24 Hours of Travel for 24 Hours of Vacation

This is going to be the beast of all beastly entries. You have been warned.

7/21/08 7:54pm

After talking with various other Orbisters this weekend, this is the common consensus: we are fascinated by China and we are quite happy to be here teaching, but we don’t actually like China that much. The way of life is very different and really interesting to observe and partake in for this month, but I don’t have the same desire to immerse myself in it like I do with South American countries, European countries, etc.

Some friends this weekend gave me some Chinese proverbs that their Regional Coordinators (RC—ours is Helen) told them and they pinpoint what I don’t like about Chinese culture. The first proverb translates to “it is better to be crying from a BMW than smiling from a bicycle,” which I just cannot believe no matter how many times I hear it. The second proverb is “the tallest blade of grass gets cut first” (actually, there are many like this—for example, another one is “the bird who flies far from the flock gets shot first,” etc). I don’t think I need to elaborate much on what bothers me about these quotes. It’s fairly obvious… I don’t think they could clash with western thought any more.

Ok, on to details about this weekend. I’m actually going to start with the end of last Thursday, so this is bound to be quite a long post.

Anyway, I taught for two more hours on Thursday. For the last hour or so, the back of the classroom was flooded with parents. They had come in from the surrounding villages to pick up their children, but they got to the school early so they sat in the back and observed. We were discussing the Olympics and everyone had a really good time. The parents laughed along with us and it felt good—their laughter showed they approved of the style of my teaching and the dynamic of the class. We played a game for the last half hour, and when I finally dismissed the kids, they went screaming, laughing, and running out of the classroom. Only a few stopped to say goodbye. I was a little surprised… I was expecting tears (I know, way to toot my own horn), but I think they were all just really happy to see their parents and to go socialize. After I packed up my stuff I walked down to the second and first floors and saw everyone packing up their stuff, emptying their rooms, and heading out. (Packing up stuff means taking everything and shoving it into a really big plastic bag.) It was a lot harder and sadder for me than I thought it would be. Nothing incredibly intense, but it showed how much of a bond I felt with kids who I had only spent less than two weeks with. On my way out the front office, I high-fived every one of my students I saw and they were really enthusiastic about high-fiving back and gave me big smiles. It made me feel good. (As a side note, some of the kids actually left an hour early without saying goodbye. Their parents must have needed to get back sooner rather than later, so some of them just disappeared before the end without warning.)

The day before last we went on a little walk to a nearby park. Most of these girls were Rob's students.

At the end of the last day, I had all my kids go outside to line up for a class photo. That's Fanny, who was translating, on the right. She took one of me with the kids, too, but it didn't turn out as well. So yes, here's the whole gang.

Later that evening we went out for Helen’s birthday dinner. Rob and I beautified ourselves (I’ll take the liberty of saying that it was the first time we tried to look nice since being here) and took a taxi out to one of the nicest restaurants in Anyang. Helen’s boyfriend had rented out a private room, which was upstairs (the second floor was just a long hallway with private room after private room after private room). We had our own personal waitress who stood in our room in case we needed anything. It was me, Rob, Helen, Mark (Helen’s boyfriend), and four of her other friends. It was really nice. It was interesting to see what the etiquette is at a formal gathering like that and it was also nice to meet some of Helen’s other friends. The host is expected to pay for everyone (which Helen did, with the help of Mark—they kind of functioned as one unit), which rarely happens in the US with our age group. No one wants to take out all of their friends and pay for an incredibly expensive meal. Anyway, after the dinner (there was a ton, ton, ton of unbelievable food), we went to an arcade in the center of the city and played game after game after game. It was really fun. What was most interesting about the night was how different activities for kids in their early 20s are here versus in the west. We go to an arcade to play games in late middle school and high school, but don’t tend to go crazy there in college like we did in eighth grade. But here I think kids have less freedom, so they are doing the activities now that I did awhile ago. It was, like I said, really interesting to consider. At any rate, I had a nice time.

