Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Learning Chinese is a Piece of Cake…….

The alphabet was invented by the Phoenicians thousands of years ago.  The alphabet teaches you the basic sounds of a language so you can apply them in reading, writing and speaking of a language.  Gaining knowledge by applying basic concepts is how we are taught in schools in America (western thought).  In Chinese there is no alphabet so you have to learn the language in a different way; lots repetition and memorization.  But how are adults from the western world supposed to do that?

The Chinese language is a very ancient language.  Its modern written language comes from pictographs that have evolved over thousands of years so there is no alphabet.  Having no alphabet makes learning Chinese one of the most difficult achievements in the world.  If you want to sit down and read a newspaper in Chinese, you have to know on average a minimum of two thousand four hundred different characters.  Now how does a person who has been educated using western thought learn that many characters when there is no alphabet?  Step one; learn how to learn Chinese.

If you think you can memorize several thousand characters with flash cards, be my guest because you can only get so far before the brain reaches its limits and then starts to forget.  Of course there are some basic characters that you have to memorize in the beginning (and it will be as familiar as a bunch of scribbles).  These basic characters are important for learning most of the rest of the characters.  Simple characters such as the character for wood for example.  When you look at it and use your imagination you can see a tree with roots (stick figure tree).  Even just training your mind to use your imagination allows it to organize and make sense of the basic characters.  When you have memorized the basic characters you can start to learn the more complex characters.  Now you are applying your western style of learning to a language that has no alphabet.

Learning the complex characters takes more time than the basic ones. Now you have to apply basic concepts that you learned but you also have to memorize quite a bit still.  Complex characters are composed of basic characters called radicals.  Like the character for chair has the radical for wood on the left side of the character.  This shows that wood has something to do with the character; when you picture a chair in your mind is it made of wood?  You can learn Chinese when you can make some sense of it.  Step two; find an outlet to learn Chinese from.

I have been studying Chinese for two and a half years now and still have a very difficult time finding an outlet of which to study Chinese at my skill level.  Here in Beibei the university has provided us with a Chinese teacher to teach us introductory Chinese.  I have learned introductory material in a classroom setting three times now (which does me no good).  I am at an intermediate level and need more than what that class provides.  I have thought of a few ideas; read children’s books and get tutored by some of my Chinese friends while I teach them English.  Also it helps being immersed in the language by living in China. 

Isn’t it amazing how you can distinguish how people learn knowledge based off of how they learn their language?  Whether it is applying basic concepts (western thought) or memorizing all concepts (Chinese).  We shall see how I progress as I continue to learn this language.  Every day I can read more on the restaurant menus and street signs and the people become more understandable.  Piece of cake right?

Monday, November 28, 2011

Burgers and Fries to Replace Stir-Fry and Rice

During the summer of 2010 my sister and I drove from Hattiesburg, Mississippi to our home in Ashland Wisconsin; I had just finished a summer internship at the University of Southern Mississippi.  During the long 20 hour drive we traveled through Mississippi, part of Tennessee and Missouri, Illinois and Wisconsin.  When we entered the state of Illinois, we set sail into the endless sea of corn fields.  It’s a pretty boring drive when all you see is corn on the side of the road.  But isn't it also amazing?  Corn is the crop that feeds our industrialized food system. 

During the Chinese National Holiday I traveled to Chengdu China by fast train and was able to see much of the Chongqing and Sichuan landscape along the way.  The first thing that struck me was that there was no endless sea of corn and there were no large scale farms.  The hilly and mountainous landscape was dotted with small farming plots which all seems to be taken car of by different people and had many different crops growing in them.  Seeing this gave me a good idea for a class lecture.  I wanted to know what my students thought about using the industrialized food system in China.

First I showed my students the documentary film Food Inc to give them a good all around view of the way food is made in an industrialized system (the movie certainly makes you think more about where your food came from).  Then in the class following the movie we discussed what answers they came up with to this question, “Should China ever adopt the industrialized food system so as to independently feed its large population?”   Over all the results were about half and half for adopting or rejecting the food system.  The main argument for adopting the food system was to help overcome feeding the large population independently even though the consequences were great.  The arguments rejecting the food system were many.  Students used arguments stating environmental problems, emigrational problems, cultural problems and health problems.  None argued for human or animal rights (kind of a touchy subject here in China).         

