Guangzhou

This Friday, the program shipped about 50 of us up to the provincial capital of Guangzhou to see the opening ceremony of the Guangdong Tourism Festival. The best way I can describe the event, which was held in the Guangzhou stadium, is to say it was a mini Olympics opening ceremony. There were 26,000 people in attendance and the performances ranged from a progression of floats to vocal performances by some of China's top pop stars. The most impressive parts, though, were the numbers that featured just massive numbers of people.

This first picture is an example. Tons of people dressed in many different costumes would run around and form themselves into this or that. It was pretty impressive. There were fireworks, sparklers, and of course the 26,000 fans all equipped with both mini-lightsabers and thundersticks. Needless to say, it was the most fun I've had in a while. But the large masses of people were not the only entertainment to be had. China pop star JJ sang a couple of songs, which were great. Finally, as the closer, none other than Jackie Chan ran onstage from a giant-ass fake airplane to sing a song. He actually has quite a good voice. I'm told he began his career in music. The only pictures I could get were fuzzy, but you can kind of tell that it's him. After the concert, Phong and I went out to meet up with some British teachers living in Guangzhou that we met in the Phillipines. We had a great night at the bars and got back to Shenzhen on early afternoon Saturday.

Macau!

So, due to the fact that I'm lazy, AND that Danielle is a better writer than I am, I will quote her blog post about our trip to Macau, adding editorial comments where I deem necessary. So, now, according to Danielle:

"Ben and I had been planning to go to Macau for months. Both the first colony established in China as well as the last one to be returned, Macau was the longest running colony in China and is the area in which the vestiges of foreign influence are still prominent in everyday life. Last Saturday morning, after an hour on a bus and another on a ferry -- neither of which covered a particularly long distance, mind you -- we were in Macau. The town is a study in contrasts and confusion, which beings at customs where, as the man stamps my passport above the one id received upon "leaving" China not one hour before, its even unclear what country I'm in. Macau, I'm told, is part of China both nominally and, increasingly, culturally. And yet, according to the customs man and my passport, China is no longer where I am. "China" on the top of the page, "Macau" on the bottom. That's about as much sense as it's going to make.
Macau used to be Portuguese and as a result most of the signs read in both Portuguese and traditional (as in, even more complicated) Chinese characters. No one but tourists and expats can be heard speaking Portuguese and most people speak, although really what it sounds like is scream, Cantonese. This is likely the most random and disparate language pairing one can ever hope to find, although both Portuguese and Cantonese share a few utterly mystifying nasal sounds that seem, at least for me (and also me! -Ed.), beyond replication.

The city is laid out much like residential portions of Hong Kong: narrow, winding streets piled with four and five story apartment buildings and clothing, wires, and signs hanging out into the middle of the streets. These streets open up into wide, tiled European-style plazas, many of which are bordered by one if not two churches. Churches, like all organized religion, are exceedingly rare and actively suppressed. Macau, being Portuguese and thus as Catholic as possible, apparently has an excuse, and continues to display its piety (or at least symbols of it) proudly. Aside from being ornate, vibrantly colored, and overall pleasing to the eye, churches like these also make it easier for people like me, who exist in a permanent state of wishing they were in Europe, to pretend that they are just that. While Macau has many, the most iconic church in the region is in fact not a church at all but rather one's facade. The back three walls, presumably built of much less grit than the first, went down in a fire along with the ceiling above them and the contents between. Now this ornate front wall stands starkly at one edge of Macau's old town, wide stone stairs winding down the grassy hill at its feet.

While I was interested in Macau for its European heritage, western food, and the promise of a decent fucking cup of coffee, Ben had another motivation for the trip -- the casinos (Note: This is not entirely true. I was equally, if not more, interested in the culinary traditions of the colony which include, but are not limited to, meat-sheets. -Ed.). If anyone has heard of Macau, they have likely heard of its casinos and booming economy. I say this trying to remember if I had heard of Macau prior to moving within 50 miles of it. More and more I have come to realize that my grasp of what is "common knowledge" leaves a little to be desired. Talking to Ari, I was shocked to learn that it was abnormal to know the average height differences between North and South Koreans. I was similarly stunned to see Ben's quizzical look upon telling him "platypus surprise" in American Sign Language. These seemed like common enough things to me, but in both instances garnered the same "what the fuck?" response (Danielle writing style is a bit..."grittier"? than mine. -Ed.). Maybe its just the boys I've been hanging with.