We came back and went to bed. I was so, so happy to have a morning to sleep in.

Ha. Sleep in? Helen and I were rudely awakened at 7:30am to the headmaster banging on our door. Helen had to jump out of bed, throw on clothes, and go out and talk to him. I stayed in the room, but I spent awhile imaging what it would be like to go hit the headmaster as hard as I possibly could. It was very satisfying. The headmaster had decided to pay us one of his obnoxious visits because he wanted us to leave the hotel. We were going to Xi’an for the weekend and he did not want to pay for days that we were not going to be here. He wanted us to get up, where he said we could rest at the school. Rob and I were both in sleep clothes, hadn’t showered, hadn’t packed, and were just generally pissed that his highness had the audacity to come bother us on the one morning we had to ourselves. Helen and the landlady argued against the headmaster (I love the landlady, more on that later), and he finally slammed money for the weekend down on the table and stormed off. See, technically he’s supposed to pay for Helen’s room and board, too, so he can’t just send her off when we’re not around. Also, there was no guarantee that there would be a room when we got back. He was trying to save money, but in reality had we left this popular hostel/hotel thingie, the headmaster would likely have spent more money finding fancier accommodations and having to feed us, etc, when we got back. He is easily one of the most inefficient, daft people I have met in my life. After he left, the landlady came in our room and gossiped with us (well, really with Helen) for awhile. She stressed that not all Chinese are as rude as the headmaster, and she told us she wanted us to have dinner with her sometime. She’s wonderful. She also offered to do our laundry and is always doing extra things here and there to look after us. She could not be nicer and, considering that all I can say to her is “hello,” “thank you,” and “goodbye,” I have grown surprisingly attached to her.

Later in the day, we went to the bus station and headed off on the 3.5 hour journey to Zhengzhou. I really liked it. It felt different, it felt new, and it felt like adventure. I looked out the window at the fields and villages the whole time. I noticed that the highways are always incredibly empty. The only vehicles on them are a few busses, a few trucks, and only a tiny smattering of cars here and there. Most people do not own cars, so they can’t travel between cities by themselves. And most people, even the ones who own cars, probably don’t travel much, anyway. So that leaves public transportation for the most part. It’s so different from the US, where the highways are packed with people going to work or going on vacation. But here in good old northern Henan province, people seem to stay in the same place and when they do rarely go somewhere else, they take public transportation. The highway is kind of like a railway track, almost—really only meant for buses.

We met everyone in Zhengzhou (in front of the KFC; Rob was thrilled) and headed off to the train station (it’s across from the bus station) to catch our night train to Xi’an. It was really good to see everyone, actually—even better than I thought it could be. I talked with a lot of different people who I hadn’t really gotten the chance to sit down and chat with before and I like pretty much everyone I talked to. Because we’re all teaching in different places (some more remote than others), we had tons of things to talk about and experiences to compare. Rob and I definitely have one of the most hardcore assignments. The other intense group are the ones in Nanyang (don’t be misled by the name… one letter difference from Anyang, but 8 hours between us), who are living in the school and use the school’s trench toilets as their own toilets. I was impressed with them.

Moving on. The night train was actually really nice. Some people stayed up to drink, but I decided to sleep (shocking, I know, Emma passing up the chance to drink to do what’s practical). The beds were stacked in threes; I was put on the bottom because of my ankle. Hank, on of the Orbis leaders, came around to tell us that we had better not miss the stop in Xi’an (7 hours away), because the next stop after that was Kazakhstan, which was another 8 hours. That freaked me out. My over-active imagination pictured me by myself, getting of the train in Kazakhstan, totally and utterly screwed.

