The One

Finally, after a few weeks of randomly stopping in whichever of the little one-room restaurants along the street outside the gate, choosing whichever one looked like it had a free table and a proprietor who would take the time to listen to a foreigner mispronounce their food, I have found The One. 

One of my favorite vegetables here in China is lotus root (ou in Chinese); it was available at any restaurant in Jingzhou.  Here, I kept trying to order it, but kept getting mei you (don't have) as a response.  I knew they probably all had it, but I didn't know the full name of any dishes it was in, and I probably was yet again pronouncing it badly, and it's easier to say 'don't have it' than take the time to figure out what on earth this illiterate foreigner wants.  In Jingzhou, they were always happy to see a foreigner and fusses over us, treating us like the children we were.  We'd squeak out, "Carrots!"  or "Cabbage!"  and they'd just smile at us and fix us whichever dish with that ingredient in it they thought appropriate for us.  And it always was.  I think we only really learned how to say the name of one full dish--tong su li ji, sweet and sour pork.  Here, foreigners are not that special, and they expect you to behave like an adult and tell them the dish you want.  If I just go in and say "Carrot!" they will look at me like I'm a little off my rocker and burst out a spiel of Chinese that I assume translates to something like, "Carrot what?  There are five dishes with carrots in it.  How do you want your carrots?  Learn to read and write already!" 

But this place...I couldn't find ou on the menu here either, but I pointed out the characters in a little dictionary I had, and the woman just said (translated): "Lotus root.  Okay.  Chao?"  I just nodded, and off she went.  (I later figured out that chao means stir-fried).  It was exactly what I wanted, and easily the best stir-fried lotus root I've ever had.  I pointed to something random on the menu--I could read the characters for shredded pork, but I hadn't figured out the vegetable it was mixed with--and it turned out to be pork and onions, which was also wonderful.  Another day I went back and managed to figure out pork and bell pepper, and again, it was the best version of that dish that I've ever had, by far.  Now, I've also been trying that old favorite, sweet and sour pork, at various places along the strip, and been dissapointed each time.  One place, it was bland with no flavor at all.  Another place it was soggy and also rather bland.  Another place it was the right level of crispiness, but the sauce had a weird aftertaste to it.  This place had so far exceeded all my expectations; would this finally be the one place to get decent tong su li ji?  

I finally ordered it for lunch today.  And....I've found it at last! The right level of crispiness, sauce with the right flavor, and friendly service.  

I've been to the little place about four times now; they now recognize me.  The grandmother smiles at me and shows me to a table, but she doesn't dare try to communicate with me just yet.  The daughter leaves me alone at my table to rifle through my pocket dictionary and try to unscramble the menu until I finally call her over to order.  The grandmother normally picks up the menu as soon as the person has ordered, but she leaves it on my table until I get my food, because she sees that I want to keep studying it and try to figure out more dishes while I'm waiting.  The son, a chubby child of about ten, often tries to start conversations with me, and has given both my pocket dictionary and my kindle (which I often read while eating) a thorough, curious inspection before his mother calls for him to get back to the table by the door and finish the page in his homework he'd wandered off from. 

And so, I've found my new favorite.  Today, I took pictures of the menu, so that I can work on learning to recognize more dishes to speed up the process a bit.  I'm looking forward to trying out the rest of my favorites there!

One Week Down

I’m really excited that I have my writing students for a full year; it’s nice to have time to go more in depth.  With the material that we were given, this semester will focus on the mechanics of writing, and next semester on writing essays and papers.  Here’s a general overview of the plan for this semester:

Week 1: Introduction to Writing, Course Syllabus, Personal Introductions

Week 2: The Writing Process

Week 3: Review of Punctuation and Capitalization Rules

Week 4: Diction (Word Choice)

Week 5: Combining Sentences (Compound, Complex, and Compound-Complex Sentences)

