Space to Roam

August 30, 2006

"All current technologies reduce expanse to nothing. They produce shorter and shorter distances, a shrinking fabric. Now, a territory without temporality is not a territory, but only the illusion of a territory. It is urgent that we become aware of the political repercussions of such a handling of space-time, for they are fearsome. The field of freedom shrinks with speed. And freedom needs a field. When there is no more field, our lives will be like a terminal, a machine with doors that open and close. A labyrinth for laboratory animals. If the parceling out of territory, of territories of time, is envisioned like that, according to strict regulation and not a chrono-political understanding, there will be nothing left but absolute control, an immediacy which will be the worst kind of concentration."

- Paul Virilio, Pure War

I received a call late last night from Mrs. Soon telling me that our class today would be at 7:50 a.m. and not 2:20 p.m., as previously noted. This put an immediate end to my staying up late and sleeping in party and severely hampered any possiblity of a good night's sleep. When the A/C cut out in the middle of the night, I believe my fate was sealed. I turned the fan to the preternaturally loud "High" setting and tossed and turned through another night at the Jiaotong Hotel (also known in certain hotel literature as the Rong Cheng Communications Mansion).

That morning we arrived at school, climbed the stairs from the parking lot, and crossed the empty marble plaza near the entrance. The sun beat down on the reflective surface making it feel hotter than it actually was. I wondered what these dead stone plazas say about our values.

We walked to the auditorium where my classes are held only to find it literally padlocked shut. While Mrs. Soon made phone calls, I looked out to the area where the road ended. The school and surrounding vicinity are still under construction and I remarked to Mrs. Soon that I'm drawn to these raw areas. Soon everything will be paved over, demarcated, quantified. I used to wonder what the obsession was with paving everything until it dawned on me that pavement has greatly increased my ability to visit some of these strange regions. It's curious that the same process that enables me to explore new territory also generates a wistfulness for untouched geography.

Our colleagues arrived to tell us that there would be no class today, the students had something else to do. Feeling slightly demoralized, I returned to the hotel and tried to sleep. Lunch arrived at the cusp of sleep with a knock at the door. I roused myself to let the bellhop in and was further disheartened to see the tentacles of my arch-nemesis, the dreaded you yu (squid), dismembered on my plate. I was beside myself.

On my way to the Signing Ceremony last week we passed a park that dwarfed all the previous parks I've seen on my Rong Cheng bicycle tours. It was a significant distance from the hotel, but I decided that I would trek out by bike one day. This was that day. I looked around the room unable to sleep, unable to eat, unwilling, even, to blog. I resolved to bike out to the park and spend the afternoon reading.

The ride, though lengthy, wasn't exhausting. I tried to avoid the endless staring around me and focus straight ahead. At the park they had benches with backs, a rarity in Rong Cheng. I picked one out overlooking the entirely empty park and opened my book. Within minutes, three generations of a Chinese family encircled me and began asking questions and pointing at my book. I intimated that I was from America and that no, the book was not in Chinese. They walked away and the youngest daughter, a girl about 7 years of age, turned and smiled at me. I felt better.

Not even ten minutes later a man pulled up to a bench 50 yards away on his scooter. I noticed out of the corner of my eye but paid him no mind. Five minutes passed and he rode through the path where my bike stood. I looked up momentarily and nodded, noticing for the first time that he was a cop. He motored around my bike and rode off down the path. I continued reading but could feel the upcoming interruption like a knot in my stomach.

The policeman returned and parked his scooter next to my bike. I stood and moved my bicycle off the pathway and he waved me off, insinuating that it was okay where it was. He stood and took a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and offered me one. I declined, shaking my head and motioning that I don't smoke. He looked at me curiously and took one cigarette for himself. He asked where I was from and what I was doing here in China and how had I come to China without knowing any Chinese. I explained in shattered Mandarin that I am an American English teacher at the engineering school and that I had come here to learn Chinese. He kept looking at me and smirking and then looking around the empty park. I took my wallet out of my backpack to show him the hotel's business card and mistakenly left the wallet exposed on my bag. He promptly took the card and put it in his other shirt pocket. He pointed at his shirt sleeve which, among the Chinese characters, clearly said "Police" in English. I nodded innocently, trying not to betray my unease at the tension in the air.

