I think Americans are very afraid right now. After 9/11, Americans are especially afraid of more terrorist attacks, and after Katrina, Americans are starting to fear that more natural disasters will befall us. Americans are really quite afraid right now, Christians or not, though their fear will only make things worse and stress them out-- prevent them from living normally. She agreed that there is more fear in the world today (in America and even China), and admitted that even she had begun to fear terrorism since 9/11, even though she knew it wouldn't happen here in China. In fact, at first, she told me, she thought that the earthquake was a terrorsist's bomb exploding in the building. I found this very interesting, China to me seems very distant from the threat of terrorism, but I guess the effects of 9/11 reached around the world in terms of provoking fear; even in a place terrorists (or our terrorists, anyway) would never attack.

Aside from terrorists, though, she explained that the students are very worried about another earthquake. In the 1970s there was a huge, devastating earthquake that killed thousands. It happened a week after two smaller earthquakes (like this situation). Many students, she said, are afraid that there will be another, almost apocolyptical earthquake in China like the one that hit in the 70s.

Never before have the Chinese people seemed closer to home--afraid of a vague, yet deadly threat. Be it terrorist or natural disaster, we humans always want to fear the worst.

Anyway, I guess the festivities offered kind of a relief to everyone, not just the people who are now homeless (which, not to be callous, but was fortunately much fewer people than it could have been), but also people like the students who live in fear of another earthquake that will hurt their families, their country, or themselves. They found some comfort in the group, in their community. I guess it was like the wise Chinese student said, in Chinglish, on his decoration for the festivities "He who stands alone has no power solidarity is policy."

Aside from the relief/festival, that day I also attended a ceremony where I, along with the other foreign English teachers, presented awards to students who had won in various English competitions. They gave each of us teachers a souvenir wireless radio headset with a huge antenna. It looks straight out of the early 80s. I love it. And, yes, to pick up any station, you must extend the antenna all the way-- SWEET. The picture above has been edited to increase 80 badass-ness.

That night, John treated me to dinner at a hot pot restaurant. Hot pot is DE-LICIOUS. It's similar to fondue, but rather than dipping stuff in boiling oil, you dip it in your choice of soup-like broths: one very spicy and one mild. We had mutton (my first time to try the meat; Lindsay told me I was evil for eating a sheep.), beef, two types of tofu, potatoes, lettuce, cabbage, peanuts and more. Also some nice beer (I put my burgeoning healthy lifestyle on hold that night--see post below).

Today, it's finally the weekend, so I'm going to spend the rest of the night relaxing and hopefully try to travel somewhere nearby tomorrow.

You can view the entire gallery of photos relevant to this post by clicking here.

Well, not much new over the past few days. This week, because of the stressful weekend, we're just watching a movie in class--"Monsters, Inc." Just like "The Incredibles" the students like it a lot and understand most of it (I think).

I've also been exercising for the first time in, well, years. I guess I've only done it for the past few couple days, but I'm going to make myself do it every day. Yesterday, my body felt so betrayed for having to do so much work and nearly gave out on me; today it was still mad, but less furious and more grumpy, I'd say. After two days of seeming hell, I still have a small pot belly, so I hope I start seeing some results in the next few weeks. I've also quit eating meat for the most part, (which believe me, is one of the toughest things to do in China-- they slip it into anything they can), more fruits and veggies, fewer and healthier snacks, and I've cut out alcohol altogether. I've still got a long way to go before I'm bonafide "healthy," probably for the first time in 10 years even. But I feel pretty motivated about it.

Check out this weird bug I found in my apartment! (Click to embiggen it.)

Also, check out this video from when Bush was in China. Very interesting in many ways-- First the comment in the Church's guestbook- "God bless all the Chinese Christians"?? What about the other 98% of the Chinese who are NOT Christians? Second, "Ever hear of jet lag?" not when you're the highest level ambassador for America-no, no I haven't. Pretty snappy answer too, for a simple question. Third, the whole thing, though an honest mistake that everyone's made, is pretty metaphorical if you ask me. "I'm trying to escape," he says. We know, Mr. President, we know... Finally, all the members of the press laughing at him shamelessly--that's really got to hurt. I love how he just freezes until someone tells him what to do... Poor guy. Sometimes I just feel pity for him. Then I remember how many people he's killed because of a lie and for political glory...

