Little Angels American Bound

I could get used to this!

Four hours of teaching, 8 AM to 11:50, 10 minute breaks every hour, so really 200 minutes of teaching. Only two classes of about 25 students each today. I spent a few hours planning after, but it was so much more enjoyable and efficient planning after class, instead of before classes and meetings, fighting for a photocopier. With my own desk! And computer!

My students are sweet so far, too – all sitting ready at the bell, excellent English though directions are still tricky. I had them do a warm-up activity, tell me what their aspirations are and why they’re interested in going to the US (I’m in the US-bound program). One of my classes even stood up to deliver their beautifully articulated answers!

Why are these guys interested in going to the US? Well, according to the administrators, the plan for upper-middle class Chinese students is, first, to ace the high school exit exams to get into a good Chinese university. If they don’t score high enough, the next option is to get into a university abroad. It seems backward to me – how much more difficult to have to learn content in another language, in another country.

However, the students have much more inspiring reason for going to American (maybe to please me, their teacher). They talked about the environment, by which they seem to mean natural environment, in addition to the people from diverse cultures that they are eager to meet in our melting pot (should I warn them)? They say that the US has the best education system (I smile and tell them I’m here because I heard China has the best education system ).

They have deeper reasons, too, beyond the platitudes. They talked about different learning styles, that they know Americans are taught to be more creative and learn in a different way. They talk about freedom – their words – and how they think there are more options to learn different things in the US. And, of course, they talk about beautiful places, creature comforts, entertainment, technology, and the NBA.

Now, I know I’m Amero-centric. I love my country. And I know Chinese students aim to please their teachers, and will respond to questions accordingly. But they do see a side to China I’m sure I’m not privy to – all I know is Nanjing, and they are from all over Jiangsu Provice. It makes me curious to know what they’ve seen.

The Great Food Hunt

You read about our first experiences, I’m sure, in our post Frog is Meat. Julia was right, the first thing you do miss is you home foods.

We love Asian food (a la our wedding!), and while meat has been a problem when we speak so little Chinese, Asian cuisine is so cheap here. But eating with friends is more fun, and our collegues are fans of traditional western fare. We’re the new kids on the block, so we’re not yet sick of Chinese food, but dollar for gram, it doesn’t make sense. Compare: our colleagues’ favorite place is a sandwich shop (white people do love sandwiches) by campus, which charges 20 RMB for a can of soda and a sandwich – a good sandwich, but nothing special (especially if you don’t eat deli meat). For the same price, you can get two dishes at our favorite Asian place down the street, a kind of teriyaki eggplant or bok choy noodle soup, or a huge plate of lo mein and a side of spinach.

The other night, we all went out to a Mexican/Italian place (need we say more) that locals rave about, including the Chinese/English entertainment magazine “Map.” The restaurant Behind the Wall served fried wonton wrappers for nachos, some kind of chunky duck sauce for salsa, small greasy pizza without tomato sauce, and quesadillas – not even up to par with Applebees or Pizza Hut, if you can imagine. And 80 RMB a person! At a new dumpling place we found in the alley with some help of some British students we overheard speaking English, that’s 160 dumplings – enough for 32 people to eat lunch! So here’s our lesson learned: go Chinese.

Our well-learned lesson turned against us, however, when the college threw us a fancy, authentic Chinese banquet. Whole prawns, or mini-lobsters, shrimp soup with the eyes still on, eel, yellow crunchy funnel cake, jelly fish (which we mistook for cabbage), bean curd noodles, almond-paste filled finger-sized sesame buns – a huge array of exotic foods. We tried all of the non-meat items, but have been feeling it in our intestines since. My theory is we’ve eaten more oil than we’re used to and it finally caught up with us; Matt’s is that the restaurant didn’t fully boil the water. That, and the free-flowing pijiu (pee-geo or beer) couldn’t have helped our digestive tract.

But, Julia is right, we are craving our comfort foods – for Matt, coffee, and for Laura, chocolate. Or sweets, any kind of sweet. It haunts us, intruding in our thoughts throughout the day. The best we’ve been able to find for coffee has been coffee-flavored drinks from the cooler. The closest thing to a western dessert has been ice cream bars (only 1 yuan). We tried buying a pretty rolled chocolate dessert from a Chinese bakery, but it tasted like air and chocolate jimmies. Tubs of ice cream are reminiscent of those small Neapolitan cups you get on field day in elementary school, the ones you eat with a wooden stick. We tried to buy a sticky bun from another bakery, but the best we got there was a kind of dense punchki (Polish donut). There aren’t any ingredients or an oven for baking with either.

