David's Big Adventure in China

What is that bright thing in the sky??? I asked my students this question and they told me “sunshine”. It had been so long since I had seen the sun I forgot what it looked like! It was so nice to see it again. Apparently the rainy season has almost come to an end and we can expect to see lots of sunshine going forward. After a couple sunny days the clouds and rain and cool weather returned. I purchased another heater and got another blanket from the school so I shouldn’t have any trouble staying relatively warm now. The superintendent for our building came to my apartment and did some work on the windows to get them to close better. It was a baling wire and duct tape sort of solution…..an example of typical Chinese craftsmanship……lol. In my last post I misspoke about my plumbing fixtures. Actually 2 of my 3 fixtures have the hot and cold reversed. At least I have a shower in my apartment with hot water. The students here have shower facilities in their dormitory buildings but don’t have hot water so they go to another building if they want a hot shower. The tap water here is pretty cold so I can’t imagine taking a cold shower. An Australian friend of mine here lives in an apartment near downtown and has a shower but often does not have hot water. From time to time in our building there is no water at all. It happened the other morning just after I had finished shaving but before I had taken my shower so I used the water from my water cooler to wash up a bit before heading off to class.

The cost for the students to attend this school is about $750 to $850 per year for tuition and another $70 to $160 per year for their dormitory rooms. On top of that they need money for books, food, transportation, etc. I know it sounds very cheap to us foreigners but for the locals it’s pretty expensive. One student was telling me that both of his parents are university teachers but they together they make less than $600 per month. I think many of the Chinese teachers make less than us foreign teachers. There are some scholarships available for students from very poor families. The dorms are quite basic and the really cheap ones in the older buildings are just 1 step above poverty conditions. The apartments across the courtyard from me are being used as a dorm and it looks like in an apartment the same size as mine they put 8 students (4 in the bedroom and 4 in the living room). There is no central heat or air conditioning in any of the buildings on campus. There does not seem to be any campus wide computer system that is available to the students and teachers. When I get an e-mail from my contact in administration it comes from her personal address and not a school address.

A Chinese friend was telling me that she taught for a year in a public school in a city with cold weather and the classrooms did not have heat and she suffered some frostbite on her hands (there was snow on the ground outside). There was a program on tv today talking about the financial problems of many Chinese universities. Apparently about 10 years ago many universities started borrowing money from the banks so they could expand but didn’t have a plan for repayment of the loans. There is a big debate about where the money should come from to repay the loans. The schools here don’t have big endowments like schools in the west and don’t get a lot of funding from the government. Apparently the government told the banks to make the loans to the schools or at least approved of the loans so many people think the government will need to provide funding for the loans.

Over the last couple weekends I have finally started taking in some of the local sights with the help and company of some local friends. Yesterday there were 8 of us that went to Chengjiang which is about a 2 hour drive southeast of Kunming. There is a large lake there that is similar to Lake Tahoe in that it is nestled among mountains at a high elevation and has very clean water. There is very little development around the lake and part of the road to go there was very rough. Among the 8 of us were 5 Chinese, 2 Americans and 1 Slovak. The previous weekend I went to a park and lake in the south part of Kunming and hiked up Xi Shan (West Mountain) to see the temple carved into the mountain. There was one guy that worked for 14 years to carve the temple into the side of the mountain. Also last weekend I spent part of Saturday evening on Wen Ling Jie (the locals call it foreigner street because it’s where all the laowai hang out). There are restaurants there that serve poor to not-bad imitations of western food. The most popular place there is Salvador’s and it serves some Mexican, Italian, and American food. Whenever I go there it is likely I will see someone I know even though I’ve only been in Kunming less than 3 months now. The laowai (foreigners) community had a Halloween party that night and I ran into them by accident and joined them for a bit (sans costume). The locals were quite curious as to what the heck the foreigners were all doing in the strange costumes acting crazy.

School is going better now that I’m more comfortable with my lesson plans. One class that I really struggled with coming up with good lessons was my class called “English Listening”. The students in this class are all sophomores majoring in International Accounting. Some of the students were complaining to me this week about their accounting class. The class is their first accounting class and they were concerned that the book was not very good. The book is in English but their teacher (Chinese lady) does not speak much English so they are not getting much help understanding the principals. I looked at the book and told them the book is fine. I told them in class this week that starting next week I will spend at least half the class time teaching them accounting. They were all very happy to hear this. Too bad I didn’t figure that out 6 weeks ago…….lol. Some of my students would like to have western penpals to practice their English. If any of you would like to be a penpal or know someone that would, send me an e-mail address and some basic information about the person (name, age, sex, interests). High school or university students would be best but others are welcome too. Well that’s it for now.