Week 6: Sentence Variety

Week 7: Effective Paragraphs

Week 8: Development of a Paragraph by Time

Week 9: Development of a Paragraph by Process

Week 10: Development of a Paragraph by Space

Week 11: Development of a Paragraph by Exemplification

Week 12: Development of a Paragraph by Generalization

Week 13: Development of a Paragraph by Comparison and Contrast

Week 14: Development of a Paragraph by Cause and Effect

Week 15: Development of a Paragraph by Classification

Week 16: Development of a Paragraph by Definition

Week 17: Final Exam 

So, this week, I did the first two weeks’ lessons. The first time I saw each class (Monday and Wednesday), I first introduced myself—the students generally personally know very few foreigners, and so they find it interesting to hear about the life of an American.  I made a power point with some pictures of my family, my parents’ house in Tennessee, scenery from Tennessee and Columbia specifically, and of things Tennessee is known for (music, mostly—although actually, whenever I’ve mentioned I’m from Tennessee when traveling in several countries, the first thing people always think of is…Jack Daniels.  However, I decided not to use whiskey as a claim to fame for my students).  I told a bit of my history—where I went to college, that I was an English major like them, my time in Italy, that I had lived in Jingzhou for a year—and also some of my interests: I like photography, genealogy, I’m a Christian, etc. I opened it up for questions afterward—told them it was their chance to be nosy (not that they always need one).  My first class, 1106, asked plenty of good questions, but my other two were shy and didn’t come up with anything.  

Next, I had each student stand up and introduce themselves to me—my students in Jingzhou (I know, I feel like I’m constantly comparing Jingzhou vs. Wuhan, but that’s my only frame of reference right now) barely squawked out their names, hometown, and struggled to come up with an interest: “My name is Echo…I’m from Enshi, in Hubei province…I like…badminton…and reading.”  These students, on the other hand, weren’t shy at all.  I almost had to cut a few short , even—each and every one of them spoke for at least two minutes; not only a list of their hobbies, but why they like and what they don’t like and what their friends think about it.  I do think it would be fun to teach spoken English sometimes—but I am firmly entrenched as a writing teacher.  

After our personal introductions, I gave an intro to the course, going over the syllabus and talking about written English as opposed to spoken English as a form of communication.  Finally, I had a bit of fun with the students—to help both me learn their English names as well as them learn each others’, we played the name game.  The first person says, “Hi, I am Helen.”  The second says, “I am Jane, and this is Helen.”  The third says, “I am Lily, and this is Jane and Helen.”  And so on, until the last people have to give everyone’s name.  I usually start at the back and work towards the front, because the best students usually claim the front row to vie for attention as teacher’s pet, so I figured they could use the challenge.  Finally, I rattled them all off—they always seem to be impressed that I do this without much effort—but I’ve been paying attention as we go through it over and over, and besides, it’s easier for me as the names are at least familiar name (or words) to me. 

The Normal, the Out-of-Context, and the Bizzare

On the first day of class for the semester, I have to be careful not to laugh when I make a list of the English names of my students.  We foreigners sometimes try to learn and use our Chinese friends and students’ names, but we rarely get the pronunciation just right—so many of them prefer we just use an English nickname rather than butcher their Chinese names.  English majors, especially, choose English names to use in class and with foreigners; I remember we used to do that in language classes too—my Spanish name was Catalina in high school.  

Overall, I think this is a good idea—it sure helps us teacher to learn their names and be able to keep records much more easily, and it helps the students to learn how to pronounce some English names.  The problem with it is that, apparently, students are not well-supervised when they are picking their names.  I keep wishing that I could teach some freshmen, so that I could guide them—or, rather, exercise the power of veto.  But, I teach sophomores, and most of them are already attached to the name they already have.  

Some of them make good choices of names—I have plenty of Alices, as well as Jessica, Charlie, Sarah, Lily, Lance, Natalie, Cassie, Daniel, and Lisa.  Chinese names are chosen for meaning,not sound, and many do the same in English, picking a name with a good meaning (happy, lucky, brave) without regard to the sound.  Some take the opportunity to do the opposite: choose a sound they like without considering the meaning, which they can't do in Chinese.  Other choose a name that sounds similar to their Chinese name: Lily for Li Li, Lucy for Lu, Joker for Jiao Kai.  Other identify themselves with a hobby or interest, taking a name from sports or TV.  Kobe was popular a couple of years back, as many of the boys are huge NBA fans;  Roger admires tennis star Roger Federer; Sheldon is popular this year (I have two) because of the TV show Big Bang Theory. 

 The next tier of names are proper names, but chosen out of context--the Chinese students  have no way of knowing which names were popular in which generation, or are currently in or out of fashion—so, I have Bertha, more than one Helen, Linda, Frances, Sharon, Ruth, Cindy, and Tina, which, while not unusual, are not that common for a nineteen-year-old.  Oddly enough, I also have two girls called Blanca.  One wouldn't be that odd; she just looked for a name that meant 'white' or something, but two? 

