David's Big Adventure in China

I spent 5 days in Langkawi, Malaysia mostly just relaxing, eating and reading. Langkawi is a pretty big island and it would take at least an hour to drive all the way around it. It is mostly a tourist island with some nice resorts and a lot of budget accommodations. There is a Sheraton Resort there with rooms starting at $200 and a Four Seasons Resort with rooms starting at about $450 per night. The first night, based on the recommendation of a guy I met in Penang, I stayed in a guesthouse that cost me about $9 but didn’t have a/c or hot water. I did have a full bathroom in my room and the cold shower somewhat offset the lack of cool air but I decided the extra $6 per night it would cost me for a nicer place with cool air, hot water, and a tv would be worth it so I moved! A couple folks asked me if I wanted to share a rental car with them for a day of sightseeing and one of them had lived there for 5 years so I jumped at the chance to have a local tour guide at a bargain price. We saw the sites of the island and ran some errands, did some shopping and had dinner. We saw many monkeys along the sides of the roads (see pics).

I returned to China on July 31 to make sure I didn’t have any problems getting back in since my visa expired on August 5. On Monday, August 4 a student from the school where I will teach went with me to the police station to get a 30 day tourist visa to hold me over until the school gets my resident visa. I had to stay here in Nanning until I got my 30 day visa and my passport back from the police. I figured out the other day that 10% of the time I have been in China the police have had my passport while working on getting me a visa. It’s a bit unnerving to be without my passport knowing I can’t travel anywhere without it. I was stuck staying at the hotel at the school while waiting for my passport and my room there was not very nice but it only cost me about $8 per day. It did have a/c, hot water from 5:00 p.m. to midnight, and a tv with HBO. I spent the week catching up on some things and getting to know my way around Nanning and the school.

On my flight back to China someone gave me a copy of the Asian Wall Street Journal which on page 2 reported that a man who posted pictures of schools that collapsed in the earthquake has been sent to a labor camp for a year. The article said that people here can be sent to a labor camp for up to 4 years without any formal charges or a trial. The article goes on to say that officials have pledged to investigate the collapses which many parents have claimed were caused by poor construction and government negligence. It also said that local authorities have begun offering compensation to parents if they pledge in writing to stop speaking out and pressing for inquiries.

I will do some local travel this week and next and then I can move into my apartment at the school on the 25th. Next time I’ll tell you more about the school and my apartment there.

I spent 3 days in Kuala Lampur (KL) which is the capital of Malaysia and the largest city with a population over 1.5 million. I visited the national museum and the national mosque (both not that exciting), went to see a cultural show, visited an 11 story shopping mall with an amusement park inside (see pics) and went to the dentist and got a cavity filled. A fellow student from the class I took to get my teaching certificate lives in KL and he recommended the dentist for me. I went a couple months ago in China and the dentist told me I needed 3 fillings replaced. I didn’t trust her diagnosis so I wanted to get another opinion and I heard the dental care here was good. Thanks Ken and nice to get together for beers! When Ken first saw me the first thing he said was “you’ve lost weight”. I have lost 14 pounds since I left America and am now down to a weight I haven’t seen in over 20 years. Maybe I’ll write a diet book and call it “The Chinese Food Diet”….lol. KL was much cheaper than Singapore. It cost me about $11 per night for a private room (community bathrooms) in a nice hostel. One nice feature was that they had washers and dryers to use. (It’s rare to be able to use a dryer in SE Asia.) It was so nice not to have to hand wash my clothes. I packed 6 clothes pins to bring along and they come in handy for drying clothes after hand washing.

After KL, I went to Tanah Rata which is in the Cameron Highlands. It is a mountainous area with cooler weather. The hostel there was quite basic (see pics) and it felt more like camping since it was just outside a small town (cost was about $9 per night). It has a nice community room with movies every evening. I played golf at a local course and it was the first time in over a year that I’ve played. The next day I went for a strenuous 5 hour hike in the jungle but the trails were not well defined or well marked so I never did make it to my intended destination. I am now in Penang, which is a fairly big island off the west coast in the northern part of the country. I have visited a few sites and seen a couple movies here while hanging out with a Taiwanese/American couple that I met on the ferry. Tomorrow (Friday), I will take a ferry for almost 3 hours to a resort island very near the Thailand border called Langkawi.

