Christmas Miracles and Decorations

First off, we hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas. We're happy to report that Santa Claus does in fact deliver to China. Thank you to all our friends and family who sent us Christmas cards and packages. Its wonderful to receive mail from home! We also received gifts of chocolate and wine from the administration and gifts from our students including but not limited to chocolate, tea, and Chinese silk scarves. The favorite gift to give in China is fruit. So we were bombarded with students giving us brightly cellophane-wrapped oranges, apples, and bananas. Let's just say there's a lot of fruit salad to be made!

Christmas miracles even happen in China. For example, remember that typhoon that hit our area way, way, back? Since then, our local Pizza Hut has been closed. Eventually, we all gave up hope that it would ever reopen. A few days ago, Kendall was in a taxi driving past the restaurant when he noticed lights and his head jerked to look in jubilation. It was a glorious scene that can only compare to the Who's getting ready for Christmas day in Whoville. He swears that he even heard the singing...Fah who for-aze, dah who dor-aze! Welcome Christmas, Come this way... A beautiful sight indeed. We decided what better way to spend Christmas Eve than at Pizza Hut with the other foreign teachers. We were pleased to see all the serving staff dressed in Santa outfits, and some fine decorations to boot. The restaurant even had a special "Christmas Party Pizza" with a special crust that is supposed to be like pigs-in-a-blanket, but came off looking more like the popular dog treats, "snausages". Needless to say, we politely refused the offer, and insisted that we wanted a regular American pizza. To appeal to the Chinese, Pizza Hut has developed some pretty strange pizzas. Therefore, usually at some point during our order our server will say, "You know that if you take the melon, octopus, and mayonnaise off the pizza it won't taste the same." Yeah...we know.

Before the holiday season has passed by, we wanted to share some holiday sights from around Huangdao. We think many of you would be surprised at the amount of decoration that goes on here around Christmas time. Granted, most of the decorations can be found in the shopping centers and hotels, but it's the thought that counts, right? The most impressive Christmas by far was in our local shopping center, Jusco. You can enjoy the picture below, and also catch it in the video below. Children would write wishes on the red and green snowflakes, and they would hang them on the tree. It is a little odd that they hung all the lights vertically, but it works (and it's probably faster).

Even Jusco's employees had the Christmas spirit as each worker was wearing a Santa hat. It went well with the continuous loop of Christmas music they played everyday. Many places played Christmas music. The problem was, their selections usually weren't too large. One of our favorite restaurants was the worst. We ate a meal while being serenaded by Jingle Bells over and over, which is probably one of the more annoying songs to hear in repeat. Jusco, however, never let us down. Kendall being the music lover was impressed at their selection. He remembers one time while walking past the larvae section (right next to the sushi) he found himself humming along to I'll be Home for Christmas. Jusco had a lot of Christmas spirit, you can learn a little more about it in the videos below.

A few nights before Christmas, Mr. Li (our waiban) from the Foreign Affairs Office took all the teachers out to dinner. Surprisingly, it wasn't a Chinese banquet dinner, but instead a Western-style buffet dinner. Huangdao has one outstanding hotel, the Golden Marina (although it is not on a marina). The hotel has several great restaurants, and we were all pleased to be eating in such a nice place. At first the sound of a buffet was not to appetizing but this had a great selection. Kendall had a roast beef sandwich for the first time in months, and we both had steak (grilled while you wait)! To top everything off, the desserts were really good. Sadly, Chinese desserts are either non-existent, or worse, appear ordinary but taste awful. This is especially the case for ice cream, which usually just contains ice shavings, sugar, and maybe some flavoring. Thankfully, the ice cream, while not perfect, was the best Chinese ice cream we've had. They even had tiny slices of pecan pie which reminded us of home. The Golden Marina had its own share of Christmas decorations. Inside the lobby was a little Christmas cottage. There is snow on the roof and deer in the yard, and if you look closely at the picture above, you can see the Olympic Friendlies playing in the snow. That's HuanHuan over Darbie's shoulder. Golden Marina's outdoor Christmas display was second to none. It featured many lights, and most impressively, the tall blue light tree.

In the last video Kendall will tell you about a popular game that took place in Jusco during the holiday season.

The week before Christmas they also started offering peanut oil as a prize. Large jugs of peanut oil can be found in every grocery in China. According to CCTV9 (the only English language channel), there is not only an oil shortage, but also a cooking oil shortage. The price has been going up, so the oil was a hot prize item because of the massive amount of cooking for the massive amount of people that migrating all over China in a little over a month - Chinese New Year!

Have a Happy (Western) New Year!

DB & KM

Christmas Variety Special

We were asked to participate in a Christmas variety show with most of the other foreign teachers in the university. The show was on Saturday night, and evidently, it was the hot ticket of the night. Each teacher invited their students so we were expecting about 150-200 people. 30 minutes before the show began the 200 seat auditorium was full and all 300 of the programs were gone. This did not deter the people that arrived later, they just pushed in, and soon all the aisles were full of students. Unfortunately, we didn't charge for the event. Apparently, this was the first time any foreign teachers had performed a show for the students.

