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September 2005
Hi All,
It’s been several weeks since my last China update. Our
Internet connection is quite slow, and we’ve had recurring
problems with email, especially with sending. That’s my
excuse for the delay. We don’t really have those things
“fixed”; we’ve just made our peace with the
fact that anything involving the Internet will take much, much
longer in Fuyang than in other places. We’ve been hoping
to get www.donandkate.org
launched, but don’t bother going there yet. I’ve tried
several times to upload the site with no luck at all. The Web
site will have to wait until we get to another location with better
Internet service. I’ll let you know.
Orientation
We arrived in Fuyang, Anhui Province, on August 25th, following
three weeks of orientation at Huzhou Teachers College in Zhejiang
Province and four days in Nanjing where the Amity Foundation (our
sponsoring agency) is headquartered. Orientation was for those
of us who are Amity rookies—about 16 of us, including people
from the United States, Britain, Scotland, Finland, Denmark, and
Norway. Among the highlights of orientation, along with lessons
in Chinese language and culture, was a Ping Pong tournament. It
was an international affair with players from all the countries
mentioned above. It will give you an idea of the general athletic
prowess of our gang of English teachers to know that the tournament
champion was I—conspicuously the oldest member of our group.
Summer Conference
Our four days in Nanjing were for the Amity Teachers Summer Conference.
Most all of the Amity teachers, veterans and rookies, were there,
about 45 or so. Most Amity teachers are assigned in pairs, and
the pair are often the only foreigners and native (or very fluent)
English speakers in the cities where they are placed. That’s
the case for Kate and me. So Amity provides four occasions each
year for teacher conferences (apparently also thought of as breaks
from cabin fever) where we can all communicate with each other
easily and talk about Western food. The summer (August) and winter
(February) conferences are for all Amity teachers in China. We’re
told the winter conference is usually held in some place warm.
The fall and spring conferences are regional events—for
us that means a get-together with about seven teachers from Anhui
and Shandong Provinces, including a pair of young second-year
teachers from Germany.
Arrival in Fuyang
On the night of our arrival in Fuyang there was a dinner at an
international hotel for us. A vice-president of the college was
the ranking official, along with representatives of the English
Department and the Foreign Affairs Office and Kate and me. Tradition
says that the most prominent member of a dinner party is seated
on the far side of the table facing the door. That’s where
they put me. Fish here are served whole, and another tradition
says that the fish is served looking at the most prominent person
at the table. If you are a foreigner at a table of Chinese diners,
I think you can count on the fish looking at you. Drinking alone,
even at a crowded table, is considered impolite, so the entire
dinner was a continuous string of toasts. One diner would raise
his/her glass to another and both, or all, would drink. When you
hear “bottoms up,” it’s more of a command or
a challenge than a suggestion. Eating Chinese food in the United
States isn’t much preparation for the food in China. Bones
are an issue. They cook a whole chicken, then cut it into pieces
with a cleaver leaving bones or bone fragments in every bite.
I don’t understand that, but I’m from a small town
in Kansas. On the whole, the food has been very good, even when
we don’t know what we’re eating.
The apartment
Our apartment in Fuyang seems to be much larger than the housing
provided for most Amity teachers. We have a two-story apartment.
The ground floor includes a small living room, dining room, kitchen,
bath, and entry area. Not pretty, but functional. Upstairs is
a bedroom, office, and bath. What would have been the upstairs
kitchen has been turned into closet space. We understand that
many of our Amity colleagues are living in two or three rooms.
The apartment is furnished with plain but serviceable furniture
and is equipped with a computer (Windows 98 in Chinese) with stereo
speakers and HP printer. We also have two TVs with cable service
(China has one very good English language channel, no HBO), plus
a DVD player and about 75 DVDs, many of them quite recent movies.
DVDs here cost from 6-8 yuan each (8 yuan = $1.00), and we’re
told they are available in China long before they reach the U.S.
market. Piracy will do that. We’ve watched several of the
movies. Two had statements that would appear on screen periodically
stating that the DVD’s were released only for award consideration
and were not for sale or general distribution. The security among
Academy Award voters is apparently not real tight. Most of the
ones we’ve watched have been in English, most have Chinese
subtitles available in the menu. The last one we saw was in English
with English subtitles, but the subtitles were for a different
movie. It was rather distracting. The sound quality isn’t
always good, and the packages are pretty good reproductions of
the original release covers, but sometimes include strange things.
