Lao Shan

This weekend after our week from hell E and I had some homey time in Qingdao which included celebrating a friend's birthday, experiencing China on the big screen watching "Kung Fu Panda" - we both loved it, and climbing Lao Shan.

Here are some pictures from Lao Shan in an area called Bei Jiu Shui (North Nine Waters) just a half hour from our apartment in the city; the mountains here look so different from any I've seen in the States. Looking at them I'm always reminded of making drippy sand castles at the beach.

It felt like summer finally to get out and spend a day getting dirty.

Singing Zai Jian to the Semester

Why is it that goodbyes always seem to take place when you're in a state of total exhaustion?

This week at least, it's because I've been teaching double. In exchange for a tricky visa extension that has allowed us to stay in China for the Olympics as planned (and a little more pay), Ethan and I have signed on to teach for six additional weeks at OU in a summer program for Alabama-bound students. The new group of students is dreamily small (only 12 so far!), but this week we've been juggling the teaching commitments of getting this new program up and running as well as finishing out the final week with our other 200+ students. But for me at least, the madness is over. Poor Ethan still has to get up and teach at 8 AM tomorrow, sorry honey!

Last night though, tired as we were, it was time to say goodbye. For the past couple of weeks we've hosted a couple of "movie nights" for our 70 or so first year students who have come to be our favorites (mainly because we can gossip about them together). We've showed them "The Shawshank Redemption" and also the most recent "Pride and Prejudice" which were both well loved and deemed "perfect" by resident movie buff, Hebe. And, last night we took over the media room once more for a goodbye party and to share by request some of our pictures. Ethan put together a great sampling of our adventures over the last three years that included beautiful scenery from the US in Yosemite, Zion and the Whites as well as pictures of our travels in Guatemala, Belize and Honduras, many of which have appeared on his blog. We've been so lucky to have such adventures!



When our show was over, though, no one really wanted to leave. Even the slacker boys who have all but stopped breezing into class these days (but amazingly came to look at pictures!) remained. I don't know who demanded it first, but what they wanted was a song (or a dance, it was up to us). I have to admit in my exhausted state there was a part of me that felt like I had sung and danced enough over the course of the semester for this group, but as there was a microphone attached to the media console, Ethan and I gave in. Ethan sang "Yesterday" and then we did a duet to that song from "The Breakfast Club" (I managed the "hey-hey-hey-heys" but drew a blank on the verses, sorry Ethan). So terrible! But I'm glad we broke the ice. One by one, and with a little coercion, our braver students came up to the mic to sing us goodbye, leaving me with some of my fondest memories of this semester. Not only that but Hebe and a few others stayed later to present us with two wall hangings to remember them by - very sweet.



Here's a a video of three of our songbird students singing the official Olympic song, "Welcome to Beijing" - you can hardly see a thing (that's Costa Rica in the background), but hopefully you can hear their sweet voices. I will miss them.

"Welcome to Beijing" - Sunny, Olivia, and Hebe

Night Lights

A few weekends ago our friend Sarah paid us a visit from Beijing. Our weekend adventures included beer bags (finally!), epic karaoke (with a group of 10 other ex-pat Bejingers), and this late night walk in 54 Square (one of my favorite places in Qingdao).

Ethan and Sarah

Getting Ready for Lift Off

Up, up and Away: A paper lantern fueled by fire makes its way up into the city sky

Just another typical Sunday in Qingdao...or, why I have a hard time deciding what to blog about

China is complicated.

7:50 I wake up to see the sunlight streaming in through the curtains of our bedroom balcony. Fog has enveloped Qingdao for weeks (some date it back to the earthquake in Sichuan in May), so I decide to make the most of the morning sun and go for a jog by the seaside.

9:10 I get back home and Ethan is up and making apple pancakes (topped with real maple syrup) from our favorite Korean import store, Silver Garden - the best weekend comfort food! We scarf them down and I head out to my side tutoring job with "The VIP".

10:30 The VIP, one of the local directors of the Danish shipping container company, Maersk, is a little tired and annoyed because 1) his company is forcing him to take more English classes during the week at his office and 2) we will be stopping our lessons at the end of July. Five days enough to see family! Then come back to China! We've practiced this conversation many times. This time I change the subject to his business and learn that one shipping container leaves Qingdao's port every ten minutes, and over 30,000 of the world's shipping containers transport bananas - gross!