After whispering with one of the Irish girls for awhile about our experiences (she was the one who told me the BMW/bicycle quotation), I went to sleep. A few hours later, I got woken up by a fairly intoxicated Rob (he was sleeping in the bed above me) who was babbling on about how drunk they had gotten Hank and how I needed to wake him (Rob) before Xi’an to make sure he didn’t wind up in Kazakhstan. After that, it was hard for me to sleep. I didn’t know when the train would get to Xi’an (I didn’t know exactly how long the ride was and I didn’t know exactly when we had left) and I wasn’t sure if a hammered Hank would remember to wake all of us up (we were scattered all over in different cars) to get off at Xi’an. But, luckily, Hank came staggering to all of our beds with about 10 minutes notice to get off the train. We all made it to Xi’an.

We got off the train at 7am (ish) and headed to the hotel, where we had breakfast and checked in. At 9am, we left for a day of tourism. It was really nice to have a break, be in a place with a decent amount of westerners, and just have the day to be tourists. I know we’re really tourists here anyway, but it was a day with no teaching, no real responsibility… just a day to hang out and have fun.

So. The terracotta warriors. Definitely worth seeing, definitely impressive, but not as impressive as I thought they would be. It makes me sound kind of stuck up to say that. I certainly wasn’t disappointed, I just wasn’t as in awe as I thought I would be. I imagined us walking through caves or being right down alongside the soldiers or something, but the museum is set up so that you can look down into the pits from above. Still cool, but yeah… for whatever reason, I wasn’t as wowed as I was expecting.

View down into the main pit.

In the first pit (it was easily the most impressive) with, from left to right, Danielle (American), Michelle (Irish), me, and Samantha (American).

Orbis treated us really well, though. We had a tour guide and a tour bus for the day. After the warriors, we went to the famous Pagoda in Xi’an, followed by the Muslim Market, which is a market in the older part of the city (within the old city walls) that sells the kind of touristy trinket stuff we had all been looking for (considering there are no tourists in Anyang, it’s kind of difficult to find that sort of thing). Both activities were fun and worthwhile, although I need some practice on my bargaining. I think I’m actually pretty good, but I always leave thinking I could have paid even less. It’s a moral battle, though… for example, I paid 100Y for two very beautiful bracelets. That’s about $15ish. After the fact, I decided I could have probably paid about 60Y and still have gotten away with it. But the thing is, that’s really not that much money for me, whereas for the vendor it makes a world of difference. So does it matter that much? I suppose it’s the principle of the matter—I don’t like getting ripped off—but part of me thinks I shouldn’t care because paying 40Y more is hardly getting ripped off… it’s a $5 difference. That’s $2.50 a bracelet. Ok, a few dollars.

Walking around the Pagoda with Mitch and Molly.

The kids who are in Luoyang are kind of in a bubble compared to everyone else. There are 10 of them there and they have been with Daniel, one of the Orbis leaders, who has helped them get around. They actually didn’t even have to take the bus to Zhengzhou—the train went through Luoyang on the way to and from Xi’an, so they just got on and off there. In many ways, their experience has been much cushier than anyone else’s. I would think it would make me jealous that they got the supposed good end of the deal, but in reality I’m quite happy that I got put in one of the more “remote” locations. I am experiencing China in an authentic, independent, real way. I don’t have a bubble of western comfort with me wherever I go and I live in a city with people who have never seen a foreigner before. The conditions are worse (ha, some of the other teachers have just been watching DVDs over their multimedia systems in the classroom), but being here is real and unsheltered in a way I have never experienced before (ok, still sheltered, we do have Helen handy whenever we need her, but it’s all relative). Rob’s different—he would rather be in the big group because evenings are a bit more fun that way (to say the least)—but there you have it. That’s my opinion.

