Hats, Posters, and Beer Bottles

2006-07-21T01:30:00.000-07:00

Zaijian, Yanji...

After I lived in my parents' basement--which was before a brief stint as a boorish envoy--I was a history major. Although there were some good courses and solid professors along the way, I chose history simply because most of the other options frightened and confused me.

Typical students at Wash U from anywhere outside of the College of Arts and Sciences were a bit too "exotic." Not exotic in "that hot Asian chick from the bar" sense, but rather, they carried collective dispositions all remote from normalcy. You had the budding capitalists of the business school, who were almost average personality-wise, but any group of them together looked like the cast of a Dockers commercial. The architecture crowd was fine, but they all had a necessarily fanatical obsession with their projects, which consumed fanatical amounts of their time. Art majors were an almost uniformly weird bunch, as were the engineers, albeit for entirely different reasons. That left the College of Arts and Sciences, which combined all the shortcomings of the aforementioned groups with somewhat less unanimity.

At one point, English seemed like a safe option. Dad had taken that route, and he wound up teaching it. Certainly at least some of the gene must have passed to me. I signed up for an American lit class sophomore year. The reading list looked pretty good, and I figured the class would be cereal. By "cereal," I refer to the breakfast staple which is nearly impossible to fuck up. But we got the great American authors--Melville, Faulkner, Hemingway--all served up in the form of soggy Chex Mix. His classes were dogmatic lectures, never discussions. He had not a hint of interest in students' opinions of the readings, and he would spend every 90-minute session blabbering away his own misguided views. He would even disagree with himself on occasion and subsequently explain how he'd just misinterpreted whatever he was talking about.

At his best, he was a quirky intellectual who occasionally exuded flashes of raw brilliance. He could have been writing those Cliff Note books...for the romance novels in the checkout line. He had a tendency--and by tendency I mean definite personal commitment--to giving everything an overtly sexual description. Sometimes the overtones were obvious. Melville devoting a chapter to Ishmael's kneading of whale sperm in Moby-Dick comes to mind. But it became tiresome quickly. One person's impotence. Another's hope for incest. Sexual frustration, jealousy, et al. The kids over in Intro Psych were getting less perversion studying Freud. I knew there was more to the American literary tradition than what we were getting in his class, which was kind of like an academic look at Penthouse Forum. After that course, I didn't like the idea of studying anything--short of archaelogy--that could be interpreted so poorly. Sure it happens with history, but not as often.

Now that that rambling missive is out of the way, the eventual point I've been hoping to get to (before the real point, which is my final word on Yanji), which I've since inadvertently achieved, is that I never learned how to write a good academic paper. To begin with, the idea of writing something for a grade seems absurd in itself. How does one muster up the necessary resolve? I never figured it out. I procrastinated. I didn't stay on topic. I used unnecessary, recondite words, often incorrectly. And my conclusions were invariably bad, usually no more than a simple rehash of the intro. And a year out of school, things haven't changed much.

I couldn't hope to write a worthy conclusion after a year in Yanji. The general theme of things there, from beginning to end, was that I could never be quite sure of what might happen next. It was a sort of stream of consciousness lifestyle, not so different from the format of this blog. I've merely posted highlights of what I've found humorous, absurd, frustrating, or otherwise worth mentioning.

With all of the other stuff that got here first, I rarely took the time to make note of the positive impact I made as a teacher. I'll do so now. Right here. At this moment. I'm gonna do it, really. Uh, let's see here.

It would be difficult--no, make that almost impossible--to get an accurate gauge of what kind of difference I made in Yanji. I could not hope to get a truthful answer from my students, coworkers, or even supervisors. They would all tell me, "oh, you are great!" Of course I can hardly fault them for it. Despite the often cynical nature of this blog, I always wished for the best for my students, despite any of my shortcomings as a teacher and any of theirs as students. Without a single exception--even the kid Long and I privately referred to as "Chowderhead"--I thought all of my students were genuinely kind, unselfish individuals. And I would say that for nearly everyone I met in Yanji, as well. Excuse the profundity, but it says a lot for humanity, with that concern for one's fellow man, even if it means sleeping in his class. I won't miss the city of Yanji--the list of things that suck about that city is as long as the number Pi--but the people have made an indelible impression upon me.

In conclusion, I'm quite uncertain regarding the future of this blog. There was never any shortage of ideas in Yanji--which doesn't really speak well for the city--but there was always something worth mentioning. My family will be moving to Chicago later this summer after twenty years in the Quad Cities. Perhaps the Windy City (or more accurately, the western suburbs of the Windy City) will hold some new promises. Until then, it's back to the parents' basement here.

2006-06-29T23:56:00.000-07:00

Best of the Rest...

Throughout the past year in Yanji I've kept a small notepad in my bookbag to jot down a few words about whatever catches my fancy at any given time. I made note of anything that might be worth posting here, a collection which has now come to include a picture of a cow trying to lick its own ass. If in fact the cow had actually succeeded in doing so, it would have made this blog a long time ago.

I've been fairly forthcoming with any info here. Anything I didn't mention fell into one of two categories. The first group includes a number of titles for posts I never wrote, such as "Top 5 Public Places to Urinate and/or Vomit in Yanji" (number 1 on the list was the area right outside my apartment building. I couldn't come up with anything for 2-5 because pretty much anywhere in town seemed an acceptable place for those activities).

The second category of things left unposted consists of those ideas with which I never found a way to fit into any particular post. That I omitted them says a lot, as I have difficulty staying on topic both in regular conversation and in print. Wait a second, there's some lady doing the dishes in her underwear in the building across from me.

But I am also a packrat, and I am not fond of discarding material regardless of its content or relevance. I still have quite a few ideas written that have not and likely will not go any further than their home in my tattered notepad. There are some worth mentioning, though. Here is the best of the leftovers:

Beverly Hills Yanji High

Long and I first arrived at the school late on a Saturday night after flying in from Beijing back in September. As there is almost no outdoor lighting anywhere on the campus, we couldn't see anything. I'd also been twenty-four hours without sleep, so I didn't particularly care what the place looked like as long as it had a bed.

We went for a walk the next day and finally got a look at headquarters. Despite a relatively short growing season, the soil is quite good in this region of China most famous for its industrial might. The hills and valleys around the school had a colorful vitality not unlike what I'd seen in Tuscany. Comparisons with Italy end there, but the countryside was quite beautiful.

The school itself, with its red tiled roofs, reminded me of the opulent high school campus on Beverly Hills 90210. So, I thought, this would be the grand stage for our year in China. I, with my sideburns and Midwestern roots, would play the part of Brandon Walsh. Long, meanwhile, would match for the role of Andrea Zuckerman. English department colleague Lambert would have Steve Sanders covered. They don't really have anything in common, but I think Lambert could pull it off.

Yanji Tech was not West Beverly. The students here look ten years too young for high school instead of actually being ten years too old. There is also no campus radio station with a DJ, although you must listen to old patriotic tunes on the loudspeaker at certain times throughout the day. But they are both high schools, real or fictional, and thus neither ever suffered from a shortage of melodramatic, inconsequential bullshit.

Dam That River

Yanji's "river," the Buerhatong He, is a mostly stagnant puddle of runoff until it reaches the commercial district of the city, where they have dammed it quite sufficiently. They diverted much of the water from elsewhere on the river to this particular area in an attempt to beautify the only part of the city many visitors would see. Even with the great volume of water in this section, there is no flow, and only Yanji's standard high winds make it appear otherwise.

The unfortunate residents living outside the city center are left with something resembling what you see in the picture, and sometimes even less. It does not stop them from washing themselves or their automobiles in the warmer months. The city has also begun to improve on scenes such as this by constructing pathways just off the water and developing right up to them. If you're going to take the river away, you might as well build over where it once was.

I Wanna Be Like Hammer

Even though the Chinese in Manchuria are considered large for their race (a result of the regional preference for wheat-based noodles over rice), I am significantly taller than almost everyone at the school. With all the Yao Ming hysteria of the last few years, the Chinese have quickly adopted basketball as a national sport, and Yanji is no exception. However, it takes time to build an athletic tradition, and most of the students at Yanji Tech lack the athletic fundamentals for basketball so readily apparent when they are playing ping pong or badminton. I don't have much ability on the floor, but the important thing is that they've even less, and I also have that slight size advantage.

The late Mitch Hedburg once said how great it would be to return to Little League as an adult. I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed playing basketball here with these youngsters. Teaching them the sport, enjoying the camaraderie, and just absolutely dominating their punk asses. It's like Shaq versus a junior high girls' team, people. I am making up for my lost youth of athletic glory by ruling over the green squads of Yanji Tech.

Hot For Teacher

Many Yanjians often refer us foreigners as being "handsome" in great excess. We hear it all the time, from anyone, man or woman. Rarely a day goes by when Lambert does not yell out, "hey there handsome guy!" Perhaps there are some people who genuinely believe in the universal appeal of our fetching good looks. But most of this praise is simply because we look extremely different from everyone else. We are the exotic foreigners.

A majority of the "handsome" comments come from our female students. Perhaps 80% of them have innocent schoolgirl crushes on us. This was quite apparent from the first day of class back in September. We'd finished giving introductions and receiving them from the class, and we opened up the floor for questions. The first was, "do you like Chinese girls?" By now I have received this question at least twenty times, although it always comes in some new form, as if the students think they can get me to slip up on answering. "What do you think of the Chinese women? Why you no have girlfriend?"

The whole issue has never really been a problem, although it has produced some minor difficulties with discipline on occasion. In one class I got upset with a second-year student named Ann.

Me: "Ann, you need to stop talking. You need to pay attention. You must listen if you want to learn."

Ann: "You have very beautiful eyes."

It gradually became easier to see when these compliments were real, which was rare, and when the students were only attempting to cajole me into doing something, which was the norm. "Teacher, the weather outside today is very beautiful. Have class outside. Handsome!"

Even six months without shaving was not enough to deter them, despite the strong Chinese disdain for facial hair on any man below the age of seventy. Earlier this semester, at the height of my beard's unkempt notoriety, I was helping the second-year class prepare for their midterm. The assignment, while working in groups of two, was to write and perform a dialogue on what they hoped to do in the future. Here we pick up on one of them midway thru:

Student 1: "How about a husband? Will you married?

Student 2: "After I graduate this school. He is thirty years old and very dark. His name is Hamel and he look like a big Indian."

Student 1: "I think you will make the good couple."

The most uproarious example of this phenomenon comes from the end of the year teachers' banquet held in December, which I detailed a bit in an earlier post (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Drag Queen, et al). The banquet was being held in the school, and the students had decorated the assembly area with an assortment of colorful banners and posters. After a number of obligatory bajiu toasts, Long and I took a break to check out the artwork. Long saw my name on one poster. It was written by our third-year students, who'd recently finished classes at Yanji Tech and were beginning internships and jobs. The poster contained a message in English written in enormous letters, and I can recall it in reasonably good detail despite not being reasonably sober by that point:

"Hamel, now we must go. Let us keep our love a secret until the time of the great day is coming!"

Out of sight, out of mind, I suppose, as my secret admirer(s) never came forward. I feel rather slighted.

2006-06-22T00:50:00.000-07:00

Laying Low...

I'm headed home soon, and some people have asked me what I'm looking forward to doing back in the U.S. Hmm. Well, I like to go to the picture shows, and Yanji is without a theater, so that's high on the list. I also like to drive, which is how I intend to reach the cinemas, so that's two for one. And I've been having a lot of nightmares, too. I can only assume the latter is somehow connected to living here, so I eagerly await not having nightmares on an almost-daily basis. But mostly I am interested in committing crime.

I've been an upright citizen here since day 1. It hasn't anything to do with the fact that I work for the church, or even that because of my job a few might consider me a "role model" of sorts, whatever that is. Rather, I have avoided even the most petty crimes simply because every action I take is certain to have at least five witnesses. I call it the "under surveillance life."

I am under more scrutiny at school than anywhere else. Somehow, though, it is where I feel most liberated. I've got all kinds of freedom at Yanji Tech, most of which I have illicitly created for my own purposes. Call me the Chinaman Professor Keating from Dead Poets' Society, without any of the "inspirational figure" status that character possessed. A controversial instructor, you might say, who may've actually had a counterproductive impact on his pupils--that's more up my alley.

Colleagues are too polite to point out my shortcomings as a teacher, and students are too reluctant to do so. I do make an effort, but on occasion I forget that I am a teacher, and that this is China. Sometimes I'm asked if I plan to continue teaching in America. I tell them that it seems unlikely, but I do not mention that I avoid the education career path simply because I would be fired within a matter of days.

In future interviews, when the "tell me about your weaknesses" issue arises, I won't be at a loss for words. "Well sir, there are a few 'chinks in my armor', so to speak," at which point I may just direct them to this website detailing my year of defects, deficiencies, and drawbacks as an English teacher.

Blatant Disregard of School Rules

To be honest, if I actually wielded any significant authority, I would certainly use it. I have no power to assign detentions. If I am really looking to discipline a student, I have to get a colleague to do it for me. This is due almost entirely to the language barrier, but for two different reasons. Many students cannot understand me well to begin with, and it's quite another story if I'm pissed at them. Some translation help is necessary. The real kicker, however, is the inherent lack of respect for someone who cannot communicate himself in your native language. How important can someone be if you only understand half of what he's saying, right? With exceptions for those levels of ESL education for those students who actually want to learn--university students, recent immigrants, etc.--it is a system that is built to spill.

There's no reason to get worked up over this, especially at this point of the year, although I do wish I could give detentions, and perhaps an old school Catholic beatdown now and then. But I've merely become a bit lax with the old rule book meself, particularly with the "no-smoking" decree. There is a big anti-smoking campaign, which the party has implemented at schools nationwide. China is a smokers' paradise; you can light up just about anywhere you please. The young fellows at Yanji Tech develop the habit in the schools' bathrooms. This is strictly forbidden, of course. I recently walked into the bathroom and interrupted a smoke break for a couple of students, who were inexplicably dumbfounded to see me. I just thanked them and went about my business. The scent of cigarette smoke is perhaps the only aroma capable of diverting one's attention from the inconceivable foulness of Chinese bathrooms. In fact, Chinese toilets might explain why so many people--well, men, at least (some 67% of them)--smoke to begin with. Most people use the bathroom what, nine or ten times a day? One cigarette each time? That's half a pack right there. And with the effect Chinese food has on your body, you'd be needing multiple smokes for a few of those longer trips.

If smoking is the biggest no-no, chewing gum is probably #2. A student won a small contest in a class of mine a few weeks ago, and I'd forgotten the candy I'd promised the winner. Ellen had emerged victorious. She is a student who excels very much at rock paper scissors and not so much at English. She will make a fine cadre some day. If there is candy involved, however, she's dean's list material. I told her I'd left the candy at home, and with the certainty of a state trooper who's just pulled over a VW bus, she said, "I believe you have some candy in your bag." She had me. "Alright...gum...that's the best I can do. Here." She grabbed a few pieces and jogged off in the short, awkard trot the Chinese women use when mildly animated about something.

Cultural Insensitivity

I could probably write a book on all the times I've overstepped cultural boundaries. Perhaps one of my students has done so. Big Ignorant Foreigner: A Record of All the Times Hammer Overstepped Cultural Boundaries. Sometimes it is a basic misunderstanding which I could not have hoped to predict. A few weeks ago I was attempting to define "freckles," and I pointed out a student with a good number of them. Big mistake. To paraphrase from Peter Hessler's River Town, this is equivalent to saying "nice birthmark." Jill, the student with the freckles, immediately hung her head in embarassment. I tried to backtrack, saying that freckles were a sign of beauty in America, but the class wasn't having any of it. It's a damned shame. She's cute as a button because of the freckles, but she and her classmates won't see it that way.

On other occasions I knowingly cross the line on cultural issues simply because it is a guaranteed method of getting their attention. If I have not communicated this adequately on this forum for the last ten months, let me do so now. Getting these kids to pay attention, and to hold that attention for more than thirty seconds, is the number one daily struggle with this job. It's usually a losing effort. Sometimes you have to bring out the big, anti-P.C. guns. For example, I often tell them they are crazy. This is quite harmless in English, but it's less than polite in Chinese. Its use has never really worn off on them.

I had a particularly lazy class last week, and I was getting frustrated with their complete lack of interest. I decided to make them write their own obituaries as punishment. In a country where ancestor worship is still quite prevalent, the concept of death is taken differently in China, which is to say that having someone write their own obituary is off limits. Not for me, though. While it made a few students upset for a few minutes, the rest of them took to it with enthusiasm, some predicting fiery ends for themselves, with others on their way out because of a steamy love triangle. Others took a special pride in mentioning their surviving family members, which always included more than one child. Mission accomplished.

Lack of Basic Hygiene/Personal Grooming

This doesn't really need any elaboration. But I did shave last month, so I got that going for me.

Discussion of Objectively Taboo Topics

My students, who all look to be about thirteen years old, still realize I was their age not so long ago. They seem to know they can push the envelope a bit more because of it, and in any case, they know I'm not going to tell my colleagues what we talk about in class (a group of random people on the internet is a different story, though). And then, on some occasions, an innocent discussion loses its grace in a heartbeat. It moves beyond the students' level of comprehension, and I'm left alone to grasp the hilarity that follows.

Case in point: one day we were studying some new vocabulary words on clothing. I'd just finished explaining the concept of crowdsurfing, and had included a nice anecdote about this guy I didn't like who got dropped when he was surfing at a show. The next word was "sweatpants."

Student #1: "Teacher, what are sweatpants?"

Me: "A pair of comfortable pants. They are very soft."

Student #2: "Teacher, do you know panties?

Me: (stunned silence) "Um, what?"

Student #2: "Panties."

Me: "Oooh...umm...hmm."

Helen was becoming frustrated. She did not know why it was taking me so long to define this short, simple word. "PANTIES!", she nearly shouted. At moments like these I am convinced someone is filming me, and that some dumbass in a trucker hat will jump out of the closet in stitches.

Recently, when not talking about panties, I have been making travel plans. I leave Yanji July 5th, and will spend four days in Beijing. After that it's four more in Taiwan, home of the Chinese Nationalists and Kyle, my roommate from Wash U. I will be back in the Quad Cities in time for the Alleman High School Class of 2001 5-year reunion, where I plan on boozing my way through jetlag and awkward conversations.

2006-06-11T00:12:00.000-07:00

Now that we're well into June, just about everyone in the U.S. at every academic level has finished classes until the fall term. Of course there are some exceptions, most notably the dunderheads in summmer school and the teachers obligated to look after them.

Were motivating my own students not a formidable enough task at any other given time, it has become quite difficult to teach here knowing that fellow teachers and students alike back home are wasting their summers through slightly less futile pursuits, such as mowing the lawn, making photo albums, and sitting. I'm ready for a change.

Some would say I've but one month to finish making my mark on these childrens' lives. I do hope and believe I've been of some help, although I'm more for display than anything else. The truth is that my chances for living a long life lessen with every day I spend in Yanji. Every time I cross the street I run the more-than-minimal risk of being hit by a vehicle. I saw a human corpse by the side of the road when I was taking the bus back into town last week. If he was not dead, he was faking it very well. He'd likely been hit by something and then subsequently pulled off to the side of the road until an ambulance came. No one was tending to him; thirty or so people had gathered around around for a look.

This was the first time I'd seen such a thing in Yanji, but it had left my thoughts within five minutes. It happens so often here that you're not really taken aback when you see it for yourself. Pedestrian fatalities have been on the rise in Yanji as of late, and many of them have been children. The people have asked the government to do something about it. There is not enough money allocated for stoplights in the municipal budget, and thus the police response has been to cut down on jaywalking. Of course, this will acomplish nothing. There is little choice but to jaywalk. The crosswalks without stoplights are the most dangerous places to do so as the vehicle traffic is highest there, and the pedestrian never has the right of way.

The real solution to the problem would be to fire no less than half of the city's taxi drivers, most of whom should not even be permitted to operate remote-controlled toy cars, much less their two-ton manslaughter machines. I've mentioned them before, and things haven't really changed. It is absolute anarchy on the streets. Their reckless driving aside, there are at least two or three times as many taxis in Yanji as what would be necessary. But they're nearly untouchable. When, in the past, the city made some attempt to restrict them, the taxi drivers made a point of actually following the rules of the road: stopping at red lights, not cutting off traffic from the opposite direction, etc. This would create a citywide gridlock that makes it impossible to get anywhere. The people, in turn, would complain, and the taxi drivers would get their way. The end result is that the citizenry is willing to give a few pedestrian deaths in exchange for a brisk commute.

Danger for me runs beyond Yanji's busy streets. Every time I walk through a doorway there is the possibility of severe head trauma if I'm not paying attention. I am in a world of peril every time I go out with the other teachers. The forced drinking has finally run its course. What this means, if you're not saavy, is that you must empty your glass every time someone makes a toast, which is about every 8 seconds. It was cute at first, but I miss drinking at my own pace.

I tried to avoid this yesterday when we all went out for lunch after the third-year graduation ceremony. I wanted to work out later in the day, so eating and drinking little was a priority. I sat at a table of mostly women teachers, who tend to go easy on the beer and hooch. I was all set for a relaxing experience that would not force me to nap until it was dark outside. The table was nearly full with women when a couple of the men teachers took the last seats. Just my luck. They were big lushes.

But despite the toasts, I was getting by alright, not having too much. Then the soup came out. Soup is the last course in a Chinese meal, and it was at this point that a number of the women decided they were full, wanting no more beer or food. They turned to me:

"Hamel, please drink this for me."
"What? Just let it go."
"You have to. Please drink it."
"I think you were a goddamned fratty in your last life."
"Drink!"

Now that I was drinking for myself and four others, I had to make a quick escape. My Salesian boss, who was in town from Seoul, was at a relatively empty table and not talking to anyone. I went over to chat. Bad move. It turned out the empty seat next to him was that of the principal, who'd somehow found his way back from the bathroom. "HAMMER!" His breath smelled like the inside of a Popov bottle. "Have a drink." Instead of the usual glasses, he insisted we both down full 600mL bottles of Tsingtao. The workout had to be postponed.

Then there is the potential threat that goes with communal eating. I came around to chopsticks long ago. They are significantly more useful than I'd thought possible. However, I remain greatly disturbed by everyone picking through the same dish with their own wooden wares. Widespread hepatitis B is the direct result of this practice. This problem could easily be solved by placing a serving spoon with individual dishes, but the Chinese have soundly rejected this practice as it effectively cancels the communal aspect of the meal. A prominent party official once suggested the Chinese abandon chopsticks and communal eating to cut down on the spread of disease, and he was immediately vilified. Mr. anti-communal eating Chinese man, wherever you are, we salute you.

Life in Yanji brings a bit of nausea to which I have never learned to fully ignore. Although it's not as bad as it sounds, I nearly always have a slight headache or stomachache. I can only conclude that it is Yanji, not my lifestyle, which is responsible for this unpleasantness. There are several possibilities that would implicate the former. Vast pollution from burning coal, garbage, etc. North Korean nuclear tests being conducted nearby. Looking out the window at endless grey cookie cutter apartment blocks. It's more than enough to cause some discomfort.

In an effort to alleviate these aches and pains (aside from copious use of actual Aleve), I have taken to generous usage of household products and toiletries of which I have accumulated considerable surpluses. Due to life in a semi-conscious state, 2006 has moved very quickly for me, and I mistakenly purchased or had my parents send over a number of things which I now have in great abundance. This is somewhat of a problem, as I have a good deal of luggage to transport in the near future. I don't need to be hauling around any extra q-tips. I thought about leaving some of these things for the two guys coming next year and then thought better of it. It seemed a nice gesture at first, since certain items like deodorant are not available in Yanji. But then again, there is something objectively unnerving about inheriting somewhat else's unused toiletries.

That said, I've been very liberal recently with the application and usage of such products. Too much shampoo? No worries. I work up an enormous albino lather fro every morning, and sometimes in the evening as well. Long will ask, "Hamel, why are you showering again?" I'll tell you why: I cannot let that $1.50, 48-ounce bottle go to waste. Too much floss? Who feels guilty using too much floss? The next person to finish a tube of floss will probably be the first to have every done so. The only product that is really tough to burn through in a short period of time is deodorant. You can't really use that much on any given occasion. A couple of times I rolled some on my forearm like they do in the commercials, but nothing happened. In any case, I have never understood how the Chinese do so well without it. You'd be hard pressed to smell body odor here. Any other unpleasant scent is pretty much fair game in Yanji, though.

2006-06-03T00:16:00.000-07:00

Picnic time. I made you some jelly sandwiches...

Once per year the students, faculty, and staff of Yanji Tech take a Friday off in mid-May for an all-school picnic. The outing is a celebration of the recently arrived spring weather, a time for camaraderie before the academic year ends, and an opportunity to inflict pain upon disliked colleagues, classmates, and superiors.

Aside from an hour's break for lunch, the entire day was spent in competition. The morning's festivities showcased schoolwide games, and everyone broke into individual classes for afternoon games.

Apparently the ideas for the games were all lifted from Korean television, which typically aims to mix absurd physical contests and humor. As I have noted on here before, Koreans are weird. Observe their influence:

This contest consisted of passing someone down a human line, at the end of which the contestant was flipped head over heels onto the ground.

I stayed far away.

Alice looks horrified, and justifiably so.

Here the object of the game was to bat away as many water balloons as possible in a limited time frame. Every successful hit resulted in the contestant becoming more thoroughly doused. Again, horror on the face.

The red bin is full of water. Not just any water--this was Chinese river water. Whoever got wet probably had to burn their clothes afterwards.

I don't know why anyone volunteered for this game.

Attached-leg walking game. Yes, I am indeed packing--4 inches of Nikon digital.

Hey funboys, get a room.

Mandatory breakdancing that occurs at every school event. All of these guys have about five moves between them, and I have seen them 742 times.

I call this next piece, "Asian in cowboy hat." His name is Lambert, and he is one of my English department colleagues. I know him as Dirty Bert.

More fun from the Spongebob Squarepants beatdown. This squadron would lose soon after when the opposing team's female captain kicked her, in the back, from her perch. The lesson: never turn your back on a 95-pound Chinese girl.

A fellow teacher, relaxin' on the swing after a long afternoon of boozing. Happy hour for the teachers began at lunchtime. On occasions such as this, it is acceptable to drink in front of the students. They themselves may not partake, but they did pour beers for us and sing for us between toasts.

Were I to choose any one event to illustrate the great differences between an American high school and its Chinese counterpart, it would be the picnic. The dangerous physical contests. The drinking with students present. The taking of an entire day for such a schoolwide outing. We're talking about the absence of rules here. It doesn't have to be a bad thing.

Despite the competetive atmosphere shown in the photos, there is a refreshing innocence at Yanji Tech you could not find at nearly any American high school. Rivalries between students are usually friendly. Teachers are not seen as enemies (with an exception for myself). High school, the last bit of formal education the majority of these students will receive, is to be looked back upon fondly. After graduation, a few of them--maybe three or four per class--will go to college. Many will take factory jobs in any one of China's burgeoning urban metropolises. Others will return to the rice paddies and apple pear farms to labor for their parents. Others will find work as drivers, waiters, or clerks.

But in the meantime, they're still interested in being young.

2006-05-28T20:23:00.000-07:00

Nice to meet you...

I made an effort to be more outgoing this year, and part of that effort included a genuine attempt to learn peoples' names.

Note the use of the past tense. I can't quite recall when, but I jumped ship on that one a while back. It doesn't really have anything to do with the old "all Chinese look alike" thing. Sure, everyone has black hair, and there's scant fashion diversity in Yanji. Rather, with my time here, I've come to notice a variety in facial characteristics that was not readily apparent at first. I've come a long way. For my first couple of months in Yanji, I saw my cook on the street eight or nine times daily. Now, I am eager to update my resume with this newfound facility: "Skills acquired at position: basic conversational Mandarin, experience with ESL instruction, capable of differentiating between individual Chinese people (if not too similar)."

I do have a good long term memory, so normally I'm quite able with names and faces. But China has been a real challenge with regard to the former. This is because they ran out of surnames somewhere along the way. Interested in knowing why putting the importance of the group before the individual is such an essential part of Chinese culture? There are boatloads of reasons. The Confucian tradition, the importance of family, reaction to corrupt governments, famines, yada yada yada. Another factor that's helped this aspect along is that nearly everyone shares a surname with millions, if not tens of millions of other countrymen.