 Yes the industrialized food system is great. We Americans are able to spend less of our annual budget on food than most people in other countries around the world.  Our grocery stores don’t have seasons anymore, and they have an average of forty thousand different products to choose from.  One of our major exports is food because we can produce so much of it so cheaply.  Other countries cannot compete with our food system.  For example, think about how widespread McDonalds is in the world.  McDonalds is everywhere (over 31,000 restaurants in 119 different countries world-wide).  Go America!  Right?  Also keep in mind many Americans don’t know how to cook, can’t afford to cook healthy food, don’t eat together as a family and have some sort of health problem related to their diet.  And don’t forget the large carbon footprint and all of the human and animal rights violations that are created by manufacturing this super cheap food.   
Personally it makes me feel disgusted when I see a McDonalds in the Forbidden City in Beijing or KFC in downtown Beibei.  American fast food restaurants don’t belong in China and frankly neither does the American industrialized food system.  Chinese food is a big part of Chinese culture; culture that comes from how the food is grown, processed, cooked and then eaten.   China is already losing a lot of its culture by being on the fast track to modernization.  Why should burgers and fries replace stir-fry and rice?  With an industrialized food system already in America, I wonder what food-related culture we Americans have lost (how food is grown, processed, cooked and eaten).              

Sunday, November 6, 2011

The Toilets in China are Different

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is often portrayed in the shape of a pyramid, with the largest and most fundamental levels of needs at the bottom, and the need for self-actualization at the top.  You cannot not reach the higher levels of the pyramid without fulfilling the lower ones first.  The part of the pyramid that I am stressing here is the physiological part; more specifically excretion. 

In America we have public toilets everywhere so you don’t have to stress out or worry about what to do when nature calls.  Every public restroom will have privacy, have toilet paper and have a sink to wash your hands.  I don’t mean to put the American public restroom system on a pedestal; I have experienced my fair share of dirty, stinky and scary public restrooms in America.  But of all of the dirty, stinky, and scary public restrooms I have experienced in America, none have prepared me for public restrooms in China.

In China the idea of a toilet is completely different.  You don’t sit down and relax while you do your duty, you have to squat over a porcelain hole in the floor (the dreaded squatting toilet).  I don’t know about you but I find it very difficult to relax in that squatting position even if I am using facilities that have burning incents, calming tradition Chinese music playing in the background, and beautifully decorated stalls (my hips and knees are just not used to it).  Even becoming comfortable with using a squatter in a nice environment like the one that I just described, is difficult.  I used to have nightmares about using squatting toilets (not really, but I definitely avoided them like the plague) and that didn’t change until I brought myself to the brink of disaster.  Sometimes you eat something that your body just doesn’t agree with and your body will spring into action (out of the blue) and give you the five minute countdown to find a toilet or else……  I could be ten or fifteen (or longer) minutes away from home (my beloved western style toilet) and refuse myself to use a nearby squatting toilet and hike all the way back to my apartment (I would not suggest doing so).  Like I said, my fear of using a squatter took me to the brink of disaster before I finally gave it a try. 

Now even though you may have become comfortable with using squatting toilets doesn’t mean that you have gotten comfortable with public restrooms.  It is very important to remember which public restrooms are nice and which ones look like and smell like a sewage tank.  You don’t want to be forced to use a public restroom that smells like ammonia so bad that it burns your nostrils and makes you eyes water or one that doesn’t have flushing toilets.  Just the environment of a public restroom can give you nightmares that continue to scare you away from ever using squatters.  When learning to become accustomed to squatters, it is wise to purposely go to places that have very well kept restrooms (like at a nice café or restaurant). 