One prominently featured a quote from a bad review that
said the director had set up several possible plot lines and then
followed “the least interesting one”—not the
way Hollywood usually promotes its films.
We have room heating and air-conditioning in four rooms. We’re
quite comfortable now, but the real test should be keeping warm
and dry when winter sets in. It’s quite obvious that our
windows and doors aren’t sealed very well, so we’ll
have work to do there in shutting out drafts.
We have hot water only in the ground floor bathroom and only
from the shower nozzle (a hand-held nozzle on a flexible hose).
The water heater is electric and mounted up high on the wall.
There is no shower stall or enclosure—just a drain in the
floor, so showering also requires some floor mopping afterward.
We also have a washing machine, much smaller than the typical
U.S. version. It’s located in the downstairs bathroom and
we stick the drain hose down the floor drain when we use it. On
good days, the water doesn’t back up onto the bathroom floor.
The washing machine is connected to cold water only, but we can
add warm water from the shower nozzle. We hang things up to dry—inside
when necessary, on the clothesline on our small enclosed patio
when we can. We plan to buy a fan to speed up the indoor drying.
Our kitchen has a small refrigerator and a two-burner bottled
gas stove that sits on the counter. The fridge has a small freezer
compartment on top, but so far we haven’t been able to find
ice cube trays in any of the stores. We’re improvising.
We also have an electric hot plate, but haven’t used it
yet. The water in China must be boiled before drinking, so we
bought a 1.7 liter water boiler; think electric coffee pot without
the insides. We also bought a toaster. This wasn’t easy
to find, since bread is not a common staple here. We use hot water
from the shower for washing dishes. Because the water isn’t
pure, the apartment also comes with a dish sterilizer—a
countertop electrical appliance we put the dishes into after washing
to sterilize them with heat. It’s kind of like the high
temperature drying cycle in an American dishwasher. It melts plastic
stuff, so anything that might melt gets rinsed in a mild chlorine
bleach solution instead. We’ve adapted pretty easily to
our new surroundings. The water has no visible impurities and,
once boiled, has been perfectly good for drinking and tastes good.
Some of our Amity companions have had stomach ailments and related
miseries adapting to the diet and water in China; so far we’ve
not had any such troubles.
Our kitchen is also pretty well equipped with dishes, pots, and
pans. There have been Amity teachers here for at least four years
before our arrival, and no one carries household stuff with them
back to the United States, so anything acquired tends to remain
in the apartment. We’ve been cooking at home, buying food
in a nearby supermarket and in the vegetable markets. We’re
eating a lot of chicken, vegetables, and fruit. There are lots
of very good vegetables and fruits available here at very low
prices. There are a variety of green beans here with beans more
than two feet long. We cut them down to bite-sized and they’re
quite good. The elongated red and green peppers that we thought
would be similar to bell peppers turned out to be pretty spicy,
though not has hot as jalapenos. We’re limited in our cooking
styles because we have no oven or broiler, so we’re cooking
in a wok and a steamer mostly. China has a number of wine producers,
and we’ve tried a few. Most Chinese wines seem to be reds,
and the few available white wines are rather expensive (expensive
here means $6-8 a bottle; reds can be had for less than $3, 18-22
yuan). The wines we’ve tried so far don’t measure
up to the cheap box wines in the U.S., but the real bargain is
beer. Chinese beers are light and come in 630 ml bottles (I think
that’s close to 24 oz.) for 2-3.5 yuan each, or between
25 and 40 cents. So we split a bottle of beer more often than
a bottle of wine. Bear in mind that while prices here are low,
incomes are low, too. We’re living on the equivalent of
about $300/month each, plus housing, and we can be pretty comfortable
on that amount. If you lived in China with even a modest American
salary, you would be considered quite rich.
Shopping
Trips to the supermarket are interesting. Sometimes a student
will come along and translate the labels for us. Some products
have a little English on the labels, but others are mostly guesswork.
Still, there are a surprising number of familiar American products.
