1 Year

February 1, 2015 marked my one year anniversary in Guilin. It still doesn't feel like I've been here
that long, but joining the double digit month club has caused me to become more reflective of my time here than I have been in recent weeks. When I first decided to write this blog, I figured that it would be easy to bust out one each week; and when I first arrived I kept up with that pace. But now, writing my 11th post in 12 months would suggest that I have since fallen behind my original goal. In many ways that is natural; when you first step off the plane here as a foreigner you are immediately met with sensory overload. My first weeks here I was constantly updating my blog notes with sentences like "Just saw a young child taking a dump on the sidewalk," "The woman working at that noodle shop must have been born in the Qing dynasty," "Are Chinese pears really just funky looking apples?" I naively felt that I would always have an endless supply of material, but then, the things that were crazy to me at first became part of my everyday life. So does that mean that I've changed? It doesn't feel like I have. I still enjoy watching the same TV shows and listening to the same music, I still hold the same political views, I still think that Chinese music is a bunch of tacky, over-the-top, recycled crap, I still treat myself to a cheeseburger when I have a rough week, and I'm still sarcastic and cynical beyond my years. I've done some cool things since I've been here but I find that it's very easy to point at an 18 hour motorcycle trip or a weekend journey deep into the interior of China to see some cool landforms and say "Look at me I've changed! I've gotten outside of my comfort zone!" But those kinds of experiences aren't normal, even for here. The way to measure true change is to examine how one approaches the mundane or what one defines as mundane. Case in point: the other day I was walking down the street and I came across a scene where I saw a long trail of skid marks leading from the road to the sidewalk where there was a fallen tree, a road sign bent in half, and what was previously a brick wall was rubble strewn across the ground. If I saw that during my first few months here I may have been able to write 1000 words about it. But what did I do this time? I simply stepped over the tree and kept walking, my instinctual reaction said "Yea people here drive like maniacs, what else is new?" It didn't register with me until a couple minutes later that I had just stepped through the scene of an extremely violent and possibly fatal car crash. My nonchalant attitude to this scene jarred me and has caused me to examine my current state of affairs and how I go about dealing with them compared to my "previous life." I discovered that it's not just how I react to the environment around me that I need to examine, but also the conversations I have with people; I even caught myself texting a smiley face emoticon last week...WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING TO ME?!

There is no doubt that my life is drastically different now from a year ago but the question I find myself asking is what has driven that transition? Is it a fundamental change in who I am as a person or simply a natural instinct for survival in a foreign place? I don't know the answer to that question so I gave myself an assignment to try to document a normal week of my life. This is what people more professional than myself would call "getting back to their roots." Let's see how it went:

My job teaching has been great for me insofar that it has given me a routine to adhere to, but it is this routine that has caused me to begin to gloss over some major talking points that I could expound upon.  One of those points being my school's morning exercises. My week begins on Monday morning at 9:30 when I arrive at school to see the entire student body arranged in orderly lines by class in the middle of the school courtyard running through their morning exercises which are choreographed through a 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 cadence. Watching 1000 young children in orderly lines making the same movement more or less in sync was a shock to me that still hasn't worn off. After their exercises the popular Chinese song "Xiao Pingguo" (Little Apple) blares on the loudspeakers (WARNING: if you are on drugs while reading this, I do not recommend clicking on the link, you've been warned). This song is basically this year's "Gangnam Style," and watching a bunch of happy young kids dancing to it would bring a smile to my face if I wasn't so tired of hearing it. To me, doing this dance in the morning is equivalent to American children dancing to Miley Cyrus' "Party in the U.S.A." before then heading to morning classes.