After becoming accustomed to using squatting toilets I have come to understand the reason of their design (I have allowed myself to rise to a higher region of Maslow’s pyramid!).  When you use a squatting toilet, you are not touching anything (except for your shoes on the ground) so it is cleaner.  Can you imagine using western style toilets in an over populated country like China (kind of gross if you ask me)?  Anyway, when you visit China, the sooner you can get over your fear of using a squatting toilet, the sooner you can start enjoying yourself by allowing yourself to rise past the bottom region of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  Just have patience and an open mind and everything will be more enjoyable.        

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Like a Can of Sardines

Chongqing province has one of highest population densities in the world (350.1 people per square km) and has a population of about 30 million people.  The city of Chonqing has a population density of about 380 people per square km.  This high density is caused by the fertile (many farmers) and mountainous terrain of the area.  This is a huge difference from the small population density of my home in Ashland County (about 26 people per square km).    

Southwest University is a very large university.  Its’ student population is about fifty thousand undergraduate students and about fifty thousand graduate students and it takes me about forty five minutes to walk from one end of campus to the other.  I teach in a building (teaching building #8) that is near the center of campus and it takes me about thirty minutes to walk there so I ride a campus shuttle every morning to get there.  The shuttles are very convenient because they only cost one Yuan to get on and get to your destination.  However, since the drivers don’t pay much attention to safety, they tend to pack as many people as they can on the shuttle (like a mobilized can of sardines). 

Every morning I walk from my apartment to the bus stop at Gate Six and then wait for the shuttles.  Almost as soon as the shuttles arrive, a large group of grandmothers and grandchildren suddenly appear and jump on to the shuttle before paying.  I always get so frustrated when this happens.  I arrive early and stand in line (what I think is a line) so I can pay and then get on the shuttle.  Lines are kind of a myth in China; more a mob style of organization is used instead of lines.  Sometimes I get so mad I picture myself grabbing some of the grandmothers and grandchildren and then throwing them out of the shuttle so I can sit in a seat that I waited and paid for (don’t worry I said “pictured” myself doing).  Sometimes it doesn’t matter if I get a seat because I will end up having someone sit on my lap anyway.  These shuttles have fourteen seats (driver’s seat included) so there should be no more than thirteen passengers right?  Wrong!  Remember when I said that the drivers don’t pay much attention to safety?  One morning I can remember a very industrious driver packing twenty seven passengers onto the shuttle.  That morning I was sitting on my friend Ryan’s lap (and he is a big guy) and my head was cocked to the side to avoid hitting my head on the roof of the shuttle.  Also I remember seeing many faces of amazement from many passing by students while we rode the shuttle to class that morning.  This is the kind of life I have to get used to.

I am amazed with how people in Chongqing are so accustomed to living in an area with such a high population density.  Heck I am amazed that all of China is accustomed to living like this (not like they have a choice though).  It’s packed like a can of sardines over here.  