I do not recall ever having met someone outside of my family that shared my name or even a variation (i.e. different spelling) of it. And, since almost everyone pronounces it correctly on the first try, I've come to appreciate it's unique nature. And it's damned unique here. Not everyone is so fortunate. You would think that for a country with well over a billion people the Chinese would have more than a few names to go around. But at some point, the moniker bigwhigs put a halt to it all. The results? 90% of 1.3 billion Middle Kingdom residents have one of the fifty most common Chinese surnames. 50% of the Chinese (all of them, not that 90%) have one of the following nine most common Chinese surnames. Some of their anglicized variations are listed in parentheses.

1. Chen (Chan)
2. Lin
3. Huang (Hwang, Hwong)
4. Li (Lee)
5. Zhang (Chang)
6. Wu (Oh)
7. Wang (Wong)
8. Cai (Tsai)
9. Liu

Some of you may take pride in your last names for one reason or another. Perhaps you are of Italian descent and enjoy attributing your olive skin to ethnic heritage and not the tanning booth you frequent biweekly. Perhaps you are of Irish descent and smile upon your birthright to alcoholism. No one takes family name pride quite like the Chinese, though, especially if theirs was one of the many celebrated dynasties. I don't see anything wrong with this. It would never fly in the U.S., though. If you have a common name like Smith or Johnson, you're probably more concerned about all the morons you know who share the same name. You're not out getting it tattoed on yourself or having it placed in giant old English letter decals on the rear window of your Honda Civic.

The common name issue is another reason communism was able to take off here. Actually I just made that up. But, it's much easier to say that everyone's equal when everyone knows fifty other non-family members with the same last name. Unless, of course, it's mostly morons sharing your name and you're not interested in politics.

My personal attempts to diversify the surname culture in China have come up short. When I meet someone I am occasionally asked if I have a Chinese name. I actually have two of them, both given by the fine students of Yanji Tech:

Gao Jun Jie--Tall Handsome Hero
Chui Zi Se Lang--Hammer Lady Killer

My teaching colleagues, upon hearing them the first time, had a good laugh with both and then became unnerved when they realized I was serious about using them. They rejected the first because, go figure, there is a Chinese celebrity with a similar name. It is considered innappropriate to name children after celebrities. The second could be the greatest name the Middle Kingdom's ever seen. But naming someone after a tool is also undignified, and the male player is not favored here as in Western culture. So I continue to go with Hamel, and thanks to botched Chinese pronunciation, I remain a tool.

With the school year nearing its end, the primary mission at Yanji Tech in May is securing enrollment for next year. The school recruits from middle schools far and wide, serving those students who often would otherwise be unable to afford a high school education. Big subsidies from the Salesians make this possible. It can be difficult to attract students, however, with the cash that other high schools will fork over for them. Many high schools pay middle school teachers a small sum--usually 100 yuan (about twelve bucks) per student--to send their pupils to said high schools. We cannot afford to do this and are thus forced to attract students through alternative methods, namely with the lure of candy and a ride in our big van.

That's not entirely true, of course. Our van's not even that big! Selling the school, however, is an interesting process. Long and I recently accompanied a group of Yanji Tech teachers on a recruiting visit to a middle school just off the Tumen River, the natural boundary between China and North Korea.

Due to some scheduling mishap, we arrived at the school fairly late in the afternoon and only had time to speak with one class. Everything was in Korean, so I had no idea what my colleagues were saying. I figured, however, that they were probably like most other recruiters and that their schtick consisted of half-truths or flat-out blatant lies. I followed suit and proceeded to tell the students that, with our expert foreign instruction, they would graduate from our school with fluency in English. But it was in spotty Mandarin, so I don't think they understood anyway.

After the classroom visit the real recruiting started when we took the middle school teachers out to dinner. We could only see their students for an hour, but their teachers would see them everyday. They are the ones who really sell the school--or don't. Treating them to a fine meal and getting them liquored up would only be par for the course if we wanted enrollement at Yanji Tech to stay up.

The Chinese are fantastic businessmen. They typically refrain from discussing such matters at the dinner table, but this is where professional relationships are cemented, over a seemingly infinite number of courses and swigs of baijiu. The Chinese business dinner is a very elaborate series of deferential movements, most of them focused on keeping potential colleagues' plates full of food and glasses full of hooch. Pretty much all of the toasts are a variation of the same topic, friendship. If you can hold your liquor and call someone your friend every five or ten minutes, you can succeed in the Chinese business world. It was a successful, enjoyable outing, although no one may have felt so the next morning.

The food at such events is invariably excellent. It is also invariably salty. I have never fully adjusted to this aspect of Chinese cuisine, and consequently I am always thirsty. The garlic, onions, and peppers don't help either. I wonder how long it will take for my breath to smell normal again, if ever. I usually carry a water bottle around at school. If my behavior in class has been any indication, my students probably think it is vodka.

The Spongebob Squarepants battle in the above photo was taken at the all school picnic last week. It involved, among other activities, a group of typically reserved female students beating the hell out of each other with plastic hammers to see who would fall first. Naturally I approve.

2006-05-17T21:14:00.000-07:00

Don't let buzzwords fool you.

As you well know, the Peoples' Republic of China adheres to a communist political philosophy. This might be a bit misleading to many, particularly those of you who are currently students. Don't get the wrong idea. It's not as if I walk outside everyday seeing young folks in Che shirts, handing out pamphlets, and/or supporting a Howard Dean presidential candidacy. Rather, I wonder how many real communists are left in China. The socialist education remains de rigeur, but capitalism is more profitable, and the Chinese are too good at it not to cash in themselves. The economy has been growing at about 8% annually for over a decade now.

This newfound wealth, however, hasn't made the Chinese wild spenders. The national savings rate is some 40% of the GDP, the highest in the world. National debt? Fughettaboutit. The black-haired masses have got their country in the black, with roughly $850 billion in foreign currency reserves. Chinese abhor the very idea of being even only slightly in debt. Until recently, credit cards could be used for debit purposes only. Most places will accept only cash for payment. So if you decide to play tourist here, you'll have to walk around with stacks of it.

Conservatism in Chinese society runs not only in economic circles; the Chinese are also a socially cautious folk. This notion may be more evident in the world of Chinese romance--and basic relations between the sexes--than anywhere else. It can seem practically Victorian at times. And now that only a couple of people are still reading, we can begin our look at love in China (don't you appreciate the fact that I can write these ridiculous things describing an entire nation based on my experiences in a podunk northeastern city?).

Chinese teenagers interested in courtship have a societal disadvanatage working against them. Many high schools in Yanji forbid their students from dating. It's not a fond suggestion either; schools do enforce this rigidly. And since the students at Yanji Tech live in sex-segregated dorms, they have taken the message to heart quite well, so well that even basic interaction with members of the opposite sex is not worth the effort.

If they're looking at the teachers as role models, the same message holds true. While male-female interaction is somewhat more common among the teachers, they too have fine, unspoken guidelines as well. They sit separately on the teacher bus, socialize at different tables at the various staff outings, etc. You can walk around town and see the phenomenon elsewhere, which is that aside from couples, men and women do not socialize very much.

Even at the university level, Chinese youths may be encouraged by their elders to play it safe and be remain. My Chinese tutor mentioned that, as an undergrad, one professor "strongly recommended" that his students avoid relationships. Pretty straightforward, no? This kind of thinking in higher education produces the likes of Sheng.

Sheng is a grad student that I met at the med school cafeteria a few months ago. He spoke English tolerably well, and he later emailed me a link to his English-language blog. Its only post happened to be a real gem. As an undergrad, Sheng experienced anti-dating propoganda not unlike that of my tutor, but he was determined not to be swayed. He merely had to use more creative outlets for his romantic hopes. Here's pure poetry for you, unedited:

"When I was a sophomore, I rented a room so that avoided noisy dorm. But the room was so far from my campus, because of the cheaper rent than nearby. So I had to go to class by bus every day."

"One day a pretty girl rushed into by sight. She took the same bus with me. Her attractive figure, angelic face, flashing eyes, cute nose, lovely voice, all of those made me falling in love."

"Gradually I knew that she studied in the BMU which was in the opposite of the BUAA where I studied and took the bus to class every morning. So I took the same bus on purpose."

"I decided to write a letter to her. But I didn't know what I should to write and I was afraid of that if she refused and was unpleasant. I thought of this all night. And I'd written nothing because of fear and inserted a blank paper into an envelope with a heart mark. Next morning under the confusion of getting off I put the envelope on her hand and escaped rapidly."

"During the following days, every thing seemed normal. She didn't look unpleasant and took a look at me occasionally. I began to regret the I'd nothing written on paper. I knew it was the time to take action."

"On the next day, I got up early and got to the lecture hall where she studied according to my investigation. And I planed to invite her to the movie after class. But the ideal always differed from the reality."

"As the class was arriving, my situation was becoming worse. My god! Nursing school! There were all girls in the lecture hall except me. Everyone looked at me as if I were from another planet. I never thought falling in beauties' country could make me so nervers. The worst thing was that the topic of the lecture was 'Nursing fo Pregnant Women.' All the class I was seeking the hole where I could escape from."

"The class was finally over. And I'd forgotten already all the reason why I was here. God was always joking on me."

"She appeared in my front, gave me an envolope and ran away. I just was going to enjoy receiving an envelope from her and suddenly I found that was my envelope which I gave her. She returned me my envelope. I knew nothing but over."

"When I felt hopeless. I found the envelope was opened. I took out the blank paper. No, it wasn't a blank paper. A rew of characters was on it."

"I need to exercise my injection skill. Would you like to be the volunteer?"

"First time in my life I felt injection was so happy."

So there's the next Lu Xun for you. Stalking: check. Writing a love letter with nothing but a "heart mark": check. Accidentally attending a class which likely showed slides of half-naked pregnant women: check. It's like reading my own goddamned life story, people!

At the same time, there may be some remarkable clarity in this fellow's writing that his otherwise passable English would overshadow. Read it again. He drops in casual innuendo like a pro. I haven't gotten in touch with him since our first meeting. In fact, I hold a firm "No Sheng" policy for future potential friends. It's much less confusing that way.

Despite all the elders' urges to hold off on dating, Chinese are expected to get married by the approximate age of twenty-five. That may even be a conservative estimate. It's an interesting system they've got going here. Do not date at all through school, but find someone to marry the moment you're finished.

Just recently my best student dropped out of school to get married. Actually, she was the best student in the school. Word on the grapevine was that she'd had a big fight with her parents over winter break and was looking to liberate herself from them completely. This is another fault of the one-child policy. If there are no siblings to receive the minor beatings that one must release on occasion, where must that tension go? Towards Mom and Pop, of course. I worry for my former prodigy. She's only seventeen. Like most other students, she spoke Korean as well as Chinese, and her English, relatively speaking, was excellent. I fear that her marriage will remove any interest in pursuit of a career. This would be a shame; there are only so many people with such linguistic facilities. What's more, I needed her to translate in class for the stupid kids. I don't think I've been completely understood in class since she left.

Chinese attitudes towards romance are not as open as those you'd see in the West. If you turn on the TV at any time in America, you can probably find a Springer episode on great-grandmothers who haven't hit sixty yet. If you turn on the TV in Europe, you can probably find softcore pornography without any difficulty. In China you have to dig deeper, beyond the status quo beliefs, to hit any real dirt. Massage parlors seem to be the big exception. They are quite acceptable locales for adulterous and/or illicit behavior. But most of the time, you have to go beneath the surface. There are occasions, however, when rather bold assertions of sexuality parade themselves right before your eyes.

One of my Chinese language books offers such an example. There is a dialogue in every chapter in Chinese, and they provide an English translation in the back of the book for each. Most of the translations are pretty weak. In any case, I can remember them simply because they are so unsatisfactory, so maybe they succeed after all. One of them:

(In the hospital)
Speaker A: Well, I see your health has improved. I'd like to go out for a walk. Are you coming along?
Speaker B: I'm sorry, I can't. A friend is coming to see me.
A: Who is it that's so concerned about you? Your boyfriend?
B: ....
A: Haha, I know from your silence I was right.
B: Oh, what do you know?! Go away quickly!
A: How would I dare go slowly! Well, don't forget to give him a good treat.

Since hospital patients typically do not provide their guests with gifts or "treats," one can only assume the translator was working with a perverted mind.

Another day I was using the computer in the English department at school. Classes had ended for the day, and everyone in the office was waiting around for the teachers' bus to leave. I was just surfing some non-controversial sites on the web, minding my own business, and all of the sudden the computer speakers emitted a loud, continuous moan from a female voice. It was a popup ad in Chinese characters, which I cannot read. My first instinct was to turn my head slightly to see if anyone had noticed. One set of round eyes and five sets of slanted eyes had become fixated on my monitor. "Um, it's not me, really." The moaning continued. As I was frantically attempting to close the ad, one of the teachers walked up and glanced at it. "It is an advertisement for a cell phone company." Whew.

No single experience in Yanji, however, has even come close to the graphic, albeit otherwise unknown hilarity of the Penison Pub. With the linguistic aid of my Wash U roommate Kyle, who is going for a Master's in Mandarin in Taiwan, it appears that the "Penison" may well be a botched spelling of "pension." Kyle thought the nearest translation of the characters might be "Benefital Spirits Bar," for which a Chinese could easily mistakenly substitute "Pension Pub." I actually begged Long to go there for a drink. I didn't care if it turned out to be a raging homo bar or not. Would you pass up the opportunity for a drink at the Penison Pub?

I think not.

2006-05-05T07:10:00.000-07:00

Meiyou Cinco de Mayo...

It's easy to get stressed out in this line of work. My job is no picnic. Amidst all the coffee breaks, alarm clock-less mornings, and days with no obligations whatsoever, I have to find time for a rest every so often. Even though many teachers the world over put in more hours per day than I do in a week, I'm not about to let work rule my life. Last week we had no classes due to the national labor holiday. Call it the Chinese spring break, minus the tequila, beaches, wet t-shirt contests, or anything else that would make it such. It was a welcome respite from the Groundhog's Day existence at which Yanji is adept at generating.

At first we thought about using the week to jump ship in Hong Kong, which was an especially attractive locale given its distance from Yanji. But, nearly everyone in China uses the labor festival week to travel, and tickets for train and plane alike were unavailable for garden-variety road trip Americans who plan these things a few days in advance. Instead, we took a short trip with the Salesian group to Jilin City, a seven-hour bus ride west in the province of the same name.

Having expected the typical Manchurian shit sandwich of an industrial city, our brief run through Jilin was quite pleasant. Spring had finally separated itself from winter's harsh, GHB-fueled advances, and we enjoyed Cinco de Mayo with a stroll through Beishan Gongyuan, Jilin's renowned hillside park just out of the city center. At least 10,000 Chinese had the same idea. As much as I enjoy people-watching--particularly attractive young women and weirdos--it's not quite the same when you're the focus of attention. I had quite a few requests to pose for photos, all of which I honored, all of them without a stitch of clothing upon me.

That's not quite true, but I was a bit overdressed for the day. I almost started sweating, but I think I've forgotten how to do so. Such is Mother Nature's nature here. It will keep me from playing tourist in China after classes finish up in early July. I do love gatherings, but I hate crowds, especially when it's hot outside. I can picture myself at the main sights, hairy and sweaty, barking at the natives. Something out of a Conrad novel. I'll pass.

Back in Jilin, I ought to have been charging for all the photos I took. I do wonder what went through the minds of those who asked me, something akin to the mindset of a tourist in a wildlife preserve. Creep on up next to it, there. The chance for a photo is worth the possibility of provoking an attack. Prod it with your sun umbrella if necessary, Li, but not for too long. You must keep that skin of yours unsullied.

After about the first ten pictures, all the smiling was becoming tiresome. I suppose I wouldn't make a very good celebrity. Some people were filming me or taking shots with their cameras on the sly, pretending to focus on something else. This was irritating. Then something unexpected happened. A girl about my age saddled up right next to me and solicited me for sex. It was rather embarassing. Not only was I with a large group, but I only had about twenty bucks on me, which wouldn't have gotten too much.

Of course, she was really just asking for a photo, but her request was in Mandarin, and it didn't process right away. My initial reaction was nothing out of the ordinary for a man who'd recently traveled through Bangkok, Phnom Penh, Saigon, and the various other sin cities of Indochina. There, the ladies of the night will put themselves right up against you and ask if you want a "massage." As soon as I realized this young lady's true intentions, I happily obliged.

Also, with the spring weather at its finest, many t-shirts made their seasonal debuts with the Chinese. As I've noted before, the Chinese will wear anything in English or Roman script. Most are likely made in China, but some make an overseas jaunt, secondhand from the U.S., too. Some of the notables:
-- "Frat Boys Love Me": seen upon the t-shirt of a girl no more than fifteen. Something you might expect to see in the U.S. Not here. Her dear mother, blissfully unaware of the actual meaning, likely takes pride in her only child's interest in learning English. This t-shirt was her gift.
--"Ruff Ryders Ryde or Die": seen upon the t-shirt of a forty year-old man. Apparently its previous owner did not adhere to this philosophy. What would DMX think?
--"The smell of her perfume when she wakes up next to you": seen upon the t-shirt of a fourteen year-old boy. I actually wanted to take a picture with this kid. He was certainly more deserving of the Ruff Ryders t-shirt.

We've been called into work for tomorrow, a Sunday morning. The school is taking part in a recruiting fair in the main plaza downtown. I'm not quite sure what we'll be doing, although I imagine it will probably consist of standing around and looking foreign. Given my appearance, I'm not quite sure how this fits into their actually trying to attract prospective students.

I'll leave you with a photo I took at the Tumen River at the North Korean border from earlier in the week. I apologize for the lack of a closeup, as there was indeed a river preventing me from getting a better shot. You can make out another elusive animal uninterested in being photographed: the North Korean soldier. Pyongyang would say he's there to protect the border, but his main task is to ensure that none of his countrymen head for greener pastures across the Chinese side. You can see that he's quite engaged in doing so, although he gets in a quick crotch pick when he can.

2006-04-21T04:44:00.000-07:00

Carr on me, carr on me...

Well, they recently changed ownership at my gym after the old manager, Tian, got a job in Guangzhou with some Korean company. Good for Tian. He is a swell guy, and I won't hold it against him for letting his business fall into the shitter. It's kind of like how seniors in college really let loose when they finally have a post-grad plan. That was the case with me, anyway. I didn't allow myself a drop until I accepted this job a few weeks before graduation.

The gym was in rough shape, and the new people decided to jazz it up after he left. They slapped some paint on the walls, cleaned the bathrooms, and put in a ten-inch color TV, which continuously shows a DVD on the importance of stretching before and after a workout. To accomodate those who enjoy a smoke in between sets, they put in ashtrays around the gym. So I joined a new, snazzy gym.

It was high time for a change. Along with the aforementioned concerns, the old gym was about the size of a walk-in closet. This wouldn't bother me so much were there not ten Chinese sharing the space and staring at me for the duration of my workout. There are several activities which are more readily enjoyed when others are not eyeing you. The first three are primal in nature:eating, procreating, and defecating. A close fourth is exercising, which may be considered primal as well. Lions on the hunt being filmed by National Geographic may empathize with me on this one.

My new gym, which opened in January, is a high class health club catering to Yanji's upper crust. Poor as Yanji may seem at times, there is a wealthy class here. Many former residents of the city have taken jobs abroad, in South Korea, Japan, and even the U.S. They send home big chunks of their paychecks to their families. This phenomenon creates a large number of people who, supported by their expat husbands, wives, and children, have no need or want to work for pennies in Yanji. I can understand this. In fact, I even aspire to it to some degree. You may have read about this before in an old post in which I express interest in becoming a "house husband."

Long and I are the token foreign members at the gym. All the equipment is brand spankin' new, and American, no less. Every treadmill has a small color TV before it. I took an especially long run last Monday to catch the end of Rambo III, and I myself was ready to kill when it was through. Instead, I saw some lady wipe out pretty hard on her treadmill. Even before we were sure she was ok, it was pretty funny.

As was the case with the first gym I joined in Yanji, I was asked to join an aerobics class. Since a half-hour on the treadmill would be better cardio anyways, I declined. I've heard people talk about what a great workout you can get at an aerobics class, but this is a bunch of nonsense. Here, they spend no less than half the class with arms akimbo while humping the air. This was no isolated incident, either. Every time I walk by, there is a group of twenty or so spandex-clad middle-aged woman engaged in that exact activity. Does this constitute a workout? I'm sure a few of you are hoping so.

I don't really have anywhere to spend money, so there the gym membership comes in handy. However, it's probably not even necessary since I live on the seventh floor of my building. It is the top floor, it is not a penthouse, and there's no elevator to it. I'd always accepted the hike up the stairs as another Jobish misfortunate associated with living in this city, unaware of exactly how deep that sentiment ran. I recently learned of a city law that residential buildings with less then eight storeys are not permitted to have elevators installed. What this means is that somewhere in Yanji, as I write this, there is an obese man taking the elevator to his second-story apartment in an eight-story building. He has no reason to sprinkle his stairwells with obscenities, not that he ever sees them.

While we're on the subject of swearing, one short term goal of mine is to help Lambert work on his English vulgarities. One of my fellow English teachers, Lambert never really learned how to cuss properly in English. His favorite word is "goddammit." He doesn't know that people usually only say this when they're pretty upset. He'll look up with a huge grin on his face and some extremely minor problem. "Well, I accidentally touched the insert key and erased a few words...GODDAMMIT!", whereupon he looks to me for approval. He sees me laughing and assumes he's used it well. Actually, now that I think about it, this is one of my few pleasures. So, I see no reason to change things. However, he seems to have a number of the right tools at his disposal already for a man to breathe fire in vulgarity. He's about 5'7", he's got a flattop, and he moonlights as a trial lawyer. This man deserves to know how to be properly obscene in any language.

Aside from the number of recent snowfalls, it's been pretty tame here for a while now. We have next week off for the national Labor Day holiday, so I've been giving midterms this week. As I've said before, exam week is always a highlight for me. I usually administer individual oral exams a few class periods in a row, which is quite simple. The only real challenge is paying attention for the duration of the exams. My attention span lasts for about forty minutes on a good day. This has been somewhat problematic given that conflict with my occupation requires that I teach forty-five minute classes. At the forty minute mark of the class, I usually zone out and lose interest in the topic du jour. "Teacher, is class over?", the students will query, to which I respond, "What? Did you say something?"

Most days, however, I'd be lucky to receive that kind of attention. Usually about one-third to one-fourth of the class is genuinely interested in what I have to say, and interested in participating. The rest of them are engaged in meaningless chitchat, or they're sleeping. A few weeks ago there must have been some strange alignment of the planets, as I had a class in which every student was both quiet and attentive. This happens occasionally when another teacher spends the previous class yelling at them for some reason. But it always catches me off guard, and especially so on that day. I'm usually well prepared for this figurehead job, but for some reason, I didn't have a lesson plan ready. The students caught on soon enough. "Teacher, what do we learn today?" We spent the rest of the class practicing the art of leaving messages on an answering machine. Some of them were pretty creative. "Hello Jay. This is your girlfriend. Why you not call me today? Tell me. I so angry."

The above photo was taken at the top of Mao Er Shan, a mountain just outside the city. I like to go there once a week or so if the weather is good. It gives me time to relax, collect my thoughts, and interrupt Chinese persons' photo opportunities. The latter became a big hobby of mine while traveling in Korea and Indochina. It's pretty much a certainty that if you're somewhere with a scenic view, historical significance, or at anytime near sunrise/sunset, there will be an Asian person taking pictures nearby. Hell, it's not even restricted to that. They would take photos of their own goddamn cameras if they could.

You have to look around for a quiet place on this mountain, and it's no small task. I also have to worry about frightening people I run into on the trails. They're not used to seeing people like me. If I could read the newspaper, I might catch a column on the "elusive bear man of Mao Er Shan." Anyway, as I was making my way back down it a couple weeks ago, I found a secluded spot that doubled as a scenic overlook. It was the perfect place for a good, solitary piss. Just as I was unzipping, I noticed a couple, ten feet away and horrified. They were working on a picnic lunch, and I think their appetite was pretty much gone after that. What strange karma ensued? I'm not sure, but I didn't have to go anymore.

2006-04-16T07:10:00.000-07:00

The Lesser Known Drinking Holidays...

In the U.S., we have a few days set aside annually for excessive drinking and generally rambunctious behavior. St. Paddy's Day. New Years Eve. Mardi Gras. The Super Bowl. July 4th. The day before Thanksgiving. Labor Day. Thursday. Each of these days provides one with an excuse for inordinate merriment without remorse.

Whatever these holidays originally stood for is no longer relevant. Each has become a drinking holiday. As for Halloween, I suspect that it was always such, but only for those well beyond the trick or treating age. When you are young, the objective of Halloween is to procure as much candy as possible. When you've grown older, the objective of Halloween--if you are a typical, modest young woman--is to wear the least modest costume possible. As a typical young man, your objective on Halloween is to ogle said young women.

Nearly every holiday in American culture has set a course for alcohol abuse. And American holidays alone have not proved sufficient. Thus, Americans have begun reaching for foreign holidays to satisfy and justify their thirsts. In recent years, Cinco De Mayo has gone from a regional Mexican holiday to serving as the only plausible explanation for purchasing Corona. Purists of the holiday are understandably frustrated with this development. However, as more Americans learn that the original purpose of the holiday was commemoration of military victory over the French, I suspect this will change.

Why do Americans turn every holiday into a drinking holiday? As much as the drinking culture of the American university system may suggest otherwise, Americans as a whole are not noted for being lushes. Indeed, alcohol consumption has been dropping in the U.S. for several decades now.

Most nationalities brag about being able to drink a lot, here's some evidence to show who's true to their word and who isn't. Some detective work online yielded an interesting survey of the world's fifty heaviest-drinking nations. This list is based on pure alcohol consumption per capita, factoring in beer, wine, and spirits. Luxembourg, an extraordinarily wealthy, pea-sized country situated between France and Germany, sits comfortably numb at number one. Some of you aren't doing your part: the U.S. didn't even crack the top 20. However, we did manage to top all of the Muslim nations.

From NTC publications:

Per capita consumption of alcoholic beverages, selected countries
Total pure alcohol
Rank Country Litres
1. Luxembourg 11.8
2. Portugal 11.2
3. France 11.1
4. Czech Republic 10.1
5. Denmark 10.0
6. Germany 9.8
7. Austria 9.8
8. Hungary 9.5
9. Switzerland 9.3
10. Spain 9.3
11. Slovak Republic 9.2
12. Republic of Ireland 9.1
13. Belgium 9.0
14. Greece 8.7
15. Romania 8.7
16. Italy 8.2
17. Netherlands 8.0
18. Bulgaria 7.8
19. United Kingdom 7.6
20. Australia 7.5
21. Cyprus 7.5
22. New Zealand 6.8
23. Argentina 6.8
24. Finland 6.7
25. USA 6.6
26. Japan 6.6
27. Russia 6.2
28. Uruguay 6.2
29. Poland 6.2
30. Canada 6.0
31. Venezuela 5.5
32. Chile 5.0
33. Sweden 4.9
34. South Africa 4.9
35. Colombia 4.5
36. Norway 4.0
37. Iceland 3.7
38. China 3.7
39. Brazil 3.5
40. Mexico 3.4
41. Cuba 2.7
42. Taiwan 2.7
43. Estonia 2.3
44. Paraguay 2.1
45. Singapore 1.6
46. Peru 1.2
47. Ukraine 1.0
48. Israel 0.9
49. Turkey 0.9
50. Thailand 0.7

Scroll to page 31 of the link (http://www.aihw.gov.au/publications/health/sdua98/sdua98.pdf) to see the lists for countries consuming the most beer (Czech Republic), wine (Portugal), and spirits (Russia).

So it appears that we have some serious catching up to do. Currently I am unable to help the cause. China had a poor showing in the beer category, and I don't want them to lose face over it any more. In the meantime, co-opting other holidays and turning them into American drinking holidays seems to be a step in the right direction.

There are a number of drinking holidays that don't get as much publicity as the aforementioned heavyweights, but they remain potent in their own right. Here area a few notables.

