A Week to be Reckoned With

I sit here on the Sunday afternoon before my first round of finals emotionally drained. Not absolutely ecstatic, not exactly depressed, but pensive and in many ways fulfilled. A dichotomy, I realize, being simultaneously drained and fulfilled, but I find myself this way often—learning and growing just takes so much energy! But it’s that end state, the settled, sated, contented state that makes it all worth while. As I recently discovered while reading excerpts of Carl Phillips' Coin of the Realm, “departure, dislocation: these are two possible translations for the Greek ekstasis—from which our own word, ecstasy, is derived,” and I think that it might be apt.

Part of the reason I’m quite as emotionally drained as I am is because I just got finished reading River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze by Peter Hessler. I cannot begin to describe how much this book resonated with me. It’s about a Peace Corps volunteer who spent his two year term north-east of where I am now in a small village in the SiChuan province called FuLing. Obviously, there are many things about our experiences that differ vastly, yet his stories and experiences resonated with me. From the frustrations (skirting the government regulations), to the things that always make me smile (a boy student named Rebecca), this book describes the Chinese experience in a way I can only hope to convey to you in my blog entries. Thus, I know it’s not exactly my story, but I highly recommend this book if you’re interested in what it’s like to be here teaching in China!

But beyond being dragged through the emotional spectrum by books, reality has been quite accommodating of late. In reflecting upon this past week, I cannot think of a single day where something interesting, exciting, or growth-inducing hasn’t happened (with perhaps the exception of Monday which was mainly dedicated to grading). Since this semester is coming to a close, and it is also the holiday season, I decided to throw holiday parties for my students. For my first years it was on Wednesday evening. For my sophomores it was Saturday evening. Most of my stories of this week revolve around these events.

On Tuesday it all began. After having a lively class with my sophomores and finishing writing their final exam, the afternoon was dedicated to party prep for the following day. That meant mainly shopping, and in order to get everything, I needed a helper. Thus, one of my freshman, Sean, came into town from the YangPu campus (which I’ll remind you is roughly 45 minutes outside of town) to help. He’s a native Kunmingois (Kunminger?) and shopping is, with perhaps the exception of singing karaoke, his favorite pastime, so it seemed like the right choice for helpers. Also his English is above par, which is always helpful. But actually, that was one of the best parts of the day—the fact that I was able to hold my own in Chinese with him. It finally made me feel like I belonged. Don’t get me wrong, we got a fair number of stares in the Carrefour, but that’s just a part of China. A foreigner speaking in Chinese, no matter how badly, draws a crowd wherever as usually the Chinese are expected to be speaking in English with the foreigner. The fitting in was more a result of finally really feeling like I could connect with an actual Chinese person as opposed to just other foreigners.

We spent over five hours shopping (granted some of that was transit time), and due to that my student missed the last bus back to campus. Luckily though, several of his friends, including another one of my students, Shakira :o), had driven into town (a big deal I might add, actually having a car) and were doing some shopping of their own. We met up for dinner, which we had at what can only be described as a Chinese food court. We grabbed little dishes from many different restaurants, and thus my meal consisted of something like: rice and milk paste (which is traditionally a baby food, but one that is becoming more and more popular among nostalgic teens as a snack), 烧烤(shaokao, Muslim barbequed kebabs that are really quite spicy. We had squid, zuchinni, lotus root, and some sort of fish), 饺子(jiaozi, or dumplings, which were absolutely delicious! I really am going to have to become a dumpling maker in my spare time or something so that I can keep eating them outside of China), a kiwi smoothie served in a bamboo cup (and complete with chunks of some other fruits and what can best be described as gummy worms), and the very traditional 猪脑 (pig brain which was surprisingly tender!).

It was a good meal, and I could figure out generally what they were talking about as long as they didn’t revert into Kunminghua (Kunming dialect). We had some good conversations, during we discovered that I was only one year older than Sean (well, I already knew that, but he thought I was much older). It was gratifying to know that the Chinese have as much trouble telling the age of 老外 laowais as we do telling their ages. And yet, after that discussion we were on our way out and decided to stop at a video arcade when one of them asked Sean “does he know what video games are?” I tried not to roll my eyes too much. The games in and of themselves were quite amusing, and I got my first try at playing a game where you were supposed to beat a big drum. My first reaction was something like “how is this fun again?” but it grew on me. All in all, it was one of my best nights in China so far! It was really my first time just chilling with Chinese, and I loved it. Of course, it got me into a bit of trouble for I didn’t get my grading finished. Then again, I think my students are getting used to that. I’m turning into a miniature Keith Farrington!!! :o)

