April 19, 2013

If You Help Us Build It

by eric

Below is a post regarding a Peace Corps Partnership Program (PCPP) proposal we drew up and submitted. Basically, PCPP is the Peace Corps version of Kickstarter, except the only prize donors get is the joy of donating and projects are pulled as soon as they hit the fundraising goal. Because of the incredible generosity of family and friends, our goal was met in less than 24 hours. As a result, we have no page to link to. This post, however, was already written, so it’s going up anyway. Below, we’ll give you some other opportunities if you missed our project but still want to donate.

Remember those long hours spent in the university library studying for major exams or completing major papers? Maybe you didn’t actually enjoy those times like I did, but you probably can think back to a class, exam, or assignment that you worked really hard on and earned a grade that reflected that effort. When you got that grade, I’m sure it made you feel proud of yourself. Confident. Maybe it was the first time you realized you could actually pull off your goals for your academic and professional careers.

Now, think back to the details of those seemingly never-ending nights. The flipping of the pages. The musty smell of the books. The warm coffee. The barely audible whispers. The low, hard, plastic, back-less stools you sat on for hours at a time.

If that last part doesn’t sound right, it’s because I’m describing our students’ situation (well, except for the coffee. But who’s keeping score?). When Saara and I began thinking about what we wanted to do with our Peace Corps service, one thing we decided on is that we wanted to leave something tangible behind that would make the school better (other goals include doing a keg stand with green tea; convincing our students to say, “Noodles. Don’t noodles.”; and starting an intramural sport that somehow combines baseball, literary theory, poetry, and Joss Whedon TV shows. The boxes on that checklist are bare so far). When we saw the crowded, dilapidated library and its small, outdated foreign-language offerings and heard our students complain they had no English-speaking “environment” (read: “place”), we immediately had our secondary project: a resource room.

We didn’t want just a small library with English resources, though. We wanted our students to realize that learning a language means using it outside of the classroom through daily conversation, movie and TV watching, and reading. Moreover, we wanted them to know that learning doesn’t just have to be drudgery, that you can learn by talking about things you’re interested in, watching movies and TV you like, and reading not just textbooks but comics, sports books, and romance novels. A major goal of this project has been to create a relaxed atmosphere where students can hang out or study or watch movies, but do it all in English. Because of a RELO Grant through the State Department and donations from some amazing friends and family [I love you guys!!!! For reals. -saara], we’ve already stocked the room with texts, classic and contemporary alike, as well as some English-language TV shows and movies. However, because our furniture consists of the already mentioned plastic stools, students have a hard time spending a long time in the room. We’re hoping you can help us to buy a couch, some comfortable chairs, and a new bookshelf to help us create this inviting place, which we hope will encourage our students to study and use English, thereby increasing their exam scores and providing more job and life opportunities for them.

This goal has the added benefit of something sorely lacking on many Chinese campuses: a community outside of the classroom. At Chinese colleges and universities, you start your major from day one, and changing majors is difficult to do. At our college, 98% of classes are taken with the same students, all of whom are the same year and major. In addition, many of my students, when asked to list their habits, put “sleeping” at the top of the list. All these factors mean our students spend the great majority of their four years in college interacting with the same 30-50 students. To provide them with more opportunities to get to know other students with other interests and skills, we are working on the Ray Kinsella theory, believing that an inviting environment will make this interaction possible and more likely.

Here’s where I would have pointed you to our project page on the PCPP site, but it no longer exists because of the aforementioned generosity. However, if you’re disappointed you didn’t get to donate and think you won’t feel better until you have, we’d like to recommend this similar project some other China PCVs are working on or the China country fund, from which the PCPP administrators can redirect money to projects in danger of missing their funding goal.

Posted in Anshun, Teaching | Leave a Comment »

February 28, 2013

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

by eric

[This post was inadvertently published before it was finished, which is why some of you may have had trouble accessing it. My apologies for the confusion. Below is the finished post. Well, as finished as it's ever going to get.]

When I learned I’d be teaching at a university in China, one of the things I was most looking forward to was getting to know my colleagues as colleagues. While I love teaching, I also enjoy being a part of the larger academic community, learning about other faculty members’ research and teaching interests. I thought the Peace Corps would present a unique opportunity for me to do this with Chinese university teachers, with the added benefit of learning about another culture, its interests, and research methodologies. I envisioned exchanges that were mutually beneficial, with both me and my Chinese peers getting fresh ideas.

