Life, Lately

Birthday Sunset, view from our rooftop

As spring rolled into Wuhan these past few weeks, we've done a number of fun things aside from our usual teaching. 

We celebrated Inga's last birthday before the big 3-0 on March 27th. The day included sampling a 'toffee' birthday cake from a Chinese bakery and watching a take-your-breath-away sunset.

Chinese Cake (FYI, that's white chocolate on the right, not cheese)

The air quality has been decent (for Wuhan, at least) so we've taken lots of walks in the sunshine. Inga especially got a kick out of the new music-themed art in the walking street behind the nearby Wanda Plaza mall:

Is that what you'd call an eighth rest? And how about the bongo drum trash cans?

Over Easter weekend, we took the fast-train to Hunan Province to the city of Changsha. Our time there included a meaningful visit with a friend, visiting a fantastic zoo and Trevor's first experience eating 'stinky tofu.' One great surprise near the zoo exit was seeing a photo of WSU Cougar football on a poster display about animals as mascots. Go Cougs!

Eating "Stinky Tofu" in Changsha: Yes it really stinks (like an open sewer), but tastes good
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WSU Surprise at the Changsha Zoo - "Go Timberwolves!"(?)

Trevor had some classes to teach the week after Easter but Inga enjoyed having a more than a week off for spring break. What happens when teachers get time off? Well, they wear silly matching shirts like this out in public: 

Inga and her best fellow-teacher friend:  "I'm not going to teach"

Besides plenty of tree blossoms around Wuhan, we heard there were imported tulips. So last Thursday we took advantage of a free afternoon and beautiful 70-degree weather to head across-town to the East Lake area. (And when we say 'across-town,' we mean riding buses for about an hour and fifteen minutes--we usually catch up on reading on these types of bus rides). 

The first garden we visited actually didn't have tulips, but still was a beautiful change of scenery from the usual construction cranes and traffic detour fences. That day we saw several couples getting wedding photos taken in these gardens. 

East Lake "Plum Garden" - Chairman Mao approves of this garden (upper right)

East Lake Botanical Gardens - Tulips (a bit out of their element, and fading fast, the flowers that is)

At the East Lake Gardens

Two-thumbs-up Tulips

Finally, this past Saturday we took two friends with us to begin some exciting 'projects.' Stay tuned to hear and see about those in a few weeks. Any guesses?

Thanks for catching up with our adventures lately, and we hope spring is lovely where you're at!

March & Music Men

"March winds bring April showers, which bring May flowers." In the past three weeks, we've had March winds, March showers and March flowers...so it may be safe to say spring is coming to Wuhan. Trevor and I haven't quite packed away our winter coats and layers, but if this weather keeps up, the transition will happen soon. Whenever it's a sunny day in Wuhan, this is what we've grown accustomed to seeing:

I also can tell spring is coming because the Chinese elementary school near where I teach ESOL part-time has resumed their outdoor morning exercises:

Another fun thing about spring is that it includes many birthdays. On March 10, we helped a friend celebrate her birthday with 'breakfast for dinner.' It was great to have an excuse to go all out making cinnamon rolls, cream cheese frosting, fruit salad and tons of pancakes (Trevor has definitely perfected his pancake-making skills here in China).

And now for the musical part of this entry....
Last Saturday, I was walking around the nearby fancy mall with my friend when I saw this:

I froze in excitement at such a great music window display. I mean, really, how often do you see a clothing store use classical music to sell their products? On the teal poster, most of the composer and conductor pictures were matched correctly with their last names. 'What if I could buy this poster and use it to decorate my future violin studio?' I thought to myself excitedly [not exactly thinking how in the world I could take something that big back to America.]