And then, just as I begin to think I finally have a class with good sense, we reach the bizarre.  There’s always one or two who just have to be “creative.”  How am I supposed to call on a student (male) named Dreamcatcher? Without laughing?  He’s probably the most interesting I have this term, but there’s also Apple, Echo, Ecco, Seldom, Cloris, Malak (female), Joker, and Armstrong.  So far, however, there are fewer outliers than I had in Jingzhou—but still. I’ve written before about the dilemma here—do I accept such names because, as it’s their name, it’s their free choice, or do I insist that they use proper names because most Americans are going to laugh at them? 

Beijing Airport...Still.

And here I am at my new home! Oh…wait…this is the Beijing airport…still. 

So, we had a tight layover in Beijing.  And our plane from L.A. was late getting in.  And we had to collect all our luggage and walk with it through customs.  And it’s a major capital city of a huge country airport, meaning correspondingly huge.  If any little thing goes, wrong we could miss this flight…

Well, of course it did.  Oddly enough, it was the first group of us who got our luggage who missed the flight.  Somehow, we missed the place where we were supposed to return out luggage for the flight to Wuhan, and ended up out in the main part of the terminal.  We went to the check-in desk, but were sent to another, then to the ticket counter.  Oh, and in the middle of this, we had a Chinese man trying to be helpful and leading us in circles.  The long and short of it is, nine of us missed the flight.  Those who had taken longer to get their luggage and were behind us did not go the wrong way and made it, go figure.  

There was another flight an hour later, but it only had one free seat. Kevin happened to be first in line, so he decided to try and run for it.  Apparently he made it, because he never came back; we waited in the same area for a good while just in case.  Unfortunately, there were no more flights after that until the next day.  We managed to change our tickets to one person at 12:30, three at 1:30, and the last four at 5:40.  By the time we finished all that, it was 7:00 pm.  So…eighteen and a half hours to go for me (1:30) and even longer for the last group.  Definitely qualified as longest layover I’ve ever had… To make it even more fun, we were stuck for the night, with all of our luggage. 

We piled all the luggage together around a group of three seats near the ticket counter; a few people stayed to guard it all while a few of us did some recon work.  Laura found that we could get passwords for the free airport wifi from the information booth.  Kelly and I went exploring downstairs for a better home base; we found a quieter bank of chairs with plenty for everyone, and also the hourly lounge, which had beds and showers.  In the end, we all cheaped out and stayed out of the lounge.  We set up home base on the last row of seats.  It turned out to be nice that there were so many of us; we could take turns guarding the luggage, sleeping, and wandering off to find food, shop, etc.  Samuel found a row of outlets around the corner, where we could recharge our laptops.  

Although no one was particularly excited at another night in an airport, we made the best of it.  I got to know teachers who would be at different schools, who I probably would never have made much connection with otherwise.  We played balderdash.  We ate some particularly unappetizing Burger King food (my last meal in the U.S. and my first meal in China were both Burger King…sigh; I’d hoped for at least a Taco Bell in L.A.), we sponge-bathed, we took exploratory walks, and skyped relatives.  We watched a group of window-washer rappel from the roof, cleaning the glass wall of the terminal as they swung back and forth. Finally, I got through to Ed, so he could inform those who were supposed to be picking us up our new arrival times; however, most of the schools were ahead of us and had already called the airport and got the information themselves.  Sigh, the things you can do if you speak Chinese… 

And finally, we did make it to Wuhan.  And all of our luggage made it with us.  And you know the funny part?  The group who made the original flight didn’t get their luggage until the next day—it waited to fly with us!  So, an adventure either way around. 

October 3rd: Fish for Sunday Dinner

 The long-awaited fall cool-down came to us over a week ago, but we haven't been able to enjoy it too much as it brought with it a solid week of drippy drizzling.  Today, however, was one of those crisp, clear, brilliantly sunny perfect fall days.  I wished I was hiking in the woods; the urge to be outdoors was nearly irresistible.

