A Year and Counting

I arrived in China on July 2nd of last year a little confused, a little lost, and a little scared. I clearly remember collecting my bags at the Chengdu airport and then boarding a bus with the rest of the volunteers to head into the city. The city was so large, so modern...yet, so different and new. I remember laughing to myself as I looked at all the billboards along the ultra-modern highway that cut its way into the city, because no matter how much those advertisers wanted me to buy their products, without a big picture...no Chinese writing was going to help me. After traveling through a dense urban landscape for an hour, a landscape that seemed to be repeating itself every five minutes, we started passing through the most developed part of the city. It contained thousands of bicycles and cars flying past the bus, bright signs in unintelligible Chinese, Chinese pop songs blaring from store fronts, and people everywhere, then, we stopped. We stepped off the buses in front of our hotel and stumbled around dazed and surprised. We were finally here, for better or worse.

Later that day, another volunteer and I decided to walk around a bit, to leave the safety of our cushy downtown hotel and go exploring. Matt could speak a bit of Chinese because he had studied the language in college. When we stopped our walk after five minutes because Matt wanted to haggle 1 yuan off the price of a pirated dvd, I was a amazed, scared, and nervous. After that first day, I was wondering if I had done the right thing. China was not the place I thought it was going to be, it was faster, more developed, and bigger than I ever could have imagined. But here I was.

I would start learning the language later that day by repeating the four Chinese tones over and over and over during our introductory class to the language. Later that week, we all moved out of the hotel and moved in with our host families, began language classes, and learned how to eat hot pot. I played soccer with my host brother, made Chinese food with my host families' grandparents, and always, drank too much beer at dinner with my host Dad. We bitched about our teacher training, bitched about our language training, and described our bowel movements in vivid detail. I improved my Chinese, training came to a close, and then, I learned that I would be moving to Panzhihua, my current home.

A great deal has happened in this first year, I have made a lot of friends and met my fabulous live-in sitemate/girlfriend. I have learned how to speak Chinese, but have also learned how to pretend like I can't speak Chinese to avoid having the same agonizing conversation ten times a day. I have certainly been hardened by this experience, and find myself complaining about China occasionally. I have no deep love for this country, but still find myself amused by the countless idiosyncrasies that can only be described as Chinese. In the next year, I don't know what's going to happen, yet, I am still excited for the teaching, friends, traveling, and day to day life that is mine here in China. I still have a lot left to do and explore here, and I still wake up excited for each day, and that's all I can hope for this next year.

This summer I'll be heading to Yibin, a city north of here, to teach for two weeks and then I'll be heading to Tibet for three weeks. So, I probably won't have a new post up until late August. I would just like to say thank you to everyone who has read this blog or has been in touch with me in anyway, be it through AIM, myspace, facebook, Skype, googletalk, or the occasional e-mail. It's great to know that my family and friends are still with me, even though I'm on the other side of the world.

Train Ride, Boat Ride, and Minorities!

This past weekend Lindsey and I took a trip out to a little place called Xichang. This city is located a couple hours north of us on the train and it is the capital of the Yi minority here in China. The city is also the Chinese Cape Canaveral equivalent, they have launches every once in awhile and have had some supposedly incredible failures that ended in whole towns being destroyed when the rockets plummet from the sky, but this is all covered up. Last little fact...this city was one of the places that the Communist party trekked through during the Long March. They had to secure safe passage with the Yi locals or they never would have made it through the then foreign, unwelcoming lands of the Yi. Oh, the Yi also had slaves until the 1950's.

We jumped on the train here in Panzhihua on Monday just to take a little trip before I head off for the summer and Lindsey heads home (she'll be returning in the fall). I had looked up the city of Xichang in my China travel book and it looked fairly interesting, part of the old city wall still exists, there's a lake nearby, and we could buy some minority trinkets, most importantly a handmade Yi minority skirt for my Mom (I still haven't sent anything home...it costs a lot!). So, we pulled into town after the train ride and checked into a decent hotel. We spent the night walking around the main shopping street which could easily be confused with downtown Denver. Every Chinese city I've been to seems to have these incredily well-maintained, fancy shopping streets with trendy expensive stores, yet these are really the last places you want to be when your in China. They all look the same, have the same stores, and have the same people walking around looking at you. While it's fun to people watch in these places for a little while, your interest starts to wane as the fiftieth group of gigling teenage girls dressed in a seeminly haphazard assortment of colors and hair styles strolls past. So, our first impressions of Xichang were mostly dissapointment; it was the same as everywhere else in this country.

