Adventures in Kunming and Beyond

As you can imagine, every day in China has potential for being lost in translation. Today was a prime example. By “lost in translation” I don’t necessarily mean in terms of the language, although that is a regular issue. I’m also talking cuturally.

First, the day started off with two classes. I was pretty happy to finish up the fourth session of the “listening, viewing and speaking” class, and figured my writing class would be simple enough, since it was the first day. Wrong. The students that showed up for academic writing were definitely ones I had already taught “viewing, listening and speaking” to. Within five minutes, my lesson plan was shot, since the already knew me and had done my generic first week lesson plan. Excellent. Plan B included talking about writing in English…and the discovery that these students have a lot of animosity toward writing in English and are confused by all of the types of writing you can do in English. I’m not sure I’m the right person to conquer English writing for them. Yikes.

Anyway, fast forward to after classes. I was supposed to meet Havvah, David and Rachelle for a search for some our teaching buildings, lunch and a shopping expedition. Well, our campus tour turned into circling all around amidst hordes of students moving into their dorms. As much as we tried, we just couldn’t seem to get the answers we needed regarding the correct buildings for our Int’l Business School classes.

Lunch was also a fiasco at a local place. It consisted of being informed that they didn’t have what we wanted to order, and the rest of the time just not getting the food we ordered. Oh China. Over an hour later, we walked out. The Bank of China was next on the agenda. Havvah and I were going to change some cash, and the downtown bank is the only one that does it. Our total visit included waiting in several lines, being redirected and given numerous pitiful excuses for these ridiculous conditions. There is definitely a lack of efficiency here. After barely surviving, it was off to Metro, a German superstore chain, to scope things out. Some good progress was made here, namely in the way of Bisquik pancake mix, canned veggies and spaghetti sauce. Lovely imports! Our afternoon adventures took so long, that by the time we got back, it was supper time. Having full faith in the Western restaurant, I set out to try ordering fried rice again. We also begin with a divine plate of french fries. Good thing, because my fried rice turned out to be a chili pepper infused stir fry…after much confusion on my part because it clearly didn’t look like fried rice. At that point I gave up and decided I was better off if I avoided the outside world on this culturally-challenging day. So, Havvah and I decided to bond with the Chinese washing machines. My laundry is now happily hanging up drying and smells good, so hopefully that’s a sign I did everything right. So yeah, if anyone has suggestions for quickly drying jeans, pass them along. I’m sure the best response would be a dryer…oh, such luxuries.

For the third day in a row, it was cold and rainy. Here are two immediate problems with that: wet pants, particularly jeans, are very difficult to dry quickly when you don’t have a dryer. Also, rainy weather is very conducive to napping, even in China. So, after returning from teaching another section of the viewing, listening and speaking class, which did not go as well as yesterday, it was time for Skype and a nap. Beautiful. Anyway, so after a sufficient nap, my hope was to successfully obtain a cafeteria card. Nope, the office wasn’t open again today. So, David, Havvah and I decided to venture out around some of the area around campus. We walked for a few miles and pretty much saw a lot of the same things: random convenience stores, hole-in-the-wall restaurants and other odd businesses. Yesterday we finally saw signs of other foreigners, but the majority of Kunming is made up of locals. Such was the case where we walked. It was definitely true China. I will say that sometimes this is not very appealing. For example, small children wearing split pants instead of diapers, in addition to many other sanitation issues makes a clean freak like myself absolutely neurotic and spastic. But, that’s just me. For all of the things that make me cringe in China, I try to be open to them and hold hope that there will always be one awesome moment in the day, either meeting someone new, positively interacting with locals or even seeing something beautiful, that will make up for the not-so-good things. My goal is not to love China, but have an appreciation for it.

In our trek out, we decided to have supper at a place that David tried on the weekend. I will say that this was an amusing dinner as it included the Chinese version of mashed potatoes (mashed, then fried in oil), zucchini fries, Pabst Blue Ribbon and watching American cartoons dubbed into Chinese. Just another day in China

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