Good News, Bad News

The Spring Festival is upon us! For those of you who aren't familiar with Chinese New Year, it is a lot like the hype surrounding the holidays in the US. There is a lot more buying, smiling, and traveling. The universities position their semester breaks around the New Year (or Spring Festival), so we are on break until the first week of March! This means that we get to travel all around China, and see some new stuff. Unfortunately, this means that there won't be any new blogs for all of you to read until we get back.

Jimbo is coming to meet us in Xi'an, but we've already had many adjustments to our travel plan. As I mentioned earlier, traveling is BIG around the New Year. In fact, I read that it's the single largest migration of people in the world every year. That's because the Spring Festival is the only time when many Chinese travel home to see their families. The Spring Festival is all about being with families and remembering the deceased. They eat a lot of dumplings, and watch TV. Each year, CCTV (think Chinese BBC), broadcasts a variety show with all the hottest and favorite Chinese celebs. So, literally, a billion-plus people tune in and watch CCTV on New Year's Eve. It has got to be the most watched program every year. Oh, I was writing about travel.

The most affordable way to travel in China is train. However, China doesn't allow train tickets to be bought more than four days in advance (10 days around New Year). You can only imagine the chaos this creates. Chinese people have trouble making an orderly line (or "queuing up" for our British readers) as it is, so when you pack in holiday demand, it gets pretty ugly - elbows necessary. Originally, we were planning on traveling first to see the Buddhist Caves in Luoyang, but there is only one train from our train station heading in that direction; so despite having signed up for tickets with a travel agency 3 weeks in advance (which doesn't really mean anything apparently), we didn't get the tickets. It went to the 500,000 other people that wanted to go to that one destination on that one day. Thankfully, it's pretty close to us, so we can visit later in the year.

Here's our travel itinerary for those of you so inclined:

Jan 24th: Fly to Xi'an. Highlight - Terracotta Army
Jan 30th: Train or Flight to Chengdu, Bus to Leshan. Highlight - Giant Buddha
Feb. 3rd: Bus back to Chengdu. Highlight - Darbie holding a baby Giant Panda
Feb. 7th: Fly to Lhasa. Highlight - Potala Palace, being on the "ceiling of the world"
Feb. 11th: Fly to Hong Kong. Highlight - Doing a whole lot before Jimbo leaves on the 14th.
Feb. 14th: Fly to ?? Possible options - Sanya (China's Hawaii), Harbin (China's Siberia), or Nanjing (China's old "South(nan) Capitol(jing)." Can you figure out what Beijing means? Good!).
Last week of Feb: Return to cold, windy, McDonalds-less Huangdao.

We shall return with many a story to tell.

DB&KM

PS: We will be checking our email when possible, so feel free to write!

Wiggles and Giggles

Kendall and I were asked to make "sweet memories" by one of the university professors by going to the on-campus kindergarten these past few weeks. We innocently thought that it would be easy. Who wouldn't want to see tiny Chinese children playing and speaking baby Chinese? Well, things weren't that simple. We mistakenly thought we would just play with them and maybe sing a little bit. When we arrived, we are taken into the first tiny classroom crammed with about 25 very active 5 year olds. And I think everyone knows how 5 year olds are. They can't sit still for more than 30 seconds not to mention trying to keep their attention when they don't speak the same language. So with little preparation we began trying to teach them Itsy Bitsy Spider, Hokey Pokey, and Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. Thankfully, some of them knew a few words of english and we had a piano player. They spent most of the next harried 30 minutes giggling, running around the room, and shouting "MY NAME IS" instead of singing but I think the kids enjoyed it. I can't say as much for the teachers. They had a few scowls on their faces when we left. Next we were huslted into the 3 year old class which was far calmer and cuter. They were all bundled against the cold but it was about 90 degrees in the classroom so all their faces were bright red. Sitting in their little semi circle, they watched intently as we taught the motions to Itsy Bitsy Spider. Most of them retracted in fear as Kendall approached wanting to check their spiders (who is this strange looking white man?) but some as you see to the right were quite eager to show off. They really enjoyed Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes especially when we did it super fast. They got most of the motions until we got to Eyes and Ears and Mouth and Nose. We kinda lost them there. I think their favorite was the Hokey Pokey because they got to wiggle and dance around which 3 year olds are incredibly good at. Our favorite song to teach them though was If You're Happy and You Know It. We did lots of different emotions. Mad, sad, sleepy, hungry, excited and asked the kids what you do if you are feeling like this. My favorite by far was one adorable chubbster with one pigtail on top of her head who, when asked what you do if you are mad, immediately placed both hands on her hips and cocked one to the side. Even 3 year old chinese girls know that move.

Its sad to admit that we were more exhausted after teaching 1 hour of Kindergarten than after teaching a whole day of college students. Below you can check out my attempt to teach wiggling.

DB & KM

Straight to the Top!

Lately we have had a lot of free time due to the semester winding down. As the Spring Festival break looms nearer, we have had to find new ways to entertain ourselves besides purchasing more pirated dvds. Since there is a small mountain at the south entrance of our school we decided to take a little hike and see if we could reach the top. From the picture below you can see the two peaks we were able to summit.