Dyngus Day

Also known as Easter Monday (as it is celebrated the day after Easter), Dyngus Day is a Polish holiday commemorating the birth of Christianity in that nation. Old pagan rituals were carried on after the Poles went Christian, but with new Christian baptismal connotations instead. On Dyngus Day, men would drench women with buckets of water and slap them in the ankles with willow branches. Dyngus Day may well be the forefather of the modern wet t-shirt contest. Unfortunately, this particular tradition lives on only in a few rural areas in Poland.

Dyngus Day minus the old pagan rituals lives on in the U.S., celebrated in Polish communities nationwide, most notably in Chicago, South Bend, and Buffalo. Polish sausage, hard-boiled eggs, and polka are customary, but mostly it's a chance for people to sit around and drink beer all day. I am one-quarter Polish and am thus entitled to celebrate this holiday as only a partial poser.

Purim

Had I not gone to Wash U I likely still wouldn't have heard of this holiday. Jews are generally not big drinkers, but there is at least one day a year when this isn't the case. By the Jewish calendar, Purim is celebrated on the fourteenth day of Adar, which usually falls in March, and occasionally on the other big drinking holiday of that month.

The story of Purim is told in the Book of Esther. On the thirteenth day of Adar, the Persian king Haman called for the extermination of the Jews. The Jews emerged victorious, and they celebrated on the fourteenth day. Now here's the real kicker: "A person should drink on Purim until the point where they can't tell the difference between 'Blessed is Mordechai' and 'Cursed is Haman.' (Talmud - Megillah 7a; Code of Jewish Law 695:2).

It would appear that God gave the chosen people a mandate to party. There is, however, a spiritual component to all this. Drinking allows one to "transcend normal limits of comprehension," to be "elevated to a higher spiritual plane." Jewish scholars note that if one drinks to the point where he cannot understand the difference between the aforementioned passages, it serves to show that there really is no difference between them in the greater scheme of things--that it is all part of God's plan, one that humans could not hope to understand on earth.

For some reason, I don't recall covering this in any religion class in high school. L'chaim!

St. Kevin's Day

Long before Americans made St. Paddy's a drinking holiday, Irish celebrated the legend of St. Kevin with boisterous behavior every June 3rd.

St. Kevin (498-618--he reportedly lived 120 years) lived the monastic way of life, going barefoot, wearing skins, eating various plants and herbs, and spending his days in prayer. His only company in ascetic solitude came from animals. Among his legends include one of a blackbird landing on his hand as it was outstretched in prayer. The bird laid an egg, and the monk remained in that position until it hatched.

After years in solitude, St. Kevin helped found a monastery, and it became a center of pilgrimmage long after his death. The British destroyed the community in 1398, and it was then that the Feast of St. Kevin began to be known as a drinking holiday. Over the years, his monastery became a center of pilgrimmages, which often involved raucous parties in his honor. They continued to grow more rambunctious, and by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it had become downright riotous. The church banned the festival in the 1890s, but it lives on in many Irish communities. This is the drinking holiday for many Irish.

So then, if you weren't aware of them before, I've told you about at least three new holidays you can now celebrate. All I ask is that you invite me to your Martin Luther King Cobra festivities next year. We will let freedom ring with malt liquor.

2006-04-07T23:10:00.000-07:00

Yanji: A Culinary Journey...

For entertainment, Yanji has all the charm of a snuff film (an aside: the city has no movie theaters in which to show such films). For aesthetics, Yanji looks like it was built with grey Legos. Dirty grey Legos. For dining, Paris or Rome it's not. But one won't go hungry here.

One advantage of living in the Middle Kingdom is the Chinese abhorrence of "fast" food. What I mean by this is not that the Chinese do not care for McDonald's, KFC, et al. Fast food franchises are booming throughout the country, and Yanji is no exception. I daresay that the recently opened KFC is the most popular restaurant in the city.

What I mean, rather, is that there is generally a strong emphasis on fresh ingredients, fresh preparation, and presentation. There is an expectation that if you're going to pay for a meal, it should be better than what you'd cook up at home. Quite simply, Chinese do not settle for crap when it comes to restaurant fare, or for that matter, food in general. The very idea of a TV dinner would probably start a bunch of peasant rebellions that you would never hear about. The downside to all this is that I have not had a frozen pizza since August.

For the first half of my time here, Long and I had a cook who made us dinner six nights a week. There was good variety, a knowledge of what dishes we preferred, and consistently good fare. To say that we were spoiled was more than a mild understatement. But Theresa quit when we got back from vacation in February, and suddenly we were on our own.

When this happened, my first thought was that I'd end up eating ramen every night. This would have been nothing less than torture. I can tolerate ramen every now and then, when I'm in an extreme hurry. That it is dirt cheap--a "gourmet" pack of ramen runs about 50 cents--does nothing to win me over. It makes me wonder: why did people start eating ramen back in the beginning? Did they run out of dogshit?

Theresa's departure pushed us into independence. To be more accurate, it forced me to go out to eat every night. I'm not really interested in cooking here, and not really capable either. Fortunately, a hearty, reasonably-priced repast awaits me somewhere daily. In the interest of making you jealous, as you gnaw through a leftover casserole, I have compiled a brief list of some of my favorite dishes in Yanji. The current exchange rate is approximately 8 Chinese yuan to 1 U.S. dollar.

Niu Rou Mian (beef noodles)

Price: 3-8 yuan a bowl

The beef noodles at the Yanbian University Medical School cafeteria (3Y) are some of the cheapest and best in the city. I know this because I have ordered beef noodles from at least five of the 800 restaurants in Yanji where you can get them. YU's noodles are homemade, and the kitchen staff seems to always be in a jolly mood. I have this effect on people.

One has to be specific when ordering this dish or you will get damn near a bushel of xiang cai (coriander) in it. Similar to parsely, coriander has an intense, numbing effect on the tastebuds. Interestingly, it is loved by Korean-Chinese and despised by the South Koreans. This threw me for a loop, seeing as Koreans are usually about as discerning as horses when it comes to food.

Jiaozi (dumplings)

Price: 5 yuan for a plate

Duck restaurants in Yanji and elsewhere in China kick out the national dish of Beijing Kao Ya (roast duck). But I frequent such an establishment in Yanji rather for its exceptional Zhu Rou Bai Cai Jiaozi (pork and cabbage dumplings), dipped in soy sauce with a dab of garlic. For dessert, it's Tao Ren Mi Zao Bing (peach bits with honey-covered almonds covered with a thin pastry crust).

Niu Rou Chao Fan (fried rice with beef)

Price: 4 yuan

We're not talking about Rice-a-Roni, now. Simple, fast, and filling. The perfect food for a college student or a Chinese.

Galifan (curry with rice)

Price: 4-8 yuan

Disclaimer: I have never had Indian curry, so I cannot provide a comparison of the curry in Yanji and that served elsewhere. In fact, I had never had Indian food until I was introduced to the wonders of chicken tikka masala on our trip back in January. I used to think the only Americans who enjoyed Indian food drove Volkswagen Jettas, scattered copies of The Bell Jar on their coffee tables, and listened to the BBC. Now I can see I've been missing out.

In the meantime, the curry here's not so bad either.

Gu Lao Rou (sweet and sour pork)

Price: 6-10 yuan a plate

The Chinese would like you to think all of their food is wholesome. Here's an exception. Dreamed up in hell's kitchen by Lucifer herself, this dish is pure evil deliciousness. It has been banned in some of the western provinces, as it is known to incite political uprisings.

Qingdao (old transliteration: Tsingtao)

Price: 4 yuan a bottle at the store, 5-8 in a restaurant or bar

The Chinese have their staple foods, and I have mine. You cannot afford to be a beer snob in China; I've seen no more than 10-12 brands in Yanji, all lagers. Qingdao isn't much different from Miller Lite, perhaps a bit smoother. It's also the best I can find. C'est la vie.

The Germans founded the brewery in the northern port city of Qingdao in the early 1900s, and it has become the nation's premier beer. Incidentally, China recently overtook the U.S. as the world's largest beer consumer. I regret to admit that my time here has increased the Middle Kingdom's lead. I can assure you I'll do my best to even things out upon returning home.

For a while I was buying Bing Chuan, which is a regional beer brewed in Harbin. Then, late last year there was an accident in a factory south of the city, and an enormous chemical slick made its way north on the river. 9 million people were without water for about a week due to the possibility of benzyne contamination. Eventually the slick made its way to the Amur River, which forms the border between Heilongjiang province and Siberia. The Russians, not an historically environmentally conscious people themselves, cried foul, and everyone else had a good laugh at them for that. I'm fairly sure that product recalls aren't very common here, so I've avoided Bing Chuan since then. Benzyne doesn't do much for the taste.

However, I will now avoid Bing Chuan on principle as well. Today I saw an enormous Bing Chuan poster of a bikini'd young lass frolicking about on the beach. Not much different from most American beer posters, but Bing Chuan is not sold anywhere where there are beaches. This is just plain bad ethics. They know damn well the closest beachgoing frolicking young bikini'd lasses are at least 400-500 miles away.

On American beers: Budweiser happens to be the beer of choice for Yanji's wealthier citizenry. It's foreign, it's expensive, therefore it's quality, right? I could learn the Chinese words for "skunk piss," and tell them what a grievous error they've made, but it would ruin my fun. Wanna top that? You can get PBR here, even tallboys in some places. If the Boxer Rebellion were this century instead of the last, I'm certain this would be the dispute in question. "Why does the West only send their shitty beer?"

Pulgoki (marinated braised beef)

Price: 20-30 a plate

This is a Korean dish, one of that country's most popular. It's also one of the only Korean dishes that non-Koreans enjoy. You're part cook on this one: thin slices of marinated beef are cooked over a charcoal grill at your table. Can also be served ready with rice (shocker) or bibimbap, described below.

Dolsot Bibimbap (steamed rice with vegetables and hot sauce)

Price: 5-10 yuan a pot

Another Korean mainstay available in Yanji en masse. Hot steamed rice is topped with a variety of vegetables, red pepper sauce, and a sunny-side up egg. Stir it all together and you've got a dish fit for a Hamel. This variety of bibimbap is served in a hot stone pot, and it continues to cook well after arriving at the table.

Some places will throw in a dab of ground beef, but this is basically a vegetarian dish. All the more reason that I, a carnivore, cannot explain why I like it so much.

So, it's not the four food groups everyday, but it is an improvement over last year's initial foray into providing food for myself. Mondays we made burgers. Tuesday was gyro night. Wednesday the Stouffer's chicken pot pie. Thursday was Pointer's pizza at happy hour. It's a wonder I did not have a heart attack.

It's a (somewhat) healthier lifestyle now. It's good to eat out for a dollar. It's good to be a regular--one place yells my order to the kitchen as soon as I walk in. I'll miss these things.

2006-03-31T06:12:00.000-08:00

I came to Yanji with nary a clue what I'd be teaching. On the first day on the job, the department supervisor took me to my first class, introduced me in Chinese, and then smiled and wished, "good luck!" She scurried out and slammed the door behind, hoping to distance herself from the oncoming trainwreck. Forty bright eyed Chinese youngsters waited for my next move.

Now, after seven months, I'm still not quite sure what I should be teaching. I am almost certain, however, that I'm not covering it. One day I will come across it deep beneath all the junk in my desk drawers. "Whoops."

The textbooks are not very practical. They provide a starting point for the lesson, but beyond that they're useless. They do not offer examples of conversations that occur in everyday life, as the pictures below will show. They promote diversity in one example and reinforce stereotypes in others. They offer a view of American culture that no foreigner could hope to understand. They confuse.

But, for the life of me, I can't decide if the writers and illustrators are hopelessly incompetent or comedic geniuses. That they've included a "Grammar Rap" exercise in every chapter suggests they may well be out of touch with reality. But if it's the latter, I will subscribe to their newsletter. The following illustrations will show you why:

Here we have an example from a lesson on using the word "since." This book is twenty years old and was made specifically for Chinese students. Numerous issues arise. How am I to explain to my students the difference between Democrats and Republicans, or why an animal represents either? "What this means is that they vote for someone else now." "Vote? What's the meaning?" Someone had fun writing this.

Your standard buck-toothed Asians, back in the kitchen and using the soy sauce liberally. In the book, all Asians have buck teeth, all black people have afros, and all the white people are hopelessly confused, blundering morons.

I am sort of hoping that this woman ends up getting stabbed. She pretty much deserves it.

The bloodshot-eyed hippy, the frightened lady dowager, the collision of patchouli and old bitty perfume.

Standard procedure. They always forget this in the language guides.

Here we have a black woman in full tribal dress. The lady on the bike is late for class, and thus does not have time to ask for her opinion on female genital mutilation in the Sub Sahara.

Here's a lesson the book missed: never talk to someone you don't know in a locker room. I don't like where this one is going.

Sleazeball: "You're gonna make me rich, Waldo."

Dancer: "Please do not tell my parents about this."

I added a personal touch to this one.

My favorite. Here we have a man on his way to work, probably as a goddamned rocket scientist, who must rely upon a stranger's explanation on how to change a flat. Of course, she is a woman.

Children of the corn. I don't think they'll be throwing a party.

Lord knows my students are confused enough without these books. They certainly see me as a bit loony, with the mad scientist/Oscar Wilde do and the constant howling. But there's good reason for the laughing, even if it's old news.

You see, there are a number of things in Chinese that sound straight outta Compton. One is the common pause word. English pause words may be "uhh," "well," or "hmm." The Chinese pause word sounds almost exactly like "nigga." Yeah. It is used all the time, and of course I have not developed the ability to refrain from laughing when I hear it. Common classroom scene: a student will be speaking to me in English. The mind goes blank when he/she needs a certain word. "Nigga..sdkjfywemikrapid firechineseorkoreanapcmeuivbsi." I always call on them out afterwards: "Nigga what?" The whole class then laughs, as the Chinese always do whenever a waiguoren attempts to speak their launguage.

Similarly, the translation for "fine" or "okay then," hao le, sounds much like "holla." If I hear this, I often say "holla back," and then start chuckling.

Most of my jokes go over their heads. A few weeks ago we were talking about what they'd like to do in the future, and a few of the girls mentioned the idea of becoming housewives. I was supportive and enthusiastic. "Really? Me too. I want to become a house husband. My wife will do the work, and I will watch TV all day." This met dead silence.

I suppose it all balances out when they start yapping back and forth about me in the native tongue. I always interrupt them and ask what they said. Nothing, of course. Come on, tell me, I'll say. "Teacher, I said you are very handsome." They are full of shit, but far too cute for me to be angry.

2006-03-28T03:26:00.000-08:00

The Long March...

March, like February, is an unnecessary month. It is barren, frigid, and heartless. March is probably when Rip Van Winkle went for some shuteye, out of sheer boredom. "Wake me up for Cinco De Mayo. Ready the burritos." Nothing interesting happens in March, save St. Paddy's Day and the NCAA tourney. But the closest pint of Guinness is in Shenyang, and Chinese only like pro basketball, namely Yao Ming. There's not really anything left to do here, so little thrills get a bit more celebration. They just started running another city bus out by the school. I'm pretty psyched about that. Also, the Yanbian U cafeteria actually does serve curry. It turns out they'd just run out of it the first time I asked for it!

Now get this: they recently opened up a new fast food joint near downtown on the other side of the river. Yanji has a KFC, California Beef Noodles, and a couple of Lotterias (a Korean owned McDonald's knockoff) franchises, but that's pretty much it as far as fast food goes. I felt a quiet content upon seeing the new place for the first time, with its giant hamburger sign outside. Add addictive, no-nutritional-value-whatsoever cuisine to plotless action flicks and downright atrocious pop music to the list of chief American imports.

That wouldn't stop me from going, mind you. To tell you the truth, I almost felt obligated. I'd be doing them a favor with my appearance alone. The American in the fast food place--it gives it legitimacy, and the owners knew this. I could read their thoughts, which might be similar to the concerns of a record producer pondering, "Would black people dance to this?" I went with an open mind. Would the service be prompt and efficient? Would the food be made ready to order, and fresh? How far would the smell of urine from the restrooms extend into the dining area? These were important things to consider.

If there were failures in any of these categories, it certainly couldn't have been due to lack of manpower. On a slow Saturday afternoon, with only three customers in the restaurant besides ourselves, I counted eighteen employees, all manning their respective stations, all looking a bit suicidal. One guy was scrubbing the nooks in between the floor tiles with a toothbrush. There were three workers assigned as doormen/greeters, which is kind of embarassing. Most people feel some shame in eating at fast food establishments to begin with, and thus are not interested in having someone remind them with a welcome.

China's overpopulation shows itself in every restaurant and department store, where anyone will serve you out of sheer boredom. If only their numbers extended to places of public service. If there is any facial expression capable of saying, "fuck you," it's the one I get every time I go to the post office. I can empathize with them, though. There are only two people working at any given time. It's a wonder they haven't been on a shooting spree yet.

Elsewhere, a foreign customer is an especially unique opportunity for entertainment. Need someone to help you, white person? It's about as difficult as getting laid in a monkey whorehouse with a bunch of bananas. And if they don't have the chance to talk to you personally, they use the house stereo to welcome you.

It is a not uncommon occurrence to walk into a place of business and soon after be greeted by the musical stylings of the worst that America has to offer. Celine Dion, the Backstreet Boys, and Britney Spears come to life, all in the form of a courtesy to you. Name a crappy Western pop music act--that is not difficult to do--and they're huge here. Now, when an American friend confides in you that they enjoy the music of Linkin Park, you can end that friendship without feeling the least bit guilty. It doesn't work the same way with a foreigner, though. How do you go about explaining why their taste in music sucks? I have a theory. There is a strange inverse relationship at work. Just as all the quality Chinese products are shipped overseas, no quality American products make their way here. Hence, the average Chinese is not exposed to any good American music. What else could explain the popularity of Matchbox 20? Americans who enjoy Matchbox 20 should consider ritual suicide.

Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy many different kinds of music. My musical interests are as diverse as the actors in a McDonald's commercial. At the moment I am listening to Parliament Funkadelic on Pandora (a website I insist you visit--pandora.com), Yo Yo Ma is in the player in the living room, and Joe Satriani is in my Walkman. I remember a kid in high school--notice I did not say, "a kid I graduated from high school with"--that had a different take. He was known in several circles as "Chucky." He sported a mullet, a gut, and enough chemical substances in his blood to test positive for an entire pharmacy inventory. I gave him a ride home once, and when it was apparent that I would not be shanked and carjacked, I asked about his musical interests. "Oh yeah, dude, I listen to all kinds of stuff. Foghat, Creedence, Zeppelin." He went on, naming about ten other acts, all of whom peaked around 1970.

It doesn't get much better with my students. Last semester they were insistent on learning the lyrics to the Carpenters' "Yesterday Once More." Thankfully they are usually interested in less intellectual pursuits. Today I gave them a short test, after which we went outside to play hackey sack for the remainder of the period. I find it quite intriguing how well this hippy non-sport has caught on in a country where a seemingly minor drug offense can net you a quick trial and execution. When the weather warms up a bit more, I'll bring out my frisbee. The whole of Jilin province will be wearing tye-died t-shirts within a month. In the meantime, I will continue teaching why hippies are to be resented.

2006-03-20T22:17:00.000-08:00

Hey, you got a job for me when I get back?

I was recently, once again, offered a position teaching English. This guy was standing on a corner, chatting on his cell phone. He saw us and immediately stopped talking to the person on the other end. He didn't bother to hang up the phone, though, so we knew he meant business. When someone can't turn off their phone to offer me a job, that's when I know I've hit big time.

He mentioned that he was starting up a new school and looking for English teachers. He said it was "really difficult to get foreign teachers to come to Yanji." Well, you don't say? Even with all that Yanji has to offer? I wanted to hold off whatever plans I had for the rest of the evening and explain why this was the case.

I've lost count of the number of times I've been offered work here, whether for an institute or for private lessons. All of them would have paid significantly better than what I make at my current job. I have turned them all down, though. There is something that wounds your pride about working for less than the American minimum wage, cost of living be damned. I don't care if these people offer me three, four, or five times what I make. My mind always jumps to images of laggard, hefty, tattoed high schoolers emptying the trash bins at Wendy's, talking about getting high after work. If the choice is to not work or to work for less than them, it's not a tough decision.

In any case, I can never get over how hard up some of these people are for the exotic foreign teachers. I've written about the hordes of unqualified, unlikeable, and occasionally unsanitary teaching English throughout Asia. The local recruiters bring on this phenomenon themselves, though. When you walk up to a complete stranger on the street and offer him a job without having said a word to him, do you expect to be taken seriously? They can't seem to understand that not all English speakers are inherently qualified to teach their language. "Sure I'll teach in your school. Can you teach me kung fu? Or how to make dumplings?"

It's all perfectly innocent on their part, though, and nothing to get upset about. I only wish I could have similar luck in the job market back home. In fact, I shall miss the no-interview, no-experience, no-background check, no-problem approach. It would pretty much remove all stress involved in the job search.

I'm not looking forward to looking for work. Hell, I had to fly to New York just for orientation for this job, and I wasn't even reimbursed. That I could deal with, even if it did take a couple months on the job just to earn what I lost on airfare. I was not, however, a big fan of the rather thorough pyschological exam (check the August 13, 2005 entry of this blog for details) administered on the second day of orientation. Without any prior knowledge that we'd be talking to a psychologist, I sat through a series of straightforward, beyond personal questions from a bearded man with a Queens accent. We eventually got to the topic of drinking. "John, have you ever blacked out? Blacking out is when you drink so much you can't remember certain periods of time."

Already I'm thinking, what kind of bush-league moron did they bring in? The guy asks me if I've blacked out and then proceeds to explain what it is. Good grief. "John, have you ever strangled a man? It's where you forcibly cut off someone's air passage, resulting in their strangulation."

Hearing his question, that was the first thing that came to mind. The second was an image. It was me, wearing only my boxers, waking up on the couch in a friend's apartment one Sunday morning my senior year. Seems like some a perfectly harmless collegiate experience, right? The thing is, I remember going to sleep on the couch in my apartment, two stories below, fully clothed. I'd had a few drinks and a hot dog before calling it a night.

So there was Beardy McGee sitting across the table, waiting for my answer, and I'm thinking: "Sir, you needn't explain the concept to me. I can give you a textbook example of blacking out, and I didn't even go to a state school."

However, I still wanted to go to China. "Yes, I do seem to recall one occasion. Well I don't recall it that well, ha!" He wasn't amused. Some reassurance was necessary. "That was the last time that happened, though. Those days are in the past. Or at least until this interview is over."

The good Salesians decided that I was mentally competent enough for the job--or at least, not too incompetent--and I'm glad for it. I'm glad I got it taken care of in the U.S., though. The Chinese psych exam would have been significantly less interesting. "You not crazy, are you? Okay good. I have job for you, teaching the Engrish."

2006-03-16T01:52:00.000-08:00

Tuesday is my "day off," and I decided to go for a walk on the most recent one. Walking is a new thing of mine. I am tired of public transportation, and I don't like paying for cabs, cheap or not. So I've taken to walking everywhere. Mostly, though, I think it comes out of a hatred for cardio. I will admit that lifting weights is a rather aimless, vain hobby, but I can't bear to use a treadmill, bike, or stair-stepper on a regular basis. Some people don't know how ridiculous they look when they're using one of these machines. I do. I've got enough people gawking at me as it is. What's more, I've got time to walk. There's no rush to be anywhere.

Back to the Tuesday stroll. I set out hoping to stumble across some hidden treasure. Perhaps, I thought, there is some allure to this place I've not yet noticed. I decided to make it thorough, as I have no interest in finding a spectacular bar, bookstore, or restaurant the same month I leave. It took awhile. The city, with 400,000 people, is expansive, even if not in the Chinese mind. My students talk about getting a job in the "big city." China's got plenty of 'em; twenty-seven with over a million, to be exact. Yanji's little more than a dot on the map. The river that runs through it is one great big stagnant stream that could not support a paper sailboat. The above picture of the man set to swim in frigid waters was taken in a park in Changchun, the provincial capital nine hours eastward.

The walk confirmed my suspicion that the city has not a single redeeming value, at least with regard to architecture. Only a handful of buildings have an ounce of charm, and most of them are government ones. But not all of them. There's one on the campus of Yanbian University Medical School that is quite attractive. I have Chinese class in the building right next to it. I don't know how to describe architecture well, but this building has got style. It's got something that makes it stand out from all the grey socialist drab. It's got brick, stately dark red brick. It looks like it should be on a college campus.

My Chinese teacher didn't agree. "I think maybe it is not so pretty. It is the most old building on the campus. I don't like it."

This was a very Chinese sentiment. If something isn't new and shiny, it can't be that good-looking. I'm not sure where this comes from. China's had it rough for the last century and a half or so. I suppose people want to start out fresh, and keeping things good and modern seems to be the best way. If you can't afford to buy new things, you'd better keep what you've got in tip top shape. Car washes and tailors will never have to worry about going out of business here. Image is everything. The Chinese will never understand my beat-up jeans, dirty sneakers, or tattered bookbag.

The emphasis on keeping things looking new extends to the people themselves. Most older Chinese, like many Asians, have no interest in showing off their wisdom with grey hairs. They dye it back to black on a regular basis. It seems quite reasonable up to a certain age. People dye their hair so they can look youthful, no? It's a simple, discreet way to do so. However, if you're ninety-two and your hair is the same color it was seventy years ago, it looks absurd. Everyone knows for sure that it's a sham. But then again, you probably don't care what people think at that age. I personally look forward to those years of disregard, swearing at youths and wailing on unsuspecting passerby with my cane.

The elderly haven't got anything on the new generation when it comes to changing hair colors, though. The nonconformist kids like to dye their hair too, but it always ends up the exact same putrid-looking burnt orange. Of all the bad fashion trends here, this may be the worst. It is simply not attractive. Many a pretty young lass here has thought otherwise, and it kills whatever style she's got. As for the young guys, most of them dress a bit gay to begin with, and this doesn't help much. Machismo doesn't come with a new hair color, unless it is Chuck Norris chestnut brown.

Changing your hair color is one of the main diversions here. There's not much otherwise. There's public urination, which is quite popular everywhere at most any time of day. And eating. People do seem to go out to eat fairly often. It's cheap, but more importantly, it's communal. The idea of eating alone in a restaurant is a foreign concept, and even at my regular places I'm always asked, "Are you eating alone?" "Well, yes. Thank you for reminding me."

If you've got a little more change in your pocket, you and the crew will then head out to sing some karaoke after the meal. We had a particularly rousing experience a couple of Wednesdays ago. It was International Womens' Day, which was cause enough for most of the teachers at school to get completely hammered on a Wednesday night. Well, the male teachers, anyway. The men were considerate enough to pay for the meal, and any concept of chivalry thereafter drowned in a sea of baijiu and Qingdao. The customary toasts went around, and in short time the women were spending the rest of their holiday babysitting their sauced, word-slurring male colleagues.

2006-03-16T01:03:00.000-08:00

Ai dee didlee da dee dum
Da di doo di didlee dum
Ah doo ra didlee ai eeye
Ai dee didlee da dee dum
Da di doo di didlee dum
Ah doo ra didlee ai eeye

Let grasses grow and waters flow
In a free and easy way
Just give me enough of the fine old stuff that's made near Galway Bay
The police men from old Donegal
Sligo and Lietrin too
We'll give them the slip and we'll take a sip
Of the real old mountain dew

Ai dee didlee da dee dum
Da di doo di didlee dum
Ah doo ra didlee ai eeye
Ai dee didlee da dee dum
Da di doo di didlee dum
Ah doo ra didlee ai eeye

At the foot of the hill there's a neat little still
Where the smoke curls up to the sky
By the smoke and the smell you can plainly tell
There's poitin brewin near by
It fills the air with a perfume rare
But betwixt both me and you
When home we go you can take a bowl
Or a bucket of the mountain dew

Ai dee didlee da dee dum
Da di doo di didlee dum
Ah doo ra didlee ai eeye
Ai dee didlee da dee dum
Da di doo di didlee dum
Ah doo ra didlee ai eeye

Now learned men who use the pen
Have wrote yer praises high
That sweet poitin from Ireland's green distilled from wheat and rye
Put away your pills, it'll cure all ills
Be ye pagan, Christian, or Jew
Take off your coat and grease your throat
With the real old mountain dew

Ai dee didlee da dee dum
Da di doo di didlee dum
Ah doo ra didlee ai eeye
Ai dee didlee da dee dum
Da di doo di didlee dum
Ah doo ra didlee ai eeye

Happy St. Paddy's Day

2006-03-13T06:07:00.000-08:00

I am not a handyman. This is a problem, because my apartment is starting to fall apart.

