Pictures from Xining

Been doing some exploring around this little town of more than a million ... We spent an afternoon at People's Park, which is kind of like a Disneyland that encourages alcoholic consumption. We were looking for a zoo that was reported to be in the park, but - after a harrowing ride on a children's train that went all around the park, a ride that has clearly not been checked for safety compliance in the last half-century - all we could find was a circus tent with pictures of kangaroos boxing. Skipped that.

We emerged from the park into what I can only describe as Puppy Alley. Row upon row of cages piled with puppies off all kinds and colors and sizes. Apparently, the puppies are often dyed into more desirable colors with harsh chemicals, so they often expire very quickly after you bring them home. To make them more sellable, they're perked up with cough medicine before being taken to the market so they'll be active and playful.

But I'll be honest, I was a whisker away from coming home with a puppy that day. I mean, look at the way that little guy at the bottom was looking at me!

We've been having all kinds of culinary adventures, as well. The other day, we were wandering through a food market and stopped in one stall to try a bowl of soup that looked particularly tasty. Looks can be deceiving, though: It tasted a little off, and had these rubbery hunks of meat bobbing around in it. Later, we looked it up, and discovered we had just had our first bowl of ox entrail soup.

I've been on a mission to get some good photos of the baby split-pants (which is harder than it sounds; it's kind of delicate business snapping photos of other people's kids' bare bottoms), mostly so that Kim can see for herself what little Anthony can expect in his stocking this year :) Anyway, this is the best I've been able to get so far -------->

Beth and I been doing our best to stay out of trouble, at least until the government finally issues us our legal residence papers. The other night, though, we left the Internet cafe late and - perhaps unwisely influenced by the bottle of wine that we split (and by wine, I mean grape juice and vinegar) - we figured we'd take what we were sure was a shortcut, down a street of brothels, and then climbing a fence that we thought would land us directly on our campus. It didn't. As we were scrambling back over the high iron fence, trying to keep out of sight of the guard shack (at first we wrapped our scarves around our heads as a disguise, in case there were cameras, but then I figured given the large number of Muslims in the city, we might ignite race riots if there really was someone watching) Beth envisioned the potential headlines: "Two American teachers shot for breaking and entering ..."

Well, sure, but if one of us survives, think of the blog entry fodder, I pointed out.

You can take your red rubber stamp and ...

I have filled out their documents in triplicate and quadruplicate. I have affixed at least a dozen small, unflattering photos of myself to various forms. I have made an estimated 999 photocopies of my passport to submit to various bureaus whose authority I couldn't even begin to guess at. I have registered at the local police station to get the appropriate red rubber stamps to take to the provincial government to get the proper red rubber stamps to register with the Foreign Experts Bureau (yes, I am a Foreign Expert, OK? Quit the snickering) to get my residence card, which I will then take back to the government and the police to prove something or other. I have been warned repeatedly that screwing up any step in this process, even inadvertently, will mean I am not legal. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but it's been repeated so often and in such ominous tones that I gather it's not something I want to discover.

We met the Dean of something or other today, and he gave us our teaching schedules (and yes, I believe there was a red rubber stamp on that as well). Despite being assured that we wouldn't have any writing classes, we were assigned writing classes. We pointed out that we hadn't prepared for that. "I think ..." the Dean said, touching his steepled fingers to his lips and gazing up at the ceiling. "It is OK." Oh. Hard to argue with that.

Unfortunately, the apparent cosmic okay-ness did not last through the day. I got another red rubber-stamped document from the university to take down to the China Telecom office, hoping to finally get my Internet set up. An hour later, as the Telecom guy was still frowning at his computer, my passport and University letter clutched in his hand, I asked the student assigned to help with this task if everything was OK. He smiled encouragingly. "I don't think so," he whispered back. Much later, I was told that it wasn't working today. What exactly wasn't working (his computer? his frickfrackety red rubber stamp? the whole Internet?) was never made clear. They promised to call me whenever it was working, though. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe not.

When I got home, I discovered that my phone service had been disconnected. Ha! Joke's gonna be on them when they try to call to tell me my Internet is working!