The event started with Mike Collier's (the "compere") speech about the meaning of Christmas, including a power point of the creation story which started with Genesis! As we expected, most people did not understand. Eventually, he made his way around to the history of Santa Claus. One of the more impressive parts of the show followed Mike's lengthy history lesson. The students from Pam Collier's (Mike's wife) class recited "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" by memory. You can see the video of the ending below.

As the students filed off the stage, the lights went down and when they came back up Santa Claus was on stage! 300 screaming, obsessed college students pushed forward in hopes of a single present from the jolly old elf (portrayed by Dan - you can see his pic in our last blog). It seems that the mixture of a giving, yet sometimes borderline commercial holiday with hyper-materialized, yet deprived young people, will create a mini-riot. Soon, Dan was on the floor with hundreds of college kids on top of him, grabbing his bag and ripping gifts out of his hand. All the foreign teachers ran to his aid, though we were a bit afraid he might have a heart attack! We all lined up like police officers at a concert with our arms outstretched trying to ward off the teeming crowd. Sadly, any time presents were mentioned, given, or even alluded to, the riots would begin anew.

Hopefully, the students also learned about Christmas fun that doesn't include presents. Like songs! Paul, a foreign teacher from England, and I were the musical portion of the evening. Paul plays an impressive guitar. We combined to sing "Santa Claus is Comin' To Town," and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," and we also led two songs with all the other teachers and the audience - "Silent Night," and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." Chinese students LOVE music, and despite their shyness, can always break into song whenever, wherever; so the music was a big hit.

There were also student performances in the show. The German class sang "O Tannenbaum," completely in German and my speaking class sang "Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer." Some of our other classes were jealous when they found out about their peers being featured, rather than them. Darbie's class kept coming up to her exclaiming, "What a pity that our class cannot participate!"





Each of the foreign teachers was given a role, either as leader of a game (i.e. charades, memory) singer, host, etc. To the right you will see some of Darbie's students who were picked to participate as a team in one of the games. For each game, the winners got to get a gift from under the christmas tree so naturally there was pandamonium whenever we requested volunteers for the games.


Thanks to the fact that we have foreign teachers from all over the world, the students also learned how Christmas is celebrated in their countries: Norway, Mexico, South Africa and Germany. Darbie read a Christmas poem complete with pictures on a large screen. After her successful reading, she also took it upon her tiny self to do much needed crowd control (remember Santa and the presents?). What an intimidating little elf!
Besides the rioting over 5 yuan presents, the Christmas show went pretty well. We ended with all the teachers singing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," and Santa gave his famous line, "Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!" We thought the show was over, but in reality, it was just beginning. The students ran up to the stage and took turns taking loads of pictures featuring the foreign teachers, mostly with their cell phones. Most were our students, but we also took pictures with more than few eager strangers.



These are some of the girls in my speaking class. Shirley (back right) looks pretty angry that she's having to share camera-time. Meanwhile, Hillary is just about to enter Ice's nose with her "V" salute. We even managed to get a picture of ourselves! Here's our 2007 Christmas photo!



We should have one more before Christmas!

DB & KM

PS: Extra bonus video, click if you dare!

Ganbei!!

For the past month we have been tutoring 3 men, Yin, Cwui (pronounced Twee), and Cheng, who work for an engineering company named Shan Yuan and are being posted in Nigeria in February. They expressed an interest in learning some English before they departed so our school assigned us along with 2 other foreign teachers (Dan Brown and Pam Collier) and 1 chinese teacher(Gavin) to instruct them as best we could for 6 hours every day. This proved to be quite a challenge but interesting as well.

During the doctor lesson, Kendall decided since they were going to be in Africa they only needed to know the essentials such as I have a fever, My stomach aches, and I have diaharrea. So of course the latter was their favorite phrase. A lot of class was spent role-playing, "Hello, I'm the doctor, what seems to be the problem?" Inevitably, the response would be, "I have diaharrea" (which interestingly enough translates into Chinese as la duzi, "spicy stomach"). During the restaurant role-playing, we discovered that they did indeed know a few words of English. In response to "What would you like to drink?" We always got, "I want whiskey!" No matter what other drinks responses we told them. It took them 3 weeks to learn "My name is....", but they picked up on beer and whiskey pretty quickly.

(Front Row: The two leaders, Dan Brown, Doris (she assigned the class to us))

(Back row:Cheng, Yin, Darbie, Kendall, Alex, Driver, Cwui, and Gavin)

Mercifully, the class ended last week, and they were nice enough to invite us to a banquet dinner in celebration of their efforts. As always, we brought the camera along. Banquet dinners are a unique and enjoyable experience. Upon entering a nice Chinese banquet-friendly restaurant, one is greeted by the large, over-populated staff, and undoubtedly, rows upon rows of aquariums holding what could potentially be dinner. Watch your step! It gets a little slippery in and around the aquariums when the restaurant is busy. The tanks include different types of fish, of course, but also crabs, lobsters, eels - you name it, they'll likely have it.

