Baby's Bare Bottom

I came across a quote (during my frequent quote Google expeditions) when I first got to Cangzhou that not only made me laugh but also was so true that it has stuck with me: “The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.” – Rudyard Kipling. 

Before this trip, this quote would have been just words on a page that made me laugh, but now they are the words prompting me to write how Cangzhou is affecting my senses.  So let’s run through them starting with smell.  I ride my bike everywhere now.  Even though I wear a face mask to protect my lungs and, let’s be real here, my snot, I still am able to experience the lovely aromas Cangzhou has to offer.  If I use Kipling’s quote I would have to say that what the smells teach me is that Cangzhou is normally pleasant at times, so putrid it takes everything in you not to vomit about 50% of the time, and every once in a while you are graced with something so lovely you take a minute to let it go through your whole body.  Every area in the world has a smell, as do the people that live there.  Here the people don’t smell bad, not like some places in Eastern Europe but they have a distinct smell, which reminds me daily that ‘yup, I am in China’.  Now the city smells are what really cement it in.  I will be riding my bike and everything is fine, it smells like air and normal stuff, them WHAM…I ride so fast and try not to breath just to get through a stench.  There must be sewer let outs on the streets or just concentrated spots where multiple people have participated in way too frequent practice of street urination, because about ever 50-100 feet you hit this 30ft area of rotten stench.  It’s a smell that just makes it physically painful to breath, so horrible.  But then there are rare those times (normally near a good restaurant) when the smells are just wonderful! But when those smells are overpowered by the street stench, there is always my trusty Japanese Cherry Blossom scented body spray from Bath & Body works!

These wonderful smells take us to my next sense: taste.  Finding good food in Cangzhou has been a culinary rollercoaster.  Since Cangzhou isn’t a tourist town we are left with nearly one type of food: Chinese.  There is a Japanese place, but its way overpriced and not that good.  Then there are the pizza places, and even though the Chinese invented pizza and Italians only perfected it, the Chinese really have no bragging rights in the pizza business.  So that brings us back to Chinese.  It has taken a month, but we have found 2 great places, besides our kitchens, to get food.  It took time to find these places because there are a million little shops everywhere that sell food.  But we were on a mission to find a place with not only good food but, honest owners, reasonably healthy (ie. not dripping in oil), and at good prices.  One of our places is the noodle place.  It is a run by a nice Muslim couple.  A big pro about going to a Muslim place is that there is no wondering what meat it is: white meat is always chicken and red meat is beef, since there will never be pork.  Also, they are great with sign language.  We normally get the food to go and when we couldn’t say it we mimed it and they got it, a rarity in China.  So now when we go in they ask us if we want to eat in or take out, all through sign language! And they are so friendly!! Plus, they make the noodles by hand, and it is so awesome to see, they got a kick out how excited the 4 of were to see them do this.  And the last deciding factor on if this place became a favorite was the price: great prices for good portion sizes, and they always put in a lot of veggies (or as my UK friends say, lots of veg). Our second favorite place is actually somewhere we have spent 3 weeks hunting down.  My first week here, Leann (Shishi’s husband) brought home this wonderful chicken, and would only tell us it came from across the street.  So we have been checking out the shops and stands across the street but never found it, but whenever we would look about half the shops would be closed.  So Tuesday we went out on another scouting trip and God must have known how much we wanted this chicken because we followed our noses (and the rare wonderful scents) and found our chicken shop…enter the harp playing angels as a light shines upon the shop.  It is a solely chicken place and so well priced we were ecstatic, 1 kilo of chicken for 21 Yuan (about $4).  We have been twice so far.  The chicken paired with stand bough veggies and rice or a yummy bread bun, is the perfect dinner! That is what Abigael and I had tonight minus the rice or bread buns, so great!
Here is a video of the awesome noodle maker:

Next sense: hearing.  There is a constant pollution of honking.  Even at 6am, it is there.  They use car horns not to be safe, but just to let everyone (drivers and pedestrians alike) know that they are there and driving crazy.  The driving reminds me of the quote by Henry Morgan: “A careful driver is one who honks his horn when he goes through a red light.”  It’s absolutely terrifying to bike around all of it.  There are also random yells of “Hello” which are always found to have come from a very smiley Chinese man.  But it is fun to hear and they are always so happy when we smile and say hello back.  There is also random music that floats through my windows on weekend mornings, around 6/7am.  It would be annoying but since weekends are my early days it’s a nice wake up.  There must be a group that dances nearby but I have never seen them. But it is nice Chinese music.  Walking around at night we have seen a group who does this slow karate dance in front of some shops to similar music, but I have yet to find the morning group, they must be gone by the time I bike to work. 

Sight: Here in Cangzhou, the dominant visual features are tall, plain buildings, millions of people (4 million to be more precise) and smog.  But after a while you see past that and notice the beautiful lights that line the streets at night, the rare more traditional Chinese decorated shop, bare bottomed babies, and on occasion the cute rabid dog.  Let me explain about the bare bottomed babies.  About 75% of the babies here don’t wear anything to cover their bottoms or fronts.  I don’t know why, but diapers are not used to much.  We still have not figured out why the busses, subways and streets are not covered in baby poop, but even though most of the babies are bare I have never seen anything plop out.  Abigael theorizes that someone just holds them over a toilet every 30 min or so and they can go on command…but we think that is a little too weird to ask the parents at work, so we are answerless.  When we were in Beijing Abigael and I could not stop staring at the totally open baby sitting with his grandmother.  He was moving up and down and just wiggling everywhere, giving everyone on the subway a good view of what he’s got going on.  And all we could talk about was why on earth would grandma sit the baby’s butt on her clean outfit…what if you pooped.  And then why don’t the people standing the wet zone move out of the way just in case…I would have.  But even on a 15 min ride, the baby was good. 

Ok the last sense is touch, but as I try my best to not touch everything, so as not to contract anything unwanted and waste my antibacterial wipes, I will not be describing how Cangzhou feels.  But All in all my 1^st month here has been educational and fun.  

we are supposed to be teachers not business gurus

This week has been a very trying one.  First of all, let me say that the Chinese have a very different approach to business and schedules than we westerners.  So different in fact that makes me wonder how they ever came to be a power that can threaten the UK or US for world influence.  Their approach to business seems to be “no schedules, we will just give you a call 5 min before and hope you are near your phone or can come.  When something goes wrong we will just laugh and smile till the westerners head’s are about to explode.  Then, instead of giving you what you need and ask for I am going to spend money on getting you something that is not only unnecessary but unwanted.  Oh, and surprise, I’m not going to tell you when you will be getting something I’m just going to send strange men over to your apartment and have them install it.  And don’t worry, if you don’t answer your door, they have a key and will just come on.”   That, in a very tiny (as well-mannered as I can be) nutshell, has been my week. 

Things in Cangzhou are fine.  I am getting used to the city, we bought masks to ride our bike with so we don’t die of smog inhalation, and I am even getting used to the street markets and expanding my knowledge of Chinese.  However, work is the frustrating part.  When I came I thought adjusting to the culture and china was going to be the issue, but now my issues seem to be in figuring out how to deal with Chinese business.  My boss never seems to listen.  She is the sweetest woman, but no business sense, she is digging herself into a hole with the business and we are all worried about having jobs for our contracted times.  Also, she won’t give a straight answer about anything, nor do the TA’s.  We ask about Chinese New Year breaks…we get “12 days for sure……or 15, I don’t know yet.” We ask when, I get told different things by the boss and the TA whom she seems to let be in charge of everything.  But after 2 weeks ago, when we were never told of schedule changes then got a call at 8:30am asking why we weren’t there to teach our classes, we lost all faith in the TA.  So now we are here trying to figure out this ludicrous system that not only wastes so much time and effort but is wasting precious money that the school does not have.  We even sat Shishi down and said that certain things are not acceptable and that we need to have schedules and be notified of changes, and she wrote it down and asked us to help her revamp the school to make it more efficient.  It lasted for about a week and then this week everything was back at square one.  To top it all off, the class I started, who are also my babies, had 17 kids in it, way too much for a class. So I asked if we could split it and Shishi (my boss) said oh yes, that is way too much, you should have no more than 10.  So I talk to Vicky (the main TA) and she just goes behind my back and takes 4 of my kids out and puts them in a beginner class! I was so frustrated.  Out of all 17 kids, a few could actually have used the help to get sent back to the beginning but she just chose at random and chose 4 pretty advanced kids, and it was so hard for me.  This week it just seems like one thing after another keeps piling up, and all of us are feeling it.   