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.

I didn’t realize that teaching a few hours a week would be so much work! I have been very busy and didn’t get a chance to update the blog last week. Lesson planning takes a lot of time especially since I am new at this and the school has provided us zero guidance and support. I have two classes of freshmen majoring in business for a speaking class that meets twice a week. This is the only class for which the school has provided a textbook but after 1 week I have decided that the text is not much help. The oral English ability of most of the students is pretty low and most American 5 year olds can easily out talk them. On Monday of this past week I went in with a lesson plan but after asking some students about their weekends before class and getting blank stares because they didn’t understand my question I scrapped the lesson plan. I wrote a basic dialogue about weekend activities on the board and modeled it with one of the students then had the students practice it with each other. Then I randomly called students in 2’s to the front to demonstrate the dialogue. On Wednesday I gave the students the words to the song “Yesterday Once More” by the Carpenters since they told me the previous week that was once of their favorite songs. I had students take turns reading the words and we talked about the meanings and grammar features like the use of contractions then we sang it together. These two classes have about 40 students each.

I have 3 sessions of a class called “Practice”. I didn’t know until I had the first class that this would be 3 different groups of students and not 3 times a week with the same group. I had not been given a list of students so I didn’t know how many students I was supposed to have. I was not given a text, syllabus or any guidance about the expectations for this class. I had several students come up to me before the start of class of tell me they had trouble signing up for my class on the computer system and asked if they could join the class. Not knowing how the system works nor how many students I was supposed to have I said okay. Later, I talked to a couple of the other teachers and also my contact in administration I decided it was best not to allow any additional students to sit in. So in the second week of class I had to tell the students that if they were not officially registered they could not stay for the class. (I had obtained students lists by camping out in the admin office until they gave them to me.) The class size was limited to 20 and I had as many as 15 additional students wanting to sit in. Some of them were practically begging me to allow them to stay and it was tough to say no but the class is designed to be small for effective practice. All of these classes are in the evening and I was surprised to see that my Friday night class was 17 girls, 2 boys and 1 absent. I don’t know if the girls prefer having a male teacher or if the girls were more ambitious about getting signed up for their electives.

I also have a listening class that meets once a week and has 52 students. I was given no guidance about this class and at first was provided a classroom with no board but an AV system that couldn’t play a dvd and wouldn’t accept my USB portable drive. I managed to get this room changed to one that is much more functional. Actually, one of the students (the class monitor) managed to get it changed. For yesterday’s class I showed them an episode of “Friends” with English subtitles. Only about ¼ of the class was able to follow most of the dialogue and we stopped often to discuss the themes, aspects of American culture and words that were unfamiliar to them.

It seems the students in the practice classes are the most eager to learn since this class is an elective. In the Listening class and the Speaking classes many of the students are there only because it’s required and show little interest. There is a wide range of skill levels within the classes which makes lesson planning more difficult. The school makes no effort at determining students’ levels and putting students in classes with students at similar levels. In each class there is a student assigned as class monitor. I don’t fully understand yet the role of the monitors and how they are chosen but often they work as an intermediary between the students, teachers and administration. In one case the monitor gave me the student list for the class and told me I was supposed to submit my teaching plan to the administration.

At certain times of the day I see many students carrying big thermos bottles. They take them to a central place on campus where they can get hot drinking water. They like to drink their water hot and they also use it for making instant noodles. There are several cafeterias on campus and I now have my cafeteria card so I can eat in them. When I do, my meal costs from $.65 to $2.00. I do often eat simple meals in my apartment but I don’t do any real cooking. (PB&J, cereal, instant noodles, etc.) I can buy many western foods at a nearby Carrefour which is a French version of a more upscale Wal-mart. While I was there the other day I was browsing the meat department and saw a small animal that looked very much like a dog. I can’t imagine what else it was but will try to get a local to help me confirm what it was. The sights in the markets here are always interesting! There are all options for shopping……big department or chain stores (2 Wal-marts here), local small markets, and flea market style markets as well.

I have my passport now after having been without it for more than 2 weeks. It was being used by the local authorities to issue my resident permit and to get my Foreign Expert document (which looks like a passport). The resident permit allows me to live here in Kunming and the Foreign Expert document allows me to exchange Chinese currency into U.S. dollars. I can exchange up to 70% of my pay into dollars. I don’t expect to exchange much since I will most likely spend everything I earn.

