I hate Google

Google is still giving me a lot of problems to log in, but I have a work-around going now. Not sure how long it will last, as Google is not content until they have annoyed every last person on the planet.

In other news, my class is winding down. Click to see it full size.

and I'm Back

Sorry about the length in between posts, Google in their quest to take over the world has also conquered blogspot so I had to jump through a million hoops and hurdles and change email addresses and confirm accounts to just access my blog. Finally, all is well. (I hope)

Class F

After a much too short break, the mayhem of last session has resided and a new session has started blissfully free of any of the major problems of last session. For the first time in over a year, I am back in the classroom by myself. This is a lot of work, but it's fun and I look forward to actually connecting to the students in Class F.

Interesting...

I saw this on the subway the other day. Apparently the Chinese version of NASA is being sponsored by Yanjing Beer. Anyone else think that might create a little problem later on? Should American government agencies have sponsorship? What would that look like? Would we have the iShuttle? What about corporations taking over troubled states? Would we have something like Pepsi Presents New California (now 35% less debt!)

"Hate Asia yet?"

Everyday brings a new storm. It rains all night and then rains most of the day, when it doesn't rain, the humidity soars. The overabundance of rain is putting a strain on the city's antiquated sewage system that clearly can't handle tens of millions of people let alone flooding and tens of millions of people so there is a very peculiar smell wafting about. The rain isn't like a soft summer rain, but more of a hard angry downpour that can last for hours on end. With this brings problems, each time the lightning gets closer and closer another part of our vaunted technological armory goes down, leaving us teaching with only a chalkboard and oftentimes, no lights, or air conditioning. Put 150 people into a room designed for 100 for 2 hours with no air conditioning and you get another curious aroma to mix in with all the others. With all of this, people have been getting sick. We're heavily short-staffed and overburdened as is, with about 20 people (including hastily "trained" summer staff) trying to handle 1,000 students, so when one person goes down it's an extra burden on everyone else. Right now, we have three down so that's bordering on crisis. I'd say the sky is falling, but it already has been for about a week now. All of this just adds to the overwhelming feeling felt by the newest short term people we have who just got to China two days ago....As one of them came in soaked and drenched after walking back from a class she just got thrown into with a lesson plan, a few tips and good luck, one of the admin team said to her "Hey good job this morning, ya hate Asia yet?"

Storm of the Decade

The past few days we have had unusually heavy storms culminating in one last night that China Daily is calling the Storm of the Decade. I have lived through my share of thunderstorms in my life, even a few tornado warnings in Missouri, but none of them were in any way close to what we went through last night. It started late last night, around 11 and got harder and harder in intensity until about 4am this morning. Some students who got caught out in it were showing off bruises that they got from the rain. Yes, it can actually rain so hard that you can get bruised. The thunder and lightning were the worst. It was nearly fully light in my room from the constant lightning and the vibrations from the deafeningly loud thunder were so bad that it caused a lot of the alignments on our projectors to go askew. (As a result, the students were floored when I told them that Hansel had a sister after watching literally half of the fairy tale.)

I was told by one student that 30 minutes after the rain started to really pound down, it was past their ankles. Given their penchant for exaggerating, I believe the depth but I think it probably took at least an hour to give 3-4 inches of rain. According to a Chinese news service, the city officially received 35 millimeters of water. According to Google, that's 1.37 inches. So either someone's exaggerating, or someone's covering up. Whatever, I'm used to both by now. However, it has also been raining and storming the past few days. Here are a few pictures.

photos

This session, besides being crazy and the most frustrating and intense out of all of them so far, has left me with little free time. Last night however, I was going through a flash drive and found some pictures from when Dad was here.

Us in front of the Temple of Heaven with the Merchandiser.

A giant cat statue at the Beijing Zoo. Look at the people next to it for scale.

In front of the Bird's Nest, where some of the Olympic Games were held.