(Darbie, Cheng, Yin, and the Leader)

Instead of being a large, open dining room like a Western-style restaurant. Nice Chinese restaurants usually have a lot of private rooms, so their guests don't have to worry about what others think about their dining etiquette or behavior. The rooms usually have a sink (some even have a bathroom), and a large round table with matching lazy-susan. The hosts of the meal usually choose all the dishes, and the guests have no prior knowledge of what they might be until the fuwuyuan (server) places them on the lazy-susan, and wheels it around to the host to inspect and approve. At first, this was pretty scary, but now we've adjusted and actually enjoy the anticipation of seeing and trying new dishes. Most of the time, our hosts never fail to impress us with their selections. The average banquet meal usually consists of somewhere around 20 dishes for an average table size of 12. The dishes are always ridiculously large, and it isn't rare for a dish to not be completely finished (despite being shared by 20 people). As the dish is spun to your vicinity, dig in with the chopsticks and either go straight to the mouth, or your plate. The Chinese wouldn't have gotten the classic Seinfeld episode where George double-dips the chip. "You dipped the chip. You took a bite... and you dipped again. "

The dishes usually start with some veggies and a Chinese staple, peanuts in vinegar. This might sound revolting, but I can assure you, I never miss this dish when it is in my area, simply brilliant. After the appetizers, the real Chinese dishes begin their parade onto and around the lazy-susan. Our favorite for this particular meal was what appeared to be deepfried bacon and spring onion in what is basically a soft-shell taco. Other dishes that made appearances were sweet-and-sour fish (yes, the whole fish makes an appearance), Nanjing bread (the closest thing to donuts in China!), in-shell mussels, broccoli in garlic sauce, squid, and a host of other unidentifiable, but delicious, dishes. At one point the servers cleared our dishes and I thought the meal was over suspiciously early. It turned out that we were being presented with fresh plates, each with a large she-crab staring back at us (sorry about the picture above, the flash was a little overzealous). Our hosts instructed us on how to pop it open, but then left us to our own devices. I began to hear a lot of sucking and slurping, so I just followed suit. Darbie was a little turned off by the tiny hairs and the suspicious color of the innerds she was supposed to be sucking. It turned out to be pretty good, though it takes a little too much work. If Chinese cuisine does have an achilles' heel, it is their soups. Each meal typically consists of two soups, and more often than not, these are our least favorite dishes. The soups are very thin, watery, and end up tasting like hot, dirty water with spicy tofu or fish balls in it (not those kind of fish balls).

(The driver, Gavin Wang, Alex, and Kendall)

Chinese banquets are very loud, fun events. It is a time to celebrate, be with friends and family, and eat very good food. Another neccessity for banquets is alcohol. The most popular alcohol at banquets is a grain alcohol (55-65% alcohol) affectionally called, baijiu, or white liquor. Thankfully, they let us choose the drinks, and wisely, we stayed away from the potent libation. Instead Tsingtao and Great Wall Wine were the drinks of the night. At banquet dinners, it never fails that Chinese engage in drinking contests. This might come as a surprise to some of you that heard that is shameful to be drunk in Chinese society, but they say, the point of the game is to not get drunk. The contest consists of numerous toasts to friends, family, China, business, and the future. One toast might directly follow another. Sometimes it is hard to give a toast because another toast starts as another is ending. After each toast, the toast-er decides whether or not it is a ganbei toast. If the toast-er finishes his/her drink and says "ganbei!", then everyone else must too. Women are the only exception because they are considered ladies, but Darbie and Doris were even prodded to ganbei once or twice.

Our table successfully went through about 20 bottles for the evening which is surprisingly little for that size of a group. I contribute this to the fact that Cheng stopped drinking after the second or third toast and slyly poured tea into his glass. When foreigners are at the table, toasts are even more prevalent because each chinese man want to out drink the foreigner. But as everyone knows, Asians are not known for holding their liquor. After the third toast, the leader was as red as a tomato and couldn't set his glass down straight. Due to the multiple toasts, by the end of the meal the english was flowing more easily. The men began shouting english words for the things on the table. So a chorus of "Cup!", "Tomato!", "Beer!", "Tea!", etc. ensued all around the room, though they couldn't quite remember complete sentences.

As the meal came to a close, we thought the food had ended but to our astonishment we not only got platters of fresh fruit but also a bowl of noodles with eggs and no less than 3 kinds of dumplings. By this time, it was nearly impossible to even smell food without gagging we were so full. But out of hospitality, you must try everything. Of course, the chinese had no trouble finishing off the bowl of noodles with one big slurp and downing a few platters of dumplings. I will never understand where they put all that food and still remain so thin.

So with very full bellys, Yin's eyes swimming, and lots of red faces we exited the restaurant and a very pleasant evening came to a close. We did manage to get a video of the evening which gives you an idea of the english level of these men. It was too large to load onto the blog but click on the link below to get a taste of a chinese banquet for yourself. Warning: it may take a while to load, its a bit lengthy.

Enjoy!

