La vie quotidienne

I was reminded the other evening, while talking to another teacher here, that one of the joys in China is the pleasure of sitting around and simply watching things happen.  Here, for your viewing pleasure, a couple more videos of life on the basketball court next to the primary school on a Sunday afternoon, circa late September / early October.

Part the first:  In which Z tools around randomly on his bike, Y follows two girls that come by with a kitten in a small box, a random passerby talks on her cell phone, and a clump of children then run off to points unknown...



Part the second:  In which Z and friend play a Pokemon-type game with small circular trading cards, Y experiments with a plastic fake guitar, and someone in the background says ”对“ ("dui" = right, okay) repeatedly so fast that it almost sounds like machine gun fire.


Part the third:  In which Y shreds on the toy guitar, Z loses a round of rock/paper/scissors, and a toddler and her mom take their leave. 

Just when you thought it was safe...

I know this post is a little bit late for Halloween, but may I humbly present...



Yet more scary looking kiddie rides!  Yes, it has been a long time since I've featured them on this blog, but the profusion of scary childrens' rides continues unchecked on the streets of Chengdu, with yet more species being discovered (and more flagrant copyright violations..) every time I go into town.  Besides the Skitch copy above, if that's what it is, there has also been a notable Transformer upswing.  I'm pleased to report, however, that the ever-popular Xi Yang Yang and his cartoon sheep companions continue to hold their own.
 


Also of note - no matter where you go in China, or what the ride, the color palette remains exactly the same.  Don't believe me?  Check out the earlier installments of the series here and here. 

How to Be Alone

As we know, we humans are generally social creatures, deriving a large portion of our happiness from interaction with others of our kind.  However, we are also by definition individuals, who obtain our identity from within.  Thus is born the continuum between extrovert on one hand and introvert on the other.  For some strange reason, we are, generally speaking, much more comfortable with the first end of this scale than the second.

Take this weekend, for example.  A fine weekend indeed, and spent almost entirely at home with Zekey and Ysa.  Highlights included finishing up a short video that I'd been working on, reading a bit, making black bean chili, editing some photographs, and chatting with Jane and a few friends in the States on Facebook and Skype.  The kids played inside most of the day Saturday, half by themselves, and half with a (very loud) young friend who came over for a three hour long match of... Jedi knights?  Ultraman?  In any case, something involving a lot of swords and yelling, in (to me) nearly incomprehensible Chinese.

Sunday, more of the same in the morning, followed by an afternoon following the kids on their bikes as we went first to the exercise park (a small plaza fitted with generically dangerous clunky metal workout equipment that passes for our playground) and then to the paved lot in front of the elementary school, where I watched the kids interact with a streaming succession of friends, older schoolmates, friends' parents, giggling college girls trying to get them to pose for pictures on their cell phones, gaping grandparents who had never seen a foreigner before - still! after us being here for two years!! - trying to push their two year olds into playing with Ysa, who now knows how to deal with such behavior by a simple humph! and a turning away that is just charming enough not to be offensive...

Aaanyway, my point in all this is that, through all this, I don't think I had a face to face interaction with an adult that lasted more than ten minutes.  And was fine about it.  (Notice the obligatory disclaimer.  You see what I mean about us humans feeling much less comfortable with the introverted end of the spectrum, right?) 

All of this a long, round-about intro to this video, which, now that I've gone on for a while, really speaks for itself:



A good reminder that no matter where we travel, the most comfortable, and the most challenging place to live is inside your own skin.

The first and final voyage of the SS Styrofoam

One Saturday, about a month ago, Xander and Zekey decided that they wanted to go sailing. More specifically, they wanted to launch a boat that they (well, mostly Xander) had made. One of their ongoing projects this spring has been the making and testing of various kinds of Lego and styrofoam watercraft in the big red plastic washbasin in our bathroom, but it seemed like they were ready to move on to bigger and better.

So the four of us (Ysa included) trooped across campus to the "fake mountain place", as it's known in our household. One typical feature of Chinese universities that I've neglected to describe up to this point is the artificial landscaped garden, usually featuring pavilions and a pond of some sort with some craggy rocks (natural or otherwise) in the middle, surrounded by groves of bamboo.

As you can imagine, three blonde children walking across campus taking turns carrying a chunk of cardboard and styrofoam almost as big as they are isn't exactly a common sight in most Chinese universities, so by the time we got to the pond, we had a small crowd of onlookers ready to witness the launch. Xander proved to be a fine MC.



After the launch, there was the small matter of getting the boat back to shore, which was soon solved with the help of some of the aforementioned bamboo. The boys, and a young onlooker or two, started poling and prodding the boat around the vast wide ocean (or small stagnant pond, depending on your point of view). I left with Ysa to go to a nearby ATM, and when I got back, the number of boats in the lake had magically doubled!





The adventure continued through the morning, until a combination of distraction and soggy cardboard brought our small fleet into drydock. A fine seaside morning in our landlocked little campus.

