Arriving in Beijing I was impressed with the massive size of the airport. I was also impressed with the fact that it was entirely smoke free. In fact I am beginning to wonder if that description of Chinese as being cigarette puffing nicotine addicts is not something of a myth. I have not been in a single restaurant that had ash trays on the table and out on the streets the number of smokers does not appear to be any higher than what I see on the streets of Richmond. Of course I haven’t been in the big cities yet but for now I am thinking that if the Chinese market might not be Phillip Morris’ salvation .In fact from what I have read the largest producer of cigarettes in China is the government. Now if France had China’s population MO would be in great shape.
The connecting flight to Hangzhou was delayed and something happened that I had never seen in the same situation in the states. The dinner that was to be served on the plane was brought to the ticket counter and the waiting passengers picked it up and returned to their seats in the waiting area to eat. I did the same and when I opened the package I realized the meal came with chopsticks, not as a fun alternate but as the utensils for the meal. Oh yeah, I am in China for real now. Rice flew all over the place as I struggled to regain a skill I had only applied at places like PF Chang. I have already begun to improve. I have been timing myself at each evening meal to see how long it takes to eat. I measure my chop stick skill by time and debris left on the table. My speed is up and the table no longer looks like the tray on my granddaughter’s high chair after she has eaten.
It is quiet where I am. The wide streets are never very crowded and the electric motor bikes go by without making a sound. You never hear the roar of a Harley or the incessant thudding that comes out of some of our cars where for some people a ridiculously loud system played at full volume is some kind of status symbol. Or mating call. I haven’t heard any sirens here which makes me wonder if the emergency vehicles use lights only or if there even are emergency vehicles. Maybe the Chinese don’t have emergencies. On either side of this four lane road are bike paths wide enough for two bikers to ride side by side. The greatest vehicle for me is what I call the motorized rickshaw. For less than a dollar I can hitch a ride for at least three miles, which means I can get pretty were anywhere I want to in the area around the school cheaply. They too use the little bike paths. But then they use the main road, the sidewalks, paths in parks and anything else that will get their customer where he wants to be.
Lately for me that has been almost exclusively to Vanguard, a large department/grocery store which sells everything from cell phones to live eels. I bought a Chinese cell phone which was an experience. The sales clerk spoke not a word of English and it took me a couple of trips to make the purchase. By the time it was done I had me a new friend. It was not near as exciting as trying to buy a coffee maker. Mr. Coffee is not at that store. My efforts to explain what it was I was trying to buy drew a crowd as various sales clerks offered me blenders, tea kettles and waffle irons. Fortunately Maxwell House instant coffee was available so I can get my caffeine fix.
I was walking around a lot when I first got here and I made some interesting discoveries during those walks. Behind all the high rises that completely surround the school there is a street that looks like China unchanged. Small shops: bike repairs, fruit stands, outdoor kitchens all crowded together on one side of the street. Very third world. On the other side at various intervals are concrete block little structures like sheds with the doors taken off. Their surface is small green tiles. Here garbage is dumped and once in a while burned. The decaying garbage gives this street a nasty odor and I have dubbed it “stinky street”. But stinky street has shops with stuff I need and friendly shop keepers who are always happy to see me.
The other discovery was the presence of fairly large, well-tended gardens in what would be considered in our country to be in vacant lots. Ground between the high rises yields tall stalks of corn, and neat rows of cabbage, carrots and other vegetables. Land is not being wasted where I am, but I can’t help but wonder how many of those little gardens have disappeared with the appearance of these high rises, some of which are completed and others still under construction.
Speaking of food I have been eating really well since I arrived in China. For two dollars I can get a dinner at a little restaurant nearby that would easily cost twelve to fifteen dollars back home. Huge potions. And the school lunch is unbelievable. It too is about two dollars and includes a salad and a main course larger than what I normally eat for dinner. For the first time in my teaching career I am wishing that there was such a thing as doggy bags for school lunches.
It is the dog days of August and evidently in China that means it is just as hot as hell itself I constantly feel like I need a shower. The humidly here beats Virginia and runs a close second behind Panama. It is raining right now, and it feels very much like a good old Virginia rainstorm. I think of home a lot, the Old Dominion and the good people in it. Cindy and I video conference every morning and evening on Skype and the kids check in from time to time. Recently the internet connection stopped and I was suddenly sized with a sense of panic. I am now cut off from my homeland, a stranger in a strange land. Then I reminded myself that this technology was not around when I wandered about Europe in my twenties and I did just fine. After that I re-booted the computer, Cindy and the dogs came back on the screen and all was right with the world so flat.
September 7 I have been in China a full three weeks now. A great deal of the time has been on the campus which is more like a compound, completely fenced in with a guard house manned twenty fours hours a day, seven days a week by security guards. During the night they make their rounds and when my jet lag had me up and out at three in the morning I startled them more than once and on one occasion woke one up that was asleep in the guard house. Today they are reinstalling security cameras that had been taken out during previous administrations. Like me, both my principal and assistant principal are new to this school. I guess they are just trying to get everything ship shape but I have to say it is a bit creepy. The property is leased from the Chinese school next door which has a reputation for being one of the top in all of China. It is a boarding school and in order to qualify for a dorm room the student has to score very high on an entrance exam. Low scorers have to fend for themselves in the city. They like to play music over the loud speaker on Saturday mornings which I am sure is not too much fun for my colleagues in these apartments who want to sleep late. As for me I am up before the music starts. There is plenty of room in the buildings we have to handle our population of 1,000. The school is from Kindergarten to Twelfth grade. K to 6 is called Lower School and 7 to 12 is Upper school. Students are varied in their background. Some have American sounding first names and Asian last names. Many of the Upper School students I teach have lived in Hangzhou for many years and consider it more home than country from whence they came. With the exception of Amelia Ti from California I have no students from the states. Several of my students are Finnish. Nokia has a research and development facility here. English is the language of the school and is the only language allowed in the classrooms. Some are stronger in the language than others of course but most demonstrate a lot of intelligence and a strong desire to succeed.
As for me and the language that surrounds me, I have “hello”, “thank you” and “stop” (so the little took-tooks don’t miss the school) down pretty good. I think I can recognize the number one. But that’s all. English signage is abundant here which is very helpful. I was thinking about that the other day. A common complaint back in the states is the appearance of Spanish signage which evokes the frequent comment “If they are going to live in our country they need to learn our language.” I wonder if there are some Chinese saying the same thing about me. I have tried on occasion to work on Mandrin. One night I went with my book of phrases over to the guardhouse and tried to get a few words out of one of the friendlier of the guards. It turned into a one way street where he got English words out of me but gave no Chinese words back. I found how to ask him his name and after he read it out of my book he then wrote his name on a piece of paper with Chinese characters. So what am I to do with that? Maybe I’ll make a sign with his name on it and next time I see him I’ll say “Ni Hou ….” And then hold up the sign. I marvel at some of the veteran teachers who have been in China for years and the Mandarin just flows out effortlessly. I think its going to be a struggle for me mainly because at this age the memory isn’t what it was. Today they are reinstalling security cameras that had been taken out during previous administrations. I got my first Chinese haircut today. The guy did a good job but I did miss the conversations I would have with Mr. Nick down at the mall. The hair cut cost 25 RMB which is about $4. A meal here is about $2.50, the taxi meter starts at a $1.47 and on short runs never gets past $2.50. The tuk-tuk is five RMB to get down to Vanguard for shopping and that’s about 74 cents. A teacher’s salary can go a long way here. I have spent less than $1,000 in these three weeks and that includes buying lots of basic things for the apartment.