DB&KM

http://www.facebook.com/posted.php?id=4709732&share_id=8841457811#s8841457811 , hopefully that will work for you. Sorry for those of you w/out facebook.

"Big" Problems

For the most part, teaching has been a pleasant experience. However, as I'm sure all teachers experience, there are moments and interactions with our students that leave us scratching our heads, bitter, or worst of all, heartbroken. This blog will focus on one such heartbreaking experience.

In my Movie Appreciation class which I was assigned to teach with neither experience, nor materials (i.e., movies!), I show the students films and usually have them write about a simple topic that relates to the movie. A few weeks ago we were watching one of my favorite movies, Big. I asked the students to write about what they would do if they could be a kid again for a few weeks. The class enjoyed the movie, of course, and I thought it would be fun to read their essays. Most of the students' reports were what I expected, "I would play with all my old friends and toys," or "I would be better to my family," or "I would do it all different and not care what others think." However, a couple of essays were striking, and speak to significant social issues that China struggles with that go largely ignored. I wanted to share the most striking essay with you, not just because it's heartbreaking, but mainly because its subtle references to the looming social problems that China will have to face (on an enormous scale) in the future.

If I were a child

When I was a child, I hoped that I would grew up as quickly as possible. Now since I have been an adult, I'm envious of the pleasure that the child enjoys. I was brought up by my aunt, because my parents wanted a boy. However, I was such a lucky girl that my aunt loved me very much, as if I were her own child. I was the centre of my aunt's family, partly because her own child - my brother was ten years older than me, and partly because she ever wished she could have a daughter. There's no denying that I had a happy childhood. But sometime I feel upset at the thought of not living together with my own parents. If I were a child, I wish I was taken care of by my mother and I wish I had lived with my parents. My mother gave birth to me but didn't bring up me. If I were a child, I wish that I hadn't been sent to my aunt. Although I know its the conventional ideas that should be held the responsible for the case and it's not my parents willing that giving me to my aunt. I just wonder if there would be any differences, provided I was brought up by my parents. So I wish I could live with my parents if I were a child.

Unfortunately, this is a problem all over the globe, but especially in China. The one-child policy "forces" parents to make difficult decisions, and sometimes these decisions have alarming results and consequences. As China becomes increasingly prosperous, I will always wonder, "at what cost?" More concerning is the idea that millions of soon-to-be leading minds in China grew up in this harsh reality. This is only one of a hundred more reasons why China will be such a fascinating country to observe in the coming decades. Lastly, at the risk of sounding too "Christmas Shoes"-y at the holidays, stories like this one hopefully remind us of what we have, and who we should help.

I promise the next installments will be double the excitement and Christmas cheer to compensate for this sad blog. What can you look forward to? Chinese Banquet Dinners, Christmas in China, and especially, Darbie and Kendall's Christmas Variety Show featuring the Foreign Language Department! We'll have a lot of action (vids and pics!) between now and Christmas, so stay merry!

DB & KM

Saved by the Bell: The Chinese Years

We have told you about the few wonderful and exciting trips we have taken but we have told you little about the thing we do most: be teachers. Since Thanksgiving, where we spent the evening having a feast of various Chinese dishes with our mexican and norweigian neighbors, we are only getting busier with the preparation for exams, new classes, and time spent with our students.

Chinese classes only have 1 exam at the end of each semester and this is averaged with the class attendance and participation score for a final score. So we have to create our own exams to give the students! You would think that as the semester was ending, the job of the teacher might get easier because you get into a routine. Not here! Kendall just started a new class last week as a part-time job at a community college in a neighboring town. He teaches a class of 70 students English once a week. His outline for the class: just get them to talk. So that has been an interesting new addition to the schedule. Also, 2 weeks ago we were both given a new class to teach of 4 men that work for an engineering company and are going to Nigeria in a month and want to learn english. They have never had english before so you can imagine what this class is like. In other words, we are being forced out of our comfort zone of well-spoken college students into the world of a foreign teacher. It has definitely filled our days more and more.

In addition to classes, we have been busy being the spokespeople for the foreign language school. We have attended english corners, english salons, we tried to attend a basketball game, and have had students drop in for conversations.

The english salons I think are one of the more interesting and embarrassingly entertaining spectacles of the foreign language school. The students are all broken down into classes. There are 3 classes of freshmen with about 30 students each in them. Each class takes responsibility to plan one of these English salons where they put on skits, sing solos and duets, and play games. My class hosted the first english salon so we were invited as honored guests as we were treated to these spectacles.

First to the right, we have Slinda who gave us a rousing rendition of Never Had a Dream Come True. Slinda is one of my better students. All the other girls are always remarking about how good her pronunciation is with an envious tone. You will notice the pink balloon in her hand. This is the students way of telling the singer they like their song. Similar to how we would give flowers to someone who has just performed. Boys give balloons to girls and girls give balloons to the boys. The more balloons you receive the better your performance.