Beijing, Toilets, Starbucks and Smog

Weeks 2 & 3 in China have been ones of travel and really learning about the Chinese people and culture.  I am really settling in here, it’s very nice.  I moved into my apartment in the middle of my 2^nd week here.  Edwina and Alistair were supposed to move into their place but (as we are in China) it was not finished, even though the construction team has been given 3 months to finish it.  So we are currently nice and cozy in my little 2 bedroom.  It’s actually not bad at all, we all get along really well and we would be hanging out together no matter what-this just cuts out the travel time.  October 1^st is National Day in China, about the equivalent to the 4^th of July to us-just without the fireworks.  My favorite thing about national day was 4 days off work!! Shishi had work off as well for she took Edi, Ali, myself and Fenfen to Beijing! It was great, and totally exhausting. 

(Oct 1) After a crowded, slightly smelly 3 hour train ride into Beijing we were so happy to get to the hostel and rinse off before exploring China’s capital. We hadn’t even walked 100 ft from the hostel before we were stopped by a group and asked to take pictures with them.  Walking through the very crowded streets we had multiple pictures taken of us and were just stared at like crazy, it was very funny at times.  Out game in the city became spot the person who is very non-discreetly taking a photo of you-we got very good at it.  After some very crowded bus and metro rides we went to this HUGE market that Edi and Ali went to last time.  It was quite the experience.  I have never been good at bargaining prices, but I got OK here.  Its 6 floors and you can find just about anything you would ever want.  My goal was to find scarves and some other gift items.  Walking around the market, you really get a sense of how well God designed the body and made it so your arms can be tugged, pulled and twisted without coming out of the socket.  The sales people literally try and pull you into their stores…and some actually bar you from going out if you won’t buy something.  Most people tug rather lightly and when you twist your arm they let go, but there were a few very persistent and rather rude people.  One lady actually grabbed my wrist with bother of her hands, pulled with her whole body and twisted my arm to try and get me into her store.  She kept pulling until I finally managed to yank free, but my wrist her for the rest of the day.  The sales people are also just like parrots...all you hear is “lady”, “buy a Prada wallet??” and “what you look for?” or “what you want?”.  If you do go into a store to look around, about half of them will try to keep you in there. They actually stand in the entry way and when you try to leave they won’t move and they keep asking going down in prices, it’s nice when you actually want to buy something, but when you don’t it’s just rude.  It only doesn’t freak you out, because they are tiny little Chinese women, so you are able to just sort of push them out of the way.  It sounds rude when I actually write it out, but when you are doing it, it’s just more a matter of self preservation.   Since I am not too good at bartering Alistair stuck around to help me for a bit.  But since the sales people speak some English we can’t discuss things in front of the in English so we would use Spanish since all 3 of us speak it.  It actually comes in very handy because we can say what prices we think are good, etc.  I did manage to make a few good deals though.  I bought a few gifts and even a cozy scarf for me. 

