An American in China

Mao says:

HELLO FROM CHINA!!
I am terribly sorry this took so long to do. Sara and I have been having internet trouble. Actually, we still are. But, I think if that is our only complaint, we can claim a victory.

So, this post is all about my first week. Well, actually it is more like our first 4 days. My first 4 days. I warn you, this entry is over 3500 words long, so adjust your life accordingly. Here goes:

Cast of Characters:
Kirk- Program Director, Drake’s Teach in China Program
Sara-my friend and traveling companion, she is also teaching at the Teacher’s College in Chengde.
Whitney and Jason- They are also teaching in Chengde, but at the Medical College (which is just a quick bus ride away)
Fellow teachers dispersed throughout the country:
Monica
Alexis
Ben
Ry
Steve
Luke
Maggie
Jennifer
Claire
Jordan
(another) Jordan
Andre
Sam
Julie
Lizzie
Josh
Tyler
Paul
Owen
Phil
Stephanie

The flight:
The journey as a whole was rather uninteresting. The flight from Chicago to China was about 1.5 hour shorter than the estimated time, which was nice. I slept a little, but not as much as I probably should. Aunt Pam had Sara and I upgraded to Economy Plus, which gave us 5 extra inches of leg room, however for whatever reason the row we sat in had even more leg room than that, thus:

We were happy campers.
There were some weather related delays. Our flight in Des Moines was delayed by about 1.5 hours because it was raining. This didn’t pose much of a threat for Sara and I because we had a 5 hour layover at O’Hare, however two of our fellow travelers didn’t fare so well. They were flying through Air Canada because it was cheaper and their Chinese institution isn’t reimbursing their ticket. They missed their flight because of the delay in Des Moines and all subsequent flights were cancelled, so they got to run between United and Air Canada for four hours to get their flights switched and to get their baggage figured out before they finally made it to the United gate just as we were boarding. However, their luggage didn’t quite make it as planned. They got it 3 days later.

Beijing:
We arrived at Beijing Airport at about 1330-1400 Beijing time. I’m not sure exactly when. Customs and whatnot was pretty smooth, or at least as smooth as it could go with a bunch of stern-looking Asians wearing face masks staring you down (thankfully no one boarded the plan wearing a Haz-Mat suit to take random passengers temperatures, like Kirk said might happen).
Beijing Airport is the biggest airport I have ever seen. Our gate was at the farthest end of the airport and going through customs (or whatever that is where they check your visa/passport/ temperature to make sure you don’t have Swine Flu) took 20 minutes or so, most of which was spent walking. After that mess we got to board a tram to take us to our luggage. Yep, that’s right, a tram. After that it was just a hop, skip, and a jump to the exit.
We waited for a couple of hours as a group for everyone’s flight to get in, but since Drake is such a small school, and the Teach in China program even smaller, we all at least knew of each other. We were all so excited (and, in hindsight, so exhausted) there was no end to the chatter.

The Bus:
We didn’t stay long in Beijing, and in fact the only time I have spent in Beijing so far is those two hours in the airport. Once everyone arrived we loaded up a bus and headed for Shijiazhuang (note: I will be referring to this town as The Shiz after this because that is just to long to type.) It was quite a funny sight actually, half the bus was luggage, the other half people. Yes, that is a lot of luggage, 25 people and 2-3 suitcases a person= LOTS O’ LUGGAGE.
It was about a 4.5 hour drive to The Shiz, and I slept through most of it. I had been traveling for about 24 hours or so at that point and once the sun went down there wasn’t anything to see anyway.