The first three semesters of my service have been nearly void of that. Thanks to my program manager, I was able to meet and talk with a Lacanian specialist who lives in Chengdu. I’ve had a few conversations with a dean here about his work and was able to recommend some sources to him, but there’s been very little of this interaction at site. Many factors contribute to this lack, three that I have been able to identify. One is that very few teachers here in Anshun have offices. Various deans have dedicated office space, and we occupy the foreign teachers office. Everyone else must use what free computers they can find in others’ offices. It’s hard to talk shop when there’s no shop in which to talk. Additionally, many small colleges in China are beginning to see an increase of faculty who either hold graduate degrees or are in the process of earning them. With much of the faculty not having received the research  training one gets in graduate school, it follows that they would have little or no research to discuss. The third factor I see is that because smaller colleges in China are often tied directly to a profession–we are at a teacher’s college, the skills students are expected to learn are directly related to that profession and thus are limited. As a result, the classes offered are also limited, which means teachers need only refine their classes each year and not imagine new topics or create new syllabi.

One exception took place recently, when I was able to have coffee with the head of an English department at a major Chinese university. This professor just happens to also work on testimony studies, so we were able to discuss the joy and challenges of that particular field. As the conversation unfolded and I learned that she could expertly discuss many of the same sources I used in my dissertation, I realized that I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed the academic version of shop-talk. Because we work in different periods of American literature, we took turns discussing different testimonial texts and the specific research opportunities and challenges they presented. read more »

Posted in Teaching, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

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November 2, 2012

Two Chinas, Not at all Alike in Dignity

by eric

We’ve posted before about the noise in China, how it seems never-ending, inescapable, all-encompassing (you see where I’m going). Often, that’s true. For an example, here’s a video I shot while Saara and I were eating hotpot with some new friends from Ukraine. Saara is shouting to be heard. The noise you hear in the background is from only about ten people. This was by far not their loudest moment, and this fairly representative of our eating experiences.

Here is a video that does not fit that description of China. This is in the Buyi village of Shuitou, Guizhou, near Qinghe, a secluded spot about 90 minutes outside of Guiyang by bus. There’s an amazing hotel on this river that we’ve visited twice now, or not nearly enough. It takes some getting used to the quiet. The lack of a wall of noise makes every small noise all the more noticeable for a few hours, but it is so very relaxing once you adjust.

Posted in Anshun, food, Travel | Leave a Comment »

October 23, 2012

Squeaky Wheels and What Not

by eric

When people ask how living in China is, I often answer, “Great and terrible, exciting and boring, familiar and strange, rewarding and frustrating, and often all of those within the span of about 30 minutes.” Almost every time a Chinese person points, yells 老外 (lao3wai4; foreigner) at us and laughs, within minutes another Chinese person greets us with, “老师好 (lao3shi1 hao3; Hello, Teacher),” a phrase that (a) expresses the great respect teachers are often held in here and (b) recognizes us simply as teachers. We are not 外师 (wai4shi1; foreign teachers), but simply teachers, a subtle difference that is strangely comforting. Any time a Chinese person is so convinced we can’t speak any Chinese that they tell us they don’t understand English after we speak to them in their language, it’s almost a guarantee that later that day we will encounter a patient Chinese speaker wanting to hold a conversation with us about something besides whether we can use chopsticks, if we are accustomed to Chinese food, and if we have visited the nearby waterfall.

This brings us to a few weeks ago. Saara and I were returning from grocery shopping, tired from finishing up a week of teaching and preparing for Saara’s dad to visit. On the crowded bus back to campus, we stood next to a group of university students who proceeded to talk about what foreigners like to do, what they eat, and how they are. Saara turned and asked, “Foreigners what?” (it doesn’t sound so rude in Chinese). Usually, this question effectively embarrasses participants in these kinds of conversations enough to stop the discussion but not so much that they can’t pretend they aren’t embarrassed. It’s a win-win for all involved. read more »

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September 14, 2012

Fear of a Red Planet

by eric

America needs an enemy to fear. To be more specific, many American politicians are quick to let the American public know who they should be fearing and why that threat justifies their legislation, emphases, etc. Usually, the result isn’t pretty. In cases where a foreign power is the looming monster waiting to take away our freedom, our “protection” has included McCarthyism, the Vietnam War, and the Patriot Act. The list could go on and on. And another endless one could be made for domestic “threats.”