After the song is over the attention turns to me. I am then given a microphone to get on stage and say the morning English sentence for the student body to repeat back to me. This week's sentence was "Turn on the light/Turn off the light." I initially recite the sentence a few times then it is returned back

Morning exercises

to me. Next, I ask the grades individually to repeat the sentence. After hearing it recited back to me from the high pitched voices of the first grades to the significantly lower voices of the 6th graders we all break for class. This week the subject of my lesson was musical instruments. In all of my lessons I start with the basic words and get progressively harder and have an extra hard "bonus" word at the end. After going through the usual instruments (guitar, drums, piano, etc.) I get to the bonus word: "xylophone". When I clicked to this slide one of my students' hand immediately shot up. "Really?" I said "You know this word?" He nods and says "I think so...is it a tree piano?" I can't help but laugh at his answer but the fact that he used words that he had previously learned to try to figure out a word he didn't know showed creativity and an ability to think outside the box that is rare among Chinese students of all levels. I gave him a piece of candy for the effort and explained to the class that even though he was wrong that his was the kind of thinking I would like to see more of. Candy has become the great equalizer in all of my classes. Kids here are so obsessed with getting candy that even the rowdiest of students will calm down if I flash a bag of skittles. But, while candy has proven to be an effective control tool, it also has a tendency to turn little kids into savages. For the last 10 minutes of all of my classes I try to play a game in order to review all of the material I introduced during the day. The winner of these games gets a piece of candy while the loser goes back to their desk empty handed...harsh world. While 99% of the time these games go by without problems but every once in awhile, a contentious decision by the referee (me) can lead to spirited disagreement from the loser which can come in the form of name calling, swearing, or even sometimes the dreaded middle finger. These small acts of insubordination are usually dealt with on a case by case basis, but with such high stakes, who can blame the students for occasionally losing their cool. It's also important as a teacher to be thick-skinned and not allow 9 year old children to hurt your feelings.

My day at school typically ends around 5 PM after which I go home to decompress. One thing I've noticed about being here is that every week I will usually have one task to complete that is a little unorthodox and always makes me think "Only in China would something like this happen." Past examples of these tasks include: escorting a man on a bicycle towing a western toilet down the street to my apartment, riding in a carriage attached to a motor scooter to the wholesale market to buy a rug, or robbing and beating up homeless men so I can get money to go grocery shopping (OK fine one of those isn't true). This week's task was to transport a fresh water dispenser (like the ones you typically see in offices in the U.S.) from my friend's apartment to mine. I head over to his house, pick up the item and head home. As I was about to walk out of the front gate to his apartment complex I am confronted by two security guards. They ask me why I'm carrying a water dispenser, I tell them that I'm bringing it to my apartment. They ask where I got it and I tell them that my friend gave it to me. They ask me to write my phone number down and tell me if anybody reports a stolen water dispenser to expect a phone call from them. I found this request odd. If someone is in the business of breaking into houses and stealing shit I imagine a water dispenser would be far down the list of coveted items. But, in a country this polluted and with a population this large, maybe water is more of a desired commodity than I'm used to. I write down a fake number and continue on my way. As I walk down the street in the interior of mainland China holding a water dispenser I begin to reflect on how strange things have gotten for me...but strange in a good way of course. I arrive home, install that sonofabitch, and hit the sack.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are always early mornings for me because these are the days when I have Chinese class. Because my motorcycle is out of commish I will need to make about a 25 minute walk to my class.

This guy is making popcorn

 I don't mind walking early in the morning, it helps me wake up and helps me really take in the the three S's (sights, sounds, smells) of this place. This is a time where you can see the insanity of the driving or the bewilderment of the locals to see someone like me or watch some old woman busting her ass working a noodle stand that she most likely has been running for half a century. It's a rich experience and every once in awhile you're able to witness something truly special. This week's special occurrence was a doozy. As I walked down the street, I happened upon a man who was switching out a hose attached to a septic tank behind a public bathroom (If watching someone do a job like that doesn't inspire you to stay in school I'm not sure what will). The hose was long and as the man pulled it out part of it slid out into the street. Almost immediately a man riding a scooter ran over the hose, yanking it out of the man's hand, causing human waste to flow from the hose out onto the sidewalk. Instead of rushing to pick the hose up, the man turns and runs out into the street to yell at the guy on the scooter for I guess having the nerve to drive where he is technically supposed to be driving. As this argument went on a whole mess of human feces, urine, and puke was accumulating on the sidewalk. I found this exchange to be fascinating; it was like watching the discovery channel. I eventually arrive at my class where I sit for two hours and try to make sense of the caveman drawings they call characters. Afterwards, with my mind a mixed jumble of English and Chinese sentences, I head to school to shape the minds of China's future generation.