Friday, October 7, 2011

National Holiday

Sometimes when you make plans they don’t completely go to plan and sometimes nothing goes to plan.  When I tried going on a trip to Chengdu China to celebrate the National holiday, nothing went to plan.
Our misfortunes began when we tried to book a hotel through Hostel World (which I would not suggest).  We booked two twin suites at the Inn Barsby Hotel in the downtown area of Chengdu and had to pay a ten percent reservation fee of thirty dollars.  The next day we purchased our train tickets in downtown Beibei.  Unfortunately we were not able to buy tickets to arrive on the day that we were supposed to check in at the Inn Barsby Hotel.  This didn’t seem like too big of a problem until I realized that I couldn’t contact the hotel by phone or email.  So we were just going to have to show up and try to explain the situation at the check-in desk.  We left for Chendu on a Monday morning train from Chongqing, so we had to take a bus from Beibei to Chongqing. 
We arrived in Chengdu East Train Station and only had a vague idea on how to get to the hotel, which was all the way over on the west side of the city.  So we just took an hour long bus ride from the train station to the bus station.  When we got there we were lost, other than knowing that we were on the west side of the city.  Fortunately we met some very nice Chinese girls who wanted to take pictures with us and helped us buy a map and flag down a taxi to take us to the Inn Barsby Hotel.  When we arrived to the hotel, the manager at the check in desk told us that they no longer do bookings through Hostel World so we had no reservation.  This is where the stress really set in.  We were in Chengdu and had no place to stay and could speak very limited Chinese.  Two blocks away from the Inn Barsby Hotel we found another hotel that had rooms for us to stay in.  After looking at the rooms (show rooms) we decided that we should stay there because we probably didn’t really have any other choice.  We paid for two rooms (150RMB per person per night). 
When Ryan and I opened the door to our room and the intense smell of sewage hit our nostrils.  When we stepped in the room, we heard the sound of a gush of water draining through a pipe in the wall.  When we began investigating the room we realized what the smell was.  It really was sewage.  We deduced from the smell and the brown stains on the wall paper and the sound from the pipe that the main sewage vain ran through the wall next to our room and that it must have burst sometime in the near past.  We had not choice though, there wasn’t really any other hotels that we could stay at, we just had to endure.  At this point everyone was very stressed out and needed time alone to calm down and think.  We decided that the next day we would take a train back to Beibei. 
Now our trip to Chengdu wasn’t a total loss.  That evening after everyone had calmed down we met up with a Chinese friend of mine and Matt’s to go eat hot pot (famous Sichuan/Chongqing meal) and then go to the bars with her and her friends.  Hot pot was delicious and the bars were a blast.  We went to a bar called SoHo Bar in the southern part of the city.  Immediately after entering the bar we heard the sound of country being sung live by one of the employees of the bar.  He was also playing and acoustic guitar while he sung.  His performance was better than most I have seen in the US.  Also there was a female singer who looked a lot like Lady Gaga and sang just like her.  Things got a little crazy at the club.  At one point I was dragged up on the dance stage by a Chinese girl to dance, though I did jump off after a short while.  Towards the end of our stay I was invited to drink beer with some more Chinese people (I painfully drank the bottle of Budweiser they offered me).  We stayed out at the bars till about 3:30 in the morning. 
The next morning was very ruff waking up.  We quickly ate breakfast and then flagged down a taxi to take us to the East Train Station.  There, we exchanged our old tickets to get new ones so we could leave that day.  Eventually we arrived back to our apartments in Beibei. 
I definitely learned quite a bit from this disastrous trip to Chengdu.  Don’t go traveling during the Chinese National Holiday.

Recording

Once again I have been involved with teaching English to junior high school students.  But this time I did not stand in front of the room and give a lecture.  Remember when I told the story about my “Guanxi” experience when I first arrived in Beibei?  Well because of that little adventure, I was given the opportunity to do some voice recording.  Students at a junior high school in the Beibei will be learning English in their classrooms to Diana’s (another English teacher from CSBSJU) voice and my voice.  The recording took about five hours total and we were able to record forty lessons in total (five tapes worth).

When we arrived at the studio on a Saturday and we pretty much immediately got to work.  I grabbed a cup of hot green tea to keep my mouth from drying out and then sat down in the recording room right in front of a microphone.  Reading in front of the microphone was very easy; I just had to speak slowly, clearly, and with emotion (try to make it sound more natural).  I did make a few mistakes every once and a while but overall I did a pretty good job I think.  At the end of the first day of recording we had finished twenty five of the lessons.  The next day we finished up the recording and experienced nothing new. 
When we finished the recording, I was finally able to listen to my voice; I don’t think anybody likes the sound of their own voice.  My voice sounds completely different when I am listening to it than when I am speaking.  But if the teachers at the junior high school thought that the sound of my voice was good enough that means my voice must be just fine.  Overall I had a very fun time and I was told that I might have the opportunity to do some more recording in future.  I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

A Face of History


Whenever I walk around Beibei I see people of all shapes, sizes, financial back rounds, ages, etc.  You can learn a lot about a person just by looking at their appearance.  There are the simple traits that can tell you a lot about a person’s financial back ground such as how well they dress themselves or how nice their smile is.  Other traits can tell you about a person’s lifestyle such as the types of shoes they wear or how fit they look.  But the traits that I find most fascinating in China are the traits that distinguish a person’s age.  These traits allow you to ask yourself, “When did you come from?”  The Chinese people that are my age all look healthy and tall, they have nice smiles (and white teeth if they don’t smoke), and nice skin.  When you look at the older generations you see a slight decline healthy appearance.  And finally when you look at the old people in the population, you can see that they have come from a completely different era.  Most of them are very short, have many missing teeth (and what teeth they have left aren’t pretty), still wear uniform style clothing (communist issue), and have true grit mentalities.    