It was a good Sunday, following the normal pattern: in the morning, Rebecca, Season, and I headed over to Ron and Evelyn's house on the south campus for a morning meeting.  After the meeting, most weeks we all go out to eat together.  Eleven people gathered around two pushed-together tables in the small back room of a restaurant across from the south campus.  It was crowded, but the more the merrier when we can share good food with good friends.  The main dish was grilled fish.  We Americans tend to have quite a disconnect between animals and food--we buy our meat clean and packaged in plastic from Kroger's; it's easy to disassociate it from the animal it used to be a part of.  No such thing  here.  Just inside the doorway of the restaurant there was a tub of water with a board over top of it.  Jordan, one of the Chinese brothers, translated Ron's request for fish.  The restaurant owner lifted up the piece of plywood and plunged his hands into the murky tub, and came up with a squirming ten-pound fish.  "Bigger!"  So he dropped the first fish unceremoniously back into the water and scrambled for another.  The third pick met the requirements, so he tossed it over his shoulder onto the sidewalk by the door.  It gasped in the sun as we filed past to find a table.  The owner's daughter squeezed past us with a meat cleaver in hand.  Twenty minutes later, we had a perfectly grilled fish, with a marinade of onions and spices, in the center of our table. 

As everyone else settled in at the tables, Ron, Jordan, and I held a conference in the kitchen with the owner.  Jordan is Chinese, so he could write our order down for us--here, generally you write your own order on the pad of paper instead of the waitress doing it.  Ron has the idea that I'm good at ordering food, so I have now been promoted to the ordering committee at most meals.  My Chinese is still on a just-getting-by level, but I have learned how to say several of the normal dishes.  Today was a wonderful meal: besides the fish, we had a plate of sweet and sour pork, two plates each of eggplant and cabbage, potatoes and onions, scrambled eggs and tomatoes, lotus root, and a super-spicy version of chicken and peanuts.

Another Sunday dinner, a couple of weeks later than the one I'm talking about.  Of course, I should have got the shot before we ate all the food...

I spent the afternoon doing some stuff for BW's birthday, and then we had a meeting at Colonel and Kelly's at five.  The singing seemed especially wonderful today--several of my favorite songs.

A Perfect Ramble in Perfect Weather

I don't know when I've seen a day with more perfect weather.  It's sunny, not a cloud in the sky, but breeze and in the mid-seventies now; it was almost cold this morning, and I wore a sweater and a scarf most of the day. 

After class today, I sat in Piazza Savonarola as usual.   I wrote a few postcards, then started walking along the route of the 13 bus.  I bought pizza and an apple at a bar and ate in a little strip o graass with benches across from the old cemetery.   Sometime, I'd like to explore the old place.  Anyhow, I read my new A. S. Byatt book while I ate: The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye.  I read Possession a few weeks ago, and Elementals over the summer.   She is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors.   Her characters are usually from within the field of literary scholarship, and she makes many interesting references to mythology and literature.   What she writes is what I wish I were writing, or, at the least, living. 

After I ate, I took the 13 bus.  The guy sitting behind me asked me in broken Italian how far to Piazzale Michelangelo, and some other questions, before we realized that we both spoke English. He turned out the be Mexican, but lived in Switzerland for some time, and is now from Chicago.  He, Rafael, and his fried were traveling through.   We talked the rest of the way to the Piazzale, and for a while while we took pictures.  

It was of course a perfect  day to take pictures, and I took quite a few from up there.   I kept trying to put my camera up, but I had to take it back out again because I kept noticing more good shots as I walked down the trail to the river.   I crossed over at the bridge before Ponte Vecchio from that direction.   I took a few pictures in the Piazza degli Uffizzi, and of the states there--the copies of Michelangelo's David and Donatello's David being two of the most famous. 

About that time, my camera batteries finally died.   I wondered over a few streets, and bought some gelato, half chocolate, half strawberry.   I ate it leaning on a light post in Piazza della Repubblica.   And now, here I am on a bench next to the carousel; a street performer is playing sweet, sad music across the square, which seems so fitting to this angelic, almost too-good-to-be-real sunny day.  The crowds wander through slowly; the horse-drawn carriages are out in full force today--I have caught the faint smell of them all afternoon.  As I've sat here, the piazza has gone from sunny to mostly in shadow as the sun moves lower. The top of the Duomo's bell tower is visible over the Savoy hotel.   It's my favorite time in the city---late afternoons with warm slanted sun rays, with the crowds out but unrushed, relaxing after the day.