Dad, Michelle and I at Tienanmen Square

large group fun

So this session is going to be mayhem. We are breaking our record for most students by a few hundred: 980 students. Normally we have 2 to 300, so this should be fun. For this session, I am in charge of large group. The students have classes of about 40-50 where their facilitator has lesson plans and what not and then three times a day, all the students get together for large group. This session, because of the massive number of them, the students will be broken into 5 groups which we label with colors. Each color will have around 200 students, broken into about 5 classes of 50. Three times a day every student in that color will get together for large group. I will be leading all the large group activities of two colors and some of a third, and another facilitator will do the other two colors and some of the third. So basically, we are responsible for 2.5 colors. Confused? Good. Now try being a part of our staff planning meetings.

Anyway, since I am technically in charge of all the large groups for all the colors, I am giving the large group curriculum a long overdue overhaul. This isn't without it's troubles. What we do in large group is practice diction, read inspirational Chicken Soup-esque stories that we call Morning Motivationals to keep morale high and listen to famous speeches and fairy tales. That's where it gets fun. The second week is a doozy for both facilitators and students as we listen to Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" speech for two days and then Robert F. Kennedy's "Remarks on the Assassination of MLK" speech. This entails a great deal of civil rights coverage which the students could quite frankly, care less about. Think about it, what do you know and/or care about 1960's China? King's speech is also especially difficult for a non native speaker, filled with fiery Southern vernacular to put it simply. I have tried to bring this point up again and again and it's been shot down for political reasons by teammates who share the hue (not to mention the view) of King. This summer, being in charge of overhauling this, I have decided to ignore the torpedoes and full speed ahead. I replaced the two days of civil rights and "I Have a Dream" with Joshua Chamberlain's "Why We Fight" speech from the movie Gettysburg and then follow it up the next day with Abraham Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address." Later in the week, RFK kept his slot and the civil rights has been cut down and merged in there. I think this works out because it creates an overarching theme for the students to put together, rather than a bunch of random speeches. We have Chamberlain urging men to fight to make others free, Lincoln urging their sacrifice to not be in vain and then RFK carries it into the 20th century. Besides at least this way, I don't have to listen to 200 Chinese students trying to imitate the Southern drawl of MLK. I think it's a good plan and so far, the planets have aligned, because admin team is agreeing to it. For now.

...but I'm sure I'm still an evil racist.

new summer staff

The short term volunteers have come and we have the usual amount of high school students, teachers, retirees, etc. The same as we have any year, except this year we have Marcus. Marcus is in his late twenties and retired from the Army. Yes, you read that right. This guy's "been there, done that" list reads like a comic book hero. He's an Army Ranger who has a confirmed kill count, several shrapnel and small arms fire injuries. After a piece of shrapnel from an IED (roadside bomb) gave him his second Purple Heart, the Army forced him out and through his friend (and my former roommate) Geoff, he found his way here. This guy is fun to talk to and really adds to the session.

For those of you wondering...

No, the spiders didn't work. They foolishly built their webs nearby Michelle's shower drain and met a watery grave when she was most displeased with their apparent lack of progress.

In other news, it is bloody hot. You want to get an idea of what the humidity is like, turn your shower on full blast, shut the door as tightly as you can and let the steam build up for about 10-15 minutes. Get dressed in business attire and open up the door so the steam hits you full blast. Now work like that all day long, every day and you get the picture.

Valuable and Icky Resources

With the onset of summer, comes two unwanted things. The first is the high humidity that makes an 85 degree day feel like Riyadh in a heat wave, the second is the millions of bugs, especially mosquitoes that come for the all you can bite smorgasbord. We try many ways to get rid of our long-nosed guests, some work better than others. However, the latest tool in the War Against Itching is perhaps the most interesting. When Emily left to go back to the Motherland, what she left behind was scavenged as is our custom. As I was walking out with several hangers she left behind, I saw my girlfriend Michelle coming in with a piece of paper and a small bit of cardboard.

"Whatcha doing, babe?" I said, curious.

She replied nonchalently "I'm getting her spiders before anyone else does."

Spiders. Right. I was just on my way to get them myself....wait, what?

"Check it out...do you see any mosquitoes in here, did she ever even complain of them?"
"Well no, but still...." I couldn't quite complete my thoughts as I was too busy watching her go into the bathroom to coax some rather shy daddy-longleggers onto her piece of paper. She got a few that had been quite comfortable thank you, under Emily's sink and carefully took them back to her own bathroom.