Actually it's far beyond "starting to fall apart." It began back in September, a few days after we moved in. If you're a longtime reader, you may recall an early post detailing the halving of my position's salary from the previous year. It was done to appease the school, primarily. They, being communists, did not smile upon the idea of a part-time foreign teacher making more than them.

Naturally no one had told us this prior to our arrival. We sat down to sign the contracts a few days after arriving, and the information was presented in a bit of a matter-of-fact manner. "Oh, and your salary is gonna be down a little bit from last year. How much? Down to 1,000 a month. Oh you're right, that is half! Sign here, please!"

Although we never discussed it, I think that, as committed as they were to decreasing the salary, they felt a bit guilty in doing so. They had given us the shaft. But you have to keep the talent happy, so we were told our apartment would be a step up from the previous guys'.

We moved in a few days after arriving and were at first nearly speechless with our new place downtown. It was enormous, for starters, and much larger than a place we could ever hope to furnish modestly. The guys before us had left a TV, a DVD player, and a couch. The kitchen especially stood out. Tiled, radiant, and with seventh-floor views that offered views of the distant countryside. This remains the apartment's saving grace; from there you can see what neither my Land of Lincoln nor Long's Sunshine State can boast of: mountains. They aren't the Himalayas, and they might only qualify as foothills in the Rockies. But they're pristine. It's almost as if they've spoken to Yanji's city planners, "You've made everything here ugly, but damned if you'll do the same to us."

We soon discovered that our apartment was somewhat lacking in a few areas, namely the ability of any given item to last beyond a few weeks. Granted, some of this was due in part to my little misadventures, but nothing here is quite solid, either, i.e., "Hamelproof." Some of the misfortunes:

* The toilets. Early on, unaccustomed to the strength of the local baijiu, I had to finish one evening with a prayer to the porcelain god. During one particularly violent episode I inadvertently ripped the toilet seat clean off. Looking back, I would have to attribute this one more to my error than the sturdiness of the toilet. Since then I have not gone back to the "local product." I quote it as such because I do not believe it was distilled and bottled within the province, the region, the city, or even that particular neighborhood. I think it was a product originating somewhere in the back of the store, and I am now a little bit dumber because of it. Stay off the Manchurian moonshine.

* One day not long after that episode I managed to dislodge another household item. I'd just finished showering, and as I was reaching for my towel I began to slip. Fortunately the steel towel rack was within reach, and I lunged for it. I grabbed it in the center, only to discover that it was not in fact steel, but had been painted to resemble it. Used in supporting only towels beforehand, it bent nearly to a right angle with the weight of the American oaf. One end liberated itself from the wall, and the other miraculously stayed in place, preventing a very wet, naked trip to the emergency room.

* Then there's my bed. If you think this has also been damaged due to some bit of clumsiness on my part, I regret saying that that is not the case. It remains in good working order, insofar as a fucking board of wood with an inch-thick mattress may be in good working order. I was told this was the "Korean style" bed. Apparently Koreans like a good firm mattress. Apparently their concept of a mattress is a small quilt slightly thicker than my fleece jacket. Apparently Koreans are sadistic. I'd be just as well off sleeping on the floor.

The place is a fixer-upper, and it's not even a year old. The longer I live in China, the more apparent it becomes that all quality merchandise is shipped overseas. So the next time you read a tag that says "Made in China," just remember that you have helped prevent me from using a quality product. That goes for everything but fireworks, tea, Kung Fu, and a few other things I don't give a shit about.

Soon our apartment will fall into an irreparable state, as we no longer have the services of our dear cook/housekeeper Theresa to foil such a descent. She is pictured above with Long and myself. She will not read this, but I wish her the best.

2006-03-05T04:09:00.000-08:00

What's My Name?...

Many of my students, in their efforts to pick agreeable English names, failed miserably. When I first started teaching it seemed problematic. I didn't think it would be possible to maintain a serious academic environment with students like Zee Roo and Flower under my tutelage.

That is no longer a concern. The notion of me maintaining a serious academic environment never really was a possibility. I have all the maturity of a 7th-grader, and my students know this. At this point, referring to them by their goofy names remains one of my few diversions. Indeed, I have come to appreciate them.

There are roughly forty first-year students, and about half of them took names that are either archaic (Hester), nonexistent (Chenow), or inspired by inanimate objects (Snowman). Other notables include:

* Mackey -- a girl, she has pronounced it as "Mikey" on several occasions.
* Nina
* Belle -- I'll give you a hint: she ain't from Dixie. This is the funniest of all the names, because she insists it be pronounced "belly".
* Mira
* Asuka -- I think this is a Japanese name. Chinese often do not like Japanese, but that wasn't stopping her.
* Angel
* Blue Sky -- a boy. On the first day of class I asked, "Are you sure you want this name?" "Yes."
* Kalinda
* Clava -- I recently learned that she was going for "Clara" when she wrote it out at the beginning of the year. She talks a lot and doesn't pay attention, so I don't intend to stop calling her this.
* Ginger
* Flower -- one of the "cool" kids who thought he would be funny for choosing this name. He recently requested a name change, but he also doesn't listen in class, thus annoying me. Flower it shall remain. I have contemplated renaming him Diggity. That way, upon his frequent absences, I shall be able to call role and yell out, "No Diggity?", to which will come the triggered response, "He is ill today."
* Ayla
* Doyle -- Taken from the surname of Arthur Conan of Sherlock Holmes fame. Enjoys reading his books in class, in languages that are not English.
* Myra -- even looks a little bit like Urkel's girlfriend. Spends most of class using her hair to hide her headphones.

For a while I was under the impression that my supervisor in the department had enforced rules against such ridiculous names up until this year. I don't have any particularly strange ones in my second or third-year classes (save Candy, Silver, and Summer--all good students--and all completely unaware these names are otherwise only used by persons who refer to their naked pageantry as "dancing"). Recently, however, I came across an old seating chart left in a textbook by one of my predecessors. It included these gems:

* Apple
* Saki
* Aspirin
* Pretty

Glad to know I am helping to uphold some traditions, even if commitment to excellence is not among them.

2006-02-28T09:40:00.000-08:00

Theme of the year: walk don't run...

Life moves a bit slower in Yanji.

Well, mine, at least. There's a good deal of commotion elsewhere. People here spend most of their time simply trying to avoid walking into each other. This is a country slightly larger than the U.S. with over four times the population. It could be worse, though. Look at India. Apparently the time they save not killing cows is invested in procreating. Mo Rocca's take on the Where's Waldo? books: "Where is this taking place, in Calcutta? I mean it's such a mob scene!"

My schedule permits me to take things a bit slower. Now that my third year students have taken internships for their final semester in lieu of classes, I have 2/3 the teaching load from last term. And it wasn't much then, either. This semester I teach about ten forty-five minute classes per week. That said, I have a lot of spare time. That I keep a stupid diary online should have alerted you to that already. The fact that you are reading it says something about the way you spend your time. Do continue, though.

So what am I doing with all this free time? I read books that I want to read, which I haven't done in years. I go for walks. I go out to eat, often alone. I grow facial hair. All of these are perfectly acceptable activities for a man three times my age. Seriously, am I not living the life of a retiree? People think I'm doing something extreme and adventurous over here, but most of the time I'm thinking about whether or not I want to get up and reheat my coffee.

It's easy to lose touch with your youth when you're away from all those you identify with. My Salesian supervisor here left Green Bay for Korea in the mid 1950s, right after the war. He ended up spending his life there. Don't get me wrong; he's one of the happiest people you'll ever meet. But he's missed a lot also. He wasn't there for rock and roll. Rock and roll, people. He's never busted out the Led; he's never heard anyone shred. He's also missed call-waiting, reality television, and Uggs. The very devolution of American culture. Maybe he was onto something after all.

Worse than an old man who regrets not having lived more in his youth is a young man who worries he will become that old man. This is where beer comes into play. I had this great idea that I'd give up beer for Lent. I'm not really sure what brought on that little moment of utter delusion. I abstained for about forty-eight hours. Long and I were on our way home from school on Thursday:

Me: "So I'm giving up beer for Lent."
Long: "Uh-huh."
Me: "It's gonna be tough, but I think I can do it."
Long: "Hold on a second, I'm gonna run in the store and get a beer."
Me: "Oh, could you get me one, too?"

As far as I'm concerned, living in Yanji is enough of an asceticism in itself.

Amidst the simple pace of life here comes occasional tedium, so some diversions are necessary. I wish I could have a dog, maybe a pit bull. Perhaps one trained to attack the faces of those who give more than a passing glance.

Indeed I could have a dog. You can buy a puppy from a box of 'em on a number of street corners downtown. I would constantly fear for its life, though. If it weren't run over it would end up someone's dinner. The other day I saw a truckload of dogs go by. They were adults, all in individual cages, and there must have been seventy or eighty all together. As the truck rumbled off into the distance, their cries and whimpers went out of range, and it got all too metaphorical for me. I bought a beer to take the edge off.

2006-02-20T02:43:00.000-08:00

Dropping like flies...

It's been a rough week here in Yanji, Pearl of the Orient. Well, Yanji is not the true holder of that title. That would be Shanghai, also known as the "Paris of the East." Perhaps "Lamphrey of the Tundra," or "Scourge of the Wastelands" would be more befitting for Yanji.

Coming to Yanji for a one-year commitment, I didn't anticipate having to say goodbye to anyone prior to my own departure. But I've lost a lot of friends recently, and each one's exit was unexpected.

They're all healthy and well, mind you. Bob--my Salesian supervisor at school--had forecasted the current mass migration early on with his usual happy-go-lucky outlook, "Oh, nobody stays in Yanji, heh heh! I think the number is something like 1 in 6! They don't stick it out here, oh no!"

Only recently did this materialize, and Bundo was the first to go. We learned just before returning that Bundo, the community's driver/go-fer had gone to Japan for a factory job. This is a pretty common thing here, i.e. a local going abroad for work. He'll probably be there 7-8 years, saving money and sending some home.

I cannot hope to capture in words the essence of Bundo, so I will merely list some of his inanities:
- An avid hiker, he ascended mountains sporting wingtips.
- As the unofficial barber/stylist of the Salesian community at school, people went to him for haircuts despite the fact that he has a mullet.
- A dedicated student of English, he studied via a dictionary. Later, he was eager to put his newly-learned words into practice whilst driving. Mayhem ensued as he let go of the wheel and looked at you while explaining with his hands what he was trying to say.
- "Bundo" is his chosen Christian name, although not once in some fourteen years of Catholic school did I come across any mention of such a religious figure. I never did find out what name he was going for.

Bundo, I will miss you. Even though you are likely reading this in the year 2016--since you only now have accumulated enough English to do so--I enjoyed the time we had together. Lovers have Paris, but we will always have Yanji.

Two of the Korean volunteers at school went home for winter break and decided it wasn't worth returning. I don't really blame them. Their lives in Korea are comfortable ones. They were near my age, and that was more than enough for friendship. Most of our Salesian colleagues are middle-aged, if not elderly, and the teachers at school are older as well. I will remember these two particular friends of mine for a prank I believe they engineered, although they never admitted to it.

It was at the end of the year Christmas party for all the teachers, staff, and their families. As is the custom at Chinese banquets, most of those in attendance were pretty housed within an hour or so. They're big on toasts, and getting toasted quickly. There had been Christmas music playing the entire time, and in between drinks I heard strains of what I had assumed was the intro to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. It turned out to be something different, a slight variation on the classic tune by the noted she-man Rupaul. Some lyrics: "RuPaul, you big-foot, red nose drag queen, you'll go down in history."

Naturally I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Long and I turned our heads slowly toward one another, an eerie meeting of stares of stifled amazement and hilarity. "Um, did you hear that? How did that get on the playlist?" As far as I knew, we wer the only ones that had picked up on it. Nobody was paying any attention to the music, and only a tiny fraction of the audience spoke English anyway. Someone was having fun, and I only wish I'd thought of it first. This was a decidedly socially conservative crowd--between the Chinese and the Salesians--and there they had no idea a song about drag queens was being blared for their enjoyment.

Our cook/housekeeper also decided to resign this week, so we are on our own for dinner and cleaning from here on out. I'm predicting a hungry, dirty existence for the duration. But she was a good friend, too.

So we're starting a clean slate at this point, which is disconcerting. It's difficult to make friends here. There are almost no foreigners in town, and with only a little Chinese and no Korean, conversations are rather limited. We meet plenty of people who seem kind enough--they want to have a foreign friend-- but I'm not really interested in getting to know them. That would be like befriending the disabled kid when you were in high school, just because he was in a wheelchair. In the meantime, I would prefer to be lonely on occasion if the alternative is having toddler-level chats.

So I've been somewhat surly this week, and the city isn't helping much. I'm getting more stares than ever--this being due to the beard--and it's beginning to anger me. I certainly won't ever get used to it, and it's become easy for me to understand why celebrities occasionally go apeshit on the paparazzi.

Perhaps my students can warm my cold heart as classes start up again this week. Yesterday one of them remarked, "Hamel, you look like Jesus," and a chorus of laughter followed. It was pretty funny, but at the same time I thought about how just about any guy out there with long hair and a beard can expect comparisons to the son of man. I suppose it was preferable to, "Hamel, you look like a fellow who has completely rejected important notions of personal hygiene and care."

Today has been relaxing, though, as Fat Tuesday always is. I have been eating garbage all day; there is a small collection of candy wrappers and Pringles cans amassing in the apartment. I haven't yet decided what to give up for Lent, though fasting tomorrow will be no great feat.

2006-02-20T00:21:00.000-08:00

You dropped a bomb on me: vacation photos...

Long is big into photography; he took over 1,000 shots over the course of the trip. I am not nearly as prolific, but I managed a few good ones here and there. Here are some of my favorites:

From the Ice Festival. It was 30 below that day. (Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, China)

At least the grammar is correct (Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, China)

"Hey, have you guys seen my car? They put it where?!" This is the vehicle that once belonged to the Archbishop of Seoul. For some reason, it was put here. Koreans are weird. (Seoul, Korea)

Perhaps the classiest bathroom in Southeast Asia (Bangkok, Thailand)

No squatters' rights (Siem Reap, Cambodia)

Ta Prohm, ancient temple constructed in the reign of Jayavarman VII, the most prominent king of Southeast Asia's most dominant empire ever. They also shot some scenes for Tomb Raider here (Siem Reap, Cambodia)

Halong Bay (northeastern Vietnam)

Angkor Wat, the world's largest religious building (Siem Reap, Cambodia)

At the killing fields (outside Phnom Penh, Cambodia)

Dancing in the streets of Saigon. The loudspeakers,--mainstays in socialist countries--were blaring something resembling the theme song from Dallas (Saigon, Vietnam)

He's baaack (Saigon, Vietnam)

Seaside sunset; Long tries to look tough, fails (Mui Ne, Vietnam)

Triumph of the Hamel (Mui Ne, Vietnam)

Champa ruins, worn down by Father Time and sorties (My Son, Vietnam)

"You guys praying cards?" Game at the train station attracted too much attention; soon after broken up by Chinese police (Changchun, Jilin Province, China)

I don't think any caption could do justice to this photo. Where do you begin? For now: "The Peoples' Blend" (Yanji, Jilin Province, China)

Car used to transport Buddhist monk Thich Quang Doc to the sight of his self-immolation in June 1963. Doc did so to protest against the government's anti-Buddhist policies and also in the hope of gracing the cover of Rage Against the Machine's 1992 self-titled EP (outside Hue, Vietnam)

Maybe Chinese up to somesing here. All I wanted was a cheese danish (Changchun, Jilin Province, China)

2006-02-11T07:59:00.000-08:00

Defective exports...

The post on Harold/Edgar got me thinking. I neglected to mention that he is currently working as an English teacher in Korea. His appearance in Saigon was but part of a week's vacation, the whole of which he likely spent patronizing the city's already stable prostitution industry.

Over roughly seven weeks on the road we met scores of persons teaching English throughout Asia, and we had many a good laugh at the expense of the Asian nations that have mistakenly allowed their youth to come under the charge of these individuals.

They're not all bad, I'll admit, and I'll even speculate that Harold is a good teacher, despite his little insanities. We met a lot of pleasant, charming folks who were teaching for the chance to do something different with their lives. We met fresh-faced kids--right out of school--eager to save the world, flee loan payments for a year, or delay the need for a real job. We met retirees grown tired of life after work, looking for some new adventure. We met the guy who played Eddie on Family Matters, and he's still doing his thing. I made up that last part; I was just thinking how it would have been cool to meet him.

It takes more of patience than anything else to teach English, and in that regard, there were plenty of qualified folks. What would be amusing were it not so disturbing is how many people simply show up, play tourist for a few weeks, and then talk about "staying here and maybe teaching English."

You may not think much of this. You might be saying, "It's just great how so-and-so has gone over to Asia, on a whim, and is gonna help out so many kids in that classroom. What a fantastic experience--if only we could all have such an opportunity!"

Sounds perfectly noble, right? But imagine there were hordes of foreigners descending upon the United States, coming to bang a few hookers in Vegas, check out a NASCAR race in Florida, do some crank, and perhaps teach American children their native language when they needed to replenish their bank accounts. You wouldn't think, "What an admirable group; how fortunate we are to have them!" You would think, "Stay the hell away from my kids."

I must say, though, that of the English teachers coming from Australia and Ireland, I did not meet one I didn't like. And for that matter, I can't ever recall meeting any Australian or Irish person I didn't like, regardless of their profession. Call me Will Rogers. They are just plain likeable, cheery folk. It is probably because they drink a lot.

I met far more Canadians in seven weeks of travel in Southeast Asia than I'd met in my life. There are only about thirty million Canadians, and roughly half of them spend the winter touring Southeast Asia. I'm convinced that when the cold rolls around, the entire Canadian population packs up and heads for warmer climes. You can imagine the conversations that take place: "Jeez it's cold here. Fuck this, eh? Let's go to Vietnam then. We can still play hockey when we get back."

Am I missing anything back home? I guess the latest big news, apart from Dick Cheney mistaking some man's face for a pheasant, is the Mohammed cartoon controversy. They even showed some news clips of American flags getting torched, even though we have nothing to do with any of this. These fundamentalist Muslim tirades are becoming tiresome. Do they not have anything better to protest? Can't they complain about something in the hope of benefiting the common good? How about Paris Hilton's celebrity status? Telemarketers? Jean shorts? Pick something new, for Christ's sake.

Most of the countries we visited are nominally Buddhist, which was evident upon entering any restaurant, shop, or hotel. There, people had erected small shrines, offering plenty of incense along with a few small vittles. The incense sticks are rather ubiquitous there, as you can see them tucked into unusual spots--like cracks in power line poles--still smoking away. They're littered all around the city streets, and my first instinct was always that they were used bottlerockets. I got giddy when this happened, and disappointment always came soon after. Such is the tendency of a boy who grew up in a state where fireworks are illegal, this despite having two cities--Chicago and East St. Louis--with some of the highest murder rates in the country.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we stayed in a guesthouse in Siem Reap, Cambodia, that catered to Koreans. We were the only white people there. A similar thing happened upon returning to Bangkok, except this time we were the only Gentiles. This guesthouse catered to Israelis, most of them college aged. No big deal, I thought; it will be kind of like going back to Wash U (for those not saavy, my alma mater's student body is about 35% Jewish). The Israelis were quite a bit different, though. They were tall, dark, and toned. They spoke beautiful Hebrew with a delightful flow, a far cry from the Long Island nag pervasive at Wash U. Long commented that they bore a strong resemblance to the people he went to high school with. "They spent most days at the beach. They worked out a lot, but only upper body, and they listened only to rap."

The final leg of the trip proved to be the most exhausting, as we moved through four countries in five days on the way home. For four nights straight, I slept on either a plane, boat, or train. Of these I enjoyed the boat most. It was from Incheon (Korea) to Dalian (China), a good experience that Long called "a budget hotel that floats to your destination." Our quarters were reasonable, if small, and they provided a small packet of toiletries, which is always enough to win me over. My only grievance was the closet-sized bathroom, where I accidentally turned on the shower while brushing my teeth. It ended up giving me a good soaking before I could turn it off. This happened right before I was to go to bed, and I was fully clothed. I came into the room with my right side rather drenched and a bunch of Koreans wondering why I hadn't bothered to disrobe before bathing. I do these things.

I got back into China a few days ago to find real bottlerocket remains and other various firework leftovers scattered all over the place, remnants from the recent Chinese New Year. Nobody had bothered to pick anything up following the festivities, but that's nothing out of the ordinary. The party has decided to block Blogger again, so although I can post and read comments, viewing other blogs is not possible. I would apologize, but the real enemy is in Beijing.

The photo above was taken on Khao San road in Bangkok. I needed passport photos for visas, etc., and you can see I decided to have them taken after a few beers and a lot of sweating. Twenty-four hours later I was in the hospital. Traveling is fun.

2006-02-01T04:58:00.000-08:00

Tweeter and the Monkey Man...

My apologies for the long time without posting, dear readers. I have devoted a majority of my time on the tourist trail to the backpacker lifestyle, and making it to Internet cafes has not been high on the list.

Actually, on the backpacker thing, that's not completely true. Long and I are not true backpackers, as much as our often slovenly appearances may mislead. We shower every day, put ourselves up in modest places, and generally avoid street cuisine. We even do laundry with some regularity. Or, to be more accurate, we pay a little old woman to do it for us. I like to think of it as giving back to the community.

We move back toward harmony with the backpacker crowd, however, with regard to time spent on the road. Until today, when we finally broke down and caught a flight from Hanoi back to Bangkok, we have put in some serious man hours on the bus. So many, in fact, that a seven or eight hour trip seems like a walk in the park. A number of twelve hour overnight rides have groomed us so, one of which I spent six hours sitting on a tiny plastic chair in the aisle. The bus company had overbooked the second leg of the ride, and for a while it seemed that we'd be forced to stay the night. A couple of American hippies were in the same boat as us. One of them commented, while stroking his beard, "I got a snooky (not sneaky) feeling we aren't getting on this bus tonight, man," as he emitted a carefree laugh that only years of hardcore drug use could make possible. We did make it on the bus, despite having to participate in the one-man tea party in the aisle for half the journey.

These long, often agonizing jaunts are soon made up for by the characters that we meet, and there is no shortage of them. It seems, in fact, that there are an inordinate number of psychotic, spiteful, and/or generally misguided individuals touring Southeast Asia, and we end up meeting most of them, resulting in great personal entertainment for us. I'm not sure why they're so drawn to this region, but I have some ideas. It's cheap, and these persons usually do not have deep bank accounts (a lot of them are English teachers, but I'll touch on that later). Also, the language barrier tends to prevent most of our Asian hosts from understanding just how abnormal some of them are. It's something I think Europeans would pick up on. I hope to God they would.

The most memorable such experience of ours was in Saigon with a Canadian fellow whom we shall call "Edgar." His real name is Harold.

Long and I were walking along one day late in the afternoon, looking our usual moronic selves, Lonely Planet in hand, searching for some obscure restaurant that served up an even more obscure specialty dish. A tall white fellow about ten yards ahead of us half-tripped on a crack in the sidewalk, and Long started chuckling (only the next day would it become apparent to us that Edgar had tied one on well in advance of our meeting). The man turned around and immediately engaged us in conversation. "Hey, where are you guys from? America? Right on! My last trip here was with a bunch of Americans. Yeah, I was in the U.S. Army." Upon learning that we were in search of food, Edgar joined us, and a memorable evening was born.

Not to make light of post traumatic stress disorder, which is a serious issue, but at dinner it became apparent that Edgar had some mild form of it, which manifested itself in the form of hilarity. Many restaurants here provide wrapped washcloths with utensils, and there is enough air inside to create a large pop when you open them. The Vietnamese love doing this. It was a huge restaurant, almost the size of a small cafeteria, and you'd hear a short series of pops everytime a group sat down to eat. And, with every individual blast, Edgar would nearly jump out of his seat. "Goddammit, they had better knock it off." And he would say that everytime. I wondered if he was going to start shooting the place up.

The evening's next and final stop was Pho Binh, a run of the mill noodle shop with an interesting history. During the war, the restaurant was a secret meeting place for Viet Cong leaders planning communist war efforts in Saigon, while at the same time serving up pho for American GIs, including Edgar. A return trip was in order.

We had a few drinks, and when the restaurant employees learned that Edgar had eaten there as a serviceman thirty-five years before, it became a full-on celebration.

Why a celebration? It seemed strange, and you wouldn't think that we had a major war with these people only thirty years ago. Despite all the propaganda that remains--Vietnam is still a communist country--relations with the old enemies are quite jovial now. At our table was a US Army Vietnam vet, an ARVN vet (South Vietnamese army), and the son of the owner, sympathetic to the VC.

Time heals all wounds, I suppose, and alcohol does so as well, at least temporarily. As a measure of good hospitality, a torrent of numerous beverages were soon offered, no, forced upon us. To refuse is to be impolite. And we are damned courteous, proud folk. There came rivers of spirits with no end in sight.

As the night and the drinks wore on, Edgar, who was not a reserved fellow to begin with, began ranting on any subject that came to mind. All this was in a Canadian accent, no less, as Edgar was from Newfoundland. The "Newfie" accent is a cross between stereotypical Canadian and Irish accents. It may be described as "unique." Some of Edgar's observations, which I somehow remembered:

"You know man, twenty two years in the army, in Vietnam, Kuwait, Somalia, and it was pretty much all the same, you know what I mean?" To this Long replied, "Actually no, I'm really not sure. What are you talking about?" You could almost see the lightbulb flickering above Edgar's head at this response.
"Every woman here is a huge whore. Sure they all have a husband and ten kids, but there's no sense in denying it. Huge whores, all of them."
"So I'm divorced." Nothing too special about this comment; it was just the least surprising thing I'd ever heard.

You know when someone funny goes on a roll? It doesn't matter whether or not alcohol is involved; everything that person says is just priceless. Harold was on a roll, although he didn't know it, and only through some divine intervention were we fortunate enough to witness it. Best of all, he bore an uncanny resemblance to Uncle Fester, as you may note in the second photo.

In the taxi back to the hotel district at the end of the night, I asked Edgar what our share for the ride was. "250,000 should do itaggghhh." This was the equivalent about sixteen dollars, roughly eight times the actual fare. Edgar was in some other realm by this point, so Long and I cleared the cab and began the search for our hotel, which was somewhere far back in a maze of narrow alleys. We ended up making a couple of circles around the entire neighborhood, and we saw Edgar on our second attempt.

He was supposed to have stayed in the taxi, as his hotel was all the way out by the airport. But I think he'd forgotten where he was staying, and in all likelihood he was probably looking for us. Further contact, however, was not acceptable. Even in our state of mind, we knew Edgar was going to ask to crash at our place, and by this point, we were frightened of him.

I spotted him first from across the street and almost yelled at Long, "Oh crap, it's Edgar, let's get out of here." He may have actually heard me. A trail of rambunctious, unintelligible muttering echoed above all the traffic noise, and Harold appeared to be talking to himself.

I wondered the next couple of days, with a clear head, just how often the guys at the noodle shop had to put up with this kind of nonsense. They'd shown us a photo album with scores of American vets who'd returned to the shop to reminisce, and perhaps get mind-numbingly intoxicated if time permitted. There was no way this was the first time it'd happened. Meeting Edgar, though, was a unique experience for us. He is far away now, and I feel safer because of it.

I'll leave you with this photo Edgar took of myself and the shop employees. I have not altered the image whatsoever; Edgar was simply losing his balance when he was taking it. No worries--the camera is ok.

2006-01-24T22:53:00.000-08:00

Dropping Angkor...

Our run-in with culinary toxicity in Bangkok was frustrating not merely for all physical discomforts that resulted. After five days, we left the city without having seen much, hoping that greener, more sanitary pastures awaited us in Cambodia.