Well, it turns out I was mostly right about scientists' ability to predict earthquakes. Both earthquakes predicted for last night never occurred (see post below). We left the apartment at about 6:30 to avoid the imminent 7 o'clock quake. We ran into Professor Cao who informed us (through John) that the hotel had been designed to withstand an earthquake of at least 8 on the richter scale, but we should still evacuate for safety's sake.

We went to eat at one of the new coffee shops -- California Coffee -- which was totally empty because of the quake scare. Afterwards we returned to the school which had taken on the appearance of a refugee camp with students huddled together to keep warm all over the campus grounds. They had also set up the ultimate in Chinese fun-- KTV (karaoke). And teachers were performing songs to a large crowd (a few hundred at least). Eventually John and another student, Karen, pressured me into getting my guitar and playing a song, "A happy song," John requested. "Because everyone is afraid." I chose the happiest song I know, which is "You are my sunshine"--which also happened to be the all around favorite song of my students when I played songs for them in class. It was very harrowing--the biggest "gig" I'd ever played by far, probably about 400 kids at least crowded around. Lindsay has a video of the event, and towards the end you can hear Karen say, "The girls go crazy now." very cute. I'll try to upload it.

After "You are my sunshine" we--Lindsay, John, Kevin, and I-- found a nice place to sit and wait it out. It actually ended up being a lot like a campout except with a LOT of people. Finally at 3 am after neither of the predicted earthquakes occured, Lindsay and I decided to risk it back at the hotel. All the other students could not go back to their dorms until 6 am, though--so that the school couldn't be held liable for any accidents. I felt so bad for them as I got into my warm apartment and bed.

Anyway, you can see the refugee pictures here.

The past two weeks have been really great in terms of class. The first week, I showed pictures from America, having the students describe each picture before I do. Everytime I changed to a new picture, the class always reacted with animated oohs and ahhs. I showed pictures of our cats in Conway. They were beside themselves with excitement over Nage, because it seems that black cats are pretty rare here, a good number said they had never seen one before. Most students, though fascinated by him, thought he was "ugly." I told them Nage probably would't care too much. When I showed them our house in Conway, they were floored. They thought it was enormous and beautiful, so you can only imagine what they thought about mom and dad's house in Magnolia. When I showed them the back yard with all the flowers and plants, they were squirming. They asked a lot of questions about America and how to say different things, so it turned out great. At the end of class, I played a few folk songs for them, which went really well. Students at the back would stand up so they could see, or even rush forward. A few girls took out their cell phones and called their friends to listen too.I also explained the history or the meaning of each folk song. Explaining, "Sixteen Tons" I almost brought a couple of them to tears. I did the same thing this week when while showing them American money. When telling about Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson, I make the stories so dramatic and intense that they really get into them. My story of Lincoln and his assassination really gets 'em, quite a few near-cries. On Thursday, one of my classes even gave me applause at the end of class. The students were so involved in these classes, I think everyone made a lot of progress, it will just be hard to continue putting together such involving classes.

Finally, Lindsay wrote an article about china that was published by The Libertine in Conway. Since I don't think it's the current issue any more, you can read the article here.

Cool link: Check out google earth, if you haven't already. It's a small, free download and very cool. A globe ++ of sorts. I can't wait until ten years from now when all the pictures are high resolution. Check out New York to see the best pictures.