"Now you are free to live here. Kindly don't roam. This is a good land, rich and fertile with plenty of food for you. Your only condition is to eat mosquitoes. You can do that to your little heart's content." She said kindly as her eight legged charges took their first timid steps upon the strange new tile. "However, if you don't live up to your part of the deal then we will have to revisit our agreement." She said with an ominous look at the sandal that bore the dried out carcasses of those insects with whom she didn't negotiate.

I went back to my room and saw a small spider eyeing me carefully from the corner of my shower, I paused for a second and considered Michelle's "live-in-harmony-with-all-things" strategy. Then..

BAM! SLAP! POW!

I'm a cold-hearted person and I have the mosquito bites to prove it.

Hope for MY City

If you're from Gettysburg, or anywhere nearby Freedom Valley, you know of this Hope for the City thing going on. If not, well keep checking back for the next post.

Here is my list for MY city.

1. Haidian District (my "home" district)---population about 2.3 million

2. Fengtai District-- population about 1.4 million. Burgeoning population resulted in a new large english speaking church.

3. Changping District -- about 800,000 --considered a rural district on the outskirts of Beijing. My first time to China, I lived in this district.

4. Chaoyang District --about 3 million. The Embassy District where most of the embassies and consulates are. A very affluent district.

5. Dongcheng District -- about 1 million. This one and the next one are in the very heart of the city where most of the government buildings are.

6. Xicheng District -- about 1.3 million

7. Shijingshan District -- about 500,000. Contains a large number of Buddhist temples and monasteries. One of the more religious parts of the city as far as Buddhism/Taoism go.

8. Daxing District -- about 700,000 home to many extremely poor Chinese migrants who come to Beijing looking for work. --

9. Fangshan District. -- about a million people. Rural part of Beijing that contains many many ancient Buddhist shrines as well as a Christian church known as the Monastery of the Cross that dates back over 500 years.

10. Wudaokou --maybe 25,000 people. A small neighborhood close by me that is the heart of the University area. As such there are many more foreigners here than Chinese and a good place to talk to anyone from back home or meet people from all over the world.

The numbers are a rough estimate and if anything, I underestimated. There are still more districts I haven't counted yet, not to mention the rural counties.

NBA finals

I will never understand how a Chinese student who can barely understand a word of English, and speak even less, can suddenly give lengthy dialogues on the wonder of the NBA finals. NBA as you might know, has more fans over here, than in the US and during NBA finals, the country practically shuts down. Even the average housewife knows today that the Mavericks beat the Heat and maybe perhaps, LeBron James will kindly shut the &#!% up. I have a student in one of my classes who just sits there and pays attention best as he can and then leaves at the end. Doesn't ask questions, doesn't answer questions. He's in a low level ability class and was tagged for special help in tutoring, but today he became a fount of knowledge on the NBA final last night. His account of the game as well as his near flawless pronunciation of "Dirk Nowitzki" made me think perhaps he had been mislabeled, or just didn't care. If only we could have a basketball theme TIP...

Differences

So since coming back from this...

....to this

I've noticed a few things about my time in America. When you're gone for 14 months, you notice a few things and the culture that you grew up can give you culture shock like a completely foreign land. Some of the things that I knew once, but caught me by surprise this trip:

-By and large, Americans wear nothing. It was mid May, temperatures in the mid to high 70's mostly, a few forays into the 80's and people were out and about with clothes where the biggest piece of fabric was the "how to wash" tag. Which sadly brings me to my next point.

-Americans are fat. Not like "feel proud of who you are" fat, not "big boned" fat, not "a few extra donuts at work" fat but "more chins then a Hong Kong phone book" fat. Now, I'm not saying this is true for all people I saw, as my mom still weighs about the same as an anemic gopher, and a few close friends of mine have dropped some serious weight, but by and large (pun intended) Herman Melville could write a book about the average American. Which is probably because...

-Drinks are epic. When I was a kid, I had an inflatable pool that was smaller than a Medium at Burger King. I got a large value meal at McDonalds where the sweet tea came with a ladder and life preserver. And refills are free! Back in Beijing, you order a drink, and it comes in a shot glass and refills are buy one, get one same price. However, in America when you drink enough Mr. Pibb in a single seating to flood a small Romanian village and noticeably affect Pepsi's stock, them calories are gonna begin to add up. Speaking of adding up...

