All things Chinese

There are things that I love about life in China and things that I loathe. I love that no one can get angry at me when I do something wrong because I am a foreigner. I went to the train station to buy a ticket to Beijing. There were over 50 people in line. I walked up to the counter, shoved my elbow in front of someone (I learned about this technique in Israel, the only people just as rude as the Chinese), and promptly bought my ticket.
I loathe the pollution. Even during the windy days in Shijiazhuang, it is impossible to see that the sky is blue. You look up and all you see is brown-grey haze.
I love going home for a warm lunch every day. I wish that my break was a bit longer so that I could take a nap, but this works for me.
I loathe that people smoke everywhere. Today, there was a man smoking in the elevator. Gross.
I love the way they eat. It's not just the chopsticks, but the communal dishes that everyone plucks their food from. Each person usually has a dish of rice or rice porridge or soup of some sort, but then there are always 4 or 5 dishes that you eat out of during the meal. You can tell this is a first come first serve culture.
I loathe the over population. This makes everything incredibly difficult, from riding your bike on the streets, to finding a spot to park your bike, to getting a decent table at a restaurant, to finding a seat on the train. I don't think I've been anywhere in my travels where on every city block there is some sort of public school (elementary, junior middle, or senior middle school).
On the topic of food, I love the many varieties of tofu that are available. I think since I arrived, I've had at least 12 different preparations of one of my favorite foods. Today, it was in a soup with ginger, parsley and green onions. Unlike miso soup, tofu was the central ingredient. Amazing.

My life in Shijiazhuang

It's been almost three weeks since I first landed in China. I was set up with my host family, who is great! My teacher, Dong, he goes by Tom, is also wonderful. I wake up every morning around 7:30am, sometimes earlier if my 3 year-old Chinese brother is up early and crying about going to preschool. He is very sweet, but as he is only a toddler, he throws temper tantrums quite frequently. My family provides me three square meals a day, and breakfast usually starts out with a hanbao (chinese hamburger - usually just eggs and onions) and a bowl of milk. Then I take the elevator downstairs from their apartment on the 22nd floor. I usually see 3 or 4 school children along the way. They always stare at me and giggle.
Then I find my borrowed bicycle and ride through the busy streets to my school building. Tom is usually about 5 minutes late, so I wait outside room 303 and review the lesson from the day before. Classes officially start at 8:30am and the lunch break starts at 11:30am. I go home for lunch, which is awesome. I love the break in the middle of the day. Not to mention having a great, hot Chinese meal cooked just for me. I head back to the classroom at 1:30pm and when I arrive Tom is usually asleep. His chief complaint is that someone put some sleeping pills in his meal. We speak Chinese for another hour or so before riding our bicycles to the program's main office where I check my email, chat with other students and eat some snacks before heading back home. Like an elementary school student, I practice writing my Chinese characters for about 2 or 3 hours before dinner. Dinner is usually a comedy. My host parents (Jiu Li and Chen) are trying to talk to me in ChinEnglish, only asking their 16 yr old to translate on occasion, while Didi, the 3 yr old, is going nuts over what he wants to eat and doesn't want to eat, changing the children's DVDs he watches constantly every 3 minutes, and the dog, PiaoPiao barking up a storm at everyone who is eating good food except for her.

I'm in bed by 10pm. It's hard work learning Chinese.

My first 12 hours in China

I finally made it to Beijing on March 6th at 8:30pm. My 3 hour flight from Hong Kong was great and not only did I get an aisle seat, but there was no one next to me so I got to stretch out!

At the customs check, there was a young man holding up a sign with my name on it. He didn't introduce himself, he just said, "My English is bad. My aunt sent me to pick you up. You go to Shi Jiaz Huang?" He took me to the enormous Beijing West Train Station and put me on my 3 hour ride to my host city.

In my sleeper car with me were two Chinese business men on their way home from the capital. They knew I was incredibly nervous about missing my stop, so they tried their best to explain to me what was going on. Not expecting to be travelling on my own, I hadn't brushed up on my transportation vocab, so I was really a mess. My biggest problem is that I don't want to fill in the blanks of my words and phrases with English, so I fill them in with my other foreign language - Spanish. This does not help a young American woman who is traveling for the first time through China.

