Archives for Category "China"
Going Back to China. Yes. It’s True.
I haven’t posted a China-specific post in a while, and participation in the weekly polls has since suffered. Part of this is because I’ve been busy working on the book, instead (currently at chapter 26), but I’ve also just run out of things to say. It must be time to go back.
For the past six weeks, I’ve been working for a web company in Utah. After their mandatory probation period ended, they decided I was only worth $10.60 an hour. I’m not going to make my girlfriend in China wait to see me any longer for a measly $10.60 an hour.
This doesn’t mean I am returning to China to teach. I’ve already said many times that that will never happen. This trip will only be for a month, but that should be long enough to generate some good material to talk about again. Happy now?!
Chinese Souvenirs: Protection Decorations
I’m pretty much at a loss what to call this thing. It was given to me by the first school I taught at in Hefei. The school had a little farewell lunch for all the foreigners. One of the people present was our Chinese teacher, though we both knew not a lot of teaching got done. Mr. Liu sometimes didn’t show up to Chinese class or showed up drunk, and, truth be told, the foreigners just weren’t good students to begin with.
Mr. Liu had tried to teach us a song in his class. Now that we were leaving the school, he thought he would redeem himself in front of his peers and asked, “Would the foreign teachers sing the song that we learned together?” We all said, “Uh….” Nobody knew the song. Mr. Liu, embarrassed, sat back down, and somebody else presented the item above to each of us.
The most I can tell you about it is that the characters on the front, 镇宅 (zhen zhai), refer to protecting one’s house from bad spirits. Order yours today!
Sitting is Boring
I now have a job that requires me to sit and stare at confusing code on the computer for eight hours a day. When I go home, my eyes are so fried, they’re about to fall out of my head. It’s at times like this when being a teacher in China didn’t seem like such a bad thing, after all. But I know if I ever did that again, I’d just complain about it, too.
Still, I’ve been thinking about China a lot lately, though it isn’t the teaching that I miss. It’s the adventure (and the girlfriend, but you don’t want to hear me go on about that). It’s being able to do something different every day and having the energy to do it!
I always whined about how teaching was tiring, but my schedule at least gave me enough free time to take a nap and go out after work. Since the school also provided an apartment—and since eating out was so ridiculously cheap—I didn’t need to spend time on the things that now consume my after-work life.
It’s funny how my past blog entries bordered on bitter, but now that I’m back in the US and writing a book about my experiences in China (14 out of 50 chapters done!), it’s much easier to sort through the good aspects of it. Granted, as soon as I go back, the bad will come crashing down on me. But for the moment, it’s nice to put those things aside.
Chinese Souvenirs: Monkey King Puppets
There is really nothing to do in the little town of Wuwei, so my time there was mostly spent watching Chinese television and not understanding a lick of it. One show in particular intrigued me, because it was about a magical monkey fighting ridiculously cheesy visual effects and didn’t make any sense at all. When I started watching it, though, I noticed just about everyone in China liked watching it. This “monkey show” would be playing in the restaurants. The Chinese teachers would be watching it in the break room. It was everywhere.
A few years later, I finally read an English translation of Journey to the West (also known as The Monkey King) and finally understood what the TV show was about. Now that I got the story, I started recognizing pieces of it in other aspects of Chinese culture. It comes up all the time in the form of other shows, cartoons, books, paintings, figurines, advertisements, and toys. That said, it was only appropriate I took some kind of Monkey King memorabilia home. The story is about a group of four that set off to retrieve religious scrolls, but the shop in Xuzhou only had a puppet of the monk.
Near the end of my stay in Changzhou, there was a surge of toy/junk/novelty stores. Many of them started selling the Monkey King puppets in complete sets. Every time I walked by one of these shops, I thought, “I need to remember to buy the rest of the set.” I couldn’t buy it at that moment, of course, because I didn’t want to carry it around all day! Then every day, I’d go home and say, “Crap, I forgot to buy the puppets!” Alas, I ended up leaving Changzhou with none of the other puppets. Oh well. The monk was my favorite, anyway.