Crest and Colgate toothpaste are in all the stores, and we buy
Safeguard soap for showering. We’re doing laundry with Chinese
“White Cat” detergent that the school provided for
us, but we bought Tide in Huzhou and it’s in all the stores,
too. Coke, Pepsi, and Sprite are readily available, though diet
soda is hard to come by. And Oreos and Snickers are here, too,
along with Chips Ahoy cookies. I was not an Oreo fan in the United
States, but was pleased to find Oreos here with chocolate and
peanut butter fillings. I suppose they have those in the United
States, too, but I would never have looked at them there. Skippy
peanut butter is another familiar product here and is occasionally
the main course for lunch at our house.
Shopping is an interesting mix of big department stores, all
of which include a large grocery section, or very small shops.
Many shops, especially on smaller streets, are about the size
of a single garage and often have garage type doors that are pulled
up when the store is open. These stores have very limited offerings—only
jeans, only sox, only pajamas, only ladies underwear, only DVDs,
only beer, only cigarettes, etc. Bargaining over prices is a routine
practice, though it doesn’t come naturally to me. Chinese
students are surprised that in the United States we just pay what
it says on the price tag and don’t try to get a lower price.
Fuyang
Fuyang is a city of about 600,000 people. By Chinese standards,
this is a very small, nearly insignificant city. People in Fuyang
don’t see many foreigners, so we provide some element of
entertainment just by going out in public. People here turn around
and stare to get a better look and often laugh when they see us.
Just being Americans is enough to generate interest, but my white
beard and shoes with springs on the heels seem to raise the entertainment
level. My new retirement persona dresses in flowery Hawaiian-style
shirts that my stodgy working persona would never have worn, and
these also attract amused attention. The stares and laughter are
curious, not malicious, and we usually respond with a wave and
the standard Chinese greeting “ni hao,” which people
also seem to think is funny. And when I talk (or attempt to talk)
to people in Chinese, a crowd gathers around to enjoy the show.
Even though my Chinese generates some head scratching and laughter,
my efforts at speaking the language are clearly appreciated.
Cuisine
Being in China is an abrupt reminder of how many of us Americans
are seriously overweight. The people here tend to be very slender.
There are some Chinese who are a little overweight, of course,
maybe 10-20 pounds or so, but we have yet to see a single Chinese
person who was fat by U.S. standards. Maybe that’s why diet
sodas are so hard to find—not many people here would need
to be on diets. That may change with growing Western influence.
McDonald’s can be found in most cities, including Fuyang,
but Kentucky Fried Chicken has more Chinese locations. There are
some Pizza Huts, too, but we haven’t seen any of them yet.
American style fast food is expensive here—about $5 for
a burger, fries, and Coke. We can both eat well for a couple of
days for the price of one McDonald’s or KFC meal. We’ve
been once to each place, both times while we were in Huzhou and
feeling quite new to China. The chicken sandwich was pressed bits
of dark meat, the fries were just like at home, and the Cokes
had ice in them—the only places we’ve ever found ice
in drinks.
Teaching
The Fuyang Teachers College (also called Fuyang Normal College)
has two campuses about a mile or so apart. We live on the east
(or old) campus, but will do most, if not all, of our teaching
on the west (or new) campus. Watch for more information about
this, plus pictures, when the Web site finally goes up. The students
here dress much the same as in the United States—in jeans,
t-shirts, and sneakers. Half or more of the t-shirts have English
words on them, sometimes not proofread by an English speaker before
printing (e.g., “Brids of a feather”). We see virtually
no such clothing with Chinese writing. The only people we’ve
seen wearing anything we would consider as “traditional”
Chinese clothing have been hostesses in restaurants wearing the
qipao, the long, form-fitting “Suzy Wong”
(older readers will remember Suzy Wong) dresses that are slit
to the hip. Chinese girls tend to dress more modestly than Western
girls. We just about never see a bare midriff or low neckline.
Skin-tight jeans, on the other hand….
On the teaching front, we must be getting the slowest start in
all of China. Our assignment for this year is to teach oral English
to freshmen. School started on September 5th, but the freshmen
don’t get here until about the 17th or 18th. Then they have
military training for their first two weeks. The end of their
military training coincides with the beginning of the week-long
National Day holiday, so the Freshmen won’t have any classes
until the second week of October. We were told about our teaching
schedule in a phone call from the assistant dean while we were
still in Huzhou for orientation. At that time she asked us if
we would be willing to do one lecture a week during September.
