I woke up around eleven this morning and was checking my email when the doorbell rang. It was my landlord and my neighbors from downstairs, along with their elderly parents. I suspected correctly that this was about the water leak discovered in my kitchen sink yesterday evening, but it still seemed like an excessive delegation (then again, the Chinese love a good delegation). After the guy who works at the front gate of my apartment complex rang my doorbell yesterday to tell me that water was dripping into the apartment underneath us, my landlord and the repairman were over here in a flash, changing hoses and even pulling out the entire kitchen sink. They replaced the faucet, but apparently there's still a problem and they'll be back tomorrow morning.
The previous day wasn't exactly free of complications either. My friend Huw and I headed back to my new favorite place in Nanjing, the communist bridge, and arrived there after dark. We wandered through the vegetable patches to the water's edge, and were picking our way back when I saw a hole in a fence that looked like it would let us through. I went to step towards it and glug! my left leg was sunk up to my waist in something viscous. I pulled myself out, not sure what exactly had happened and got a whiff of the sludge covering my jeans, shoes, and part of my sweater. I had fallen into a vat of manure used to fertilize the fields. With nothing to do but laugh, I took off my pants and "washed" my shoes in the silty Yangtze, proceeding out the park gate in my boxers. Huw went to a store and got some plastic bags and baby wipes, while I was subjected to even more stares than usual as I stood by the side of the street. We got a cab and I tossed most of my clothes in the trunk. Still, the driver said, "It really stinks in here!" I told him what happened and apologized. He laughed, but then became serious and said, "I'm going to have to clean my cab! No one's going to want to ride in it!" Trying to mitigate the smell, I took off my shirt and held it out the window. When we got back to my apartment I gave him a 50 yuan note for the 20 yuan ride, and he immediately got out with a tiny bottle of cleaner and headed for the trunk.
Aside from these adventures, life continues as normal. My students never fail to amuse and impress. The prize for this week goes to a seven-year-old in my second grade oral class. We were practicing the construction "I like x but I don't like y." She said, "I like daddy long legs but I don't like dirt." Runner-up goes to, "I like tiramisu but I don't like coffee." Also of note were responses following the general pattern of, "I don't like Michael but I like bananas," as well as the suck-up variant, "I don't like Michael but I like teacher."
But middle school is still my favorite. This week I was teaching them the difference between "make" and "let" since they're expressed by the same verb in Chinese, rang. The question was, "What do your parents make you do?" and I heard one kid jokingly shout, "Make love!" This had them laughing of course, but I decided to make them repeat it, since some kids didn't hear. "My parents make me make love" (if only this were true!). At the end of the class, I said, "Bye! Have a good week," they said, "It will be a bad week. Every day is bad for us. But your class is fun." I don't think I have any idea what their lives are like, but all indications suggest that they are swamped by schoolwork.
Even in elementary school, they have no time to do anything but go to school and do homework. There is a small restaurant near my house that I have started to frequent. The food is simple but cheap and good, and they owner is very friendly. I went into the restaurant at 8:30 last week for a late dinner, and I was the only customer. The owner was sitting at one of the tables, dictating a passage to his eight-year-old daughter and giving her hints at the characters she didn't know (for the record, she's way past me in terms of character knowledge). A young Chinese couple came into the restaurant and the woman said to me, "Look at this guy running his restaurant and helping his daughter with her homework. The lives of Chinese men are very hard!" I wasn't sure how to reply, especially since she seemed to express a certain perverse joy at the fact that men's lives were difficult, while hers was relatively easy. What really struck me, though, was that when I walked past the restaurant to use the payphone two hours later at 11 o'clock, the daughter was still at the table working on her homework.
I think the schools realize what they're demanding of the kids is nearly impossible. Between every few classes, calm music comes over the PA and a woman's voice counts "One two three four, two two three four..." The kids know the drill, and sit at their desks quietly massaging their eyes for five minutes. But despite all of this, they still managed to be sweet, diligent, and adorable, though I certainly can't say I envy their lives.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Tomb Sweeping Holiday
I had Friday off this week for the Tomb Sweeping Holiday. I didn't hear much about the traditions of the holiday itself from pretty much anyone; instead it was all descriptions of how much time off or overtime pay one gets, which I guess is a testament to how little free time most Chinese workers have. I did see people who couldn't actually visit their ancestors' graves in person burning fake money and other things on the side of the street, though.
I took advantage of the break to do a little sight-seeing in Nanjing, taking a two hour walk to the northern part of town to check out the Yangtze river bridge built in 1968. At the time it was a huge engineering feat and a triumph for the Communist Party. I don't have any photos, as I foolishly forgot to charge my camera battery before setting out, but I'm sure I'll be back there sometime and I'll get some photos for you then. The bridge itself is a huge steel trestle, with enormous concrete ramps leading up to it both for cars and trains. There is a park around the base of the bridge on the Nanjing side, and I hopped over the park wall to get to the bank of the river itself. Between the wall of the park and the edge of the water, there is a strip of land maybe about 100 meters wide, where people were tending to the vegetables they had planted and kids were running around with sticks. It is certainly not the kind of place you'd see farming taking place in the U.S., and I wonder whether these people own the land, or whether they grow vegetables as a sort of hobby or supplemental income.