I woke up today by being violently shaken at about 8 am. At first I thought it was Lindsay trying to wake me up, until I realized it was not me shaking, but rather everything around me. Thus I experienced my first earthquake. The quake ended up measuring 5.7, with the epicenter about 15 miles from JiuJiang (where I live). The students have had to evacuate their dorms and all buildings; downtown JiuJiang is like a refugee camp with literally thousands of people getting out of buildings. Despite this, there is little damage to the downtown (though I heard that 8000 buildings in the county are down) and spirits are pretty high, it seems. People seemed to have fun in the park where I spent the afternoon. Our students have been checking on us a lot (a little too much, even), and some are really freaked out. We (lindsay and I) are not very nervous or worried, however, and know that we'll be ok. In terms of actually describing an earthquake, it's pretty difficult. Trying to remember what it was like is like trying to remember a dream--it's surprisingly surreal. It's a completely new feeling. You know in movies when they try to recreate an earthquake and they just shake the camera around a bit and the actors kind of bumble around. It always seemed so fake- "hey! they're just shakin' the camera!"-- but really, that's about what it's like.

Here's a yahoo ap feed about the quake.

I just found out there will be another quake at around 7, and then another at midnight ("a bigger one" Roxy, a student, said). So I've got to get out of the 11th floor where I live. Multiple students have advised that I not sleep at the hotel tonight, but rather rough it outside in the wild. I'm taking a bag of stuff just in case, but after the "bigger one" I think I'll take my chances in my bed. I'll go ahead and end now though, as the hour is soon upon us.

I didn't think they could predict Earthquakes like this... Lindsay assures me that they can.

I decided that I should post today not about China, but about something from the American heartland. I read today on the NY Times that the Kansas school board has passed changes to its curriculum that requires science teachers to teach detractions from Darwin's theory of evolution. This basically paves the way for Christian creationism, I mean "intelligent design" to be taught in the classroom. In my opinion this is the first step towards destroying our wonderful policy of the separation of church and state.

What's even more troubling with this is that the state government is effectually changing the definition and goals of science. According to the New York Times, "Among the most controversial changes was a redefinition of science itself, so that it would not be explicitly limited to natural explanations. "

Do these fools have no idea what SCIENCE is? As Lindsay, put it, Harry Potter could now be considered "science". These changes represent a disgrace to the quality of education to American students, to the field of science, and to the study of religion.

For students to learn basic biology, an understanding of evolution--how species change over the course of thousands and millions of years--is necessary. Processes of mutation, adaptation, and natural and artificial selection are indispensable to understanding life on Earth. If students must spend equal time learning how these processes are false ideas, this basic understanding will be undermined and not fully taught.

It is wrong to think that Darwin's law should not be studied further and questioned. In many ways, challenges like this are the basis of science. It is extremely important for scientists to study and question the scientific laws we assume to be fact (and yes, amongst scientists, Darwin's law is fact). However, even though Darwin's law should be questioned and further studied, this task should be undertaken by real, trained scientists, not 7th grade biology students who don't even understand the theory that they are supposed to be questioning. Further to define science as anything but the pursuit of knowledge through observation of natural phenomena is to negate science altogether. Any basic training in science that ignores the study of natural phenomena is not training in science but in something entirely different.

The study of religion, and especially the Christian religion, is based in faith--a belief in something that cannot be proven (or disproven). Science cannot touch religion, Christianity, and especially faith. It is (though cliched) beyond the realm of science. If God could be proven or disproven, there would be no faith and no religion. There is no physical, "hard" evidence that God exists, nor is there evidence otherwise--if there were, there would be no need for faith, the cornerstone of religion. To try to include religion into the area of science not only is detrimental to science and its pursuit of knowledge in the observable universe, but is also detrimental to religion and its focus on faith.

Science need not be at odds with religion, and religion at odds with science. These are two distinct fields that are impossible to bridge, nor cannot it be rationally attempted. The Kansas school board's ruling today is a fatal blow to education, science, and religion. Unfortunately, though, I think this might just be the beginning. This push and pull between science and religion is a cyclical pattern throughout history--for example the medieval times gave way to the Renaissance. And we are beginning to see this push/pull again in the beginning of the 21st century. However, this cycle will be much more muddled--our society functions on science and technology now, and the religious nuts feel alienated and left out (hence the election of Bush because of his supposed Christian ethics, the debate over evolution, etc.). What we need now is not a bridging of science and religion but an equal tolerance and interest in both fields. One is not "right" and the other "wrong," both are distinct in their aims and should be given equal consideration as seperate fields of knowledge.