Shijiazhuang:
We got to Hebei Normal University at about 2130. Kirk announced we would have to carry our bags about 600 feet to our “hotel” because the bus couldn’t fit. So we got off the bus and started to unload. The first thing that hit us was the humidity. It was actually offensive. In all my years as a proud mid-westerner I have never felt anything like it. Everyone was instantly sweating, and it was 930 at night. Bleh.
But, back to this 600 feet. It was the longest 600 feet of my life. I hooked my carry on and my tote to each of the bigger bags, but my carry-on had about 10lbs of DVDs in it and once I kicked the bigger bag onto its wheels, those DVDs practically tore the bag out of my hand. I started to seriously lag behind, also keeping Whitney and Jason who were there to lend their moral support. Pretty soon the group was completely out of sight, and I was ready to get back on the first flight back home. Whitney and Jason were a few feet ahead of me, but they had no idea where the group went either. Pretty soon two Chinese ladies came up from behind me, and after watching me drop my suitcase for the third ever-loving-time they took it from me. I was too tired to argue, the brain capacity it would have taken was beyond me at that point. They were asking me questions in Chinese and I cursed all the nights I spent burning all those DVDs that were now causing me this trouble, instead of learning some Mandarin. They were pointing at the direction I had just come from, but I didn’t know why, and then suddenly, Kirk came sprinting out of a side street, cigarette dangling from his mouth “You OK?” he asked. I nodded and he curtly thanked the ladies as he took my suitcase from them, Jason and Whitney came up behind me and we backtracked to the side street with a building, and suddenly it all made sense. The reason those women were pointing back in the direction I had come from was because there was a sort of “hotel” and everyone was there already being paired up and assigned a room. Since I was the last one there I got the roommate no one knew. And, bonus, they ran out of normal rooms, so we got a suite. They tried to put us in with Steve and Luke, but thankfully Kirk said, No, that would certainly not work.
So, the suite, this was not as “sweet” as it sounds. We are still thinking dorm rooms here people, so it wasn’t nicer, it was just bigger. Two rooms, each with two beds, a main room and a bathroom. They only unlocked one of the bedrooms, which was fine with me, a bed is a bed.
That first night I was too tired to do anything but shower and go to bed. But alas, it was not that easy. My roommate took a shower first and promptly announced the shower didn’t work and the water was cold anyway. I didn’t really care, I washed my face and hair, which was what I really cared about, and the cold water felt wonderful on my hot skin. I fell into bed at 2330, was asleep by midnight… and promptly woke up at 4 the next morning, ready to go. Wait…WHAT?! No matter what I did there was no going back to sleep. So I got up, and went into the main room to read, because apparently this whole jet lag thing didn’t seem to be affecting my roommate. At 6 I started to get ready for the day. I went into the bathroom to investigate the shower a little better, and this is what I found. Typically, in Chinese homes, there is no central water heater. There is just one in the bathroom for showers. Every other faucet in the house , er, apartment usually, is cold water. I noticed by the showerhead, just below this particular water heater was a nozzle, I lifted it and water came out of the showerhead, and a couple seconds later, it was warm. YESSSSSS! At 730 it was breakfast time, and since I had already been up for 3 hours, and I was bored out of my mind, I figured, meh, why not.
Breakfast in China is not good. Or at least I don’t like it (Note, in America it is not the food itself I am opposed to, merely the time of day it is usually served). There are lots of vegetables, cucumber, sprouts, peppers, unidentifiable foods, there are scrambled eggs with “muer” (pronounced kind of like “more”, it is kind of like a mushroom, but dark brown and slimy) And all vegetables taste like they have been sitting in a bowl of vinegar. There are huge things I can only describe as dumplings (but these are not the famous Chinese dumplings served for dinner, as those are YUUUUUUUMMY.) there is fried dough, porridge (truly offensive stuff), and just because they heard Americans were dining, there was bread and “milk”. The “milk” was powdered and I heard it tasted something like whole milk. I decided to pass.
The rest of the meals at this dining facility were not much better. It was the cafeteria on campus, so we were eating what was the equivalent of bad cafeteria food.
Afterwards, Whitney, Jason and I went out exploring. We found the Future Mall, and got mildly lost, but were rescued when we magically found Paul and Ben (or maybe they found us? I don’t know).
I got back to the hotel at about 1030 and sat in my bed to watch a movie on my DVD player.
I couldn’t tell you what lunch was like that first day, as I slept through it. This was unintentional, but it still happened. I probably conked out around 11 and woke up at 1300. I vaguely remember the phone ringing, probably around noon, which was Kirk calling to see if we were all right. At 1315 he showed up because no one had answered, just to make sure we were alive. You see, meals tend to be communal. You sit at a big table with a lazy susan in the middle and they put large dishes of food on it and you just twirl it around and pick up bites with your chopsticks, so the fact that neither me nor my roommate were there was noticed.
As my roommate and I were milling around the suite we noticed the other room was open and there was a suitcase on the bed. A few minutes later Lizzie walked in the room. She had taken a rather indirect flight, which led her through Tokyo and put her into Beijing at 2300 the night before, so she didn’t make it to The Shiz until that day.