To the left, we have Cathy and Lavender singing a duet. They really got into it with the swaying and snapping action. You have to realize that the whole time we, the teachers, are sitting in the front row of a classroom so we are about 2 feet from all the action and we have to be smiley and encouraging the whole time. They do give us water, sunflower seeds, and tangarines to snack on while we are watching. These are pretty common snacks in China, no milk duds or popcorn here.

After the songs, there are short plays. To the left, you can see Cathy as Cinderella with her fairy godmother and on the right several of my boys, including Brad and Metter, as the soldiers in Mulan. In the center, is an unidentified chinese play that appeared to have a pimp and his two gangsta women.

Of course during the break between each of these plays, there was more singing so that the actors could do a costume change and recycle each of the outfits for the next play. One of the most entertaining was Kendall's student Bloggs singing Imagination to extremely enthusiastic applause. Below, you can see that he has 3 balloons so he was extremely popular with the ladies.

All in all, this is one of the most amazing things I think I've seen my students do. They orchestrate a 2 hour long ensemble entirely in English. They sing all the songs, do all the games, and all the plays in English. This is the one time that you can really see their personalities too. They really have no embarrassment at all. Try to imagine 18 or 19 year old college freshmen in the US getting up in front of their whole class and singing in another language while everyone applauds or boos!

I'm going to leave you with my contribution to English Salon. They also play games throughout the evening such as putting an english word on the screen and and have one person describe it in english to a partner while they try to guess the word. But I had to participate in a sort of chain charades. One student sees the word and then acts is out to the other student and so on down the line until the final student guesses. So teacher Darbie had to participate. Good times.

Enjoy!

DB&KM

Qufu...finally

Sorry to those who look forward to our little blog here, we've been busy and/or lazy the last couple of weeks, but we are still here. If I can remember correctly, I believe we left you with a nice big bowl of hotpot. That must mean you need to read about Qufu next. Here goes...

First off, let's work on our pronunciation! This is how you say Qufu: choo-foo. Leave those Q's for Latin-based languages.

Every city or village in China is famous for something. Usually it is some type of flower, delicious vegetable, or export (Ex. Qingdao - Tsingtao Beer), and Qufu is certainly no different. Qufu is the (disputed) home of the great Chinese thinker Confucius, or Kong(fu)zi to the Chinese. In fact, a lot of people in and around Qufu still have the surname Kong, and they are quick to claim Confucius in their ancestry. Here is a quick, and likely flawed, history of Confucius. Raised in Qufu (around 500 BCE), Confucius was well-educated and sought to be employed by emperors or local rulers, but never quite told them what they wanted to hear. He decided that he would instead concentrate on educating Chinese adolescents so that, one day, they would use his philosophy. Like many, Confucius' fame came after his death. There are claims of specific students, government jobs, and miracles, but as with most historical figures, it is hard to tell legend from fact. We do know that later empires saw the benefits of Confucian philosophy (such as knowing and staying within one's role and fitting into a harmonious society), and began implementing it. Jesuit missionaries brought Confucius back to the West where he is seen as a leading philosopher, and this popularity reinvigorated his status back in China. A guy named Mao came along and didn't care for him, but he died, and now it appears the Chinese are willing to celebrate his importance, though some are reluctant to celebrate his philosophy.

So Qufu takes advantage of this mystique and the beautiful village certainly has a lot to offer. It is a walled city, with very narrow (and crowded) roads. Street-vendors and shops are everywhere, but the city still manages to have a quaint appeal. Unfortunately, our stay in Qufu was all too short. We only got to visit the main Confucius Temple. The real treasures are supposedly hidden in the Confucius Forest, so we might just have to go back if time permits. We do have a few pictures to share, so enjoy!

As you can see above, the temple area is very lush with many different types of trees. I can't say the temple was anything greater than previous temples. Although, the insides of the buildings were usually more bare than a Buddhist temple. The tour guide would show us different buildings and relay a legend about who or what Confucius taught there. However, these building were built much, much later than Confucius, so basically, they act as monuments.

Another "must-have" for every Chinese temple is the Good Luck Tree that has been worn smooth from eager hands. However, these trees are much more important than all the others because Confucius planted these himself...uh-huh ;) There's the man of the blog himself, Confucius! This is the only idol or altar in the Confucius temple. Confucius isn't a Christ-like figure in case you were wondering. I think of this kind of like the Lincoln Memorial in DC. It is just a place Chinese can come and remember a great man. Of course, they do this differently then Americans would Abraham Lincoln, so one might see them bowing, burning incense, etc. Inscriptions of some sort and variety cover the stone wall. A classic gathering of knowledge and beauty. The Temple has these fantastic columns carved to look like dragons. The guide told us that these columns were much better than anything the emperor had in his palace at that time, so any time the emperor visited Qufu the columns were covered up and hidden from the emperor so that he would not lose face. I'm pretty happy that the emperor never destroyed them, because those columns are really beautiful, perhaps the highlight of the Confucian Temple. After we left the temple, we had a few minutes to kill so we walked down a street of vendors selling various Confucian trinkets. Every other vendor stand was selling "chops." Chops are Chinese stamps made out of jade or marble, and they have some kind of ornamentation on the top. The best thing about the stamps is that they can carve your name and Chinese name into the stamp. All the vendors had signs promising that "The Job is done in 5 minutes." We gave in, and 30 to 45 minutes later, we both had chops! Unfortunately, they are a little tough to photograph, but once we figure something out, we'll get it to you.

