Since the last update over New Year’s Day (and subsequent photo postings), there has hardly been a minute to stop to reflect, as everything seemed to kick in to high gear.
We spent all of January working 6-day weeks, and were too tired to do much on our days off. We worked late Monday night and came in on the earlier side Wednesday, so if we wanted to do anything it was pretty much limited to the local area and downtown Hangzhou on our day off (always Tuesday). We initially decided that we would take some overnight trips during our first extended holiday, which was over the Chinese New Year in February. So, January was busy with teaching, but not extremely eventful. We did have some interesting experiences with locals, though….
While Marie was teaching one day, and Jon had a couple of hours before his next class, he was invited by one of his younger and newer student’s father to have dinner with him and his son. The man, who had basically no English language exposure before he came to the center, is a local factory owner. He was a student of Marie’s, and was given the option of different English names that he could use while at school. He chose Tom, while Jon had already given his son the name of Ted. So, Jon accepted the invitation to have dinner with Tom and Ted (very exotic names ;)!) at a local “Western” coffee shop. As already mentioned, coffee shops in China are extremely expensive places that serve supposedly Western meals that mostly consist of steak, eggs, ham and then other things that would never be recognizable to most Westerners. An example would be crab ovaries, pig’s brains, and other strange items. The even funnier thing is that the food on the menu in English have nonsensical names like “The pig explodes the row”, “The burnt cow meets the lotus root”, and “Soupy soup Hungary style” and other mangled English titles. Luckily, there are pictures on the menu, but most of the time you have to guess what picture corresponds to which meal. Often, the picture shown is not even of an available item on the menu. But, to be fair, that is because they always sell out of things, sometimes in perpetuity.
So, when Tom and Ted invited Jon to eat at a nearby coffee shop, Jon figured that he would just get a basic ham and egg sandwich, and bring back half for Marie since she would be in class at the time. This was not to be, as upon arrival, Tom insisted on ordering an obscene amount of food. He ordered Jon a sandwich, but also soup, fries, a gigantic fruit plate and a meal set that consisted of sausage, chicken, beef and vegetables. He also ordered his plump 11-year old son the same things, while ordering only a small Chinese meal set for himself. Ironically, since fat kids are not common in China like they are in the West, parents not only often don’t mind when their children are overweight, but actually see it as proof of their wealth and status. It shows that they can afford to feed their children more than enough! Sadly, as the proliferation of skewed wealth distribution increases to the few in China, wealthier families seem more likely to have heavier children. It was the same for Americans a century ago, when men wanted plump wives to prove that they were well cared for and not starving!
Tom not only ordered a ton of food, but also insisted on ordering duplicate items that could be taken to Marie. As mentioned these places are extremely expensive, even in US dollar terms. So, suffice it to say that it must have cost a small fortune for all of the food that Tom ordered and would not be dissuaded from doing so by Jon. And, if ordering a huge meal that would have cost more than many Chinese people make in a month was not enough, Tom would accept no money to help pay for anything.
So, Jon had only intended on getting a small meal, but after conversing with Tom and Ted in extremely basic Mandarin the whole meal and eating a ton, was almost sick to his stomach when he left to go to his next class.
Tom, probably a wealthy man by Chinese standards, is not uncommon in what he did since this sort of generosity seems endemic to Chinese people. The insistence by people of far less means than he to treat others is apparently almost a cultural standard. This personal graciousness stands in stark contrast to the unscrupulous business owners who will squeeze profits by any means while not considering the lives and health of their employees and customers. We’d be hard pressed to imagine a man like Tom knowingly selling tainted goods through his factory to turn a quick buck (Yuan), but unfortunately there are obviously countless who do. In fact, Tom personally seems to be a man of great integrity and intelligence. He is an excellent student who retains knowledge and language at an impressive pace, and obviously dedicates himself to study in the near absence of spare time that he has. Yet, what might actually be the most startling aspect of the situation is that Tom had nothing to gain by treating us to such a personally expensive meal. He and his son did not have grades on the line as they would in a regular full-time school or college, nor were there any employment promotions to be gained. It was a gesture born not of self-interest but of selflessness. It is sad that this should seem so odd to us, since it is not unheard of for people to treat others generously in the West as well as the East. But, maybe it comes from an ingrained U.S. East Coast cynicism that tends to question all actions for their possible ulterior motives. Either way, it was a very kind thing for him to do and a nice gesture.