At 1430 was our first Chinese lesson. The 25 of us were spilt into 2 groups of 12 (one of us had studied abroad in China and knew all the Mandarin we were about to learn). My teacher was a teeny tiny woman with frizzy hair whose name was Song. While she was very sweet, she turned out to be the lesser of the two teachers. Although I do have a good grasp on pronunciation and tones, Sara was in the other class and was given much more vocab and sentence structure. This lasted until about 1700. We all went back to our rooms and were told we were on our own for dinner. Lizzie and I made tentative plans for dinner. I sat down to watch another movie.
I vaguely remember Lizzie waking me up to see if I wanted to get dinner. I have no idea what I said, but I assume it was along the lines of “No thanks”. I slept from 1700 to 430. Waking only at midnight to take my contacts out and put on my PJs.
At 430 I woke up absolutely STARVING. I had missed lunch and dinner the day before and only picked at my vinegar-y breakfast. The only thing I had in the room was my peanut butter. I really didn’t want to break it open that early in the game, but I was about to eat my own arm.
This day was a blur of more Chinese lessons, and bad food. However, that night after our lesson in Chinese culture with Kirk, he gave us an assignment. He told us to get into groups of 3 and get on a bus, ride it for 10 minutes, get off and find a place to eat. Oh. Holy. Hell.
My group actually turned out to be a foursome. Sara, Whitney, Jason and I decided all of us Chengde people should stick together. The Chinese value solidarity, right? We got on the #6 bus and rode it exactly 10 minutes, which ironically, in the stop and go traffic was still within walking distance of the school. We wandered around a bit, walked past The Peoples Square and found a place next to, what else but a Pizza Hut, called A! Xing (Ah Tsing):

We walked in and the lady pointed up and told us the second floor (we all caught the “er” pronounced “are” but the word for “floor” went over our heads) we sat down and looked at the menu which was just a little table topper with 3 pictures on it. Sara and I were just about to settle on some kabab looking things when the waitress came over and started talking. None of us really paid any attention and she repeated her sentence and when I looked up at her she was so close all I could see were a pair of eyes. I have been told my face was priceless, I had NO idea what she was saying. We all shook our heads and shrugged and she yelled “FOREIGNERS!!” in Mandarin across the room. All of a sudden, out of nowhere a customer appears who spoke AMAZING English and explained the menu to us. It turned out to be kind of like a Hot Pot type of place. You pick what kind of broth you want and they bring it out to you in your own individual bowls with a tray of raw vegetables, meat and spices. You put what you want into it and the broth is so hot it cooks everything, and then you put noodles on top of it. Sara and I decided to be daring and dumped the whole tray into the bowl. It was the most delicious thing I had eaten in about 3 days. And it is definitely on my list of new favorite foods. I was full before I had even made a dent in the meal. Jason put it best when he described fullness in China. He said there was a definite feeling of satisfaction, but it didn’t leave you with that kicked in the gut feeling that American food leaves you with. The meal, plus a rather large can of beer, cost 21 Yuen, or about $4.
After dinner we wandered around a bit more. Next to our restaurant I found this:

And this is what it sold:

