Cultural Questions

Today’s post will be a collection of questions that friends from home have asked me about China,and conversely the most common questions that Chinese people tend to ask us.

So here goes:

Questions asked by foreigners about China.

1.Don’t all Chinese people look the same?- maybe at first but not after you know a lot of them.

2.Don’t they eat rats/dogs/cats/snakes -No.Maybe in some far-flung remote villages or in the 1950s when people were starving.But not in our experience.

3.Don’t you miss home? -sometimes,but not nearly as much as we were expecting.We sometimes hanker for bluer skies,hummus,falafel.But we have found all of these foods here and since we speak to our family a lot on Skype we are fine staying here a bit longer.

4.Can you speak/read Chinese? No. We are trying but it is really really hard. We can now order food,we know how to say where we are from and what we do,and ask the price of things,ask for larger,smaller,less expensive etc. We can’t really have much of a conversation.

5..When are you going home? We don’t know… the plan is we have no plan.

6.Is Chinese difficult? Yes,Very. As a linguist I was shocked at how difficult it is,and before we came I thought in a couple of months I would be able to chat,as I have done in almost every country we have visited. However I have come to realize this is not to be.

7.Do you know how to use chopsticks? Yes

8.Do you like Chinese food? Mostly,although i don’t like Chinese breakfast (porridge,fried dough sticks,milk tea) and I will NOT eat chicken feet or stinky tofu. However there are many dishes that I really love. And of course Chinese food is like saying “European Food” as there are different foods in every region,and China as we know is VERY BIG.

9.Don’t the police follow you around/control your movements? NO.WE can go anywhere we like.

10.Aren’t you frightened? No.The Chinese are extremely helpful and friendly and frequently go with you to show you where to go.China is a very safe country,hey nobody here walks into a cinema and just shoots people.

Poison Bar,near Xiamen University

Questions Chinese people ask us:

1.Why did you come to China?

We love travel and we came here in 2008 and realized that 3 weeks wasn’t enough and we wanted to see and learn more. Chinese people were so friendly to us then that we wanted to return.

2.Do you like China?

Yes of course,China is fascinating and every day we learn or see something new. The country is so vast and varied and we can visit many interesting places here.

Plus the school is very kind to us,gives us a salary,an apartment and our flight money so living here is a very good deal compared to most other countries.

3.What do you think about Chinese people? See above.

4.Can you use chopsticks? Yes.

5.Do you miss your family/hometown.Sometimes.See above.

6.How do you manage with the language?

We have learnt some important coping mechanisms eg. Dictionary on mobile phone,sending text messages with address in Chinese to show to people on the street,a printed page with our home address on it to show taxi drivers, etc. You have to master google maps,find out names of bus stops in Chinese and then you can manage pretty well.

(God bless the Internet)

7.What is your country like?  This is a hard one to answer.Sometimes we just show pictures,sometimes we say it is very small.The people are different,the food is different.But frankly some things cannot be given a short answer.

8,Do you know X (insert name of Chinese basketball star/singer/movie star)? No ,sorry.

9.How can I improve my Oral English? Go and talk to some foreigners,there are lots in XIamen,join couchsurfing and meet people there,find a friend and do language exchange,go to English corner at University,watch more movies without subtitles.

That’s it for now.You are invited to add your own questions.

Weather here is really hot and sultry now with the occasional downpour and thunderstorm. i love it ,D is suffering. We have started a Yoga Class twice a week (in Chinese!) run by a lady who has a ballet school for kids downstairs in the building next to ours.She has studied in Paris and so I talk to her in French which is a little bizarre.

Pictures from the Shavuot thing:

Chinese dude with kippa

 

 

 

 

On another note we are now testing our students for the end of the semester.Then we will hand in our paperwork and hop off to South Korea for 3 weeks,and then back to Israel via Hong Kong.Roll on end of the semester.We were invited to a Shavuot Dinner at the house of an israeli businessman who lives in XIamen Island.Suffice it to say that the dinner was very weird,with a very strange assortment of people,but we did enjoy meeting Tanya and Adi,a young couple who are coming to stay with us next weekend to experience the Jimei Dragon Boat race at the Jimei Dragon Pool.They are also on couchsurfing and seem very lovely.The rest of the people there were not “our kind of people”.The food however was awesome.