This last Saturday, Lindsay, Jennifer, our Chinese student Kevin, and I went to a monastery located at the bottom of Lu Mountain. The trip was actually initiated because earlier in the week, Kevin had some trouble with the brakes on his bike. He felt that surely this trouble must be caused by bad spirits, so he felt it direly necessary to go to the monastery to fix the problem.

The Monastery was like nothing I could have imagined. First of all the size was tremendous. The monastery was a walled compound that held about 10 or 12 different temples. At first, I thought the monastery would be buddhist, which it was--sort of. Kevin didn't know what the religion was called, but he said it came from India and that they changed it a lot when it came to China. There were definitely buddhist aspects--shrines of the Buddha and what not--but it also seemed Hindi in some respects-- multiple gods, a statue of Vishnu, etc.-- and also possibly Confucian--statues of "ancestors" with different powers. So I'm not really sure exactly what religion it was, but it seemed more of a combination of a few religions--but then again, I know practically nothing about Eastern religion, so possibly I'm just ignorant.

The monastery was beautiful beyond description, so I took a lot of pictures. I didn't know whether it would be appropriate to take pictures inside the temples, so I took them "on the sly" by trying to face my camera towards the subject and snap it covertly. Some of these actually turned out pretty well, but you still can't get any perspective as to the immense size or beauty of the shrines. Many of the pictures, unfortunately, came out blurry and are not aligned very well. Still, maybe you can get the idea.

The monastery was very peaceful, and though it was obviously a tourist attraction, there weren't many tourists there on that day, which made it even more peaceful. Also, behind the monastery, we followed a trail that led us into a beautiful forest--pine trees of some sort. We didn't get to walk into the forest as much as I'd have liked, but it was good to be in nature again for just a little bit.

There were many animals at the monastery and they all seemed to reflect the peaceful atmosphere of the monastery--birds that would sit at a table with you, a dog who spent a good 4 hours dozing in the sun, even a salamander that wasn't too afraid of humans. There were also geese and chickens who just roamed wherever they felt around the monastery.

After leaving the first monastery, we walked about a mile to another monastery--The Women's Monastery, which was smaller than the previous one, but just as peaceful and beautiful.

All in all, this was a wonderful trip. My favorite place that i've been to in China. I left feeling very at peace and with a strong sense of well-being--nothing mystical or anything. Though Kevin never got to talk to a monk or anything, he was able to buy some beads from a vendor outside the monastery who told him that they would ward off ghosts. His brakes have worked fine ever since.

You can view the enormous gallery of this trip by clicking here. I recommend changing the images per page to 30 since there are so many of them.

You can view all the available galleries here.

As I've said before, I have about 600 students that I teach every week. It's very difficult to keep track of them all, especially with their Chinese names. To help me remember individuals, last week I gave them a homework assignment which was as follows.

1) Write your Chinese name in both characters and pinyin (the romanization of the characters).
2) Choose an English name for yourself by visiting www.babynames.com or by taking the name of a character from an English movie, and tell me why you chose that name.
3)Choose a Chinese name for me; write the characters, the pinyin, and tell me the meaning.

I received a variety of responses, some very detailed, others, well, not so detailed. Many of them were very cute and amusing in that Chinglish sort of way, and I've provided some of the more interesting names and/or reasonings behind the name, that you can view here.

Speaking of names, for some reason, all the Chinese people here think my name is "Christ." It doesn't matter how many people I correct, I always see my name written as Christ. All of us foreigners get a kick out of it.

Otherwise, this week we've been having a movie week. I chose "The Incredibles," for my class, as I've heard Chinese students really get into it. I heard correctly. My students love this movie, as there's enough physical comedy to keep them interested and the language is pretty simple so they can really focus on listening. I play it with English audio and English subtitles, so they can both hear and read the English.

The movie is pretty good, even for adults, but I'm about to go crazy watching this thing. I've seen it seven times in four days. I've got a good portion of the movie memorized now. Maybe tomorrow I can just recite it for my class.