Another interesting incident that occurred in January was when Marie and Jon were walking by the brand new building that seemed to be put up almost overnight next to their apartment. The building has several floors of clothing, jewelry and other stores that are mostly “Western” and overpriced. Some, we have not seen for a long time, like Lacoste (the makers of the ubiquitous 1980’s Izod alligator clothing), and others are ones we never thought we would see here like Von Dutch. There are many other stores like Nike, Calvin Klein, Gucci and even a Hello Kitty store going in to this as of yet unfinished building. In fact, there are posh apartments that will be opening on the higher floors of this huge complex at some point in the near future. And, of course, a KFC, which unbeknownst to us before we arrived, is China’s most popular fast-food chain.
So, as Jon and Marie walked past the back of this complex one evening to get back to their apartment, they were beckoned by what looked like a police officer to come over to the building. In parts of China, and definitely in Xiaoshan, sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between policemen and security guards because their uniforms look almost exactly alike. As well, policemen either don’t carry guns, or have them well concealed. So, even though we had done nothing wrong, the old paranoia when having to deal with a cop kicked in. But, as we approached the man calling us and entered in to the control room where he sat, it soon became apparent that he and the others with him were indeed building security guards. They were in a room that had at least a dozen security monitors that they were watching. It was actually a pretty impressive area with brand-new state of the art security technology; so much, in fact that we were still not sure when we first entered whether it might actually be a small police kiosk.
When we entered we were asked to sit and Jon was offered a cigarette. This is customary as almost all men, and many women, smoke without an afterthought. Jon mostly always kindly declines and hopes to not cause any offense, but they seem to understand. So, Jon declined and he and Marie sat and began to speak with the security guards. There were three of them, and they were all very pleasant. The one that beckoned us was the most vocal. They, like many people in Xiaoshan (as well as people in many parts of China) were very curious to see Westerners and wanted to talk to us and find out about us since they had seen us several times before. The man we talked to the most had, like many people under the age of 40, learned some English for a few years between Middle and High School. But, like most, only learned to write and read Pinyin and English a bit, but did not have much conversational ability. Again, this continues to be the norm that schools have Chinese English teachers who themselves cannot carry on English conversation and only teach the students writing, some reading and grammar. Sadly, schools in the West teaching languages often also do not engender conversational skills until the very advanced levels. But, many are now coming to understand that language acquisition, as with babies and children, works best if it starts with listening and then gradually progresses to speaking. Reading and then writing should come well after a basic conversational proficiency has been obtained. Especially, that is, when the written language uses an entirely different alphabet or character system than the learner’s primary language.
So, Jon and the gentlemen conversed in very basic Mandarin for a bit and found out that the main guard was the only one who was married. He had a baby boy, and unless the one-child policy really is to be changed, that is all he shall have for the time being. He was very kind, as were the others. Early on in the conversation, there was something that happened on the monitors that caused the guards to jump up and immediately rush to see what it was. We are not sure if it was anything, but were very impressed by their alertness. They were probably just bored, and looking for something to occupy them, so we also provided a good distraction. After talking for a while, they gave me their names written in pinyin, and asked us to come back to visit. Again, probably the friendliest and most interesting security guards we have ever met.
As we continued to work through the end of the month, we were looking forward to February. Even though we still had to work 6-day weeks, we had our Chinese New Year, or Golden Week as the Chinese holidays are known, coming up. We were, because of the week long holiday falling two days after our regular day off, to take an extra day between in order to have nine consecutive days off, from February 5-13th. The actual Chinese New Year’s Eve was on the night of February 6th, and the New Year’s Day was February 7th. Since the Chinese calendar is lunar unlike our Western solar calendar, the dates change every year. In fact, people who were born anytime from later January through the entire month of February should check to see when the actual Chinese New Year fell during their birth year in order to see what their actual Chinese Zodiac sign, or animal is.
This Chinese New Year was to see the end of the 12-year Zodiac cycle that ends with the Pig. The first sign of the new cycle, and this new Chinese New Year is the now the year of the Rat. Some people here tell us that it is actually the year of the Mouse and that it is not a Rat. But, it is still called the Year of the Rat by most, so that’s what we’re going with! The year of the lovely rat could not start soon enough for us in order to get our first several days break since we got here. We had plans to travel to Shanghai, Hangzhou, relax, do some errands and even update the blog during our time off. We were to find out that our plans were to be drastically altered by events over which we had no control.
There was to be, at the very beginning of February, the worst snowstorms and winter weather south of Shanghai in over 50 years! This made the international news; so, many or most of you reading this blog entry probably already are aware of what happened. We actually had a couple days of classes cut short and cancelled right before the Golden Week because there were several inches of accumulated snow which has not happened for years in the City. We are amazed that more driving accidents did not occur, but we may have missed many of them because we spent most of the time in our apartment trying to stay warm in the only room of our apartment that is heated. We used the space heater, the wall unit and even hot water bottles to try to accomplish this. The entire southern half of China was in crisis, and many parts were without power, adequate food supply, transportation or potable water for several weeks as they were unprepared for such an event. In fact, there was surprisingly a bit of local open criticism of the bureaucratic ineptitude that allowed for such poor infrastructure and lack of preparedness. The news continued to compare it to the Hurricane Katrina disaster, and said that the government had to learn from events like this how to be ready for these kinds of incidents.