Keepin' it simple

A very nice small portable kiddie carnival, seen at the market in downtown Jepara, in north central Java, Indonesia.

Adding to the collection

More scary-lookin' kiddie rides, posted without comment for your general edification.

Sports Day, China style

Some photos and video from an assembly at Xander's school last month. The theme was a sports competition, with each class performing their group exercises in front of the whole school. Having worked in primary / middle schools for a while, and been on the classroom management end of these types of assemblies for many more times than I care to have been, there was a lot that was familiar, and a lot that wasn't.



Familiar: Squirming kids, teachers on the lookout for trouble, announcements from the principal, parents watching their kids perform through the tiny monitor on their video cameras, tinny music with feedback from the PA system.



Unfamiliar: Whoa, that's my kid sitting there! And it's all outside, and oh, yeah, all in Chinese...

And um, weren't our school assemblies a bit less, oh.. paramilitary? I mean, we had the Pledge of Allegiance and all, but really. This is one of those times where I will have to respectfully agree to disagree with the educational system of my host country, I suppose.

A further word on the mass exercises may be in order. From Ysa's three year old class on up to the sixth grade at least, as far as I can tell, a significant part of gym class is devoted to teaching the kids some kind of dance routine to music. The routines remind me in turn of line dancing, Super Bowl halftime cheer leading routines, and North Korean mass propaganda rallies. (You know, the kind where thousands of people in the stands hold up cards to make a picture of Our Beloved Leader? Yeah, that kind.) There are some similarities to activities in American schools - Boy Scouts and high school marching band comes to mind - but this is mass activity on a higher scale.

It makes me think about some of the staples of the gym classes that I had growing up, dodge ball in particular. Or, more accurately, "bombardment", as my extremely paramilitary Boy Scout troop in Hutchinson, Kansas preferred to call it. Dodge ball, as played in the Midwest in the late seventies and early eighties anyway, was less about dodging and more about sheer Darwinian carnivorousness. Last man standing wins, and all that. (And for those of you familiar with my, ahem, uh, shall we say, "geekiness" during my Junior High Years, let me just note for the record that I usually did pretty well during dodge ball, chiefly because I stayed along the edges and took strategic cheap shots while the jocks were busy pounding away at each other in the middle.)

It's tempting to use the two gym class activities as a metaphor for the two countries - a sort of junior high contest where Communist-era faceless conformity goes head to head with good ol' American rugged bloodthirsty individualism. But of course, it's not that simple. You don't have to look much further than the the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders to see that faceless conformity is still a big part of American culture today.

And as for Darwinian competition, the Chinese academic system, from what I've seen of it, is much more competitive than its American counterpart. There are many cultural explanations for this, starting first with the obvious fact that China has a heck of a lot more students, and going on from there. Much less sugarcoating, and many more tests, going on up to the big one at the end of high school that determines where (and if) you can go to university.

Having said all that, I've been happy with the experience my kids have been getting in the Chinese schools so far. All of their teachers, from what I've seen, have been quite caring and nurturing to their students, in spite of (what seems to this American teacher, anyway) huge class sizes and a relative lack of classroom resources.

I don't think I would want my children to go all the way through the Chinese educational system from start to finish, however. Then again, I'm not sure about having them go through the American system from start to finish either. Just a few preachy reminders (mostly to myself) to sum up:

• There's a lot of learning that happens outside of (and in spite of) the school system wherever you go, and
• If you can choose educational options for your kids, count yourself extremely fortunate and privileged. There are many people on both sides of the ocean that can't.
  

Ordinary Stuff - Scary Lookin' Kids' Rides

One universal wellspring of surrealism is childhood, or more specifically, our often ambiguous adult views of childhood. There's a strange disconnect between our sentimental view of childhood as a time of safety and innocence, and the half-remembered feeling that we were ourselves once quite tiny beings with very little control over the strange world around us.



So it's nice to know that even here in China, on the other side of the world from my home, you can still find coin-op kiddie rides that are a) not only slightly creepy looking, but also b) play incredibly tinny annoying sing-song music!



"Mommy? Why's that duck looking at me like that? Mom...? Mommy...?"



"Hey, son, I've got to go into the liquor store for a sec. Would you like me to sit you down on the smiling pointy-eared demon, or the two-headed dog?"

(Don't worry - China also has a large supply of cute fluffy kittens and baby ducklings to make you feel good again.)

Nice contact with people, and knitting

What a normal day, yet so full of different experiences.

The ball really got rolling when Dave and I left our classes’ joint party with his student Elise, who wanted to copy the Wallace & Gromit video. As we chatted before parting ways, conversation naturally turned to he nan da bing, which they translated as a seed cake. I jumped at the opportunity to have Elise show us he nan da bing today, just on the other side of campus.