While not as pressing a threat as terrorism right now, China seems to rank high on the list, particularly from an economic perspective. Obama’s recent “pivot” to Asia implies that the region poses a potential danger to our way of life, requiring heightened attention to the area. While North Korea’s recent missile experiments no doubt are a large part of that concern, China’s economic policies* likely play a role, too. Meanwhile, Romney wants to increase defense spending because of the growing militaries of some rising countries, including China. There’s also the “threat” of China cashing in the U.S. debt it owns, which, according to this fear, would wreck the U.S. economy (never mind that China, as of 2011, owned only 8% of all American debt and that China needs a strong US economy in order to sell its manufactured goods).

These fears have as one of their assumptions that China is a thriving country with a huge population that can mobilized at once by its strong central government. There is a sliver of truth here. China’s economy has grown leaps and bounds in the last 20-30 years, making it the second largest economy in the world. However, as I’ve pointed out before, its GDP per capita puts it squarely amongst developing countries. The easily mobilized population fear is, I suspect largely based on the assumption that China’s central government can do what it wants when it wants when it comes to domestic matters. The majestic Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony seemed to only reinforce this idea in many Americans’ minds.

Although an impressive display (and, I’ve since discovered, no exception. The Chinese know how to put together an open ceremony), the coordination and planning necessary to execute the ceremony is no more representative of daily Chinese life than High School Musical is indicative of an American high school’s ability to smoothly perform a school-wide dance (at least that’s what I think happens on that show). While power is focalized here, the government’s reach can be exaggerated. Yes, there is a Great Firewall and Internet monitoring (although, the latter probably isn’t uncommon in the U.S., either). However, black cabs flourish. Unlicensed business owners dot nearly every corner, their carts bursting with food or sundry items. A food-safety crisis looms. These are not the only reasons to question this fear.

The new library on campus that will likely never be occupied.

Living in Guizhou, the least developed and poorest region in China, has diffused any such concern we had before we arrived. Anshun is dotted by unfinished buildings. In what seems to be a fairly typical Guizhou story, the shell of one apartment building just outside campus has been abandoned; the developer has fled with the down payments of prospective apartment owners, including some of our colleagues. A beautiful, modern library on our campus has been nearly completed for a few years, ready to replace the cramped, crumbling library in use now. However, it isn’t likely to get any closer to being finished as the building failed to meet code, and the expense of taking it apart and putting it back together is likely prohibitive. No one is likely to ever step foot in the building, in part due to a very large dog who is very good at warning people not to enter it.

For the past two weeks, our water has been unreliable. On two separate occasions, we’ve been without water for four days. The same situation greeted us at the beginning of last semester, but our province was suffering through a drought at that time. Later last year, construction of a road meant the water pipes had to be disconnected and then reconnected. In both situations, we knew when we wouldn’t have water (and, at least as importantly for us, why) and were able to plan accordingly.  read more »

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September 6, 2012

Who You Calling an Old Outsider?

by Saara

老外/Laowai literally means “old outside” but actually just means “foreigner.” The “old” part connotes respect (see the words for teacher, wife, husband and elder: 老师， 老婆， 老公， 老人家, respectively). People usually call us laowai, and that’s fine. I can’t remember Chinese names for shit, so I make up my own names for everyone anyway [the people in my neighborhood are Harriet Fruit-Lady, Stella Fruit-Lady, Cecelia NuoMiFan (best 糯米饭 in China, y’all!), Chinese Mr. Rogers (dude rocks a cardigan), and the Green Family (Their restaurant sign is green. Shut up! Clarity beats wit.)]. I hope that our neighbors have special names for us, like “American Fancystockings” and “Foreign Pretty-Glasses,” but I suspect that we’re just The Laowai.

Can you spot the foreigner in this picture?