"Ivy" the owner of my language center was at the station when I arrived. She took me to the office and set me up with a room, but I was too excited to sleep. I just wanted to get out and see the city so badly! But eventually, I drifted off.

This morning - March 7 - I started my day at the Hebei Health Clinic. I apparently need a physical in order to live with a Chinese family. I had a blood test, urine sample, eye exam, ultrasound, eco cardiogram, and a chest x-ray. Then I went to get some noodles with my teacher.

I spent the rest of the day in the center, talking to both teachers and students. We have a really small program with only 10 students at the moment so it's lots of individual attention. Tonight I will spend another night in the office and hope that my physical results will come tomorrow and prove that I'm not HIV positive and therefore can live with a Chinese family.

Philly Here We Come

Just a short post today. Barak got his official offer from Haverford College for a three-year appointment as an Assistant Professor in the Political Science Dept.

Looks like we'll be setting up shop in July so keep your weekends open for a visit!

Thy, my Khmer companion

After a long nap, I emerged from my room refreshed and ready to learn about modern life in Cambodia. My friend from the night before, Thy and I made arrangements to meet up at 6pm and go get some traditional food. We went to the central market and had a great meal of fish and chicken soups. I learned quickly that for every Khmer life experience I had, Thy wanted a western one in return. Thus we ended up on Bar Street (yes, this indeed is the name of a street in Siem Reap) at a pool hall where we ended up meeting some great folks from around the globe and playing pool all night long.

The following day I explored Siem Reap on foot. I ventured into the fabric market and bought some raw silk for my mom and sisters. I wandered down the streets and into the residential neighborhoods to see what kinds of housing arrangements the urban people lived in. I also took a long rest at a cafe and enjoyed several cold beverages as it was about 85 degrees and humid as hell. My afternoon was spent avoiding small children selling all sorts of crap - mostly postcards, books and bracelets - and wandering the grounds of the Royal Palace.
That evening Thy and I met up again and this time we joined a couple we had met the night before for dinner and drinks. Then it was time for another taste of Khmer culture. This time Thy took me to a popular local disco. When I walked in, it reminded me of a 7th grade dance. Boys on one side, girls on the other. Groups of friends danced together and there is very little mingling between groups. I wasn't the only westerner there, but I was the only western woman. The western men were all there with their Khmer girlfriends. My favorite aspect of it were the "girly boys." A well known cultural group in Asian society of young men who dress and act feminine, but do not consider themselves homosexual. They were hilarious. They were actually friends of Thy and so impressed that he brought a western woman to the club.

In Khmer, as in most developing countries, relationships are based on wealth. Because westerners are the ultimate sign of wealth, to be seen with a westerner is one of the most impressive things a local can do. The minute we walked into the club, all of the people were starring at Thy and I. It was really bizarre. After a couple of minutes, I knew that this was the effect he was going for when he decided this is where he was going to take me that night.

We only stayed until about 1am and then it was time to go home. I had an early bus to catch to Phnom Penh the next day, and Thy had decided he was going to come with me and visit his friends and family back home.

The bus to Phnom Penh was long. There were several delays including the fender-bender accident we got into as we pulled out of the Siem Reap bus station. But at 7:30pm, we made it into the city and I found a super cheap guesthouse to spend the next 3 nights in. Thy and I had dinner by the riverside that night and made plans to visit the Killing Fields the next morning.

Visiting the Killing Fields was a mixed emotional experience. Although I felt great compassion and sadness seeing the 8,000 skulls housed in the white memorial pagoda, I was also incredibly angry when I left. It seems in this world, our governments will spend large amounts of money to build memorials for genocide victims, but they won't spend the money or political capital to stop it from happening. In 10 years from now, am I going to visit the Sudan's genocide memorial where thousands of visitors will write in the reflection book, please don't let this happen again? Why is it that we can all sit by and watch and not do anything to help the innocent people who are subject to such hatred and torture? Here I go again.

After spending the morning at the Killing Fields, I needed a bit of a break from the Khmer Rouge Regime history. Instead, we went to the National Museum and the Royal Palace. Both great places that remind you that countries are run by humans, they have horrid periods and magnificent ones.