We said “yes,” of course. Once we got to Fuyang we
started asking about these lectures—who would we be lecturing
to? On what subject? For how long? And when? The answer came on
Sunday evening, September 4th, around 8:00 p.m. when the assistant
dean came to our apartment with our first week’s schedule—ten
lectures beginning at 8:00 a.m. on Monday. As it turned out, it
was one 45-minute lecture each repeated five times to classes
of seniors.
Elvis for a night
This week our only performance was an hour and a half gig on
Tuesday evening. The topic was “College Life in the United
States,” and we had lots of pictures to show (nice built-in
computer/projector system) from Vic’s recent days at Davidson
College. There were posters around the campuses about the event.
Our presentation was in a large lecture hall that seats about
200. We arrived 30 minutes before starting time and walked into
a room that was already SRO and a big round of applause. Then
we stood around for 20 minutes while student techs tried to get
the sound system to work. About 10 minutes before time to begin,
all the students jumped up and ran out of the room. We hadn’t
understood the Chinese language announcement that our lecture
was being moved to another room down the hall. Turns out that
an evening class was evicted from their room so that we could
use it. It was quite gratifying to have such an enthusiastic audience.
All the seats were full, and more. Seating was at desks with three
fixed seats attached, but most of the desks had at least four
students in those three seats. There were students standing in
the rear of the room and in the aisles, along with people standing
in the hall outside the door and sitting on the floor in front.
Occasionally, even an old fart gets to feel like Elvis. We don’t
know what we’ll be doing next week.
In the meantime, we are meeting a lot of students. Many of the
English majors who knew our much-loved and appreciated predecessors
(Billy and Vickie See from Tennessee) have come to visit us. Time
with native English speakers is a rare commodity, and the students
who really want to speak English well want to spend time with
the foreign teachers. At the same time, many are shy about approaching
us because they fear that their English is not good enough. I’m
hoping that my faltering efforts at Chinese will help to lower
their concern about making mistakes in a second language. The
kids we’ve met have been bright and eager and gracious.
They all want to help us, in part because they want us to be happy
and comfortable in China and in part to have a reason for spending
time with us. So we’ve had student guides to various stores
and markets and to the post office, student visitors at our apartment,
and two students helped us select a cell phone last weekend.
Our new cell phone number, by the way, is 139-6557-3605. If I
have this right, you must dial 011 to make an international call
from the U.S.; China’s international calling prefix is 86;
so I think to call here from the United States you would
dial 011-86-139-6557-3605. We have found a simple and extremely
inexpensive way to make international phone calls, which we have
used to talk to our families in the United States. We signed up
for Skype service at www.skype.com
and make international calls online. Calls to telephones in the
United States cost about two cents per minute. All we needed was
to download the free software and buy an inexpensive headset with
a microphone. It’s very easy and the phone connections are
very clear. You buy time with a credit card (calculated in Euros—Skype
operates from Luxembourg), and call charges are deducted from
your balance. If the person you’re calling is also a skype
user, computer-to-computer calls are free. I read recently that
ebay may be buying skype.
Moon cakes
Sunday, September 18th, is Mid-Autumn Day in China, which is
always in conjunction with a full moon. A student told us the
ancient legend associated with this day. A very good man had a
very beautiful wife whom he loved very much. He was given a special
elixir that would turn him into a celestial body, but he would
not drink it because he did not want to be separated from his
wife. A bad guy came along when the good man was away from home
and tried to steal the elixir, but the beautiful wife quickly
drank it to prevent the bad guy from getting it. She immediately
floated out the window and up into the sky. When the good man
returned home, he found the empty elixir bottle and realized what
had happened. When he looked at the moon, he could see his wife’s
hair blowing in the breeze. So he would sit in his garden when
the moon was full and be rejoined with his wife in that way. The
full moon in China signifies the wholeness or completeness of
the family, and so families get together for this holiday, which
is celebrated with moon cakes (small pastries filled with fruit,
chocolate, and other good things). It is not a school holiday,
and students here will not be with their families, but some will
be coming to see us on Sunday, so we will be stocking up on moon
cakes and fresh fruit for the occasion.
Well, by now I’m sure I’ve told you more than even
my sisters will want to read. We have been following the news
about Hurricane Katrina and have heard from friends about some
of the efforts to help the people displaced by the storm. We think
of you all and look forward to hearing from you.
Shalom,
Don Lindsay
Fuyang, Anhui Province |
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