The faculty joined faculties from sister schools for a river float on bamboo rafts this yesterday. It was the first time I had been in the countryside of China and seeing the tea fields on the sides of hills, the mulberry trees, and the river with its water buffalo submerged up to their necks was a refreshing change from the daily view of high rises and high rises under construction. The river looked a lot like the James up around Nelson County, except of course for the water buffalo. It was lots of fun attacking other rafters with water guns. The favorite ones to attack were the people all wrapped up in raincoats and carrying umbrellas. I wonder what they thought of the raft load of Americans in bathing suits hollering out random nautical terms spraying as much water on them as possible. The barbeque that followed was strange. Tables were scattered about with grills in the middle of them. For 15 RMB a little old man would carry a shovel full of hot coals and pour them into your grill. He moved through crowds of people with his flaming spade and it was just up to you to get out of his way.
The heat continues to be intense and thunderstorms can be ferocious. When hurricane Earl was sounding like a threat to the Carolinas and possibly Virginia I followed it closely until one morning when I was checking my school e-mail I learned that a similar storm was off the coast of China and posed the same level of threat to us. Fortunately for both areas nothing came of either threat.
-------
September 12, Last night I ate at a Muslim restaurant, not because it was 911 but because the place had been recommended by everyone who ate there. These are people from the very far west of China, near Kazakhstan. They are called Uyghurs and they are an ethnic minority. The area the Uyghurs call home, is being taken over by the ethnic majority who control the country, the Han. A story I heard from one of my colleagues who has been in China for a long time is that a couple of Uyghurs were rounded up in Afghanistan and transported to Guantanamo Bay during the invasion that followed the destruction of the towers. When they were released the US realized that sending them back to China was a death sentence so we set them up with lives in the Bahamas. Only the good old USA would do something like that. The food was very good but very strange. I learned later that when they fix chicken they tend to hack the whole thing up and throw it in the pot. I think at one point I got the head. But they make their pasta right in the restaurant and you can see the pasta maker at work. And his pasta is first rate.
I continue to face and overcome small hurdles around here. For a while there was the deodorant scare. It is not a common commodity here, something I learned as my Old Spice stick got smaller and smaller. Matters were made worse when I learned it could cost up to $92 to ship me some from the US. Just when I was about to resign myself to more showers than normal my friend Ryan pointed to a small store and low and behold that crisis was solved.
The buses are good when they aren’t crowded. They are air conditioned and have televisions for riders to enjoy. I have no Idea what the programs are all about but they look interesting. My friend Lance and I spent a whole Saturday riding around on buses trying to learn where they went. One bus took us completely out of the city to an area where factories were sprawled about for companies like Motorola and Siemens. It was a challenge to find the right combination of buses to get us back to the part of Hangzhou that was our original destination but eventually we succeeded.
September 22 We had the day off from school today. It was the Mid-Autumn festival, and as if on cue the weather turned cooler. For the first time since I arrived here the temperature actually got into the sixties. I took a long hike with a co-worker the kids call Mr. Steve. It's easier than trying to pronounce his long Polish last name. Steve has been international for the last 2O years. He taught in Florida for a while after doing a stint with the Peace Corps and then said god bye to American schools and started teaching around the world. He has been in China for three years and would greet people we met on the walk with the Chinese expression for “Happy Mid-Autumn Festival”. Their faces would light up and they would put their hands together , give a little bow say something which I think was the Chinese equivalent to the Spanish word “equalmente” . Steve was full of great stories about China and other places he had been and the three hour walk went quickly. We finished at the top of a hill called Jade Emperor Hill which had an old Taoist temple and a panorama of the city of Hangzhou and West Lake. I asked what the Chinese people did for this holiday and learned that most of them join all the members of their family for a big feast. A big family feast in the fall. That has a familiar sound to it. The big holiday starts next week and we will again have some days off from school. Unfortunately my passport is still in processing to update my status from tourist to resident and I can’t make any plans to travel until I get back. This is when all of China travels so by the time I get my passport back it will be impossible for me to by a train ticket to anywhere.
September 26 I caught a bus across the river this morning and found the tomb of Yu Quan. He was the minister of defense during the Ming Dynasty. When his emperor was captured in a battle with the Mongols he took over the army and successfully defended the Chinese against their enemy. He then ruled the country for the duration of the conflict. When the emperor got back he declared Yu to be a traitor and had him executed. He was later absolved of these charges (not that that did him any good) He is something of a Hangzhou home boy hero. The other place I went to was the Silk Museum. Now that doesn’t sound like a very exciting place but it is when you think about how much silk is a part of China. And this display does an excellent job of getting that point across. Silk was more than just a product. It was the first major form currency, it was the cloth everyone wore and ones status was determined by the color of silk and rank by silk badges. Beautiful building and grounds. I think I’ll be going back there with my World History class.
October 1 We are on break for a Chinese holiday called the National Festival. Entranceways to apartment complexes are adorned with Chinese Lanterns and wide swaths of bright red cloth with Chinese characters painted in gold on them. Red archways, made of the same material and inflated in the same way as our yard snowmen and Santas are at Christmas time, span entranceways into some of the nearby gated communities. The flag of China is on lamp posts on the main roads around West Lake, the way our flag appears on lampposts in Midlothian around the fourth of July. I made a run to the grocery store and it was much more crowded than usual. Traffic is now heavier too. The taxi I was in last night took over an hour to get to a place that typically would have taken twenty minutes. I have maintained that rush hour is a twenty four seven phenomenon in this city but during the national holiday, when so many people are off from work, this tourist town is jammed.
October 3 I went out yesterday with several faculty members and their families to the Grand Canal. It was pretty impressive; not just the size of the ditch which was built from 486 to 1293 BC and still carries barges, but the way the area to tour was fixed up with stone walkways and statues everywhere. There is a renovated area where people live that is like a touch of old China. The best part was it was not crowded at all and we could move about freely and watch the barges go up and down the river. A barge loaded with crushed rock went down stream. A few minutes later another barge appeared carrying crushed rock but it was going upstream. I am not too sure what that was about but it seemed inefficient to me. From there we went to a furniture store. One family bought two easy chairs and I think the others are seriously contemplating a couch I might go back there to get and get a recliner. It was only $205. And delivery is free.
Today was the perfect fall day. The temperature was in the low seventies, with a gently breeze. The sun was out and shiny. After a run I decided to brave the crowds and go to a tourist attraction called Tiger Running Spring. The legend behind this place is that a ruler in the Tang Dynasty was about the leave the area for lack of water when a vision came to him a dream that tigers would bring the town all the water it needed. The next day he saw two tigers scratching on the ground and low and behold a spring appeared. I made this trip alone. Yesterday was nice but when it comes to exploring China I like to make a decision on what to do next without waiting for a consensus. I doubt I would have wound up in a furniture store yesterday if I had been on my own. Tiger Running Spring was a scenic walk through an uphill park with ponds created out of the spring .At the end of the path was the spring with a large sculpture of the sleeping ruler and the heroic tigers. The sign said it was a wonderful place for quiet reflection and it probably is when there are not a multitude of tourist guides and their followers wandering about. But watching Chinese tourists soon became part of my visit to the spring. There were parents taking pictures of their little ones next to the ponds or statues, teenagers venturing across stepping stones and mucking about the way teenagers do, lovers slipping down solitary paths, and old couples holding hands as the supported each other up the steep grade. The children all seem to give the peace sign when being photographed. I’ll have to ask Steve what that is all about. My favorite was a little girl placed on top of a giant statue of a tiger. The apprehension in her face faded into a smile as she heard her daddy’s reassuring voice. Meanwhile mom lined up the shot and grandma, behind the photographer served as executive producer shouting out instructions with a big smile on her face. They were all scenes played out in hundreds of parks in countries all over the world.
During this break maintenance been on the school has included washing the outside walls of the building. Five guys repel down a given side of the building equipped with garden hoses, scrub brushes and buckets and scrub the walls by hand. I wish I had a picture of the one or two guys who would powerwash the outside of a building at home. It would be a very simple example for my economics class of labor intensive verses capital intensive.