Well that’s it for now. Tuesday is mid autumn day here (a big holiday) and next time I’ll tell you what it’s all about. Oh, a couple more things. I have been sitting in on a Chinese language class that meets four times a week with a bunch of French students and I’m still meeting with my tutor twice a week so hopefully my language skills will improve quickly. Also, the rainy season is over now and the weather has been beautiful, highs in the mid 70’s and lows in the low 50’s.

It has been a bit of a slow start to the school year. I only had 1 class all week and it was on Friday morning. The school staff did a terrible job of helping us get started. There has been no organized welcome or orientation process and it has been like pulling teeth to get any information out of them. Fortunately there are two returning foreign teachers to help us out. In my building where I live there are 6 foreign teachers including myself. There is a lady from Florida in her mid to late 20’s (returning teacher), a man in his 50’s from Australia, a man in his 30’s or 40’s from Canada (returning teacher) and two young ladies from the Midwest that recently graduated from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. The two young ladies were especially troubled by the lack of welcome and orientation since they had never been to Kunming before and nobody bothered to tell them that there were other foreigners here in the building. They were basically dumped at the apartment and left to their own devices. I didn’t run into them to meet them until after they had been here for 2 or 3 days and when I did meet them they were so excited to meet someone that spoke English and could answer some questions for them. There are some other foreigner teachers that are living on another part of campus or off campus but I don’t yet know how many.

Many of the classes don’t start until the second week because the freshman didn’t arrive until this week and some of the upperclassmen are assigned to assist the freshmen. The freshmen took their college entrance exams the week of July 22 and received their scores the week of August 12. Between August 12 and the end of August they find out to which university they have been accepted. The process is different here and they can only be accepted by 1 university and it is possible that they are assigned a major different from the one they wanted.

I still do not have my complete schedule but what I know so far is that I am teaching 2 classes of English Speaking, 1 English Listening, English Practice (either 1 class 3 times a week or 3 classes once a week – won’t know until I ask the students), and Business Communication. The only class for which the school has provided a textbook is the Speaking class. For the other classes the material and syllabus is entirely up to me. Even for the Speaking class I think we are free to teach whatever lessons we choose. The class I had on Friday was Listening and I arrived early to get familiar with the room and get set up. The room was locked and I couldn’t find anyone with a key. Class was scheduled to start at 8:00 a.m. and nobody came to unlock the room until about 8:20 so at 8:05 I started class in the hallway. The students in this class are sophomore International Accounting students. I am not teaching any Writing classes but the ladies from Drake are teaching some Writing classes. It seems strange to us that Speaking, Listening, Writing and Practice are taught in separate classes but we will coordinate amongst ourselves to try to give the students a rounded set of lessons without duplicating what each other is doing.

We have managed to find restaurants and food to give us a taste of home when we want it. We found a local place where we can get mashed potatoes and PBR (Pabst Blue Ribbon) beer. There are a few western restaurants in town owned by westerners so the food is authentic. There are also several western restaurants owned by Chinese but the food is usually not as authentic. We are allowed to eat at any of the cafeterias on campus but we need a campus debit card to pay and they have not allowed us to get cards yet as they are supposedly changing to a new system. Of course the students all have their cards already. One of the more popular cafeterias is a Muslim cafeteria. Today for lunch I “cooked” in my spacious kitchen…….I had the all American favorite of PB&J sandwich (found bread at the bakery) and Pringles…….yum, yum!

After talking to the others it seems I ended up in the best apartment. The other apartments are in worse shape than mine and have assorted issues with plumbing being the biggest issues. Apparently they had first planned to tear down this building then they were going to remodel it but in the end nothing was done. Everyone’s apartment was dirty when they moved in. Getting issues addressed is almost impossible as they seem to be deaf when it comes to requests for assistance. I have experienced great kindnesses from many Chinese people since I have been in this country but there seems to be great indifference when it comes to work duties.

Now for the usual odds and ends. I saw a news report on TV that said that the government here is now using pop up ads on the internet to remind users that their online activities may be monitored. I haven’t seen any of them I assume because my pop-up blocker is working well. I assume that my blog may be monitored and you should assume that if you send me an e-mail that it may monitored as well. Later today I will probably meet a friend from Nanning for dinner. She and about 30 of her co-workers are in town as part of a 5 day vacation organized by her employer. It is quite common here for employers to organize trips for the employees.

In the past week it has rained everyday with not much sunshine but at least the temperatures have been nice. I have spent my time learning my way around town, making some friends, playing a bit of ping pong and studying Mandarin. I purchased a Mandarin textbook and have a tutor that charges me 30 yuan per hour ($4). His wife cleans my apartment at a cost of 10 yuan per hour so it cost me $2 for the 1 and ½ hours she spent here. I wore my blue jeans for the first time in over 3 months and found that what used to be my tight jeans now fit me a bit loose. According to the scale at Wal-mart I have lost about 6 pounds since I left America.