The next day we headed off to go found the South Gate, the only part of the ancient Ming Dynasty city wall that is still standing. Around the wall, there was supposed to be an eclectic local market and teahouses. Before we reached the wall, the buildings lining the street started slowly growing older. It was then that I found an antique shop that had the Chinese 2 yuan bill from 196o that I had been looking for (I started collecting the set of 1960 bills a month ago and the 2 bill is the rarest. Most stalls sell the bill for between 100-150 yuan, but this old, rundown shop sold it to me for 50...pretty sweet huh?). Further down the road was the local market, full of women and men dressed in their ehtnic garb. The road by the city gate was a congested nightmare, but it was more entertaining then annoying. We walked along and looked at the puppies, old fortune tellers predicting the future by looking at the contents of cracked eggs, the bird market, and the shops selling Yi crafts. I ended up by my Mom a pretty nice Yi skirt with Lindsey's help and then I bought a couple hand painted wooden bowls.

The next day we took the bus over to nearby lake, where one can supposedly swim. We got off the bus amid miles of lakeside construction and stumbled around looking for the park, but couldn't find it. Eventually we found a place to rent little electric boats. After we crawled our way across the lake in our painfully slow boat we saw a small wooden boat being paddled towards us. When the woman paddling the boat got closer she yelled to us (yes the woman paddling the boat was going at least two times as fast as us). We didn't know what she wanted right away but she ended up coming right over and tethered our boat to hers. It turned out to be a mid-lake BBQ boat, fully equipped with beers that tasted like they had been microwaved for five minutes. The woman had a small charcoal fire and different food that we could pick out. So, we had two beers, potatoes, and this green vegatable called jiucai that Lindsey loves. After we ate, we jumped in the lake to cool off and then made our way back to the dock and then hotel. All in all it was a great little break from the average day around here. It was nice to get away and see something different here in China. Sometimes, everything starts to look the same and things start to get a little dull, but we can still get rid of that feeling by taking little trips here and there.

Adieu Quasi-Ponytail....and My Hot GF!!!

Well, I hadn't gotten my haircut in about 8 months until last week. I finally told myself that it was time, but only because I was able to pull it back in a quasi-ponytail, as a much needed ponytail shout-out to Nate Kester, one of my college buddies who refused to part with his much loved locks until very recently. So, before I went and got my haircut twenty steps from my front door for 3 kuai (38 cents), I took some pictures in memory of the ponytail, while trying to simulate an average day in the life of Nate...




"Yeah!, Phish is
the best!"

"What the hell is this
light, watered down,
lacking flavor, non-
Guinness swill!!!"

"Lets see what
The Boys (Phish)
are up to!!"

"##(*!^($!)*!!$!
%& friggin' George
Lucas!!!"

Here's my girlfriend Lindsey and me!!! Wooohooo!!!

Baldwin the Monk

I woke up and sat in bed, listening to the activities of the house from the security of my room. I finally rose at about 9:00, put on my clothes, and walked outside. It was still a little cool out but the sky was blue today with only a few patches of clouds. It looked as if I wouldnt have to shiver and try working blood into my hands as I rode today. My agenda for them morning was light; wandering the streets to try and grab some breakfast and then take some pictures. After sauntering towards the center of town, which was denoted by a few farmers selling produce and some groups of old men and women chatting about whatever old Chinese men and women chat about. I didn't notice any place that seemed to have food, but there was one house with a big colorful sign, so that seemed like as good a place as any.

When I walked in the gate, the owner rushed over and greeted me. He whisked me inside the courtyard as I asked him if he had any dou jiang (soymilk). One of the best breakfasts in China is hot soymilk that comes with fry bread. The soymilk is served in a large bowl with one spoonful of sugar in the bottom, and then you tear the fry bread into pieces and dip it in the milk...all this for only one Yuan (12 cents). The owner assured me they did, and continued talking as we walked past three men and a dead goat. He brought me into the familys living room and put on the TV, and then he began rooting around for a video to play for me. The video was a hand-held camera production of roughly 40 old townspeople doing ethnic circle dances in the town square. Seeing these dances for the first time is interesting, especially if you go to a bonfire where people are drinking, dancing, and having a grand ol time. But, the dark living room where I sat by myself failed to produce the same festive atmosphere. The old man smiled and nodded approvingly for having done his job and then quickly left. I sat and watched the video for about 30-minutes, wondering if these people were ordered to dance, or were simply caught in the act. As my boredom increased, I wandered outside to see what the three men and the goat were up to.

The goat was lying on a circular metal stand, above a bowl filled with charcoal. The men were standing around this contraption looking at the goat and talking with each other. While I didnt understand the reason for it, the men were trying to brown the outside of the goat. They werent trying to cook it; just tan its skin. But, the fire didnt seem to be doing the job fast enough so they were thinking of new ways to get the job done. After an hour of stoking the fire with bellows, they went and bought liquor to poor over the goat. After this didnt seem to do the job, one of the men heated up a shovel in the fire and then pushed that against the goats skin, this was met with a great deal of approval. So, while I waited for breakfast, I watched these men tan a goat with shovels, cut it open, completely disembowel it, clean all the intestines, and kick some chickens away from the scraps. This took about three hours. While this was going on, I noticed that the soybeans for my breakfast were being ground in a hand-operated grist. While it took four hours to get a bowl of soymilk (no bread), the family let me eat lunch with them and didnt charge me.