In any event, as per Ben's request we visited two of Macau's many houses of cards. It takes only about ten minute to walk from the churches, through the streets of crumbling apartments, to come upon a seemingly endless string of multimillion dollar casinos stretching out along the coast. First we visited the Casino Lisboa, a Macau establishment which, although still the most visited in the city, compared to the new casinos, looks at this point like the drunk, loser casino that had to move back in with its parents after it got fired from its gig as a part-time floor sander. The ceilings were relatively low, but the lights were bright and the two floors were filled with loud, smoking Chinese men and women winning and (mostly) losing money. While save the asianness of it all this could have been a scene from Circus Circus, there were two key elements missing: booze and sex. Every female employee was dressed in a sort of manish tuxedo-like uniform that buttoned up to their neck. Wearing a tank top at the time, I definitely had the most boobies in the place, which is really, really not saying much. The women that were not dealing cards or monitoring security were circling with a cart of coffee and milk tea (which, i presumed, was not spiked) and distributing it to anyone seated at a table.

Ben and I stuck out in the casinos. I would say that our whiteness was the first sign that we were different than the rest of the clientele, but I don't think that Ben's backpack or Tufts hat helped us blend in much either. Not much of a gambler myself, I spent most of the time there people watching and trying to understand the Portuguese and Chinese postings above each table, the Portuguese, sadly, being still much easier to decipher than the Chinese written above it. I did, however, have a brief encounter with a HK $5 (US $0.75) slot machine named Geisha. Our affair lasted about six minutes, which for me these days is a decently long time, but in the end she stole both my money and my heart. Ben gambled like a grown up, placing and promptly losing about $30 on blackjack. I could see him developing a gambling problem in the future."

What Danielle fails to mention about my little gambling stint was that I in fact won a couple times while gambling. The end result, however, is accurate: fail. Thanks for your great summary, Danielle.

Wutong Mountain

This weekend Danielle and I decided to get in a little physical activity to change up the pace. So, we decided to hike up the highest "peak" in Shenzhen: Wutong Mountain. It's about a 5 mile hike up and down. We discovered that the Chinese idea of a hike is going up a 2.5 mile staircase. Literally, the path all the way up to the peak is one giant staircase. Along the way we ran into my school's gym teacher, who told us that the fastest ascent was done in about 50 minutes. It took us a little over two hours... Constantly we were reminded of how out of shape we were by seeing little 6-7 year olds pass us by, or by seeing old frail women carry trash bags full of water bottles to sell at the top. Regardless, it was a fun climb and a very nice contrast to the big city.

邱老师

This Friday, we had a Chinese class that was much more interesting than most. Our teacher, Qiu Laoshi (teacher qiu (the title of this post)), went off on a tangent that ended up lasting about 45 minutes. She was trying to describe the definition of a word that meant 'way of thinking', and started talking about how in the Mao era, there was only one way of thinking. She started telling us that when she was growing up (30-40 years ago) people wouldn't answer the phone with the now typical 'wei' or 'ni hao'. Instead, they would answer with communist slogans, because they were never sure of who was calling them on the phone. She said that no one had their own thoughts. Whatever Mao said was simply repeated by everyone as the truth. That's all there was. In everyone's house there hung a picture of the chairman, and before each person went to work they stood and talked to the portrait. They told him what they were going to do that day. When they got home they would tell him how hard they had worked and what they had accomplished. Talk about cultural differences...

Qiu Laoshi also talked to us about where she lived when she was younger. For 7 years she lived in what I think we would call a cow shed. I wasn't sure of some of the words that she was using, but I gathered that she lived in a building with cows, and that before she went to sleep she needed to shovel out the cow dung so that there would be room on the floor. She lived that way for seven years. She mentioned that a few years ago she returned to that place where she grew up and just started crying.

Between 1966 and 1976 the cultural revolution was in full force. Qiu laoshi told us that all of the city youth was sent out to the countryside to work and be "reeducated" by the peasants. For those 10 years, all universities in China were shut down. Not until Deng Xiaoping and the opening to the west did university activity resume. Qiu laoshi was in the first university class after the cultural revolution in 1976-77. She has quite the life story, and I'm really glad that she shared some of it with us. It's amazing to see people here who are in their 50's and 60's and think of what they've lived through.

The Grind...

Now that we've been here almost two months, things are starting to settle into a fairly consistent routine: wake up, teach, go home, fry up some dumplings, watch prison break, sleep, rinse, repeat. Classes are becoming easier and easier to teach as I become more comfortable in front of my classes. Things are less and less structured, and we (the students and I) are able to have a bit more fun. The days are going by faster and faster, and really, it's hard to believe that we're half way into October.

