It was a funeral.

While it was still dark this morning I heard voices down in the street and saw this strange procession of what I assume were relatives and friends carrying belongings from the apartment across from us and putting them into cars and vans. The flowers were all gone too. Just a moment ago, at 7:13 am, fireworks erupted and chased away evil spirits.

addendum

When we were coming home from a friend's place last night, it started to snow. I took a picture of the flowers with a little snow on them, and then this morning everything was covered with it.

window things

I was in my kitchen this morning making pancakes for Erin. Our kitchen is my favorite spot in our apartment, because you can see all of the other people in all of their kitchens in all of the surrounding apartments. I like the feeling of everyone cooking at the same time. Now that it's winter, I especially like to look out the window and see all of the windows steaming up at once. When the sun is setting, this look the best, but I can never get it to come out in a picture very well. One of the reasons the buildings are all constructed the same way is because the gas for the stoves is piped to the same place in each of the units. I think the uniform construction of Chinese apartment buildings is beautiful and pragmatic. At least, it seems that way to me. I'm sure that I'm missing a good deal of what is happening around me on a daily basis. My interpretation of events is wonderfully askew. For example, this morning when I was making pancakes, I looked out the window and there were these flower arrangements in front of the door to the opposite apartment building. I looked at these for a long time trying to figure out whether they were for a wedding, or for a funeral. I'm still not sure. "I'm Waiting For My Man" by the Velvet Underground was playing on my Ipod in the kitchen while I was cooking, which would be appropriate for either occasion.

"Pizza for Women"

Apparently, my idea to post something every day didn't work, owing to my truant disposition. I digress, though. I'll move on.

I was teaching some of my younger students different food and restaurant vocabulary and they asked me, with genuine seriousness, whether I had ever eaten pizza. Once I told them I had, they asked me what my favorite kind of pizza was. I, in turn, asked them what their favorite kind of pizza was and they informed me that, OF COURSE, it was Potato Pizza. There was much horrified sighing and rending of garments when I informed them that I had never eaten potato pizza, and they were positive that I was lying to them. According to my students, every American MUST have eaten potato pizza, since pizza is American food, and everyone loves potato pizza. (Sorry Italian peoples of the world. Apparently my country has appropriated your food. We have a tendency to appropriate things. Mea culpa.)

My very serious student Carol repeated, half to herself, under her breath, "But Mr. Cartwright, potato pizza is so delicious. Is is SO delicious."

What could I do? I asked my students where the best place was in Tianjin to eat Potato Pizza and I promised them that I would try it. Carol also said "You should try corn. Corn is good, but Potato is the best pizza." My students told me to go to Mr. Pizza for Potato Pizza. Luckily, Erin and I knew where this place was, since it is close to where we buy groceries. Mr. Pizza is memorable, to me, because their slogan in English, under the name, is "Mr. Pizza--Pizza for Women." Erin and I have tried to figure out why Mr. Pizza has pizza for women, but it is a mystery.

Here are some highlights of potato pizza:

1. Potatoes (naturally)
2. Corn flakes (?)
3. Mayonnaise (??!)
4. A stuffed crust filled with warm, pureed pumpkin. (??!($#*(##(@*@!)

"distressed" bicycles

Erin and I just got home after having dinner with her friends Miguel, Juana, Lihuijin in this tiny restaurant inside of an apartment building. I liked it. It felt like a secret restaurant. Most of my favorite restaurants and bars feel like secret restaurants and bars. For example, in Seattle, I love the Alibi Room. It's in an alley off of Pike Street. There used to be this coffee shop, or maybe a bar, (I can't remember which and I think that means I'm getting old) in Port Townsend, Washington, and you had to enter the place through this little half-door. Maybe if one of my cohorts from those days reads this they can comment and tell me the name. I can't remember the name of it.

After dinner Juana and Miguel told us about this guy who sells cheap bikes down the street from the restaurant. The cheap bikes are actually new cheap bikes, not stolen cheap bikes. Erin and I jumped at the chance to somehow circumvent her earlier moral dilemma about buying a stolen bike. Juana and Miguel kindly offered to show us the place. The bikes cost what amounts to about $25 after conversion, so we jumped at buying one for Erin. Bicycling is the most practical way to get around here, and getting one's bike stolen is nothing to write home about. The timing was perfect, too, since I had previously taken a taxi from my school to meet up with everyone. Erin had our one remaining bike with her, and I wasn't looking forward to hoofing it home in the progressively bitter cold of a Tianjin winter. After we bought the new bike we both got to ride home.