My friend Lance returned from the hospital in Shanghai today. This hospital sent drivers down to get him, performed the operation on his back, got him through the recover stage and drove him back to his apartment and it did not cost him a dime. Apparently we have a very good health insurance program at this school. I doubt they would be able to provide such wonderful coverage if Chinese medicine costs what it does in the United States.
October 8 I got my hands on a copy of The Rosetta Stone and began using it to build my Chinese speaking skills, which are still very puny. The technique the program uses reminds me of what I used to do with the old Apple II computers. I would write programs that repeated lessons over and over until the information was drilled into a slow student’s head. Rosetta repeats and repeats constantly throwing out new words and phrases in with those already presented. None of the expressions are immediately useful but Chinese words are sinking in and it was fun tonight to sit in the neighborhood restaurant tonight, watching a family and thinking to myself that’s a “nánhái(boy) and that’s a “nǚhái” (girl).Their daddy is a “nán ren” and mom is a” nǚ ren”. I do seem to have those four down after just a couple of hours of drill and practice.
October 31. Halloween! And what a surprise. The school PTA called PAFA pulled out all the stops and put on a big Halloween party for the kids and their parents. It followed an afternoon of Halloween fun during the last hour of the school day. It is not a festival the Chinese have but the international families really got into it and the Chinese staff participated with enthusiasm and some great costumes. Lily Zhou, one of our Mandarin teachers had a replica of what the well healed woman wore during the Han Dynasty. There is a costume shop in the city and several of the teachers went there to get outfits. The van had limited space so I told Ryan and Lance to find me a scary mask. They did and it came in handy when the head of PAFA asked me to help out in the haunted house as one of the scary monsters. That costume shop must have done a land office business this week because most of the kids and parents were in costumes that looked store bought.
I have been on my side of the river lately, mostly concerning myself with work. Yesterday however Dan,, Steve and I took bus 822 in the opposite direction from downtown to it’s terminal a few miles from a Buddhist temple Steve wanted to explore. It was a walk through a village and up a steep hill but the effort was worth it. The temple was part of a complex that we soon realized was a monastery. Monks were chanting in one of the buildings and construction on two temples was underway, one of which was brand new. A walk through the new construction reviled that it was being built to the specifications of the old temples. No nails, wooden pegs, giant ceiling beams, everything one would see in a traditional temple. In the temples that were operational large icons and ornate alters abound. Who was funding such a project was a subject of speculation. Would the government sponsor the restoration of religious buildings? Somehow that doesn’t fit with the Communist ideology. But then there is a lot in China that doesn’t synchronize with Communist ideology. Perhaps one of the newly wealthy entrepreneurs who has benefited from China’s shift to capitalism figured he owed the Buddha for his good fortune. Coming home we got off the bus and walked through “stinky street” I suggested a shortcut down a road that I had used when I first got here but we discovered that a large concrete wall had been constructed across it. Behind the wall workers were laying plastic sewer pipe in a shallow trench and building a manhole with bricks.
November 6-7 This weekend I went to Nanjing. I chose Nanjing for my first tourist outing away from Hangzhou for a number of reasons. First of all it is a small city of only 6 million people. Second it had a bullet train and a subway, and third there was a great deal of nineteen and twentieth century history associated with the. The city is known to us as Nankin. On the way up I rode first class. Nice comfortable seats with lots of leg room. Stewardesses roamed the isles dressed in uniforms that looked exactly like those of airline stewardesses. A digital display told the passengers the speed. On the long stretch between Hangzhou and the southern railroad station of Shanghai the speed got up to 350 km per hour (217.479 mph). Between Shanghai and Nanjing there were many stops so the speed stayed a bit lower. It was a very sleek looking train. Arriving in Nanjing I took the metro to the Jinling Hotel a state owned hotel in the center of the city which for the about $100 gives you a nice room, free breakfast buffet, unlimited wireless and all the amenities of a high dollar establishment. Once straight with the check in I took off for the memorial to the 300,000 victims of the slaughter perpetrated on the citizens of Nanjing by the Japanese when they invaded in 1937. This was a mammoth museum with room after room of the account of those horrible events. It was cavernous, dark with a bell continuously tolling for the victims. In one room above an eternal flame, an old photograph of someone who was murdered would appear with each sound of the bell. The killing was at such a high rate that if the Japanese had continued doing this to the Chinese they would have killed more than were killed in the holocaust. And so much was known about these people. A scrolling list in one room had entries such as “so and so a fish seller, shot when he couldn’t answer a Japanese soldier in Japanese.” There were confessions recently extracted from the aging veterans of the Japanese army. “We raped the girls because there was nothing else to do in Nankin.” At times I wanted to tell the Chinese tourist in the room with me that my dad killed a bunch of those guys that did this to your people. But it wasn’t just a memorial. It was also a historical museum, with artifacts from both armies, maps showing the route of the invasion, and accounts of battles and acts of heroism (Chinese heroism of course). There was a large dark room with candles for quite meditation towards the end which opened up on a park with a seven story (at least it looked like seven stories) statue to peace. The Japanese never apologized for this atrocity.
From there I took a cab to another part of the city where a wall from the Ming Dynasty (roughly from our Renaissance past Jamestown). Nanjing was the Ming capital and like the Great wall, and lots of other walls this one was built to keep invaders out. Above the wall was a temple. Although I have had my fill of temples for now I climbed up to this one (why do all these temples have to be atop such steep hills!) so I could see “China’s Sorrow”, the Yangzi River. Through the air pollution, which was very bad I could see the mighty river with barges going up and down. It’s the river that gave birth to China’s civilization.
The next day I went to the mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat Sen. Ok this was on a frigging mountain. Climbed a thousand stairs to pay tribute to the man who gave China to the Chinese and kicked the foreign devils out(well At least for awhile. Judging from the number of KFCs and McDonalds I see around here it looks like we are back.) “The world belongs to the public.” He once said. It was his disciples Chang Kia Sheik and Mao Te Dung that fought a civil war over how China would belong to the Chinese. The book I am reading “Socialism is Great” (a sarcastic title by the way) is about a young woman growing up in Nanjing during China’s transformation from pure communism to the state capitalism of today. She worked in factory that made missiles capable of reaching the US. It now makes flexible hoses, giant Buddha’s and anything else it can produce that is of interest to the market economy. One interesting thing I learned about China from that book is their greeting. Friends don’t say Ni Hao (Hello) to each other. They ask “Have you eaten today?” As I made my way back down the stairs a group of young cadets from an air force academy came running up the stairs. My guess is they had challenged each other to a race to the top. None was still running by the time the top was reached were Dr. Sen lie in quiet repose. Turning back for one last look I actually could see leaves turning on the side of the mountain. It looked like early October in Virginia.
January 20 2011 That’s right the journal came to a stop after Nanjing. It was if some pinnacle had been reached that couldn’t be topped. In reality there was a continuation of sorts with emails to friends and family about what was going on with my life in Hangzhou. November went by quickly and was highlighted with a Thanksgiving get together at my apartment for the faculty. Ryan acquired turkeys, stuffing and mashed potatoes from Sheraton Hotel down the road and everyone else contributed sides and deserts. The occasion started off with flag football on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I caught the ball wrong and messed up one of my fingers. It is still not right today. Around 3pm the turkeys arrived and everyone came inside where I had set up enough tables and chairs to accommodate forty people. It was easy. I merely told Psyche Sun, woman in charge of the building and grounds what I needed and her crew took care of the rest. The sun went down around five thirty and the grand finale of was a fireworks display. Thanksgiving with a Chinese twist. After that it was an intense three weeks of finishing up classes and taking care of the final exams before everyone headed off for Christmas. While some went to other countries like New Zealand and Russia I headed for Virginia. It was a difficult journey. My flight from Hong Kong to San Francisco was delayed 23 hours and the big family get together planned for the 19th took place without me. I did not take the computer home with me so the journal sat inactive of the hard drive for three weeks. I did put pen to paper on New Year’s Eve and called it Christmas Break Insert. This is that journal entry:
New Year’s Eve I have been home in the Old Dominion since the 19th and it is good to be back. I finished The China Price, a book I bought while stranded in Hong Kong. I read it flopped out on the comfortable couch in the den. I do miss my den when I am in China; with it’s cable TV and it’s fireplace. The book gave me some interesting insights into the working world of the Chinese in the post cold war era. The gains China makes are astonishing but the human price that is being paid is awful. And yet in all of that there is the recognition that young Chinese like young Americans are people with dreams and unlike their parents they see how these dreams can come true. Shaun and I walked around the Gaines Mill and Malvern Hill battlefields and it reminded me of what it meant to be back in Virginia. It’s history is nowhere near as old as China’s, but to me it is more endearing. Perhaps that is because it is my history.