Awesome.
Then we wandered through the People’s Square and then got back on the bus and went home.
The rest of the week was a succession of rather boring Chinese lessons, where we were overwhelmed with new information, little of which made sense, really bad food, and going to bed anywhere from 1700- midnight while waking up anywhere from 4-8.
The first weekend was our homestay. The details of which were not worked out until the day before it started. There were 25 families for 25 teachers. Each family was chosen based on affluence and the students’ English comprehension. That part worried me. Chinese will do anything to get ahead, and cheating is very common. So, just how competent were they? Feelings about the homestay ranged from indifference to mild interest to disdain. I think most people would have felt better had we been paired up, but in the end it wasn’t so bad. The students were from the private language school, a high school, and most of them had just graduated. I never did catch the family name of who I stayed with but the daughters name was Suyan. Well, that’s at least what her name sounded like. (note, I do know how to say it, just not how to spell it…) She had learned English from watching Friends over and over and over again. She was on her way to Beijing in the fall for college, but really wants to go to a college in America. She kept asking me questions that I, personally, never ever worried about, let alone asked.
-Is it hard to get scholarships to a top 100 school?
Uuuuuummm, I didn’t go to a Top 100 school, so I don’t know.
-How many schools in the top 10, 25, 50, 100 should I apply to?
Uuuuummm, well that is really a personal choice.
-What did you write about for your personal statement?
Uuuuuummm I didn’t HAVE to write a personal statement, it was optional, so I just picked something I wrote for English class.
-How did you pick your personal statement topic?
Uuuuuummm Well since it wasn’t mandatory I didn’t really worry about it…
-How did you pick your major?
Uuuuummmm I like to write…
-Oh, but your major isn’t really practical is it?
I suppose it depends on how you look at it…
-What did you do to study for the SATs?
Uuuuuuummm I didn’t have to take the SATs, just the ACT. And I didn’t study at all…
That is what most of my Friday afternoon looked like. On Friday night her mom made dumplings. These are what we hick Americans call pot stickers. Let me tell you though, you have not had food until you have had homemade dumplings. I ate an entire plate (like 10 or 12).
Bedtime was early, which was fine with me. And at 830 the next morning I woke up (the latest I’d slept yet) and breakfast was served. I can’t actually remember what I had, but there was that awful porridge stuff, and hard boiled eggs, and something else that I can’t remember. That day we went to the plant market because her dad had bought a plant but it was beginning to wilt despite his best efforts, so he was taking it back to buy a new one. There were plants, and fish and dogs everywhere. It was like a Teskes. After we were done with that we went and picked up Suyan’s Aunt and cousin, who was also at the language school, but was only 11 so he was just learning grammar and was shy about trying his English out on a native speaker. “Why don’t you try asking him some questions?” Suyan asked. Great, I thought, what am I supposed to ask an 11 year old boy about? We obviously have SO MUCH in common. So, remembering that my own brother at 11 was glued to the TV whilst playing Zelda on his N64, I asked him about video games. Oh he loves games. “Computer” he said. Suyan scolded him in Chinese and after a bit of bantering he stuttered. “I like play video game on the computer.” Naturally “computer” came out sounding more like “com-poo-door” but I didn’t correct that, as he will probably grow out of it. Instead, with Suyan’s insistance, I corrected “You like to play video games on your computer?” He nodded vigorously. Luckily, at this time we were at our destination. We were at the People’s Square. Again. “It’s CosPlay” Suyan said. I had no idea what she was talking about. I still don’t really know what CosPlay specifically is. All I know is that I attended an Animae Convention. Yep. An Animae Convention. There were Chinese teenagers running around either dressed up as their favorite character, in a t-shirt with their favorite character on it, or getting their picture taken with their favorite character. However, it wasn’t completely, um, unnatural. They had all sorts of really cool graphic design software on display. There were booths were workers were drawing all kinds of make believe characters. And on the second floor we watched a little bit of a contest where contestants were seeing who could make the best Mickey Mouse the fastest using some sort of promotional software.
However, I did spot a familiar, friendly face:

After that was lunch, where I was yet again forced to grill Suyan’s poor cousin about I can’t even remember what, while he haltingly answered me in English.
We then retired for the customary Chinese siesta. I think the Chinese and I see eye to eye about the subject of naps. And that is, they are good.
That afternoon I organized my Chinese notes while Suyan’s mom helped me fill in the gaps, and she even gave me some new words. Suyan normally does yoga everyday and she offered to have me come with her. I asked her how long it was, figuring I could suffer through an hour or so being stared at as I clumsily made my way through the poses. “Um, two hours, two and a half, sometimes more.” I politely declined, insisting I would be just fine staying home and watching Friends.

Well, there you have it. My first four days. It will be easier for me to update this now that school is in session and I have settled into a little routine. The rest of that first week and a summary of the first month will be following this shortly.