Well, that's our trip. We'll be telling you about our students, classes, and some funny moments in the next few blogs. Perhaps we'll even take you of a tour of our little suburb, Huangdao. I have to get back into shape, because this blog wore me out!

Happy Thanksgiving Break,

DB & KM

Stairway to Hea-eh-ven

The next day in Tai'an we went to the mountain, Tai Shan (hey that rhymes!). Tai Shan is by no means a huge mountain, but I can honestly say it wasn't a pleasant journey up. The Chinese don't believe in tranquil mountain paths. Instead, they build steep staircases that wind up to the summit. As I was walking up the path I couldn't help thinking about which job would I want less: creating this staircase, or building the Great Wall? Staircase, of course. I was trying to remain positive, but around the 5, 458th step I was sure the Great Wall sounded like a better idea. Supposedly, Tai Shan has 6,666 steps from the base to the summit, but I lost count somewhere around number twenty. It was a great day for hiking, however, and that kept perspiration to a minimum. Despite being a large, stone staircase, the path really has some beautiful scenery. Though, it is mixed with the multitudes of restaurants and shops that dot the mountain. Which leads to another incredible thought: How would you like to own/run a shop at 1345 meters above sea level (that's only two-thirds the way up) where all your goods have to be brought up an insane amount of steps, hand delivered? There are roads, but most of the stores are far away from any, preferring the foot traffic of the mountain visitors. Thankfully, the shopkeeps are very passive and don't really care to annoy the trekkers. Although, about half way up the mountain there was a crazy, bearded man that was giving all the Westerners big, smelly hugs.

You might be thinking, "Why do people climb Tai Shan?" Good question. If you look in the guide books, they'll tell you that people climb it because its the most holy mountain in Daoism. But, if you ask the Chinese, they'll tell you that many important people have climbed it, and indeed they have. If I may return to many Americans' favorite revolutionary, Mao Zedong once said from atop Tai Shan, "The East is Red." It sure was. . .is, I mean! Just with "Chinese (capitalist) characteristics." But my favorite quote from atop Tai Shan comes from Confucius (Kongzi to the Chinese) who said, "The world is small." Someone should make a song about that. A handful of Chinese emperors also climbed Tai Shan. The mountain does indeed have a few temples, the most famous being the Azure Cloud Temple. In the good ol' days, sacrifices could be made to Heaven on top of the mountain. It was also believe that it is the first place the sun rose, so many people would come and worship at daybreak, and in fact, many people still do. There are hotels, restaurants, and shops on top of the mountain, but the greatest things are of course, the views. At the very peak of the mountain, another temple stands where Chinese couples go with padlocks and lock them onto a large altar. The padlocks represent their eternal love. . .awww. However, the temple is very small, so be prepared to throw some elbows while crowding inside (getting eternal love is never easy, after all). Mercifully, we didn't have to walk down the mountain. Tai Shan has nice, scenic cable-car rides up and down, so we hopped on one and enjoyed the view. I think enough has been said about the mountain, so here's some pictures:

Oh man, still a long way to go. If you look closely between the two ridges you'll see the staircase and a little bit of the main gate. All those dots are people.

Shoo! Just a little bit closer. The gate is the most crowded (and dangerous) part of the trail. A lot of jerks ride the cable car up the mountain, walk over to the gate, and take a picture looking like they just climbed the mountain. That's the main reason there's so many bodies there.

Finally! And what a beautiful time of day. If you look closely to the left of the pic, you'll see a large Chinese bell temple, and once again, some dots that are people. In the top right corner of the picture, a possible UFO (maybe this mountain really is holy after all).

Nothing says loving like an engraved padlock. Although, I doubt this would go over too well on Valentine's Day.

After a little rest and napping, Mr. Li took us out to one of the best restaurants in Tai'an. We got to try a very popular Chinese dish for the first time, hotpot. Hotpot is basically like fondue without the trendy setup. The table has hotplates built into it, and each person sits in front of one. The restaurant places a large pot in front of you, spicy or mild. Darbie wanted mild, but through a mix-up ended up going spicy with me. It was delicious. Just like fondue, you dump food,veggies, tofu, into the pot, let it cook, and dig it out with chopsticks and enjoy. It can get pretty steamy in the room, and there are a lot of runny noses, but I highly recommend the experience.

Your nose should be running already. I'm proud to say that I held this. I held it.

A super-steamy hotpot room. Those nice pink rolls are beef and lamb. Chinese love lamb. That nice couple you see to the left are our friends and neighbors, Fatima (from Mexico) and Joachim (from Norway). Next to them are the nice, and very British, Colliers. They crack us up with their vocabulary: smashing, quite lovely, cheerio, etc.