On the ride home I kept thinking about the word "distressed" because Erin and I had already discussed wanting to rough up a new bike, if we bought one, so that it would look less appealing to steal. In the states, at a Pier One, or some other store, "distressed" tables are being sold for exhorbatent fees. At clothing stores "distressed" jeans are also being sold for exhorbatant fees. Distressed leather jackets, distressed baseball caps, the list goes on. I've been thinking lately that America may be unique in its need for "distressed" goods. From what I can glean, Tianjiners distress things on their own, and don't need manufacturers to do the distressing for them. In fact, things here maybe be a little too distressed at times. The air is distressed, the water in the canal is distressed, the frozen globs of spit on the sidewalk are distressed. But I digress.

Advertising language keeps coming up in my thoughts and my writing, lately, because I'm coming to terms with the fact that many sounds and sights that make me feel nostalgic, or safe, are really just Pavlovian responses to advertising. For example, after about a month in, here in China, I walked into a Fomax store and was in the drink aisle when I suddenly felt an emotional tug towards a plastic bottle with a familiar color scheme. It was a Minute Maid bottle of "orange drink". Here was the distressing part, before I move on to discuss "distressing" a bike; I don't read characters. I have merely been trained, through all of the years of my childhood, to know that the colors orange and black mean "Minute Maid". At first I thought it was a fluke, but a week later I was in Carrefour, in the toothpaste aisle and felt a similar, nostalgic tug. After I felt the tug I pointed to a display and said "That's Crest." Then I pointed to another one and said "that's Colgate," and then I felt a little like a trained monkey. And also, shamefully, a little bit at peace.

But back to the bike.

Once we got the new cheap non-stolen bike home I ran up to our apartment and got some supplies: 1) the steel wool from the kitchen, 2) a roll of strapping tape, and 3) a plastic bag. Then I proceeded to scratch the new cheap non-stolen bike as much as I could. I wrapped a piece of strapping tape around it. I used the steel wool on the "leather" of the seat. Erin grabbed some dirt and we rubbed it on the bike for good measure, before locking it up. Voila. We successfully "distressed" a bicycle.

I'll take a picture of the distressed bicycle tomorrow and post it.

If it hasn't been stolen.

here's something

I'm not very good at blogging consistently. I'm going to try and post at least one thing each day, even if it's short. Here's my first try:

Today I had one of my classes listen to music as part of their grammar lessons. I played songs that have the phrase "I feel" used in different ways, because I've been teaching them different ways this phrase is used, and different sentence patterns it is used with. My students huddled around my miniature Ipod speakers and fought over who got to sit directly in front of the speaker. They asked me if I could play Sara Vaughn's cover of "I feel pretty" three times in a row. Some days I feel like teaching in a Confucian culture, though absolutely maddening at times, has spoiled me and that I will find it difficult to go back to teaching brooding, trustafarian JoCo college Freshmen. That is my moment of the day. Also, I learned that in Korea crows are bad luck. The word for the number four is also bad luck, because it rhymes with the word for death.

School Festival

Last week, on Friday, my school had their yearly festival. I’ve never been to something like this in the United States. I’m curious if some U.S. schools, maybe private schools, have festivals like this. Unfortunately, Erin and I both forgot to take our cameras. It was a real spectacle. My students told me this week that they posted a video from the festival of them singing and dancing to a K-pop song on some Korean version of YouTube. If I can find it, I’ll link it here. My student “Alex” said to me: “Mr. Cartwright, I am sure that we are going to be famous now. Our video had maybe twenty hits on Friday, and then I looked today, and we have 300 hits!” I’m kind of at a loss to explain exactly what happened at this festival in some way that makes sense. There was food. It was in a giant, fancy auditorium. Parents were there. Teachers were there. Students danced, and one student sang opera in Italian. There was a movie about two students who love the same girl that was shown. Students dressed up like waiters would run up and down the aisles and deliver things to people. There was some strange raffle where everyone had to stand up and look for a number on the bottom of their seats. A lot of my fellow teachers got on stage and danced with giant lollipops to a K-pop song called “I am kissing you.” There was a dance contest. Some of my twelve year old students dressed up in drag and sang a song called “Hey Mister!” from a Korean movie. They looked a little like the supremes. They were wearing a lot of blue, silver and gold lamay. A lot of things are more intense and confusing because of my lack of language over here. I felt a little like Hunter Thompson while watching all of it.