12:00 After class I find Joanna, one of the young Chinese office ladies who manages payroll, in the teacher's lounge. After chatting with her and sharing my concerns about the VIP's lack of motivation and his pronunciation she asks me about her English which I say, honestly, is very good. "I don't know how to improve!" Joanna complains. "Maybe I should get an American boyfriend?" We laugh and then she says, "But I don't think my Chinese boyfriend will like that very much!"

Joanna: But maybe you can give me your opinion on something?

me: Sure!

Joanna: Many young Chinese are now dating not one but two people! Both men and women and they are not tell the other one! Many of my friends in fact. What do you think about that?

me: Well, um, I guess it's important to be honest.

Joanna: Could you do that?

Me: Probably not.

Joanna: I could but I wouldn't want my boyfriend to - I would be too jealous!

12:30 I go across the street to the indoor mall in search of a bra. All of mine have been mangled by our vigorous top-loading washer. I duck into a tiny store and begin to browse. I try to communicate what I'm looking for to the two saleswomen displaying increasingly frightening options but I don't know how to say no padding please. A young woman in the shop offers to help translate. "Do you want...?" she asks while squeezing her breasts together. "Cleavage? No, no...I'm boring." I explain. Finally they find a black bra with removable stuffing, the only questionable detail being a t-neck link chain in the back. I decide to try it on anyway because I've come this far.

In the tiny dressing room/storage closet, my dress around my belly and mid-way through clasping the bra I get a call from the friend I'm meeting this afternoon. I take the call with one hand and continue wrangling with the bra with the other.

"Where are you?" she asks. "Do you still want to get together?"

At this point I feel a presence behind me. Before I know what's happening the saleswoman has raised my left arm and is now smearing my flesh into one of the two rigid cups. Dumbfounded, I raise my right arm obediently so she can work on the other side. So that's how you do it!

"You'd never guess," I answer. "I'm getting A LOT of extra help trying on a bra. If you could only see me now..."

We agree to meet in ten minutes in front of the large department store across the street. I extract myself from my encasing and head out of the shop still in good humor, albeit a little surprised by the early afternoon manhandling.

12:50 Crossing the street to our meeting place I catch the eye of about twenty curious east Asian foreigners. "Hello!" One of the braver women calls out after a few shy smiles, and then the rest begin to huddle around me. They ask me some questions about what I'm doing here and they explain that they're here in Qingdao visiting from a much smaller town in Shandong province where they are studying Chinese and textiles. They tell me they're from Turkmenistan. "Do you know where that is?" I admit that I do not and tell them that for me the "'stans" are the hardest countries to place on the globe. They pepper me with questions: Where are you from? What are you doing here? With your boyfriend!?! Ahhh (satisfied squeals). I like to think that after six months in China I'm pretty good now at holding court. I ask them about their time here and also Turkmenistan. It's a beautiful country, they say, you should visit! One of the women crowding nearer on my right, spots my piercing on whatever that tiny part of the ear is called. "Ooh," she says fingering the small hoop. "Painful?" I tell her no and she pats my belly muttering something in Russian. "I know," I say. "All this time in China has made me fat!" "Oh no!" chorus the ladies. "She wants to know if you have a..." I understand them to mean belly-button piercing and I tell her no. After two large group pictures observed by about a dozen Chinese pedestrians they leave me to see the rest of Qingdao.

1:15 Disappointingly, my friend pulls up in her cab after the large pack of Turkmenistanis have already left. She is dressed in a linen blazer, a pink sequined scarf and cute espadrilles that she is now complaining about, explaining that she tripped last night at a Jamaican themed party and has a hurt ankle. She is also carrying a gold Prada purse. My shopping partner for the day is from Qingdao originally, and now lives in the States with her husband who she refers to as an "ABC" or American Born Chinese. She has generously offered to take me shopping today in Taidong to buy fabric, and visit a tailor.

3:30 Measures taken, silk fabric selected, haggling through, and two beautiful dresses ordered, we are pooped. Although we had lunch together yesterday and ordered jellyfish and bean curd, today my shopping-guide is in the mood for Mickey-D's. She orders me ice cream and I feel guilty eating it - my first American fast food abroad!