The party itself was quite enjoyable. I made three pumpkin pies, two chocolate pies, and something that was in between ginger snaps and gingerbread people (basically it was gingerbread dough, but I didn’t have the time or patience to roll it out so I just scooped little balls onto the cookie sheet). The other grand culinary adventure of the evening was the mashed potatoes that I ended up making (although I had tried to beg out of it, they wouldn’t have any of it). Those we made at the YangPu campus, and they weren’t bad, although they weren’t spectacular either. I have my suspicions that my students were thinking something like “this is just like old grandma potatoes (a regional specialty) without the flavour.” The freshman, who are not allowed to get drunk on punishment of being expelled, put back a full two cases of beer which definitely got the party going. One of my favorite parts of the evening was teaching them “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” where I had exactly the right number of students to have one person sing the partridge part, two people for the turtle doves, three French hens, and so on. Also, I went there with another foreign teacher and we did a swing performance to “Jump, Jive and Wail.” We then had to teach them how to do it, and some of them weren’t bad. The funny part, and this is typical of Chinese, especially ones who just recently entered university, is that the girls danced with the girls and the boys with the boys. Too adorable!

Several events punctuated Thursday. One thing is that I’m almost positive that I found one of my towels from my childhood in the possession of the 服务员(fuwuyuan, maids). I’d like to get this corroborated by the ‘rents, but when I was little, I had a towel (or maybe it was my sister’s) that had a brontosaurus on it. I think that when I came here last time, and stayed in the exact same place, I must have brought the towel, and then left it here so that I could actually close my suitcase. So guys, do we still have that towel at home, or could it really be mine? The other two big events included the second meeting of the book club that several of our teachers started, which was interesting. The topic of the readings was travel, and thus we all had a lot to say. Afterwards, we attended a charity pub crawl (as if we needed an excuse to go drinking at our local pubs), which, needless to say, left me quite drunk and in the end I made a small scene, but by then it was already like 3:30 in the morning, so not many people noticed (and if they did they were totally drunk and it didn't matter). In any case, yay for no Friday classes!

Speaking of Friday, it was party time again, but this time it was one of the other foreign teachers that was holding it for her kids. I recall mentioning this before, but Chinese parties are a bit different than American (dare I say Western?) parties in that they need an emcee and require performances and organized games. I helped animate (to use the French term for it), which included a Sebillana (a type of Flamenco dance that I don’t think I spelled correctly) with the hostess, a swing with another friend, and the most rousing rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” we had this week. It was quite enjoyable, though I was exhausted in the end!

This didn’t exactly bode well for the party of the next day, which was actually for my students, but I was able to tough it out. I went shopping with different students (again at Carrefour, but a different one), and I treated them to McDo’s for lunch, which I think they enjoyed. I haven’t eaten there for reals since I had the shrimp wonton meal in Hong Kong, and before that I couldn’t actually tell you it’s been so long. I found a teriyaki chicken triangle wrap (do they have those in the US?) which was not too bad. The party itself was good, and I think my students enjoyed themselves, though not as many showed up as I had been expecting. It just really made me start thinking about the fact that this semester was coming to an end, and hoping beyond hope that I’ve actually touched these students in some way. That maybe they’ve actually learned something. We’ll see how the final goes.

After that it was out to the local pub to celebrate a Chinese friend’s birthday. From what I understand, before I arrived he kept asking for me and kept asking for me, and he was obviously elated when I did come. He’s a cute little student at the Minorities University down the street whose nickname is 小猴子XiaoHouzi, or little monkey. His girlfriend was there, and she had brought her mom along, which impressed me. He then got overly drunk and started throwing up, which was less impressive. But again, it just made me feel like I belonged here. That somebody was waiting for/expecting me was just a really nice feeling that gave me warm fuzzies. I was then taught a new Chinese drinking game called 7-8-9, which is the devil! It takes two dice, and if you roll a seven you can add as much alcohol to the communal cup as you want (note that in China this tends to be shots of beer as their drinking games go fast!), an eight means you have to drink half of whatever was in the cup(s), and a nine is the whole shebang. Of course, if you roll one of those numbers, you have to continue until you roll something else. I had a streak of like 4 8s and 9s in a row which got me sufficiently toasted and made me quit drinking for the rest of the night. And actually, after this weekend, methinks its time for a good long break from the drinking. Of course Christmas and New Years are not likely to elicit this kind of behavior.

So, three pages later and I’m even more drained. I guess that in the end, what’s important is that I made an impact on the lives of my students, and really feeling tied to this community. It begs the question, how do you even begin to measure that?