But, there were a couple of things recently that broke the routine. On Tuesday, Niko and I hosted what our English department called the "English Square". This consisted of Niko and I MCing a presentation to the entire Junior 1 class. That's about 250 kids. I was initially worried, but it turned out to not be too big a deal. We played catch-phrase and Jeopardy. At first, the Jeopardy contestants understood the rule that the first person to raise their hand answers the question, but towards the end of the competition (when things were getting a bit more heated) they resorted to jumping out of their seats, flailing, and just calling out the answer. The end result was that whoever got called on had the answer screamed in his ear, and was pretty much guaranteed the points.

Another routine-breaker in the past couple of days has been our walk home from school. It just so happens that we tend to go home at the same time that the elementary school gets let out. As you can see in the picture, we now have a couple tag-alongs on our journey home. We let them listen to our iPods, let them hitch a ride on our backs, or just drag them along. They love it. Next on the list is coming up with a good Halloween costume and planning our school's little Halloween festival. Who would have thought that at age 22 I would be bobbing for apples in China...

The Philippines

This past week saw a group of 8 of us teachers take the short two hour flight down to Manila, Philippines. The plan was to spend a couple of days in Manila, and then head out to a more southern island where we could relax on the beach for a few days before returning to Manila for our flight home. In the end, we stuck to our plan, although we had no idea how difficult that would be...

Phong and I arrived a day after the rest of the group and were greeted by Niko and Jeff at the hostel in Manila around 11pm. We were immediately pulled out to the bars, where we saw what Manila is all about: hookers. Now I'm sure there are women in Manila who are not hookers, but I swear I did not see a single one of them that night. The city itself, or at least the area we were in, was obviously very poor and thus was very dirty. Almost every street had people huddling in a dry corner of a building or lying down on a flat, dry surface. I was surprised by how similar the slums in Manila resembled those in Latin America. I knew that there was Spanish influence here, but if you couldn't hear the language that was being spoken, you would have sworn that you were in the slums of Santo Domingo. Regardless of the state of the city, we had a fun night and got on our 3:30am bus to depart for the town from which the ferry would leave.

Around 5am I was woken up by two things simultaneously. First, I was freezing my ass off. Second, the bus wasn't moving and no one was getting off. The bus had broken down. Of course it had. We were lucky enough to be able to catch a passing Jeepney (flamboyantly decorated taxis made from WW2 jeeps, I believe) and made it to the port with plenty of time for our 8am ferry. When we arrived in a light drizzle, we found that the ferry had been cancelled due to concerns over an approaching typhoon. We were 0/2 with transportation so far. Nearly as soon as we arrived, a man approached us and offered us his personal ferry service to our island. Obviously, we were skeptical, but with no other option, we took him up on his offer. We were driven to a rocky beach about a half hour away from the port and boarded his boat that "could hold 60 people". Yea, sure guy...

About an hour later, tired, wet, and a bit cranky, we made it to the island. A town called Puerto Galera. There a man told us of his cousin's hotel/resort at a town called White Beach. It sounded nice enough, so we decided to check it out. That's how we found the beaches that are in the pictures above. It's the off season now, so we were able to get good rates at the hotel, and were about a 2 minute walk from the beach. Things were looking up.

In the next few days we relaxed on the beach, went hiking to a waterfall in the jungle, and went snorkeling. It was really relaxing and we ended up having a really good time, even if a good portion of the "women" that we saw on the island may not have been born that way...

That's all I have time for, for now. More pictures and updates soon.

Sports Competition!

Due to the week off from classes that we get for national day, most schools in Shenzhen are teaching classes on Saturday and Sunday. Not so for us as the Yantian Foreign Language School. In lieu of more classes, our school is having a two day long, school wide sports competition. The opening ceremony was actually pretty amazing. Each class marched out along the track, stopped in front of the school administration and chanted motivational slogans such as, "Achieve our dreams, touch the sky!"or "We can fly very high!". There were balloons and streamers, flags and pompoms. Quite the sight.

However, not just the students compete in the events. There are teacher only events that, yesterday, included the shotput, as well some other ball throwing competition where we threw a small 2 kilo ball over our heads like a soccer throw in. Today we have the standing long jump as well as a couple relays. Apparently there are bonuses in it for the winners...

Luckily, we all received our passports with our completed work visas before the October holiday. Yesterday, I booked a flight to Manila, Philippenes. We're leaving on Tuesday and coming back Sunday morning. I haven't looked much into the country, or what there is to see there, but I'm still really excited. It should be a great trip. We're planning on staying in Manila for a couple days, and then heading out to an island or "off the beaten trail" for the rest of the week. I'll be sure to take pictures and send out an update when I return.

Typhoon!