3:45 My friend and I talk for a bit in the brightly lit restaurant and she describes the sometimes hard negotiating that goes on as a Chinese-American. She and her husband are living with his parents, saving money. "It's hard right now," she explains, "One minute his parents are American and want us to support ourselves and buy a house with our own money and the next minute they're Chinese and demand we listen to their every word and follow their orders. It's not fair. My parents would buy us a house and his parents refuse. What can they do? It's Chinese tradition that a husband's family support him and his wife. Naturally, my husband's under a lot of pressure." I'm learning that my Qingdao friend is a rich girl. Her Prada purse is real, and her Dad is a CEO of a shopping mall downtown. But in the US despite her LV bags and gucci glasses, she is scrimping and saving, working hard.

5:20 Home again, home again. Ethan and I do some lesson planning in preparation for a busy week (one program is ending while the other is beginning) and we decide our busy schedules warrant a treat.

7:00 For our third time since arriving in Qingdao, we are dressed in matching flannel pajamas getting $7 70-minute massages. I decide to try a foot massage and Ethan goes for the full body. We sit side beside in the no-frills private room chatting in Chinese to our masseurs - well, Ethan, more fluently than me - and relax a little before Monday.

Let Me OK!™

This week after watching and discussing some TV commercial parodies I found online (my favorite: a comedy sketch that I found on YouTube from Left of Center for "Invisi-bandages"), I gave my first year classes the assignment of writing and acting in their own TV commercials for products like toothpaste, shampoo and deodorant. Along with providing an excellent excuse to capture my students on film, it turned out to be a worthwhile, although definitely challenging group assignment. The students needed a lot of input and help, but after two class periods many of them ended up with some very creative products and incredibly funny commercials.

Some of my favorite products included:

Olympic Sneakers - "One world. One shoe."

Sunshine Toothpaste - (A toothpaste that turns your teeth different colors) "Light up your life. Light up your teeth."

Magical Laundry Detergent - A detergent that can change your life. Literally. It could change you into a polar bear.

And:

Dark Child Sneakers - "Street ball is my job"

Amazing.

But my favorite came from the superstar trio: Victor, Olivia and Amy - who, whenever I headed their way to check in on their progress demurred, refusing to give me any details - it was going to be a surprise. During their secretive rehearsals they could barely hold it together. I couldn't help sneaking peeks as they pumped their fists, chanting quietly in unison "Let Me OK!" - before dissolving into hysterics.

I've uploaded their commercial for Let Me OK™ Deodorant below. Victor plays the stinky fly ("I feel lonely and ashamed"). Olivia plays God (who kills and eats poor Victor the fly - which was actually a delicious, seasonal cherry - we are gorging ourselves these days). And Amy sells it while struggling to keep a straight face. Olivia introduces the product at the beginning of the clip, and Victor's buzzing signals the commercial's start. I hope you find this as hilarious as I do, but chances are that this is only something that a teacher, or that teacher's mother could really love.



P.S. Victor is the aspiring rock star in Ethan's post about teaching.

Where has the time gone?: Pictures from a bad blogger

Here are some things I've been doing recently...

Controversial Topics

This morning after an unusually heated class debate on the topic of gay marriage, I ran into one of my students, Mars, at the bus stop. Contrary to his namesake, Mars perpetually sits in the back row beaming benevolently upon the rest of the class and occasionally making wisecracks. He is one of my most outlandish students, and easily one of my favorites. This morning the God of War and I sat together on the bus chatting about class and the usual topics: the weather, pollution, and inevitably, the Olympics -- Qingdao will host the Olympic sailing events this summer. "You know the smokestacks downtown?" Mars asked me chuckling. I nodded a little guiltily. Ethan got a great picture of one towering above a sign that reads: “Clean Energy Supply for Better Environment.” "Well, the government is destroying them now." He was still laughing. "Why?" I asked, smiling too, wondering what the joke might be. "Well, they don't want the foreigners to think bad about China so they are taking them all down, but...they even take down the ones that are giving off steam, not just smoke, because they worry about what the foreigners will say." We both laughed at this, the government taking down supposedly innocuous "steam-stacks" simply because they are worried about the impression it will give foreigners. But at the same time I had to wonder: who was I laughing at exactly? The government's less than thoughtful efforts to gain favor with foreigners, or the extreme environmental demands imposed on China by westerners? Where did Mars get this story in the first place? And how benign could these smokestacks, er, steamstacks really be?