One day when I was walking to eat dinner to one of my favorite restaurants I passed a little old woman carrying her sleeping granddaughter. What I saw seemed very odd to me.  The old woman had to be no taller than 4ft 8inches or so and was carrying her granddaughter who was about two thirds her size.  At first I thought to myself, “That child seems to be too old to be carried like that”.  But then after thinking about it a little bit more I realized that the child was still very young and the grandmother was just so small.  Just seeing this simple situation made me start comparing the life of the grandmother to the life of the granddaughter’s.

The old people of China have survived a part of Chinese history that has experienced a lot of war, famine and political hardships. They would not be here today if they were not as tough as nails.  This grandmother looked like she was malnourished during times of her life (her small build) and she was still carrying her granddaughter who was in comparison to size, big (hard working grandmother).  Then I looked at life from the granddaughter’s point of view and saw that she came from a completely new/modern era.  She is a probably a single child and gets spoiled by her family (hence why she is being carried) and malnourishment is certainly not a problem for her because she physically looks very healthy.  I have just compared the old China with the new China.

I enjoy being able to see how the quality of life has rapidly changed in China from generation to generation just by comparing the faces of the old (old China) with the new (new China).  Rapid change has occurred since the Communists came to power in 1949 and even more so since the time of Deng Xiaoping (Chairman of China from 1978-1992).  Where else in the world can you see a picture (such as the one that I am trying to paint for you) that shows you how standard of living has rapidly changed and developed? You have to hand it to China for being able to do that.

Monday, September 26, 2011

Boom Boom Beibei

Sometimes when I am walking around in Beibei I feel like I am in some sort of Charles Dickens novel.  Everything is covered in soot.  I keep my windows closed all the time because I don’t want to have to clean and wipe the whole apartment again after it gets all covered in it.   The sky is scorched out by the always existing smog (I have yet to see blue sky since I have been here).  Very poor air quality always has me coughing whenever I wake up in the mornings (it’s like smoking two packs of cigarettes per day).  Cheap manual labor is everywhere, the use of man power over machine power helps employ Chinas very large population.  There is massive coal usage, everything from making electricity to grilling the chicken on a stick that you just bought.  There is constant construction and you will find it in any direction that you look.  Beibei is in the process of building a subway system that will run all the way to the city of Chongqing.  Throughout the day I can hear and feel beneath my feet explosions (Boom Boom) from dynamite that are used to dig deep down into the ground for the subway tunnels.  There is a constant presence of beggars in downtown Beibei who have mutilated limbs from factory accidents.  Lastly, China is crowded and Chongqing province has a very high population density even for China (380/sq Kilometer). 

Now I don’t mean to paint a completely negative picture of China for you.  I am just trying to compare the setting of a Charles Dickens industrial novel to what I see in China.  I want to give you an understanding of the consequences that China lives with because of its need to develop so quickly.  The province of Chongqing is very important to the fast development of the western part of China, so as a result huge government and private investors pour tons of money into it.  Since my return to Chongqing province, I have been able to see how quickly that money got put to use (even though I have just been gone for two years).     

Not only have the cities developed, but so have trends and styles have as well.  I can remember even small things like finding a good cup of coffee being a challenge in Beibei.  Now there are more cafes than there are bubble tea stands and they look and feel like a cafés too.  Whenever I go to bars and clubs I can listen to music that is recently released.  Before, all you could listen to was pop music that was 8-10 years old (NSYNC and Backstreet Boys). 

I find it very fascinating seeing Beibei transform right before my eyes at such an explosive rate.  It will be interesting to see how much this place changes within my eleven month stay here.  Every night I fall asleep to sounds of Beibei growing, one stick of dynamite at a time.  Boom Boom Beibei.  