Well, that's all that's new over here. It's rainy, so the electricity keeps going out, which I hear is a new thing. It used to never go out, but since I've been here, it's been fairly common. Who knows...

I think it's time for Christ to go eat some dumplin's.

Unfortunately we had to cancel our trip to Mount Lushan over our nice break because of inclimate weather. Instead of spending a nice weekend in a beautiful place, we decided to eat ourselves silly in a weekend long feast.

Our dining experience began at the S & N Hotel (Smile and Natural Hotel), which is the newest five star hotel in JiuJiang. We wanted to take the Taos out to dinner since they had taken us to another five star restaurant a few weeks ago. Even though Lindsay, Jennifer and I were the ones taking everyone out, since I am the male, I was seen as the host--I got to sit at the host's seat, but even more "interestingly" I had to order all the food.

Dr. Tao's daughter, Anita, came with me to a room where you inspect all the food and pick all of the dishes. Though she was helpful, nothing could prepare me for the experience of having to pick all sorts of foreign food. Here are some highlights:

1) I thought I was ordering duck, which ended up just being the skin of the duck, which you wrap up in a little spring roll type thing with cucumbers and a sauce that looked like barbeque sauce (it wasn't). This was actually very delicious.

2) Ox Stomach. This was Anita's suggestion. I had never eaten ox before, much less the stomach of an ox. It didn't taste too bad, but my cultural baggage of "appropriate food" was challenged, which prevented me from really diggin' in.

3) I had to actually pick the live fish that was to die for our dinner. This made me very sad. They wanted me to watch as they picked the pretty little fellow out of the water and bludgeoned it to death. I couldn't.

4) I actually picked a delicious soup made from fresh ingredients. I was proud of my selection on this one. It was great. As well, there were some sweet pumpkin breads that went over really well.

All in all, I didn't do too bad picking a ten or eleven course meal. I think everyone, Chinese or American, enjoyed it pretty well. But I was once again challenged with the cultural divide between just what exactly is considered food. Like the dog meat I was confronted with (and did not eat) a few weeks ago, I've had a somewhat difficult time dealing with food, especially meat. The Chinese eat just about everything, and every conceivable body part of that everything as well. With the exception of dog, I've tried everything. In some ways this is much better than in America. I mean if you're going to eat an ox or a duck, why not eat every possible part of it. Why is, say, a butt-muscle appropriate, but not a stomach? A wing of a chicken, but not its feet? The body of a fish, but not its head? This is one of those things that I realize the almost irrationality of our cultural concept of appropriate food (it's very wasteful), but for some reason it's very difficult to overcome. I tried the ox stomach, it might have even tasted very good, but I couldn't bring myself to eat more than a few bites. I always thought I was immune from such cultural small points, but I still have a long way to go.

Anyway, last night we continued our dinner with the Taos at their home. They taught us how to make dumplings, which was a lot of fun, and pretty easy, not to mention delicious. There were also many other courses, including the duck skin spring roll that we had had the night before. Also, my favorites--sprouts, cabbage, and tomatoes.

Once again, there were a few foods that I tried that were far outside my cultural norms of "food". The first wasn't too terrible--duck stomach. It was a little firm and bitter. The taste wasn't too terrible, cultural difference withstanding, but something I would definitely have to eat since I was very young in order to really enjoy. The worst however were "aged duck eggs". Which were, literally, rotten duck eggs that had been boiled. I almost vomited when I ate it, because, well, it's a boiled rotten egg--the thing was even black.

All in all, though, the dinner was fantastic, especially the dumplings. I now know the recipe (nothing too specific) to make them from scratch, which will be great when I come back to America. We've been buying pre-made frozen dumplings for late night snacks, but they were nothing compared to Mrs. Tao's incredible recipe.

Another additional treat was that Dr. Tao gave us a bottle of homemade baijiu, which is really one of the most delicious things I've ever tasted. I had been becoming used to the taste of baijiu, but this was really good. Plus, he assured us that it is very good for your health. Anita told us that she had never been to a doctor because her father "cures all her diseases". Dr. Tao is an delightful and generous man, one of my favorite people I've met in China, and it seems the feeling is somewhat mutual... Dr. Tao told (through Anita) us at dinner that I am a "perfect Chinese man," which, though vague, was a very nice compliment, and made me feel good.