OK, so all this sounds like a preamble to another "I hate China" lament. It's not! I absolutely love Xining. The weather is great. The people are great. The food is fantastic (don't worry, I
found another baozi lady). My apartment is ... well, special. There's no shower, or water in the bathroom sink; I've been scrubbing the kitchen for days with chemicals so intense my hands started peeling 15 minutes after I first started using them and there are still several layers of grime to get through; my bed is essentially a mattress pad on a board; and, most irritating, the pictures of cartoon dogs that someone has glued to all the windows are nigh on impossible to scrape off. BUT, there are no cockroaches, and no special room filled with yak dung (that's how one of my fellow vols is expected to keep warm this winter: burning his supply of yak dung in the stove. He also has to pay $1 every time he wants a shower, which is located down the street and shared by the rest of the village). So I'm not complaining.

I'll post photos of my apartment as soon as I get the place presentable.

Goodbye Nanjing

Heading to Xining today! So looking forward to finally meeting my pet yak. I think I'm going to call him Fred.


Just said goodbye to my "Dracula"-reading roommate, Lydia (who declared the other night when I caught a falling shot glass that was knocked off the table: 'You've got the reflexes of a vampire!'). She is headed to Guangzhou to work at a school that prepares handicapped kids for careers. Seems like a great program, and I'm definitely hoping to make it down there for a visit.

She went with me yesterday to the clinic, possibly my last chance at reliable Western medicine, to finish up my shots. (That's right! Who's proud of me?) I was afraid if I went alone I might disappear into the black hole of the Chinese quarantine, and never be heard from again. But although they made us both pass the fever gun test before they'd even talk to me, I eventually emerged unscathed, and inoculated against all kinds of disagreeable ailments. Except rabies. And the Plague. And Japanese encephalitis.

This morning, we said goodbye to the people we've come to know and love. The always-helpful girls at McDonald's who give us our morning coffee. The wizened old man who sits on the corner and plays a pretty mean tune on a makeshift fiddle, and who always has a big smile for me -- even before I put money in his bucket, I might point out.

But chiefly: my baozi lady. Baozis are steamed buns stuffed with all different kinds of delicious goodness: Meat, or shredded turnip, or noodles, or red bean paste. Our relationship (mine and the baozi lady's) was a little constrained at first, limited by the deep cultural and language divide to a largely point-and-pantomime kind of kinship. Still, the bond was there. I never really knew what filling I was going to end up with, but I visited her shop every day, sometimes twice, and our friendship really blossomed last week when I was finally able to say "Excuse me, please, do you have pork buns today?" And she smiled -- not in a crass, overt way, of course, but on the inside, where it counts -- and handed me a pork bun.

Apparently, a few years back some scandal-mongering journalist levied some trumped up charges that many baozi makers were supplementing the fillings with as much as 60 percent cardboard. Much to Lydia's amusement (she wrote a blog entry on it), I choose to side with the Chinese government on this one. They promptly arrested the journalist, declared his story to be fabricated, and I'm pretty sure no one's heard from him since.

Alright, I'm off. The next time you hear from me, it'll be from high up in the Himalayas.

Opera ... or cats being strangled? You decide.

(Update: audio should work now)


I went to the "opera" last week, and was, frankly, struck speechless. I should have been prepared, of course, given all the other ear-splitting charms of this country. (Example: the fingernails-on-chalkboard squeal of two dozen defunct bike brakes at once, followed by a veritable symphony of horns from drivers irked by the mere whisper of the thought that they might have to oh-so-slightly brush their brakes to avoid carnage. But I digress.)

At first, I thought it must be a joke. Or a comedy act to warm up the crowd. But the screeching continued, and nobody was laughing.

I finally managed to upload a (very bad) audio clip so you all can hear for yourselves. It really doesn't do it justice, but it does begin to hint at the musical travesty that is Chinese opera.

And then along came Typhoon Morakot ...

Sigh ... China = still kicking my ass.

Swine flu is sooo yesterday's news (no, really. yesterday.)