That’s it for now.

Renee and Barry Redux -Shanghai weekend again

Last weekend we had 5 days off work because it was the Chinese Festival of Qing Ming. THe holiday was Thursday and Friday,with Sunday being designated a makeup day for Friday’s classes.However since we don’t teach Wednesday or Friday this meant we effectively were free from Tuesday night until Monday afteroon! We had originally planned to go off to Guangzhou and Huizhou,two cities where we have been offered jobs for next year (still having heard nothing from XMUT) but after I read the weather forecast calling for thunderstorms and heavy rain we decided to give that a miss. We also had trouble getting our passports back from the police station in time to buy train tickets. In the end,I discovered that the weather was forecast to be much better up north,so we hit on going up to see our friends Renee and Barry up in Shanghai,a splendid city which we know and love. Fortunately Barry was due in from Hawaii on that Wednesday evening, so we would be able to see him too.We bought train tickets on the fast train from Xiamen North Station to Shanghai Hongqiao Station which left Wednesday morning at 10am and arrived a mere 9 hours later at 19,20.It was a lot cheaper than flying and the train station is 10 minutes by bus from our house,whereas the airport is down on the island and you always have to check in at last 2 hours before the flight so we figured the journey would be ok and we would be able to look at the view on the way.In fact the train journey was pretty comfortable and I managed to sleep a fair bit of the way,as on Wednesday morning I woke up with a flowing nose and head cold. On arrival in Shanghai we attempted to get the metro straight to our old friend the Asset Hotel which we have stayed in twice before. However due to my cold we got off the metro at the wrong stop and ended up getting a taxi.No matter,The hotel is pretty cheap and comfortable and has free internet and wifi,and even a safe in the room and free breakfast.Tried to call Renee on her Chinese cellphone unsuccessfully.Later found out that she had tried to call me too likewise. Next day we managed to get hold of each other and they came over our hotel and we went together to our favourite haunts in Shanghai East Nanjing Road,People’s Square and the Bund.We walked around chatting and snapping and then hit a local place for lunch.Then we went back to our neighbourhood together and walked around there a bit and then found a great place for supper in the upscale shopping mall near Shanghai Stadium right near our hotel.It was a Korean barbecue place and we just had barbecued vegetables which were delicious.Had an earlyish night as my cold was still plaguing me somewhat.

Fuxing Park

 

Next day we met up again and this time went to walk in Tianzifang Art Market where we met Yossi Sedbon, the former Chief of Tel Aviv Police,whom we recognized from the TV. This market was too crowded and so we decided to head off to another area, the famous Shanghai neighbourhood called the French Concession.It is great,with some lovely architecture and an almost European feel to it.We found the beautiful Fuxing Park which had the most wonderful trees,a lake and people doing Tai Chi and couples doing ballroom dancing.The whole place was serene and gorgeous.We headed back to the Bund in the evening and went to the Peace Hotel as we had done the previous visit with Renee and Barry and again enjoyed the Jazz there.

European Style house in French Concession

 

Tai Chi in the Park

 

Now we are back in XIamen looking forward to Renee and Barry’s visit here next weekend.Tomorrow our department is taking us on a trip to the Botanical Gardens followed by a Buffet Lunch on the island.The sun is shining but everyone at XMUT is just gossipping about who is going and who is staying next semester and nobody seems to know what is true.Some have definitely signed and some have just started looking for work elsewhere.The atmosphere is pretty weird.We are leaning towards staying even though only I have been offered a job. We feel that we are not done with Xiamen yet.We feel comfortable here in the apartment and the city is great.WE have made friends here.Time will tell…..

 

 

Not so great things in China-post for my critics

Lots of people keep saying “It can’t all be so great-you are only describing the wonderful things and leaving out the bad things” and I admit that I have a tendency to do that,being an optimistic person(though not according to Mr Piglet). So here goes with the things that can be taxing,trying or downright disgusting in China.

Of course the first one everyone is thinking about is toilets.Yes I know you all envision horrid holes in the ground and so forth. Now for me this has been a real eye-opener. I mean yes they are all squats,and no you don’t get toilet paper and towels.But actually I have found the squats to be frequently a lot cleaner than public toilets back home and frankly now I am used to it and go everywhere with tissues and wipes in my bag it really is not an issue. Plus,public toilets are in abundance in China unlike the West,and they are mostly cleaned on a regular basis. Compare that to France (5* hotel with crappy facilities out back) or our beloved Tahana Merkazit in Tel Aviv.