Saturday, September 24, 2011

English Group

I was recently invited to an English group by a couple of my graduate students to participate in a group discussion about movies.  The group of students meet together every Friday night to practice their English with each other and discuss some sort of topic with every session.  Each of them prepare some notes about each discussion and they all take turns acting as a host who gives more background information.  To have the opportunity to get to know some of my students a little better in a more relaxed setting was way too tempting to say no.  So of course I accepted the invitation.

I was picked up by two of my students at the southern end of campus near Gate 6 (right across the street from where I live) and was brought to teaching building #33.  There I met up with the rest of the group, most of whom were my students.  All of the students had brought snacks: a large variety of fresh and dried fruit, nuts, and other random things to eat.  I was also treated with some hot tea that was refilled whenever the cup got empty.  I began the discussion by introducing myself (even though mostly everyone knew me) and then the discussion about movies began.  The host gave a very good introduction about the history of movies and then each of us went around in a circle talking about our favorite movies.  After we had come around the circle, I was flooded with questions which I gladly answered and I also asked several questions.  The meeting ended about two and a half hours later and I said my goodbyes before I was escorted back to Gate 6.   

I had a very fun night and was invited to come again to the next Friday’s discussion.  Hopefully I can also improve my Chinese with this group of students as I help them improve their English.  We shall see!

Friday, September 23, 2011

Military Training

Early in the morning I witnessed hundreds of young adults marching around the SWU campus in camouflaged clothing while chanting in unison.  Later I learned that these people were the first year students fulfilling their required one month of military training.  It’s kind of similar to one month of boot camp.  They have training early in the mornings, late in the afternoons and late in the evenings.  They learn how to march, stand in ranks and endure intense physical conditioning in the Chongqing heat and rain.  This requirement gives every student in China at least some basic military training that can come in handy if the government calls for a draft.  I don’t know about you but considering that china has the largest standing army in the world (2.5 million troops) and has over 40 million reserve or civilian guards I can’t help but feel a little nervous about being a citizen to a country (USA) that owes such a huge debt to China.

I have talked to many graduate students about their military training experience when they were first year college students and I have gotten a mixture of opinions.  Some had an overall enjoyable experience while others seemed to completely dislike it.  The ones who said they enjoyed it said they had gained several benefits from the experience.  They had the opportunity to meet many people and make many friends, learn discipline and time management skills, were able to get into good physical condition, and gained some vitality out of the whole ordeal.  Of those that disliked it mostly complained about how officers would yell at them or about how hot the Chongqing weather was.  And in defense of the students who complained about the hot weather, in September sometimes the temperature reaches over 105F with over 90% humidity and the military training is never postponed.  The students still march around and stand in ranks for several hours out on the soccer fields regardless of the weather.  I can recall seeing students faint in the heat while standing in their ranks and then being carried away to some shade in a stretcher. 

It is very entertaining to watch some of the military exercises.  One of the most fascinating exercises that I saw was a very large group of young men dressed in camouflage uniforms practicing Kung Fu all in unison on a soccer field.  They all would hold still in some sort of position for a few seconds until an officer would yell “HO!” and then in response the whole soccer field would yell “HO!” and change into a different position all in unison. 

The first year students have just recently finished their military training here at SWU and can now blend in with the rest of the students.  It is kind of scary to think that China has so many of its citizens with some military experience (even the students) especially when much of the world is in indebted to China.  I think it is very important during these hard economic times to learn as much as I can about the culture and language and to make friends here so as to strengthen friendly diplomatic ties between us and China.  This is however “The Asian Century” isn’t it?

Saturday, September 17, 2011

First Week of Teaching

My experiences with teaching English in China have always been a mixed bag of experiences, but have always been very enjoyable.  Last time I was in China I had the opportunity to teach some college students at Southwest University and with junior high school students in a small rural town called Shehong in Sichuan province.  Teaching English in Sichuan was my most memorable teaching experience in China.  We were not given any kind of teachers training when we arrived to the school.  We were given a text book and were instructed to teach one lesson per forty minute period (we taught nine periods total in one weekend stay).  I had never taught a class in my life and after looking at the lessons, I figured it was only going to take maybe ten minutes to teach each lesson.  Somehow I had to figure out how to use up the remaining thirty minutes of class while being under the pressure of having to teach a class of 40 students.  I ended up having the students play games and have competitions in front of the class to test their knowledge of the material.  I also remember a photographer constantly taking pictures of me the other CSBSJU students while we taught the English lessons.  I kind of chuckle at the idea that maybe there is a billboard somewhere in Sichuan with my picture on it that advertises English learning opportunities at that particular school.  I cherish my teaching experience in Sichuan and little did I know that I would be experiencing a very similar situation two years later at Southwest University.

