Lessons learned...the hard way

So I am still here in Ping Quan and I have learned a few more things about Chinese culture. China is in every way completely opposite from South America, and because South America is the only thing I can compare my international experience to, it gets me into a lot of trouble.

Showing Affection
Latin Americans are very loving and physically affectionate. They kiss and hug EVERY person they meet, and as their love for you increases so does their physical manifestation of it. I had been in Ping Quan for a week and one of the students’ mothers took me to go find a bag for my laptop. We ran all over the whole city and she was so kind to me, she bought me good treats and always made sure that I didn’t get hit by a car. We found the perfect bag and then she brought me back to Cui Guo Hua’s learning center. I wanted to show that I appreciated her and that I considered her my friend so I did what any good Latin American would do; I hugged her. That was a HUGE mistake. I thought she was going to die and I am sure she felt the same way. I made her so uncomfortable. She had no idea how to respond to that. I asked Cui Guo Hua about it later and he said that he wouldn’t even hug his mother. Nobody touches each other here. When I am playing games with the children and I need to whisper in their ear, they won’t get close to me. Their personal space is huge.

Always Refuse
There is a practice in China of always refusing when anything is offered to you. I went with Cui Guo Hua to his friend’s house during the first week that I was in Ping Quan and they brought plates of nuts and fruit into the room. Using my South American savvy got me in to trouble again in this situation. In South America, if you are offered something you accept it gratefully to show respect to your guest. It is rude to refuse something offered to you, most especially food. Cui Guo Hua’s friend offered us oranges. I did not want one as I was not hungry; so I pretended I did not understand the offer (which was in Chinese, but was accompanied by a very obvious gesture). Cui Guo Hua had peeled his orange and then translated and said, do you want this orange, not wanting to seem rude to his friends, yet still not really wanting to eat a whole orange I said I would take some of the one he was eating. This was a trick I used all the time on my mission. It saved me from having to accept huge portions of food but also allowed me to remain in the good graces of my host. I tool part of his orange and the friend said something to Cui Guo Hua, and they laughed and said “American”; one of the few words I could recognize in Chinese. I asked Cui Guo Hua what he said and he told me that his friend commented on how “free” I was. Meaning, it was very odd to them, and a little rude that I accepted the offer of an orange on the first offering. You see, people in China always refuse even if they would really like to accept. They will finally give in when pressed, but will not accept the first offer. Even the little children are taught this. A little girl brought a bag of candy to class and offered it to her classmates; they all said no! These are nine year olds refusing candy!! She pressed and pressed and they finally all said yes. I took a picture with a little three year old in a restaurant and then had it developed and gave it to her. She was so delighted she jumped up and down squealing and showing every one in the restaurant. After she had circulated around the restaurant she brought the picture back and gave it to me. I told her in Chinese that it was hers and gave it back to her. She looked at it again and handed it back to me. Again, I gave it to her and asked Cui Guo Hua to tell her that it was for her. She handed it back and told him, “ I am a good girl, I don’t take it.” I asked Cui Guo Hua what I could say so that she would take it. He told her mother that if the child did not take it, I would think it was rude. Her mother told her to take the photo and she took it and bounced away.

I will include more cultural differences later...For now I wanted to tell you that I got to name a whole room full of new students. So far my class includes Susan, Alicia, Teresa, Laura, Steven, Nathan, Jacob and Blake from the family and a Heather and Ashley. I can only name them names that other foreign teachers can easily recognize even with awful pronunciation and that the students can say and remember.


This is Alicia
















This is Laura








These are a bunch of kids from one of my classes. The little girl with the scarf on that is sitting in front is named Megan and is a true tomboy. She came to my room on Saturday and invited me to "play." Once we got outside she showed me that she had a bunch of firecrackers that she proceeded to light. Through a mixture of peer pressure and a total inability to communicate I found myself, led by Megan of course, racing unsupervised through the streets of Ping Quan, her on roller skates, me on foot, throwing lit firecrackers at people. I gave her the rest of mine and she climbed on top of a roof and threw them at unsuspecting pedestrians. Oh the life of an 11 year old rural Chinese girl.