As we got to the foot of the trail, we ran into two elderly Chinese men who were determined to not let us climb the mountain. They kept pointing to a piece of paper, which after examining, was just a list. We put our names down on the list and the number 4, because the people ahead of us on the list had put some number down. They looked at our names, pointed at the number and began a discussion. Apparently, they were impressed by the number four, and we were cleared for climbing the "mountain." Also at the foot of the trail was a pretty little stream with lots of chickens walking around and drinking the water.

Oh yeah, it really wasn't that pretty. It was actually kind of disgusting, and I would NOT want to be eating those chickens after what they were eating and drinking! It was a pretty cool day, so we were appropriately bundled. The walk started as a nice leisurely stroll on a path, but soon became a pretty vertical ascent with lots of sliding rocks. After managing the loose terrain, we had to start shedding some layers, and we began to respect this "mountain." If you remember Tai Shan - the mountain we climbed in a trip in October - "climbing" it was just walking up a steep staircase. It seems the Chinese prefer these straight-to-the-top trails over the North American zig-zag trails. In other words, these trails can be really demanding, even for smaller mountains. Nevertheless, we braved the harsh trail, the "limited oxygen," and the "dizzying altitude" and finally reached the summit!
I'm a little confused as to the title of the picture above. It's either going to be "Darbie's Search," or "Conquistadarbie." Feel free to vote for either on a comment, or submit your own. The rocks on the top of the mountain are huge and a lot of fun to free climb. The rocks almost have a fake quality to them, like something you'd find at Big Thunder Mountain in Disney World's Magic Kingdom. Here's Darbie negotiating the sheer cliff face like the pro she is!


From the top of the mountain you can see the wonder that is Huangdao. On a really clear day, you can see all the way across the bay to Qingdao. It's definitely worth the trek. So, if you're in the Huangdao area and would like to go for a little climb, give us a holler.

DB&KM

Right outside the window

Before winter came, students were always outside. Dorms are pretty boring for them here. No TV's, no computers, no video games, so they are always outside when the weather permits. Beside the apartment building is a gathering square where a lot of activities take place, from one-on-one badminton to giant association (club) fairs. A few months back, I was invited to sit with some of my students at the English Association's table. I was the funny-looking foreigner that would lure students into joining the association. I got to walk around the fair a little bit and witness pop bands playing for the pop music association, break dancers for the break dance association, students fighting robots for the robot-building association, amazing calligraphy made by the calligraphy association, and of course, stunt rollerblading by the rollerblading association, along with many, many, many more very specific student groups (numismatists, chess players, hair-stylers, martial arts, Beijing opera fans, etc.) .

Darbie took the opportunity to take some snapshots of the association fair. The pics also double as a fun game of "Where's Kendall?" Have fun!

Not a chance.

If you look really closely...

I can see me! Can you?

I'm the white guy in the center if you haven't found me yet.

I can only imagine the fun you had playing "Where's Kendall?" Thanks to the cold weather, and mostly the wind, the square is pretty lonely these days. Maybe in the spring we'll be able to bring you a follow-up of "Where's Darbie?" Though, if she's tan, it could be infinitely harder.

DB&KM

Mini-update

Last week, we went to our local DVD store. It has become a bi-monthly trip for us, mostly because nights can get a little dull in Huangdao. For those of you that don't know, China has a HUGE DVD black market. Government authorities care a little about it, so they mainly have busts when they have nothing else to do. Our DVD store is actually a music store, and we are always escorted to a hidden back room to view the DVDs for sale. They choose to import/rip/copy the strangest selection of DVDs. Of course they have the blockbusters like Transformers, and most recently, I Am Legend. But they also have lesser-known indie movies or classics like Dr. Zhivago. I've mentioned that I teach a movie appreciation class, and Darbie sometimes shows movies to her listening class. Strangely enough, we've found that, on more than a couple of occasions, movies we have recently shown in class suddenly start appearing in the DVD store. We've brought some movies from back home like The Princess Bride and The Count of Monte Cristo. Both of these movies magically and randomly appeared in the DVD store exactly one week after their viewings; we had not seen either of these movies anywhere before we showed them in class. I like to think our students are black market bigwigs, and that Darbie and I are shaping the market.

But here's what I really wanted to share with you. We recently bought I Am Legend on DVD (it took a total of one week to get it from the US to Chinese DVD). Often the best part about these jiade (fake) DVDs are the jackets. Because there is not yet an official English DVD version to imitate, they usually have to create their own plot synopsis on the back cover. I give you the jacket description for I Am Legend:

Ignorant humanity, often disaster event setter of a bad example...

A big area virus suddenly erupts, the propagation velocity

quicklynearly nobody can prevent, nobody knew source of

the fearful viralstarts in where, only knew it does not

have the means irreversibleto stop, being unable to cure,

most importantly, it is artificialcreates.

You can only imagine how reliable the Chinese and English subtitles are.

Darbie and a hardened member of the tough Chinese black market

DB & KM