David's Big Adventure in China

I’ll start this post with some follow up comments from my last post. I forgot to mention that the gestation period for a baby panda bear is from about 90 to about 180 days. I was shocked by the wide range in time. I added a few new pic’s this time but don’t worry, not too many! I know there were a ton of them last time. Some of the pic’s are of the roads between Chengdu and Kunming which were taken out the train window. You can see that the terrain is very mountainous. This is why it takes the train 15 hours to go a distance that only takes 1 hour by plane. I also added a few more pic’s of sights from the park near downtown Kunming.

It has turned a bit cold here over the last few days. It has been in the low 50’s F but has felt much colder. Part of the reason it feels colder is that the building construction here is not very good and there is very little insulation if any and the windows are only single pane and do not seal well when you close them. I have one small heater to warm up my apartment but it doesn’t make a big impact because the cold air comes in and the warm air escapes. Many of the students just leave their windows open all the time. Many of the restaurants leave their doors open so there’s no escape from the cold there. Another aspect of the quality of construction here is the plumbing. Plumbers here don’t seem to know their left from their right as often the hot and cold are backwards. One of my three fixtures has the hot and cold backwards. Also, water and toilet pipes run right through my apartment so I hear anytime someone above uses water or the toilet. From time to time the smell of a sewer will come wafting from the floor drain in the kitchen. The other teachers have the same experience in their apartments. The water that comes from the faucets is not safe to drink so I have a water cooler in the kitchen with a 5 gallon water bottle. When I replace the bottle it costs me 5 yuan (about $.68) to get a new bottle.

Chinese students spent a large percentage of their academic time learning language from an early age. As an infant they learn their parents/grandparents local dialect and perhaps Mandarin (the official national language). When they go to school they learn Mandarin and learn to read and write Pinyin (the English alphabet version of Mandarin). Then at some point in the next few years they begin to learn English and how to read and write Hanzi (Chinese characters). The characters take years to learn since there are thousands of them. This is a large factor in why students here spend so much time in school and doing homework.

On Sunday evening the university administration took the foreign teachers out for a nice welcome banquet. We had lots of good food, some wine and of course the obligatory toasts. Afterwards a few of us went to a local high end bar that was very busy even on a Sunday evening. The highlight of the evening was the brief show when some dancers dressed in stylish Nazi uniforms danced on the stage then on the bar. One last comment which I believe I have shared before. If you come to China for a visit assume that when you are walking that vehicles will run you over. Pedestrians do not enjoy the right of way here and vehicle drivers assume you will move out of their way.

School is in full swing now and I’m still struggling a bit with lesson plans. The students have such wide ranges of skills that it makes it difficult. Some classes of the same subject have very different skill levels. In the elective classes if I provide materials the students are expected to pay for them so I will have to collect money from the students to reimburse myself. They did not have to buy a textbook for this class and the cost of the materials will be much less than a text. The textbooks here are all softbound and cost in the range of 40 to 100 yuan ($5 to $9). I think American schools could learn from the Chinese about how to keep the textbook costs lower. One thing that we westerners find very strange and frustrating here is that they don’t publish an official school calendar before the beginning of the year so we don’t know for sure what days are holidays. We were supposed to have classes on Saturday and Sunday the 29th and 30th of September to make up for 2 days of holidays in the first week of October but we didn’t find out until about a week before and then we got the information through the grapevine rather than via an official notice. I have also learned that whether I will be invited back next year is primarily in the student’s hands. Their feedback is the primary determiner of our fate.

On Thursday the 27th I learned that I needed to cancel my Friday night class because the school wanted me (and the other foreign teachers) to attend a National Day celebration dinner being hosted by the provincial government. It was a formal dinner so I wore a coat and tie and we went to a very nice hotel on the edge of town. It was a very nice dinner and there was a very short speech by the Party leader for the province and they introduced the leaders of the consulates from several nearby countries (Myanmar, Viet Nam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia). The speech was to note and celebrate China’s 58 years (on October 1) as a unified country and to thank the foreigners for their contributions to the progress of China and Yunnan province. The speaker also noted that Yunnan has a secure border will all of its neighboring countries. There was another foreign teacher from our school that I met for the first time as she went to the dinner with us. She is a Medical Doctor from Canada and speaks about 5 languages. Among our teachers we have a PHD in Economics, two American lawyers, the MD and me the CPA. All of us teaching English for a small percentage of the money we could be making in the West……interesting!

The Mid Autumn Festival was on Tuesday the 25th and is associated with the full moon. This is an important holiday here but is not a holiday from work. It is similar to our Thanksgiving and families get together, have a big dinner and look at the moon. There are many famous poems about the moon here. There are some Vietnamese students living in the same complex as me and they set up a stage area with music and had a big party which I joined for a bit.

One thing that is a bit startling here sometimes is that anytime they start or finish a construction project they shoot off firecrackers. All of a sudden there will be bursts of firecrackers. After my comments recently about communications here being monitored someone asked me about news restrictions. I have found that very rarely am I restricted from reading news on the internet. It has happened a few times that I tried to click on a story and could not get the story to come up. Of course that only happens when the subject is a sensitive one.