I just finished my first week of teaching at Southwest University.  Let’s just say it was a big learning experience for me.  When I first got here I was expecting to go through some sort of teaching orientation (because we teach graduate level classes) to allow me to get an idea of how to teach.  Unfortunately we didn’t.  If you have a bachelor’s degree from an English speaking country, you automatically are an expert at teaching English.  All I did was introductions for all of the eight classes that I taught.  As much as I hated doing cheesy introduction games I started each class off with a guessing game.  I started by briefly introducing myself and welcoming the students to their Conversational English class.  Then I wrote ten statements about myself on the board.  I would write five true statements and five false statements on the board.  To add a little humor to my introduction some of the false statements were as ridiculous as “I have been to the moon”, or “I am thirty years of age”.  Then I had the class try to figure out which statements were true and false.  After that I had the students do the “two truths and a lie” exercise one at a time in front of the class so that they could introduce themselves to me and the rest of the class.  Of course I wouldn’t make the whole class introduce themselves partly for my sanity and for the class’s as well (the class size ranges from 35-65 students).  After the forty minutes we get a ten minute break before we start a second forty minute period.  I would use the second period to allow students to ask me questions about anything they wanted to know or to just start up conversation.  Now teaching did not always go so smoothly.  I could go into every classroom with some sort of plan and still have to change it and modify it.  It was very stressful when a class was not as talkative as the others or was not as skilled in speaking English as the others.  But, in the end everything still seemed to work out just fine and the students seemed very excited about the class.  We shall see how the next couple of weeks go.

Friday, September 16, 2011

Kenny G.

Sorry I haven’t written a blog for over a week, I have been gathering too much information at a time for future blogs.

You all know Kenny G., the adult contemporary and smooth jazz saxophonist.  He made it big during the 80s in the United States.  You may have heard his music randomly played in an elevator, or the mall, or at some downtown café.  His music is very distinguishable, where ever you may hear it, you will know “that sounds like Kenny G”.  Anyways whenever I mention Kenny G. in conversations I get a lot of rolling of the eyes and shaking of heads.  At least in the past decade, I can’t really remember hearing any of Kenny’s music in public.  For a while, I had forgotten about Kenny G. 

It wasn’t until I studied abroad in China in the fall of 2009 that I heard his music again.  It was very strange when it happened.  I was walking down town with some friends in the Chongqing heat and we heard one of Kenny G.’s hit singles playing inside of a small socks shop.  Even amongst all of the Chinese pop music blaring out of every street shop I could still make out the smooth jazz saxophone.  I couldn’t believe my ears!  In all places for Kenny G.’s music to exist, it was in downtown Beibei in a tiny street shop.   And of course when I recognized the song, I just shook my head and rolled my eyes.

Once again, as you all know I am back in Beibei and Kenny G.’s works are still being played in downtown shops, in elevators, in the halls at Southwest University in between classes and at big shopping malls.  You can actually buy 8 track tapes of Kenny G. in some of the big shopping malls in downtown Chonqing.  As I see and hear his musical works here in China, I still roll my eyes and shake my head.  But now I can’t help but also give a little chuckle thinking of the idea that the Chinese have become the later fans of his works.  Even Chinese jazz pop ballads that you might here on the radio sound very similar to the smooth jazz style of Kenny G. 

I love finding these random bits and pieces of western culture that don’t seem to fit in here (to me at least) and I love being able to recognize that things get “Chinafied” here.  