This is me and Mr. Li. How can you not love that face? Not his, mine! I hope our next hotpot meal isn't too far away.

Lastly, I want to include a video of some intense manual labor. I'm narrating during the video, so no explanation is needed. Note my "out-of-breathness."

Incredible.

Hope all is well wherever you may be,

KM

DB is currently in the States with her family after her Grandmother's passing. I want to send along my thoughts to the Bryant/Duncan/Simmons clan. You can too if you want, at darbieb@hotmail.com

Foreign Affairs

Mr. Li, our waiban (literally: foreign [affairs] office) administrator is a nice guy. He fields all our requests and usually responds very quickly. We get our monthly pay (all in cash) from him, and if we have any problems, we call him. Simply put, Mr. Li gets things done. So we were thrilled when Mr. Li let us know that the University was sending all the "foreign language experts" off to Tai'an and Qufu for the weekend. Supposedly, these retreats take place once a semester to various places of the Shandong Province. We were glad that the trip was to Tai'an and Qufu, because both of these cities were on our "to-see" list, and now we were able to see them for free! Friday morning, all the foreign teachers crammed into the rental bus, and we set off on the five hour journey to Tai'an.

Tai'an is a destination city only for the fact that it rests at the base of the most sacred of the five holy mountains in Taoism, Tai Shan. Tai'an (ty-an) just happens to be Mr. Li's hometown, and so we were treated to many of the best restaurants and cuisine. But our first stop in Tai'an was its mildly popular temple, the Dai Temple. We were treated to an English-speaking guide, which still makes me think about what the Japanese teachers in our group felt about this. Nonetheless, the temple was vast, and it took us a good while to get through it. The temple rests in the center of town, and was/is the place that pilgrims gather before climbing Tai Shan. There were a lot of interesting parts about the temple, despite its apperance, which is falling into disrepair. For example, there's a big fresco inside one of the halls that depicts an emperor climbing up Tai Shan with a huge army to become the God of the mountain. Technically, one isn't supposed to take pictures here (the fresco is already peeling), but I figured what can a no-flash shot hurt? I got a snapshot of one of the most intriguing parts of the mural showing one of the emperor's men releasing a rainbow out of a large pot. It could quite possibly be the oldest advertisement for Skittles.

Most of the temple-goers were elderly, but very active. Religion in China, of any type, generally seems to be limited to the elderly, and even this is usually just for superstitious or auspicious reasons (though who am I to say it's any different in the States in many cases?). Young and middle-aged Chinese adults believe in the Party, and/or making money. We'll have more on this when we can include conversations we've had with people and students about xinyang (faith). Going back to auspicious ritual, there's a popular ritual that involves walking around a sacred rock clockwise three times, then counter clockwise three times, all with one hand on the rock and your eyes closed. Then, with your eyes still closed, you walk from the rock to a special tree and try to touch the smooth part of the tree. Mr. Li pressured me to do it, and I gave in. I can't say I regretted my decision, but I will say it was a painfully long process (painful because the rock has some pointy edges, and walking around blind for that long with people crowding in is more than awkward). When I began it was just our group watching and enjoying the show. Evidently this changed quickly after I began, and when I finished and opened my eyes, I had drawn quite a crowd of elderly Chinese temple enthusiasts all having a good laugh at the waiguoren (foreign person). Glad to be of service. I should mention that if one succeeds in touching the special part of the tree (I did not, oops!), then a long, good life is assured. "Special" trees abound in Chinese temples. It is not uncommon for the bark to be smooth because so many hands have touched the tree. Below is a tree that holds rare and exquisite beauty:

See? These Chinese really know how to get the most from their ancient trees. Another staple of Chinese temples is a garden with "ancient" steles. Usually it's not hard to tell the older steles from the newer ones, because the old ones no longer have any legible inscriptions on them. That's because a lot of Chinese (and foreign) hands have come along and worn them off over time. So the newer ones are inset very deep into the stone to ensure that it never happens again. There are no shortage of the steles, and they usually are written in the many different forms of Chinese calligraphy. There are five different styles of calligraphy, but within each style there can be many different variations. To the Chinese, one's calligraphy says a lot about that person. The writing style reflects the inner and outer of one's being. So contrary to what you might think, the first character in the picture above is not scribble, but an intricately designed character (The top character is beyond my learning, but the next two are yi [one] and shan [mountain], but if any Chinese scholars are out there, please let me know.).

The temple also has some other notable sights like the mega-bixi (Darbie's favorite Chinese mythological animal). The bixi (bee-shee) is the turtle-like offspring of a dragon. The bixi has the head of a dragon, the feet of a hawk, the tail of a snake, and back of a turtle. In other words, it is ferociously cute. The bixi are created to hold and protect giant scripture stones (steles) on their backs. This was the biggest bixi we've seen to date, and accordingly, it is the luckiest. Touching the bixi all but assures you a rich, healthy, and long life. The last thing worth mentioning about the temple is yet another temple game designed in order to gain a good life. It involves throwing coins into slots or openings in a religious structure; yue duo yue hao (the more the better). This takes place in every Chinese temple I've been to, and fortunately for you, we've got a video for you to check out of me playing the coin game! The object of this game is to throw an "ancient" coin into the slot and make the bell ring.