I have had a couple requests for pic’s of my apartment so I have added some plus a couple pic’s of sights in Kunming. In the pic “apt1” you can see the water heater hanging on the wall. It is electric and has a capacity of 45 liters which is about 12 gallons. The temperature on it is easy to adjust so I crank it up a little while before I’m ready for my shower then turn it back down afterwards. With only 12 gallons of hot water a shower can get cold pretty quickly so I turn off the water while I am washing then turn it back on to rinse and wash my hair. Energy is an issue in China and is very expensive which is why I turn down the temp to about 100 F when I don’t need hot water for a shower. In apt2 you can see the very small mirror I use to shave with as that sink serves as the bathroom sink. In apt3 you can see my cooking facilities which are quite meager (microwave and a hotplate). Apt4 shows the rest of the kitchen. Apt5 shows the shower in the open area near the kitchen. Notice the fine plumbing craftsmanship and the overall ambiance in apt6. In apt7 you see my 20 inch tv where I can watch the 1 English channel available. In apt8 you will notice some of my clothes hanging to dry as the Chinese don’t have clothes dryers since they would consume too much energy. The biggest complaint I have about not having a dryer is that lint often clings to the clothes. My entertainment center (I use my pc for listening to music and watching dvd’s in addition to other normal pc activities, I sometimes also listen to KFOG my favorite radio station in San Fran via the web) is shown in apt9. In the corner in apt11 what you see is a heater, not a fan which will be my heat source in the winter. I tried to buy an electric alarm clock for the bedroom at Wal-mart but couldn’t find one there…….maybe they consume too much energy…….lol. In apt14 you will notice the gate that restricts access to the foreign teachers’ apartments and there is a small room near the gate where someone is stationed pretty much all the time. I’m not sure if their primary purpose is to protect us or watch us…..probably a bit of both…..lol. In apt16 you get a better view of my building which appears to be one of the older buildings on campus. They were supposed to remodel these apartments over the summer but I haven’t noticed any signs of recent remodeling.

I still don’t know my class schedule or what classes I will be teaching. I am supposed to learn that tomorrow which doesn’t leave much time for prep as classes start on Monday. I’ve been told that’s the Chinese way. For the students here, the most important event for any educated Chinese person until they get married is taking the university entrance exams. How well they do on the exam determines what university they can get into and to a large degree determines their career opportunities after university since employers put great emphasis on which university a candidate graduated from. Apparently many students choose to go back for another year of high school if they do not score as well on the entrance exam as they wanted. They feel a great deal of pressure and sense of obligation to their family to do well on the exam. The family really focuses on helping the children prepare for the exam and pay for extra study programs that many children gladly participate in during weekends and holiday periods. Education is their ticket to a more prosperous life and being able to support their parents when they are old.

After I did my last post I realized I forgot to note that the elevation here in Kunming is 6200 feet above sea level. I went back later and added it but you may have missed it if you read it soon after I did the original post. I have one odds and ends observation this time and that is about trash in China. Trash here is sorted through thoroughly for anything that can be used or recycled often by individual “entrepreneurs” as a way to make a living. I was at a busy bus stop the other day and within 5 minutes there were 3 different people that came by looking through the trash cans to see if there was anything of value inside.

One last thing…….if any of you have it setup so that you get automatically notified anytime I have a new post would you please write to me and tell me how you set that up. Thanks!

I have a home! I moved into my apartment here on campus at Yunnan University of Finance and Economics in Kunming (YUFE). I am located near the center of campus and very near the Western Restaurant so western food will be convenient and relatively inexpensive. I have added some pics of the campus which is very pretty. Classes start September 3 and I will find out on August 28 what classes I will be teaching. YUFE has about 12,000 full time students and about 12,000 part time students. Kunming is located in China roughly where Dallas is located in the U.S. and not far from Viet Nam, Laos, and Myanmar. Kunming has a population somewhere between 4 and 5 million and is known as the “Spring City” because of it’s spring like weather year around. It is at an elevation of 6200 feet above sea level. Since I arrived here on Friday the highs have been in the upper 70’s and the lows have been in the low 60’s and very little humidity except for when it rains. The weather here is very similar to Oakland, CA weather (my former home).