Back to January 20. I have now been back in China for two weeks. The return had none of the excitement the first trip here had. But it had none of the anxiety either. It was good to walk into my apartment and see my stuff all just as I had left it. It wasn’t home but it wasn’t strange either. The Chinese government started building a market in the big field next to my apartment while I was gone. My dream of turning it into a baseball field is shattered. They are using a monstrous machine to set large concrete piling into the earth. Every now and then they do something that makes all the building on campus shake. The return was more like returning to work after a long break. Since I have been back that is pretty much all I have done. Work. The weather has been too bad to do much else. It snowed here for three days straight, letting up for the first time this afternoon. It looks now like it will resume. The temperature stays in the 30s most of the time and the humidity makes it bone chilling. The Chinese here appear to like to play in the snow. There are snowmen or strange things faintly resembling snow men all over the place. Friends pelt snow balls at each other like our kids do. As for me, what can I say, this is just not my favorite time of the year. I am hunkered down, going to work in the grey day and spending my evenings in side with a good book on the Civil War.
January 22- The sun is out and while there is snow on the ground it looks like a good day to go outside. Steve, Dan and I are going to check out West Lake in the snow. This past week the news was all about China’s President Hu Jintao visit to the United States. The Democrat president treated him a lot better than di George Bush. Obama had a full state dinner for him as opposed to Bush’s lunch. As usual there were protests about Tibet and human rights. I am sure that many Americans feel that the Chinese people welcome our efforts to improve human rights in their country but I am not so sure that is the case. The sense I have is the that Chinese people are very proud of their country and what it has accomplished in a relatively short period of time. Harping on human rights is focusing on the negative. I find myself being defensive of China in this circumstance. Yes human rights need improving but if I were president Jintao I would be pointing out that America needs to do something about its recklessness with firearms. When you allow crazy people to buy guns and these guns are used to kill innocent people you are contributing to the denial of the ultimate of human rights; life. As far as Tibet goes I would offer the US a deal. Give California back to Mexico and we’ll give Tibet back to the Dali Lama. Interestingly enough nothing I watched about the visit during or the protests was blocked by the Chinese government, including an animation from Taiwan showing the Americans as kowtowing to Jintao and presented as homeless man with a cardboard sign saying “Will sell Bonds for Food.” Republicans of course avoided anything to do with the visit and the cry-baby speaker of the house refused to attend the dinner. Jintao was probably relieved not to have that blubbering right winger around. He deals with those at home, they are refered to as the “old guard communist’. Fortunately there are not many of them left in China.
January 27 New Year’s break is upon us. It goes without saying the in China New Years is big. It is the time when people travel back home to small farm towns and villages, hopefully with pockets full of RMB, ‘yuay’….. money. It is also the time when the mass migration happens and millions, that’s right millions of young people move from the country into the cities hoping to make a better life for themselves. So when the next Chinese New Year comes they will be able to return with loads of cash. As fate would have it I will be here in Hangzhou for the New Years. As others head out to Vietnam (When those who are going told me so I had 1960’s flashbacks and almost said “Oh man I am sorry to hear that.”), Thailand, Borneo, Japan and other exotic places I am stuck in plain old Hungzhou, China. The story I hear is that the city closes up as people head home, and those who stay go absolutely ape shit with fireworks. It will sound like a war zone around here probably starting the first of the week and intensifying to some kind of mad crescendo on February 3, which is the actual New Years Day. I will tell you later whether that story pans out to be true. One thing I have already noticed about the level of firework activity in this area, which is always high by American standards, has already increased. I plan to stay immersed in my Civil War book. Reading with sound effects. The mandarin teachers here put together a wonderful program this week. I took video of the dances and shortly thereafter I received an e-mail from Meghan inviting me to see pictures of how here pregnancy was coming along. While there I noticed the service, Flickr allowed small video up loads so I created an account and uploaded two clips. When I went to play them back I could not get them to run. Back in the states however everyone saw them just fine. The only explanation anyone (and in this case it is Lance and Dan) has given me is that when I go to watch, the video it is blocked the same way YouTube is blocked. If this is true, then I can watch video clips of people protesting China’s occupation of Tibet, which I did during the Hu visit to the US, but I cannot watch a video I just uploaded from China. The Great Firewall of China.
January 28 it is my plan to keep this journal running all through the Chinese New Year in Hangzhou. We shall see how well that plan pans out. Tomorrow starts day one of the week long break. It will be a time of reflection, of answering the question, Why China? Of all the places to go and things to do, why teach in China? It appears that there is something almost mystical in the answer. Three weeks before I was born Mao named this country The People’s Republic of China, a country whose name had the word “People” in it for the first time. Red is China’s color; not the red of Communism it was China’s color long before that. It goes back to the legend of Nian a mythological monster that attacked people in their villages. To keep Nian away people wore red, a color he fears, banged pots and pans and threw firecrackers. Firecrackers and fireworks are China’s way of scaring of evil spirits. Today it is still a time to get together with family, party hearty and carry out old traditions that are noisy and rambunctious. The color red soaks this country and its red national flags that adorned the streetlights of the city in October and have been gone since then are now replaced with bright red festival lanterns. The people of the People’s Republic are getting ready to cut lose. Some cut lose from work, from their studies, from the routine of everyday life. Others cut lose from their families and communities and move into a city in search of work. There is a lot to say about the people of China and I try now and then to get my observations in without making poor generalizations. Steve related a story to me that sounded like something I had read somewhere, something set in the US and involving a member of a racial minority. He went to dinner at the apartment of a young Chinese couple and when he arrived he noticed the heat wasn’t on and all the windows were open. As he sat at the dinner table with coat, boots, scarf and gloves still on, he was told that they did not run the heat because it was too expensive, and the windows were kept open to prevent the apartment from trapping in the cold. When the dinner in the icebox was over the young man offered to give Steve a ride in his brand new Buick Regal, which was at a local car wash before the two of them hit the road. A strange set of priorities that I would not attribute to all Chinese but perhaps to those who have expectations of upward mobility which they believe they accomplish with displays of lavishness.