I knew I had to go into the store to ask if I could have/buy the poster. Somewhere between using my broken Chinese about being a violin teacher and the bewildered store associate trying to explain in simple terms that the decorations were not for sale, another store associate came around the corner with a t-shirt with the composers and conductors. I gasped because I knew the shirt had to come home with me...and gasped again when I looked at the price. [Yikes the price of about three violin lessons here!] My friend and I doubled over laughing at the situation--I couldn't have the poster but the t-shirt was definitely for sale. I tried on a [Chinese] men's size small, which strangely, fit great. And I guess you could say that the rest is [music] history:

One very happy music nerd

 

Spring Festival Trip

This year for our Spring Festival (a.k.a. Chinese New Year) vacation, we headed south (a.k.a. "somewhere-warm-unlike-bone-chilling-Beijing-like-last-year") to a wonderful retreat center on Cheung Chau (长洲) island, near Hong Kong. So...instead of trying to make a few days of R&R into a action-packed blog post, we'll just let the pictures do (most of) the talking. [Note: you can click to enlarge any of the collages]

Day 1: Cheung Chau

Clockwise, starting upper-left: Trevor reading his Valentine's Day note from Inga; random cute old couple on Cheung Chau; viewpoint along the (unimpressive) Little Great Wall; loving the fresh Pad Thai; Cheung Chau; "fire beaters," for your safety and convenience; sugary goodies that can't be easily found in mainland China 

Day 2: Hong Kong Island

Clockwise, starting upper-left: One(!) of the malls on Victoria Peak; view across Victoria Harbor; (quiet) downtown HK on the way to the Peak; can't pass up a chance for an Ikea visit!; view from the Peak

Day 3: Cheung Chau

Clockwise, starting upper-left: "Waiter, there's a person in my straw!"; pretty flowers; bulk foods and a lazy cat (health code, what?); Cheung Chau harbor; fresh from the sea; happy laowai on the windy beach

Kite Surfing - looks like fun, looks like hard work!

Day 4 (morning): Marveling at seashells on a quiet beach

Fishing Fun/Tiny silver fish no longer having fun

Things to blog home about:

Clockwise, starting upper-left: a quiet lane and a giant tree (Cheung Chau); "don't do it...just don't" (Cheung Chau); city busses of the water; drivers in their lanes, waiting for pedestrians(!); doggy litter box (Cheung Chau)

Apple products are cheaper in HK than in mainland China - apparently this isn't a secret...

Best apples in the world! Sign on right says "Fuji Apples"

Can't even imagine how much money is sitting here...or where it all those containers came from...or are going to...

Evening light show, from Kowloon

Huangshi Trip and Everyday China Photos

In mid-January, we decided to get out of Wuhan's recently very-bad smog by taking a trip to the nearby city of Huangshi. This smaller city is a couple hours away and is where several other members of our Zhong Relations team live and teach. Actually, Trevor and I took a trip to Huangshi around this same time last year with one of Inga's tutoring students (part 1 and part 2). But we have to say, this most recent weekend trip was much more fun.

Getting to Huangshi in the first place was a bit of an adventure. By the look of this photo, it might appear that we hitch-hiked along a busy highway to find a ride...which indeed we did. But don't worry, moms, our Chinese friend helped us find a safe driver. :)

We stayed with our friends, Brad and Dana and their adorable almost-one-year-old baby. Their home was such a welcoming place, and baby Leila's funny antics kept up laughing all weekend. Dana whipped up delicious breakfasts both mornings. Especially after living in China for a year and a half, treats like pancakes and coffee cake are indeed treats.

On Saturday, Trevor spent time with the guys. They spent most of their time hanging out in downtown Huangshi, though they also got to see the Huangshi "Fight Club" in action. These tough guys melted, however, when Brad and baby Leila showed up. Instead of trying to best each other in kungfu matches or wrestling, they turned to "fighting" for a chance to get a picture of the laowai baby.

Kevin and the "Fight Club," before baby Leila arrived

Inga met up with Lesley and Camille for some shopping and coffee (at one of Huangshi's cool new coffee shops!). After Dana returned from her Saturday teaching job, she met up with us a little later at Huangshi's newest malls before the four of us headed off for manicures. Coming from Wuhan where most activities include a lengthy bus ride, I was pretty impressed how much we could do in the downtown area of Huangshi in one day, all on foot.