-Can anyone afford coffee anymore? Why do they call it a latte? Maybe because it costs a latte or because it takes a latte time to make. I don't know if it's the economy or a flood of graduates but apparently a Masters in Art History or a Bachelors in English qualifies you to do one thing these days: Get a nose ring and pour coffee for a living while talking with customers about things that are "ironic." Be it Starbucks, or an independent coffee shop, it's still the only place in the world that can charge you $4.50 for a coffee drink and then still ask you for tips with a straight face....

- Just like the guys at the MTV music awards, accepting awards for creating...nothing. Maybe I'm just getting old, maybe I've been away too much but modern pop music sounds like someone is listening to a computer modem try to connect while a police scanner goes off sporadically. As Autotune takes over, music just seems to get lazier.

(...and the Grammy goes to....Kanye for his hit single, "All Units Stand By (Stand by, stand by)")

Ah well, like the old West Point adage goes...my country right or wrong, but still my country. Just....what have you guys been doing since I've been gone?

Back in China

I'm back in China after two long days of waiting for connections, flights and layovers. I hope to resume updating on a semi regular schedule again soon.

America...oh the joy

As many of you know, I am in America for a few weeks. Due to both personal and work related reasons, I tried to get back to Beijing earlier and figured I could just "easily change my flight." I booked my flight originally on a website that had Captain Kirk promising to do to fares what he did to the Klingons...zap 'em! However, I would rather clean up every tribble off an international space station than have to deal with their customer "service" call center again.
I call the website and I get rerouted to what I call the computer maze.
The customer support people don't want to actually talk to anyone, God forbid, so they force their customers, like mice, to go through mazes.

An overly cheerful female computer answers on the first ring.
Thank you for calling GeneriTrip, where you can save up to .004% on airfare, hotels and car rentals every day! How may I help you today?
Press 1) for English
Press 2) for Spanish
In Soviet Russia...Number presses you!

I press one

Press 1) for airline reservations
Press 2) for car rental
Press 3) for hotel reservations
Press 4) for your itinerary
Press 5) to hear a duck quack

Again I press one. Again I get the cheerful fem-bot.

Thank you for booking with GeneriTrip! For staff entertainment purposes, this call may be monitored and recorded. To assure we have the highest level of customer service and to better assist you, please enter the 16 digit confirmation code in the lower middle upper right hand of the email you deleted 3 weeks ago followed by your high school locker combination and mothers pet name for your father on nights when she's had too much sherry.

Fortunatly, I don't delete anything and after a few false starts, I am able to enter in the information and am told to "please wait and the next available customer service representative will help you."
So I wait.
and wait.
I hear "Whole Lotta Love" done entirely on strings. I hear what sounds suspiciously like the Star Wars theme done, elevator style.
I wait some more and I hear Captain Kirk tell me about all the awesome things GeneriTrip can do for my next trip. Book Today! Oh wait, you're on our hold line...yeah, hahah, good luck buddy.

Finally a guy who is a dead ringer for Abu from The Simpsons answers.

Long story short,they said it would be a $250 fee plus the difference in the tickets. Ouch, but whatever OK, I'll pay that. I just want to get this over with. So I say i want to leave anywhere between the 18th and the 24th (3 days on either side of the 21st, the date I want to leave) and he was like "ok no problem lets find you a flight." 20 minutes on hold (again) later, he says all of those days are completley booked. I said you have GOT to be kidding me...you're telling me there is a great exodus of people leaving from Baltimore to go to Beijing in the end of May? At this point, I detected a bit of sarcasm in his heavily acccented voice.
"No sir, but there is a lot of people going from SAN FRANCISCO to Beijing and considering how you're flying into SF first, that might be an issue."
It was at this point, i was really hoping his was one of those "your call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes" calls because he was the furtherst thing from helpful. So then I said, "Ok travel guy, rumor has it more than one city gets flights in from BWI and also goes to Beijing...can I get one of those? Literally anywhere, LA, Seattle, Vancouver, London, Timbuktu?"
No, he says.
Not just sorry sir, or let me check but straight up no.
Care to explain? say I
"Yeah you're flying with continental which is being absorbed by United, so right now CON flights out of the east coast are flying to west coast hubs before they go to asian destinations."
Ok, so any other airline?
"You would have to book it with them, genius."
Yeah, i guess i should have figured that one out.