Feburary 2, New Years Eve. I am thinking of all the quite New Years Eves I seen and realizing that although I will be home tonight it ain’t going to be a quiet New Years Eve. The salvos, going on all day, intensified with the setting sun. There are none at the moment but I expect it to get fireworks crazy around here tonight and I plan to be on the roof to watch it. The last few days have been “tourist in Hangzho” and connect the dots days. I made a bank trip to get forms and from the bank walked around the city looking for signs of New Years celebrations. Instead I found business as usual and landmarks connecting to other landmarks. Information that will be useful in the future. The tourist part centered around temples and shrines and extraordinary walks through the West Lake area, especially the long causeway. The West Lake Museum was a wealth of information but the weird thing about it was to get to the main exhibition hall you had to that an elevator to the -1 floor. There has been a constant barrage of firework noises for the last ten minutes. Anyway, along with describing how various Emperors dredged the Lake and Mongels let it fill up with silt, they mentioned the three heroes of West Lake. Of course one was my old buddy Yo Quan Another was a warrior named Ye Fan (I think). The third was some wimpy poet and I should do the right thing and look him up. But unless I have a contract to teach Chinsese history I probably won’t. So one of my things to do today was to visit the tomb of Ye Fan. For some reason he gets more statues than Yo Quan and much more in the way of gardens. That was after a climb up a mountainous set of stars to yes, you guessed it another temple. The view from that height with the city on one side of the mountain and the lake on the other side was worth the physical exertion it took to get there. The day ended with walk down the long causeway in the setting sun with scenes that looked like paintings. The night began with the sound effects of the Confederate artillery attack that preceded Picketts charge at Gettysburg, or the Russian attack on Berlin in 1945. Leaving the bus stop to walk back to my apartment I moved down deserted streets passed shuttered store fronts, flashes of light between buildings followed by loud reports went on continuously. At midnight I went out into the deserted street in front of my school where I videoed pure firework mayhem for about fifteen minutes. All around me fireworks and firecrackers were going off at once. At times the echo reverberating off the wall sounded like a train. It died off a little before one and I was able to sleep until about 5:30 when it started up again. It was not a quiet New Years Eve.
March 10-March 14 I was fortunate enough to be asked to chaperone six of our students to Beijing to a Model United Nations conference. Fortunate because the school paid for the flight up and back plus accommodations in a five star hotel. Also fortunate because the team consisted of six good kids. I had the head of PAFA, this schools version of the PTA and she was more than happy to take over as chaperone while I went out and explored a bit of the city. Fortunate in that respect as well. I managed to see a few things, the most impressive of all was the Forbidden City. It is hard to describe the immensity of that place. I’ll let Wikipedia describe the dimensions it “covers 72 ha (178 acres). It is a rectangle 961 metres (3,153 ft) from north to south and 753 metres (2,470 ft) from east to west. It consists of 980 surviving buildings with 8,707 bays of rooms.” In other words it is the largest palace in the world. I walked from well know entrance Tiananmen Square with the large portrait of Mao over the doorway of the though to the north side and up Jingshan Hill for a panoramic view that would have been completely spectacular had it not been for all the smog. Palacial buildings and sweeping courtyards that could hold thousands of people appeared before me repeatedly. There were a lot of people touring but it was never crowded. During the stay in Beijing I also wandered around the Hutons, villiages within the city where Mongols lived during the days of the Great Kublai Khan. This would have beenin the 1270s about 300 years before the Forbidden City was built.
March 27-March 31. The Xiamen trip. This was a trip with the entire eighth grade class and one other teacher. It wasn’t as onerous as it sounds. There are only sixteen students in the class, the other teacher was Maranda Brunner who teaches all of them. Besides there were no less than two tour guides for most of the trip, Jo Jo from Shanghai who joined us in Hangzhou before the bus pulled out of the campus, and Katherine from Xiamen who was with us from the moment we arrived in her city until we boarded the plane to fly back. Xiamen was six hour by train from Hangzhou through a narrow piece of land that runs between the ocean and a string of mountains, all pretty much the same height as those in Hangzhou. It was a scenic ride through a part of China I had not seen. It has a more temperate climate with palm trees and very little air pollution for a Chinese city. Katherine told us that most of the industry was moved futher inland. Xiamen is straight west of Taiwan and many Taiwanese businesses operate in the city. On the second day of our visit we took a long bus ride to a Hakka Village where were stayed over night in somewhat primitive conditions. We had a hotel but the locks on the doors were latches locked with little padlocks typically used to secure luggage. The village was a fresh breath of very rural China. A small river ran through the village and the sound of cascading water in the early morning added to the enchantment. The villa is famous for its large round shaped building called Tulous. Many of these date several hundred years old. Whole families live in them, including aunts and uncles from different generations and their children and grandchildren. As Katherine, with her portable loudspeaker gave us a tour I pushed the recalcitrant eighth grade boys along and tried to listen. Finally realizing that I was having about as much luck with those guys as I would herding cats, I left them to their own devices and listened to what she had to say. The purpose for this type of construction was defense. The walls were several feet thick. The center was a large open area and open to the sky as well. Rooms surrounded this open courtyard. This first floor rooms were kitchens. The second floor was all for food and supply storage and the bedrooms were on the third floor. There was only one entrance into the building that could be sealed shut with large doors. Feng-shui was very important in the Tulous and the positioning of the doors along with what is carved above and below the doors are all part of meeting some Feng-shui requirement. Leaving the Village we headed back towards Xiamen for a visit to a Hot Springs where one of the students began hyperventilating and had to be taken to the hospital. She was out of before long and joined the rest of us for a short ferry ride from Xiamen took us to Gulangyu Island where we stayed two nights. This island was the home of many European consulates after the Opium War. There are no cars on the islands but lots of people and small winding roads. Big walls surround old stately mansions with large palm trees in the yards, reminders of an imperial age now passed into history. There was also a McDonalds. From there it was back to Xiamen and a fast flight back the Hangzhou where I swapped out dirty close for clean and then headed for Shanghai to catch a plane for Amsterdam.
September 22 We had the day off from school today. It was the Mid-Autumn festival, and as if on cue the weather turned cooler. For the first time since I arrived here the temperature actually got into the sixties. I took a long hike with a co-worker the kids call Mr. Steve. It's easier than trying to pronounce his long Polish last name. Steve has been international for the last 2O years. He taught in Florida for a while after doing a stint with the Peace Corps and then said god bye to American schools and started teaching around the world. He has been in China for three years and would greet people we met on the walk with the Chinese expression for “Happy Mid-Autumn Festival”. Their faces would light up and they would put their hands together , give a little bow say something which I think was the Chinese equivalent to the Spanish word “equalmente” . Steve was full of great stories about China and other places he had been and the three hour walk went quickly. We finished at the top of a hill called Jade Emperor Hill which had an old Taoist temple and a panorama of the city of Hangzhou and West Lake. I asked what the Chinese people did for this holiday and learned that most of them join all the members of their family for a big feast. A big family feast in the fall. That has a familiar sound to it. The big holiday starts next week and we will again have some days off from school. Unfortunately my passport is still in processing to update my status from tourist to resident and I can’t make any plans to travel until I get back. This is when all of China travels so by the time I get my passport back it will be impossible for me to by a train ticket to anywhere.
September 26 I caught a bus across the river this morning and found the tomb of Yu Quan. He was the minister of defense during the Ming Dynasty. When his emperor was captured in a battle with the Mongols he took over the army and successfully defended the Chinese against their enemy. He then ruled the country for the duration of the conflict. When the emperor got back he declared Yu to be a traitor and had him executed. He was later absolved of these charges (not that that did him any good) He is something of a Hangzhou home boy hero. The other place I went to was the Silk Museum. Now that doesn’t sound like a very exciting place but it is when you think about how much silk is a part of China. And this display does an excellent job of getting that point across. Silk was more than just a product. It was the first major form currency, it was the cloth everyone wore and ones status was determined by the color of silk and rank by silk badges. Beautiful building and grounds. I think I’ll be going back there with my World History class.
October 1 We are on break for a Chinese holiday called the National Festival. Entranceways to apartment complexes are adorned with Chinese Lanterns and wide swaths of bright red cloth with Chinese characters painted in gold on them. Red archways, made of the same material and inflated in the same way as our yard snowmen and Santas are at Christmas time, span entranceways into some of the nearby gated communities. The flag of China is on lamp posts on the main roads around West Lake, the way our flag appears on lampposts in Midlothian around the fourth of July. I made a run to the grocery store and it was much more crowded than usual. Traffic is now heavier too. The taxi I was in last night took over an hour to get to a place that typically would have taken twenty minutes. I have maintained that rush hour is a twenty four seven phenomenon in this city but during the national holiday, when so many people are off from work, this tourist town is jammed.