After sitting and watching the barges going up and down the river while trains rumbled over the bridge, I climbed back into the park and struck up a conversation with a gaggle of young female tour guides who had no clients, apparently because of the holiday. They told me that the bridge was built during the Great Leap Forward when steel was hard to come by. Mao made people melt down their rice bowls to provide building materials for the bridge. They also told me about the large number of people who jump off the bridge (this was confirmed by my roommate's boyfriend, a Nanjing native, who laughed when I said I had gone there, saying that it's known for its suicide rate), as well as the retired old men who take it upon themselves to patrol the bridge trying to spot and dissuade jumpers and the soldiers who scan the roadway with binoculars attempting to do the same. Despite all of the efforts aimed at preventing suicide, though, the girls told me that there had been one two days before.
Before setting off for the bridge, I had lunch at a restaurant near my apartment that I had never been to. Despite the fact that it's an average restaurant, it seems to have been founded with a romantic theme in mind. Both the sign on the outside and the walls and tables on the inside are decorated with hearts and silhouettes of cupid. The Saturday afternoon clientele was just like any other restaurant, consisting mostly of groups of businessmen. While I was waiting for my food, I noticed a bizarre poster hanging on the wall:
有间餐厅
我想带你坐泰坦尼克
可惜我只有一张船票
我想带你去。。。有间餐厅
因为我有固定号码
（restaurant's phone number)
You Jian Restaurant
I wanted to take you on the Titanic
Unfortunately I only have one ticket
So I'll take you to . . . the You Jian Restaurant
Because I have the exact number
(restaurant's phone number)
It's probably a good thing the object of the guy's affections missed out on that Titanic trip, even though the consolation prize was a little lame. I said to the waitress, "That poster's pretty weird. Maybe the Titanic is romantic, but there's a pretty big disadvantage to going on it." She replied, "Think of it however you want." I'm not sure what to make of that reply.
I took advantage of the break to do a little sight-seeing in Nanjing, taking a two hour walk to the northern part of town to check out the Yangtze river bridge built in 1968. At the time it was a huge engineering feat and a triumph for the Communist Party. I don't have any photos, as I foolishly forgot to charge my camera battery before setting out, but I'm sure I'll be back there sometime and I'll get some photos for you then. The bridge itself is a huge steel trestle, with enormous concrete ramps leading up to it both for cars and trains. There is a park around the base of the bridge on the Nanjing side, and I hopped over the park wall to get to the bank of the river itself. Between the wall of the park and the edge of the water, there is a strip of land maybe about 100 meters wide, where people were tending to the vegetables they had planted and kids were running around with sticks. It is certainly not the kind of place you'd see farming taking place in the U.S., and I wonder whether these people own the land, or whether they grow vegetables as a sort of hobby or supplemental income.
After sitting and watching the barges going up and down the river while trains rumbled over the bridge, I climbed back into the park and struck up a conversation with a gaggle of young female tour guides who had no clients, apparently because of the holiday. They told me that the bridge was built during the Great Leap Forward when steel was hard to come by. Mao made people melt down their rice bowls to provide building materials for the bridge. They also told me about the large number of people who jump off the bridge (this was confirmed by my roommate's boyfriend, a Nanjing native, who laughed when I said I had gone there, saying that it's known for its suicide rate), as well as the retired old men who take it upon themselves to patrol the bridge trying to spot and dissuade jumpers and the soldiers who scan the roadway with binoculars attempting to do the same. Despite all of the efforts aimed at preventing suicide, though, the girls told me that there had been one two days before.
Before setting off for the bridge, I had lunch at a restaurant near my apartment that I had never been to. Despite the fact that it's an average restaurant, it seems to have been founded with a romantic theme in mind. Both the sign on the outside and the walls and tables on the inside are decorated with hearts and silhouettes of cupid. The Saturday afternoon clientele was just like any other restaurant, consisting mostly of groups of businessmen. While I was waiting for my food, I noticed a bizarre poster hanging on the wall:
有间餐厅
我想带你坐泰坦尼克
可惜我只有一张船票
我想带你去。。。有间餐厅
因为我有固定号码
（restaurant's phone number)
You Jian Restaurant
I wanted to take you on the Titanic
Unfortunately I only have one ticket
So I'll take you to . . . the You Jian Restaurant
Because I have the exact number
(restaurant's phone number)
It's probably a good thing the object of the guy's affections missed out on that Titanic trip, even though the consolation prize was a little lame. I said to the waitress, "That poster's pretty weird. Maybe the Titanic is romantic, but there's a pretty big disadvantage to going on it." She replied, "Think of it however you want." I'm not sure what to make of that reply.
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