The likely culprit of my illness was a club sandwich from our own guest house kitchen. For additional salt on the wound, it was delicious. It had all the makings of a traditional club sandwich, no funky Asian additions whatsoever. Management at the guest house was insistent that their food was not to blame. Within no time, though, four other people at the guest house were experiencing similar illnesses. On several occasions I was wretching away in the communal restroom while complete strangers did so at the same time. It eases the process a bit in my opinion. You throw up a little, hear someone else do it one stall over, and get so grossed out you do it again. Repeat nine or ten times.

Some might say the illness was my punishment for having ordered Western food in Thailand. At dinner a few nights ago here in Siem Reap, a couple of Australian expats accosted me for ordering a club sandwich (this was part of the recovery process). "Ah, Western food," they uttered with not-so-subtle condescension. Maybe they wanted me to order some local slop, to have some kind of authentic Cambodian experience. They must have mistaken me for some other moronic American tourist, like the lady at Angkor Wat snapping pics of monks: "Oh, I want to say thank you but I don't know how to." (This is immediately after she had a conversation with them in English). Her next comment: "I don't even know what country I'm in."

I don't feel the least bit guilty ordering Western dishes on occasion. If people had any idea what kind of shit I have eaten in China they would probably apologize and pick up the tab for me instead of acting like they possess some goddamned tourist moral authority. The Aussies were expats in Malaysia, though, and the resulting tolerance was nearly palpable:

Them: "Ah, Western food."
Me: "Um, we live in Northern China."
Them: "Oh, understood...sorry."

Crossing the border from Thailand into Cambodia was a step into the third world that perhaps only the 38th parallel can match in terms of wealth disparity. Within ten minutes we went from air-conditioned bus to lugging our bags along a dirt road to get our visas processed, all the while attracting mosquito-like swarms of scammers and kids begging for handouts.

We arrived in Siem Reap rather sapped from three hours of Cambodian "roads," which would be considered acceptable only by professional motocross riders. The Koreans we'd shared a taxi with recommended a guest house, and we didn't feel like walking around town at that point. Walking inside, ready for an epic nap, the first words I hear from the Khmer fellow across the counter: "Anyong Haseo!"

This is not Khmer. It is the standard way of saying hello in Korean. I, a man quite obviously not Korean, traveled thousands of miles to be greeted in Korean. As it is, this guest house caters to Koreans, who come in droves to see Angkor Wat. Fortunately, the staff has enough English to help us out, and our stay has been pleasant.

Now, as I mentioned, Cambodia has serious issues with poverty. There are plenty of folks walking around without shoes, and it's not because hippie backpacker values have rubbed off. There was a thirty-year civil war, which, combined with genocide and famine in that period, eliminated some 20% of the population. The country is still very much in recovery mode and will be for quite some time. One of the principal issues is the removal of land mines. As one of the most heavily mined nations on earth, Cambodia has an incredible number of amputees on the streets, some selling knick knacks to make ends meet, and others taking what they can get.

All the glory and grandeur of Cambodia lie in a number of thousand year-old temples and ruins outside the city of Siem Reap, a city that exists because of them. For that matter, the temples at Angkor form the backbone of the nation's economy. It is rather difficult to imagine where Cambodia might be without one of the wonders of the world to back it up.

In the meantime, while the Khmers get back on their feet, I am determined to help in whatever manner possible. Actually, all I'm doing is spending money. But my efforts ought not be questioned: I am helping rebuild the economy. Opting for a room with air conditioning? Rebuilding the economy. Taking taxis instead of walking ten minutes? Rebuilding the economy. Having an overpriced cocktail or three? Rebuilding the economy.

It's not always clear if the Khmers have the same interest though. Sometimes the desire to build one's own finances well supersede any patriotic inclinations or legal hurdles. Consider the policemen at the temples of Angkor who want to sell you phony "National Cambodian Police" badges. I joked with one of these fellows after his pitch: "Ok sir, but will I be issued a weapon with this purchase?" He lowered his head and voice to utter, "I can get you gun, too." We leave for Phnom Penh tomorrow, and given the city's mean reputation, I may consider this option.

2006-01-19T23:48:00.000-08:00

What's the capital of Thailand?...

Long and I were all too spoiled during our week in Korea. Feeling sorry for our September pay cut, our mutual friend paid for everything and even took us around the country. Standup fellow, he is.

Several people asked me why I wasn't returning home for break. The easy answer is money, and the other is that I do not wish to return to Yanji from home. It all has a rather ascetic sense to it. Perhaps the monks here will understand.

We're getting quite the diverse taste of Asia on the 2006 tour, though. Headquarters in Northeast China are bleak, frigid, and barren at present. Korea is a model of efficiency that few Asian nations can match--or afford. We begin our travels of Southeast Asia ready to stereotype the nations and peoples we will visit in the coming weeks.

After a brief stopover in Hong Kong we arrived in Skin City early Monday evening. Certainly Bangkok is one of those cities I never envisioned myself visiting, and as you read this, you are probably wondering, "what is Hamel doing in the sex industry capital of Asia?" I'll tell you what I'm doing. I'm scouting out the best young talent that Thailand has to offer, and man alive is it thriving. You oughta see this place.

I kid, of course. I would place a strong emphasis on the young in "young talent," though. It's estimated that around 1/3 of the prostitutes here are under the age of 16. I felt like an old man as we took a stroll through Bangkok's red light district that evening. We opted to be onlookers instead of participants, mind you. After a bout with some Thai cuisine that nearly brought me to tears, we took in a few beers at a roadsite bar to watch the action.

As it happened, the local ladies of the night were actually being patronized by the real old men, not those aging fellows in their early twenties. Every ten minutes or so an older Western fellow would walk by with a young Thai lass dressed to impress. You need a shower at the end of the day in Bangkok, and I had a long one that night. It took a while to scrub off the city.

The second time I wondered what I was doing in Bangkok was in a Bangkok hospital lobby on Wednesday night. While Long and I had been able to avoid innumerable STDs our first two days here, we could not dodge a nasty case of food poisoning.

It came early Wednesday afternoon, and conditions deteriorated quickly. I went down to the lobby of our guest house to pick up some laundry. Seeing me sweating like I had ebola, the lady behind the counter said, "you do not look well. I think you should go to the hospital. Our driver will take you."

Now I'm used to hearing this kind of socialist nonsense in China, where a trip to the hospital for a runny nose is nothing out of the ordinary. It's not like you have to pay for it anyway. "Oh, I don't think that will be necessary," I uttered, almost passing out on the counter.

It happened to be quite necessary. We were severely dehydrated and incapable of keeping anything down. Thirstier than a couple of drunks in Salt Lake City, I wanted nothing more than a glass of water. Make that a jug of water. A swimming pool. Whatever. I sat there looking catatonic in the waiting room, and although it wasn't acting, I think this was able to expedite our treatment.

IVs were hooked up and the slow improvement began. We lounged around in azure patient scrubs until they kicked us out at noon the next day. It was pretty reasonable care, I thought, even with a seemingly endless number of Thai nurses, doctors, and staff personnel coming to take a look at the foreigners who must've done something moronic to end up there.

Still on the mend, today I have made the mistake of playing tourist here in the city. The combination of the sun, noise, and unpleasant culinary odors abound, and they are taking their toll on me. I have sought temporary refuge in the cafe, for my presence on the street is fearing the locals. Still thirsty, sweaty, and irritable, I am stumbling around like I just walked off the set of Thriller. I can only hope the Thais have no strong feelings on the undead.

2006-01-09T03:28:00.000-08:00

Seoul Man...

The journey from Yanji began Thursday evening with the night train to Harbin. I could not recall a time in recent memory when I'd looked forward to a vacation so much as this one. Yes, I have already seen some fine places on the trip, and I believe the best is yet to come. The real joy, however, came with our departure from Yanji. Most of the third world's glorious shitholes are in tropical climes, so I suppose I have to deal with fewer smells. But the cold also preserves various unpleasantries, including:

- Snow. The temperature has not risen above freezing in Yanji for about two months and likely will not do so until March. And snow does not remain white and pure; it gets filthy like everything else in town.
- Urine. For men, the world is our toilet, and for Yanji men, so are the city streets. Pretty much anywhere is fair game.
- Feces. Mostly animal, and then the occasional dropping from someone who had "the fear" and didn't make it in time.
- Spit. Loogies fly freely all the time, but they don't dry in winter. Especially in Harbin, where, with the tourist season in full swing, any given sidewalk sported thousands of frozen hocks.

With that said, a vacation became more of a necessity than anything else. We took the overnight sleeper and arrived in Harbin at 6:00 a.m. on Friday morning. Harbin, situated in the Chinese geographical equivalent of Maine, is home to the Bīng Dēng Jié, or Ice Lantern Festival. The festival is the highlight of the region despite its being held at the most frigid time of the year. The temperature reached -30 Celsius. If you're about to do the math, hold on there, sport--that's 22 below 0 Fahrenheit. This was with relatively little wind, I might add.

The Ice Festival is an annual event whereupon ice and snow sculptors from around the globe put their talents on display. As you can see from the photo, their work is stunning. I would have taken more pictures had I not feared the very real possibility of my camera freezing.

All of the ice and snow sculptures are something to behold, but Harbin as a city can be impressive in its own right. Previously annexed by Russia, a number of neighborhoods bear architectural similarities to counterparts far away in Europe. Like any American city, though, the neighborhood can change in the blink of an eye. A ten-minute stroll can take you through the historic district, the financial district, and the shanty district.

Those who assume the Chinese are a diminutive people have not been to Harbin. There there exist infinite specimens of Han enormity. They were only overshadowed by groups of Russians. If I'd grown up during the height of the Cold War, I would've been afraid of the Soviets too. They are massive. Must be all that cabbage, or vodka isn't being given enough credit.

We stayed in Harbin with some relatives of our cook, who they were even kind enough to take us around town, not to mention providing us with breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I am quite grateful for their kindness, and I wish I'd been able to communicate it better than "Thank you very much; it's been nice meeting you; please don't hesitate to elephant us." I don't think I said the last part, but one is never quite sure with these pesky tones.

They did not have a shower, so Long and I were somewhat earthy until using the facilities at the Salesian house in Seoul this morning. Fortunately on our plane ride over, I was able to sit next to the one fellow on the craft who'd gone without bathing longer than I.

If only all international arrivals could be as hassle-free as that of Seoul's. A flash of the passport, a handing over of the customs card, and we'd gone from the plane to the parking garage in fifteen minutes' time. "Welcome back to the Western world," said Long.

The sound of silence is everywhere now. Our man in Korea noted that the farther east of Japan one goes, the quieter it gets. Cheeto B must feel like he's in a library all the time, because Korea is dead silent. I'm probably just warped by Yanji, though, where it's okay to yell at people standing next to you.

A friend of mine often refers to Korean women as Asia's finest looking, and although I'm not well-travelled in these parts, I'm tempted to agree already. The knockouts are everywhere. Jet black, shimmering hair, those mysterious eyes, and those high-heel leather boots. It's enough to make one want to learn Korean. For once, I don't mind being stared at, even if my appearance is more an anomaly than one of respectability.

While Koreans do stare a bit, it's typically only brief. The longer, often condescending looks come from other Westerners. Those among them who are not tourists--which is most at this time of year--like to think of themselves as locals, even if they do stand out. They usually sport Ipod headphones and black, thick-rimmed glasses. They are always walking in some furious hurry somewhere, because their business is much more important than yours, and if nothing else, they can't stand the sight of another white person stealing their thunder. "It's not tourist season; what the hell are you doing here?"

They'll not get me down, though. It was 33 degrees with light snow this afternoon, and it felt like room temperature to me after Yanji and Harbin. Bangkok will be furnace-worthy.

On that note, more good news. Faithful readers of the blog from early on will remember that my salary was cut in half from last year due to communists. The good Salesians in Seoul have informed me that I am to be rewarded for this injustice in the form of free airfare to and from Bangkok. Score one for America.

2005-12-31T21:54:00.000-08:00

Keep spending most our lives teachin in the worka's paradise...

Sung to the tune of Coolio's original:

"Tell my why,
I don't see
The difficulty
Of pronouncing the letter 'l',
It's really easy"

"Keep spending most our lives teachin in the worka's paradise,
Keep spending most our lives teachin in the worka's paradise."

Since I've no knowledge of Korean and the Mandarin conversational ability of only a two-year old Chinese, my efforts in the classroom are purely for conversational benefit. Explaining grammar (of much less significance in Chinese than English) is an exercise in futility. I am there solely because I am a foreigner, with no accent, and my inability to converse in their native tongue prevents the use of Mandarin as a crutch when the English doesn't immediately come to mind.

Long and I get the impression that while we may be of some aid in lowering the tensions that go with speaking to a foreigner, the grades we give are of little to no importance in the grand scheme of things. When we turned in grades after midterms back in October, our supervisor glanced at them and said, "Oh, right, yes," and proceeded to chuck them into a drawer that probably hasn't been opened since the Cultural Revolution. This would have bothered me were it not so hilarious. It was like saying, "Oh, you gave grades?! How cute! Hey guys, come rook! Hammer and Rong giva da grades!" I could not care less as to whether or not the marks I assign are taken into context when ranking the students. If the kids can come away from my class having made some progress in their respective conversational abilities, I'd like to think I have succeeded.

The already high likelihood of bizarre or comical events to happen at school always increases during test time. Sometimes it's both at the same time. Last week my second-year class gave me a gift one hour before their oral exams were to be held. I could not decide if their timing was intentional. Pure genius, or rather there was the assumption that Hammer would have to be an incredibly moron not to see through it. The gift is of absolutely no practical value whatsoever. It is an 8" carving of a mostly-naked African woman playing a flute. I'm told the hollow tree trunk next to which she is sitting is intended to hold one's pens orpencils, but it is far too deep for any writing utensil of normal length.

Since I am a teacher of conversation, I only administer oral exams. Occasionally, during a bad exam, the student will pull a rabbit out of the hat near its end. I have made the mistake, on several occasions, of asking them what they'd like to do after graduating. If there's one portion of the exam they've prepared for, it's this one. There I sit, all set to give them a bad grade, and they will throw this out: "I will go back to my family's farm and help them because they are poor." And that's not even the best. One student gave a spectacularly bad exam, and then, at the end, mentioned her interest in running an orphanage sometime soon. I think they are actually sincere about these aspirations, but the little demons know exactly when to bring them out into the open. They seem to know Hammer is a softy deep down, and he'll be reluctant to punish them, their complete lack of preparation notwithstanding, for being so fucking admirable.
As I mentioned, most of my structured classes regarding grammar are vastly unproductive. Our best sessions involve tangents in conversation. Good teachers generally avoid extended tangents, but I don't fall into that category, and I thrive on them. Getting these kids to talk (in English) can be like working with a bunch of stubborn donkeys. Getting them to avoid chatting in Chinese or Korean is even more difficult. I lost my temper a few weeks ago and kicked a dent in the wooden podium while yelling at them. I was trying to trying to split it wide open, but I was still pretty happy with the result.

I'm calm most of the time, though, and if we are having a good conversation, no topic is taboo. For example: a few weeks ago our water was out. This happens often. Water, the internet, and occasionally even electricity say goodbye to our apartment for no apparent reason. I'm not complaining, mind you. I can deal with the occasional outage; I consider it preferable to the living conditions of fellow SLMs sitting in the bush in Zambia, Sierra Leone, and Papua New Guinea.

Anyway, since there was no water and no way to shower, I went to school with a European aroma. My hair was dirty enough, though, to take on a reasonably good hold of my choice with a few dabs of water at school. However, my hair is usually just dry and messy, and my students made note of it. "Hammer, are you wearing something in the hair? It rook different today." I explained to them that I'd been unable to shower because our water was not operating properly due to government incompetence, and if they wanted a sanitary, well-groomed instructor, they would have to call for political upheaval.

Sometimes a tangent during an oral exam is necessary, too. The idea of having a three or four-minute conversation with me horrifies many of my students, and this goes without even taking their English skills into consideration. It is my classroom presence and general appearance that makes it so. I am 6'4", and that puts me at least a head or two above most of my students. When I walk into the classroom, I have to duck my head slightly to avoid a shot from the top of the doorway. Then there is the platform. Since most Chinese teachers aren't a great deal taller than their students, every classroom has a platform at the front of the room to ensure their authority by making them appear eight inches taller. When I walk across it, it creaks with every step, groaning with at the unexpected weight of this foreign brute.

Standing on the platform, wooden podium before me, adorned in my enormous tan parka, and with my students sitting at attention, it must appear to them as if a small tree is teaching the class. Coupled with my recent neglect of shaving and my not-so-recent neglect of haircuts, I embody the quintessential image of a barbarian. I only wish I had an Isaac Hayes baritone to accompany the physical intimidation factor.

So you can imagine the frightened looks on these little tykes' faces when they have to talk to me alone and can't ask one of the smart kids to translate everything. I'll admit that I do take some pleasure in being such an intimidating presence, but I want to see them do well, and sometimes it means calming them down, and perhaps assuring them that I am not hungry and will not be eating them that day.

Take Tina, for example. One of my second-year students, she's five feet tall, maybe ninety-five pounds. Giving her the exam last week, I could tell that she was prepared but rather nervous. This was the icebreaker:

Me: "So, Tina, do you have any hobbies or interests?"
Tina: "Yes, Taekwondo.
Me: "Really? Tell me about it."
Tina: "I have studied it for two years."
Me: "Cool. Do you think you could hurt me?"
Tina: "I think so, yes."
Me: "Awesome!"

Our students, like all Chinese, our invariably nosy people with regard to our personal lives, and I occasionally indulge them with a story. I must do so often with the third-year students, particularly on Fridays. This group only has a half-day on Friday, and they spend the first two classes with another teacher watching movies in English. They come to me for third and fourth period interested in doing nothing, aside from packing up to go home. I would like to kill that teacher, but I do not care for the food in Chinese prisons.

So, we chat. A recent discussion focused on the shower drain unclogging competition held between myself and Long in our apartment's main bathroom last week. It had backed up considerably and was due for a cleaning. Each competitor was given an alloted amount of time, that being the length of The Hazies' cover of "Turning Japanese." He who extracted a larger quantity of gunk from the drain in the given period of time, with the aid of a wire hanger, was to be declared victorious.

I grossed them out sufficiently with my description of the drain contents, but some were curious about the song I'd mentioned.
Them: "Turning Japanese? What's the meaning?" (one of the nerdy ones pulls out pen and paper)
Me: "Well, I can't even begin to explain this. Next question."
One of them: "I think Japanese people are bad."
Me: "That's not a question."
One of them: "Do you think Japanese people are bad?"
Me: "Uh, hey, I have gum! Who wants a piece?"
All in unison: "Me!!"

I am done teaching until March, thankfully. I'll not have to deal with questions regarding my love life or rascism towards China's neighbor to the east. It's high time for a change of scenery. Last night I was checking the temperatures of some random cities of interest to me in the near future. Yanji checked in at 6 degrees Fahrenheit, while Harbin was at -1. Seoul was a balmy 34, and Bangkok, in the winter season, was 91 degrees warm. Returning will be difficult.

2005-12-23T21:47:00.000-08:00

2005: A partial pictorial year in review...

My camera was a gift, given to me just a few days before I left for Yanji. All of the photos below were taken in September or afterwards. That's why it's only a partial year in review. Aapologies to you readers who do not appear in any of the following photos. That being all of you.

Enjoy.

A view from my bedroom window. Taken last week, this photo shows the inside of one of Yanji's two military bases. The PLA deemed it a bit frigid to go outside that day, aside from their daily wakeup call at 5:30 a.m. Make that our daily wakeup call.

A few of my second-year students after one of the approximately thirty annual talent shows/contests at school. The papal hand signal being extended at right was intended to be a peace sign, and I was chastised for taking the picture too quickly. "Hammer, not ready!"

Packaging from a tube of chapstick I picked up. I was wavering between this brand and its competitor when I saw that this one offered animal raciness. I was sold. Needless to say, that they mistook chapstick for lipstick was the least of their errors. I see Engrish everywhere I go, but this takes the cake. The sad reality is that animal spirits raciness is likely the main ingredient. Damned if those animal spirits don't keep my lips moist, though.

A hike with the students on one of the mountains outlying the city. At the top, with dense, peaking foliage and fresh air all around me, I quickly became nostalgic for downtown Yanji, with the wafting aroma of urine, the pageantry of jammed urban streets in which I've witnessed seven car wrecks, and the pleasant decibel uproar of city living that never ceases.

My kitchen. The sliding doors (which you can barely can see, at left) are a neat feature, as they have little etchings of tropical scenes upon them. Gazing at palm trees while we eat breakfast serves as a daily reminder that there are places in the world less abominable than Yanji.

The living room. We have a big apartment, and my pictures don't capture the size well. You see a lot of empty space, though. We are too cheap to buy anything else. The coffee table was our gift to future residents, and they'd appreciate it.

2005-12-19T17:20:00.000-08:00

Reaching Yanji Rehash...

I was provided with exemplary service immediately upon my arrival in China on September 4th. For reasons which remain unbeknownst to us, Long and I were informed that our presence at the Beijing Airport's Red Carpet Club would be welcomed. We'd flown in steerage from Chicago; why were we now being afforded some measure of luxury?

As it happened, we soon learned our flight to Yanji later that afternoon had us in first class. We'd not booked the tickets as such, but no one complains about being bumped up.

Naturally I was too exhausted to appreciate any of this. I have much difficulty sleeping on airplanes due to my size, and I thought my luck might change after I secured an exit row aisle seat on the Beijing-Chicago jaunt. What a horrible idea. Aside from the near-constant nudges from stewardess dining carts and wayward, corpulent thighs, the window shade on the exit hatch was opened and closed every five minutes by someone eager for a look outside. I can't say I blame them; the Arctic light is ethereal, and it is there for the duration of the flight. With the strobe light show at 30,000 feet, though, sleep was not an option.

Amidst my travels I eventually reached twenty-four hours without a minute of shuteye. This may sound undaunting to many, particularly to those still in school. But, as a history major, all-nighters were infrequent experiences for me. Their sporadic appearances were never due not to difficulty of the assignment, but rather concerted efforts on my part to avoid doing anything until the absolute last moment. My Waterloo in this regard came late in my junior year, when I attended a four-hour scholarship dinner at an Italian restaurant and began a paper on the Russian Revolution afterwards at 11 p.m. There few anguishes greater than having to switch from Chianti to Maxwell House on a Thursday night.

Upon arriving in Yanji late Saturday night, Long and I were finally picked up after waiting an hour or so. We wanted nothing more than a simple place to pass out for the next twelve to fourteen hours. After a few introductions and greetings were exchanged, that was what we got. I was shown to a room steeped in Catholic simplicity, and finally left alone to ponder what hell I'd gotten myself into.

Like a ton of bricks...a year away from all the comforts and familiarities of home is not so difficult to accept when you've spent the summer after graduation in your parents' basement, avoiding sunlight and human contact. My room for the night was not helping. With bars outside the window, white walls, and a mattress that would not have appeased the comfort standards of a caveman, I felt as if I'd been committed, rather than having committed myself to volunteering. Thoughts turned from spending a year in Asia to serving a year in Asia. Fortunately, I was too tired to languish that night, or any other night for the next ten days. When I awoke Sunday afternoon, I was well rested, and half a week had passed since I'd just left Moline.

Now I am preparing to leave Yanji for the first significant amount of time since I arrived. Long and I will hit up the Ice Festival in Harbin, being held at the normal time despite the recent chemical spill, and then be on our merry way to Korea for a week or so. From there, Indochina calls. The goal is to spend 3-4 weeks bumming around Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. That said, from early January until March, this blog will see little in the way of updates. I understand that it is useless to inform you so, as natural reflexes will likely implore you to check the site daily.

In the meantime, let me wish you a Merry Christmas and all the best in 2006, the year of the dog.

2005-12-09T21:50:00.000-08:00

On the Diversity of Chinese Fashion...

It's rather lacking.

It was not so long ago in China that the masses sported simple grey or navy blue Mao jackets and matching pants, or as I like to call them, "Maoutfits." Maoutfits. You would think that someone would have coined this genius term already--a testament to my ingenuity in the form of a Google search revealed that this is not the case. So you heard it first here. Maoutfits.

With Mao's death in 1976 and the commencement of Deng Xiaoping's reforms, the Chinese no longer dress so homogeneously as they once did. Which is not to say, however, that there is a great deal of variety in Chinese fashion.

As with everything else in China, there is a generation gap with regard to dress.
Most Yanjians over the age of thirty stick with dark, conservative clothing, while youths prefer the kind of shirts one might find in a Goodwill store. A brief description for each:
- The typical Chinese man wears black pants, a black blazer, a black shirt, and black dress shoes.
-The typical Chinese woman wears the same thing.
- The typical Chinese youth wears anything that has Roman letters, color not important.

I am generalizing considerably. Chinese women actually differ considerably from Chinese men. At least, those of the younger generations have begun to incorporate some variety into their wardrobes. They are not afraid to throw in some color, unlike their male counterparts, and many of them are quite keen on high leather boots, which is a big plus. The latter's stock will rise even more when as it becomes more socially acceptable to wear skirts. Jilin climate may forbid this, though.

The dress habits of Chinese men annoy me. I realize that wearing black may look good since your hair is the same color, but all black? They should consider themselves fortunate Johnny Cash isn't alive and here to kick their asses for ripping off his look.

To throw some more salt on the wound, they wear white socks. Not just any white socks, but ankle socks. I am a t-shirt and jeans man, and this offends my casual fashion sensibilities. Elton John, I am certain, would have a heart attack. This also begs the age-old question: why are gay men such good dressers and gay women the very opposite?

The weight of the move to a more fashionably diverse China rests on the shoulders of its youth. Of course, they will change everything in China. They are the children whose parents were forbidden by the government from giving them brothers or sisters. The "little emperors," spoiled throughout their lives, will not take kindly to the same restrictions their parents and grandparents endured, and they are the ones that will give communism the middle finger. In the meantime, they are wondering if you still have any need for your 1994 Iowa State Fair t-shirt.

Regarding their elders: occasionally I cross paths with an old man wearing ragged military garb, the same clothes he was issued fifty years ago. Of all the stares that I get here, the longest ones come from these gentlemen. Nearly a million of them died halting the northward push of U.N. forces in North Korea during the forgotten war. When they were my age, I was the enemy. I applaud them, for they have chosen to wear dark green amongst a sea of black.

2005-12-06T03:32:00.000-08:00

Cunning, um, smart linguists...

History's greatest is Joseph Cardinal Mezzofanti (1774-1849), an Italian who spoke more than 38 languages fluently. Aside from those he'd perfected, Mezzofanti additionally had a working knowledge of thirty other languages and was competent in some fifty dialects of the former thirty-eight.

Amazingly, Mezzofanti never left Italy, spending most of his time in Bologna and Rome. Living in Rome, however, proved to be as useful for picking up foreign tongues as any amount of travel would have accomplished. The center of Catholicism, the Rome of Mezzonfanti's era would have easily superseded any other city in the world at that time with regard to variety of languages spoken.

Pilgrims, tourists, and all varieties of travelers from around the globe came to the Eternal City to test Mezzofanti's proficiency in their native tongues. They left dumbfounded at his facility, occasionally reporting that he spoke their language without an accent and would even joke with them.

Among major languages, Chinese is considered the most difficult tongue for a native English speaker to master (followed by Arabic, Japanese, and Korean). I say "major languages", as languages such as Xhosa (anAfrican 'clicking' tongue) and Navajo are of little use on the international scale.

That said, when I hit a rough spot studying Chinese, I look at Mezzofanti's example and think to myself, "In the time I took to look up this word, Mezzofanti would have finished the chapter."

I can't get over it. The man was a freak of nature. Sure, he had no other pursuits--he studied languages all day and night--but thirty-eight? Fluency in thirty-eight and a working knowledge of thirty more. I am not doing enough with my life.

In any case, the environment at school is a fine one for someone studying a foreign tongue. Mandarin is the language of choice in school among students and teachers, while Korean is preferred in the dormitory and among the Salesians. English is bandied about often with the increased American presence this year, and if I want to keep my Italian at a tolerable level, I have three people to chat with.

There is a considerable collection of linguistic talent beyond what I just mentioned, due in large part to one of the Salesians--a native Italian--with a particularly keen ear for foreign tongues. Some of the other languages/dialects known by persons at school that go unused include Cantonese, Shanghaiese (that city's distinct dialect of Chinese), Arabic, Russian, French, and Latin. For that matter, no one actually speaks Latin anymore, but I digress.