The next day, I continued my Khmer Rouge tour and went to S-21. This prison camp was were the people murdered in the Killing Fields were jailed and tortured. There are amazing photos of the prisoners as well as some who worked for the regime at the prison. The exhibits are really amazing and eye opening. Hands down this was the most powerful place I have visited in the past 7 months.

The rest of my time in Phnom Penh, I spent with Thy. Asking him questions, riding around the city on the back of his moto, meeting his friends, etc. I was very lucky to be found by such a wonderful ambassador. He's working really hard to upgrade his status, but is really happy and content with what life has handed him so far.

The Glorious Angkor Wat

Cambodia is an amazing country. It's one of my favorite developing countries. I loved every minute of it.

In terms of level of cleanliness, facilities, and general infrastructure, it reminded me of Nepal. The people are warm and friendly, most out to make money off the tourists, but also willing to help you in any way they can. The folks I talked with spoke both English and/or French in addition to their native Khmer. Most of them saw being fluent in English as their ticket out of the middle-class and into the Lexus-driving-business-running-upper-class.

Although my official first step in Cambodia was on February 4 for my flight to Kuala Lumpur, I didn't really see too much of the country at that point. I came back to Cambodia - flew into Siem Reap - on February 19. The line for immigration was horrid. It took over an hour to process the 120 people on my flight. But I made it through and got myself a driver to the city for $1. Moto drivers are big in Cambodia. It's the budget way to get around any city. The customary procedure is to schedule your visit to Angkor Wat with the man who provides you transportation to your accomodation. The drivers in Siem Reap have to buy a permit from the government and present their license at the gates to the architectural phenomenon. My driver and I decided that I should see Angkor Wat at sunrise, so he would pick me up at 5am the following day.

After a long nap and an easy walk around the city streets, I made my way back to my guesthouse. I was lounging around, talking to foreigners and locals when I met Thy. He's Khmer, from Phnom Penh and works as a driver while studying English at the Australian Center for Education (ACE). Thy and I had a long conversation about life in Cambodia and life in the US. We even spent about 2 hours working on his English homework. He told me that he would meet me after I came back from Angkor Wat and take me to some local places to see what Khmers really live like in Siem Reap.

Angkor Wat at 5am was mayhem. There were about 2,000 people with me for sunrise. You arrive in complete darkness. The guides shine weak flashlights along the bridge you must cross to get the main compound. Your body feels the stored heat in the murky moat water as you make your way. Once across, you enter the grounds through the small opening in the massive wall protecting the complex. There before you is Angkor Wat, the largest temple in this some 60 acres of religious sites built during the Angkor era. When you emerge from the gate in the wall, there is about 4 acres of land between you and the entrance to the temple. Scattered on both sides are much smaller altars and temples where the early birds have perched themselves and their camera tripods to get the picture of a lifetime - sunrise behind Angkor Wat.

At first, I joined them. I was sitting just to the left of the temple on the far side of a small lake with about 300 people drinking coffee and eating Khmer-French pastries sold for $3 a pop. But as the sun began to rise and dawn provided enough light to see the inconsistencies in the rock paths, I decided to ditch the crowds and explore the temple on my own. Knowing that any picture I could take would never be as good as a postcard's, I was one of the first 10 people inside the temple that day. It was quiet. No sounds of tourists snapping photos, or arguing with each other over who would take the photo and who would stand next to one of the millions (maybe even billions) of carvings of Buddha.

There are 7 levels. Social hierarchy determined the levels to which an individual was permitted to enter. The top level was admitted only high priests and kings. As I wandered through the narrow hallways and paths around Angkor Wat, I came across several Khmer Buddhist priests preparing their offering for the day at different worship sites. They are incredibly appreciative of those who bow in reverence. By watching others, I learned that Buddhist bow three times in quick succession towards the statue before lighting a stick of incense or leaving a monetary offering.

I wasn't alone for long. About 20 minutes into my experience, the masses started crowding in and I knew it was my que to move on to another temple. In total, I visited 6 temples in the area in about 8 hours. I was back home and asleep at 1pm. Next time, I will get a multi-day pass and go to some of the more remote temples, but for my first trip, an on my own, this was suffice.