I reached over to my backpack and put my exposed wallet back in its pocket while simultaneously pulling out my notebook of vocabulary. I searched for a pen to write down the word for police but couldn't find one. He looked around the park some more and smirked at me some more and I sat back and waited for him to leave. I was under the impression that I could outlast him by boring him with my lack of ability to speak Chinese. He looked at my book and I offered to show it to him but he was uninterested. He lowered himself, resting on his haunches, and asked me how much money I had. I feigned ignorance. He took out a wad of bills and asked again how much money I had. I paged through my notebook and, surprise, I couldn't find anything useful. He squatted and I sat in silence, both looking around the park. I said in Chinese that it was beautiful. He asked if I'd been drinking. I played dumb and he pretended to drink. I said, "Drink what?" He said, "Wine." I pretended to not understand the word for wine. I honestly wasn't sure if he was asking me if I drink wine or was I drinking wine, but I didn't want to drink wine with him, if that's where this line of interrogation was going, and I certainly hadn't been drinking. I'd have been in a much better mood.

Frustrated, bored, and possibly insulted by my lack of knowledge, he told me to leave the park. I motioned, I should leave? He nodded sternly and I left, making no sudden moves and avoiding eye contact, truly surprised by the turn of events.

On the bike ride back I was livid. I had just been kicked out of the park for reading, or more likely, for one small man's lack of creativity and imaginaton. Title. Money. Power. That's all he seemed to understand. How dull and colorless. Is this what the world has come to? I had a real moment of despair. I looked around at the hundreds of Chinese on their bikes, on the sidewalk, my heart pounding, heat rising in my chest cavity. Is this what they have to deal with? Buses and people on scooters kept passing me and breaking in front of me, cutting me off, forcing me to slow down and work to get back up to speed. I burned most of the anger off by the time I reached one of the town's smaller plazas. I sat down and read for a few minutes before the sand fleas biting my ankles became too much to bear and then returned to the hotel.

Now all the truth is out
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Wheron mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone
Be secret and exult
Because of all things known
That is the most difficult

- William Butler Yeats, To a Friend whose Work has come to Nothing

Things are accelerating.

August 29, 2006

Monday was my first day, again. I experieced the same sick feelings in the pit of my stomach all over again as I sat in the office of the Dean of Academic Affairs waiting for some word on the class I was supposed to teach. The smoking ban has not yet reached China and he sat behind his desk chain-smoking and saying Chinese things into the telephone. I sat with Mrs. Soon who had accompanied me and whom they stipulated would only assist with translations for one week before leaving me to my own devices.

In the classroom sat 43 young men around the age of 18. During the school year they live in dorms on campus. I went around the room testing their level of English and quickly realized that they were remedial at best. Out the window went my fantasies of conversation and dialogue, listening sessions and movie screenings. I strolled around the class harassing sleeping students while Mrs. Soon went over simple phonetics. Inside I was experiencing a quiet deconstruction of my perspective on the next six months of my life.

I resumed control of the class and gave out my first assignment, to bring an English name next lesson.



Monday night I spent close to three hours practicing Chinese with Dong-Dong. Practicing entailed me typing someting into the online dictionary, the two of us searching through the myriad meanings for any particular word (e.g. with: dog with short shinbone, rice with nothing to go with it, to whip with bamboo strips, etc.) and then stringing the various words together to see if that meant anything in Chinese. We made significant progress, surprisingly. Enough that I missed dinner, which I took to mean that I would rather learn Chinese than eat. After Dong-Dong left I sat in the lobby with the lobby people and and drank tea and practiced English with a fourteen-year-old who called me Uncle.

Tuesday I didn't start class until 2 p.m. This came as a breath of fresh air in the swarm of 6 a.m. mornings that I've had, this one almost qualifying itself as a weekend, the likes of which I haven't seen in 18 days now. I went to the Leisure House and devised simple lesson plans revolving around introductory grammar.

That afternoon I felt welcome. At the end of last class I had opened up the floor to questions, always popular, and the students expressed worry that I would leave right away. I told them that I had come all this way to meet them, why would I leave so soon? This seemed to break the ice and they invited me to play basketball with them that afternoon. I declined promising them a complete demonstration of my lack of skill at a later date.