Malaysia has 23 million people of which about 70% are ethnic Malay with Chinese and Indians representing most of the rest. The Malays are Muslim so you normally hear the calls to prayers early in the mornings. Most of the Muslim ladies here wear simple head scarves. I have seen many ladies in burkas but I think most of them were tourists from other countries. There are many native ethnic groups included in the Malay population. In 1511 the Portuguese took control, followed by the Dutch in 1641. The British established a thriving port in Penang in 1786 and took over most of the rest of the country in 1795. Malaysia gained independence from Britain in 1957. Malay is the official language here but most people can speak some English and most of the non-Malay also speak the language of their ethnic group. I have found most of the people here to be friendly and honest except for the taxi drivers in KL. I didn’t need a visa for Malaysia or Singapore and the border crossing into Malaysia was the easiest I’ve had in the last 20 years.

I arrived in Singapore on Thursday afternoon (7-10) and spent the next few days seeing the sights such as the National Museum, Asian Civilizations Museum, Chinatown Heritage Museum, Singapore Zoo, Riverwalk area and some of the ethnic neighborhoods (Chinatown and Little India). Singapore is very clean, orderly and tightly controlled. Opposition to the government is not allowed. It has a bit of a science fiction movie “big brother is watching” kind of feel to it. Punishments for crimes are severe, chewing gum is outlawed and it seems it would be easier if they put up signs in the subway saying what’s allowed rather than what’s not allowed because so many things are prohibited. If you’re a rule follower it seems a very livable place; modern and very westernized. Many western food chains can be found here including Hooters. English is the official language but most people also speak the language of their heritage. Singapore is a city/state of only 228 square miles and has a population of 4.4 million people of which Chinese make up the largest group followed by Indians and Malay. It became part of the British empire early in the 1800’s and became an independent state in the mid 1960’s. Pushed by a strong leader the country became somewhat of an economic miracle.

It’s pretty expensive here (I’m paying more than $40 U.S. a night for a very small room in a hostel without a private bath) with prices for many things being about the same as in the U.S. My first night here I sat at an outdoor cafe overlooking the Singapore River sipping on a Singapore Sling. The zoo here is very nice and they have a “Night Safari” which highlights some of the nocturnal animals and brings in a lot of revenue for them. It was a bit creepy walking through the exhibit with the large fruit bats close enough to reach out and touch while they were hanging upside down eating their fruit. The taxi’s here are all very clean and well maintained and the subway system is a great way to get around. The people here are very friendly, polite and helpful……sometimes when you ask for directions or information it seems they respond like they know big brother is watching…. .lol. I haven’t taken many pictures here so I’ll wait to post pictures until later. On Monday morning I will be taking a bus north for about 6 hours to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

I am writing this on the train that’s taking me from Kunming to Nanning. I opted for the “soft sleeper” cabin with 4 beds. The trip will take 13 hours and will arrive at 8:30 in the morning. I have successfully completed my first year of teaching in China and am looking forward to my second year after my summer vacation and some travels. As has always been the case for me when moving to a new city, I am leaving Kunming with mixed emotions. I had many great experiences here and made some great friends. I can only hope Nanning will be equally rewarding. My last day of classes was a memorable one as the night before we had torrential rains and when I arrived near the classroom building I found there was flooding all around it. So I took off my shoes and socks, rolled up my pant legs and waded through about 8 inches of water to get into the building. I went to class barefoot and found that only 4 of the 40 some students had braved the water. Another student called me and said many of the students were waiting outside near the building so I went to meet them. I held a very short class in the lobby of a girls dormitory which consisted of returning their final exam papers to them and showing them their grades for the class. On the way back to my apartment I had to wade through knee deep water. I wrote some things in the past about my Sophomore writing class. They were the worst group of students I have ever seen….so lazy! I failed 20 of the 45 students in that class! The most I failed in any other class was 5. I am now technically homeless as I vacated my apartment in Kunming and cannot move into the apartment at the school in Nanning until August 25. I packed my belongings into 3 travel bags and 3 boxes. I am taking the 3 bags with me and leaving the 3 boxes with a friend to be shipped to me later in Nanning.