My apartment is a small 1 bedroom (about 500 square feet) and because of the weather here does not have a/c or central heat. It’s basic but adequate. The bathroom and the kitchen are pretty much combined except there is a small private room for the toilet which is western style thank goodness! There is a free standing shower unit which is pretty small. If I were a big person I don’t think I could use it. There are advantages to being small! The kitchen consists of a sink, refrigerator, and a small counter with a microwave oven and a hotplate. No western style oven or stove and no cabinets. Since food is so cheap and convenient here I don’t expect to be doing much cooking anyway. I paid 4 yuan (about $.56) for dinner last night at a local noodle place.

Since I have arrived here I have been mostly just been getting set up in my apartment and trying to learn my way around. I went looking for a game of ping pong the other day and found some students playing outdoors not far from my apartment. They were nice enough to allow me to join them. The tables were concrete as was the net but they played pretty much the same as a conventional table. Some of the students are quite good and easily beat me. There are many small local shops and restaurants nearby and there is a Carrefour (French equivalent of Wal-mart supercenter) a little over a mile away which I walked to the other day. While I was there I found a solution to those squatter (hole in the floor) toilets….they had a folding chair with the seat being a toilet seat so you could just position it over the squatter toilet……..I think I laughed out loud when I saw it. There is also a Wal-mart here and I went there yesterday and purchased some American movies that cost 3.9 yuan each (about $.52). There is a bus stop near campus and I jumped on a couple of the buses yesterday just to see where they went and one of them took me to Wal-mart. One thing that I noticed while out and about (and I have seen it in many other cities) are people doing mending or sewing while sitting on a sidewalk using the old manual foot power sewing machines.

As I mentioned in my last post, I got my work visa which is valid for 1 year. In addition to the work visa I have to get a resident permit to live here in Kunming which the university will obtain for me. The university had to take my passport for a day to use it to notify the local police that I am staying on campus until they get my resident permit. The hotels in China are supposed to get info from the passport of any foreigner and report it to the local authorities and a hotel is supposed to be registered to be able to accept foreigners thus not all hotels will accept us. If I stay with a person in their private residence that person is supposed to notify the local authorities. Big brother is alive and well here.

I added a map to the blog and you can see it by clicking on the link under Maps on the right hand side. You can see many of the places I have been on the map. The blogsite keeps stats on visitors and I found it interesting to learn that there have been almost 1200 unique visitors and over 8800 total visits. I know I have 20 to 30 regular readers that are friends and family but I was surprised to see how many visits there have been. Well that’s it for now. Keep those cards and letters coming as I love to hear from all of you!

My travels with a tour guide ended on August 9 when we returned to Guangzhou. We spent a total of 24 days traveling around Eastern and a bit of central China. I saw places and things that I would not have seen in a guided tour geared for westerners. We normally used local transportation and didn’t take tour buses so most of the time I was the only white face in the group. Not being part of a tour group allowed us to see what we wanted and on the time schedule we wanted. All in all it was a great trip. I saw so many things I never dreamed I would see in person. I came away so impressed with the building skills and craftsmanship of the Chinese people, it’s just such a shame that much of it was wasted on egomaniac emperors. It’s funny that they could build so many fabulous things yet sometimes there is a stark contrast in what they can’t build. In the building where I saw the terracotta warriors they had quite a few buckets sitting around catching water from the leaking roof. It seemed such a contrast that in the building that covers a national treasure of incredible building talents from thousands of years ago that they can’t keep a roof over it that doesn’t leak.

After returning to Guangzhou I spent a couple days relaxing and recuperating in a nice hotel. My legs were so incredibly sore for almost 5 days after that speed decline down Mount Hua that I needed some rest. On Sunday I headed to Shenzhen to visit my friend Lily before she heads off to America in a couple weeks to marry an American man (George) in Decatur, Illinois. She went for her visa interview today (the 16th) and got her visa. Getting a visa to go to America is quite an ordeal and it has taken her about 9 months to get a fiancé visa. On Sunday evening I had dinner with Lily, one of her neighbors and two ladies that were students at GLV in Zhuhai when I was there for my class. It’s was tough being the only man in a group with 4 lovely ladies……I know you all know how tough it was for me but I suffered my way through it……lol! On Monday, Lily and I went to a theme park in Shenzhen called Splendid China. It’s kind of like EPCOT at Disney in Orlando with 2 parts, 1 part is miniature versions of many of the great sites in China such as The Great Wall and the Forbidden City and the other part has exhibits and entertainment that highlight many of the 55 minorities within China. They do a fabulous show in the evening with music and dancing and incredible costumes.

