Hmmm... I had beef last night; tonight I'm more in a baby mood.

Stranger than Fiction

After my first class I make my way to the men’s room. As I walk in and am heading towards the far urinal I see one of my students, Hardaway, squatting (most places there are not actual toilets, just troughs) and going number two with the stall door wide open while smoking a cigarette. I snap my head back on plane and continue my saunter with disturbing detachment. This is not the first time this has happened. It must be 9:00am Wednesday morning.TMI? Maybe. Truthful? Brutally.

Baozi you are a fickle mistress

One of the great perks of the program that I have gone through to place me here is that Monday through Friday lunch and dinner are provided to us by a cook who lives on site. This is so awesome; however, it leaves us to the winds of culinary fortune for breakfast. For me this usually means baozi. Baozi are basically big dumpling creations. My flavors of choice – cabbage, and pork. 

I order my baozi from the same stand every morning.  “The baozi lady” with time has become a close personal friend of mine, but this was not always so. Chinese as most of you may know is not the easiest language to use. I often believe I am saying the word correctly, but due to tonal differences I am not. The result can be a frustrating linguistic game of who’s on first. When ordering the baozi such scenarios have played out all too often. “ro de he baicai” I order. What sounds like a bunch of garbled fast Chinese is the response I receive which the general gist of I believe to be, “what the hell did you just say? You sound like you’re choking, having a seizure, and talking all at the same time. Please tell me you are not trying to pass that as Chinese.” Ah, its raining and there is a line behind me. “Hao, hao, hao, hao” I eventually submit. This is basically like saying, “okay, okay, okay, okay”, the repetition is key. I just need something to eat before I miss my bus. Time to play scratch off lotto.

First baozi, so far so good, pork. Second, okay, the leafy green spinach deal. What I want to avoid at all cost is the bean paste baozi, the mail bomb disguised as a gift package from your grandmother. Bean paste is the ultimate Trojan horse of food substances. For it knows it is sweet, but harsh, and has a generally disagreeable texture and thus needs to be hidden in whatever food it seeks refuge. Bean paste is a cunning foe. I bite into the third baozi.

No, it can’t be. AHHHH, bean paste! I feel like some infamous military commander who has made a tactical blunder and in doing so sent thousands of my own men into certain doom. Charge or the Light Brigade. Gallipoli all over. Except its my own taste buds that I have let down. I am Colonel Kurtz from Apocolypse Now, “The horror, the horror.” This is not how you want to start your day. The good news it that I have now made it clear with my close friend and confidant “the baozi lady” which my two flavors of choice are and that these days of playing Russian roulette first thing in the morning are over.

Good thing I got my shots...

Not in Kansas Anymore

Humor. The overwhelming probability of humor is what awaits me every time that I leave my apartment in China. Sometimes I don’t even have to go that far. In our apartments at the new campus (yes, I have two apartments, don’t worry about it) one of my fellow teachers noticed that in between the potato setting and the beef setting on the microwave was a setting that read “baby.” These horrifyingly poor translations give me such joy in my day to day life. If I could just find the magnanimous soul slaving away in a factory unknowingly churning out little nuggets of comedy and thank them. In the hotel that I stayed in during our orientation in Shanghai there was a row of buttons which controlled corresponding lights. From right to left: desk light, pilot lamp, night light, and finally on the far left small pox. How did this happen? This was a very nice hotel. How could they butcher this so badly? And they were doing so well on the other light translations. I mean I thank God that they did mess this up because I have laughed a lot about it, but jeez guys.

 I posted a picture earlier of my Mr. Bond coffee drink which reads at the bottom “I’m young… I’m coffee.” If you say so Mr. Bond. That statement really reflects the difference in the way our two cultures perceive the world. I cannot say for sure and for certain what the coffee makers are exactly trying to project about their product, but do old people not like coffee too?

Another point of humor is my student’s names, their English names. Because I teach mostly sophomores they all already have English names. Some are reasonable – Jessica, Tim, Sam, Roger, Alisa. Others…. Precious (a guy), Corpse, Monkey, Sweet, Gentle, Banana, Panda. Take a moment by yourself and put yourself in my shoes. You are taking attendance. “Roger?” “Here” Jessica?” “Here” “Monkey?”… it is very hard not to laugh every time. It has not gotten any easier. “Um, excuse me you there in the back, Monkey. Do you know the answer to number four?” These are phrases I never dreamed that I would be saying. All of my teachers along the way would be proud. Well that Wes he was just always going to do something big and important. I can’t even take myself seriously when asking Monkey if he knows the answer.

The Banquette

This past Monday night we had our banquet. Most host schools have a banquet at the start of the year to honor their foreign teachers. It was absurd. I know that this is a word that I use a lot but it most accurately describes so many of my experiences here. Here is the whole concept. They get a bunch of liquor called by-joe(in English phonetics) and just take a ton of shots to honor each guest. The communist party secretary, Secretary Nan, was the ring leader and ultimately the drunkest one there. He went around and had a word and shot with each teacher, but in order for him to get better bang for his buck he would make whomever he was talking to take several shots before he took the one with them. It did not end with one round. 

Other Chinese teachers started toasting us as well. I cannot overstate how into this Secretary Nan was. Using someone as a translator he made several speeches, most of which were on the benefits of becoming a raging alcoholic. He made his strongest argument while asking us, “Do you want to be happy? Do you want to be wealthy? Do you want to be pleasant? Do you want to be good-looking?... Then drink By-Joe.” Point to Secretary Nan. Who doesn’t want to be pleasant? 