I decided last year to teach in Kunming because they told me I would be probably teaching some business classes but when I arrived they only gave me English classes. So I decided if I was going to teach English I might as well go to Nanning to a better school and get much better pay. In general, the school there seems much more professional. I have been working with them on getting my visa renewed and had some difficulty getting a clear answer from them about when and how I would get my visa. The government has made it very difficult to get visa’s here recently because of the Olympics and perhaps also because of the unrest that took place a few months ago. It may also have something to do with them keeping tabs on the foreigners here and with the influx of visitors for the Olympics they may be having capacity issues. The best answer I have received is that I will have to go to Nanning on August 4 to get a 30 day tourist visa since my current visa expires August 5, then the school will get my new resident visa by September 3. While in Nanning this week I will get the medical exam for my new visa and will leave one bag in Nanning. The school will pay for my hotel during my short visit this week then I will do some traveling.

I had originally planned to travel to Japan, South Korea and around northern China. I have changed my plans because of the visa issues and because of the protests that have been going on in Korea. If the Koreans don’t want our American beef then they’re not going to get my American dollars. I haven’t heard very many good things about the Korean people anyway. I will be flying to Singapore on July 10, then will slowly work my way north through Malaysia and perhaps southern Thailand before returning to China on or before August 4. Singapore is very near the equator and if there was land south of Singapore I think I could easily drive to the equator in a few hours. Oh well, I guess my first time south of the equator and my trip to Japan will have to wait.

The Olympic Torch Relay…….bringing the Olympics to the people….OR NOT! The Olympic torch relay came to Kunming a couple weeks ago. As I have mentioned before, hosting the Olympics is a huge deal here and for 99.987% of the people seeing the torch relay is the closest they’ll get to seeing any part of the Olympics in person. Since the Sichuan earthquakes they have combined the torch relay with memorials and benefits for the victims bringing patriotism to an incredible high. Before the relay arrived there were vendors everywhere selling “I love China” t-shirts, Olympic t-shirts, and both Chinese and Olympic flags. The day before the relay here the local newspaper reported that the authorities were discouraging people from going to see the relay. A friend of mine that went anyway hoping to see the opening ceremony and a part of the relay told me that they had blocked the entrance to the park where it was being held and only pre-selected people were allowed in to watch. They showed it on tv and the opening ceremony was an elaborate affair with many of the minority groups dancing in their traditional clothing. My friend also told me that many people had come from surrounding areas hoping to see it but were also turned away. As you can imagine, they were pretty upset. On tv they give the appearance of it being for the people but in reality it is so tightly controlled that most people don’t have a chance to see it.

In other news……..Chinese Invades America! This week for the first time since the signing of the “Memorandum of Understanding” between China and USA, Chinese tour groups can now more easily travel to USA. The first group arrived this week and were treated like royalty upon their arrival. They will tour NYC, DC, LA and Hawaii over 10 days. It is now easier for Chinese tourists traveling with a tour group to get a visa to visit the U.S. although they still have to go to one of the U.S. consulates or the embassy for an interview before receiving their visa.

The earthquakes and the aftermath are still being reported here on a regular basis and there are millions of people living in tents or temporary housing. Including the “missing and presumed dead” the death toll is almost 90,000 with hundreds of thousands injured. I saw on the news today a report about a temporary school that was just finished in one of the worst hit areas. It was built in 12 days and includes classrooms, bathrooms, a cafeteria with cooking facilities, and dormitories. It is common for middle school and high school kids to live at their school during the week with frequent visits home on the weekends.