October 3 I went out yesterday with several faculty members and their families to the Grand Canal. It was pretty impressive; not just the size of the ditch which was built from 486 to 1293 BC and still carries barges, but the way the area to tour was fixed up with stone walkways and statues everywhere. There is a renovated area where people live that is like a touch of old China. The best part was it was not crowded at all and we could move about freely and watch the barges go up and down the river. A barge loaded with crushed rock went down stream. A few minutes later another barge appeared carrying crushed rock but it was going upstream. I am not too sure what that was about but it seemed inefficient to me. From there we went to a furniture store. One family bought two easy chairs and I think the others are seriously contemplating a couch I might go back there to get and get a recliner. It was only $205. And delivery is free.
Today was the perfect fall day. The temperature was in the low seventies, with a gently breeze. The sun was out and shiny. After a run I decided to brave the crowds and go to a tourist attraction called Tiger Running Spring. The legend behind this place is that a ruler in the Tang Dynasty was about the leave the area for lack of water when a vision came to him a dream that tigers would bring the town all the water it needed. The next day he saw two tigers scratching on the ground and low and behold a spring appeared. I made this trip alone. Yesterday was nice but when it comes to exploring China I like to make a decision on what to do next without waiting for a consensus. I doubt I would have wound up in a furniture store yesterday if I had been on my own. Tiger Running Spring was a scenic walk through an uphill park with ponds created out of the spring .At the end of the path was the spring with a large sculpture of the sleeping ruler and the heroic tigers. The sign said it was a wonderful place for quiet reflection and it probably is when there are not a multitude of tourist guides and their followers wandering about. But watching Chinese tourists soon became part of my visit to the spring. There were parents taking pictures of their little ones next to the ponds or statues, teenagers venturing across stepping stones and mucking about the way teenagers do, lovers slipping down solitary paths, and old couples holding hands as the supported each other up the steep grade. The children all seem to give the peace sign when being photographed. I’ll have to ask Steve what that is all about. My favorite was a little girl placed on top of a giant statue of a tiger. The apprehension in her face faded into a smile as she heard her daddy’s reassuring voice. Meanwhile mom lined up the shot and grandma, behind the photographer served as executive producer shouting out instructions with a big smile on her face. They were all scenes played out in hundreds of parks in countries all over the world.
During this break maintenance been on the school has included washing the outside walls of the building. Five guys repel down a given side of the building equipped with garden hoses, scrub brushes and buckets and scrub the walls by hand. I wish I had a picture of the one or two guys who would powerwash the outside of a building at home. It would be a very simple example for my economics class of labor intensive verses capital intensive.
My friend Lance returned from the hospital in Shanghai today. This hospital sent drivers down to get him, performed the operation on his back, got him through the recover stage and drove him back to his apartment and it did not cost him a dime. Apparently we have a very good health insurance program at this school. I doubt they would be able to provide such wonderful coverage if Chinese medicine costs what it does in the United States.
October 8 I got my hands on a copy of The Rosetta Stone and began using it to build my Chinese speaking skills, which are still very puny. The technique the program uses reminds me of what I used to do with the old Apple II computers. I would write programs that repeated lessons over and over until the information was drilled into a slow student’s head. Rosetta repeats and repeats constantly throwing out new words and phrases in with those already presented. None of the expressions are immediately useful but Chinese words are sinking in and it was fun tonight to sit in the neighborhood restaurant tonight, watching a family and thinking to myself that’s a “nánhái(boy) and that’s a “nǚhái” (girl).Their daddy is a “nán ren” and mom is a” nǚ ren”. I do seem to have those four down after just a couple of hours of drill and practice.
October 31. Halloween! And what a surprise. The school PTA called PAFA pulled out all the stops and put on a big Halloween party for the kids and their parents. It followed an afternoon of Halloween fun during the last hour of the school day. It is not a festival the Chinese have but the international families really got into it and the Chinese staff participated with enthusiasm and some great costumes. Lily Zhou, one of our Mandarin teachers had a replica of what the well healed woman wore during the Han Dynasty. There is a costume shop in the city and several of the teachers went there to get outfits. The van had limited space so I told Ryan and Lance to find me a scary mask. They did and it came in handy when the head of PAFA asked me to help out in the haunted house as one of the scary monsters. That costume shop must have done a land office business this week because most of the kids and parents were in costumes that looked store bought.
I have been on my side of the river lately, mostly concerning myself with work. Yesterday however Dan,, Steve and I took bus 822 in the opposite direction from downtown to it’s terminal a few miles from a Buddhist temple Steve wanted to explore. It was a walk through a village and up a steep hill but the effort was worth it. The temple was part of a complex that we soon realized was a monastery. Monks were chanting in one of the buildings and construction on two temples was underway, one of which was brand new. A walk through the new construction reviled that it was being built to the specifications of the old temples. No nails, wooden pegs, giant ceiling beams, everything one would see in a traditional temple. In the temples that were operational large icons and ornate alters abound. Who was funding such a project was a subject of speculation. Would the government sponsor the restoration of religious buildings? Somehow that doesn’t fit with the Communist ideology. But then there is a lot in China that doesn’t synchronize with Communist ideology. Perhaps one of the newly wealthy entrepreneurs who has benefited from China’s shift to capitalism figured he owed the Buddha for his good fortune. Coming home we got off the bus and walked through “stinky street” I suggested a shortcut down a road that I had used when I first got here but we discovered that a large concrete wall had been constructed across it. Behind the wall workers were laying plastic sewer pipe in a shallow trench and building a manhole with bricks.
November 6-7 This weekend I went to Nanjing. I chose Nanjing for my first tourist outing away from Hangzhou for a number of reasons. First of all it is a small city of only 6 million people. Second it had a bullet train and a subway, and third there was a great deal of nineteen and twentieth century history associated with the. The city is known to us as Nankin. On the way up I rode first class. Nice comfortable seats with lots of leg room. Stewardesses roamed the isles dressed in uniforms that looked exactly like those of airline stewardesses. A digital display told the passengers the speed. On the long stretch between Hangzhou and the southern railroad station of Shanghai the speed got up to 350 km per hour (217.479 mph). Between Shanghai and Nanjing there were many stops so the speed stayed a bit lower. It was a very sleek looking train. Arriving in Nanjing I took the metro to the Jinling Hotel a state owned hotel in the center of the city which for the about $100 gives you a nice room, free breakfast buffet, unlimited wireless and all the amenities of a high dollar establishment. Once straight with the check in I took off for the memorial to the 300,000 victims of the slaughter perpetrated on the citizens of Nanjing by the Japanese when they invaded in 1937. This was a mammoth museum with room after room of the account of those horrible events. It was cavernous, dark with a bell continuously tolling for the victims. In one room above an eternal flame, an old photograph of someone who was murdered would appear with each sound of the bell. The killing was at such a high rate that if the Japanese had continued doing this to the Chinese they would have killed more than were killed in the holocaust. And so much was known about these people. A scrolling list in one room had entries such as “so and so a fish seller, shot when he couldn’t answer a Japanese soldier in Japanese.” There were confessions recently extracted from the aging veterans of the Japanese army. “We raped the girls because there was nothing else to do in Nankin.” At times I wanted to tell the Chinese tourist in the room with me that my dad killed a bunch of those guys that did this to your people. But it wasn’t just a memorial. It was also a historical museum, with artifacts from both armies, maps showing the route of the invasion, and accounts of battles and acts of heroism (Chinese heroism of course). There was a large dark room with candles for quite meditation towards the end which opened up on a park with a seven story (at least it looked like seven stories) statue to peace. The Japanese never apologized for this atrocity.