When the Chinese New Year’s Eve came, the snow had tapered off somewhat in our area. At least, it had enough for us to venture out for a meal at our favorite Japanese Restaurant. The restaurant is located in the Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Hotel, which is the nicest hotel in the part of the city in which we live. They also have a Japanese Karaoke bar in the hotel where mostly Japanese businessmen and their employees spend their time drunkenly crooning out Japanese standards. Marie and Jon went in there one night, in fact, and were accosted by drunken businessmen who insisted that we sing the Chinese favorite, “Yesterday Once More”, by the Carpenters, which sadly seems to be played everywhere. As well, we sang “Hotel California” by the Eagles, and even sang Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” for them as it was one of the few and most ridiculous English songs that they had available! The sake prices at this bar were definitely more in line with what would be seen in Japan rather than in China.
The restaurant that we like so much has very good Japanese options, a good atmosphere, and fairly decent prices. So, when we went there for New Year’s Eve, we were treated to an amazing fireworks display right outside of the window as fireworks were being set off everywhere. In fact, the average person’s fireworks were what Westerners would expect to see from professional shows. As midnight approached, they grew even more frequent and ubiquitous. When midnight struck, we had never seen so many fireworks in our life from everywhere. In fact, the irony is that there weren’t a lot compared to what bigger cities would have had. But, being that anyone can buy huge fireworks, and they are set off constantly anyway, we were amazed but not surprised.
The next day, Chinese New Year, and the day after were almost completely dead as Chinese visit their families and have home cooked meals together while cleaning their houses and buying new clothes in preparation for the feasts. Almost everything is closed, and in fact the only reason that some places were open and that people were around was that millions of migrant workers were stranded in the snowstorms and had to wait until after the New Year to go home. But, unfortunately Jon and Marie were kind of homebound again as Jon developed some sort of eye infection that took a couple of weeks to run its course, but peaked just at that time.
Because of the horrible weather, not only were train stations and airports from Guangzhou to the south closed, but all the way up to Hangzhou and even Shanghai were largely immobilized. The Chinese New Year is the largest annual mass migration of humanity on earth as millions upon millions travel across the country to go home to visit their families. In fact, there were hundreds of thousands alone stranded at and sleeping at Hanzghou’s train station. So, because of the weather, transportation woes and eye infection, we decided not to do any of the traveling that we had planned to do during the Golden Week, and to wait until we had some time off while literally millions of others weren’t on the move. The Golden Weeks are horrible in that there are so many people moving, and things are so crowded, but also all prices go way up as opportunists look to exploit those that have no choice since everyone in the whole country has off at the same time. Apparently, the next Golden Week in May is changing and there may be future changes because the government realizes that having so many people off at the same time is counter-productive.
We did go visit after New Year’s Day with a couple of nice young men that were students at the center. One’s father owns an amazing restaurant on the other side of Xiaoshan that is in the middle of an enormous garden. The place is mobbed with customers, who come not only for the food but because they can also go fishing in the pond next to it. As well, there are pens that hold deer that literally are served fresh in the restaurant. When we went to visit, the son of the owner was extremely generous and they treated us to an amazing meal. There was fish, venison, beef, pork, all sorts of veggies, and even wine served. Unfortunately, as Jon was feeling better, Marie was feeling ill at that point. As well, since deer meat is not her favorite thing, it made it even harder for her to have to see them alive and know that they or their siblings/parents were to be part of our meal. It was amazing, and a bit surreal at the same time. In fact, after the meal we were driven by them to see a huge park where hundreds of deer are kept penned up for the consumption of locals. Again, very strange and unique……
Before the Golden Week was up, we did actually get to go to Hangzhou a couple of times to relax, do some shopping, eat some actual Western as well as Chinese foods and even go to a Jazz Bar we discovered next to West Lake. It is called “Friends” and, luckily, beside the pix of the actors from the show hung up on the wall of the stairwell, there was nothing else that had to do with the show. It is a very comfortable place with a pool table, couches, overpriced drinks (sadly), but a very good Jazz trio with a man playing the piano, another playing guitar and a female lead singer. They play all songs in English, and the guitar player specializes in Eric Clapton tunes. Sarah, the lead singer, is from a place called Shenyang in Northeast China where we originally thought we might be going. She was very sweet and we enjoyed talking to her every time we went. In fact, the last time we were there, she was being harassed in to singing everything from Chinese folk songs to “I Will Always Love You (Whitney style)” by a crowd of drunken Chinese businessmen.