So then he says, wait i found a flight out of SF that would get into Beijing at 5am on May 26, is that ok?
YES YES FOR THE CATHOLIC LOVE OF MARY THAT IS WHAT I WANT! How much?
The price differential is $1,100 and add in the $250 surcharge for changing your flight and that comes to $1,350 plus taxes and government fees.

Whhaaaaa? thats more than my original flight!

I'm sorry sir, but flights have seen an increase in prices in the last few weeks. May I assist you with anything else today?


No thanks Abu...
*click*

Dad in Beijing

So for this week, my dad is visiting here in Beijing along with Michelle's parents. It's been an adventure so far taking them to the various tourist spots in Beijing. It's a good preperation for the summer staff, when instead of babysitting being a tour guide for 3 people, it's 30.

Well that was interesting

ESEC's 30th anniversary is quickly arriving and Danny is trying to get letters of congratulations and what not for a 30th anniversary book he (read: me) is working on. One of these people is the US ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman. We haven't gotten anything from him or his people, so we're assuming he has busy ambassadory type things to do. So Danny wants to make it easy on him and we'll write the congratulations letter and all he has to do is read and sign and presto, we got our centerpiece for the book. So guess what I did today.

That's right. I wrote a draft of a congratulations letter from the Ambassador to ESEC. Not quite sure if that's legal or not, but still pretty happy about it.

Who Shot the Flamingo?

Every year about this time, the cherry blossoms bloom bright pink and it's beautiful. They're in full bloom right now, but last night a storm came (the first recorded rainfall since October) and the wind blew many of the petals off the trees. This is how it looked like walking to class this morning.

My coworker Karen remarked that it looked like pink confetti. Being in a bit of a rush and in a bit of sour mood, I dryly remarked that it looked like someone shot a flamingo. Apparently, that made her day and later on, she went out and drew this in.

New Passport

After a few weeks of playing bureaucratic bingo, I finally have my new passport (courtesy of the US) and working visa (courtesy of China.) I had to go to the People's Security Bureau (PSB) to get it and that place always gives me the creeps. To get an idea of it, imagine a building that is both FBI headquarters and the DMV....and the FBI is a little suspicious of you anyway.

The PSB is sorta like that.

Anytime you see footage in VoM or the news about someone getting arrested or their door smashed in in China, probably the PSB doing it. They're like the political police. But everything went well, paid my fee, got my passport and all is well for another 2 months when i need to get my year visa renewed.

update

Like a monster from a bad sci-fi movie, Danny's book just won't die and keeps coming back. He's adding more and more chapters and information to it, which will be good in the long run, but not so much for me now. I'm co-facilitating a class with a coworker, as well as teaching two extra times during the day, helping to found a new technology orientated TIP for Shanghai and keeping up with Dannys book.

I know I've been posting a lot of pics of YuanMingYuan park lately but come on, it's really pretty this time of year. Also funny, like this one of a sign that says "Stay off the Ice"

New Passport

I spent all day today at the US Embassy applying for a renewal on my passport. It's a huge concrete and glass mega structure that could easily house several smaller countries inside and it's laid out in a vast labyrinth of security checkpoints and windows and lines. I found it a bit odd that all of the security was done by Chinese nationals as well as most of the secretarial work. I gave my application and the application fee to two very nice Chinese ladies. (for the added touch of home, the workers spoke heavily accented English)

The only American I talked to who worked there was the one who told me that my passport would be ready in seventotenbusinessdayspickupatwindowfourthankyouNEXT!

Copyright laws in China?

China openly flaunts copyright laws, with fake handbags, shoes, designer shades, DVD's etc. You get used to it quick, however, there are just some times when you look at something and can't believe China had the nerve to pull off such an obvious copyright violation.

Yes. That's Donald Duck in front of the Olympic Stadium. Mickey and Minnie Mouse were there as well.