On Tuesday I took a couple local buses to the port and then took a ferry to Zhuhai passing by Hong Kong along the way. Then on Wednesday I took a local bus to the border then walked across into Macau and went to the Chinese embassy there to get my work visa. I was 2nd in line and paid extra for same day service. I left the embassy at 9:15 and was told to come back and get the visa at 4:00. I walked around the area a bit then found a nice hotel lobby to escape the heat and do some reading. Then I went for some lunch then on to a different hotel for some more reading. I went back to the embassy early hoping the visa would be ready and it was so at 3:15 I hopped on a local bus that took me back to the China border and fell into line to exit Macau. After going through the Macau immigration I walked 100 yards to the China immigration. It takes about an hour to get through both lines. Now, I’m back in Zhuhai and tomorrow (Friday the 17th) I will fly to Kunming which will be my home for the next year (and maybe longer?). Kunming is actually pretty close to Viet Nam and Laos so those are places I hope to visit sometime within the next year. My apartment will not be ready until the 25th so I will stay in a hotel on campus for a week at a cost of a little over $10 per night. I’m not posting any new pic’s this time but just as a reminder if you want to see pic’s click the link on the right side of the blog under “my links” that says “pictures”.

Now for the usual odds and ends. Snoopy (from the Peanuts comic strip) and Playboy are both big here. I have seen many Snoopy stores and many Playboy stores. I had heard that people in the north of China are taller than those in the south and when visiting the north I found that to be true. I think I am taller here too since I can reach up and touch the ceiling in the corridor of most hotels that I have stayed in…..lol. I mentioned a while back about the lack of cultural entertainment here and as evidence of that they did a special piece of the news about the play Momma Mia opening in Beijing. For my male readers I’ve got some good news and bad news for you. First the good news, Budweiser beer is available almost everywhere and costs about the same as the local beer. Now for the bad news….those Chinese ladies that you thought were quiet and subservient are quite the opposite. I have seen many ladies here give service people quite a hard time if they are not delivering perfect service and I have seen a few instances of ladies having really loud arguments with each other. One day I saw two ladies having a knock down, fight complete with kicking, punching and hair pulling. I have also learned that quite often in a divorce the father takes the children rather than the mother. I don’t have any idea what the actual statistics are but it is surely much more often that the father takes the kids than in the U.S. Of course, the father gets lots of help raising the kids from his parents. One last observation of special interest to my Coca-Cola buddies, they still use the old pull tabs on Coke cans here. Well that’s all for now, my next update will be from Kunming in Yunnan province where the weather will be much cooler and more comfortable.

First the usual odds and ends. One thing I have noticed here is that it takes a great deal of discussion for a meal to be ordered. I asked why this is the case and was told that the there is no standardization of menus. The name of the dish on the menu does not give a good description of what the dish actually is and how it is prepared. Thus you have to ask each time unless you’ve been to that restaurant before. Most of the toddlers here (pre-potty trained) wear pants that are open in the critical areas so their private parts are hanging out in the breeze and they are not wearing a diaper. I don’t know how they keep them from making a mess everywhere. I was told they know the child’s schedule and keep them in a safe place when it’s about time. I have witnessed ladies holding babies in a fashion that they are aimed at a safe target. I have seen some apple orchards in this area and most of the apples in the trees had plastic bags around them to protect them. Think of how much work that is! Speaking of food again, I can add one more unique item to the list of foods I’ve tried and that is chicken hearts. It was pretty tasty. If any of you are wondering how I manage my finances for this trip I’ll explain it now. I opened an account here at China Construction Bank and have an atm card from there than I can use. For the past few weeks I have primarily funded my expenses by paying in cash with yuan that I get from the China Construction Bank (CCB) atm’s using my Bank of America (B of A) atm card. B of A has an association with CCB and I can withdrawl money from my account in America with no atm or currency conversion fee. One time I withdrew money from my B of A account then 5 minutes later logged onto my account via the internet and the atm transaction was already posted. If my B of A account runs low I transfer money via the internet from my Fidelity money market account. I don’t think I would have done this adventure without the internet. I use it for the blog, managing my money, researching travel options, and keeping in touch with friends and family. I normally have a video chat using Yahoo Messenger with my parents about every 7 to 10 days.

Now for the details about Xi’an. It is located in China roughly where Indianapolis is located within America. The countryside is pretty similar to Indiana with lots of cornfields except there is a huge mountain off in the distance. Xi’an was the capital of 13 dynasties from 1046 BC to 907 AD and was one of the most prosperous areas of China. In 1374 to 1378 a huge wall was built around the city to protect it from invaders. The wall is about 9 miles long, about 40 feet tall, about 50 feet wide at the base and about 40 feet wide at the top (see pics). It originally had 4 gates (N,E,S,W) and had a double gate system at each of the 4 gates. Xi’an is a fairly small city by Chinese standards but doesn’t seem as nice a place as many of the other cities I have been to. The people are not as nice and there seem to be more people trying to hustle you out of your money. I think I had my camera stolen by one of their fine citizens. Either that or the strap broke and it fell off my body without touching me on the way down or making much of a sound when it hit the ground. You will see in the pics a banner labeling the Islamic street. There is a large Islamic population here but they do not appear to be extreme fundamentalists. Even if they were we would not be able to tell because the party would not tolerate extreme behavior. I have been told that the party supervises activities and teachings of all churches.

