Music at the mall

Chinese malls are enormous and every time I visit one I see something interesting. 

This video shows a small part of a mall near the Bell Tower.   There is always a DJ blaring some tunes for shopping.

I find it funny when I'm walking through and I hear the 'F**K You' song being played by the DJ.  It must be one of his favorites because I've heard this song played a handful of times.  The Chinese usually have no idea what the lyrics of a song mean. They think anything English is ku (cool). From someone that speaks English - I don't appreciate hearing 'F You' while shopping.

I'm still teaching.....

I have survived 3 weekends of my 2nd semester as an English teacher in China.   I've decided that this semester will be at least a bit better than last semester.  I still teach 21 classes in 2 1/4 days - over 300 students but I enjoy seeing kids from last semester in the hall. 

Highlights from the first weekend of semester #2:

-I have 1 class that is completely the same as last semester.  They are a clever bunch of kids and it was nice to walk in and see their faces.

-I have one kid that laughs at EVERYTHING.  He can't say a word, throw a ball, or hear someone else say a word without him thinking it is the funniest thing.   I wish I found everything that funny.

-I still laugh every time a student falls off their little stool.  They'll just be sitting there and all of a sudden they fall off.  It's hilarious!

-My new 4 year olds kept touching me.  The Chinese teacher was a little disappointed that when she was teaching them they were running all over and not touching her. 

-In one of my mid level classes the lesson was asking and answering questions.  After I asked them the questions in the book I had them ask me the questions.  Students always take this chance to ask personal questions that aren't in the book (usually how old are you).  But this class was more creative and asked me questions like - What's your dream?  Who is your mom?  What's your social security number?     We couldn't figure out how this kid even knew what a social security number was -  I'm keeping my eye on hm.  He's 9 years old!

-I have students with interesting English names- Optimus Prime, Excalibur, Vampire, Bunny (a boy), Happy, Baboo, Yuki.  Yes, I call on these students by their ridiculous name - usually with a straight face. There are FIVE Lilly's in one class.   I named a few kids.  I like naming them after my favorite people from home - Julie, Sara, Alison, Brian.  I had hoped a student in my higher level class would take Eleanor but I think it was too different and difficult. 

-One of my students said I look like Serena from Gossip Girl.  

-I have a lot of students from last semester.  One student has become obsessed with hearing me speak Chinese.  I try not to speak Chinese in class for 2 reasons.  1.  It's English class.  2.  My Chinese isn't great and the students laugh at me and correct my pronunciation.   Number 2 is the biggest reason.  If I ask them for a word in Chinese to make sure they understand the English word I can usually understand that and tell them if they're right or wrong but I am too self conscious of my Chinese to speak it infront of my students.  Crazy how a bunch of Chinese children can intimidate me.

-I asked my older students where they want to travel.  One said America because of the freedom.  I love that answer because it shows me the student realizes she doesn't have freedom here.  That is not a common realization.

I look back at my post after my very first weekend of teaching and it's nice to see how far I've come.  This semester I can just go with the flow, I'm not lost, I can remember names, I know the routine, I know how to give homework, I'm better at coming up with things on my feet, etc.   It's still hard to get past the fact that my job is playing London Bridges, jumping around like a rabbit, and teaching words like cat, kite, girl, boy, umbrella, table, chair, pencil, ball, book.  Luckily, sometimes I even enjoy it.

Overall, I really like the kids.  I could write a post every day for at least a year about China in general and what I've learned since arriving here 6.5 months ago. It's made me appreciate the kids. They are so innocent and too young to not realize how controlling their country is.

21 lessons to go!

Dorothy

I said in my Texting with Zhōng gúo rén post that I have a stalker.  I feel bad calling Dorothy a stalker because despite being a bit crazy, she has good intentions.

Dorothy was the nice woman who helped me join my gym.  I assumed she was about 40 and married with one child.  We didn't exchange phone numbers and I went months without seeing her at the gym.   My roommate ran into her outside of our school and she asked if she knew me.  Lorynn said she did.  That weekend Dorothy showed up at school.  She talked to Lorynn again for a bit but I never saw her.  A few weeks later I finally ran into her at the gym and we exchanged numbers.

When we met for lunch I was surprised to learn she is 33 years old, was divorced a year ago, and has no children.  During lunch she came off as very desperate for a friend and a bit depressed.   She asked me personal questions about my past relationships and how I made them work.  My answers were too complicated for her level of English and there was something about her that just rubbed me the wrong way.  I knew she wasn't someone I could be good friends with.  I definitely didn't want to go to Tibet with her like she suggested.