No bigs. We’re never going to blend. And it’s not like there are so many foreigners wandering Anshun’s streets that they need to differentiate us from each other. When we moved here, we were, as far as we know, the only two foreigners in town. One day at the visa office, we ran into one grumpy American (He was snappish with my waiban. Want to get on the shortlist of people I wouldn’t ask paramedics to pull from a burning cardboard box? Get snappish with the guy who went on a special trip to buy me a space heater because he read that it might get cold that weekend.), but when I asked him how long he’d be in Anshun, he said, “as little as possible,” so I’m sure he’s gone by now. Last Thanksgiving weekend, a 70-something Irish dude showed up at our house, and he’s cool. But we only saw him the once. We had Joanne for awhile, a hilarious, whip-smart Bruneian girl who springed (earlier than summering, later than wintering) on the beige shores of Anshun, but she’s abandoned us for stupid college (We miss you, Joanne!). Oh, and there’s a shady dude who wears shiny shirts and tells Eric to shave his beard so he can get with Chinese girls. He (Mr. Shady, not Eric) also pretends he’s British when he clearly isn’t (Has anyone heard of Oslo, England yet? Until then, he’s a creeper.). So I’m saying that, in this town, foreigners are rare. Even tourists don’t pop up much. Several months ago in our Byzantine open market, I walked past two stocking-capped, backpacked foreigners, but they, like many foreigners China, averted their eyes as soon as they saw me (Travelers, what’s up with that? I’ll talk to you in Mandarin if a total immersion experience is really that important to you.).

Anyway: Near campus, they’re used to us; we see the same people every day, get crazy with the small talk (us: Mandarin / them: Anshun’s dialect). Even the people we don’t often talk to see us enough to know we’re teachers at the college who like to snack on 小聚字 and wave at all the street dogs. No one calls us 老外, except 娜娜, who is 18 months old, and whenever she says it, her parents tell her instead to call us “Auntie” and “Uncle” (阿姨 and 叔叔). I’m sure they call us 老外 when we’re not around because what else would you call us? But they get that we’re not just 老外. Or at least we’re their 老外.

But whenever we leave our area, we attract stares. And giggles. And catcalls. We go to the train ticket office, and someone yells “haalllllooo” from across the street. When we look, they turn away and laugh.* We go shoe shopping, and mothers grab their toddlers and point and say “看到老外！” (Look at the foreigners!).

On the same day that I saw the two foreigners in the open market, a woman standing not two feet away pointed at me, laughed and yelled “老外！” over my head to her friend across the street. At the time, I hadn’t learned enough Chinese to deal gracefully, so I glared at her and harrumphed away, trying to cuss away the powerlessness.

I’ve since developed what I hope are friendlyish ways to deal with the attention—I ask people in Chinese how they knew we were foreigners (It’s a funny joke!) or ask them if they’re a foreigner too (Equally funny!). Sometimes, just starting a little conversation with whatever stranger is handy works—1) If the catcaller is still paying attention, they then figure out that I speak Chinese, but more importantly 2) Because the person I’m talking with usually responds graciously, with a combination of enthusiasm and, when I’m lucky, nonchalance (How I love not being a big deal!), I’m reminded that not every Chinese person is out to yell insensitive crap at me, that I can connect, in whatever momentary way, with the people in my community. Sadly, my Chinese isn’t good enough to have an in-depth conversation about the objectification of the other and the wacky cultural differences in expressions of respect and rudeness, but I take what I can get.

[Also, some people that I try to talk to just stare at me in shock and stammer that they don’t speak English (I don’t think my Chinese is that bad, so I’m not sure what that’s about). But usually, people are nice. I should more often give people the opportunity to remind me that they want to be nice to me.]

[Also also, sometimes, I do not respond gracefully. Sometimes, people catch me when I’m tired—a wise friend pointed out that sleep is the most important resource a PCV has—or hungry or stressed out, and I don’t react well. I stop; I glare; I tell them, in Chinese, to stop being rude (or, once, I mixed up two similar-sounding words and told some poor guy to stop being boring; he looked so sad. I feel really guilty about that one). Sometimes I talk to myself loudly in Chinese about rude people and how they’re annoying me to DEATH! which is so very passive aggressive of me, and I’m not proud, and I’m sorry that I’m not always the best foreigner I can be.]

My Chinese friends say that the catcallers and gawkers don’t mean it badly, that they’re just curious, that they’re trying to be friendly. I don’t exactly buy it. 1) Some of them do mean it badly, which is to say that they mean to make their friends laugh or to make themselves look good and aren’t thinking about us as people, which is understandable and human, but one of the lamer elements of being human. It’s lame when Americans do it—in our own, sneaky American way—to foreigners or homeless people or whomever we think is freaky. It’s lame when Chinese people do it to me. Plus, 2) even if they don’t mean it badly, I don’t know how much that matters. But maybe that’s because I’m American? It seems like my Chinese friends care more about what people mean; I care more about what people do. Neither is a better or worse way to look at things (Really; both have benefits and drawbacks, and of course, it’s so much more complex than I’ll make it sound in a blog post, and really, does it matter, ideas like better and worse?); it’s just difficult sometimes to reconcile two apparently opposing philosophies. And maybe one is a better outlook when you’re living in China, and the other is better when you’re in America.