Want to get good at something? Surround yourself with people who are better than you at it.

More on Mezzofanti, including a list of the languages he knew: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/mezzofanti/index.html

2005-12-01T02:16:00.000-08:00

You know, I used to be cool once...

Although the weather can be quite inclement, they do not cancel school in Yanji. In fact, the last time they did so was during the SARS scare, when classes were called off for a solid month. Upon learning of this, I have recently become tempted to call in a threat of some sort. Bird flu seems to be the all the rage these days, and I have considered bringing in my dead pigeon collection for show and tell.

With the arrival of more snow last week, it was high time to purchase a pair of boots. Snow removal isn't always a high priority here, and I do a fair amount of walking from day to day. After our first class on Thursday, Long, Bundo, and myself headed into town for some midday shopping.

We got a bit sidetracked with a number of other errands. One of Bundo's friends owns a tea shop, and we ended up having to sit around sipping a jasmine blend for forty-five minutes. Sure, drinking tea is par for the course here. It's hard not to feel a bit emasculated, though. Less than a year ago I was sitting in the cigar club at the Ritz on "free scotch tasting" night, enjoying good company and quality tobacco, playing yuppie for the evening with St. Louis's uppities. I've since been relegated to sitting on a foot-high stool inside a fifty-degree shop listening to singsong on the merits of black tea. How the mighty have fallen.

The day passed quickly, and I was soon back at school without lesson plans for my two afternoon classes. It's one thing not to be prepared for class when you're the student and quite another when you're the teacher. I've only got so many crossword puzzles and riddles to cover my ass on down days.

Mother Nature wrote the lesson plans for us, though, as it had snowed for most of the day. Long and I got to class, where the students begged for a day outside, and we decided that we would be rebellious teachers and do just that.

We got out there, and our idea was not so fresh as we'd thought. Maybe a hundred students and their teachers were already frolicking about. So much for our nonconformity.

Before we had left the classroom, one of the students suggested that we have a "snow fight." I corrected her. "May, the proper term is 'snowball fight'."

As it happened, she may not have mispoken originally. As crowds of students milled about in front of the school, the snow wasn't really wet enough for packing, so snowballs were not an option. Instead, kids ran around in groups, usually by class loyalties, tackled individuals from opposing squads, and proceeded to rub snow all over any exposed skin and to stuff it where there was not. There were guys taking down girls, teachers taking down students, and even the CCP-nominated headmaster was getting in on the fun.

I hadn't been to recess in eight years, and it was a welcome return. How many jobs are there where one can tackle his boss (or teacher) without the fear of getting canned?

For all the rules that a communist society typically embodies, this was a nice step outside of the box. The two hours of student-teacher camaraderie did more than enough to ameliorate any bad blood there may've been--it gave everyone a good opportunity to wail on each other. It seems to be a healthy means of releasing tension.

Addendum: I posted earlier this year that I was not able to view comments. Such is not the case now. The party boys in Beijing have lightened the noose, and I can indeed view my blog now. If you've got something to say, talk to me.

2005-11-27T14:14:00.000-08:00

Malleable coolies and the hacky sack attack...

There are five Americans at the school: Long and myself, one of the Salesians, and his brother and sister-in-law. The latter three are all over the age of seventy.

One of them suggested early last week that we try to celebrate Thanksgiving at school. Preparations were underway immediately, and tasks were assigned (that's communism, Virginia). Some went out to buy various vittles and ingredients, while others procured decorations. With no classes on my schedule for Tuesday, I commenced the holiday cheer Monday night with the aid of Bing Chuan and some plum vodka that cost less than a dollar for the bottle. That said, I began helping with the Thanksgiving preparations on Wednesday.

One of the Korean Salesians set out on Wednesday afternoon in search of a turkey. I learned the next day that he had driven around for several hours with no luck. Just as he'd given up and was on his way back into Yanji, he spoke with a peasant. The man was overcome with joy, for his very own mother had a number of turkeys she was interested in selling. By the Salesian's reports, it sounded as if the man had taken that day's sustenance in the form of plum vodka, perhaps the same brand that was responsible for my temporary paralysis on Tuesday.

So, our man on the road made his way to the mother's house, had a look at the bird harvest, and selected a few of the choice ones. Before paying, he noticed that the old woman was in pain. Upon his asking, she called attention to her feet, which had been bound in her youth.

If you are not familiar with the concept of bound feet in China, I'll give you a quick summay. For about 1,000 years until the end of the dynastic age in China in 1911, the practice of "foot binding" was quite common. Designed to keep women in their place from youth onward, young girls would have their feet wrapped tightly with cloths every day. Small, shapely feet were considered attractive and necessary in order to procure a good dowry for eventual marriage. If you have a strong stomach, do a Google image search and check out some of the old photographs. The practice made everyday movements, like walking and sitting down, extremely uncomfortable. Bones in the end of the foot would break, toes might go gangreneous and fall off, and at the very least, feet would grow in a completely unnatural manner. For a woman with bound feet, movement would be hindered for life. The following link (http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/OddPics/Bound.html) offers more details if you're interested.

The practice was slowly phased out with the end of the Qing dynasty in 1911 but not completely outlawed until 1949 with the founding of the PRC. If you're wandering around the countryside, it is not uncommon to run into an older woman who has been hobbling around since she was a little girl.

Back to the present. When the woman called attention to her pain, our man on the street (or rather, on the farm) felt it rather necessary to help out. A footrub was in order.

I can only imagine the degree of fury running through his mind while working with this woman's corns, infected toenails, et al. "Ooo-hoo, those Americans just had to have a turkey. It couldn't be chicken. Ooh, I hate them." His kindness did pay off, however, in the form of a discount. This was one of those "Only in China" moments. I can't think of a situation back home where I'd have to give some old lady a footrub in exchange for a markdown on fowl.

With dinner in the bag, I was put on the informal "decorations committee." I considered this a grave misuse of talent, of course, not unlike the student council designations of years gone by. I am fit neither to cook nor decorate. If they'd simply told me to sit around and take it easy, the results would have been none the worse. As it was, I made a fitting substitute for a ladder. "Oh Hamer, you are very tar! Put baroons on ceiring!"

Charged with the duty of creating some artwork for our belated celebration to come that Friday evening, I remembered that I have coolie labor at my disposal in the form of my students. My obligation had begun to shrink already. For Thursday's class with the third-year students I brought a posterboard-sized sheet of paper and a small black and white picture of a turkey dressed in a chef's outfit. "Ok, guys. Today we will be drawing a Thanksgiving turkey and discussing this important holiday. I will need your help since I'm not much of a artist. Here are some crayons; now get to work."

They were eager to help, and the results were pleasing. The turkey was drawn to scale, and the color scheme was tolerable. Then I noticed an unwelcome addition--following the turkey was an enormous cloud of gas. Those little curmudgeons had added a huge fart to my previously untainted bird.

Before this, I was ready to take most of the credit for the project. "Hey, great turkey? Who drew it?" "Oh, I did, with some help from my third-year class." The default response had now become, "it was my third-year students. They are a devilish bunch, eh?"

To reward them we went outside for Friday's class to enjoy the unseasonable warmth. Several students suggested that we play a game, so we quickly made teams and awaited instructions. In a nutshell, it consists of running around layers of circles towards the small inner circle and then returning. The opposing team members stand outside the circle and throw a hacky sack at the runners inside. If one is successful in making it to the inner circle and back out without being hit, his/her team wins the round.

My unit was on defense first. My teammates, all girls, were awful, throwing about awkwardly as nature had predisposed them to, and the other team was advancing. "Hack me!", I roared. "Give to Hamer!", and it was soon in my hand. I swung to the side and heaved it with an MLB-worthy pickoff move at their lead runner on the opposite side of the circle.

Long describes what happened as a vision of horror in slow motion. The hack hit her square in the eye, and play was temporarily suspended.

Naturally I felt rather a cad for what had happened, and I apologized profusely. Fortunately she was alright, and I wouldn't have to explain to the headmaster why I'd decided to spend class heaving objects at my students' ocular regions instead of teaching them English.

As I've gotten into better shape over the past few years, I've become more competitive in sports, particularly those involving hacky sacks. I'll tone it down a bit now.

2005-11-23T19:26:00.000-08:00

Gobble Gobble Gobble...

I've spent the last hour on Google looking for some simple Thanksgiving stories that I can show the kids tomorrow in class. I've decided to give up, though. The beginning of every story mentions the Pilgrims' escape to the U.S. in search of religious freedom. Four-hundred years later, on the other side of the world, that's a topic I needn't touch upon.

I'm not sure what other angle to take. Most Chinese have little or no concept of American football, a Thanksgiving day hallmark of which I am fond. I suppose I could explain our national interest of eating, drinking, and watching gargantuan men run into each other. The Japanese would understand, anyhow.

Today I am nostalgic for Thanksgiving back home. We are putting together a small Thanksgiving celebration for Friday, but I've already been told that we will have to provide some sort of entertainment. Dammit. I hope they will find amusing the idea of me loosening my belt and falling asleep on the couch, because that is what they will be getting.

Enjoy yourselves tonight, the biggest drinking night of the year, some say. I remember this night last year--I was at the Bluecat Brewpub in Rock Island, Illinois, making merry with both friends and family alike. Tonight I raise one for you, a Bing Chuan, the brew of choice in the Dongbei. Hopefully you are not drinking Budweiser.

Happy Thanksgiving.

2005-11-22T16:51:00.000-08:00

"Like the banshee's lonely croon"...

Fall has bid farewell to Yanji.

About two weeks ago I walked home from the gym wearing shorts. Was the weather nice enough for this? Of course not. But I'd been running inside, and I was hot.
Doing so now would be unthinkable, although I get quite a bit of enjoyment being the only person on the streets not sporting trousers.

When I wrote about my trip to the peak of the Changbai Shan mountain range, I mentioned the walk across a narrow pass famous for torrential gusts. Of course, I didn't know this at the time. It was relayed to me at lunch shortly after. "We could have taken the main climb up the first leg, Hamel, but we wanted to go along the pass instead. It's much more interesting." Indeed it was. Few things can match the interest level of nearly soiling yourself with an adjacent thousand-foot drop and gale force winds to keep you company.

On that note, I must mention the common usage of the word "interesting" among persons here for whom English is a second or, more commonly, third language. It gets bandied about because of limited vocabulary skills, typically as a synonym expressing amusement, satisfaction, and in some cases, interest.

My students use it habitually. It's rather grating for me to hear, though, not least because it expresses the neglect to stop and think of a better word. There are actually two groups that utter the variations of "interesting" even more than my pupils: college professors and their students.

Naturally, they were usually bad professors. Discussing a reading, they would say, "What did you find interesting?", or even worse, "What did you find striking?" For them, this was the simplest manner to express their incompetence. "I don't really want to be here, and I know you don't either. So I'll pretend to teach, and you pretend to learn, and we'll both make it out of here happy."

Back to the wind. As I may have noted before, Yanji sits in a depression (that works on multiple levels) similar to an enormous crater. With the city surrounded almost entirely surrounded by low mountains, one might think that the wind would have a more difficult time making its way inward.

Not the case. Gusts whip against windows, creating a symphony that could be regarded either as tranquil or tormenting depending on one's mood. Know the sound of someone blowing into an empty beer bottle? Crank up the decibels and you have some idea of what the noise is like. It is both a reminder of several varieties: a pleasant one that I am indoors, and an insufferable one that eventually I'll have to go back outside.

Now that things are starting to cool down, Yanji's marketplaces have sought refuge below ground. These underground marketplaces are dispersed throughout the city, and they are presently constructing one next to my apartment. The entrance could just as well be that of a subway, which is what I mistook it for when they began building. A subway would be convenient, although I'm not sure I could fit into one of the trains any more easily than I can a city bus.

2005-11-19T20:14:00.000-08:00

It gets lonely at the top...

There was a student talent show at school last night, so after a Friday afternoon of leisure we headed back to the campus for dinner.

Now, any gathering that is remotely social typically involves getting everyone to provide some sort of entertainment. It's been that way since day 1. I remember the welcome party they had for us on the Sunday night of the weekend we arrived. A few people sang/played songs, a few told jokes, etc. Then, one of the Salesians announced, "Hamel and Long will now sing a song." This guy's English is pretty limited, but he had no problem with that. Probably practiced it for days beforehand.

This happens every time. This week, we didn't know about the talent show until Thursday. Someone had mentioned it offhand the week before, but without noting the date. It came up in conversation at lunch on Thursday. "So, Hamel and Long, the talent show is tomorrow. I wonder if you will be providing some kind of entertainment for the students?"

Now, I don't like to do anything half-assed, especially in front of the whole school. As it was, I didn't have time to prepare. I teach four classes on Friday, followed up by a two-hour Chinese class and then a trip to the gym. It's a long day. More importantly, Thursday night is burger night, and I prefer to spend the evening digesting dinner rather than pondering a way to shame myself for 500 people the next day. I politely declined the offer to participate.

A half hour before the show, during dinner, they had yet to relent.

American Salesian: "Hey John, I need to know if you are going to do something for the show. I would have to tell the announcer to call you."

Me: "Thanks but I really don't have anything prepared. I know the kids will do fine on their own."

American Salesian: "Ok, that's fine. Maybe next time."

Me: (in jest) "Well, maybe we could sing the American national anthem. Everyone knows that, right?"

American Salesian: "Well, I don't think the kids would understand it. They certainly won't have heard it before."

Me: "Sure they have. They've heard it plenty of times on TV while someone looks up at one of us at the top of the podium."

Everyone at the table who understood the joke: (awkward silence)

After having spent so much time at school yesterday, and feeling a bit nonplussed at my latest boorish remark, I stayed in the city today. I got my shoes shined, picked up some necessities downtown, and enjoyed a deep fried chicken kebab. Despite a strong, cold wind all day, the sun was out. Enough to lift anyone's spirits. After finishing my business downtown, I hopped on the nearly-empty #3 bus and headed home. It had all the makings of a great day.

Then I got off the bus just in time to see a guy get knocked off his moped by a speeding car. He sat on the ground for a few seconds, staggered at the event. My Chinese is not yet at the point where I can say, "you'd better get the hell off the street before you get run over," but I pantomimed it well enough. He got up and finally realized that he was hurting. I picked up his moped and pushed it over to the curb. He sauntered over grimacing, more interested in the damage done to the frame of the moped than that of his own. I asked him if he was ok. He didn't look great, but he thanked me, and I looked both ways nine or ten times before crossing the street.

Between myself and Long, we've now witnessed six or seven accidents since we arrived in Yanji about ten weeks ago. Eventually we will be present for a fatality. The statistics lean that way, at least.

The car that hit him, naturally, was a taxi. The driver stopped briefly, saw that the man was not mortally wounded, and went on his merry way. Normally, when a taxi comes close to clipping me, I wish for a brick in hand to lob at the windshield. This time I would have settled for no less than a howitzer.

2005-11-13T09:50:00.000-08:00

The Kimono District...

In choosing a livelihood, many Yanjians opt to open some type of store or shop. These establishments are quite plentiful, particularly mini-grocery stores. Why do the Chinese patronize these instead of supermarkets? Easy. When I walk out of my apartment there are five such stores within a 90-second walk. A little bit of shopping everyday, it goes. They sell everything but gasoline. Perhaps they would expand into this sector too were it not for the government's control of it.

The preferred option, of course, is to open a restaurant. Yanji has approximately 800,000 restaurants. Long suggested that there are five for every ten people. How they stay in business, I have no idea. "Four-thousand restaurants in the downtown area, I pick the one my father goes to." Ferris would have no trouble avoiding Pops here.

Since the stores and restaurants are so abundant, they are often grouped into districts. In the photo you can catch a glimpse of the cell phone district. A one-block radius about twenty different stores in which one can purchase a "handphone."

The districts are spread out all over town. Comparison shopping is a relatively effortless task provided that one can brush off the hordes of employees. It it goes without saying that there is a district for anything one might desire. On the way to dinner last Saturday we walked through the dog district, home to a host of restaurants that specialize in serving up Fido. There are Internet cafe districts, shoe repair districts, and massage districts. There is probably a hammock district somewhere in town, but I digress.

On the way to the bus stop in the morning we pass by the kimono district. They aren't really kimonos, I suppose--the Chinese equivalent, though. There are five or six of these stores lined up right next to each other, the interior of each about the size of the average American living room. We were walking back from dinner on Saturday when I pointed out the kimono district to one of the Salesians. "Um, John, those aren't kimonos. You get one when you die. They're burial garments."

That said, I have been a bit more vocally reserved this past week. Not much has changed, though; I simply refrain from shouting out, "hey, there's the kimono district...wonder how business is lately," every time we pass it.

If I'm not mistaken, cremation for the dead is de rigueur in China. It got me thinking. The people that make these pseudo-kimonos must have to ensure that their product will take on a nice, thorough conflagration when it's time. With the competition next door on either side, I wonder how they set their respective products apart. "Sure, Ming's got indigo thread, but if you want a braze, you've come to right prace. My gown burn rearry good."

2005-11-04T19:40:00.000-08:00

And on the seventh day, Hamel rested. And then he rested the day after that. And then when it became apparent that things were under control, he decided to rest for a few more days yet.

Even the omnipotent among us need some time off.

Midway through last week our supervisor in the English department informed us that we would be giving midterms the following week. What a great joy, I thought. A teacher's greatest joy, and those of you in the business will agree, is the joy that a student takes in learning, closely followed by the delicious anticipation that comes with exams.

For with exams come leverage. And after 17 years on the receiving end in the educational system, I was ready to exercise some leverage. Naturally my students were quite nervous in class prior to exams, and I must say that I enjoyed it. "Hey, you guys are unusually quiet this week. What's the big deal?"

We gave oral exams for the first three days of the week. When it came time for written exams on Thursday and Friday, it was decided that, due to our lack of Chinese and Korean language skills, it would be best for us not to proctor any of the written exams. "Hammer, I think it would be good that you take a few days of rest on Thursday and Friday." If you insist, then I submit to you, good sir.

Last weekend I went out with some of the Korean volunteers for my first Chinese karoake bar experience. I couldn't tell you if these places are popular throughout China, but remember that Yanji is to China what L.A. is to California. The influence of a foreign, yet proximate culture is significant, and karaoke in quite popular in Korea.

For 100 yuan, about 12 bucks, you get a private karaoke room with your friends for as long as you please. Aside from the big couches, a respectable sound system, and a couple of mics, your money gets you ten beers, popcorn, some sodas, and a platter of fruit. Fruit, you ask? It's like a dessert here. This is the limit of the Chinese sweet tooth. I do not eagerly anticipate a Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie. In fact, I don't think I can anticipate Thanksgiving period. First Halloween and now this. Damn Chinese are refusing to celebrate all of my holidays.

Anyway, it's hard to imagine that one might find a better time for twelve bucks in the U.S. They had a reasonably good selection of songs in English, and I nearly lost my voice following a spirited rendition of CCR's "Hey Tonight." It did not even matter that there was a limited supply of brew. For a night at Duffy's on Tuesday or Blue Hill on Thursday, there was usually a four-beer minimum to be able to tolerate and occasionally sing karaoke. But they are big on singing songs here, karaoke or not, and there seems to be less importance placed on drinking when doing so.

Moving onto physical culture. With some hesitation I decided to change gyms this week. It's quite simple to do here, a direct contrast to the Nazis at Bally's who demand lengthy contracts, a boatload of cash, your firstborn son, etc. Here you can buy a month at a time if you want, and you'll probably drop only 10-12 bucks in doing so.

I had wanted to stay at my first gym. I liked the people there, the gym's proximity to a bus stop, and the fact that I was their poster boy. But there was almost no cardio equipment, save the one treadmill which was constantly being bogarted by some lady fresh out of the adjacent 90 minute aerobics class. Frustration is wanting to go for a run and seeing someone in purple spandex slogging along on the place's only treadmill. I can't go for a run in Yanji. It's too cold, too dirty, too dangerous, and too gawk-inducing. And of course, swells of humanity everywhere ensure that there is no place to go.

I also think there was some bad karma associated with that first gym. It was the only place in Yanji I could go with the assurance that I would see fat people.

The high point of the last week, however, was getting hit by a motorcycle. My roommate and I were crossing the street with Bundo, a Chinese liaison from school. We moved through the traffic sitting still on one side and made it to the middle. We waited for a moment, and when John and Bundo started walking forward, I followed, without looking. To my left, rapidly breaking, were 20 ccs of Lilliputian Chinese motorcycle.

Fortunately he was going quite slowly by the time he got up to me. I did not have the option of backing up into traffic soon to move in the opposite direction, and I didn't have time to get across his path. I instinctively put my arms out as his front wheel went over my right foot and reached a complete stop about twenty inches later. My hands went into his chest, but not before I broke off his right mirror.

I was not injured, or even shocked, and my shoe was only lightly scuffed. I've been expecting to get hit by something here for quite some time, and I will be surprised if this is the last.

The best part came after about five seconds after the initial contact, when my friends realized I was not hurt and the rider noticed that I'd busted off his mirror. I muttered, "oops, sorry about that," and walked ahead intent on finishing our errands. He began cussing to himself, and he should be grateful that I chose not to pommel him about the face and body, right then and there, for driving outside his lane.

Pedestrians here have no more rights than political prisoners. It will take more than a glorified moped to bring me down, though.

2005-10-29T12:29:00.000-07:00

Fridays...

Earlier this week I wrote on the delight that is every Tuesday. Tuesday's counterpart? Friday.

Back in my days at university, Friday was the high point of the week. Light class schedules, mid-afternoon cigars, and imminent debauchery were the norm.

Now I teach class for the first half of Friday and play student for the second. My roommate and I have thrice-weekly Chinese lessons on the medical campus of Yanbian University, a ten minute walk from our apartment. After a two-hour class I go to the gym, and beyond that, there's not much left to the day.

Yesterday's adventures and mishaps at school, however, made Friday an unusually mirthful day.

My first two classes of the day are with the first-year students, whose English may best be described as "limited." We have a short break between first and second periods. A few of the students returned late for the latter, and I had locked the door to prevent them from entering the classroom stealthily. Upon discovering I had the upper hand, they finally resorted to knocking, so I opened the door and called for an excuse. The leader of the group, one of the best students in the class, immediately said in total deadpan while staring at the floor: "We are sorry because the traffic is very bad."

They covered their giggling mouths, and my jaw hit the floor as they shuffled past and returned to their seats. How could she have put that sentence together? Perhaps my tutelage is finally taking effect. That or she has been watching reruns of some long-cancelled American sitcom. I would lean toward the former.

I am usually quite drained by the last class of the day, which is with the third-year students. I walked into the room to see a couple of them pretending to spar with kung fu moves in the back. Approaching them quickly with a scowling face, they cowered. I'd no intent to punish, though, and only assumed the "Crane Kick" position popularized in Karate Kid. Chinese students are not used to seeing their teachers degrade themselves, so this drew quite a bit of laughter.

My roommate has said that I am somewhat like a cartoon character personified, and I would have to agree. I am not sure who I would be, though. I am clumsy, and I tend to get myself into predicaments that only a nervous laugh can ameliorate. The third incident at school yesterday is one such example, even if only a microcosm of the hilarity that ensues daily in my life.

It was in the the same class with the third year students. We were preparing for their midterm oral exams on Monday. My roommate and I had decided that a mock job interview would be best, as many of the students head straight into the workforce upon graduating. I set aside a few desks in the back of the room and proceeded to conduct the interviews one by one.

As I have noted before, many things in China are not Hamel-sized, and the desks of high school students certainly are not. At school assemblies I can easily see over all the masses of radiant ebony tresses and tufts. They are neither a tall nor well-built people. So I am not quite sure what I was thinking when I decided to test the pupil chair.

Midway through the practice interviews, things were going swimmingly. There preparations had exceeded my expectations, and they were also responding well to the new instructions I'd given, which included standing up and shaking hands with the interviewer at the conclusion.

Upon finishing one interview, we both stood up and I said, "Thank you, Therese. We'll be in touch." For some reason I was feeling a bit of tightness in my lower back. I turned around to see that the chair had snagged the top of my pants, its shoddy craftsmanship avenging itself for having to bear well beyond the median weight for the last half hour. I can only be fortunate that it did not break.

Concern for chairs folding under Western weight may well be the reason I have been obligated to sit on the floor at numerous dinners and social gatherings. Even then there is no assurance that I may fall through the floor and interrupt the karoake hour of the residents below. If this were to happen, it would not be the first time, though.

About nine or ten years ago I was ravaging through the attic for Christmas decorations. Amidst my cursing the freezing temperature and decision to walk barefoot, I did not take care to avoid stepping on a particularly flimsy section of the floor. In a split second my right leg was thigh-deep into the dining room.

Fortunately there was another person there to witness the hilarity. Besides, I did not wish to explain alone to my parents why there was an enormous gap in the dining room ceiling. My brother was watching his Saturday morning cartoons, only to be interrupted by a thunderous crash and the arrival of a hairy, ashen leg dangling above while pieces of the ceiling floated softly to the floor.

Uninjured, or at the very least too floored by my own idiocy to feel any pain, I pulled myself out and peered through the rupture. Peter was transfixed. I uttered a casual "whoops!", and he finally spoke. "What did you do?!"

He did not anticipate his cartoon marathon to be cut short by a real-life Goofy. My friends and colleagues in China have come to expect these sorts of hijinks.

2005-10-26T21:57:00.000-07:00

Chinese Monopoly Money...

I receive two salaries which are not even substantial when combined. One of them is from the Salesians of Don Bosco, the organization for which I volunteer; the other is red money, both literally and figuratively. I am paid monthly, in crisp burgundy bills, by the CCP-subsidized school. The sum of the envelope: 1000 RMBs, about 125 bucks.

Of course, Chinese currency is not Monopoly money of the same degree to which countless other currencies have wandered. Take Italy before the Euro. A plate of spaghetti? That-a will-a be-a 10,000 lira.

Mi scusi!

The relatively low buying power of the yuan, however, has made me a bit more fiscally responsible despite the fact that most things are dirt cheap. My focus here leans more towards subsistence than living large. And if anything, I have to remember that I will have to lug home anything I buy, unless I wish to make a donation to future SLMs living in the same pad. We already bought a coffee table and a two-foot shoe horn, and that is more than enough in my book.

Also, carrying a supposedly large sum of currency helps me forget that my salary is quite trifling. "Of course I'm not poor. Look at how much paper is in my wallet right now."

I had the interesting experience of being recruited for a job recently. I was running errands downtown on Saturday. In between a shoeshine and a deep-fried chicken sausage on a stick, I met a couple of teachers from a foreign language institute who were insistent that I quit my current job for a position teaching English at their school. They were so unrelenting, in fact, that twice they made the trip to my school outside of town. Did I mention I just met them on Saturday? The first time they came, on Monday, I was not in the office, and they explained to my colleagues in the English department that I was a "very good friend" of theirs.

My supervisor rightly called shenanigans on them, but Abbott and Costello returned again on Tuesday intent on roping themselves a 'fariner. More on that brush with shadiness to follow...

Getting back on track chronologically--I met them at a bookstore on Saturday. They are not friends, much less good friends. The encounter there was rather comical, if anything a fitting start to a series of short, peculiar conversations between us. They began it by asking if I spoke English, and then if I was from America. I answered affirmatively both times, smiled, and promptly walked away. I wasn't trying to be rude--it's just that this sort of thing happens all the time. Every Joe Chinese with ten words or more of English thinks that I will be enthused to no end when he sputters out a greeting in my native tongue.

I left the store and they were waiting for me outside. Oh great, as if I needed another stalker here. I gave them a business card and went on my merry way.

Back to the Tuesday visit. I was reading in the lounge when one of the Korean volunteers burst in to inform me of their unnannounced arrival. "Excuse me, Hammer. There are two men here to talk to you; they say they are good friends of yours." Alright, the fun boys are here again. "Oh and Hammer, I am pretty sure that one of them is drunk."

Fortunately the boozed fellow's friend did most of the talking that time. I'm not sure whether it was because he had a stronger command of English or because his colleague had a stronger command of vodka.