There was definitely commotion at the new mall that Saturday. A food fair stretched across the entrance and there were competing sound systems at the booths which made the whole experience a little bit overwhelming. Giant Transformers 'guarded' the entrance (see Camille in the photo collage above for scale) and there was a man dressed up in a pig costume (one of the main characters in a classic Chinese story). My favorite part were the misspelled signs hung every ten feet or so: 'Crnand Open.'

The next week in January, I went to get a flu shot at a Chinese CDC clinic. It was located in a very 'normal' neighborhood of Hanyang, not too far from where I taught kindergarten last fall. While waiting for my Chinese friend to arrive on bus to help with the translating, I walked around and took some pictures of everyday China: 

This lady mends clothes with an old-fashioned sewing machine.
What caught my eye were the white numbered cloth tags hanging from each job.

This florist waited for customers while soaking up the (rare) sunshine.

On the left, this man makes what we call 'trash can bread' (flavored flatbread made by sticking dough onto the inner wall of a converted steel drum). On the right, this man sells (probably) home-grown vegetables.

This photo of 'everyday China' is actually from Huangshi, but is a common sight around Wuhan's malls, too. It's especially fun to see these balloon vendors ride their bikes or scooters while hanging onto their merchandise. 

The final detail of 'everyday China' is something I observed (with a bit of disgust) last winter, and have grown to accept as 'normal' this year. I've dubbed January as 'the month of seeing meat.' (Meat is pretty spendy here so buying chicken or ground beef is more of an occasional thing for us.) Many Chinese take advantage of the winter temperatures to cure meat, mainly sausages and fish. Most of this is eaten during Chinese New Year. We'll see the meat hanging up on just about any available wire. Sometimes it'll be curing right next to someone's laundry. There was plenty of sausages for sale at the Huangshi mall food fair, as well as a quick 'eat and run' chicken place. For the strong of stomach...here's a look:






If you don't like meat very much, don't say we didn't warn you!

Well, now you're probably either strongly craving some beef jerky or not, and we'll leave you to it. Chinese New Year is coming up soon, and we'll be sure to have some adventures to write about from that. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned~

Dumpling TIme!

Hello, just a quick update to let you all know that we are still around. Classes at the university finished up for me earlier this week, and thus I begins my 6'ish weeks of vacation - well, the month-long vacation officially begins in two weeks, but with no more classes, it's effectively vacation time now. What could spoil this time of rest and repose? How about a mild flu? :) Don't worry, though, I'm on the uptick.

Tonight we went out to our favorite local jiaozi (dumpling) restaurant. For those of you who aren't familiar with jiaozi, they are what "potstickers" (think Safeway's China Express, but smaller) want to be when they grow up. They are also much cheaper than Safeway's - we bough 50 jiaozi for less than $4. These tasty morsels are terribly addicting, and come in various flavors. I prefer the pork and chive kind, Inga leans toward the beef and white carrot ones. Jiaozi can be boiled or fried, depending on one's tastes or current gastronomic condition. Fried jiaozi can scoop up more sauce (once you bite the end off, though that might be a breach of Chinese etiquette), whereas the boiled ones sit a bit easier on the stomach.

The outside, or "skin" of the jiaozi is basically just a flour and water mixture (2:1, if you're keeping score at home), rolled out in the shape of a mini tortilla. The filling is made from minced/ground meat, and vegetables. The skin is pressed close on top, and voila! ready to go.

Below is a video of our "jiaozi lady" and "jiaozi grandma" (sorry, but yes, we give names to these people since we don't bother to ask their real names) making some jiaozi tonight. They thought it was quite funny that we were interested in this, since, well, in China not knowing how to make jiaozi is like not knowing how to make pancakes in the States.

Enjoy!

A Violist in Starbucks

        It had been an especially busy and stressful time at school: besides my usual work with ESL students, I was subbing for three general music classes, writing and grading semester-end tests, and feeling generally worn out—both emotionally and physically. Christmas break was just a few weeks away, but with no snow or memorable holiday concerts, the season was not feeling so jolly. But thankfully, something happened last Thursday that reminded me of the warmth of human connection and the universal language of music: 

           On my day off, I rode the bus across town to buy a metronome at a music shop near the Wuhan Conservatory of Music. While I was out exploring, it had started to rain and I decided to stop at Starbucks for a break. 