We actually got to see the newer part of Xiaoshan, on the other side of the mountain, as well over the holiday. It is much nicer, newer and has much more to do. We went to the Holiday Inn, which is like a palace compared to all the others we are used to. There was a lounge act of a Spanish man playing the keyboard, and a Filipino woman singing English songs. As well, we discovered a club called the Yoyo Club that was the first time we had seen or been in a Western style night club in China. It was a techno place, and almost laughable, as though it was nice, the people took themselves way too seriously. There were male and female dancers on platforms that were also kind of ridiculous. But, we enjoyed the whole experience regardless.
We bought many cheap but good things from the night market that we like to visit and enjoyed just having time off. In fact, by the time the 9 days were over, it was very strange going back to the center. But, we quickly finished the last couple of 6-day weeks of February.
There is a day called the Lantern Festival that comes about two weeks after the Chinese New Year to signify the end of festivities. There are thousands of red paper lanterns hung with candles in them, and children carry them all over. We saw some amazing displays in the park near our house. It was also around this time that we met the relatives of one of our students who were visiting from the U.S. A couple and their 5-year old daughter live in Charlottesville, VA where the man and woman both work as research scientists at UVA. It was so ironic to meet people who, though from China, were visiting from their new home in the States that is so relatively close to where we are from!
After returning to work, as soon as we had a chance, last week we went to Shanghai for the day. It was the first time that we had gone because sadly it was the first time we had had a chance to go. Our other previous planned trips were either cancelled by others having to cancel or because of the weather. We were determined to go for the day, and so we finally did.
We weren’t sure exactly what to expect. We booked a very early train from Hangzhou to Shanghai that we caught an even earlier cab from Xiaoshan to catch. The train station was very large, but the opening to get to the platform was so ludicrously small that we felt like cattle being herded on to the train. Luckily, once inside, the train was very nice and spacious. It took about an hour and a half from Hangzhou to Shanghai’s Southern train station. Once there, we found a taxi to a part of the enormous downtown and just started walking around.
Shanghai is an enormous city with the largest population in China. There are around 17-18 million people, so we were surprised that there was any room to move around. The first thing we found, and stopped in to, was a Starbucks. It must have been about the 10th we’d been in since we got to China. We then made our way by another cab to a huge shopping and market area where Marie found a great place that sold very cheap jewelry and pearls. It had been disappointing that it took so long for her to find such a place since we’d gotten her, but she finally did.
After shopping, we went to another famous market and waited in a huge line for over an hour for 16 of the most famous Shanghai dumplings around. The service and line were horrible, and it might not have been worth the wait after all. But, the dumplings, though basic, were very good. We were annoyed that we were told that we could not get an empty bowl to split them in. But, after getting very angry after waiting so long, they were able to finally get one.
When the dumplings were finally served, there was of course nowhere to sit and eat them. So, we went to yet another Starbucks right there so that we could eat them there. After, Jon helped Marie bargain for some more things at the market. Then, we went to the Bund, or the famous riverbank at Pudong. It was there, at the Huangpu River, that we strolled along and could see the famous Shanghai skyline and ovular tower. We saw fascinating pictures of the history of the place and continued to walk around. When we realized that we needed to get going, it took forever to get a cab that wasn’t already full at rush hour. Of course, after catching one just in time and getting to the station right on time, it was then that we realized that the driver had gone to the Northern rather than Southern Station. So, it took another 45 minutes to drive back across the city. Luckily, though, even though we missed our train, we were able to take the next without paying for it!
By the time we got back to Hangzhou and had dinner, we were exhausted and Jon had to work the next day.
Now, Spring is almost here and we are finally looking forward to much more of the nice weather that has come around lately. We wish everyone all the best, and a happy early Spring!
Shanghai skyline as dusk approaches- photo taken from the Bund, the Anglo-Indian term for muddy enbankment; famous for the past century and a half for strolling and taking in famous sites
The most touristy picture we could take - no explanation necessary
Making dumplings at famous Shanghai NanXiang Steamed Bun Restaurant, take-out specializing in cheap and delicious dumplings, though after waiting in line for over an hour, were still wondering if it was worth it.....
Making dumplings at famous Shanghai NanXiang Steamed Bun Restaurant, take-out specializing in cheap and delicious dumplings, though after waiting in line for over an hour, were still wondering if it was worth it.....