It’s easy to rethink something or see it from someone else’s perspective, but it’s so difficult to unlearn an emotional reaction. So when strangers yell at me and laugh, I react the way I would in America—I get hurt. I feel angry. No matter how well they mean it. The best I can do most days is keep my auto-pilot reaction on the inside and react like a sane person on the outside. When I don’t have the energy for it, I try not to leave the area of our campus. All that is a lot of emotional work to go through. We have a few friends in town, but the language and culture barriers are such that hanging out with them isn’t exactly a comfort yet; it’s more like an investment in the possibility of future comfort.

I’m glad we moved to China. I love learning new things about Chinese—and, by extension, American—culture. I love learning to speak, read, and write Mandarin. I love that the high school girl that works in Green Family’s restaurant rubs my shoulder to say hello. I love that 娜娜 unwraps gum and gives it to me when I’m done eating at her parents’ restaurant. I love visiting schools in the countryside with our tutor and watching her start gleeful, liquor-fueled crap with people at banquets (even when I don’t understand the dialect she’s using). I love having the same conversation with the Harriet Fruit-Lady every day (You going home? / Yes. How’s business? / Good. / See you tomorrow!). I love working with my students. But living in China as a foreigner can feel isolated sometimes. Isolation, like a dearth of central heat or hot water in the kitchen, is one of the hardships I signed up for, but it still feels pretty whack. In philosophical moments, I get that this is a valuable experience for me to have. I grew up blond on a peninsula of blondness, and as I’ve moved from state to state, I’ve continued fit in, more or less. But in China, I’m irrevocably marked by my skin and my hair and my speech as an other. Of course, I still carry the privilege of being white and American and educated and temporarily-but-not-really-poor (fingers crossed!); I’m not going to pretend. But sometimes it does suck, and suck is suck is suck, no matter how much un-suck I’m otherwise granted, and no matter how much worse other people have it. Their good isn’t less good because mine is better, right? So the opposite is true too, I think. That’s probably several kinds of logical fallacy, but I’m sticking to it for now.

You are tempted to comment with something inspirational. You want to give me a practical solution. You want to line smog with silver. Please, gentle reader, resist. Sometimes things should be complicated and difficult. Let’s just let me struggle.

 

*I should note here that laughter can mean very different things for Chinese people than it does for Americans. Laughter in both places communicates complex, amorphous emotions; but in each country, they’re slightly different complex, amorphous emotions; plus, where and when it’s appropriate to laugh is different. So, you know. You know?

Posted in Anshun, Culture, Language | 77 Comments »

July 12, 2012

Your Lawn Is So Bourgeois

by eric

Before you read the rest of this post, take a look out your nearest window. If you’re in America, you are probably looking at green grass and well-manicured bushes. What do you do with this grass and these bushes? Probably what you just did, look at them, and without a second thought. If you have kids, they likely run around on the grass. Perhaps an annual picnic or Easter egg hunt is held there, but if you are the average American, you get no practical use out of your lawn.

A narrow river bank bears food.

Describe this fact to a Chinese class, and you’re likely to get a spontaneous, class-wide “Waaaahhhhh!” that is somehow perfectly in sync. To explain the reason for that amazement, a brief and extremely unthorough look at the history of the lawn is in order. The concept of the lawn can be traced back to northwest Europe in the Middle Ages, where they were essentially common grazing areas that the animals kept from overgrowing. They also  made it easier for military look-outs to spot invading armies in some areas. They don’t seem to have existed elsewhere for centuries, a uniqueness that can be connected the area’s climate and politico-economic system. Somewhere around the time of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, the aristocracy began to keep lawns that resemble the contemporary yard: carefully manicured plots of vegetation that included no crops. Instead of grazing animals, workers maintained the land. While these impractical pieces of land no doubt brought pleasure to their owners by providing beautiful, peaceful places to stroll and relax, they were also akin to cars and houses for many people in America today: the bigger and more extravagant, the better. The largest and most beautiful lawns suggested their owners were so rich that they could afford to waste large amounts of land and their workers’ time. read more »

Posted in Anshun, food, Uncategorized | 7 Comments »

June 12, 2012

好久不见 (Long Time No See)

by eric

Apologies for the long absence. China has kept us busy. Here’s a few highlights, in no particular order, from the time we’ve been away:

1. We returned to Kunming for Tomb-Sweeping Festival. In addition to the amenities that made us fall in love with the city, we discovered an Italian eatery run by an actual Italian. The menu included delicious pizza and the best bread I’ve had since Paris.