I received a couple texts from her during the weeks that followed.  One said 'I miss you so much'.  One weekend I was in the middle of teaching a class when Dorothy opened the door.  Luckily my Chinese teacher was standing right by the door.  She spoke with her and got rid of her.  Apparently she wasn't asking anything about me she was asking her questions about how she teaches - in the middle of our class!  She also stopped Lorynn in the hall and asked questions about how she teaches.  Our manager pulled Lorynn away from Dorothy and said she was a spy from another school.  She's told me before that she has come to the school looking for me so I'm pretty sure she's not a spy.

About a month later I got this text from her:
Dear Joy:  There will be a night club for people from America to dance and relax.  Would you like to join.  
A night club for Americans to dance and relax?  That wasn't very appealing and I thought it was best to continue to cut ties with her.  I wrote her back and said I was too busy.
She responded:  I do hope you are happy healthy :-) Take care. 

I still get a call from her every other week (which I don't answer) but I'm hoping this is the end of the Dorothy story.

Bike riding in Dali

I rode along the Erhai Lake and passed through a few small villages.  The people were very friendly.   There were lots of farmers working hard in the fields. I noticed many of them were women. I actually noticed most people doing physical labor in Yunnan were female. 

Corn drying in the sun.  They removed the kernels from the cobs and left the cob and the kernels in the sun.

I came to this missing bridge and decided to turn back

The three pagodas in Dali

There was much more than just three pagodas.  Look at this map:

I walked a lot of it.  I heard it was massive but this was more than I was expecting.  The grounds are filled with temples and lots of Buddhas inside the temples.

The pagodas are made of brick and covered in white mud.  The big one was built during 823-840 AD.  The smaller ones were built 100 years later.  The designer was said to come from Xi'an.  There is a pagoda here that was built 100 years before these and is of a similar design. 

Dali

From Lijiang I took a 4 hour bus ride to Dali.  It felt like we were driving in the clouds - we were so high. It was a beautiful ride.  I sat next to a tour guide.  She found it funny that she is always talking to foreigners and of course ended up next to the only foreigner on the bus.

Dali has a population of around 590,000 people.  It's a very laid back city located near mountains and a lake.

There is an Old Town with many cafes and shops.  It's quite different than Lijiang's Old Town.  There aren't as many tourists, the streets are much easier to navigate, and there seems to be more foreigners.

I found some of the shops to be confusing.

 (This one sells duck heads and mens clothing)

(Ice cream and shoes)

The restaurants display their food outside.

I'm not going to post the picture of the cow skin I found in the street.  It was just laying there outside a shop with a little bit of blood.

(A typical butcher)

One night I met up with a coworker from Xi'an.  After playing beer pong at his hostel we went and found a Dali 'rave'. It was not what I would call a rave but it was a great time - outside, music, dancing, sparklers, and a few people.

(Beer Pong)

 (The rave)

I decided to try hostel dorm life in Dali.  It is a much cheap way to travel than getting my own room and something I've never done (which is unheard of in the hostel world).  I didn't meet many people in Lijiang so I thought staying in a dorm would be a good way to meet people in Dali.

The room would have had 3 other people but it remained empty the entire time I was there.  Luckily I did meet a couple of older Australian women that were staying in my hostel.    There was also a Chinese cooking show chef building a pizza oven at the hostel for his TV show.    What are the odds??  He's from Canada and is shooting the 3rd season of his show that airs on the Chinese Travel Channel.  It was interesting to talk to him about the differences between shooting a reality show in China and in the US.

Black Dragon Pool

I spent a few hours exploring Black Dragon Pool in Lijiang. It was a close walk from my hostel and a nice place to spend the afternoon.

A rainy Lijiang day

(This picture, on the balcony outside my room. It didn't quite capture the gloominess of the day.  The clouds rolling off the mountains was beautiful)

I've found the nights in Lijiang to be overall very comfortable.  Mainly because it's cool.  It's nice snuggling under the covers for a change.  During my 2nd night it was a pleasant surprise to hear the rain outside my window.  The next day was cloudy and cool.  I decided to make it a day of reading at different cafes around Lijiang.  I got up at 9am and by 10pm I had finished the book I started in the morning.   I started off at a cafe where I had a Naxi (an ethnic group in southwest China) breakfast.