Good things should be coming my way!

Whew, I wasn't expecting to write so much about the Dai Temple. We don't want to overwhelm you, so we'll milk this trip for all its worth in future posts. Tai Shan and Qufu are still to come!

Check out the Drabblecast Halloween Special at http://www.drabblecast.org/

DB&KM

The Olympic City - Days 4 and 5

We are back from Qufu and Tai Shan, and we'll have blogs about the trip soon. But first, let's finish up our journey to Beijing. On Day 4 we decided to tackle the Beijing subway. It was much easier than we had expected. There are only five lines in Beijing, the last line opened right after we left. Of the four lines we were dealing with, one goes horizontal across town, one goes vertical across town, one goes vertical out of town, and one makes a loop, intersecting with the others. Thanks to our location, our destinations were really simple to reach. Beijing's subway is really old. Have you ever been in a subway where they have one person tearing tickets before you can go down to the train platform? That's how antiquated this subway system is; supposedly that is all changing before the Olympics, otherwise they'll need to hire some more ticket-takers.

So we hopped on the subway at Chongwen Station and got off at Yonghegong. Yong he Gong translates to The Lama Temple. For those of you who still don't know what I'm talking about, the Lama Temple is a well preserved Tibetan Buddhist temple in Beijing. Here's a helpful poem about lamas:

The one L Lama, is a priest

The two L Llama, is a beast

And I would bet my silk pajamas

That there's no such thing as a three L Lllama.

In other words, we weren't at a petting zoo. The lamasery (monastery for lamas) has been in Beijing since 1744. Before that, the buildings were the home of Emperor Yong Zheng. Because it was once the home of an emperor, the lamas enjoy some nice digs. The Lama Temple is kept immaculate (one of the few places that way in Beijing), and it seems that the Temple has plenty of cash flow. For example, every ticket (25 kuai/3 dollars) comes with a mini-VCD that you can pop into your computer and learn more about the temple. This is definitely not anything I've encountered at other temples.

Without going into too much detail (aka I might disappear), Tibetan and Chinese relations aren't great. Usually China gets most of the blame and Tibet gets the sympathy (a natural tendency to route for the underdog) from Westerners. However, both sides have a role in their current situation and icy relations. Nevertheless, the temple is a great and encouraging symbol of possibility in the capital city of the People's Republic.

This blog is already getting a little long, so I'll save Chinese temple descriptions for a future blog, and just give you what you really want, pictures!

Above, I'm rubbing a prayer wheel. Each wheel has inscriptions of some type (sutras, prayer, mantra). You spin the wheel, rub your hand along it, and the prayer is released. One might say the prayer or mantra aloud or silently in hopes of gaining compassion. Right is an icon, different icons, depending on the temple, are spread out throughout the complex. This is Skanda, he is protector of all the Buddhist relics. He's here to keep Maitreya safe. The Chinese don't discriminate with their praise, everyone receives love - as long as the deities, buddhas, spirits, etc. provide them with what they want.

Above, breathing can be difficult in a Chinese temple. Huge sticks of incense are offered in large fire pits. Top right is fat and happy Maitreya, the next Buddha. Below Maitreya, is another Tibetan deity, often called a wrathful deity. These guys and gals defend Buddhism and Buddhists from passion and evil influences outside and within. This is Mahakala, he won't hurt you. The greatest sight in the lamasery is a 56-foot statue of Maitreya made out of one piece of wood. Unfortunately, pictures aren't allowed, though I'm sure you can see it on Google.

After the temple, we crossed town and eventually made our way to the Beijing Zoo - along with every other tourist that happened to be in Beijing at the time. This place was packed. We headed to the Panda house, which was even more packed, got a look at a Panda, felt bad for the Pandas because the Chinese are always banging on the glass and being loud, and got out. If you're in Beijing during the offpeak season, the zoo would probably be cool, just not during national week. That night we took Jimbo to see his first, authentic Chinese acrobat show. While it didn't live up to the one we saw in Shanghai, it was still a good time.

The next day we got up and decided to visit the Beijing Underground City. Once again, pictures weren't allowed. The Underground City was created during the Cold War and is a series of weaving tunnels under Beijing. We got to walk through these cold, damp tunnels and it was pretty cool. Supposedly, one could walk all the way to TianJin (which is a good ways away, probably at least 70 miles) through the tunnels. If things had gone nuclear, the (select) Chinese could stay in the Underground City with the comforts of restaurants, libraries, and even movie theaters! We proceeded from the Underground City to view the City Wall Park. A well landscaped park which holds the only remaining part of the ancient Beijing City Wall. Pretty cool stuff.

Oh, then we went home via train (soft-seat!).

Here's a panda picture for being such a good reader:

Poor Chinese Pandas. Check out this recent article from the Beijing Zoo and what the Pandas have to go through: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21430375/

We'll be Back,

DB&KM