One of the first places we visited was a museum for stone tablets. They have thousands of tablets with carvings on them mostly with Chinese characters carved into them. Some of them are over 4000 years old. There are twelve Confucian classic stories engraved in the year 837 on 114 pieces of stone and they contain about 650,000 characters! Man, that’s a lot of work.

The next place we visited and the highlight of the week was The Mausoleum of Emperor Qin Shihuang. Qin ascended to the throne at age 13 and assumed power at the age of 21. Upon assuming power he immediately launched military campaigns to unify all of China and succeeded after 10 years. During his reign he developed a uniform code of law; and standardized currency, weight, measures and the written language. He also contributed to having significant sections of the Great Wall built. He had the tomb and all the terracotta soldiers built to protect his rule for eternity. There are about 8000 life sized warriors and horses along with tens of thousands of weapons. I posted lots of pics of this place as it is so amazing. If you look closely you will notice that the faces of the soldiers are all unique. The first warriors were discovered in 1974 by farmers that were drilling a well. The excavation is still continuing. According to records, it took 700,000 people 36 years to build the luxurious tomb where many treasures were buried with the emperor and his ladies.

Next stop was Mount Hua . It is about a 2 hour drive from the city and I would compare it to Yosemite in America. Its peak is at an elevation of about 7000 feet. We took the aerial cable car to about half way up then hiked the rest of the way to one of the peaks. From time to time, my fear of heights kicks in and this was one of them. I was very nervous in the cable car but was better on the mountain since there were railings or iron chains everywhere we went. We then hiked all the way back down and had to do it in a hurry as it was getting dark and we were late for our bus. We missed the bus and had to take a really old train back to Xi’an. In total, we hiked for almost 5 hours either straight up or straight down. By the time we got we made it back to the hotel I was exhausted and my leg muscles were very tight and sore. You’ll see in one of the pics a bunch of red ribbons attached to padlocks that are locked onto an iron chain (you can’t see the chain for all the locks). They sell the locks and the couples buy them and place them on the chain near the top of the mountain then throw away the key to symbolize that they will always be together. The next day (today) was a much needed rest day (and blog update day!).

I’m in Beijing now but before I go into all the incredible sites here I’ll go back and fill in some details on some previous stops and add some odds and ends. I mentioned that in Suzhou I saw the Grand Canal which runs from Beijing to Hangzhou and is over 1000 miles long! That is more than 20 times the Panama Canal. Quite impressive, and even more so considering that it was dug more than 1400 years ago. Also in Suzhou, the pictures from the garden there include some flowers in the water which are Lotus flowers. While on our way out of Suzhou we went past some big factories and I was surprised to see a nice covered parking lot for employees vehicles in front of one of them. There under the covered parking were several hundred bicycles. While in Xi Tang we had dinner at a local noodle restaurant that I refer to as the slurping restaurant because most of the customers were making a slurping noise while eating their noodles out of the soupy broth. They were all very curious about the foreigner in their restaurant and were asking about me. That dinner cost about $1.15 for 2 of us including a beer for me. If any of you come to China make sure to wear two watches if you go out in public. I have found that if I only wear one watch they think I need another one and try very hard to sell me one. I have been approached at least 100 times about buying a watch. I have found that Moon River and Auld Lang Syne are two of the most popular English songs here but I have no idea why.

Now for my experiences here in Beijing, which has a population of about 14 million people (almost as many as the state of Florida) and has a history of more than 3000 years. There is a lot of construction going on here but it’s difficult to tell how much of it is due to Olympic preparations as there is a lot of construction everywhere in China. We did see the “birdnest” Olympic stadium under construction (see pics). The traffic here is very bad and the public transit does not seem to be quite as good as some other cites although it is very cheap (only 1 yuan or $.13 for a bus and 3 yuan for the subway, minimum of 10 yuan for a taxi with most taxi rides costing less than 20 yuan). Pollution is definitely an issue as there are many days when the sun is shining but you don’t really see it through the pollution. They only have blue skies if there was a good storm the night before. We went to the Summer Palace first which is out on the edge of town. The Summer Palace was first built over 800 years ago. In 1860 the Anglo-French forces invaded Beijing and burned down the palace. In 1888 Empress Cixi (see pic) had it restored at a very high cost. It was again destroyed in 1900 by invading armies from other parts of China. The Empress again had it rebuilt in 1903 at an enormous cost using funds intended for the navy. Many believe that this drain of resources from the military contributed significantly to the downfall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911. The palace was built on a large lake and the grounds include the entire area around the lake. We didn’t walk around the entire lake but we must have walked about 8 miles during our 7 to 8 hour visit.

