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.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2007 at 5:25 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.