Scoping out the empty tables, I spied an instrument case leaning up against a table next to a Chinese girl. A fellow musician! I thought to myself with excitement. The case looked a little too big for a violin, but I couldn’t quite remember how to say ‘viola’ in Chinese. I had a choice in that moment: try to strike up a conversation with my (quite) limited Chinese, or keep to myself, saying nothing. As I sat down at the table behind her, I decided the latter, but was still hopeful to connect--somehow--with this fellow musician.

A few minutes later, the girl was rummaging through her bag and accidentally dropped her earbuds on the floor. This was my chance! I got up and tapped the girl on the back, pointing to the earbuds.

"Yours," I said in Chinese with a smile. 

"Oh, thank you!" she replied.

"Um, can I ask you a question?" I blurted out in Chinese, pointing at her case. "Is this a violin?"

She shook her head. “Vi-o-la,” she answered in English, slowly pronouncing each syllable. “Zhongtíqín,” she told me, saying the name in Chinese. 

“Oh! I am a violin teacher in America,” I said in Chinese. “I know viola just a little bit.”

“Really!” she responded, her eyes lighting up.

Hoping the girl spoke some English, I asked my next question more in English than Chinese:

“Where did you buy this? I really like it. It’s beautiful.” I pointed to her case because, as so often happens to me in China, I didn’t know the Chinese word and had to resort to pointing and saying ‘this.'

“Uh, I don’t know where,” she replied in a similar mix of Chinese and English. “It was a gift from my mother. Sorry I don’t know.”

“That’s ok,” I said, trying to think of other questions I knew how to ask in Chinese. Before I could get all the words together, she started to open up her case to show me her viola. 
It was like someone showing me a treasure box. She had a really beautiful instrument. We smiled at each other, perhaps because we realized we had the love of music in common.

After she closed up her viola case, the girl moved her things over to my table. My heart was so happy for the chance to chat with a fellow string player. I showed her the metronome I had just bought: 

"For my little student, a Christmas gift,” I tried to say in Chinese. The girl nodded in understanding and pantomimed the metronome's ticking.

I asked her if she was a student ‘over there,’ gesturing to the Wuhan Conservatory of Music. It took a few minutes of her explaining in Chinese and a little bit of English before I understood that she travels from a nearby province to take viola lessons at the conservatory. It turned out that she was only 17, though I mistook her for someone of university-age.

“Today I also bought this,’ I told her in Chinese, pulling out the sheet music for a Mozart violin concerto. "I have this in America but not here in China. I like this music.” 

Her eyes got big. “Oh! I know this. All high violin students in China have to play this piece. It is very difficult,” she said in a mix of Chinese and English. 

She told me that she had played the violin for several years and then had switched to the viola a handful of years ago. Naturally, we held up left hands to each other to compare sizes. She definitely had 'violist' hands. Even without English or Chinese, we could sympathize with each other about the finger callouses and neck marks that a lot of practicing can bring.  

It wasn’t until this point in the conversation that I thought to ask the girl her name (!). I dug out my little notebook with my Chinese name written down in characters and pinyin. She wrote hers down: ‘Fan Yu Le.’ Her name sounds really beautiful, I thought. 

"You have telephone?” she asked me. 
“Oh yes. Wait a minute,” I replied in Chinese, finding my name card and handing it to her. 
In English I asked if she had a favorite composer. She thought for a minute and then told me she didn’t really have one. Soon, though, she pulled out her current viola pieces—Bach, Stamitz, Hindemith and Berlioz.

“Wow! These look really hard,” I exclaimed. These pieces were definitely tricky, and probably looked even more difficult since the last time I read alto clef, I was still in America two summers ago.
“I know this one," I said, pointing to a Bach movement. “I had a friend who played viola and I heard it a lot.”

She nodded with a smile and hummed the first few measures. “Yes, all viola students have to play this one.” Yu Le got out another piece and pointed to a tricky chord part. “Last week I practiced this for so long and cried. It is very difficult.” 