Spring

Spring has finally hit! The temperature today was in the mid 60's, and I had the afternoon off, so I went for a walk.

Ah, spring...when the light glistens off the glass shards and the blooms come through the barbed wire!

China doesn't suffer for a lack of bridges.

in case you ever wondered what it's like to live in China

...it's something like this.

one child policy

So apparently the Politboro is in session. Yay. It's sort of like the Chinese Senate, except nobody is really elected and they actually get stuff accomplished most of the time.

What that means for us is that there is a lot more police presence around Beijing, staring at foreigners in an attempt to remind everyone that China is still big, bad and communist. With random countries around the globe playing musical leaders due to the tune of Revolucion!, I can understand the Chinese being wary about protesters.

However, one good thing is coming out of all this. China is considering removing the infamous "one child" policy with a trial run in five provinces. Details are still emerging, but always remember, you heard it here first, folks.

Purpose Driven Mayhem

Today some representatives from Saddleback Christian Church (You may have heard of them, or a little book their pastor, a fellow by the name of Rick Warren, put out a few years ago) are coming to TIP to observe. Now, I don't know much about it, but apparently, there is some talk of some sort of partnership with Saddleback and ESEC. Like I always say, recruits is recruits, so we'll see how it goes. The admin team however is running around all over the place trying to get ready for them. They will only be here for a short time as their primary objective in China is working with Haidian Church.

on a side note, this is my 250th blog post.

Japanese Earthquake

Apparently there was a rather big earthquake in Japan. I didn't feel a thing here in Beijing.

Beijing is 1,300 miles from Tokyo. To put that into some perspective, that is roughly the distance of Virgina to Texas.

Being the White Monkey

Today is student orientation for a new session. It is long, incredibly boring and held mostly in Chinese. The facilitators take turns going, and call it "being the white monkey."

Let me explain:

When you go to the zoo, you see the monkey, the monkey sees you. You both stare at each other in some sort of amused curiosity. It's similar with us and orientation.

The students see a foreigner (a curiosity in its own right) and go "oooh this place can afford to hire foreigners, it must be good!" They then stare, take pictures, smile bashfully, etc and we're wondering if maybe we should do a trick or something.

Two and a half hours later, we're both bored silly.

But at least they have something to look at.

Say what?

As you may or may not know, we require the students only speak English during their time here to keep up the intense learning pressure. There are some penalties for breaking this "english only environment." As the Chinese staff speaks English and the American staff has a pretty good grasp on the language, normally it isn't a problem. However, sometimes it's just funny. Like today.

At lunch, some students were milling around outside the cafeteria, talking or buying small snacks or drinks or whatever, when a delivery truck came up. The driver hopped out and asked (in Chinese) where a certain building was. The student she asked just looked to the ground and shook her head no. The driver then asked the next student she saw, who promptly asked if she could speak English. By this point, the driver looked pretty confused. She asked several more people, and they all either smiled shyly or talked back in English. Finally, she got pointed in the direction of a fruit vendor on campus who only speaks Chinese. She walked away saying "You are all Chinese, but yet...you can't understand me?"

Xi'an pictures

I was trying to wait for all the pictures to be collected on a single hard drive, but that doesn't look like it will happen anytime soon. So I will give you what I have.

This is a photo of all us that went and our former student/tour guide extraordinaire, Jackie. From left, Emily, Pip, Michelle, me, Jackie

Big Wild Goose Pagoda. Nearly 2,000 years old and in the exact center of Xi'an. No idea about the name.

Terra-cotta warrior army. When one of the Emperors of the Tang Dynasty died, he had an army of terra-cotta warriors buried with him to accompany him to the afterlife. These were all hidden underground and forgotten about until a farmer trying to dig a well discovered them in the 1970's.



Close up of one of the warriors. This one is an archer. All of the terra cotta warriors had different facial features. No two among the thousands are alike.

This about sums up Spring Festival...

This is what has been going through the mind of every lao wai or foreigner for a while now.

Click to make it bigger.

Xi'an

I apologize for the delay in the posts here. Xi'an was absolutely amazing and easily the best trip I have gone on since I have been in China. However, travel during Spring Festival is to be avoided at any and all costs as we got back a day and a half late on a 15 hour train rather than a 2 hour flight....right into the start of a new session.