We had some free time in the afternoon and evening to do what we wanted. Everyone else arranged to go out to a club together. I roomed with a new friend, Sam from Colorado, and we decided to spend the evening doing our own thing. She is also vegetarian and she also doesn’t really drink, so we were in the same boat. Our tour guide told us about a water show in front of the pagoda at night, so we decided to go there. We went out on the town, just the two of us, and I had a really excellent time. We got the tour guide to write down everything we would need for the cabs in Chinese, and we were off. We found a place to eat dinner by the pagoda, where we pointed to the items we wanted (the menu had pictures), but a girl sitting at another table came over to us and told us she was studying English in school and helped us decide what to eat. Picking out what to eat in these restaurants is always stressful because the waitresses hover over you until you have made a decision. They try to point out things to help, but it really only makes the situation more chaotic. We were under pressure to pick what we wanted, and the young girl who came over really helped. She clearly wanted a chance to practice her English. She was incredibly nice and kept looking over and smiling to us for the rest of the time she was there.

After, we headed over to the pagoda. The water show was incredible. It felt like the fireworks show in Disneyworld, except with water and lights and, um, an incredibly old building and not a fake castle (that’s fine American culture, for you). I could babble on like I’m babbling on about everything else, but I’ll just use the picture to illustrate instead.

It was really fantastic.

After the show, we walked around. There were some vendors selling things and we meandered around for awhile before heading back to the hotel. The hotel that Orbis booked us in was completely luxurious, so we checked in early for the night. Our entire evening out cost each of us 22Y. Yeah, that’s roughly $3… Anyway, we were both exhausted from the journey and were happy to be back at the hotel. When I turned on the faucet, the water reeked of rotten egg. Turns out the water is from a hot spring, which stunk up everything pretty quickly, but it’s probably much more sanitary than the toxic water that normally runs through the pipes. Also, the water pressure in the shower was completely blissful. I don’t think I have felt that clean since before I got my cast on. It was marvelous. And the sheets! They were so soft! These details probably bore you, but I cannot stress enough how wonderful the hotel felt after two weeks in our little room in Anyang. Not to say the accommodations here are bad… the standards are just really different. Like, at home that hotel would probably be just slightly above average. The bathroom looked a little bit like some of the bathrooms I’ve seen in Collegetown in Ithaca. But hey, it’s all relative. And to us, it was palatial.

The next morning we awoke at 6am to eat and make it to the train station to catch our train back to Zhengzhou. Lots of people weren’t up in time from a night out (my fellow Anyang-er included), so we waited in the tour bus for a long time. We were supposed to leave the hotel at 7am, but we didn’t leave until 7:40. It was stressful. They told us when we got to the station, we should be ready to run. I can’t run, not in this boot. And the train station is hell—stairs up, stairs down, narrow walkways, etc. Not handicap friendly, that’s for sure. I need help everywhere and I have no way of catching up to the group if I get behind. Luckily, my power walking skills were adequate and I was still faster than most, considering they were pretty hungover. Sam helped me up and down the stairs (I always need a hand) and we made it. It wasn’t like the train we took to Xi’an—we got down to the t racks and we had to race past 20 or 30 cars to get to the one we needed, which was a nightmare for me—instead, our car was the one right next to the stairs, which was a nice treat. So we took the train back to Zhengzhou, where I chatted away with a variety of people. Well, the ones who were awake. It was really enjoyable. And the bathrooms are just holes in the floor. You can see the tracks. It was fun.

Orla and Michelle, two of my new Irish friends. I spent awhile talking to both of them on the train. It was a good time.

Back in Zhengzhou, Hank took us to help us buy bus tickets. We were there around 3pm, but we all decided to get later bus tickets to give us time to go get a late lunch/early dinner together in Zhengzhou. We went to a noodle place and then Rob and I bid farewell to everyone, got in the taxi back to the bus station, and got on the bus headed to Anyang. We got the nicest buses—air conditioning, comfy seats, the whole shebang—and it was 66Y apiece. That’s $9.50 apiece for a 3.5 hour bus ride. Wouldn’t it be nice if going from Ithaca to NYC was the same way?

We got back safely and took a taxi back to our hotel, where Helen was waiting for us. I organized some lesson plans for the start of session two and then crashed pretty quickly.

And that was the weekend, in a nutshell. In a really long-winded nutshell. I have more to say about today and Session Two, but I think I’ll save that for another time.