(Oct 2)  This is what I was most excited about when I decided to come to China: The Great Wall!! It’s a Wonder of the World, so big you can see it from space (if you measure in a straight line start to finish it is the distance from LA to Boston), and just totally awesome!  We decided to take a hostel tour to the Mutianyu section of the wall.  It was great! We were blessed with gorgeous weather so you could see out forever around the wall, and there were less crowd here vs. the more commonly visited Badaling.  Of course nothing about travelling is every perfect, I messed up charging my battery the night before and so as soon as I turned on my camera I found a drained battery, I just about died.  Edwina and Alistair had also just commented to me that they forgot to charge their camera and only had about half their battery left-but we are troopers and made it work.  To get up to the wall from the parking lot you can hike for about 45 min or take the 5 min chair lift-we of course took the chair lift to save time.  It was really fun and gave some great views as we rode up.  WE hiked the wall for about 3 hours.  And I say hike because it really is a hike.  Parts of it are so steep, but the aches are so worth it! Not only does it provide beautiful views of green mountains but it is awesome walking a place that started being built in the 7^th century.  Taking pictures was an amusing thing; we would turn on the camera and run to take the picture really quick.  When the battery started decreasing more, we would ask different people to use their cameras to take some pictures on our SD cards, it was very interesting.  It was surprising how many people were ok with it.  I even asked Chinese girls who spoke no English and I managed to communicate what I wanted and they let me use their camera for about 10 min while they sat waiting for their friends.  One of the more exciting things about the wall is how they let you travel down it….toboggans!! They have a toboggan lane that takes about 5-10 min you get down depending on how fast you toboggan.  It was great! There was a few times that I though “wow, if you were to fly out right now, you would fall down this large Chinese hill and die”, but it was great! And of course being daddy’s girl, I was down in about 5 min!  That night, Edi, Ali and I were on a mission to find cocktails and just have a night out…we found a wonderful backpackers restaurant/bar in the Hutong (little side street) near our hostel.  It had great cocktails and amazing food-burgers and pizza, how much more western can you get!

(Oct 3)  Summer Palace!!!  Again we had wonderful weather-no smog what so ever!!  We spent a good 8 hours walking around the Palace grounds and still did not go everywhere.  The Palace grounds are very spread out with beautiful ponds, parks, pagodas, mini cities and buildings throughout.  Even though it was crowded it was still a lovely escape from the rest of the city.  We had lunch along the water in this little village inside the grounds.  We walked along the water looking at the shops and trying not to be pushed into the water by the crazy crowds.  We did have a nice stop at the scribe.  It was a little old man, like someone straight out a movie, and he was so fun and spoke very good English.  I got a scroll done with a proverb.  He starts off by having us find our Chinese year sign; based on the year you are born.  Mine is a rabbit.  After that he puts down about 8 little pieces of paper and you choose one at random, and that is your proverb.  My proverb is ‘Happiness comes after suffering’.  He wrote it in calligraphy on a piece of parchment with some other characters.  It is such a great souvenir! Alistair and I each got one and are excited to get them framed and put up in the apartments.  We walked all around the grounds and then hiked up to the top of the main palace building to see an amazing view of the Beijing skyline and lake.  Walking around the grounds I saw the most appalling thing.  A little boy, about 4 or 5, was walking around with his mother and grandmother it looked like.  He had to pee so they just stopped on the stairs, he whipped it out and peed in the middle of the crowded walkway on the steps leading to the main palace.  I could not believe it!!  

(Oct 4) We had a very relaxing day just walking around Tiananmen Square, going to Starbucks and having cocktails at our new favorite Beijing bar (Helen’s).  Then we had a nice 3 hour train ride back to Cangzhou and had a fun few hours looking at the pictures on our laptops!