Xi'an is an ancient city, one of the four ancient capitals of China, so as such it looks more "Chinese" than ultra-modern, stainless steel and high rise glass Beijing. I'm waiting for the pictures to be merged into one photo account and then I'll post several of the best people and places that we saw on here along with descriptions and some stories.

internet

For whatever reason, the internet here decided to shut off for a while, then switched to slow and unresponsive. Now it's a delightful mix of the two. I'll be in Xi'an the next few days, so I hope that issue is resolved when I get back to Beijing.

INCOMING!

Chinese New Year's is....intense. After waaaaay too much food and letting it digest a bit, we went outside to watch the fireworks and light off some of our own. American July 4th doesn't even come close. This was 360 degrees of heavy explosives streaking through the night sky for well over an hour. It wasn't set off from one central location for safety, like in America, but everyone had their own, all over everywhere and they flew all over the sky. The sounds of heavy booms and the sharp cracks of big firecrackers, along with the bright explosions, led one person to say "it was the closest to urban combat, that we'd ever come." We could look right under the fireworks and at one point, the burnt out shells from them landed at our feet. One of our coworkers had bought a box of random odds and ends from a street vendor and when we lit them off, we were surprised at the distance, size and power of the fireworks/rockets. All but the most basic of what we lit off tonight would have been illegal to buy in the US and I'm sure many safety laws were violated all over the city with nearly every one of the 20 million occupants lighting off something. The country that invented it, still has a monopoly on the biggest, loudest and brightest of them.

I have never had so much fun on New Years then I did tonight.

Happy New Year

...if you live in China. Chinese New Year is the longest and most important festivity in the Chinese lunar calendar. The origin of it is itself centuries old and gains significance because of several myths and traditions. Ancient Chinese New Year is a reflection on how the people behaved and what they believed in the most.

Within China, regional customs and traditions concerning the celebration of the Chinese new year vary widely. People will pour out their money to buy presents, decoration, material, food, and clothing. It is also the tradition that every family thoroughly cleans the house to sweep away any ill-fortune in hopes to make way for good incoming luck. Windows and doors will be decorated with red color paper cuts with popular themes of "happiness", "wealth", and "longevity". These can be incredibly intricate and detailed. It's really fun to watch a traditional paper artist make one of these with just a piece of construction paper and scissors.

On the Eve of Chinese New Year, supper is a feast with families. Food will include such items as ham, ducks, chicken and sweet delicacies. The family will end the night with firecrackers. Early the next morning, children will greet their parents by wishing them a healthy and happy new year, and receive money in red paper envelopes. One of the best things about Chinese New Year, is that it is a tradition to reconcile; forget all grudges, and sincerely wish peace and happiness for everyone. Then everyone goes outside and lights firecrackers and fireworks. On that day and the next, and the next, and the next, until every foreigner steadily goes crazy.

Although the Chinese calendar traditionally does not use continuously numbered years, outside China its years are often numbered from the reign of the Yellow Emperor (which sounds vaguely racist, if you ask me) But at least three different years numbered 1 are now used by various scholars, making the year 2011 "Chinese Year" 4709, 4708, or 4648.

I will be spending this New Year's in Beijing, but shortly thereafter will go to Xi'an as we (finally) got tickets.

That takes some cajones, China...

As you probably know, Hu Jintao, the President of China was in Washington DC for a bit. There was a state dinner held and a pianist named Lang Lang entertained the mixed American/Chinese crowd with his impressive talent on the piano. One of the songs he played in front of Hu Jintao and Obama was called ""My Motherland" -- the theme song from the Chinese-made Korean War movie "Battle on Shangangling Mountain."

Hu, the guest of honor at the dinner, surely recognized the melody. The song has been a favorite anti-American propaganda tool for decades. Lang apparently knew exactly what he was playing.

A White House spokesman declined to comment on the song selection, instead directing questions about Lang's performance to the National Security Council staff, which surprise, surprise, was not available to comment.

The 1956 film "Battle on Shangangling Mountain" depicts Chinese troops pinned down under enemy fire on the mountain. Then reinforcements arrive and the troops gallantly attack the US soldiers, whom the Chinese refer to as "jackals."