People fall asleep all over the place -just about anywhere

Spitting and other weird public “waste disposal”-okay I admit this one still grosses me out.I mean it’s not even so much the spitting but more the accompanying hoicking noise which I really hate. also little kids peeing in public I find a bit harder to take.

Pavements- (or for my US readers “sidewalks”) tend to be disastrous in China. I don’t know why they insist on having the guidelines for the blind down the middle of the pavement when I have yet to see a single blind person walking down the sidewalk using it to navigate.It is just bizarre.

Shoddy building and plumbing- buildings have no insulation and therefore get too hot and too cold,and frequently have an unfinished feel to them.The plumbing doesn’t work and of course the tap water is undrinkable,and here in Xiamen has a weird colour. Of course all these things have solutions,but this seems to be something that is hard to fix in China. I am not sure why.

Fireworks- well this doesn’t really bother me but some people find it hard to take,things going bang at all hours of the day and night especially Saturday morning 7am.

Language- well of course being a foreigner here and not being able to read anything or make yourself understood is a serious drawback.It can sometimes be frustrating, difficult and really annoying to feel like an illiterate idiot.But I can hardly blame China for that one,right?

Overcrowding and pushing- well again here there are SO many people it is really not the fault of the Chinese that there are so many of them and they are trying to fix this problem.

But the upshot of it is that when you go to get on the bus or train there tend to be a lot of other people there doing the same thing,not to mention at festivals and holidays when travelling is really not recommended.

Weird foods- well of course for me one of the attractions of travelling is trying weird foods. But in China some of them just don’t appeal to me- in fact breakfast here sucks in my humble opinion. Eating chicken feet,stinky tofu or durian fruit just don’t do it for me.

I am sure there are many other things that would bother others here,for me those are the main things.Hope this has enlightened and made you realize that i am not turning into a brainwashed Commie or anything. Stay tuned for the New Years’ Eve bash.

Weird sign on Gulangyu ferry boat -not entirely sure what they mean!

Sports Day and trip to Quanzhou

This weekend we had the promised sports day which was cancelled last week due to the rain .So we were informed that we would have no classes on Thursday afternoon or on Friday,which made no difference to me as I don’t teach then,but Danny got two hours off. So we decided to head to Quanzhou on Friday, a place which I had heard was interesting historically and only a half hour train ride from Xiamen. We had actually passed through on the train to Fuzhou on our way to the Speaking Competition.

But first we had Sports Day,on which all University lessons were cancelled to allow the whole school to parade around the running track and do various other incomprehensible things. WE were asked to meet all the other foreign teachers outside the International Office at 12.30. We then had to march around the running track in lines of 6 and wave to the crowd. It was hilarious. We waved periodically and said “Ni hao” to the students and they all roared with laughter and photographed us. Then there were short speeches by various important university dudes (none of which we could understand of course) and at 2.30pm we were free to go!

On Friday morning we caught the 11am train to Quanzhou which was the city from which Marco Polo had supposedly sailed back to Italy.In the ticket line we met a lovely young student who helped us buy tickets and told us she lived in Quanzhou and studied at Huaquiao University in Jimei,just near our house. She sat with us on the train and told us she was a teacher of Chinese to foreigners and was going back to Quanzhou to get a passport,as she wanted to go to study for a second degree in Hong Kong. She also translated for us whenever the Chinese couple opposite wanted to ask us questions.

We exchanged phone numbers on arrival in Quanzhou and hope to meet up with her again.

Quanzhou has various interesting old Buddhist temples,a mosque and a few museums. We checked into our hotel and went out to explore. We found the Kaiyuan Temple to be very beautiful. It was a short bus ride from the hotel and we enjoyed the serenity of the temple.In the temple we met a beautiful tall Chinese girl who told us she was a Sports Major from Guangzhou and was obviously very keen to talk to us. Her English was very good and she was quite charming accompanying us around the temple and taking photos with us. We went with her from there to the Mosque which was not so impressive but on the way there we passed another temple which was really beautiful and ornate in the South Fujian style.