(Potato pancake, bacon, Naxi cheese, scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee)

I explored the endless streets looking for a new cafe with hot tea and a nice view.

(Rose and plumb tea)

I saw this waterfall.

Found a funny sign by the waterfall with a reminder that I had forgotten by the end of the day (see below where I ended my day).

 (Eating out should keep civilized behavior and keep healthy eating in mind)

I sat at the hostel reading, had a nice chat with an American, and ended the day with a banana and chocolate crape.   I like the slow life in Lijiang.  I hear Dali (where I'm headed to next) is even slower.

The book I read was a suggestion from Amazon based on books I've looked at and read in the past.  I always say my tutor is my Chinese therapist.  This book is like my therapist / tutor but so much more.  The week before I left for Yunnan was one of the hardest so far in China.  I was sick, homesick, and just overall blah about my Chinese life.  The book is called 'Dreaming in Chinese'.  The author, Deborah Fallows, lived in China for 3 years with her husband.   She writes about the Chinese language through her experiences with learning the language and living in China.  She has a PhD in Linguistics so when she writes about the endless challenges trying to learn Chinese I feel much better about where I'm at with my Chinese.  As I read the book I could relate to virtually everything she wrote.  I'll quote her in another post because she's able to say how I'm feeling so much more eloquently then I am.  She does a nice job explaining the meaning and history of Mandarin.  I learned quite a few new things about putting words together, what words actually mean, and how to use them.  Sometimes the Chinese have a hard time translating Chinese words into English because often there's far from an exact translation.  I definitely feel better about myself and my struggles with China. 

So much riding in Lijiang

During one of my first days in Lijiang my hostel recommended I take advantage of the beautiful day and bike out to a village.  It sounded like a good idea. The first mistake was mine.  I was supposed to be going north.  I saw a sign that said I was going south but for some reason that wasn't enough to make me turn around.  In China anything that has to do with maps and directions is almost completely backwards from our western ways.  One problem is they don't read maps.  I don't like asking for directions. Period.  No matter what country I'm in.  Eventually I realized I had to.  It was a conversation in Chinese.  I understood him, he understood me but the bottom line was he couldn't help.  The Chinese will be very vague when they give directions because they don't want to look bad and give the wrong directions.  Or even worse admit they don't know where something is. 
A conversation could go like this:
-Where's the post office?
-Zai nar (over there).
Of course there's pointing in some general direction but you part ways completely unsure of where to go.

I rode around for hours knowing I wasn't getting any closer but I had all day so I felt like I had to shi yi shi (give it a try).    I never found the road my hostel told me to take but on the map there was another road that appeared to lead to the village and I just happened to be on that road.  After passing my 2nd set of ghost town subdivisions I ran out of road.

I turned around.  I rode some more and found the market on the map. I seemed to be getting closer!

(Lots of potatoes)

 (Look closely)

(Chicks of all different colors)

(This man bought 3 red ones.  He was given a plastic bag to transport his purchase - the same as when you get food for takeout.  This guy couldn't get them to stay in his bag so he tied the plastic bag. I think the poor little guys were dead before he rode away.)

After the market I was back on the road confident I knew the next road would be the one I needed.  If it was my road the name was different.  Eventually I just couldn't take the exhaust from the cars and trucks anymore. If the ride would have been out in the country without much traffic I could have gone for hours but this was not the country riding I had in Yangshuo.  I gave up and returned to Lijiang with sunburned hands!

Lijiang

Since I have a break between semesters I decided to see why everyone always makes such a fuss over Yunnan. Yunnan is a province located in the southwest part of China.  My first stop was Lijiang.  The population is a little over 1 million people.  It's history dates back 800 years.  The elevation is 2500.  The main attraction is Old Town.  It is a sprawling town of streets that go on and on in no particular pattern.  The streets are filled with shops, restaurants, bars, cafes, and guest houses.

 (You can see the faces on these animal skins)

 (Even an old Chinese city isn't complete without a Pizza Hut and KFC)

There are waterways that go through Old Town.  Though boats couldn't fit on the river this town really reminded me of Wuzhen.

My favorite bit of the town were the shops that go up a hill.  All the businesses there have a fantastic view. 

 (A nice view to enjoy with a cup of coffee.)

I'll say it again (this won't be the last time) China is beautiful at night.

Something unique that Lijiang has are styrofoam boats you can buy, make a wish, and send floating down the river.   It's a very nice site to just sit and watch the little boats go by.