2. The Foreign Languages Department of our school held its annual ceremony honoring the current class of graduates. More variety show than ceremony, our students sang, danced, and performed plays. Ironically, no foreign languages were used.

3. Liupanshui, the neighboring city to the west, held Laowaipalooza. We and some other foreigners spent a weekend in the City of Cool to catch a volunteer and his Chinese friends play a block party. As if the presence of a group of foreigners at a block party—a concept no Chinese person we spoke to was familiar with–wasn’t enough to shock the Liupanshuiers, we donned homemade animal costumes at the unadvertised event.

4. This past weekend, we met in Guiyang to say goodbye to the Peace Corps China 16s, who will be returning to America soon. We enjoyed red-bean hot pot, the closest thing I’ve had to Louisiana food in China, and the company of some monkeys. Thankfully, not simultaneously. Unfortunately, some giardia hitched along in my intestines.

5. We guest-judged a ten-minute play competition organized by and performed in by some Guiyang volunteers’ students. The performances impressed us so much that we weren’t surprised when the same group went to Hong Kong and placed third in the China Shakespeare Competition, an upset on the same level of the Hickory High state championship, the 1980 American hockey upset of the USSR, and the 2007 Appalachian State victory over Michigan. We also found ourselves wishing we lived in Huaxi, the university town being built outside of Guiyang.

6. We’ve started our secondary projects, projects we organize for our students outside of class. Saara holds a weekly Poetry Club while I have been teaching students the rules and English terms of basketball (not much need for rules instruction on that one) and American football. We are also teaming up to build an English-language resource room for the university.

7. We took a day trip to Tunpu along with one of our Liupanshui friends and her mother. We also made it out to Huanguoshu Falls a second time.

Expect more on Tunpu and postings on the mundanity of Peace Corps service, how bourgeois your yard is, the challenges of teaching in a different culture, and more soon.

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April 1, 2012

Say Yes

by eric

The Peace Corps strongly encourages us to accept invitations. In fact, the sheet listing required tasks for our first three months at site included the act of saying “yes” to all invitations. (Situations where our safety is at risk are exempt. For instance, a man with a curly mustache inviting you down a dark alley while rubbing his hands together laughing “Mwahahahahaha”? We’re allowed to turn that one down. Although, given the safety standards in some parts of China, it’s not uncommon for an otherwise benign outing to turn into an impending death trap.) I can’t say I always follow this advice. I’m American; I need my me-time.

Many of these invitations are actually requests for favors. Native English speakers who stay in Anshun for more than a night are extremely rare. There are currently three of us, so private English schools, which abound in China, and public English teachers often ask us to talk to their students for a few hours. These events benefit us as well as the students. In addition to helping and encouraging students, we often meet important people in the community. Furthermore, Chinese culture requires our hosts to do something in return for us. We’re not allowed to accept money or elaborate gifts, but we can accept small presents. In fact, to refuse any reciprocation would stymie attempts to integrate culturally.

When Saara and I accept these invitations, we immediately begin speculating what form the gratitude will take. Sometimes, our host, fully aware that he/she is not an expert on Americans and their likes/dislikes, asks us what our favorite Chinese food is and chooses an appropriate restaurant where an obscene amount of delicious food is ordered. We’ve also been given some beautiful minority-made textiles, although sometimes the veracity of the minority part is in doubt. Other times, it’s easy to appreciate the thought behind the act if not the result. Hotpot with Chinese people, for instance, usually includes the “insides” (read: organs); “not the insides, another part of the chicken,” which turned out to be chicken butt hole; and brains. While the food isn’t always enjoyable in these instances, our hosts are ordering what they consider to be delicacies. Other excursions, however, are just baffling, like when a trip to a mountain to “relax” turned into an hour-long hike where we rested for about ten minutes at the top before descending.

read more »

Posted in food, sports, Weather | 1 Comment »

March 1, 2012

Tiger Leaping Gorge for Wussies

by Saara

Eric already posted about our trip through Tiger Leaping Gorge, but I have some stuff to say. Most of what I’ve heard/read on the Internet doesn’t approximate my TLG experience, so I’ll leave a record for those of us who maybe aren’t experienced with backpacking, maybe hate sweating, maybe get a little confused when we try out a new semi-strenuous activity. I’ll offer some helpful tips in boldface. There will also be hotlinks to interesting—if often irrelevant—pages.