Pagoda at Kaiyuan temple

outside the other temple with Long Ping

Long Ping,our new friend said she was travelling alone and was continuing after Quanzhou to Xiamen and then back to Guangzhou. She invited us to go with her to a pop concert that night but we decided not to pay 250RMB each to see a Chinese pop singer,but said maybe we could meet her the next evening in Xiamen after we got back from our trip. Long Ping went off to look at Huaquiao University campus and we said goodbye. We had some supper in a Taiwanese fast food place and then took a taxi to the Brickyard a so-called British pub in another part of the city not far from our hotel. It being Happy hour we got free Qingdao beer and peanuts but failed to meet anyone interesting there and left when the Karaoke got started. We were exhausted anyway.

Next morning after the breakfast buffet at our hotel (bacon,eggs,sausage and lots of weird Chinese vegetables) we set off to see the Overseas Chinese Museum. On the way we ran into a kind of promotion of various food and drinks. Danny threw some beanbags at a target and won two bottles of some Chinese liquor. When my student gets here I shall ask him what it is.

The Overseas Chinese Museum proved to be very interesting,and also free of charge. It outlined the lives of the people who left China during the colonial period,to escape being exploited as “coolie labourers” and went to build a new life for themselves overseas. It turns out that it was quite similar to the lives of Jews setting off to be immigrants in foreign shores and being enterprising ane making a fortune. Many such immigrants became industrial magnates in Singapore,Indonesia and the Philippines,thus incurring the racial hatred of the indigenous peoples who then massacred them. Many Chinese became wealthy from rubber and sugar plantations,and trade and sent money back to their families. They also set up clubs and welfare organizations for other overseas Chinese,and schools to teach their children about their Chinese language and culture. One of these was of course our very own Chen Jiageng who built the University city in Jimei where we work. Again I couldn’t help thinking of the attachment between the Diaspora Jewry and Israel. It seems we are not special in our wish to preserve our culture or to help our fellow countrymen when we are abroad.

After the museum and a short walk in Dongu Park across the road we got the train back to Xiamen.

Me and Batman in the Pub Street,Quanzhou

Trip to Yongding- the Hakka Tulou villages

Trip to Yongding Hakka Earth houses (TULOU)

 

This was a trip I had been wanting to do for ages,but which got postponed because of the hospital trip(see previous post). We decided to go with two student friends of ours Sue and Echo who don’t study at our university but are English majors from nearby Jimei University.

We met up with them at the BRT station to go downtown to the Hubin Nan Lu bus station where we got a bus to the village of Hukeng,a trip of 3 and a half hours through progressively more picturesque scenery hillsides dotted with villages, persimmon trees,and tea terraces. On arrival in Hukeng we were met by Stephen,the guest house owner who was holding a sign with “DAN” written on it!

inside the guest house

Stephen explained that we had to buy entrance tickets to the village,which is a preserved Unesco heritage site,and then took us on two motorbikes (3 people on each) to the village and his Fuyulou Changdi Inn where we had booked two rooms. The guest house building is 130 years old,and built in traditional Hakka style. There is a central courtyard surrounded by rooms on three levels.This would have been shared by several different families. There are apparently thousands of these houses in the area,but nowwadays many of the Tulou houses (made of earth) are empty,or inhabited by only one or two families who maintain them as the children have moved to the city. The whole of the surrounding area is used for cultivating tea,rice,persimmons,and other different fruits and vegetables.

Tulous from above

After checking in,Stephen gave us a map of the village. The plan was to walk around the village for the rest of the day and the following morning we would have a car and driver to take us to visit the surrounding villages and see different styles of Tulou houses. Some are round and some square,but the basic idea is the same,an earthen house with several floors and shared by several families,who use the communal area in the middle to cook,sell stuff and generally hang out.

The village was serene and relaxing,with the houses dotted along the length of a river. There were many tea houses, and huge fat chickens running around everywhere. After eating a great lunch of local Hakka food at the guest house,We walked around the village,and found a temple area where the girls explained the important families had tombs. We also went to a tea house where we sat for a long time with the tea grower who filled and refilled our cups. His great grandfather had originally built the house,and had been a fighter in the Kuomintang. We also bought something which Sue described as a “tea pet”.I thought she meant “teapot” but she was insistent. Itis a small animal made of artificial jade (mine is a frog) used to check if the tea water is hot. When you pour water onto it,it changes colour.