Monday, September 5, 2011

Guanxi

There is a thing in China that you build with the people around you or that you build with people before you get down to business.  That thing is called Guanxi (pronounced Guan-shee).  Guanxi means "relationship" or "back door", like you have a good enough relationship so you don't need to use the front door anymore, you can use the back one.  When you have Guanxi with the family that owns a restaurant or a shop clerk, you get better service.  Like I said earlier its also important to create Guanxi before business, that way you become friends before you become business partners.

Last Wednesday night I was invited to a dinner with some men from the recording studio at Southwest University.  They had invited four of us (two females and two males) to have a festive dinner at a fancy Chinese restaurant.  Eventually they wanted to have us come into their studio and do some English dialogue recordings for one the areas middle school English departments.  Of course I felt compelled to accept the invitation despite my suffering from a bit of travelers diarrhea.  What I was worried about was the amount of alcohol that you must consume during this Guanxi building arrangement (when building Guanxi for business, usually there is a lot of alcohol being consumed in the process).  Upon arrival to the restaurant, we were escorted to a private dinner party room.  At first we ordered several cold appetizer dishes and of course baijiu and beers.  Baijiu is a chinese liquor that they make by fermenting and then distilling rice and the alcohol can range from 50-70% alcohol.  Even knowing that I was not going to get out of drinking a lot of baijiu, I requested to just drink Coke with the meal.  And like I expected my request was rejected by one of the smirking Chinese men.  The meal consisted of dozens of dishes, many wine glasses of baijiu and beer and toast after toast of the recorders thanking us for coming to dinner and us thanking them for dinner.  After the meal, the smoking of cigarettes began.  Now I am not a cigarette smoker, but I have learned that it is important to be culturally sensitive at certain times, building Guanxi being one of them.  I pretended to smoke and blew smoke rings and had many good conversations, after all everyone had just consumed quite a bit of alcohol.  I definitely thank my genetics and my college drinking experience to get me through situations like this.  Finally, right before we left, we had one last toast, "After today, we are friends".

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

My Arrival

Finally, I get to make a blog post.  Apparently Blogspot is a blocked website in China so it took me a few days to get an internet proxy software running on my computer.  Now I have access to uncensored internet.

I have been in China for six days now and a lot has happened to me since my arrival.  I arrived in the Chongqing airport around 10am with Ryan Kephart and John Murray.  Unfortunately the airlines had lost our luggage.   Ryan and John eventually were able to get their luggage delivered to their apartments two days later.  I am not so fortunate, the airlines still have yet to find and deliver my luggage to me.  At least I packed another pair of cloths in my carry on so I can have a clean pair of clothing to wear everyday.  Still this creates added stress on top of the stress of readjusting to my new home here in Beibei.  Now I will stop complaining.  Our apartments are great.  We all get our own apartments that include a living room with furniture, kitchen with a microwave, fridge and stove, an enclosed balcony with a washing machine, and bedroom with a queen sized bed and other furniture and lastly a bathroom.    

All of us have been keeping pretty busy since arriving.  We have had orientation meetings with Frank Wang (our foreign affairs director) almost everyday this week.  On Monday we all signed our teaching contracts with the school and then headed to a bank to open up Chinese bank accounts.  On Tuesday we had a medical examination in Chongqing which included getting an X ray of our chest.  After that we headed to a an Ming dynasty recreation tourist town called Ciqikou and walked around for a bit. In our free time we have just been exploring Beibei and setting up our apartments.


Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Just twittling my thumbs

Hello all.  Pretty soon I will be embarking on another adventure to China.  This time I will be going to China not as a student, but as an English teacher.  I will be teaching conversational English to upper level English major students at Southwest University in Beibei, Chongqing.  Returning to the university that I studied abroad at during college in a way makes me feel like I am returning home.  Since my return from my study abroad I have continued to take Chinese language classes for the past year and a half and I am anxious to use that knowledge in the field.  It will be nice to be able to communicate with the locals right away when I arrive.  During my last visit, I was not so lucky, I pretty much only knew how to say hello "ni hao" when I arrived.

I hope to keep posting my experiences on this blog as often as I can and I hope you enjoy it!  But until then, I will just keep twittling my thumbs until I depart (August 25th).