The next morning, Alistair got a call at 8:30am asking where he and Edwina were.  Apparently they had class all day and weren’t told.  About an hour later they called to tell me I had a class as well.  We learned that the Chinese do not actually get time off, they just move it around to appear to be time off.  The students got 7 days off for the National Day holiday and then to not get put behind they got to school on the weekend.  So the classes at DD Dragon were moved around to accommodate for that and instead of having a weekend scheduled on the weekend it was moved to be done on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.  Needless to say we were all pretty perturbed and had a good chat with Shishi about it on Friday night and since then things have gotten better.  They are planning more and letting us know of things in advance, which is very helpful.  The new teacher, and my soon to be roommate, Abigael came in on Wednesday the 5^th and we all started hanging out right away.  Well since we had a weekend off, we of course planned a trip.  Although with the holiday getting a train was nearly impossible so we settled for Beijing again, this time just us 4 teachers-it was great!!  We stayed at a wonderful hostel, Happy Dragon, and just hung out, relaxed, had a wonderful hot shower and slept.  We really wanted to explore the nightlife but our favorite place was the hostel.  Great prices, amazing food, the best burger in China, and yummy cocktails! We hung out at night there playing cards, eating and drinking-it was so fun!  In the days we went to The Temple of Heaven, Lama Temple then back to the market.  Temple of heaven was nice but after Summer Palace not too impressive, but since it there was hardly anyone there it was a wonderful escape from the crowds.  The weather wasn’t too good while we were there, so smoggy.  I took a picture of the sun in the sky and it is just a dim orange circle, because of the amount of smog.  Abigael and I went to Lama Temple by ourselves and had a good time.  It was a very nice temple and we were excited to see the monks.  There is also a 18-meter high Buddha carved out of one sand wood tree, it is so huge and amazing.  We all went to the Beijing Opera together, thinking it would be a nice night out.  It turned out to just be a weirdly entertaining night.  The opera is like nothing we expected.  After sitting through 90 min of interesting acts and singing we all just looked at each other, not knowing exactly what to say.  Alistair had it right when he said that you could take a cat, and flashy clothing and stick them all into a blender and get the same audio experience.  But it was still a good experience, I am glad we did it, but we all decided that next time we are going to the Kung Fu show!!

Back in Cangzhou, things are going well.  I am getting more comfortable teaching and really enjoying it.  I am learning a little more Chinese as well, it is quite fun.  We are planning our Christmas holiday, looking into Malaysia and Thailand! It’s rather excited! I also love being here with 2 Brits and a Scotswoman.  We are all having a great time!!  We all have bikes now so we are spending more time running around the streets.  The other day we were biking to a school to hand out flyers and we drove by a market selling fish.  The fish were laid out on a carpet, sitting and the dirty street, and they were flopping! Yes they put them out alive onto the street.  It was a little freaky.  But then I remembered: ‘duh! You are in China’.  Also, something that constantly reminds me of where I am are the toilets.  About half of the toilets are squat ones…meaning there is a ceramic hold in the ground and you squat and pee.  The ground around them are always so gross and dirty that it makes me miss the Wiki we made at camp on the red ant hill.   But ‘when you gotta go you gotta go’, so I am becoming better at just holding my breath and dealing. 

Along with that here are some things we have complied about the Chinese and China. 

Things not heard of in China:

Fortune cookies (…I know sad)

Manners (this is the rudest culture I have ever experienced)

Car filters (smog capital of the world)

Lines (or as my British cohorts would say: ques)

Plans (they are horrible at organization and planning, it’s so difficult)

Traffic Signals (they must just think they are pretty lights because no one abides by them)

After a certain amount of horn usage it stops being effective.  (You can walk anywhere without hearing horn blaring, they use them all the time)

Toilets!! (they pee on the street)

It is not appropriate to hawk a loogie in groups/public

It’s rude to stare (they just turn and stare right at you, people will actually slow down in cars or on bikes to stare at you)

Seatbelts

Child safety in motor vehicles (they just set kids in the rickety seats on the back of the bikes or they have them stand on the bike and hold on)

Finishing by a deadline (the never finish anything by the time they say)

Holidays (this is the hardest for us to understand-no time off, not time to travel, or to have fun.  It’s so sad)

But they make for it with:

A mean bowl of 5ft long noodles

The fact that you can buy anything you’ve ever thought for a cheap price

Selling super cute little face masks to reduce the risk of smog induced diseases

They have a ton of Starbucks in the Beijing!

Beautiful & ancient buildings

Not making vulgar/rude statements to you as they stare