The ensuing conversation seemed even more absurd. Their English was quite tolerable, but the talk moved in circles. "We will pay you four times your current salary." Enticing? Not really. Four times my current salary would be $500 a month. They could not understand that I am a volunteer, not here for the money to begin with, and for that matter, I get by alright as things are. Likewise, they probably could not understand why some dumbass American would not even consider a job paying four times as much.

By this point I was just fed up with their obstinance and downright insolence to recruit me in front of my coworkers. I decided it would be fun to confuse a bit. "Gentlemen, I have a good friend back in the States by the name of Biggie Smalls. Biggie is always saying the same thing, 'mo money mo problems.' And you know what? I would have to agree with him! And I just can't handle that right now fellas! My home's on the other side of the planet; hell I look like E.T. to most people in this city and you wanna pay me for that?! I might as well be the south end of a northbound cow to some folks here! Good day, gentlemen!"

Well I wish I'd said that. I'm not very spontaneous.

2005-10-25T12:30:00.000-07:00

Tuesdays...

When I was a freshman in college, Tuesday was my favorite day of the week.

That year I attended Holy Cross College in South Bend, Indiana. Holy Cross was and is a very small school; there were just under 600 enrolled students when I attended. A majority were of them were commuters, and I was one of the 250 or so who lived on campus. My high school was about the same size, and everyday felt like I'd never left it. There were a lot of great people at Holy Cross, but it was the same crowd, all the time.

Tuesdays were always nice because I always found an excuse to get off campus. I finished class early, worked out in the closet-sized weightroom, and enjoyed hamburger day at the cafeteria.

The afternoons made the day, though. I was one of the fortunate few to have a car. I didn't care if South Bend was a humdrum post-industrial city; anything was better than hanging around campus. Sometimes I'd go to the Studebaker museum, or I'd catch a movie, and sometimes I'd even grab lunch in the city in lieu of the cafeteria fare. I relished those Tuesdays because it was the only time I had to myself. I knew that if I I saw someone on campus, we probably knew each other and we'd have to go through the typical bullshit small talk. "Hey Hamel, sure is cold today, eh?!" Well of course it was. The weather was always brutal. When I went back to Saint Mary's for their graduation ceremony on May 20th of that year, it was in the upper 40s and windy.

Here in Yanji, Tuesday is again a great day, maybe the best of the week. I teach no classes on Tuesdays, and today I even managed to sleep in until 7:30. I don't pride myself on getting much done since I'm not at school; I simply enjoy not being there when everyone else is.

I will spend part of the day thinking of something worthwhile to teach tomorrow as yesterday's "proverb day" imploded. The kids were having difficulty understanding them without detailed explanations, and a couple of them stumped me too. "A stitch in time saves nine? What the hell does that mean?"

I had printed out a long list of them from some ESL website without spending much time previewing them, and I was skipping around to find easy ones when the kids were having trouble. A couple of them, which I did not mention to the class:

"A woman's place is in the home."
"A woman's work is never finished."

Perhaps Focus on the Family managed to masquerade itself as an ESL site.

2005-10-22T11:50:00.000-07:00

Today's forecast: slightly cloudy with a chance of sexy.

My first year students and I were recently having a rich discourse regarding weather. After saying and repeating eight or nine phrases describing various weather conditions, I decided to play mime to see if they had understood well.

Now, if my students can come away from my class with more proficiency in English and enjoyed doing so, I am not above occasionally making a complete fool of myself. When I covered common body language and gestures with my third-year students, I even demonstrated the motion for "I need to use the restroom," whereupon, standing, I crossed my legs, bent over slightly, and put a grimace on my face while raising my hand and barking, "teacher, teacher! W.C!" Since I teach in a fairly relaxed atmosphere and I have a significant amount of freedom in planning my classes, I try to incorporate a few fun activities now and then. They typically consist of a few laughs being had at my expense.

Every so often, however, it backfires on me, and it happened again Wednesday. My first couple of weather-related pantomimes were easily understood. I shivered, and they responded, "it's cold!" I opened an invisible umbrella, and they knew: "it's raining!" Then I pretended to wipe some sweat off my brow. "It's hot!"

One of the expressions was "it's warm," and I wasn't quite sure how to tackle it. So, without even thinking, I opened the top button of my shirt and shook my collar. One of the few male students in the class, without hesitation, yelled out amidst collective silence and confusion: "IT'S SEXY!"

Technically he was correct, but I decided to quit before things got out of hand. "Ok," I said while looking down, smiling but avoiding the urge to join the class in its collective uproar, "let's play some hangman and call it a day."

2005-10-18T19:53:00.000-07:00

Hammertime...

Your new Delta name is "Hammer." (On that note, I am interested in acquiring a pair of Hammerpants for my nights out on the town. I would like to avoid paying for them, if possible.)

"John Hamel" has become an alias. My roommate and fellow American teaching colleague is also named John, so to avoid confusion the Chinese have taken to calling us by our family names. Of course, this is customary, though, as the last name comes first in many Asian countries.

Now, you likely know that Asians usually have difficulty pronouncing the letter "l". Thus, my roommate is no longer Long but Rong. I am somewhat pleased with the butchering of my own name. I've long had to deal with my first name being synonymous with toilet, and now I am blessed to share tags with a heavy tool used to pound things. If only the Chinese understood the significance...

Anyways, I am not a particularly mature fellow, so although I've heard botched pronunciations of my name from day one, I cannot help but snicker every time it's uttered. It's like watching someone take a spill hindquarters first--it never ceases to be funny.

I have gone to great lengths with my students to correct their delivery. They are given very specific instructions on pronunciation, i.e. where to place their tongues for different sounds. Occasionally there is a breakthrough with one or two of them, only to be quickly followed by another botched attempt. It usually goes something like this:

Me: "Hamel."
Them: "Hammer."
Me: "Hamel."
Them: "Hammer."
Me: "HAMEL!"
Them: "HAMMER!"
Me: "Ok, good for now."
Them: "Ok, good for now."
Me: "You don't have to repeat that."
Them: "You don...Ahhh undastand!"

Most of my students have had at least three or four years of English prior to high school, so one might think that basic pronunciation errors should not be tolerated. You have to empathize with them, though, simply because so much of their English educational background has been concentrated on grammatical issues. The result is a rather disturbing imbalance between their written and conversational skills. Almost none of them have any prior conversational experience with native speakers, and it shows. They have been taught imprecise pronunciations for years now--my colleagues in the English department make the exact same mistakes. It is up to Hammer to exorcise those demons. Get me some holy water, Wang.

I occasionally tell my students blatant lies just to see if they are understanding and paying attention. One day when I was talking with my second-year class when I asked, in jest, if they were prepared for the next day's test. "Teacher, there is no test tomorrow!" They had caught on. "Alright," I said, "I'm just kidding." One of my students with a more limited command of the language cried out, "Bad joke! Bad Hammer! Very bad Hammer!"

My pronunciation of Chinese is likely equally insufficient to the native ear, but hey, I'm the warden running the joint now, and I decide when we have exercise time.

2005-10-17T16:57:00.000-07:00

Cerebrity Status--I've been elevated to it...

It's not a spelling mistake. I have to use a bit of Engrish to improve my own and better understand that of those around me.

Regarding fame, though: my fifteen minutes are well past expired, but things haven't changed much. Let me give you this anecdote for you to better understand my life here in Yanji.

When the Native Americans first saw a black man, a slave to the Spaniards, they were in awe. Gazing at the fellow quite fibrous from forced labor, they could only conclude that he was a bear that had taken on human form. Tribal leaders called for their squaws to procreate with this bear-man in the hope that their future generations would be physically dominant and superior to all human and animal rivals alike.

Perhaps I have exaggerated things a bit. I've not yet been mistaken for a bear, although I'm sure the Chinese word for giraffe has been bandied about more than once in my presence.

I joined a gym a few weeks ago. Most of the other members are there for aerobics classes, but I always have a small crowd of Chinese men interested in lifting with me, wanting to spot me and occasionally wanting to try the same amount of weight I'm using. They have since shied away from the latter after one fellow nearly dropped a barbell on his chest.

The first thing I noticed about this gym upon joining was how incredibly bizarre their promotional photos were. They have an enormous color poster outside the building with a morbidly obese youth straining to lift a tiny dumbbell with the help of an enthusiastic shirtless man.

Fortunately, however, the gym management has noted its newest member and has since decided to use me in future promotional shoots. I'm not sure what thought process they wish to bring about in potential members. "Hmm, big American rift weights der, maybe I rift der too."

During my workout yesterday, before I knew they'd started taking pictures of me, one of the employees directed me to the treadmill. "Ok, now you run and sweat," he ordered. Alright then. I ran at a good pace for about ten minutes and worked up a pretty good sweat. He turned the treadmill off and had me spot him on an incline bench. He noted, though, that he was not sweating as much as I, a problem he quickly remedied by dumping a bucket of water on himself. He then signaled to the photographer that the session could be continued. Soon after, although I'd finished my workout for the day, I was quickly herded back to the bench press for additional photos.

In my post re: the Chinese bus system I neglected to mention the hilarity that ensues prior to my actual boarding of the bus. I usually have to wait a few minutes for my bus to arrive. During this time, various buses pull up to the stop and then quickly depart. I must note, though, that their brief stop gives everyone at the window a quick glance at the human oddity waiting for a different bus. My roommate spoke of an eerie semblance to safari tours where busloads of tourists glance out the window upon wildlife they are not accustomed to viewing.

It is a strange tradeoff, to be featured on promo posters while at the same time making Joe-bus rider wish he had his camera with him. I think I'll contact the bus company to see if they're interested in using me for any promos of their own. There is enough of me to go around for all of Yanji.

2005-10-14T19:31:00.000-07:00

Empathizing with sardines...

My job title is "Salesian Lay Missioner." This is a bit misleading, though. I don't set out to convert anyone. I wasn't asked to, I don't have the slightest bit of interest in doing so, and for that matter, it's not even lawful here. Preachin' aint permitted in China.

My point, though, is that I'm not here for money. This is fortunate because my coolie wages don't go very far.

To stay thrifty I ride the bus like a good proletariat. On weekdays a school-owned bus picks up and drops off all the teachers at various stops around town. It's respectable. The seats are of reasonable quality, and I can actually fit between them. I needn't deal with any gawkers since the other teachers know me, and I can enjoy the trip to school in peace.

City buses are an entirely different manner. They are extraordinarily popular for several reasons. There are many of them, they run on efficient schedules, and they are dirt cheap (about 12 cents per ride). This accounts for their widespread popularity, in addition to the fact that most folks haven't another way to get around. So, they are always jammed. Always. I could take a taxi, as hailing a cab here is as simple as breathing. However, I have little tolerance for their erratic driving, ubiquitous cigarettes, and cell phone chatter, not to mention that cab fare is five times the cost of bus fare.

There are certain employees of the Tokyo subway system whose sole collective duty is to push commuters into the crowded cars and subsequently ensuring that the doors can still close. A similar position exists on the Yanji metro bus line. Stationed on every bus is a person (usually a middle-aged woman) who takes money, barks out the stops, and pushes people inward when it seems all space is taken. If you have ever been on the floor during a crowded rock concert, then you have some idea of what riding a packed bus in Yanji is like: you simply move with the crowd. During peak hours there is no need to grab the railing above; the persons around you serve as an adequate buffer in the likely event of hard swerve or stop.

When you exit a such a bus you cannot help but feel a bit violated, or at the very least in need of a long shower. Yanji's city buses are not bastions of reputable hygiene.

Due to my size, I am inevitably accursed when riding the bus. To the Chinese, I am a physical comedy anomaly. They should be paying my fare. For starters, I cannot fit between the seats. If I attempt to do so, my knees hit the seat in front of me a full foot before my posterior hits the one below me. Ergo, I have to stand. It doesn't end there. I am 6'4", and the bus ceiling tops out at around 5'9". I have to crane my neck just to be able to make do. At this height I also cannot see where the bus is headed, and I have to squat a bit periodically just so I can see my stop. I would laugh at myself, too.

The issue of riding the bus is symptomatic of a problem I must face every day. I can only accept the fact that most things in China are not Hamel-sized.

Rosa Parks should have tried the buses in Yanji for a few weeks...

2005-10-11T23:08:00.000-07:00

Makin' a run for the border...

Although the map image doesn't capture it well, there is a small sliver of China's Jilin Province (mine) that extends, albeit ever so slightly, between North Korea and Russia. The section marked Hamgyong-Bukto is DPRK territory, and Primorsky is Russky turf.

Yanji isn't a long drive from this area, so on Saturday we hopped in the car and headed out for a gander.

We picked the perfect time make the drive through the wooded mountains and hills of the region. It is the peak period for a view of the foliage, and a gaze upon any slope revealed five or six shades of leaves which had not yet fallen.

As the section of Jilin province grew slimmer and slimmer the farther south we headed, the borders of the neighboring countries made their way towards the road. As I've noted before, the North Korean border here is the Tumen River. The Russian border is a manmade demarcation, a less than appealing barbwire fence. There is one brief portion of the stretch where China's land is no more than the highway itself, with the river at right and the fence at left. It opens up a bit more as one nears the sea, however.

Unfortunately for the Chinese, PRC territory ends about a half-mile shy of the ocean. This annoys them to no end, as the next Chinese port is about 400 miles to the east, on the other side of North Korea. They can still ship from here, they just have to pay either the Russians or the North Koreans to do it for them. For an additional crank in the fruitstand, the nearby ocean that the Chinese refer to as the East Sea is known by the rest of the world as the Sea of Japan.

While the Chinese must deal without a port of their own in this region, I was only disappointed not to be able to see and smell the ocean up close. Although a part of three nations who've contributed detestable political ideologies and leaders over the years, it is a fitting edge to a region of significant natural beauty.

2005-10-11T22:13:00.000-07:00

The Asian Age Game...

I would like your opinion, please. Look at the young Asian boy on the far left. How old do you think he is? Three? Five?

You would be wrong if you guessed either of those numbers. And for that matter, you would be wrong if you guessed a number within the same generation. He is actually twenty-nine years old.

OK, he's three. The picture, by the way, comes from the Anti-Defamation League's 2004 poster campaign which sought to spread the idea that anti-Semitism was a problem for everyone in society, not merely Jews. It sounds like ripe material for a South Park episode, and if nothing else a rather absurd manner in which to propagate a message. But I can assure you that it is not nearly as absurd as the idea of guessing someone's age here. The Chinese are categorically inscrutable in this department.

To put it briefly, everyone is older than they appear. I cannot even begin to explain this phenomenon. Is it the result of a radically different diet? Simple genetics? Couldn't tell ya.

And to be fair, it works the other way as well. Everyone is astonished to hear that my roommate and I are both twenty-three. Perhaps white people age too quickly? Lindsay Lohan is fast becoming a prime example, but she does far too much cocaine to be considered for this study.

My students are the most obvious examples of this spectacle. They range in age from about seventeen to twenty, and the most mature-looking among them don't appear a day over fifteen. There are times when I forget that I am teaching high school students.

At first I thought that it might be normal for an Asian to mature quickly around a given age. My roommate quickly rejected my hypothesis, telling me a great story from a time in college when he worked at a campus bar. One of his colleagues was working the door one evening and carded a couple of Asian students. It turned out they were both graduate students and over forty. Whoops.

As I've gotten to know better some of my friends and colleagues here, I've learned that Asians age well enough to fool any bouncer, fortune teller, or carnie. Take one of the Salesians. I'd thought he was a couple of years older than I. Just before the holiday he mentioned that he was going home to Korea to see his forty year-old brother get married.

Me: "Wow, that's quite an age difference between you guys."

Him: "Actually I'm thirty-five."

One of the other English teachers also had me fooled. I assumed she was just a few years ahead of me. Wrong again. Thirty-one and married for eight years, spending a lot of time working on her new house. She would go to Home Depot if she had more time, and if there were one in China.

I remain stupified, wondering what I have done to hasten my decline and what Asians have done to impede their own. One thing I have come to understand quite well though is why adoption of Chinese children has become so extensive. You might point to overpopulation figures and the greater number of opportunities a typical Chinese child would have in America, but the primary explanation is this: all Chinese babies and toddlers are extraordinarily cute. I've yet to see an exception.

There are always some morons who will say that every baby is a cute baby. Hogwash. Not even an individual with advanced Tourette's would be so blunt as to tell someone his or her baby was uncomely. It's one thing to say something mean about a perfectly innocent human being, but one must also consider that if a baby is ugly, then at least one of the parents is the genetic culprit.

If you want a cute baby, China's your place, baby. Drop me a line if you make it to Yanji.

2005-10-07T23:32:00.000-07:00

Feeling stressed, reader? Take Sato's advice, and take day off. That is what I am doing today.

Actually, it's the last day of my weeklong holiday. Mother Nature saved her best for us, as it's been raining steadily outside all morning.

It doesn't bother me one bit, though. Yanji could use a good rinsing. The streets are usually moderately clean, but the sidewalks are nearly always filthy. The primary culprits are dust, dirt, and trash.

There is construction everywhere, and so there is dust everywhere. Even on the basketball courts at school, where there is a mass of concrete the size of a football field and no apparent sources of dust anywhere in the vicinity, the ball still kicks up a bit of dust every time it bounces.

The city has decided to plant trees/flowers along many of the main downtown streets, and so next to three-foot deep pits positioned every ten feet on the sidewalk there are piles of dirt. I cannot decide which is more absurd: the fact that the city has waited until October to plant or that they believe something might actually grow here. The atmosphere downtown makes the air in Los Angeles seem pristine.

And dumpsters have not yet made their way to Yanji, so people usually form trash piles behind their apartment buildings. However, it is collected almost daily by armies of city sanitation workers, who load it onto storage carts attached to the front of their bikes. Perhaps dumpsters never will arrive here--it would put all these people out of work.

My roommate and I have made a habit of getting our shoes shined several times every week to combat this problem. Besides, it only costs about fifty cents, and damned if a man doesn't feel undaunted walking around with newly shined shoes.

What I cannot fathom is the disconnect between the filthy nature of the city and the cleanliness of Chinese homes. I have been to three or four different apartments now, each of which is almost immaculately clean. The floors are spotless, of course, because shoes must remain at the door, but it doesn't stop there. Dirty dishes are never left in the sink. Appliances and furniture are dusted routinely. People put a great deal of time into keeping things spic-and-span.

So how could the same people who keep their homes such shining beacons of unblemished charm care so little about their polluted, grungy city? Someone, throw me a bone here.

Since there is an adequate workforce available, one might conclude that the government has not allocated sufficient funds to city sanitation. However, an observation of the people on the street (when they are not staring at me) reveals something entirely different.

People throw bits of trash on the ground without hesitation. It goes well beyond cigarette butts and wads of gum, however. Things like bottles, tissues, and wrappers are discarded at will. In a hilarious bit of irony, I even saw one lady throw an empty trash bag on the sidewalk. I wanted to slap her.

And then, of course, there is the issue of spitting. It is as normal as breathing for one strolling down the street to let the phlegm fly. The Chinese are trying to clean up in this particular area in an attempt to improve the national image, particularly for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. I have been telling my roommate all along that potentially the funniest thing in the history of mankind would be to unload a busload of Chinese tourists in the middle of Paris. The French have a strong distaste for spitting--they consider it about as insulting as dropping an F-bomb--the reactions would be priceless. There is also the Chinese tendency to speak English to any white person, and you know how the French like to speak French in France.

Oh man, this is too good. I need to start planning this.

2005-10-03T10:51:00.000-07:00

A Trip to Changbai Shan...

With the week off school for the Chinese holiday, a number of the good Salesians and the student teachers decided to take an overnight trip to Changbai Shan.

Sitting on the Chinese-North Korean border as part of the Changbai mountain range and China's largest nature preserve, one must be careful when exploring those less-travelled regions of the park. A good portion of it, including roughly half of the main peak, is actually within the boundary of the DPRK. One of the Salesian LM student teachers from last year was visiting the park when the lake was frozen and decided to venture out upon it, only to receive a warning shot from an unseen North Korean sentry. Seeing as how I have no strong desire to be fired upon by a man who is likely paid in bags of rice, I stayed with the crowds.

The lake, born of a crater, is the world's highest. When climbing the mountain, you do not see it until you've nearly finished ascending. It is a spectacular sight, gorgeous by anyone's standards, but especially so here given the Chinese tendency to horrendously pollute their bodies of water.

One can purchase an expensive SUV ride to the summit, but that's not how we roll. The climb takes a bit over three hours, but fortunately for inexperienced mountaineers like myself, it is a relatively simple one. You have plenty of room to zig zag about instead of the more arduous straightforward ascent. This can help you save quite a bit of energy. There are also few overly steep sections to ascend or descend.

It wasn't a cakewalk everywhere, though. I have a mild fear of heights which was multiplied by our proximity to a few sheer drop-offs and incredibly strong winds. There was one pass with steep drops a few yards away on both sides. Perhaps it was only psychological, but it seemed that the winds were strongest here. I was moving ahead slowly in a crouched position and lacing profanities at myself for taking that route and at Mother Nature nearly making me soil my trousers. Others in my group walked forward standing straight up, all the while having a good chuckle at the expense of the American twice their size who still seemed to think he might be blown off a precipice with any given gust.

After that experience and observing the massive cliffs elsewhere on the mountain, I have concluded that anyone who enjoys technical mountain climbing (i.e., with ropes, spikes, etc.) is either clinically insane or so socially inept that they must take up a hobby in which horned goats are their only company.

We have just now reached the end of the prime climbing season for Changbai Shan, so the worst weather will begin soon enough. It was sufficiently cool enough for me, though. About thirty degrees Fahrenheit at the summit, but the wind chill was brutal. Back at a lower altitude now, it's about sixty outside and positively balmy.

There are two ways to drive to Changbai Shan from Yanji. We opted for the scenic route on the way there, taking a beat-up road along the Tumen River, which serves as China's buffer with North Korea. The drive was long and the road was in awful condition--more ruts and potholes than smooth surfaces--but a number of landmarks along the way made it worthwhile.

We were first greeted at the border with a host of mountains on the DPRK side bearing signs in Korean that read something to the effect of "Long live our great leader Kim Jong Il blah blah blah!" Even in the most remote mountain villages the force-fed propoganda remains in full effect.

At another stop there were small villages on both sides of the river, separated by what was only a small stream at that part, with the idea of crossing bringing either a bureaucratic nightmare or a volley of gunfire, depending on your intentions and methods of traversing. The administrative building on the DPRK side flew a North Korean flag. It was no more than a piece of cloth, and a rather small one at that, but it was kind of like peering at pirate regalia. Creepy.

Several hours later I received an unwanted awakening. I am not good at falling asleep in cars, so I wasn't very pleasant at first. I saw a military presence, though, and it became more interesting right away. As we walked down to the banks of a more attractive, deeper part of the river, one of the Salesians, pointing at a large boulder just off the DPRK shore, informed me that it was the exact spot where Kim Il-Sung used to fish. For those who aren't saavy to East Asian history, Kim Il-Sung was the North Korean dictator who ruled the nation from 1951 until his death in 1994 and was the individual chiefly responsible for North Korea's present, woeful status. He did have a nice little fishing hole, though.

There was a military presence on both sides of the river. At Kim Il-Sung's favorite retreating spot, the Chinese private in BDUs was quite adamant that no pictures be taken. I have given up guessing the ages of Asians since they all appear younger than they are, but he could not have been more than eighteen. So many of them are just baby-faced kids.

The North Koreans have built small shacks for their sentries on top of the mountains on their side, providing an adequate view of anyone who might be mentally unbalanced enough to cross the river from China. I caught a glimpse of only one of the DPRK soldiers. He was stationed out in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the woods. But his uniform was neatly pressed, his rifle was at his side, and his eyes were fixed upon one of the few cars to pass him that afternoon.

2005-09-27T22:22:00.000-07:00

Chinese "independence"...

I have a week of vacation that begins this Friday. They have decided to cancel afternoon classes for the second week in a row, another cruel twist of fate for me. I teach four classes on Fridays, and they happen to be in the first four periods. It's kind of like working a full shift and then being told you don't have to work overtime.

The topic of conversation among students and teachers alike this week has regarded plans for the break. As usual, everyone is interested in my whereabouts and doings, vacation or not. One of the teachers brought up the subject in an interesting manner:

Him: "When do you celebrate American independence?"
Me: "July 4th."
Him: "Do you know when we celebrate Chinese independence?"
Me: (thinking: "Um, never, since it's nonexistent here?") "Of course. Next week."

The weeklong break is in commemoration of the Communist establishment of the PRC in October 1949. There will be fireworks all around, as in the U.S. on July 4th, but our concepts of independence seem to differ a bit.

2005-09-27T17:28:00.000-07:00

A drive in the country...

On Sunday afternoon a group of us piled into one of the Salesians' vans for a quick sojourn out of the city. Until then, I'd only left Yanji once for a day trip to hike up a nearby mountain. Since much of the countryside is quite attractive and Yanji is quite the opposite, we jumped at the opportunity.

Although this part of China is rugged (like most of the country), the altitude is not so high that trees cannot grow on the mountains. A view from most any peak will reveal how heavily wooded and green its neighbors are.

After winding around the highways at the bases of various mountains for quite some time, our driver decided to stop along the edge of a small river, the Yalu. Fifty yards across shallow water is North Korea.

From our position we could see only one side of a significant North Korean mountain range. There certainly was some mystique to it all. We could see only part of this mountain; everything on the other side was not for our eyes. North Korea is a hermit country, and it is extremely difficult for outsiders to obtain visas. Americans, South Koreans, and Israelis are barred altogether from visiting, and those who are legally able to visit are only permitted to take guided tours of the capital, Pyongyang.

It is an intriguing possibility, that of seeing North Korea. It's been closed to almost everyone for over fifty years, and North Koreans themselves cannot leave the country.

Despite any romantic notions of being able to brag about visiting such a place, however, I would not go even if I could. My money would go straight into government coffers, only to be distributed to armories while North Koreans starve to death. Anyone who seriously entertains the idea of visiting North Korea ought to consider that.

2005-09-25T20:40:00.000-07:00

Chinese drivers...

Internationally speaking, I'm not particularly well-travelled, and thus, I can't personally verify what I've heard about the Egyptians and Indians vying for supremacy as the world's least competent drivers. But I would bet that the Chinese have a solid claim to stake in this one.

First off, apologies for the racist cartoon. Most Chinese don't have buck teeth, or even spiked hair. Without fail, however, all Chinese are bad drivers.

As you well know, China's economy is booming. Chinese cities used to project images of the cycling masses moving around on two wheels. But times have changed. Wang don't wanna bike to work anymore, he wanna drive (Ok, I'm done with the racist stuff now). And with all of the new money pouring in, he and many of his friends can finally afford it.

The result is that roads urban and rural alike have become clogged overnight, and the infrastructure isn't capable of supporting even half the number of cars on the road. Not enough parking lots, not enough stoplights, and there sure as shit aren't enough driver's ed courses. I have no idea what you need for a driver's license in China but it can't involve much more than zipping around the block and slipping the district commissar some petty cash for the red tape.

Much of the problem is that taxis plague the streets. Bad taxi drivers are the rule and not the exception around the world. They number about 60% of the vehicle traffic in Yanji. People in the U.S. talk about how difficult it is to hail a cab. Damned if I can walk five feet out of my apartment building without some asshole pulling up to the curb and honking his kazoo of a horn (taxis are quite small here), hoping that I'll hop into his little clown car that lacks seat belts but has always the smell of stale cigarette smoke. Anyone standing on the curb or near the street is bound to attract the unwanted attention of a cab driver, but it's a particularly tiresome exercise for a foreigner. There is the assumption on the part of the driver that I am too rich and lazy to actually walk somewhere, and also that I am too stupid to actually know where I'm going on foot. Well, the second part is often true. The only saving grace is that taxis are dirt cheap. Flat rates: 5 yuan (a little over 50 cents) for anywhere downtown and 10 for anywhere outside the city. I try to walk as often as possible, but an occasional cab comes in handy, especially when I want to avoid riding the bus with the rest of the proletariat--which, of course, is all the time.