Our colleagues were kind enough yesterday to ride in the taxi with us to Starbucks for authentic coffee and a blueberry muffin – approximately 35 yuan, the cost of dinner and a beer at our favorite local joint, but it certainly hit the spot.

Maybe this is a blessing in disguise – maybe we’ll finally be able to break our sweet tooth habit. Sugar causes wrinkles anyway, and caffeine causes anxiety . Still, if we could pack again – we’d sneak in some coffee beans and a grinder.

Jiming Temple

We had half a day off and decided to hit the streets and do some official tourism.  We looked at our map and started walking to the first tourist attraction that was in English, the Jiming Temple.  After a few wrong turns (finding your way is very hard when all the street signs are in Chinese characters) we found ourselves at the temple.

Jiming Temple was orginially built in 527 during the Liang Dynasty, and has been destroyed and renovated many times since. The structure you see here was built in 1387 and stands to this day as an active Buddhist temple. If you want to know more about the Temple, read this sign that placed at within:

Yup, that’s about the quality of many English signs in China.

The Temple itself is situated about a half hour walk from our apt. The structures of the temple are all built on a steep hill, and in 90 degree weather it makes for a tough climb. There seemed to be 4 different types of rooms in the Temple, I’ll list them from most common to least.
Gift Shops- I counted at least 6 gift shops and that’s not including the ticket booth (5 yuan to enter, $.83) or the concession stand outside. Then there were rooms with large God statues in them, everything from Buddha, Shiva, and this guy:

Most of these statues had food offerings around them brought by the locals who worship there. I can only imagine the monks take the food at night.
Then there’s the Monks rooms. We started to explore these when we realised that we probably weren’t supposed to be in there and that the big sign on the door that we couldn’t read likely said, "Do Not Enter." Anyway, we did see the monks laundry being hung out to dry, and incase you were wondering, they were white underwear.
Finanly, there’s little rooms like this water garden and wishing well with little turtles in it.

Frog is Meat

By looking on an Eng lish Language website about Nanjing and using a map torn out of a magazine, we set off with our word-to-word dictionary to find a vegetarian restaurant famous for its faux meat. The good news – we managed successfully to use the subway system! (Not so challenging as we thought – the stations were written in Pinyin or roman letters in addition to the Chinese characters. Also, there’s only one line, so we had a 50/50 shot). Then we walked. And walked. And walked. We can ask for directions pretty well – Shanghai Lu zai nar? But being able to ask a question and being able to understand the answer are two very different things.

The restaurant we thought we were looking for turned out to be some kind of cafeteria, with no English words, and I think we were supposed to pay first then bring our ticket to a station, but there were all these different stations, and they all looked like they served meat. We couldn’t figure out where to start. The thing about knowing a few words in Chinese is that people think you understand Chinese, and they keep talking to you, slower and louder, but it doesn’t matter how slow they talk, you don’t know what words they’re saying! I have a new found appreciation for what American immigrants go through – and the Chinese people are way kinder than Americans to foreigners.

So we left that cafeteria place and, starving, thirsty, sweaty, and tired, stopped at a restaurant that said "Frog Prince Restaurant." English words – maybe they’ll have an English menu. The restaurant we stopped at yesterday had an English menu. No such luck. So we said "bu rou" (not meat) and "women bu che rou" (we don’t eat meat) and "women shi su de che" (we are vegetarians). Our waitress managed to nod and say a strained "not meat" in English back to us – I thought we had success. Then we got a big bowl of frog meat.

If you need the impetus to become a vegetarian, visiting China is a great way to start. They’re honest about where their food comes from. Outside one restaurant were live, and not-so-live, chickens in a tiny cage that were tonight’s dinner. The big market by us sells what I looked like swimming pickles, but then I noticed the heads – either snakes or eels.

Sorry, I haven’t figured out how to add pictures with the proxy yet.

Word Press is Up

We’ve defeated the great fire wall of China!  Victory is ours and freedom reigns again in the blogging kingdom. For those of you who haven’t been following let me describe the problem.  In China many many sites are blocked.  WordPress, blogger, Myspace…. all totally blocked.  Officially the Chinese government does not cencor the internet, or scan and store every communication coming into and out of China.  But in reality, they do.  Our problem for the last few days has been our inability to access WordPress (where our blog is, the site you’re reading now) and update our blog.  With the help of a firefox addon called gladder we are now able to get around the country wide block on WordPress and blog freely again.  All blogs in the future will be here.