I spent another two hours or so studying with Dong-Dong and actually have enough words in my little pocket notebook to say whole sentences without searching online. Simple meaning still eludes me, but that, I think, will always be the case.

Buddha Spectacular

Please excuse this bit of self-indulgence. I was duly inspired by the rotating Buddha.


Entrance to exhibit of traditional ancient Chinese lifestyle and culture


Buddhas, meditating presumably


Little golden buddhas (all shapes and sizes!)

Today

August 27, 2006

You ever have a day where you felt that you couldn't have done anything better, or anything worse, or anything other than what you did?

A list of the days activities, in this order:

- Last middleschool class (a boy who found my angry American impression particularly hysterical wept to his father after class because he thought he would never see me again. A phone call was made to the school and he was placated with my e-mail address.)
- Healthy lunch (ordered by yours truly)
- Chinese girl at coffee shop talked to me.
- Rong Cheng commercial zone shopping tour and extravaganza, led by Mrs. Soon.
- First Chinese haricut. Unexpected eradication of sideburns by overzealous barber.
- Dinner with Mrs. Soon, Mr. Yan, the three Jiangs (my new school's driver, managing director, and dean of academic affairs), and Mr. Fang (head of student life).
- Outmaneuvered Chinese in drinking games.

Is not is...

August 26, 2006

Until further notice I will no longer be able to post new pictures or video, which is a complete shame because we were able to make it the Buddha today and I did get some new pictures and video. Instead you get this old picture of me and Yan, who took me to see the Buddha with Won, and then took me out for dumplings, fried pork and beer afterward.

It appears I am in need of a cleaning cassette that I probably won't be able to obtain until tomorrow or Monday at the latest, provided they have them. I ventured out this afternoon near closing time and stumbled into one electronics dealership that had cassettes, but not cleaning cassettes. This provoked a certain amount of confusion since I couldn't say anything useful in Chinese, and they couldn't understand anything I said in English, but we settled on the construction "is not is" ("it is but it isn't"), and that seemed to appease everybody.

mmm...

(can't a guy get a salad around here?)

Night of the Wen Zi

Stairway to the breakfast buffet

August 25, 2006

I was surprised to see my old friend President Shi at breakfast in the hotel restaurant this morning. I was in the midst of saying, "Excuse me, please may I ask...coffee?" when I heard a "Hi!" come at me from across the breakfast buffet table. I was happy about the timing and glad that he caught me in the middle of actually saying something, however mangled, in Chinese. I was tired from a long night of fighting off the wen zi (mosquitoes) that had invaded my peaceful slumbers. He recommended that I light a coil but I didn't know how to explain to him my long sordid history with mosquito coils and my reluctance to loose all that dark smoke in my room. It turns out he was there early to meet with Joon and we sat and talked briefly before I headed to class.

Class, it turns out, will continue though Sunday, until further notice. Barring rain, rumor has it that I will visit the largest Buddha image in Asia tomorrow.

Conversation 101

August 24, 2006

Today was my next to last day with my current class of middleschoolers, if the original arrangement for 14 days is still in effect. (Disclosure: I did not attend school the day of the Signing Ceremony, so my teaching streak ended at Day 10.) Nobody has mentioned anything, but we had class pictures a few days ago and they gave me the files today. My hosts are rather vague on a variety of topics.





I truly feel that I made headway with the students. The first day of class they were very quiet and shy, whereas today they were teaching me the Chinese words for things and drawing pictures of me wearing women's clothing on the blackboard.



This afternoon I made progress with my new plan to befriend the hotel staff and saddle them with my tremendous capacity for the mispronunciation of their ancient language. I may or may not have a promise from Chang Dong (Dong-Dong) to massacre his mother language more, at some point in the not too distant future.

Geological Processes

August 23, 2006

"Summer days will come, happiness will be mine."
- Beck

This morning in the elevator a girl boarded and literally froze in panic at the sight of me. It took her a few moments to compose herself, after which she asked me in Chinese if I was Amercian. I told her, in my best Mandarin, that yes, I am American. She gasped and reached out her hand. We shook hands and exited at the first floor, then she ran back into the elevator, having realized she missed her floor in all the excitement. Fans.