So as I walked into the caf to eat breakfast this morning, the headmaster informed me that classes were cancelled due to the "typhoon" that is happening right now. Dope. It's been very cloudy, and fairly gusty, but really? no school? It's really just some rain. Maybe they expect it to get worse...

Anyway, I added a slideshow of some pics on the right side of the page. Included are pictures of our apartments (new and old), some friends, going out, as well as one of Niko and I with our contact teachers. Check them out and let me know what you think.

A New Week

Finally, after about two weeks, Niko and I have moved into our new apartment. I, unfortunately, lost the coin toss for the bigger room, but I like to think that mine is way more...snug? comfortable? Anyway, I'm just happy to finally not be living out of a suitcase. Here's my room:

This afternoon I had what I think is one of my best classes yet...I may have had even more fun than the students. I was teaching a lesson on English Idiom and American Slang to my senior 1 class (9th grade). Trust me, there's nothing quite like hearing a room full of Chinese students reciting: "What's up dog?" and then responding, "Not much man, just chilling." After teaching the class a few standard American sayings, I had small groups create skits using a few phrases. One group's presentation stood out to me as particularly hilarious. Two very kind and very shy girls who were partners, came up with this dialogue:

"Oh! I just broke my leg! I won a lot of money in the lottery!"

"Wow! You're so lucky!"

"Yes, but don't be sad, I'll give you half of the money, dog."

"You're kidding me!"

"You know it!"

First, the girls didn't understand that you can really only hope someone else "breaks a leg" to wish them good luck. The girl tried to say she got lucky as "I broke my leg". Awesome. Also, I'm not sure that they understood how funny it was to me that girl 1 offered to share her money, but apparently was only joking about it. I thought it was great. Anyway, just a few more days until our National Day break. I think we may be travelling to Guilin and Yangshuo in Guangxi province. It's supposed to be very beautiful. More pictures to come soon.

A Violent Weekend

This past weekend turned out to be pretty exciting. On Friday night, at a bar in Futian district, we witnessed what I can only describe as a "brawl" between two posses. While a few of us were just hanging out at a table with some newly made Chinese friends, a man from a neighboring table approached and blindsided one of said friends. The attack seemed totally unprovoked and, naturally, the victim's friends were not very pleased. We Americans just backed away and walked out into the street, but meanwhile the fight had grown to about 5 or 6 people. Wine glasses and bottles were being smashed on people, chairs were being thrown, and things got pretty ugly. Needless to say, we took the closest cab to the nearest American Embassy (McDonald's) and discussed the incident over greasy hamburgers. Crazy.

Saturday night saw us partying in an area of Shenzhen that we had yet to visit. The Nanshan district is accross the city from us, and has a very prominent ex-pat community. It was one of our fellow teachers' birthday, so we met up with a large group at a club in Nanshan. I think we saw more foreigners that night than every other day combined in the city. The club was nice, clean, on the water, and full of ex-pats. We had a great time dancing and decided to leave the club around 4am. Upon leaving, we ran into a group of French guys who were very obviously looking to pick a fight with someone, and as Americans, we fit the bill perfectly. After some heated words and threats, we just walked away, grabbed a cab, and headed home. Yikes.

Overall, a very fun and exciting weekend. This upcoming week, we have to teach not only our normal schedule of Monday through Friday, but also Saturday and Sunday. This is due to the fact that the following week, Sept. 29th-Oct.5th, is National day: a weeklong holiday celebrating the founding of the People's Republic on Oct. 1, 1949, by none other than Chairman Mao. For us, this translates into a week of travelling around China. Where are we going? no idea. But when I know, I'll be sure to write about it. Zaijian...

Recap

I've been in China now for a little over three weeks, so I want to provide everyone with a quick recap of what's gone on here in that time. We spent our first two weeks in Zhuhai city, taking both Chinese and Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) courses. After the training, we moved to a hotel in Shenzhen (the city in which we're actually teaching) to take care of some of the bureaucratic aspects of living in China, as well as to attend some banquets celebrating our success in the training and our placement at local schools.

A Texan named Niko and I were placed at a school in the Yantian district of Shenzhen called the Yantian Foreign Languages School. Specifically, we were placed at the middle school, where we teach 17 classes a week to students ranging from 5th grade up to 9th. We finished our first week of classes and are well into the second week now. Truthfully, I never realized how draining teaching is, but it's quite fun.

Right now we're living in a "transitional" studio apartment while our three bedroom permanent residence is being vacated? or cleaned? or fixed? We're not quite sure. Either way, we're about a 15 minute walk to the beach and a ten minute walk from school. Not too shabby. When I have a little more time, I'll write a bit more about the country in general and what we've been up to, but for now, I'm out.