I will finish the school year here on July 4 (how appropriate… Independence Day!) I’m still trying to finalize my plans for after that and will update you on my travel plans, etc. next time I write. Happy Anniversary to my parents!

I posted a bunch of pictures that have been taken over the past couple months. To see the pictures click on “Pictures” under “my links” on the right hand side about half way down. Some of them are from Jiuxiang which is about 2 hours from here by car and famous for it’s caves. I also posted a picture of a dam that is near there as it is typical of the many dams in China and typical of the many dams that they are worried about having been damaged by the earthquakes. There is one picture of a candle-light earthquake vigil being held by students near my apartment. There are also some pictures from the May 1 holiday celebration of the Olympics. Also included are typical local sights such as pig carcasses being delivered on bicycle wagons or bicycle and a man walking carrying a large amount of toilet paper. It is also common to see someone carrying 20 or 30 live chickens on a bicycle or motorbike with many of them hanging upside down tied together by the feet. Most goods here are delivered by bicycle, bicycle wagon, donkey or horse drawn wagon, motorcycle or mini van. The other day I saw a front door for a home being delivered on a motorbike. I rarely see trucks being used for deliveries except for Coca-Cola and they use small trucks with one door on the back. I attended a Chinese wedding recently with a friend and there are some pictures of that. The wedding ceremony was held in a hotel ballroom while a banquet was being served. During the part of the ceremony where the wedding vows were being exchanged the guests were being typically Chinese, talking and making noise. At one point the pretty lady serving as the MC that performed the ceremony raised her arms and all could see her hairy armpits (most of the ladies here don’t shave armpits or legs but most of them don’t have much hair on their legs anyway).

In my last post I talked about birth control. When a couple does decide to have a baby they have to get approval from the local government. Without the approval they cannot get a resident card for the child and the child would not be entitled to any government services such as education.

The earthquake has proven to be a tremendous tragedy. The final death toll will likely exceed 70,000 and they say they are 5 million people homeless! That would be like the entire population of Minnesota becoming homeless overnight! There are many small villages that they have had great difficulty getting to because they are in the mountains and all the roads have been destroyed by the quakes or rockslides. There have been hundreds of rescuers buried in rockslides and mudslides from the aftershocks. There have been hundreds of aftershocks with at least 4 of them being 6.0 or more on the Richter scale and more than 20 being 5.0 or more. 5.0 is a strong quake in and of itself. They announced on tv the other day a warning for another strong quake and created panic. The people in the affected area are so frightened and tired from all the quakes and many of them are sleeping outside even if their home was not damaged. There was a 3 day mourning period from Monday through Wednesday and all the bars, movie theatres, internet cafes and all other forms of entertainment were closed. It’s difficult to watch the news because it’s so sad to see so much suffering. So many parents have lost their only child and so many children have become orphans. The media was relatively open about the conditions for several days and even talked about the corruption that likely contributed to shoddy construction at some of the schools that caused the buildings to collapse with hundreds of children killed. I have read that the media is being reined in and I see that most of the coverage now is about all the people that are being helped and the amounts of money that have been donated. They have redirected some of the trains and are using them to take supplies in and injured people out of the area. Unfortunately they don’t have enough helicopters so getting rescuers and supplies to some of the remote areas has been very slow in happening. The Chinese people have experienced so much adversity for so long that they mostly take it in stride and they are really pulling together to do everything possible to help the victims.

I’ve got one topic about the culture here that I’ll talk about this time. With China’s one child policy, birth control is a big deal here. Because for most couples it is unacceptable to have more than one child, abortion is very available and affordable and is used as a backup birth control method. Many ladies here have had the procedure and most often when they were married. I have one friend that told me that she went a couple times to get the procedure and rode her bicycle home afterwards!