The cabbies are also the main contributors to the primary anathema of urban living: constant noise pollution. These guys blare their horns like it's going out of style. Want to know the world's least respected law save the Vatican's ban on condoms? This would be hilarious if it weren't so fucking annoying: there is actually a sign, upon entering the city, that depicts a trumpet behind a red circle and slash through the center, like the photo above. That means don't honk. Hmmph. Cabbies honk at pedestrians. Drivers honk at each other, all the time, even if they're just passing. They honk to let people know they're coming, that they'll be cutting them off. They honk to let them know they're going. They always keep at least one hand on the horn at all times--I kid you not. One day this will break my already low tolerance for this behavior, and I will have to kill one of them. I will appreciate your letters via snail mail as I navigate the ins and outs of the heralded Chinese correctional system.

The taxi drivers comprise but one element of the horrifying masses of Chinese drivers. There are infinite numbers of buses, vans, and carts pulled by beasts of burden. There are also these strange contraptions I still can't get over. They somewhat resemble early tractors--farmers use them out in the fields and haul their harvests into the city with them. Can you imagine some asshole on a riding lawnmower cruising down the Dan Ryan at 5 mph during peak rush hour, towing an enormous stack of garbage while another guy slaps his donkey on the ass to get him moving? That should give you some idea of the confusion and frustration on Yanji's streets.

As if the sheer number of vehicles didn't undermine the possibility for moderately safe streets, people simply do not know how to drive. I would guess that this city of 400,000 people has about fifteen intersections with stoplights--the flow of traffic is endless. If a driver needs to pull out across traffic, he does so without hesitation. Oncoming traffic seldom slows down--it either weaves around him on either side as he awaits an opening in the other lane. Drivers also combat this problem by driving down the wrong side of the street, heading toward their intended lane in diagonal fashion.

Driving is atrocious but the pedestrian has an infinitely more difficult task when negotiating some of the main urban streets, like the one I live on. Both lanes are wide enough for about three cars, although they are not marked, and thus there is no respect for another driver's space. People pass on the right, on the left, into oncoming traffic, and occasionally even on the sidewalks if the street is congested.

I like the Chinese a great deal. Their driving habits are typically fatalistic, though, and what passes for normal driving here would warrant a DUI charge in the U.S. I hate Chinese drivers with the white-hot fire of a thousand suns.

2005-09-24T17:15:00.000-07:00

Yanji, China (Jilin Province) sits a hop, skip, and a jump away from one of the only other nations still loyal to communism and a brief train ride from the nation that gave birth to it.

The map does not provide an adequate view of how far north I am. We are still experiencing fall weather none too different from that of the American Midwest, but that will change. Siberia is nearby. I may deliver my list to Santa Clause personally this year.

Traditionally, the heart of Chinese industry has been in Manchuria, the region of Northeast China that the Chinese refer to as the Dongbei (lit. Northeast). It is an area rich in natural beauty, but many of the cities (Yanji included) are rather dull, polluted, and gritty, their citizens hardened by decades of industrial or agricultural labor and without the comforts that the revenues of tourism have provided other parts of China.

Yanji is the capital of the Yanbian (lit. along the border) Korean Autonomous Prefecture. A bit of history lifted from Wikipedia: Korean immigrants came in hordes in the late 19th century and also during WWII. The latter migration was due in large part to the Japanese, who hoped to weaken the Chinese resistance to their wartime occupation by allowing the Korean migration into China. Following the war, most of the Koreans chose to stay in China, and many would fight in the Chinese Civil War with the communists, led by Mao. After the communists prevailed, they rewarded the Koreans with their own autonomous prefecture.

"Autonomous prefecture" may be a bit misleading since the Chinese government does not allow any significant political independence. However, it has allowed much of the regional culture to remain distinctly Korean. The cuisine is predominantly Korean, and many people prefer to converse in it, although everyone speaks Chinese as well. There is even a law requiring all signs in Chinese to have the Korean translation beneath. This is, of course, of no help whatsoever to us troglodytes who know neither tongue.

Living in this part of China is much like living in southern California. I take that back--it is nothing like southern California. But Yanji is an infinitely multicultural society, and it takes a great deal of open-mindedness and patience for someone from the other side of the planet to try and absorb both aspects.

2005-09-20T17:30:00.000-07:00

There aren't many foreigners in Yanji.

My roommate and I have got a "white people count" going. Right now it's sitting at nine. I would call it the "foreigner count" to include blacks, Hispanics, et al., but it seems unlikely we'll run into any here.

If you ever wondered what a black man was feeling as he strolled into a "whites only" restaurant in the Jim Crow South, I'll give you some idea--the key difference being that no one has discriminated against me.

It's actually quite far from discrimination or resentment and much closer to open-jawed amazement. There are around 400,000 people living here, and I would bet that at least a quarter of that number has never seen more than a handful of foreigners.

Much of Yanji's business community is rather nascent, and thus, foreign companies haven't made much of an impact here. So there aren't many foreigners. Apparently there is a KFC somewhere in town. I don't know if it's still open.

Peoples' reactions may be of awe, humor, or even fright. My roommate is blonde, which makes him somewhat of a freak here, but I'm the one who may as well have just jumped out of a UFO. This is, of course, because of my size. Some of the most common reactions include:

The Double-Take: usually happens when someone is passing by quickly in a taxi or on a bike. It starts with a quick glance with a bit of eye contact. They look away, and then they notice something that doesn't seem right--"Why am I rooking eye-revel at this man's chest?" Once they look at me the second time, they are fixated until I pass them and usually well after that.

The Jaw Dropper: common amongst those who've seen nary a foreigner. Very old folks, babies, and migrant workers aren't used to seeing those with my features, much less my dimensions. These are good fun for me. Toddlers are the best. They will be running along the sidewalk, ahead of mom, only to run into a human four times their height. Their jaws nearly unhinge.

The Ghost: Some people are just horrified of me. One time, out to dinner with the English department, one of the waitresses greeting us saw me and almost pulled a Linda Blair straining her neck as I walked by.

The Giggle: Girls and young ladies particularly taken aback with my vastness and round eyes. It is likely that they are so enamored with me that they can't help but snicker a bit. Women of Yanji, I forgive you. The most blatant example of this occurred in an elevator in the mall on Saturday. Some girl saw me, started laughing, and could not stop. As if elevators weren't weird enough places to begin with, there was no muzak to mask the awkwardness of the situation.

The Hard Stare: almost exclusively from soldiers, policemen, and other young guys who mistakenly think they can kick my ass without about ten of their friends.

I haven't caused any car accidents yet, but I'm working on it.

2005-09-19T21:12:00.000-07:00

Bow down before me.

As an authority figure in the Chinese educational system, I am worthy of some respect, which comes in the form of a deep bow from the students.

If you make eye contact passing a student in the hallway (and usually even if you don't), they stop in their tracks and give you a very low bow, their heads nearly reaching waist-level. For those not in the know: the more respect that must be bestowed upon someone, the lower the bow goes.

Damn straight.

It's something I barely notice at this point, but it was sheer hilarity for the first few days of school. It doesn't matter how many students you pass; there are always a sweep of bows about to ensue. I should mention that they don't actually bow until they're fairly close to me. It's like I'm controlling some invisible force field that prompts the drop, or as if they were simply ducking for a moment to avoid being struck in the head by some other unseen object attached to me.

I am unsure which students are being genuinely respectful with the gesture and which are patronizing my dumb foreign ass. Everyone does it, but some are earnest and some are just following the rules. It reminds me of that bit from The King and I in which the king stipulates that all of his subjects must remain lower than he in his presence. The funny thing is that a gesture of the same nature would never be necessary here, as I am already substantially taller than everyone. The tallest kid in the school (and he really stands out) is about 6'2". It is fun to be the giant--I will elaborate on the good and the bad of my status as quasi-Shaq in a future post.

So, as I pass the students in the hallways, walking as the crest of an oncoming wave of authority, I have occasionally muttered: "Yeah, bow down now." I speak too softly and quickly to be understood, and I know that they'll bow anyway, but I take pride in that small satisfaction. I would like to think that I have some clout in a place where I can't even ask where the toilet is.

2005-09-17T16:45:00.000-07:00

Ignorance is bliss when it's not an inconvenience.

Over the past several weeks, my roommate and I have come to realize that we have absolutely no idea what is going on most of the time.

The Chinese are not a spontaneous people, at least not in Yanji. Things are always planned in advance, and punctuality seems to be of some importance.

The need for our colleagues to inform the Americans what is actually transpiring, however, is much lower on the totem pole. Yanji is a bilingual city--about 60% of the 400,000 people here prefer Korean to Chinese. Since we have little to no command of either (I know more of the local beer brands than greetings), we often remain in the dark. Or, at best, we hear of things immediately before they happen and aren't given many details.

As cordial as our supervisor and coworkers in the English department at school have been, the teaching experience has been baptism by fire. Although I was told to expect this, it has still come as a surprise. We have to share a bunch of the textbooks and teachers' editions, which aren't very helpful to begin with, and most of the materials in the office are pretty much worthless. That said, we've been pulling a lot of classroom activities from the rear nether-regions.

It's quite frustrating. I really want my students to make progress, but all too often I've felt like I'm trying to kill time. Not a good thing to happen two weeks into a yearlong gig. However, we've started to browse the Web a bit more and are having luck finding worthwhile, helpful activities for ESL classes (I should modify that to ETL, because just about all of the kids speak Chinese and Korean already).

There are other things we never hear a word about simply because they would be of no use to us. A faculty meeting for all of the teachers in the school? No need to tell the Americans. I'm thankful for this, though, since most meetings are about as productive as changing seats on the Titanic.

We are always the last to hear about something. I think it was a Thursday afternoon when one of our colleagues approached us and said: "On Saturday, you will be going with myself and all of the other teachers to climb a mountain outside of the town." Well alright then.

Sometimes the result is mystifying. Today we had pizza in a food court at the mall. Our waitress brought it out. It was actually fairly decent, and well beyond the standards we'd set for it based upon other instances of the Chinese tendency to fuck up American culinary mainstays, namely ice cream. Anyway, we were just finishing up when the waitress brought us a plate with three small pickle slices. It made about as much sense as a Chewbacca on the planet Endor.

This, along with a biweekly viewing of one of the Lethal Weapon series films, provides enough comic relief to sustain us. I am not yet ready to share jokes with my Asian friends as I am told they usually translate poorly.

2005-09-15T21:17:00.000-07:00

"Flowing Gifts"

This is my Chinese name. When, upon a recent trip to procure an identification card for my stay in China, they deemed it necessary for me to have a Chinese name. John, of course, means "God's gracious gift." I told my mentor of the significance, who relayed it in Korean to our colleague, who spoke to the official in Chinese. Somewhere in the translation I became "Flowing Gifts." The great difference between my real name and my new one is partially due to the ridiculous system of characters the Chinese employ, but I'll have more to say about that later.

Chinese internet cafes are interesting places, except not really at all. Only some of them are worse than others. All of them are packed with scores of youth who take advantage of the dirt cheap rates (it's about 25 cents per hour) to play computer games. They are boisterous to no end, and I am grateful only that I cannot understand what the hell they're saying because it would be infinitely more annoying. The constant haze of cigarette smoke does quite little to keep the flies off, and like most businesses in China with public toilets, there is the smell of stale urine.

A quarter per hour though? That soothes all of the offenses to my senses.

2005-09-12T13:58:00.000-07:00

On comments---

I forgot to mention that I have having difficulty viewing my blog, and thus, reading some of the comments that my dear readers have left me.

Until I can figure out how to beat this, drop me an email if you've got something to say---JJH

2005-09-12T13:50:00.000-07:00

A dog, a duck, and a squid.

What do they all have in common? They've all done time in my digestive tract this past week. Seven days in the Orient and I've already eaten about twenty things that are not FDA sanctioned in the States. But hey, when in Rome...

As much of the Chinese in this area are of Korean (Chosun) heritage, a good deal of the culture comes from the peninsula slightly eastward of Yanji. The Korean culinary mindset borders on sadistic. Gone are the Wash U days when my friend Joe served up his kickass Korean barbecue. Here, it's all about making you sweat. All kinds of peppers all the time. Apparently one of our Korean colleagues has offered to take us out for a meal so hot that it would paralyze our tastebuds. Making the Americans eat strange/disgusting things is a favorite hobby for some of our friends. I eagerly await the day we can make them chili and subsequently confine them to the water closet for days on end.

My roommate and I eat lunch with the students most weekdays, and the food is absolute crap. This makes it consistent with most school cafeterias worldwide. However, we have enlisted the services of a cook for the dinner hour at our apartment, and her meals have been more than sufficient. Incidentally, she has also been somewhat of a housekeeper for us. My roommate's Chinese is limited, and mine is nonexistent at this point, so our communication with her is none too extensive. It takes me five minutes to mess up my room, and I still come home to a clean one everyday. The guilt is agonizing.

It is funny, though, that we are volunteers here, with meager stipends, and we still can afford help. The eventual, inevitable transition to actually cooking and cleaning for myself will be damn near impossible.

Our apartment is on the seventh floor of a building downtown. The daily hike up and down the stairs is a pain in the ass (elevators haven't hit Yanji yet), especially if we're carrying stuff, but the view and greater distance from the sounds of the city streets make up for it. We are right next to a military base and can view the inner workings of the compound. Every morning I see several soldiers combing the main street of the base with old brooms. Apparently, if you are a soldier, when you are not training to kill you are performing the same menial tasks everyone else is occupied with.

That said, everyone appears to be working, all the time. The only idle hands are those of the very old men, who sit in groups outside apartment buildings smoking, playing cards, and eyeing down passerby. Everyone seems to be engaged in some task, be it an important or useless one. My first visit to a department store yesterday showed me an example of the latter. The department stores/supermarkets are not huge, but there is someone in every aisle. They are willing and ready to assist you and annoy you with items on sale. One of them in the furniture department took me and threw me in one of those back and ass-massaging chairs. I won't say I didn't like it, but I digress.

Everyday is a bit of an adventure. We are always meeting new people, eating new things, and in general making ourselves look stupid with our limited cultural knowledge and command of the language. But we're definitely having a good time in doing so.

2005-09-08T11:26:00.000-07:00

Greetings from the Dongbei.

My first thought after arriving in China was not of how tired and jet-lagged I was but rather how much time I had lost. I left Moline early Friday morning, and after my first night of sleep in the Orient, it was early Sunday afternoon.

On sleeping: it's come easily thus far. I cannot sleep on planes, and this was a thirteen hour flight. I went about twenty-four hours without a wink. I am now familiar with the plight of Jack Bauer and his colleagues who persist without repose. It is brutal.

For reasons unknown our flight from Beijing to Yanji had us in first class. I could not have cared less, because by that point I could have fallen asleep on a stairway.

Yanji is in China's Jilin province, in the far northeast of the country. In fact, the North Korean border is about fifteen miles east of the school. I am told that the weather we are experiencing now is some of the year's best. That said, it is going to be cold, cold the likes of which I've not had to live with. It hit 40 below at one point last year.

After having spent a few nights at the school, which is located just outside of the city, my roommate and I moved into our downtown apartment. To our collective surprise, it is in unbelievably good shape. By Chinese standards it's downright lavish. Nearly everything is new, and volunteers from years' past were kind enough to leave certain amenities, including a TV, DVD player, and couch.

The downside is that our salaries, or more appropriately, stipends, have taken considerable blows. The first teacher in Yanji made 2500 RMB per month. We stand to earn 1000. Consider it Chinese communism's first big knock on our standard of living. Apparently the other teachers at the school were frustrated that the Americans were being paid more. So we now make the same as the Chinese teachers.

I understand that I am a volunteer and that I am not here for the money, by any means. Some of the crappy jobs that I worked in the Quad Cities would make me a wealthy man in Yanji. I am here to help without the hope of much in return. It's still very frustrating, though. I had hoped to travel a lot, and that option seems to have been nixed.

But, I have no complaints beyond that. The Salesians have bent over backwards for us, and the students and teachers have been exceptionally kind and respectful. The year will be difficult without the comforts of home, but the people here will make life enjoyable.

2005-09-01T11:54:00.000-07:00

College football season begins this week.

Those who know me well and even many who do not are aware that I am a somewhat rabid Notre Dame fan. I become a different person on Saturdays in the fall, neglecting my obligations to family, friends, and personal hygiene. I become jubilant after victories and irritable after losses. It is a lifestyle, a permanent fixation which I have not been able to alter since the age of ten.

Some people have asked me if I will be able to continue watching Notre Dame games in China. Unfortunately, the answer is no. I will have to resort to Internet radio broadcasts. Given the thirteen hour time difference and the average starting time for an ND game, I will most likely begin listening to games around 2 or 3 in the morning.

Now that ND has a competent coach for the first time in nearly ten years, the program will be resurrected. Anyone who says that Notre Dame's days as a college football powerhouse have passed and cannot return simply does not understand the nature of the sport itself. Programs move in cycles, and that the Irish have been down does not suggest they're finished. Look at other traditionally strong teams like Oklahoma and USC and their recent success after years of mediocrity.

College football remains one of the last great bastions of amateur sport. The athletes play for the love of the game (or, in the case of Michigan or Florida State players, free SUVs and cash gifts from boosters). Only college basketball can even come close as a rival in terms of the excitement and pride generated in watching a game.

In the meantime, I hope the Chinese are considerate regarding my preoccupation with a sport consisting of giants running into each other with the hope of gaining the opponent's territory.

I leave for China Friday morning at 7:00 a.m. I arrive in Yanji on Saturday at 9:00 p.m. I will be awake at 8:00 a.m. on Sunday (local time) to listen to ND take on Pitt.

2005-08-27T15:32:00.000-07:00

What great fun bureaucratic politics are.

After waiting for several months for my visa to arrive, I was informed one week prior to my departure for China that I would have to fill out a special form and deliver it in person to a Chinese embassy or consulate. Fortunately, there is one in Chicago.

The revitalization of downtown Moline continues, notwithstanding the renaming of the Mark (our local concert/sports arena which recently sold its naming rights to a cell phone company). Color me enthused for several reasons. Moline is the only one of the four largest cities in the QC that has even made an attempt at developing on the riverfront. Now that cities have begun moving their industrial centers away from the Misissippi to the outskirts of suburbia, one would hope to see additional cultural centers--i.e., bars and restaurants-- near the water. Rock Island, Davenport, and Bettendorf are all home to dingy casinos (is that redundant?). Where there are not hordes of retirees squandering their Social Security checks on nickel slots, there is little to do near the water. The reason for this is that developers are reluctant to invest given the threat of flooding. Following the Great Flood of '93, Bettendorf built a levee that will allows the city to stay dry in any flood short of biblical proportions. But then again, with apologies to residents of the Dorf, there's nothing to do there. The riverfront social scene died with that levee. It's a difficult tradeoff for a city--you can be quite profitable and fun, with an occasional natural disaster, or you can be boring and safe.

Short of the intermittent flood or tornado, we don't have to fear Mother Nature very much in northwestern Illinois. That includes traumatic weather and animals alike. I remind people of this on a regular basis. A conversation with a friend from Florida went like this:
Her: "Must be pretty boring in Moline, eh? Too cold outside for half the year, cornfields for your scenery, and your only body of water is a dirty, polluted river."
Me: "It's not perfect, I'll give you that. But we don't live in fear, either. In Florida, if the sharks don't get you in the ocean, damned if a ten-foot alligator doesn't bite your hand off on land. And when you aren't thinking about what beast might attack you next, Mother Nature is stirring up a hurricane somewhere. Plus, the state is one enormous sauna. You could sit in your couch all day and still have to take a second shower by 4:00 p.m. Moline's not too exciting, but large-toothed predators can't survive our winters."

I can't claim the included photo as my own--rather, it has gained cultlike status over the last year. It was posted on a real estate website with several other interior pictures of the house. See if you can identify what's out of place.

2005-08-23T10:19:00.000-07:00

Here are some photos from the Salesians' orientation in Stony Point, NY. Taken in the first week of August by Adam Rudin.

This was a moment of "personal reflection." I reflected on not having slept enought the previous night.

A friendly game of knockout with some of the campers. The girl behind me knocked me out eventually. She had a big mouth.

Fr. Schwarzenegger (not his real name), whom I described in an earlier post. He looked more like a bouncer than a priest.

Dinner with the Salesians. At left is John Long, who will be my roommate in Yanji.

Using the worst crutches ever on our tour of West Point.

Group shot

Breaking the human wall. This was supposed to be some type of team building exercise. The group was supposed to band together and prevent me from entering the inner circle. As you see, they failed. I pretty much just bulldozed my way in, but I was prepared to use some of the aikido pressure points if necessary.

This one is from a skit featuring a takeoff on the Three Little Pigs. I, of course, was the Big Bad Wolf.

2005-08-18T13:17:00.000-07:00

Today is a happy day because my Eagle Creek Security Wallet has arrived. This will be my stealth wallet overseas, and I will wear it on the inside of my shirt when traveling. It's got plenty of room for the necessities: passport, visas, credit cards, cash, etc.

Of course, I won't be without a phony wallet either, in case I'm mugged. I'm having a bit too much fun sorting out the contents. Besides a bit of cash to fool the mugger, all of its items will be intrinsically worthless. A few notables:
--business card of a fortune teller from the Kappa formal back in April
--coupon from the Top Hat Golf Driving Range which indicates that my next large bucket will be free of charge
--ticket stub for "XXX: State of the Union"
--I heard about this last one from a buddy. The signature item is a razor blade. Pickpockets often use razor blades to carefully slice open the pockets of passerby and help themselves to their contents. But now it's time for some cosmic justice. I am going to put a blade deep into one of the decoy wallet's pockets. Later, after removing my half-completed Sub Club card, the mugger will notice a hard object remaining. Could it be a rare coin? An apartment key? He will stick a few fingers in to grab it and acquire a nasty little cut in the process.

I don't really wish pain upon anyone, but hey--you could have just asked me for my cash. And I know that a lot of pickpockets are kids, also. Still, I remain convinced that self-initiated lacerations serve as efficient deterrents against future crime.

On the picture: it was taken at the Notre Dame-Washington game in South Bend, IN in September 2004. For those who aren't in the know, it is a tradition at Notre Dame football games to do pushups after every touchdown the Irish score. The number of pushups increases with every touchdown. At this point it was 14-0 ND. My friend Jeff's (at the time) girlfriend Melissa took the picture of me. You will notice that Jeff's hand is dangerously close to my crotch. Despite such incriminating evidence, Jeff and Melissa were married at the Basilica on ND's campus this June.

Most of the people around me at the game were reluctant to help me with my pushup effort--I weigh about 235 lbs. I was insistent, though. No serious injuries occurred, although I did accidentally hit one fellow on top of the head with one of my steel-toed boots on the way down. I was apologetic, but he was very cordial, noting that his pregame festivities had removed even the most remote possibility of pain for the next several hours.

A good time was had by all.

2005-08-13T11:46:00.000-07:00

A brief stopover in the Quad Cities for now...

I had a pretty good summary of last week posted and then promptly deleted it. Thankfully I'll be teaching high school English and not computer science.

So, I will post some highlights of the orientation in NY. This was for the China program, run by the Salesians of Don Bosco, the third-largest Catholic religious order:

--The good Salesians thought it necessary for every Salesian Lay Missioner (that's my new role) to be administered a psych exam. We had to take these the first day. For about five minutes, the psychologist seemed to think I was an alcoholic. I'd mentioned offhand that I drank a lot in college. Perhaps he is a Mormon--I received no less than ten follow up questions on the subject. I told other kids who hadn't yet been interviewed to go with the squeaky clean angle. After that line of questioning, he said: "Tell me about your relationship history." I was feeling a bit violated at that point, and I would have liked to respond: "Well, I just broke things off with my sweetheart back in Illinois, in a little town called none of your goddamn business."

--Our tour guide at West Point. In the course of two hours, he managed to majorly offend women, Asians, and a few other groups which aren't exactly minorities. I'm not with the pc police by any means, but you've got to draw the line somewhere. Since I was hobbling behind the group on crutches (more on that below), I missed the part where, in the cemetery, we stopped at Custer's grave and the guide referred to him as a hero. If getting your entire battalion killed doesn't speak of heroism, what does?

--The pledge. On the second to last day of orientation, the Salesians asked us to sign a paper saying that we would not become involved in any romantic relationships for the duration of our time abroad. For a brief moment, I thought I'd inadvertently taken vows. I couldn't believe they had the temerity to ask us to sign something. Just asking us would be one thing, and I could understand that--but signing a paper? I'm 23, and I live in my parents' basementj. However, I'm a little above that. I kept my unsigned copy as a humorous memento.

--I rolled my ankle playing basketball. One of the brothers loaned me a pair of crutches, which was nice of him. But they were MS crutches, the kind that latch onto your forearms. They are almost uncomfortable enough to make you use your gimpy leg. But I did pull off a nice impression of Jimmy of South Park fame, which my Yanji roommate, John, immortalized with his camera.

--The most comical event of the week was when the Salesians brought in a priest from the city to play basketball against us, the SLMs. He wasn't a ringer or anything, but I knew right away that he'd be my matchup. Fantastic. He was about 6'2" and 250 lbs--not cut, but he did mention that he could bench 365. He'd recently broken the nose of a nun in another pickup game. Luckily I injured myself before having to take a charge from Fr. Schwarzennegger.

China in a few weeks.

2005-07-30T09:12:00.000-07:00

Ah, this is such a sterile place right now. Let the decay commence...

So with the big university degree in hand, what's the current track? I'm living where every twenty-three year old bachelor yearns to live: in his parents' basement. Sure, I still have a room here my parents have not yet converted into an art studio or soulless guest room. My old room is my base of operations, actually. I keep all of my laundry there, and my computer is (t)here as well. But the basement is cool and dark, while my room is hot--although not nearly as bad as it used to be--and it's a bit untidy as well. I've yet to finish unpacking after my May 31st return from St. Louis. The way my family looks at it, I am a horrible procrastinator. This is true.

But I think there's also some subconscious refusal to conclude the collegiate experience that subsists in all these boxes and bags sitting on the floor. I've never been reluctant to leave anything, and up until my senior year, I didn't think that leaving Wash U would be a big issue. Wrong. It took a long time for me to get comfortable with that place, and then when it finally happened, it was time to skip town. I miss my friends and the city very much.

For those who've with whom I've not spoken recently, I am headed to Yanji, China (Jilin Province) in late August to teach high school students English for the better part of nine or ten months. I am quite enthused, and I don't think it's hit me yet. Sure, I've been away from home, but this is on the other side of the world. I don't know what the situation with phones will be. No one is going to visit, unless they can produce the 2K roundtrip ticket and wish to come over during my vacation time in January and February when the average temperature is subzero. Away from the comforts of family, friends, people that do not speak my language, and the twenty-four hour McDonald's drive-thru, there will be a difficult adjustment period.

As for the blog title, I couldn't think of a damn thing, so this will have to suffice for now. I was looking around my room at some of my old stuff. I used to collect hats. There was a time when I wore a hat almost every day. I still have a bunch of 'em. Later in high school and through most of college, it was posters. I picked them up at sales and music stores. When I was cleaning out a closet for one of my work-study jobs sophomore year, I found an enormous group of old promotional posters for events on campus. I took at least thirty--they would have been tossed otherwise--so I have about 100 posters now. The beer bottle and can collection was begun senior year. With my own thirst and the donation of my aunt's collegiate collection, I have about 300 bottles and cans (clap your hands). Most people think my collections are rather vapid, extraordinary wastes of time, but eventually I plan to live off the fortune I've made from selling them, and I don't intend to forget those who belittled my lucrative hobby.

I think I will try to relay at least one humorous story in most of my future posts. Here's today's:
My current job, as a temp, is painting apartment interiors at a complex out behind the bowling alley in Milan. The tenants are not exactly model citizens. They pay only 100 bucks for a deposit, and guess what? They leave the apartments in incredibly bad shape, along with a lot of their stuff. So the guy I paint with and myself have a little game going. We call it "slum archaeology." We find as many artifacts as possible and compile a profile of the former tenant. It's really quite stupid, but when you paint all day, there's not much else to humor you. Thursday was a good one. I kept painting over long, kinky hairs that had stuck to walls all around the apartment. So the guy must have had a fro. Later that afternoon my colleague was cleaning out drawers in the kitchen and found the business card of a probation officer. The trail was getting hot. Soon enough, we found a few pictures. There were two guys. One of them sported the fro, adorning a Raiders jersey. The other pic had his roommate posing in prison duds. Why he wanted a picture of himself in incarceration is beyond me. When I get access to a scanner, these gentlemen are going on the web.