The song Lang played in front of Hu and President Obama includes the verse: "When friends are here, there is fine wine/But if the jackal comes/What greets it is the hunting rifle."

Lang said in a TV interview that he played the song to reflect Chinese pride.

"I think playing the tune at the White House banquet can help us, as Chinese people, feel extremely proud of ourselves and express our feelings through the song," he told the Chinese network Phoenix TV.

"I think it's especially good. Also, I like the tune in and of itself. Every time I hear it, I feel extremely moved."

Lang, who performed for the state-dinner music program that the White House billed as "quintessentially American," was more blunt in a blog.

"Playing this song praising China to heads of state from around the world seems to tell them that our China is formidable, that our Chinese people are united; I feel deeply honored and proud," Lang wrote, according to a report by Epoch Times.

The anti-US musical interlude at the White House touched off some patriotic chest-thumping on Chinese blogs.

"Those American folks very much enjoyed it and were totally infatuated with the melody!!! The US is truly stupid!!" wrote one blogger.

Yeah...."Quintessential American", indeed there Obama.

Skype

Skype is a wonderful thing. Last night we had a wonderful video chat with several former coworkers who are in various parts of America. This is a screen shot that our friend Syrena took while we were talking and catching up with one another.

From top left, clockwise: Beijing, China -Chicago, Illinois - Los Angeles, California, - Lancaster, Pennsylvania - Brookings, South Dakota - Portland, Oregon.

We were able to talk to all of these people at the same time for free. (Although it does require a trial version of an upgrade which will charge in the future.) When you can do stuff like this, you have to realize that at some point, we stopped living in the present and entered the future.

train tickets

We have an extra long break coming up for the observance of Spring Festival, a major holiday time. (think Christmas season) So a few of us decided to go to the ancient city of Xi'an for a while and take in the sights. Normally you can go and book your train tickets and then go. They don't have online booking or expedia for trains, so you have to physically go and book them. It's not usually bad....but apparently right before Spring Festival, it is.

My coworker Pip and I got to the train station ticket counter at 7, believing it to open at 8. At 7 the line was already about twenty yards and the temperature was a balmy 24 degrees. So we waited...and stood. And waited.

And stood.

And froze.

And waited some more

Around 9, I went back to the campus to grab some warmer clothes and clear some things up with the Chinese AA who told us to go there and I grabbed a thermos of hot water for Pip and headed back.

And then waited.

And stood.

And waited.

At 1120, we finally reached the front and merging both of our Chinese and gestures asked for hard sleeper tickets to Xian on the 30th of January.

The conducter told us that there were no more sleeper berths available but he could offer us Zhan tickets.

Pip: "zhan? zhan? what is zhan?"

Me: I don't know either....let me look it up. ah here we go zhan, third tone,...."to stand."

Wait....he's trying to sell us tickets to STAND the whole way there?

Apparently so....

I hate taking the subway across Beijing when its crowded for 20 minutes, and this guy wants us to stand for 12 hours across China?

So we left empty handed. We'll try again after Spring Fesitival, hopefully the lines will be shorter and the (good) tickets more plentiful.

next month

February is the biggest holiday month on the Chinese calendar, so as such I was expecting few (if any) students next month a more relaxed session. Wrong. Turns out it will be our biggest session in several months with around 300 students.

Update

Finally back from Europe. It was a great trip all around. I spent most of my time in Zilina, Slovakia with Darya, and then her and I took side trips to Bratislava and Trencin, as well as Ostrava in the Czech Republic. The scenery was absolutely fantastic. Castles, museums, art galleries and gorgeous snow covered countryside. I have a few pictures below, however over a hundred more can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2012848&id=91300146&l=3a99725150

I came back to Beijing to find that we have a very small session, only a few dozen students, so I will be working along with others, to develop a Mandarin TIP. We had one last year but I missed it when I went back to PA, so this will also be a new experience for me as well.

Darya and I outside of a castle in Zilina

Trencin Castle

Vacation

For those who don't know, I am on vacation in eastern Europe. Normal posting, as well as pictures, shall resume when I return on January 7th.