I have received quite a few e-mails checking on me to make sure I’m okay after the earthquake. I didn’t even feel it and there was no impact here in Kunming. I haven’t talked to anyone here at the school that felt it but people in other parts of town felt it and said the highrises were swaying. Obviously, it is quite a tragedy and I suspect the number of deaths will far exceed what’s been reported so far. There are many villages and small towns that they have not talked about too much mostly because they are remote and difficult to get to as the area is mountainous and doesn’t have many good roads. Many of the roads were heavily damaged or blocked by rockslides. Many of the locals are suspicious about whether the government will reports all the facts accurately. There is a lot of coverage on tv with much of the footage showing the premier telling the workers to work harder to save the people and telling victims not to worry that the government will take care of them. This is the standard script for tv coverage whenever there is a disaster here. I have not heard any discussion about quality of construction issues that may have contributed to the deaths of many such as at the 2 schools where some buildings collapsed killing hundreds of students and teachers. In general, the quality of construction in most parts of China is poor compared to western standards. I chatted online this morning with a friend of mine in Chengdu (the capital of Sichuan province and less than 100 miles from the epicenter) and she said there was very little damage there but many people were sleeping outside and that last night she slept in her car because she was afraid of more shocks as they have been having many of them.

I forgot to mention in my last post some details about the May 1 (Labor Day) holiday. It was an official holiday but the students here had to participate in an Olympics celebration. In the morning they had to stand on the sports field in their designated area neatly lined up in rows and listen to some speeches then they all jogged around the campus carrying Chinese and Olympic flags. The day before was the start of the 100 day countdown to 8-8-08 (8 is considered a lucky number). There is Olympics coverage on tv everyday and even some special shows about the preparations, facilities, etc. Needless to say, it’s a huge deal for China and they are pulling out all the stops to put on a great show. They are having the longest torch run in history including taking it to the top of Mt. Everest which was covered live on tv. In order to have a trouble free relay to the top of Mt. Everest they prevented non-Olympic climbers that had already made commitments and plans, cancel their climbs shortly before their climbs were to begin. I think most of the people here are very excited and proud for their country to be hosting the Olympics. I don’t have any plans to attend any of the events as I don’t want to fight the crowds and I assume it would be very difficult to get tickets for the events I‘d be most interested in seeing.

The last thing I’ll comment about is about Chinese lifestyle regarding their kitchens. I have been in several local’s kitchens and on average they have about 5 to 10% of the stuff of an average American kitchen. They normally only have 1 to 3 cooking pots or pans and very few dishes and utensils (most of the time they use just one bowl at meal time). They don’t normally have a big pantry stocked with food or a big refrigerator filled. They use very few frozen foods so there is normally very little in a freezer. Because they don’t store a lot and since they don’t have cars that they can pull into a garage near the kitchen they normally only buy what they can carry at one time. This requires them to shop at least 2 or 3 times a week. I also keep very little in my kitchen (no room for a lot anyway) and shop at least 2 or 3 times a week. It’s amazing how few things you can get by with!

It’s been about 4 weeks since I’ve written mostly because the last two weeks I’ve been incredibly busy. I have been working on finding a different job, dealing with some issues at my property in Reno and grading mid term exams.

I have accepted a position starting in August in Nanning which is the capital of Guangxi province which is southeast of here and is the province just to the north of Viet Nam closest to Hanoi. I will be teaching at the Sino Canadian International College (SCIC) at Guangxi University. SCIC is a program that is a cooperation agreement between a Canadian institution and Guangxi University (GU). It is a fairly small program in which the students primarily study English for 2 years then go on to GU or a school in Canada to study their subject of choice for 3 years. I learned about this program from a couple of the current foreign teachers there that I met when I went to Nanning about 3 weeks ago. I went to Nanning to visit a couple other schools and learned about the SCIC program by accident. The school where I am now asked me to stay for next year but I decided to look for a different school. I think the SCIC job will be better in almost every aspect than the job here…better students, better school facilities, better living quarters and better pay. The only thing that will not be better is the weather as the weather there is similar to Florida weather with very hot and humid summers. GU is the biggest university in the province and has 48,000 students.