I have never jogged, power-walked, or learned to play a sport. When balls come toward me, I duck. My craptastic athleticism is based mostly in fear—some of it well-reasoned (a professionally-thrown baseball, at upwards of 100MPH, can be a lethal projectile), some of it not (a half-flat, middle-school volleyball, at downwards of 15MPH, isn’t). As a child, I wasn’t clumsy, nor did I enjoy watching my schoolmates fight over whose wiffle ball team was stuck with me; rather, I was crippled by bewildered embarrassment and an imagination for catastrophe that was vivid, luminous, focused as a sniper. Enigmatic sports rules and the gymnasium itself loomed before me like malicious Rube-Goldberg machines. I looked at a climbing rope and saw the angle at which a neck snaps when you fall, headfirst, onto a laminated hickory floor. Someone passed me a basketball, and my palms began to sweat with the effort of figuring out which lines were in- and out-of-bounds. The gymnastics horse whinnied for blood.

Studies have shown that great athletes often have an increased capacity for self-deception, an ability to tell themselves, as they go in for a lay-up, that they’re winners even if their ratio of losses is much, much higher; to ignore blisters and muscle soreness during a marathon. This is apparently part of what makes one able sink the rock in the bucket (that’s sports talk) or break the tape at the finish line (two things I’ve never done—though I did participate in the beginning of a half marathon last year). As a poet, it’s my job, in some ways, not to self-deceive, and I’d like to pretend that my problem is artistically justified hyper-awareness of the truth; alas, nope: I, too, have an increased capacity for self-deception—just more on the losery, blister-focused side.

Knowing these tendencies, it was with wisdom that Eric didn’t mention that the trek through Tiger Leaping Gorge would involve ladder climbing, mountainside clinging, waterfall-hopping (Note: he says he mentioned the mountain before our arrival; I’ve apparently blocked that out). Yes, I have the Internet; I could have looked it up. But I know myself better than that. I handle life better when it’s a series of surprises.

Tip 1: Tiger Leaping Gorge is a gorge, which means that mountains surround it. In order to hike TLG, you will be hiking up a mountain. This is both unavoidable and surmountable.

Yep. That's a gorge.

The first morning we got up early to catch a bus to Tina’s Guesthouse, the closest to Middle Gorge. After my favorite 中国 breakfast of 稀饭 (xi1fan4, or rice porridge) and 花生 (hua1sheng1: peanuts!) (with a delightfully assertive black cat that I named 最好的朋友／zui4 hao3 de peng2you/best friend), we walked awhile and then paid a local man the 10 RMB entrance fee (this is the only part of TLG operated by locals, so the 10 RMB goes to them; all other TLG cashmoney goes to the government, I think) to hike down to Middle Gorge (where that legendary, slick-trick tiger leapt a mean swell of rapids to escape a hunter). The trail is narrow and rocky. Early on the hike, our friend’s water bottle slipped from his pack and dropped. We lost sight of it, and I imagined it bouncing, bouncing with the buoyancy granted to inanimate objects and mountain goats, to the rapids. We joked that we’d see it when we got to the bottom, but we didn’t. In fairness, I was pretty zoomed-in on my feet, making sure they stayed on that slender, uneven path. China lacks the hyper-litigiousness of America, so safety precautions here can seem slap-dash by comparison: no safety rails, or safety rails made of rebar and driftwood, tied together with wire, scarves, ripped scraps of denim, maybe a scarf tied to a ripped scrap of denim (A+ for sustainability and reuse of resources, 云南人！).

Tip 2 and 2.5: Hang on to your water. Repeat the following until you believe it: If denim is strong enough to survive the California gold rush, it is strong enough to keep me from plummeting to my death.   

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Posted in food, sports, Travel | 7 Comments »

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