Then one of my students, Wendy, strolled by. Of course, Wendy. She and I bump into each other around campus all the time. She is the one who once proclaimed it as, “We are destined to meet again and again.” Her voice is very deep, her demeanor very calm, casual and, to tell you the truth, comforting somehow. Her eyes, behind Ira-Glass-type thick, black glasses, are big pools of liquid dark chocolate. A mesmerizing type of gal.

I was thrilled to see her, and extended her the invitation to come with us in search of he nan da bing. She’d never had it, either. Okay, plan was to meet up at 2:30.

Got home, ate lunch, set Xander up on an architecture-building website that he loved, and crashed for about an hour myself.

Met Wendy and Elise in front of the 1st cafeteria close to 3:00. A downright expedition-sized party were we: Dave, Jane, Xander on red wiggle-scooter, Zekey on bike with training wheels, Ysa in stroller mostly, Jiang A’yi, Wendy, and Elise.

We made our way over to the other side of campus and the students treated us to the flavorful flat cakes. They are thicker than crepes, thinner than pita bread. Three versions are vegetarian: one with egg mixed with the dough; one spicy version, one kind-of plain, maybe with onion and really buttery-tasting, even though there’s no butter here. So warm and good!

Then the students showed us SWINGS! Two, real swings that my kids could swing on! There is no such thing in China as children’s playgrounds such as Americans generally know playgrounds, so this was a real treat. Next to the swings, there were lots of simple, outdoor-style exercise machines the Chinese love to have - “exercise parks” - in this area, and about 72 ping pong tables, all full of students playing ping pong.

Since we'd earlier talked about knitting, Elise had planned to teach me how to knit. Elise is a real pro, but when I asked her to show me the completed scarf she said was in her bag, she said, “No.” She explained that if she were to show me, she might be embarrassed. I still didn’t get it. She further explained that others might think that she’s showing off. Us, sitting on a low wall in a corner of a playground, and her hesitant to show her work! In my teacher way, I said that this was a great opportunity to show the differences between our two cultures, that Americans are generally eager to show something that they’re proud of or do well, and Chinese people are very hesitant to do so. I suggested, “Let’s just try it the American way for a second, ok?” And she produced an exquisite white scarf with many different patterns, or whatever they might be called, knitted into it.

And then I learned how to knit! Elise was a great combination of having me watch her, and letting me try it, with her guiding my hands, even my fingers.

It was an emotionally beautiful experience for me. At one point, for several minutes, Wendy, who’d been sitting in front of me on the kids’ red scooter-type toy, was resting her hands on my knees. A real Chinese touch exchange! Chinese women hold each others' arms or hands or touch in some way publicly all the time, and usually I can’t get beyond thinking, “How Chinese! Cool.” But today I experienced it a bit myself, and it was very calming and natural.

Wendy’s fingers have red blisters on them, like she’d been recently burned. I inquired, and she said it happens every winter. She doesn’t like to wear gloves all the time (I understand, neither do I), so her fingers simply get too cold. I know it’s because people’s daily life involves being so cold all day and all night. These two girls further said that many of the students have blisters on their feet, as well. I was incredulous about these kinds of blisters on people’s feet, as feet always have socks and shoes on them. They said that some shoes just aren’t warm enough. That’s what you get when your life for months reaches a high 52 degrees for a couple of hours a day, and is therefore in the 40s, day in and day out. No indoor heating can really get you.

Anybody know of any good anti-blistering cremes out there?

It came around 5:00, getting colder, speaking of cold, so we set back home. As these things go in China, though, you always run into more people, so we ran into several of the boys’ classmates. They were ingeniously dipping paintbrushes into a plastic cup of water, and practicing writing characters on the sidewalk. Really, how smart, because you write all over one area of the sidewalk, it dries, and you have a clean surface again. Xander was so excited, begging them to teach him more, saying how much he needs to learn more Chinese characters. Zekey was trying his best to meticulously copy the character for “to have.” Even Ysa’s scribbles looked like Chinese characters!

I went away to go and buy dinner: our favorite wraps, oranges, apples and bananas. One sure-fire way to seal a great day in China for me is to wander outside the university gate by myself to see the latest in vendors, sights and sounds. Wasn’t disappointed today either, as a brightly-dressed, obviously non-Han-Chinese woman was squatting at the front of the outdoor market, selling what looked like huge hunks of blue cheese gone bad. She whacked off a piece to let me sample it, and from the crack of her machete on the substance, I could tell it wasn’t soft like cheese, but hard as a rock. Sugar! Sugar whose outer coating of the hunk of it had little green-grey strings, like Spanish moss. Of course! I bought a chunk to give the kids maybe tomorrow, and to see if Jiang A’yi can explain it more to me.

Wandering back home, seeing people carry bundled-up Chinese babies on their backs, noticing groups hanging out in street-culture fashion, enjoying the mix of trendy students, older generations, hard-working farmer/vendor types, I reflected on this amazing, yet normal day here. Good to have these kinds of days and feelings at least once in a while.