The next day we visited the Forbidden City/Imperial Palace (aka Palace Museum) in the heart of the city. It also is enormous and is literally a city within a city. I’m guessing that in a residential area you would find about 100,000 people living in the same amount of space as the Forbidden City. Construction was finished in 1420 after 14 years of work by 100,000 artisans and 1 million civilians. There is one large marble ramp carving (see pic) that weighs more than 200 tons and took 20,000 people to move it the 43 miles and was accomplished in the winter on an ice road using logs and iron sticks. 24 Emperors from the Ming and Qing Dynasties ruled from here. The luxurious lifestyle enjoyed by the royalty is quite amazing. The Emperors normally had more than 1 wife and enjoyed many concubines. There was a ranking among the Empresses and the concubines with higher rank conferring more power and entitlements. There was particularly powerful Empress named Cixi who started as a concubine. She ruled the country for the better part of 50 years even taking power away from an Emperor when she felt he was unfit. Often she would rule by sitting behind a curtain while a child emperor sat in front of the curtain holding court. She had a taster to taste every dish of food before she ate to ensure that they were not poisoned. As an example of the luxury she enjoyed, there were over 1000 people working to make her silk embroidered socks as she wore a new pair every day and they were destroyed after she wore them. To keep the concubines from “straying” the male servants in the palace were all eunuchs. I read that about half of them did not survive the surgery and that many of them carried around their “dismembered members” to help them get into heaven since they had a religious belief that you couldn’t get into heaven with parts missing. We walked and walked and still didn’t see all the buildings within the Forbidden City. In the afternoon I sat down and leaned back in a chair and promptly went to sleep. Needless to say, my feet and back were dog tired.

The next day we rested a bit and only did some light sightseeing. We visited Tiananmen Square the site of many famous populous protests. The “Mao-soleum” which is where you can view the body of Chairman Mao is also located there along with the Peoples Hall (similar to our Congress). We also attempted to buy our train tickets to Xi’an at the nearby train station. We wanted to buy “soft” seat tickets (sleeper) for the overnight train but apparently scalpers buy up most of the good tickets so we ended up with “hard” seats (no bed, just a seat). For dinner that evening we went to Quanjude restaurant for Peking (roast) duck. They have been serving duck at this restaurant since 1864 and it was delicious. It was the most expensive dinner I’ve had in China costing about $16.50 (125 yuan) per person without any alcohol.

The next day we had a very busy day. We climbed the Great Wall, visited a Ming Tomb, a Lama Temple and did a Hutong tour. We left the hotel at 6:00 a.m. to go join the tour bus to the Great Wall as I wanted to beat the crowds. The closest and most popular section of the wall is at Ba Da Ling about 50 miles from the city. We arrived there at 8:00 and it was already crowded. It’s mind boggling to think about how difficult it was to build it considering that it is on top of a mountain ridge and the tools they had to use when it was built. It is really several walls that were joined together over time. Construction began as early as 400 BC and ended by 1620. It is almost 4000 miles long and it is estimated the amount of bricks and rock used to make it would be enough to build a wall around the world 3 feet thick and 16 feet high. After the Great Wall we went to see one of the Ming tombs which was not too far away. It was built in the 1500’s and was built underground. It’s amazing the riches that they buried and that the tombs were not pillaged later considering it took many workers to build the tombs. They were left undisturbed for hundreds of years. Then we went back to Beijing and visited the Lama Temple which is a large Buddhist temple. After that we went to see a nearby Hutong neighborhood which is the old style of housing in Beijing. A Hutong is a rectangular compound with a wall around the outside with much of the wall being sides of buildings and a courtyard in the middle. We hired a bicycle taxi to take us for a tour of the neighborhood and we went inside one of the Hutongs (see pics) owned by a private family that charges a small fee for a tour and some tea. One of the buildings is for the parents to live in, another building is for the adult children and their family to live in, another building is for cooking, and the 4th building is for guests. Many of these Hutongs have disappeared in recent years and have been replaced by high rise buildings.

Well that’s about it for Beijing, next stop is Xi’an and the terracotta soldiers. I hope I didn’t bore you with too many details.