Now for some odds and ends. I recently learned that the power in the students’ dormitories gets turned off at 11:30 each night and turned back on between 6:00 and 6:30 in the morning. I have watched the dorm across from my apartment a couple times when the power goes off. I heard a few screams and then saw many of the rooms with flashlights or perhaps cell phones being used to provide enough light to finish whatever they were doing. Apparently, this is the case at all universities in China. There is a restaurant here in downtown that sells Dreyer’s (Edy’s) Ice Cream and I went there recently and had lunch and bowl of Cookies N Cream. The ice cream cost more than the rest of the lunch at 35 yuan (about $5 which is about 1% of my monthy pay). They sell a container which is 1.875 pints (a little less than a quart) for $11 U.S. That’s it for this time!

Last Friday was a holiday (“Pure and Bright Day” for honoring the dead) so many people had the day off. Some friends invited me to go with them on a trip to Dali and Jizu Shan (mountain). Four of us (3 ladies and me….I know what you’re thinking but you’re wrong…lol….the 3 of them shared a room and I had a room to myself) boarded an overnight train at 11:00 p.m. (see pics) on Thursday night and arrived in Dali at about 8 the next morning. Dali is famous for its ancient city (see pics) and its Bai minority people. The taxi driver that took us from the train station took us to a hotel operated by friends or family and we got a nice room for about $6. We then hired him for about 7 hours to drive us around to show us the sights and he charged us $14. We spent the evening walking around the ancient city and had drinks in one of the many bars. Saturday morning we took a local bus to the long distance bus station then took another bus to Jizu Shan which was about 3 hours away.

Jizu Shan is famous for its many temples and monks. We arrived at about noon, had some lunch then began climbing the mountain. Like most famous mountains in China it had a paved walkway and many stairs. There was one section that had 476 stairs (see pics). In roughly 3 hours we climbed about 3500 feet over a total distance of about 5 miles. After spending about 45 minutes visiting the temple and pagoda at the top we went back down quickly in about 90 minutes since it was almost dark. We stayed near the bottom of the mountain in a building that is combination restaurant and guesthouse. It was the worst place I’ve stayed in China. The room was very basic and there was a Chinese style toilet down the hall and a simple sink outside the toilet. There was no shower or bath and no hot water. The cost was the same as our nice rooms in Dali. The next morning a van took us to the nearest town and we took a sleeper bus from there back to Kunming and arrived at about 5:00 p.m.

I just finished reading a couple books about China that I’d like to recommend to you. The first one is a fiction based in Tibet called Lost Horizon by James Hilton and it is a very enjoyable book even if you have no real interest in learning about Tibet. The second one is Forgotten Kingdom by Peter Goullart and it is an account of his time living in Lijiang (referred to as Likiang in the book as the names of many places in China have changed over time) in the 1940’s and working for the Chinese government. It gives a very interesting account of the history of that time and place and the different groups of people that inhabited the area and talks about the communist takeover in 1949.

The last thing I’ll write about this time is regarding the degree to which China is bilingual. There are English signs in most places and the buses in Kunming have English announcements of the stops in addition to the Chinese announcements. In general, China and its people are pretty accommodating of those of us who don’t speak the language well. Of course having English in so many places makes life for us laowai (foreigners) so much easier. I know many Americans get very frustrated with foreigners coming to the U.S. and not being able to speak English. I have a different perspective on that now living as a foreigner in another country. I am trying hard to learn the language but it is a tremendous challenge. Of course, since they have a written language that doesn’t use English characters it is even more difficult. I am not trying to learn to read and write, only to speak. I have gotten to the point where most of the time I can express what I want but still have great difficulty understanding when someone replies to me.

In the span of less than 6 weeks it has gone from winter with snow on the ground to summer with temps in the mid to upper 80’s. It’s not humid so it still feels pretty comfortable. Until next time…….