From there I took a cab to another part of the city where a wall from the Ming Dynasty (roughly from our Renaissance past Jamestown). Nanjing was the Ming capital and like the Great wall, and lots of other walls this one was built to keep invaders out. Above the wall was a temple. Although I have had my fill of temples for now I climbed up to this one (why do all these temples have to be atop such steep hills!) so I could see “China’s Sorrow”, the Yangzi River. Through the air pollution, which was very bad I could see the mighty river with barges going up and down. It’s the river that gave birth to China’s civilization.
The next day I went to the mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat Sen. Ok this was on a frigging mountain. Climbed a thousand stairs to pay tribute to the man who gave China to the Chinese and kicked the foreign devils out(well At least for awhile. Judging from the number of KFCs and McDonalds I see around here it looks like we are back.) “The world belongs to the public.” He once said. It was his disciples Chang Kia Sheik and Mao Te Dung that fought a civil war over how China would belong to the Chinese. The book I am reading “Socialism is Great” (a sarcastic title by the way) is about a young woman growing up in Nanjing during China’s transformation from pure communism to the state capitalism of today. She worked in factory that made missiles capable of reaching the US. It now makes flexible hoses, giant Buddha’s and anything else it can produce that is of interest to the market economy. One interesting thing I learned about China from that book is their greeting. Friends don’t say Ni Hao (Hello) to each other. They ask “Have you eaten today?” As I made my way back down the stairs a group of young cadets from an air force academy came running up the stairs. My guess is they had challenged each other to a race to the top. None was still running by the time the top was reached were Dr. Sen lie in quiet repose. Turning back for one last look I actually could see leaves turning on the side of the mountain. It looked like early October in Virginia.
January 20 2011 That’s right the journal came to a stop after Nanjing. It was if some pinnacle had been reached that couldn’t be topped. In reality there was a continuation of sorts with emails to friends and family about what was going on with my life in Hangzhou. November went by quickly and was highlighted with a Thanksgiving get together at my apartment for the faculty. Ryan acquired turkeys, stuffing and mashed potatoes from Sheraton Hotel down the road and everyone else contributed sides and deserts. The occasion started off with flag football on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I caught the ball wrong and messed up one of my fingers. It is still not right today. Around 3pm the turkeys arrived and everyone came inside where I had set up enough tables and chairs to accommodate forty people. It was easy. I merely told Psyche Sun, woman in charge of the building and grounds what I needed and her crew took care of the rest. The sun went down around five thirty and the grand finale of was a fireworks display. Thanksgiving with a Chinese twist. After that it was an intense three weeks of finishing up classes and taking care of the final exams before everyone headed off for Christmas. While some went to other countries like New Zealand and Russia I headed for Virginia. It was a difficult journey. My flight from Hong Kong to San Francisco was delayed 23 hours and the big family get together planned for the 19th took place without me. I did not take the computer home with me so the journal sat inactive of the hard drive for three weeks. I did put pen to paper on New Year’s Eve and called it Christmas Break Insert. This is that journal entry:
New Year’s Eve I have been home in the Old Dominion since the 19th and it is good to be back. I finished The China Price, a book I bought while stranded in Hong Kong. I read it flopped out on the comfortable couch in the den. I do miss my den when I am in China; with it’s cable TV and it’s fireplace. The book gave me some interesting insights into the working world of the Chinese in the post cold war era. The gains China makes are astonishing but the human price that is being paid is awful. And yet in all of that there is the recognition that young Chinese like young Americans are people with dreams and unlike their parents they see how these dreams can come true. Shaun and I walked around the Gaines Mill and Malvern Hill battlefields and it reminded me of what it meant to be back in Virginia. It’s history is nowhere near as old as China’s, but to me it is more endearing. Perhaps that is because it is my history.
Back to January 20. I have now been back in China for two weeks. The return had none of the excitement the first trip here had. But it had none of the anxiety either. It was good to walk into my apartment and see my stuff all just as I had left it. It wasn’t home but it wasn’t strange either. The Chinese government started building a market in the big field next to my apartment while I was gone. My dream of turning it into a baseball field is shattered. They are using a monstrous machine to set large concrete piling into the earth. Every now and then they do something that makes all the building on campus shake. The return was more like returning to work after a long break. Since I have been back that is pretty much all I have done. Work. The weather has been too bad to do much else. It snowed here for three days straight, letting up for the first time this afternoon. It looks now like it will resume. The temperature stays in the 30s most of the time and the humidity makes it bone chilling. The Chinese here appear to like to play in the snow. There are snowmen or strange things faintly resembling snow men all over the place. Friends pelt snow balls at each other like our kids do. As for me, what can I say, this is just not my favorite time of the year. I am hunkered down, going to work in the grey day and spending my evenings in side with a good book on the Civil War.
January 22- The sun is out and while there is snow on the ground it looks like a good day to go outside. Steve, Dan and I are going to check out West Lake in the snow. This past week the news was all about China’s President Hu Jintao visit to the United States. The Democrat president treated him a lot better than di George Bush. Obama had a full state dinner for him as opposed to Bush’s lunch. As usual there were protests about Tibet and human rights. I am sure that many Americans feel that the Chinese people welcome our efforts to improve human rights in their country but I am not so sure that is the case. The sense I have is the that Chinese people are very proud of their country and what it has accomplished in a relatively short period of time. Harping on human rights is focusing on the negative. I find myself being defensive of China in this circumstance. Yes human rights need improving but if I were president Jintao I would be pointing out that America needs to do something about its recklessness with firearms. When you allow crazy people to buy guns and these guns are used to kill innocent people you are contributing to the denial of the ultimate of human rights; life. As far as Tibet goes I would offer the US a deal. Give California back to Mexico and we’ll give Tibet back to the Dali Lama. Interestingly enough nothing I watched about the visit during or the protests was blocked by the Chinese government, including an animation from Taiwan showing the Americans as kowtowing to Jintao and presented as homeless man with a cardboard sign saying “Will sell Bonds for Food.” Republicans of course avoided anything to do with the visit and the cry-baby speaker of the house refused to attend the dinner. Jintao was probably relieved not to have that blubbering right winger around. He deals with those at home, they are refered to as the “old guard communist’. Fortunately there are not many of them left in China.
January 27 New Year’s break is upon us. It goes without saying the in China New Years is big. It is the time when people travel back home to small farm towns and villages, hopefully with pockets full of RMB, ‘yuay’….. money. It is also the time when the mass migration happens and millions, that’s right millions of young people move from the country into the cities hoping to make a better life for themselves. So when the next Chinese New Year comes they will be able to return with loads of cash. As fate would have it I will be here in Hangzhou for the New Years. As others head out to Vietnam (When those who are going told me so I had 1960’s flashbacks and almost said “Oh man I am sorry to hear that.”), Thailand, Borneo, Japan and other exotic places I am stuck in plain old Hungzhou, China. The story I hear is that the city closes up as people head home, and those who stay go absolutely ape shit with fireworks. It will sound like a war zone around here probably starting the first of the week and intensifying to some kind of mad crescendo on February 3, which is the actual New Years Day. I will tell you later whether that story pans out to be true. One thing I have already noticed about the level of firework activity in this area, which is always high by American standards, has already increased. I plan to stay immersed in my Civil War book. Reading with sound effects. The mandarin teachers here put together a wonderful program this week. I took video of the dances and shortly thereafter I received an e-mail from Meghan inviting me to see pictures of how here pregnancy was coming along. While there I noticed the service, Flickr allowed small video up loads so I created an account and uploaded two clips. When I went to play them back I could not get them to run. Back in the states however everyone saw them just fine. The only explanation anyone (and in this case it is Lance and Dan) has given me is that when I go to watch, the video it is blocked the same way YouTube is blocked. If this is true, then I can watch video clips of people protesting China’s occupation of Tibet, which I did during the Hu visit to the US, but I cannot watch a video I just uploaded from China. The Great Firewall of China.