So I've updated the picture gallery with all the new photos. I've also updated the layout of the gallery to match the rest of the site and to make it a little simpler and easier to navigate. There's still way too much red, but I'll work on it some more.

Also, I've added three more songs to the music gallery (sure, it's "legal"). This update I've added Leadbelly's classic (and my favorite) "Where did you sleep last night," Iron and Wine's "Sunset Soon Forgotten"--very beautiful--and a throwback to my 9th grade year, Ben Fold's Five's "Army". So enjoy all.

Also, I've added a few "Health Raps" produced by AETN, Arkansas's PBS station, to the video section. They're delightfully cheesy. I found these when I googled my friend Jessica Sardashti. Apparently she did voiceovers for these videos, but you can't hear her on the downloads.

Well, today is my two month anniversary of arriving in China. Most of the time, I don't even realize I'm in China. Things will seem normal and ordinary, and then I will be reminded of my location by the strangest things: a moped whipping past a packed bus, a shop owner napping on his register at 2 pm, a new skyscraper appearing in the skyline from my window practically overnight. At these moments I'm almost floored by the realization of my surroundings.

I think that I so easily "forget" that I'm in China is a good sign. All in all, I'm handling the new culture thing pretty well. I've come to realize that "culture shock" is not just being surprised by differences in a new culture. Culture shock is a mechanism that allows us to become almost dead to these new experiences--to turn off our emotions and embedded, hidden norms so that nothing is surprising. Culture shock is like Victor Turner's "rites of passage." It's the liminal stage between being American and being Chinese. It is the threshold between two cultures, and this threshold is a vast ocean of difference. Somedays the sea is calm and many leagues are travelled, other days it's turbulent and seemingly no progress is made--even degression backwards seems to happen. Nevertheless, culture shock is the development of our "sea legs" that allow us to traverse this ocean without vomiting overboard onto all of the wonderful differences below us.

I suppose I could detail all of these changes and differences I've found over the past couple of months, but honestly I don't feel like it right now. Here are some highlights:

1) Traffic is horrible. The roads are anarchy, literally. The three rules of driving as one of our Chinese friends told us are as follows: First, don't hit any pedestrians. Second, don't hit any bicyclers. Third, use the horn as often as you see fit--the more the better.

2) I almost ate dog meat the other day. You can tell a meat is dog if it has round bones.

3) BaiJiu is an acquired taste unlike any other alcohol you've ever tasted. Beware though, if you buy the cheaper bottles (this is true of beer, too). Cheap alcohol is made from formaldehyde.

4) Under no circumstances drink water unless it's from a sealed water bottle. You will get sick, and possibly pick up a few stomach friends. You will not "get used" to the water. Chinese people are not "used to" the water.

5) The best way to find cheese is to go to a McDonalds. Otherwise, you can forget it.

6) DVDs are cheap as rice here. We get DVDs of movies still in the theatres in the US, and they're great quality with wonderful packaging. I bought the Quentin Tarantino box set (6 movies) for about 8 bucks. I also bought seasons 1 through 5 of the Sopranos for roughly 20 bucks.

7) My classes are going very well, and my students love me--well, with the exception of one class full of demons. I've taken part in a couple English competitions as a judge and helped one student who ended up winning first prize at a provence level competition.

Well, ok, that's about enough highlights. Maybe from here on out I can get caught up with the low down on what's going on in China.

Finally, As you can see, I've given the website a much needed makeover (now with a new China theme!) and have added a few more sections. The photo gallery is still the place to go, with over 500 pics added since I've been here. I've also added a links page and a contact page with all my info on it. Additionally though I've added a music page and a video page. On the music page I'll add mp3s of songs I've been listening to a lot recently so that you can download them. When I find an amusing video, I'll add it to the video page. There are about 6 songs and six videos in each right now if you're bored.

So until next time, here's to two months living in the Middle Country!