Mars sighed and then looked at me intently, "But you know," he began seriously. "The real threat to China right now isn't pollution, it's the bad gangs." I paused to think. "Bad gangs? Like bang-bang?" I asked pointing my finger at him and firing. "No, no," he answered. "Bad gays." Oh, no not this again! I didn't think I could summon the energy to patiently address this issue for the second time that morning. "Bad gays...?" I asked forlornly. "No! Bad guys!" Ohhhh. Bad guys. "What bad guys?" I asked, relieved. “You know, the ones who want to divide China.” I knew at that point that we were talking about Tibet. Since the March 14th riots and the flurry of Chinese newspapers that had begun appearing in class, I hadn't broached the topic with any of my students, colleagues, or even our Chinese friends. I had read and heard enough to know that the accounts that the Chinese were following in the news were wildly different from the stories I was poring over in the New York Times through a serendipitous crack in the great firewall of China (many of our ex-pat friends can't access the site), and if I did mention Tibet and talk about my views I wasn't sure what the consequences might be. Sitting on the bus outside the classroom, I felt safe enough to at least utter the T-word, so I asked, "You mean in Tibet?" Mars nodded. After that, I didn't add much to the conversation. What could I say? Debates about gay marriage aside, the last thing I want is for a student to go to the administration with a list of grievances claiming that I'm a threat to Chinese security; I could be fired or sent home. I listened to what Mars had to say and recognized the familiar rhetoric plastered all over the China Daily, China's English newspaper. Mars, like China's journalists, was distressed that these "bad guys" were trying to divide the Chinese people.

If I were Mars, and all I had to read were Chinese publications like the China Daily, I'd probably be worried about the "bad guys" too. The headlines read more like "slam book" entries (think Babysitter's Club) or messages scrawled on bathroom stalls than actual news coverage, and the vast majority of the stories focus on vilifying the Dalai Lama and his "clique", critiquing the western media's supposedly "biased" coverage (one article dripping with irony angrily thanks the Western Media for "teaching" China about freedom of the press - click here to read.), and emphasizing the victimization of the Han Chinese without asking the question at the center of the violence - why is this happening? I've begun to collect headlines as souvenirs. Here are just a few from the China Daily web site:

Voices Rise to Counter biased Western Media

Evidence of Dalai clique's role in riots released

Don't see Tibet through tainted glasses

Do you call this peaceful?

Facts exposing Dalai clique's masterminding of Lhasa violence

Dalai clique racks brains to sabotage ethnic unity: living Buddha

China urges int'l to see true features of Dalai clique

Dalai Lama's 'Non-Violence' Stance Disproved by Lhasa Riot

The epicenter of lies

I wasn’t exactly surprised by the China Daily’s skewed news reporting. Early in our stay Ethan and I spent six hours riding around in a cab as a favor to a student who asked us to help her young journalist friend with an investigative report on whether or not taxi drivers could understand and respond to English-speaking tourists. The poor cab drivers had all learned the same unfortunate phrase -- “welcome to my taxi driver” -- but other than that only hand miming and the generous guidance in Mandarin from the back seat got us around town that day (Ethan wasn’t allowed to use his Chinese – one of the rules of the game). When we got a hold of a copy of the Qingdao Morning News the next day, we had a Chinese friend translate it for us and learned that 1) it was apparently us who had called the paper asking them to report on the topic, and 2) the cab drivers had passed their impromptu exam with flying colors. Not only that, we discovered we had missed out on the generous compensation that people usually receive for providing information to newspapers.

Just a few hours after talking to Mars I read an article in the NYT that traces China's reaction to the riots to a sense of injured nationalism (click here to read the article). China's nationalism, a nationalism I am struggling to understand, seemed to be just the issue in my conversation with Mars. Mars was saddened and concerned that "separatist" groups would want to hurt China in this way. He couldn't understand it. After reading the article I immediately clicked on the icon to share the link on my Facebook page - I hadn't realized you could do that before. When Ethan got home I found out he had read the article too, and was planning to send the link back home. When I mentioned that I had already linked to the page on my Facebook account with a description of the conversation I’d had with Mars, he did a double take. “You did what?” We spent the next fifteen minutes frantically deleting it before some phantom censor could read my comments, all the while joking about losing our jobs. The thing is we feel safe here, but we just don't know. We don't know what our colleagues think and we don't know what the consequences would be of sharing our views. Maybe our colleagues don't know either. So, between secret visits to the NYT website, Ethan and I talk about Tibet at home in our university apartment, trying to ignore the stories we heard from ex-pat friends recently over brunch. Like the one about the American couple who after having a blow-up fight one evening about on of them forgetting to call to get the refrigerator fixed, received a knock on the front door first thing the next morning from the refrigerator repairman. Sometimes surveillance can be convenient, but I think I’d opt for the broken refrigerator.