Chinese Souvenirs: Wood Shaving Pictures
Unlike the past few souvenirs I’ve covered, this one is pretty common in markets across China. The first time I saw it, however, was in the small waterway town of Zhouzhuang. Several people were making them, meticulously gluing together tiny wood shavings and pieces of barley. Most of their work was very elaborate and fancy, like a recreation of the Great Wall or a dragon or a couple of kittens playing, but the one that stood out to me the most was this simple, little picture.
You don’t think about how you’re going to get something home until after you buy it, though. I was so protective of it on the bus ride to Suzhou and the train ride to Hefei. Every time somebody came near my bag or put something next to it, I panicked, thinking, “Oh no! My picture’s going to break!” Then I had to find a way to safely pack it back to the US. Of all the things I took home, I was the most afraid of this one breaking. But it was worth all the heartache.
The Book About China
I start a new job tomorrow, and while I’m happy to finally be working again, I’m not too thrilled by the idea of working 9-5. Teaching in China spoiled me. Oh, it was still hard work, but the schedule itself was pretty relaxed and only consisted of four class periods a day. The rest of the time I could do whatever I wanted (i.e. sleep and watch DVDs). I haven’t actually worked 9-5 for a long time.
Part of why I’m reluctant to jump into web development is that, despite how natural it comes to me, I had always told myself I was going to write and publish a book. Writing was the easy part. Publishing, however, proved to be a hurdle. Turns out, fantasy adventures aren’t as easy to pitch as they sound. Now that I will be working a full-time job, though, that’s less time to spend on my real passion. The blog is probably going to suffer a lot, too.
The weight of the job, however, has inspired me to finally get serious about writing my book about China. Oh, come on, you knew it was going to happen! I’ve actually already written a book about my experiences with ILP in 2005 (there’s been a sample chapter on my website for years), but I wasn’t happy with the end result. So I’m doing it over and focusing more on the teaching aspect of being in China as opposed to me going about my day-to-day life. Plus, it’ll include episodes from the 2006 summer camp and everything about Changzhou I wasn’t willing to post online. Oh, yeah!
Slot Canyons Near Escalante, Utah
While in China, I was very adamant about seeing as many sights as possible. I had to take advantage of my time there! Now that I’m back in Utah, there’s no rush to go sightseeing. These things will always be here. I, unfortunately, will probably always be here, too.
When I sit down and look at all the available attractions in the area, though, there’s an impressive diversity in my own backyard. The Peek-a-Boo and Spooky slot canyons near Escalante ended up being better spectacles than the Leshan Giant Buddha in Chengdu, and I paid a lot of money to see that Buddha! The canyons were free.
But that’s not to say people shouldn’t travel to China, since there are so many great things to see in the homeland. Remember this, this, and this? Still worth it. But it’s nice to appreciate what’s around your home, too.
Chinese Souvenirs: Olympic Mascot Dolls
This has got to be my favorite souvenir from China… and my favorite stuffed animal ever. I love the Beijing Olympic mascots. While Olympic mascots are usually rather ugly, the Chinese designers put a lot of thought into theirs, and it shows.
Interesting fact, if you’re not going to visit the link above: the names of the five “Fuwa,” as they are called, are Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying, and Nini. When the syllables of their names are strung together, they say, “Beijing huanying ni,” or, “Beijing welcomes you.”
Before the Olympics, there was a sort of “Fuwa hysteria” where every street vendor worth their weight was selling knock-off stuffed animals, key chains, posters, buttons, T-shirts, and what have you. All around Beijing and Shanghai, there were also official stores selling the same things but at a higher price (and higher quality, of course).
The Yingying doll in the picture was bought at an official store in Beijing. One of my biggest regrets about that trip was only buying one. When I went back to Beijing after the Olympics were over, all the Fuwa stores were gone. The street vendors stopped selling Fuwa merchandise, too. Everyone had moved on to the Shanghai Expo and its lovable mascot, Haibao.