January 28 it is my plan to keep this journal running all through the Chinese New Year in Hangzhou. We shall see how well that plan pans out. Tomorrow starts day one of the week long break. It will be a time of reflection, of answering the question, Why China? Of all the places to go and things to do, why teach in China? It appears that there is something almost mystical in the answer. Three weeks before I was born Mao named this country The People’s Republic of China, a country whose name had the word “People” in it for the first time. Red is China’s color; not the red of Communism it was China’s color long before that. It goes back to the legend of Nian a mythological monster that attacked people in their villages. To keep Nian away people wore red, a color he fears, banged pots and pans and threw firecrackers. Firecrackers and fireworks are China’s way of scaring of evil spirits. Today it is still a time to get together with family, party hearty and carry out old traditions that are noisy and rambunctious. The color red soaks this country and its red national flags that adorned the streetlights of the city in October and have been gone since then are now replaced with bright red festival lanterns. The people of the People’s Republic are getting ready to cut lose. Some cut lose from work, from their studies, from the routine of everyday life. Others cut lose from their families and communities and move into a city in search of work. There is a lot to say about the people of China and I try now and then to get my observations in without making poor generalizations. Steve related a story to me that sounded like something I had read somewhere, something set in the US and involving a member of a racial minority. He went to dinner at the apartment of a young Chinese couple and when he arrived he noticed the heat wasn’t on and all the windows were open. As he sat at the dinner table with coat, boots, scarf and gloves still on, he was told that they did not run the heat because it was too expensive, and the windows were kept open to prevent the apartment from trapping in the cold. When the dinner in the icebox was over the young man offered to give Steve a ride in his brand new Buick Regal, which was at a local car wash before the two of them hit the road. A strange set of priorities that I would not attribute to all Chinese but perhaps to those who have expectations of upward mobility which they believe they accomplish with displays of lavishness.
Feburary 2, New Years Eve. I am thinking of all the quite New Years Eves I seen and realizing that although I will be home tonight it ain’t going to be a quiet New Years Eve. The salvos, going on all day, intensified with the setting sun. There are none at the moment but I expect it to get fireworks crazy around here tonight and I plan to be on the roof to watch it. The last few days have been “tourist in Hangzho” and connect the dots days. I made a bank trip to get forms and from the bank walked around the city looking for signs of New Years celebrations. Instead I found business as usual and landmarks connecting to other landmarks. Information that will be useful in the future. The tourist part centered around temples and shrines and extraordinary walks through the West Lake area, especially the long causeway. The West Lake Museum was a wealth of information but the weird thing about it was to get to the main exhibition hall you had to that an elevator to the -1 floor. There has been a constant barrage of firework noises for the last ten minutes. Anyway, along with describing how various Emperors dredged the Lake and Mongels let it fill up with silt, they mentioned the three heroes of West Lake. Of course one was my old buddy Yo Quan Another was a warrior named Ye Fan (I think). The third was some wimpy poet and I should do the right thing and look him up. But unless I have a contract to teach Chinsese history I probably won’t. So one of my things to do today was to visit the tomb of Ye Fan. For some reason he gets more statues than Yo Quan and much more in the way of gardens. That was after a climb up a mountainous set of stars to yes, you guessed it another temple. The view from that height with the city on one side of the mountain and the lake on the other side was worth the physical exertion it took to get there. The day ended with walk down the long causeway in the setting sun with scenes that looked like paintings. The night began with the sound effects of the Confederate artillery attack that preceded Picketts charge at Gettysburg, or the Russian attack on Berlin in 1945. Leaving the bus stop to walk back to my apartment I moved down deserted streets passed shuttered store fronts, flashes of light between buildings followed by loud reports went on continuously. At midnight I went out into the deserted street in front of my school where I videoed pure firework mayhem for about fifteen minutes. All around me fireworks and firecrackers were going off at once. At times the echo reverberating off the wall sounded like a train. It died off a little before one and I was able to sleep until about 5:30 when it started up again. It was not a quiet New Years Eve.
March 10-March 14 I was fortunate enough to be asked to chaperone six of our students to Beijing to a Model United Nations conference. Fortunate because the school paid for the flight up and back plus accommodations in a five star hotel. Also fortunate because the team consisted of six good kids. I had the head of PAFA, this schools version of the PTA and she was more than happy to take over as chaperone while I went out and explored a bit of the city. Fortunate in that respect as well. I managed to see a few things, the most impressive of all was the Forbidden City. It is hard to describe the immensity of that place. I’ll let Wikipedia describe the dimensions it “covers 72 ha (178 acres). It is a rectangle 961 metres (3,153 ft) from north to south and 753 metres (2,470 ft) from east to west. It consists of 980 surviving buildings with 8,707 bays of rooms.” In other words it is the largest palace in the world. I walked from well know entrance Tiananmen Square with the large portrait of Mao over the doorway of the though to the north side and up Jingshan Hill for a panoramic view that would have been completely spectacular had it not been for all the smog. Palacial buildings and sweeping courtyards that could hold thousands of people appeared before me repeatedly. There were a lot of people touring but it was never crowded. During the stay in Beijing I also wandered around the Hutons, villiages within the city where Mongols lived during the days of the Great Kublai Khan. This would have beenin the 1270s about 300 years before the Forbidden City was built.
March 27-March 31. The Xiamen trip. This was a trip with the entire eighth grade class and one other teacher. It wasn’t as onerous as it sounds. There are only sixteen students in the class, the other teacher was Maranda Brunner who teaches all of them. Besides there were no less than two tour guides for most of the trip, Jo Jo from Shanghai who joined us in Hangzhou before the bus pulled out of the campus, and Katherine from Xiamen who was with us from the moment we arrived in her city until we boarded the plane to fly back. Xiamen was six hour by train from Hangzhou through a narrow piece of land that runs between the ocean and a string of mountains, all pretty much the same height as those in Hangzhou. It was a scenic ride through a part of China I had not seen. It has a more temperate climate with palm trees and very little air pollution for a Chinese city. Katherine told us that most of the industry was moved futher inland. Xiamen is straight west of Taiwan and many Taiwanese businesses operate in the city. On the second day of our visit we took a long bus ride to a Hakka Village where were stayed over night in somewhat primitive conditions. We had a hotel but the locks on the doors were latches locked with little padlocks typically used to secure luggage. The village was a fresh breath of very rural China. A small river ran through the village and the sound of cascading water in the early morning added to the enchantment. The villa is famous for its large round shaped building called Tulous. Many of these date several hundred years old. Whole families live in them, including aunts and uncles from different generations and their children and grandchildren. As Katherine, with her portable loudspeaker gave us a tour I pushed the recalcitrant eighth grade boys along and tried to listen. Finally realizing that I was having about as much luck with those guys as I would herding cats, I left them to their own devices and listened to what she had to say. The purpose for this type of construction was defense. The walls were several feet thick. The center was a large open area and open to the sky as well. Rooms surrounded this open courtyard. This first floor rooms were kitchens. The second floor was all for food and supply storage and the bedrooms were on the third floor. There was only one entrance into the building that could be sealed shut with large doors. Feng-shui was very important in the Tulous and the positioning of the doors along with what is carved above and below the doors are all part of meeting some Feng-shui requirement. Leaving the Village we headed back towards Xiamen for a visit to a Hot Springs where one of the students began hyperventilating and had to be taken to the hospital. She was out of before long and joined the rest of us for a short ferry ride from Xiamen took us to Gulangyu Island where we stayed two nights. This island was the home of many European consulates after the Opium War. There are no cars on the islands but lots of people and small winding roads. Big walls surround old stately mansions with large palm trees in the yards, reminders of an imperial age now passed into history. There was also a McDonalds. From there it was back to Xiamen and a fast flight back the Hangzhou where I swapped out dirty close for clean and then headed for Shanghai to catch a plane for Amsterdam.