All of the Chinese teachers were on board with this circus of a meal. I mean they are likes sharks with blood in the water. If they see weakness they go for the kill. One of my colleagues from Michigan who admittedly doesn’t drink very much was really having a hard time with this hazing, but that only made them want to see him drink more. He was very reluctant to which they would say, ”Just do your best!”, offering him no real out at all. What does that even mean? Take the shot, and do your best to make it to the bathroom?

Another point of interest was how the Chinese “liquid” compared to American “liquid.” All things considered I would have to say that by-joe tastes like tequila, vodka, and cotton candy strained threw a gym sock. It is raw. In the end the banquet was a lot of fun, a huge source of entertainment, and a very kind gesture.

My morning drink of choice.... I was sold after I read their mantra

Office Hours

This past Tuesday night I had my first office hours with the freshman. Their classes still haven’t started yet because they are required to complete some form of military training which I know little about.  This, however, did not stop them from coming out in droves to the foreign English teacher’s office hours. As I and the other 6 American teachers arrived I could tell there was energy and excitement in the air. It was palpable. As we all waited together in the hallway for room assignments one of the other veteran teachers was noticeably anxious. When asked if she would go in the near room full of freshman students, she quickly replied, “No, no, they will try to make me dance or something.” The man assigning apparent social death sentences in the form of assigned rooms turned to me and asked if I would take the room. I said sure. On the inside I was thinking, “Nobody makes Wes Proctor make a fool of himself by dancing except Wes Proctor… I fear no freshman.” Without hesitation or further discussion I simply opened the door and took a step inside as I would any other room. Then it hit me, the most raucous, thunderous, enthusiastic applause that I have ever experienced.

This was the unexpected that I did not expect. I waded through this absurd and unwarranted praise up to the podium. I turned to them with what I can only imagined looked like the stupidest grin on my face. If the situation could have provided I would have walked back out and taken a minute to laugh and say “What the heck was that about?!” But as it was I just stood dumbfounded facing my admirers. I guess most of them had never actually had an encounter with an American before which is weird to think about, not that it should be either.  Anyway, the whole experience was ridiculous.

 I learned that they viewed office hours as foreigners on display, and there are three things that they want more than anything: to see us dance, to hear us sing, and to hear us speak Chinese. I spoke some Chinese for them which I could tell was a real treat. Then, I was very clear that there would be no dancing, and I thought that I was clear that I would not sing, but they are crafty. They tried in several different ways. First, “Will you sing for us?” Second “Ummm, we are all here and there is not a lot to talk about, so umm it would be okay for you to sing” and finally an approach that had reluctant success, “Do you know the words to jingle bells?” I indulged them and was met with an applause that equaled my arrival’s. After a very long two hours my freedom was restored. Next time I will bring a Michael Jackson DVD dubbed over by an American translating.

This green icon indicates that I should do The Jitterbug and or The Charleston in double quick time... in the middle of the street

Crossing the Street

Because I don’t think, I know, that if I drove in China something terrible would happen I do a lot of walking. Part of walking is crossing the street to the shore of the next block. This seemingly pedestrian task (all puns intended) is what separates the men from the boys and the locals from the foreigners. The sheer amount of mopeds and bicycles here is astounding. This creates two rivers on every street, one on each side, the middle is reserved for things of four wheels or more.

My first strategy in crossing the street is to just pick an Asian that appears to have positioned themselves in a manner that would suggest that they too want to risk life and limb to want to walk on the greener pastures of concrete of the next block, and I follow them; however, this is not always an option. These scenarios are what I like to call game time. It starts with one step. Obviously I wait till it is the appropriate red light setting to minimize car risk; unfortunately, all traffic laws are NOT laws but suggestions (I have seen people in the face of a traffic jam drive into on-coming traffic of the freeway, seriously). Usually I wait till the nearer stream of two-wheeled things is ebbing not flowing. Once I clear that I am practically half way there, half way to the next block where my pirated DVDs await.

Things I have learned through this process: you will most certainly have to alter the course of the stream of bikes on the far side, and under no circumstances do you make eye contact with these people unless you are ready to dance and maybe make that person wreck. The trick is to pick a line, keep your head down, and keep a steady pace because once you do this the oncoming bikes know that they will go around you but if you make eye contact with them it is like meeting somebody in a hallway. You start to go one way around them and they simultaneously are correcting in the same manner and you both end up looking stupid because you look like you’re trying to juke the other out and carry a football past them for a score; Except it’s not like that at all because there are fast moving metal vehicles that depend on balance involved. Thing number two that I have learned: don’t get distracted by the Chinese version of a crosswalk go and stop icon. In America we have a green person midstride that lights up when its time to walk. Here it is a green person that moves. I can only assume they are intended to look like they are walking, but they don’t. They look like they have just lost all composure and are doing an Irish jig in the middle of the street.

If you don’t get stalled by laughter in the middle of the street by this image, and you take a walk of faith through mopeds, one should make it to the promise land. “What if you have to walk more than one block?” you may ask. Then I would pray… or just get a cab.

Onward and Upward

Zhengzhou is great. Everyone has been very helpful as well as friendly. I have started teaching which is somewhat of a relief. I didn’t think I would be too bad at it, and I’m not, but I also have a lot to learn as a teacher. So many things that I have experienced in China have been based on contradictions either overtly or subtly. This can be both good and bad (another contradiction). Last weekend we went to a Chinese amusement park. If this sounds like it would be marvelous in its absurdity, you would be correct. Why wouldn’t they have dinosaur advertisements on the outside and once you’re inside invite you to ride ostriches?