The week of October 1 to 7 is a holiday week (like our 4th of July) and I decided at the last minute to spend part of the week in Chengdu which is the capital of Sichuan province to the north of Yunnan. Sichuan is where the really spicy Chinese food comes from. I can’t handle the spicy stuff so I will have to be careful what I eat. I have not visited Chengdu before. It is a city of about 11 million people and is rated as China’s second most livable city (I’m not sure which is first, maybe Kunming). It is also the gateway to Tibet as many flights and the train to Tibet go from here. I was able to book a cheap flight only 2 days before I came here on Saturday for 350 yuan (about $45) and then when I got here booked a train ticket for my return for 350 yuan as the return flight was going to cost about 600 yuan. Chengdu is about 500 miles from Kunming with many mountains in between. I have been very busy and haven’t had any time for trip planning and one of the advantages of coming here is that my blog buddy Carol is coming here as well and she has done a lot of homework on what to see and do here. Today is Sunday and I arrived here Saturday morning. I am staying at the same hostel (Holly’s Hostel near Wuhou Temple) where Carol will stay when she arrives Sunday evening. This is my first time staying in a hostel and I have found that a hostel is a great place for a foreigner to stay because the staff are very knowledgeable and helpful with where to go, what to see and how to get there since most of their guests are foreigners. I have a deluxe room (private room with a bath….although it is a Chinese style bath/toilet) and it costs 120 yuan per night (about $16). You can get a bed in a dorm style room without a private bath for 30 yuan.

After I arrived in Chengdu I took a shuttle bus to the city center then took a taxi to the hostel. After checking in I walked about 25 minutes to a big park (Renmin Park – Peoples’ Park) in the center of the city. It is a very nice park and many people gather here to relax, play music and sing, play cards or mahjong. I found the people here to be very friendly. As I was walking around the park I came across an area where there was band of about 14 people playing music and people were singing and dancing. Most of them seemed to be in there 50’s and 60’s. As I was meandering by a man enthusiastically invited me to sit and a lady brought me peanuts and sunflower seeds to eat. Later, another lady brought me some dried fruits and they also offered me some tea. It was the middle of the afternoon and these folks were having a great time singing, dancing, listening to the music and playing games (see pic’s) and doing so without the help of alcohol! Later, I was walking in another part of the park and came across some other folks playing music but most of them were practicing individually rather than as a band. A man cajoled me into joining in his little group where he took me to a young lady that spoke English and he had her interpret for us. She was there learning to play the erhu (it’s like a small 2 string cello). She had only been playing for 6 weeks but could already play several songs including Suwannee River and a couple other western songs. She had met a teacher in the park that she convinced via her enthusiasm into giving her free lessons. Her uncle had given her the instrument which is a traditional Chinese instrument. I had seen the erhu before but didn’t realize that the bow is actually between the two strings and thus is attached to the instrument. After spending the afternoon in the park with all my new friends I made my way back to the hostel where they told me about a free Tibetan culture show. So I had a quick snack and took a taxi to the theatre where I enjoyed the show which was all music, singing and dancing. Of course I could only understand a few words of the songs but it was still very enjoyable. Their costumes which reflect their traditional clothing are very beautiful and colorful (see pics). After the show I headed off to an Irish pub (Shamrock) for dinner and joined an American guy from the NE watching a rugby game and having some beers.

On Sunday morning I had a massage at the hostel and after my massage (1 hour for $4) I headed out to walk around the neighborhood to find some lunch. This neighborhood has many shops with Tibet clothing, material and other items. As I was walking a schoolgirl jumped off her bike and came running over to talk to me. She is 16 and was very anxious to practice her English with a foreigner. She was on her lunch break from school (school on Saturday/Sunday to make up for 2 of the holidays during the week) and invited me to go to lunch with her. I told her okay but only if she allowed me to buy. She took me to a local noodle restaurant and we had lunch for 10 yuan ($1.40) for the 2 of us. We then went our separate ways as she had to return to school. On my way back to the hostel I ran into a group of very attractive young ladies and I think they all wanted me to be their boyfriend. Chengdu is known for its beautiful ladies and after you see the pic of me with my harem I’m sure you’ll agree! After arriving back at the hostel I took a quick nap before Carol arrived. When she arrived we spent some time catching up and planning the next couple days then headed out for dinner at a Western food place called Peter’s Tex-Mex. We agreed it was the best non-western restaurant chain western food either of us had enjoyed in China. We shared a hamburger, potato skins and enchiladas with a local friend and all of it was delicious and authentic.

On Monday morning 7 of us headed out early from the hostel (Carol, 2 Americans, 2 Scotts, our driver and me) in a van to the Panda research and breeding center north of town. We were among the first to arrive and it wasn’t very crowded so we got great views and pics of the pandas. I didn’t realize that they also have red pandas which are smaller and only eat leaves and not the bamboo stalk. Check out the pic of me holding the young red panda. It cost 50 yuan to hold the red panda but at least 400 yuan to hold or sit next to a black and white panda. Monday evening Carol and I went to see a Sichuan Opera show (see pics). It was a bit expensive at 120 yuan ($16) but that included transportation via van to and from. It was a great show in a very comfortable setting. The most fascinating part was the face changing act. The performers are wearing very colorful masks that appear to be made from linen and change them to show a new face right in front of us but we don’t know how they do it. It’s a bit of magic. Tuesday and Wednesday it was raining most of the time so I just spent the days checking out some local shopping/dining areas and relaxing.

Today in Thursday and I’m on the train headed back to Kunming. It’s a 19 hour train trip and I have a sleeper cabin that I’m sharing with a Chinese man that apparently doesn’t like to talk much. This post is a long one so I’ll end it here. Included with all the pics from Chengdu there are some pics of typical scenes in Kunming.