In case anyone was staying up nights all anxious with worry about the outbreak of The Plague in my province, I just wanted to put your minds at ease. The plague town has been sealed off, and there are no reports that it has spread to Xining. Also, I plan to steer clear of eating marmots, which is how the outbreak apparently began, so no worries there.

We got an email this morning from one of the former vols that train and bus travel to Xining is restricted, but flights are fine (I have a flight). She said the only impact she knows of is one traveler who managed to escape Ziketan before the quarantine, and the government tracked her down to her hostel in Xining and hauled her off to isolation in another province. Go Big Red!

On an even more humorous front, I wanted to share our swine flu story! The girl who is going with me to Xining had been sick for a few days, so she went to the hospital. The docs prescribed some stuff for her stomach, told her to wait a few minutes while they filled her prescription ... When no one had returned an hour later, she discovered that the entire clinic had been evacuated. Before long, a team of CDC workers in full hazmat suits showed up to swab her for the H1N1 test. About 12 hours of quarantine later -- while we waited to find out whether the rest of the group was going to be quarantined as well -- the test came back negative, of course (she just had the usual traveler's sickness), and she was released around 11 p.m.

That's about all for today's report from the other side of the world.

I suspected as much ...

Symptoms of Cultural Fatigue
A handy checklist

1. Withdrawal. (Hmm. Does not leaving your seventh-floor dorm room except to buy dumplings off the street count? I'm going to say yes.)
2. Diminished goodwill toward Chinese, and a tendency to generalize about China based on a few incidents. (Oh, check and check.)
3. Irritability. (Well, hell. It looks like I may have been experiencing cultural fatigue since I was about 8.)
   

This is all by way of admitting that I went to McDonald's today and ordered an Egg McMuffin. So sue me. It was delicious.

delicious! --------->

So far, China is kicking my ass

I embrace cultural differences. Really, I do. I detest people who disdain an entire country based on something as trivial as, say, an (admittedly somewhat unfathomable) fondness for squat toilets. Or an affinity for mystery meats of extremely dubious origin.

But then there's these homicidal taxi drivers whose philosophy of the road eschews that hackneyed old "one lane per car" rule in favor of a much more progressive "the road is my oyster (including the lanes for oncoming traffic)" system. I'm especially impressed by their refusal to view pedestrians and bicyclists as obstacles that should be avoided, but rather as opportunities to combat the overpopulation problem.

And these inexplicable "split pants" for babies. I don't want to be a cultural imperialist, but what's wrong with a diaper? I understand that allowing infants to roam around urinating and defecating freely through a giant slit in their pants -- on the sidewalk, the metro and in stores -- really cuts down on diaper rash. I just wonder if that perk really outweighs the attendant public health concerns.

Which brings me to my so-far least-favorite little cultural quirk: the spitting. The daintiest of old ladies produce these great hacking, hocking, snorting giant wads of mucus, complete with intense sound effects, and spray the street, sidewalk, railings or, you know, my shoulder with the fallout.

I might, maybe, just possibly be experiencing culture shock. I'm not positive, though -- I'll have to double check the handy chart entitled "How to know if you're in culture shock" that they gave us at orientation and get back to you.

A pox on the Great Firewall of China!

So, a few planes, trains and automobiles (not to mention one very sketchy night with all 11 of us in one tiny hostel room) later, I'm here. No quarantine for us. The entire plane seemed to be full of hacking, hocking passengers in severe respiratory distress, but luckily the lady at the fever scanning machine seemed to be asleep at the wheel.

So I'm in Nanjing, land of the grumpy taxi drivers, taking classes in Chinese for the next two weeks. So far, the highlight of my trip has been eating these crazy dumplings that have soup inside them (genius, right?) and conquering the frick-frackety Great Firewall (take that, my censorious red compatriots). Apparently blogger.com is blocked in China as well as facebook and pretty much every other site by which you might communicate with the outside world. Bastards.

Goodbye Chiang Mai!

Headed for Nanjing in a few hours, and I'm trying to get used to the fact that life as I've come to know it at the good old YMCA is about to get turned on it's head. Again.

Very excited about what's to come, but also very very sad to leave these girls! When y'all get tired of balmy tropical weather, come visit me and my yak coat up in the Himalayas.