On my two-hour walk this afternoon it dawned on me that, like plate tectonics, sedimentation, and erosion, maybe my eventual comprehension of the Chinese language would be a geological process. Mountainous. Vast. Slow.

But one day...

Signing Ceremony

August 22, 2006

I didn't understand what they were saying either.



To my Chinese audience, I apologize for butchering the proceedings.

Correction (8/21/06 Post)

I'm relieved to find out that many Chinese do indeed have weekends. I will immediately put an end to my disinformation campaign.

(it appears my informant is suspect..)

We are many

August 21, 2006

It's official. In my exhaustive explorations of the city of Rong Cheng in the Shang Dong province of China, and after rigorous application of the scientific method, I can declare with complete confidence that there are loads of places to get your hair cut. There are a lot of heads here, I guess. I, personally, will not be getting my haircut any time soon, and certainly not by myself. Too many variables right now. I'm supposed to attend a signing ceremony tomorrow for the college where I'll begin teaching in a week or so. I imagine it will be my first time meeting many of the college's faculty, and I would prefer not to show up as the walking freakshow. At least not any more than I already am.

This afternoon I was reading my hotel room communication manual ("Communication Hotel") and it said that there is a gym on the 6th floor. This was news to me so I decided to check it out. To my dismay, the 6th floor contained nothing of the sort, but it did have a better view than the 4th floor. I encountered some maids and, through a variety of different methods, up to but not including drawing, asked if there was any way to get onto the roof. They all looked around nervously so I abandoned this line of questioning. Things are different here in China. I found out today that many Chinese don't have weekends. They work. Every. Single. Day. Except for two extended holidays each year. I was floored by this. No weekend. My mind reeled. I couldn't process this, no weekend.

The TV just said, "You remember that cold front from Mongolia two days ago..." Words I never thought I'd hear.

I proceeded to move out of their line of sight and walk up the next few flights of stairs to the roof. There were floors that the elevator didn't go to with fancy conference rooms behind locked doors. The door to the top floor was padlocked shut. No weekends, I thought. When do they not do anything? I opened a window and peered out at the rows of apartment buildings, filled with people not sleeping in.

No wonder they're not interested in my rooftop tomfoolery. They probably just want to get home at a decent hour.

In other China news, my fridge now works. I plugged it into a different outlet. That one only took me a week. And tonight I actually ordered food in Chinese and they brought me what I ordered. Exactly what I ordered. Beef and rice. I need to learn the words for vegetables.

Sunday morning cartoons

August 20, 2006

Last night, Joon and I went out to dinner. I found out that our Chinese hosts were adamant that he stay in country because there was a certain American who was coming to teach and Joon thinks they were sweating the language barrier. He had me in stitches describing how they would tell him he had to wait until some unspecified time in the future when this American would show. Obviously I'm the American. He found it absolutely hilarious that I'm having all of the same experiences that he did with the food, sleep, and overwhelming hospitality. As a matter of fact, I think he may have been relieved to hear that he's not alone. I know I am.

Today was Day 9 of my 14-day teach-a-thon. For class the students had requested that I show them and American cartoon. I was able to procure an episode of Spongebob Squarepants to their delight.



By the way, they are never this quiet.

Saturday afternoon scrapbook

August 19, 2006

Yesterday I walked North. Today I decided to walk East.



Boy with bike



Bicycles everywhere



Boy wearing pink karate garb



Man under bridge



New apartments under construction



House being torn down



Men at work



All of this rubble was cleared by the next day



Man watching daughter at play



Where cement apartment buildings give way to orange roofed houses



Man burning wood on the sidewalk



Martian lamp post



Down sidestreet



Corner store



Man praying on moped



Boys catching crabs

Working Street

August 18, 2006

Today after class I decided to take a long walk through Rong Cheng. It's something I've always liked to do in new places, walk. Just wander aimlessly. I walked down streets filled with bicycles on the sidewalks, streets filled with men playing dominoes on the sidewalk. On one street there were women painting white lines around trees. I walked around to the back of the power plant and saw all of the bicycles in that parking lot. I walked up to the border bewtween the paved and unpaved sectons of town, where cement apartment buildings give way to orange roofed houses lined up in identical rows. I walked down a street that looked like it only had furniture shops and smelled like dung, where whole families sat out on the sidewalk, shop after shop, talking and staring at me as I passed by. I walked into the shopping district where there were even more bicycles, standing four rows deep on the sidewalk, and school kids said hello to me in English.