I thanked the family a great deal, especially the poor old lady who spent four hours of the day making soymilk for a foreigner, and then headed back to the Doctors house. I ended up paying the family 20 kuai for the previous nights dinner and place to stay. They told me that the town would be having a bonfire with dancing that night, and that I was welcome to stay in their house longer, but I told them that I had to be on my way. So, I packed up my things, said thank you to everyone with a tip of the bike helmet, and headed out. I knew it was going to be a better day when the road immediately turned from dirt into asphalt.

That day, I rode through a dusty, traffic filled town called Ping Di. It was hell compared to where I had just stayed, but it was, just as the last town had been in its own way, very Chinese. As a small cross roads on the border of Sichuan and Yunnan, it seemed that its survival depended on the hundreds of identical orange and blue dump trucks that roared through. I ended up eating lunch there and walked through the small town market, still in search of the classic blue Mao Ze Dong hat for my Dad. The town had no hotels, and more importantly, no pressing reason to stay there for more than an hour or two. With two options, either to travel the main road towards Panzhihua or to head towards Yunnan, I choose the latter.

After riding for an hour or two, I ended up sidetracking to go up a small road that led up a mountain. It was the kind of road that you wish you only had to ride down. I ended up pushing my bike up more then half of it, but the surrounding forest was something Ive missed during my time in China. The sound and smells around me set me at ease and helped me to resist the urge of turning my bike around and soaring back down the mountain. Then, in the forest I heard the sounds of chanting and saw a small path leading towards what I soon discovered to be a monastery. It was about 6:00 in the evening and the soothing sounds of chanting carried through the woods, mixed with the sweet smell of the pines, and the breeze gliding through the trees was perfect. I ended up staying there for two nights.

Chinese Weddings

This past week I attended a Chinese wedding. One of the younger female teachers at our school who is one of Lindsey's good friends decided to take the plunge. A plunge that is certainly different from the way that most Americans look at and perceive marriage. For the past few months we've known that she was going to be married soon, but no one knew when. Then, this past Monday, Lindsey told me that Qin Qin was going to have her wedding on Friday. On Wednesday morning, the wedding was off. On Wednesday evening, it was back on. Let's just say, I didn't get an invitation in the mail. So, when Friday rolled around me and Lindsey got ready for the wedding party. I decided that the occasion was worthy of a fresh pair of pants, a clean, yet wrinkled dress shirt, and a pair of shoes (which I haven't worn in two months, opting instead for my $2 flip-flops). Lindsey wore a skirt she bought in Laos and a wrinkled white blouse.

If you have already assumed as much, wedding is not really a big to-do in China. Typically there is no wedding ceremony because the Church doesn't have as big a foothold in China as apathy. But, it is becoming more popular to have wedding photos taken in a traditional western wedding dress and tuxedo. For the photos, you go to a one-stop-shop where you rent the dress and tuxedo, get your hair and make-up done, and then you go traipsing around town to the standard beautiful places to take the photos. In all the wedding photos I've seen, none of the women look like themselves. They are all so made up with powder and make-up that their skin is translucent. The wedding itself is simply signing your papers at the local government office and then you have a Chinese banquet style party with your guests, basically the same banquet you would have anytime you go out to eat with a large group of people.

So, Lindsey, Hong Mei, and myself showed up to the wedding a little late and sat down at an already packed table. The table consisted mostly of English teachers from our school and their children. I was sitting next to a rather peculiar boy who ended up handing me fist fulls of sunflower seeds and chocolates, he also gave me about 8 cigarettes throughout the night, he was probably 12. Qin Qin and her new husband came over to toast our table with glasses of wine. They were both incredibly happy throughout the whole night and it was really cute to see.

Well, I wanted to finish this before I headed off for Chengdu today, but it looks like the 15-hour train ride has approached quicker then i thought it would. So, it's off to Chengdu to get my mid-service Peace Corp physical and eat a whole lot of western food and maybe some beer that actually tastes good and doesn't contain any poison (formaldehyde).

Damn You Colin Brady...

So, after perusing Colin's little blog that was made with this website's template, I said to myself, "that is far superior to my pathetic myspace blog". I have therefore decided to switch my allegiance over to this new site. Sure, maybe I just need to follow in the footsteps of a Computer Science major...but this site also supports images within the text with little to no effort...which is sweet.

This past week the whole Panzhihua crew headed into Chengdu on medical leave, with the exception of Steve who is off to far bigger and better things (he is already visiting his host family in Nepal where he served in the Peace Corps prior to China).