I could totally sympathize with that feeling of frustration during a practice session. 

In a mix of English and Chinese, we chatted some more, thankfully mostly in English. When I complimented her on her spoken English, she shared that she had visited both Australia and America with her father. I assumed that maybe her father was a businessman who travelled a lot. Yu Le couldn’t think of the word in English to describe her father’s job so she looked it up in the dictionary on her phone. He is an archaeologist, and wrote books, Yu Le explained. I was impressed. For some reason, I had assumed that the Chinese men who travelled a lot were businessmen.

After awhile my brain was tired of trying to translate and speak so much Chinese. We ended up just sitting and smiling at each other. We had connected over a love for music, and at that point, it was ok that our abilities to communicate was limited. All too soon, Yu Le needed to get lunch before catching a train back to her home province. Before saying goodbye, she agreed to take a photo with me: 

I might not ever see Yu Le ever again, but something about our conversation reassured me about life in China. There have been many days when I have felt held back by my Chinese and a little sad about limited musical opportunities here in Wuhan. Nevertheless, I am so thankful that on a rainy Thursday, in the middle of a huge city of ten million, I met a Chinese violist who just happened to speak some English and who just happened to have half an hour free to chat. That to me, was a huge gift during this Christmas season. And I have a feeling that it wasn’t Santa Claus who arranged for that conversation. 

Excuse Notes

At the university here students only have Oral English for half of each semester. The other half is spent on Listening English, while a third course, Translation (a.k.a. reading and writing English) goes for a whole semester each term.

Finals for Oral English are not scheduled as part of the half-semester class (though there is time in the semester to add one more week to the class, but don't get me started on that…) The unfortunate effect of this is that we teachers must find a time outside of our classes, and our students' classes, to hold the final. Since each class is made up of multiple majors, each class thus represents multiple schedules. My solution is to just write out my "finals week" schedule on the board, and point to each time slot a la Vanna White, trying to determine when (most) everyone is available. Usually this results in several extra-busy days and at least one night of sitting in a cold classroom, listening to students slowing and brokenly answer my questions, and trying to concentrate on what they are saying, and not on wishing that I was home with my wife. But I digress.

If a student has three or more unexcused absences they are officially ineligible to take the test, but even one or two absences will lower their class participation grade. Of course, many students rush to turn in excuse notes before it's too late. Given the incentives to lie about why they missed my class, I have to be careful about which notes I accept, and which I reject. Some notes are clearly legitimate, but some are for the wrong date, have a bogus excuse, or are just to vague to be meaningful.

Below are two of the more interesting notes I've received so far:

#1

Dear Mr. Kingsley,

I'm sorry that I didn't go to class on October 12th because I went home. I'm a homesick kid. Home is to me what water is to fish, and home is where I always want to go back to I almost go home every week. But for sorts of things, it has been three weeks since I went home last time. What's more, it turns cold, but I still wear very thin, it is necessary for me to take some thick clothes from my home in case of catching a cold. That Sunday I had a test so that I couldn't have gone home again. But I considered that there was only this class on Friday afternoon so I decided to go home filled with anxiety and guilty. Whatever, being absent from class is my fault. Maybe it is not good reason. I don't want to make up an excuse to hold back my fault and to deceive my teacher. Hope that Mr. K understand me.

Sincerely yours,

Cathy Huang

That is by far the best excuse note that I have ever received. Even though this was her only absence, I didn't think twice about accepting it. :)

#2

Dear Mr. K:

I have a stomachache and very uncomfortable, please let me ask for a leave. Thank you!

Yours,

Summer Chen

The note itself is fairly unremarkable, but the paper it's written on makes it humorous. It is a page from one of the journal books that are so easy to find around here. At the top of the page is space to record the date, day of the week, weather, etc. In the upper right-hand corner is a "To do list," where my student wrote "stomachache." Below that, in the section "Today's purposes" appears the excuse note. I just like the image of a student sitting down in the morning and saying, "Okay, things to do today…have a stomachache." And then, a few hours later, "Ugh, [moan, groan]....stomachache, check!"

Maybe that's only funny after you've been grading hundreds of finals…