Justin is a boss

Tuesday and Thursday nights are also special for me because I have a side job as a tutor for a 4 year old Chinese boy who has been given the English name of Justin (after Justin Beiber of course). Justin's family is yet another local family who has been very good to me. When I arrive at their house they treat me to dinner, which allows me to try various dishes of the local cuisine as I try to make sense of the local Guilin dialect of Chinese that is spoken at their table. After dinner, Justin and I kick it for about and hour and a half as I teach him things like primary colors, please and thank yous, etc. It's sometimes a little difficult teaching English to a student who is so young he hasn't even fully grasped his native tongue yet. But this is another case where candy and games come in handy. Watching his progress over the past few months is one of the most rewarding feelings I experience during the week. Even though I am technically there to provide a service for Justin's family, I believe they also provide me with a valuable experience. Observing the home life of a native Chinese family has given me great insight into the culture here, helped my language skills improve, and reinforced the notion that I am still light years away from having the ability to raise a child on my own.

This particular week went by more or less the same as all the others go. Twenty classes at Sunny School, two Chinese classes, two tutoring sessions with Justin, dinner and bars on Friday and Saturday, and expat soccer on Sunday (I still got it baby!). Upon closer reflection I've realized that sticking to a basic routine in a place where the pace of life is ever changing and unpredictable has given me the perfect balance of normalcy combined with variation. Even though I have the same weekly tasks I rarely find myself being bored and my eyes are always open; which leads me to an epiphany on what about me has changed the most: since I've been here I have made more of an effort to stop and smell life's proverbial roses...or life's proverbial shit; both seem to occur with equal frequency.


"Going Native" Experience of the Week

It's going to be difficult to top this one, and I'm not sure I even want to try. A couple weeks ago one of the teachers at my school invited me and a couple others to her family's home in a small village outside of Guilin.The plan was to go down and stay Friday night then, Saturday afternoon, the family would slaughter a pig and we would all have a big meal before heading back to Guilin. I was excited to go; since my motorcycle broke down it had been awhile since I had been outside of the city and I was beginning to go a little stir-crazy. Also, being invited to something like this made me feel like I was becoming part of the tribe.

So there I was, getting ready to leave with my bags packed and my phone charged so that I could document the next two days and thinking about what a wholesome and relaxing experience this would be when my friend walks over and the following exchange was had (In Chinese):

Him: Have you ever been to one of these events before?
Me: Had dinner with a Chinese family? Yea I do that, twice a week before my tutoring class.
Him: No, a pig feast.
Me: Oh, a pig feast, yea we do that sometimes back in the U.S. for special occasions.
Him: Really? How do you guys kill the pig?
Me: We don't, it's delivered to us already dead.
Him: So you don't watch them kill the pig?
Me: No, never...wait do we have to watch them kill the pig tomorrow?
Him: Of course!

I am an unabashed consumer of pork but this would be a first for me. As my friend walked away I had one more question for him:

Me: How is the pig usually killed?
Him: With a machete...
Me:.........Oh.....

We then piled into the car to leave for what I was told would be a two hour trip...little did I know that those two hours would just be the amount of time that we would be on a paved road. We spent another two hours on a road that I would classify as a half step above a hiking trail. There were 8 or 9 of us crammed in a van with very poor suspension, which made going over all of the bumps quite uncomfortable. People in the back were complaining of being car sick and one girl was even crying and sticking her head out the window in case she needed to puke. Finally around 11 PM we arrived.

Poor Fido

Upon arrival we were greeted with a warm meal of chicken soup, rice, cabbage....and dog meat. Yes, after avoiding it for so long I finally took the plunge. The taste was pretty forgettable. They added a bunch of spices to the meat which ended up taking over as the sole flavor. The texture was similar to beef but a bit chewier. It didn't taste bad but it's not something I would actively seek out again. After dinner one of the guys brings a gas can into the living room full of fluid I assumed was gasoline. "Are we making a fire?" I asked. He looked at me then poured the can's contents into a small cup and handed the cup to me...oh...this is the alcohol we would be drinking that night. The stuff was rice liquor which really didn't taste as bad as it looked (and it looked pretty toxic). The Ganbei-s came early and often as me and my newly found mates ended up drinking the entire gas can (definitely the first time I've been able to string those words together in a sentence) and the night became hazy after that.