The Flower at my heart

So my internet connection here in Ping Quan is dial up and takes FOREVER to load anything so pictures are hard. But this first picture is of Mimi. She is the little girl whom I am staying with. She is eleven years old and speaks with a serious lisp. This was taken fairly early in the morning before most people were up and about, but this is one of the main streets. Ping Quan is "small" by Chinese standard. It has probably 100,000 people in it but when compared to all of the FIFTY plus cities in China that have over one million people it is one of the smallest. There is still a haze in the morning from all the coal smoke at night. Most of the people ride bikes or walk and they walk in the streets. There are no traffic laws, or so it would seem. Cars are so new that nobody has really learned the importance of sticking to traffic laws. Even in Beijing stop lights, lines on the road and medians are not even suggestions but obstacles to be overcome. Some of my taxi drivers would jump medians and drive on the wrong side of the road to bypass slower traffic.

This next picture is of the family who owns a restaurant that I ate in. They all wanted to sit with us and then take their picture with me. The owner of the restaurant pasted my picture on the wall of his restaurant like I was someone famous.

The trip back to Ping Quan from Beijing was a nightmare!! There are very few things that I will say that I honestly hate and the bus from Beijing to Cheng De just became part of that very exclusive list. So the bus is a tin cylindrical mini van with no heating or air circulation of any sort. We were driving through a DARK negative 20 degree night with so many people crammed into the bus that half of the people are sitting on top of each other and a bunch are standing in the stairwell. The trip to Cheng De takes five hours and as the drivers in China have no real respect for rules of the road we were barreling into oncoming traffic and then swerving at the last moment as both drivers honk at each other. Keep in mind that Chinese people only shower and wash their clothes once a week, AND they only BRUSH THEIR TEETH once a week AND they smoke constantly but nobody wants to open a window because it is so cold outside. The Chinese diet consists of LARGE amounts of garlic and onion so you can imagine the air in that bus. So we are trapped in with this stagnant air for five hours. YUCK!

After the bus dropped me off in Cheng De I had to find a taxi to take me to Ping Quan. The driver knew a few questions in English and tried them out on me. We had an interesting Chinglish conversation aided heavily by my dictionary. As we got closer to Ping Quan he asked if I had any children, if I was married etc and kept looking back at me. Then he said, "You are the flower at my heart." I had no idea what he was talking about so I said thank you and got out. He didn't want me to pay. I told Cui Guo Hua that he said I was the flower at his heart and asked what that meant. He laughed so hard and told me that those are the words of a song and he was confessing a "very serious" love for me. Cui Guo Hua now teases me constantly about "my boyfriend, the taxi driver."