Hukang village and countryside

In the evening we saw dancing outside in a square,returned to to the guest house where we met a group of Russians from the far eastern part of Russia. One said his grandfather was Jewish,and another said he was Jewish himself ,from Birobidjan,and that his brother was a teacher of Yiddish in New York.

We went to bed as we had an early start in the morning.

The next day we set off at 7.30 in a minivan with 3other people and the driver Mr. Wu, to tour the area.

The other people were Mike,a young guy from Hong Kong and a retired couple from Beijing whose names we don’t know as they didn’t speak any English. We drove to a number of different tulou villages and admired the scenery. It was very peaceful and pleasant. We stopped to pick persimmons on one hillside. The whole day was highly relaxing and enjoyable.Some tulous were huge,and some smaller. All had the same basic design of tiered floors made of wood,walls of earth and a central area. We had lunch in a village restaurant, in the traditional Chinese way of sharing all the dishes,and we shared the bill to treat Mr Wu the driver. We saw the last “King of Tulous” which I found disappointing and overcrowded,full of tourists and too many people selling trinkets. It had cost an extra 25RMB each,and I would recommend skipping it. Its supposed attraction is that it has over 200 rooms .But I found other tulous more atmospheric and interesting. At 3pm we got the bus station to return to Xiamen which dropped us at a different bus station but fortunately Sue figured out how to get to the BRT station to go home.

Old lady inside Tulou

 

 

Will the real China please stand up?

Well after having been inundated with emails from colleagues enquiring about China and teaching in China I thought I would take a break from my customary “diary” blog mode to answer here and also give my very limited view of things over here. Firstly many people were confused by the “traditional” view of China they have in their mind’s eye and the account I have been giving. Well let’s say it’s a bit like the Chinese student’s typical view of the UK- you know the thing pin-striped men in bowler hats sipping tea and discussing the Queen and the weather. OF course there are some people like that,but the modern UK is nothing like that.The same goes for China. You can find peasants bowed over in the fields with Chinese conical hats planting rice. But you also find people driving Buicks around Hangzou and chatting on their iphones. One of my students told me her friend chucked her boyfriend as he refused to buy her an Iphone. People here are VERY materialistic on the whole. There are public universities like ours,but there are also private universitiies for spoilt rich kids who failed the exams and are trying to get into quality programs abroad, and will get there. There are 22nd century skyscrapers,and behind them back alleys with people making dumplings off the back of a rickshaw. There are very ornamented temples such as the ones we saw in Hangzhou and there are little hovels looking like something out of Dickens.There are traditional restaurants serving all sorts of Chinese foods (not fortune cookies those aren’t real,and not just chow mein whatever that is!) but there are also McDonalds,KFC and Pizza Hut everywhere in every city even ours.In fact the opening of the new mall here complete with Pizza Hut and Walmart was a major event here.And we are only a city of 500,000. So what is the real China? Is Xiamen the real China or is Shanghai? Of course it all is!That’s what makes living here such a blast. You can have it all-Shanghai with rock and jazz clubs and little traditional villages that have not changed in centuries. More to come….

the Future generation of China

 

 

A great Day at the museum

Had a really good class today at the museum.The first part was about the use of the written word in Art,(I think it is called Conceptual Art ) and we saw works by people like Barbara Kruger, and we discussed the changes in women’s status since the beginning of the century (Virginia Woolf etc of course!)

Then came the really good bit. We had a talk from a young artist called Ariel Malca who has a new exhibit in the Shrine of the Book.It is a little hard to describe,but uses biblical texts moving over a landscape to convey the idea of the journey made by the Children of Israel on their way to the the land of Israel.That sounds crap but you really have to see what he did.Anyway we ended up talking about the lack of boundaries today between the different disciplines, since he doesn’t have any formal training ,either as an artist or as a techie. It was really cool.

Anyway when I got home I looked up some of the stuff including Barbara Kruger, and found a lot of really great stuff which I ‘d love to use in class. Maybe I will .

The ones that really caught my eye I have saved. Here’s one of them…