It seems that there is an enormous reclamation project going on, where the very poor houses are being torn down and replaced with cement apartment buildings, and the old apartment buildings are being convereted into newer apartment buildings. And there are people, endless people, working, digging, sweating, tearing up sidewalks and replacing them with newer sidewalks. I don't feel comfortable taping them yet. Maybe later. The shopping district is a whole different story. I found my way back to Working Street for the first time. It's not as far from the hotel as I thought.

JiaJiaYue

August 16, 2006

I went to the supermarket by myself for the first time today to forage for some minor items, a wash cloth, snacks, fruits, yogurt, and anything else that might supplement my strange diet. I'm not completely sure, but I think the supermarket's name means House House Happy. I encountered the usual surprised stares, double-takes, and outright gawking as I perused the aisles. I'm the only Westerner I've seen in 10 days, so I can't even imagine how often they see us.

There was an interesting assortment of fruits and vegetables, not all things I was familiar with. I picked up some peaches and what I thought were white pears but turned out to be some kind of apple-like substance with passion fruit-like seeds and goop inside. I already have a loaf of bread in my fridge that has the consistency of cardboard and thought I could find some condiments to make it more palatable. I found some honey but opted out of the peanut butter because I wasn't sure which jar contained jelly, but I knew for certain that some of the jars in the vicinity contained hot pepper sauce because they had "Hot Pepper Sauce" written on the label. I was not, as you may have all hoped, actually able to read any Chinese. I picked up what I thought might be yogurt due to the container stye and the large strawberry on the side, and I opted for the Jieshen Bathing Towel, which is a glove that you put your hand in.



To give you an idea of how much things cost in China, 3 fake pears, 4 peaches, 8 yogurt drinks, a container of honey, and a hand glove towel cost 22 RMB, or just under US$3. This is what the supermarket sounds like on the inside as well (see below).

Weihai

August 14, 2006



After a less than stellar night's sleep, I looked forward to the end of class and returning to the Traffic Hotel to crash. At school that day, Mrs. Soon had taught me how to return missed calls on my cell phone. I still can't retrieve messages, which the blinking envelope assures me exist, but I can now return missed phone calls.

Yan dropped me off in the hotel back lot and I took the elevator up to the fourth floor. My phone started beeping in the hallway. Missed call. I called back and it was Patrick telling me that President Shi was taking us out to dinner in Weihai and that we would leave in a few hours. I had time enough to finish my next day's lessons before we left.



Weihai is home to one of China's national economic and technical development zones and was one of the earliest ports to open to foreign trade. Over 5 billion dollars pass through the city yearly and it shows. They're building everywhere. I've never see anything like it. You really get a feel for how quickly China is expanding. We stopped at a seaside park for a walk before dinner and I tried to explain to Patrick and Joon how large and new the city felt compared with American cities. They translated for the driver and kept walking.





President Shi was waiting for us outside of the restaurant where the wait staff was having its pre-dinner briefing.





Shi's wife and daughter were there as well and were unbelievably kind in welcoming Joon and myself to China. I'm often impressed by how attentive the Chinese are. Shi offered me the menu and told me to order some coffee. My little support network must have mentioned something.



I think word had gotten out that I wasn't thrilled with the hotel's food prep. I was a little slow on the uptake and didn't realize that this was a Western-style restaurant until the pizza, steaks and Bud came. Shi studied in the US for a year and said that he would drink beer and eat pizza with his host family. It never occurred to me how American that is until I was doing it in China.

Nice to meet you

No rest for the weary

August 14, 2006

The Traffic Hotel is busy these days. I put my weary head down on the pillow last night at 10 p.m. in search of elusive sleep, only to be awoken by the following, in this order:

- Phone call for massagee
- Mysterious beeping
- Anonymous banging on door
- Last minute packing nightmare
- Dawn