The Other Side of the Great Wall

So my second Saturday in Beijing a girl from the ward called me and asked if I wanted to accept a temporary job teaching English in a little town North East of Beijing called Ping Quan. I did! I met the person I would be working with at a train station in northern Beijing and we jumped on a bus and headed Northeast. I work with a Chinese man named Cui Guo Hua who is a bit of an idealist. He is getting his second degree from Beijing University in philosophy. Now you know what type of person gets a degree in Philosophy in the states, so multiply that by 100 and youbegin to understand the type of people who study that in China. Let’s just say, the Chinese don’t love philosophy or independent thinking at all really.
As we left Beijing I saw the Great Wall. It is magnificent, just like I always imagined it. It was snaking its way along the peaks of the HUGE mountains. As we passed onto the other side I got the “we’re not in Kansas anymore” sensation.
The other side of the Great Wall…
We were on the bus for almost six hours before reaching Cheng De and then we climbed in a taxi that took us the last hour and a half leg of our trip. When we got to Ping Quan the whole city was in a cloud as thick as Bakersfield smog but black and it smelled like smoke. Here in the countryside people heat their homes by burning coal, so everything smells like smoke.
I am living with an eleven-year old student and her parents. All of the children have their Chinese names and an English name that one of their English teachers gave them. The girl I live with is named Mimi. Most of the children have English names already but I have named four of the new ones, Susan, Steven, Nathan and Jacob.
My host family serves me breakfast every morning and that in itself is an adventure. My first morning my breakfast had eyes and legs, I said to myself, “this is part of the adventure” and ate it anyways. It was some sort of seafood soup. This morning we went to a restaurant for what they told me was lamb soup. I recognized the strips of lamb stomach in my soup from eating cow stomach in Chile. I also found pieces of lamb brain, lamb intestine and lamb cartilage mixed in. Now THAT is adventure! They are wonderful and kind people and even though we have a totally silent relationship, I am so grateful for how well they care for me.
Ping Quan is the greatest town! I honestly love it here and would stay for a long time if I were able to get to church on Sunday more easily. But who wouldn’t love a town where they treat you like such a special person. Everyone stares at me and they tell me I am beautiful. We have had several dinners (we always eat lunch and dinner at different Chinese restaurants) give to us for free. A few times the owner has sat with us at our table. The owner at one restaurant asked to take a picture with his family and I, which he says that he is going to paste on the wall. This morning as I was walking to work I saw a man on a motorcycle with a huge dead pig draped across the back cruising down the street.
I teach five one-hour classes per day to students ranging in age from 7 to 13. In, what Cui Guo Hua calls, a “center” for supplementary education. I teach them English and he teaches them ideas from outside of regular Chinese thinking such as economic theory and philosophy. He has rented two rooms over a store and the children come for two hours every day. They love to learn songs and play games so I am eager to hear any ideas that you might have.
At this point I plan on staying in Ping Quan until after Chinese New Year and then heading back to Beijing to accept an English teaching position.

Ni Hao

After some intense pressure from certain parties who will remain unnamed, I decided to give an update to my great Chinese Adventure.
After a wretched run in with the people of Fed Ex which ended in me going to the Fed Ex facility to pick up my Visa just hours before I left for the airport, I boarded a plane bound for China. It was a really easy 13 hour flight and I felt very calm about the whole moving to China thing throughout all of my preparations and during the whole flight until we started our decent into Beijing. Then this horrific feeling of "What have I done?" came over me and lasted until we landed and I started busying myself with finding my luggage, exchanging money and and figuring out how to find a taxi. The taxi cab driver told me that he knew the address when we were in the airport but as we got onto the highway he admitted that he didn't know where he was going. He asked several people on the road for help and finally delivered me to Steve and Chelsea's apartment and the very far north end of Beijing.
Steve and Chelsea, being true Canadians and all, are the kindest and most awesome hosts in the world. They took me to go see the kids at their school and then after work on Friday they took me to the markets. The markets are huge building filled with little stalls were English speaking Chinese girls sell cheap knock offs of purses, wallets, shoes, clothes, watches etc. They also sell jewelry very cheap but you have to bargain with them for everything and let's just say that blue eyes add another 50 yuan to every price.
I love Beijing! It is a lot like New York City; lots of people, lots of pollution, tall buildings, congestion, lights, constant motion etc. I feel very comfortable here.
I went to church on Sunday and there were about 200 members in the Beijing branch. All of them are Expats from the US with just a couple of exceptions. Most families are either very young like one or two babies, or very old, like retired and all their kids are gone. The branch feels EXACTLY like any ward you would go to in Utah or California or wherever. Great leaders, great lessons, sound doctrine, and great music.
I spent all week last week looking for a job on the internet and interviewing at like six different places. I was offered a job everywhere that I interviewed but none of them actually offered what they advertised. There is a lot of false advertising here. So I continued the search. During that week I learned several new Chinese expressions, became familiar with subway and taxi systems here and ate some GREAT Chinese food.
The pictures below were taken on Saturday. Chelsea and I went to the market in search of some jewelry and we bought a sweet potato on the way. Nobody has ovens here but there are guys that ride their bikes down the street with oil cans strapped to the back filled with cooking sweet potatoes and hot rocks and coal. They are so good and sweet. So one is me eating a sweet potato by a street musician. The other one is at an outdoor market where lots of Chinese people from the countryside come in to sell their junk claiming that they are valuable Chinese antiques.
I am leaving Monday morning to go to a small town about 5 hours Northeast of Beijing to teach English during the Spring Festival. It is freezing there and it is real rural China so I will write more from there.