drink of choice

I awoke the next morning with a splitting headache to the sound of squeals...oh shit...the pig. Someone then came in my room and told me to hurry up and get outside, otherwise I would miss it. Having a headache and feeling nauseous from the night before had me thinking that it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if I missed seeing a pig get butchered. But I didn't want to be a pansy, so I said I would be out in a second. I got up and walked to the balcony in time to witness the largest pig I have ever seen get dragged over to a wooden chopping block where man plunged a machete into its neck. The whole scene was definitely one of the loudest and bloodiest events I have ever witnessed, but finally the pig breathed its last and the struggle was over.

Post-mortem

Afterwards, I decided to go for a walk to literally and figuratively clear my head. I also wanted to walk through the village to get an authentic feel for rural life in China (as if the experience wasn't authentic enough already), until that point I had only driven through villages like these on a loud motorcycle. I appreciated the the beauty of the place but the best part of this village was how quiet it was...definitely not an adjective I would use to describe Guilin. I became aware of the stares that I was getting from the locals but by this point I'm used to it. Eventually one brave soul had to guts to confront the alien (me) and declared that I was the second foreigner to have been to their little mountain hovel. I'm thinking to myself "The second????? Who the hell was the first? Ghenghis Khan?" I guess I'm not the intrepid traveler that I thought I was. I returned to the house and ate some pig before packing up and heading back to "civilization." I had vegetables for dinner that evening. 

Mandarin Improvement Sign

My Chinese has seemed to have picked up a bit of a southern twang. The reason being is that, although I take classes where I learn the "neutral" tone on how to say words, most of the speaking I do outside of the classroom is with people native to Guilin who speak in their own dialect. One of the characteristics of the Guilin dialect of speaking is that they don't pronounce their H's. This usually comes into play when I'm  negotiating a price with a cab driver or a motorcycle taxi. Oftentimes I don't know if they are saying fourteen kuai (shi si) or forty kuai (si shi) because the H isn't pronounced so they both sound like si si. Sometimes I have brought these bad habits into the classroom much to the amusement of my teachers.


Funny Sign of the Week

This was on the fence around my friend's apartment complex.

Reason Why I Like This Place

 I recently had the unique opportunity to attend an impromptu gathering of a local Guilin choir group. This group consisted of various high up party officials who work in Guilin. Before attending this performance, I had always viewed Chinese government officials as these rigid, unemotional cyborgs whose personalities were surgically removed at birth (I still think many of them are this way), but it was really cool for me to see these public figures simply enjoying one of their favorite hobbies on a sleepy Sunday afternoon.

Random Tangent

 I just got back from a trip with my parents to Vietnam (more on that later), and while we were there we noticed a very interesting and entertaining phenomenon: The Travel Douche. The Travel Douche is easy to spot, they're somebody who is clearly a tourist who, in some misguided attempt to shake themselves of that title, tries to blend in by wearing aggressively native garb.

Did you just get back from a long day in the rice fields buddy?

After we first noticed this tendency we started seeing it everywhere. Numerous guys, who I guarantee had only been in 'Nam for two weeks at the very most, were walking down the street wearing sarongs or other skimpy cloth pants making them look like a gay Tarzan. The more I thought about it the more I realized how systemic this phenomenon is in the west. Apparently its become mandatory for college study abroad students who spend a week in Paris to all start wearing berets and drinking espresso out of a small coffee mug, or for fat white rednecks to get their hair braided on the beach in Jamaica as they drink their 25th strawberry daiquiri of the day through a crazy straw. The examples are all around us. So what's the problem? Do we feel insecure when we leave the comfortable confines of our borders and feel the need to alter our appearance? Are we so naive that we genuinely feel that wearing this stuff helps us blend in? I'm not sure. My travel uniform is pretty similar to my everyday attire: khakis, T-Shirt, and baseball hat which gives off the unmistakeable vibe of "stiff, boring, uptight white guy," which isn't the answer either. There is a fine line between being an uptight foreigner who is afraid to try new things and Travel Douche but I guess my point is that that line is out there, and needs to be observed.