It was interesting to introduce Erin to my students, who are really fascinated by her. They’ve slowly gotten comfortable with talking to me, and seeing me every day, but I think Erin threw them for a loop. Some of my students would run up to us in their bowties and waiter uniforms in the auditorium and would start chattering away to me because they were excited to see me, and then you could visibly see them notice Erin out of the corner of their eye, who was sitting beside me, and they’d freeze up and get tongue-tied and the exchange would go something like this:
“Mr. Cartwright…is this…your wife?” I would say yes and introduce them and my students would sort of wave and say “hello!!!” really loudly, clearly very excited, and then they would look nervous, as if Erin’s presence threw a wrench in the script they were planning out in their head for what they would say when they saw me. I remember making scripts in my head like this in all of my French and German conversation courses. I think they’re curious about what exactly Americans do. They’re always watching me very closely, which was a little anxiety-inducing at first, but it’s just normal curiosity, and there is no cultural taboo against staring here, I think. It’s certainly not meant to make me feel uncomfortable. I always feel like I’m kind of a letdown, though. I don’t have a colt 45 to take out of my pocket and twirl around. Sometimes I think they’re waiting for me to order pizza. I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to do at those moments. Sing the national anthem? Start a business? Call a limousine? I like my students.

burning spirit money in my neighborhood

Yesterday I saw something strange when I was walking down our street, on my way to go teach at my school. There were these charcoal circles on the octagon sidewalk tiles, and little piles of burnt paper. I sort of pushed the image to the back of my mind, and then forgot about it until this afternoon.

In my World History class that I'm teaching to the Korean students we had a discussion last week about whether or not we should study the ancient China section in our book. Our textbook has a chapter on ancient China, but I skipped over the chapter earlier in the semester, figuring that my students must have learned about ancient China in their other literature and history courses, taught by their actual Chinese teachers. I found out from my students, however, that this was not the case. They really wanted to study more about Ancient China, so that's what we're doing. I actually took several courses in my honors program at Washington State University on ancient China. Still, it's bizarre to be an American teaching Korean students in a Chinese public High School about ancient China. "Unqualified" is the adjective that keeps running through my mind while I teach this unit. In any case, today my student "Abraham" asked me if I had seen the burnt circles on the sidewalks. I said that I had, and he explained to me that people are burning paper money for their ancestors to spend in the afterlife. We also talked about the practice in China of setting off fireworks to keep evil spirits and ghosts away. Abraham and my other Korean students explained to me that in China there are many traditions to scare away the ghosts, while in Korea, there are traditions to encourage the ghosts to visit. Abraham and my other students told me that in Korea the Korean people want the spirits and ghosts from the afterlife to visit them, because the spirits can teach them important things, or help them make decisions. About a half hour ago Erin and I were walking down our street after dinner and there was this amazing line of our neighbors burning little fires of paper money. We stopped and Erin asked a nice man from our neighborhood, in Chinese, about the practice, and he explained it to her. Once we were in our apartment I decided I really wanted to try and take a picture, but then when I got back out in the neighborhood I was nervous and didn't want to do anything inappropriate, or disrespectful. Some of our neighbors saw me and smiled and motioned that it was okay, but I still only took one picture. What an amazing evening.

Chang Cheng

more photos

photos

Ancient Culture Street

In Kansas, if you go to Dodge City, people put on cowboy shows, and tourists are able to see a "real" Western town. I imagine that "Ancient Culture Street" is a little like this in Tianjin. That sounds horribly cynical, and I don't mean it to. I think it's interesting how different cultures all over the world create little areas to reproduce some time period, or place in their history, which they consider to have been a high point. What exactly, or really, "when" exactly a culture chooses to reproduce might be very telling about that particular culture. I'm not going to think about what recreating a gun fight and the graveyard of Boot Hill in Dodge City might mean for my own country. Wait, it's too late. I did think about it. Here are three videos I made in ancient culture street. One is just to show what it looks like, the other is to show this really cool stand where an artist would make little characters out of clay very quickly, and the last one is of a food vendor. I thought the noise coming from his steamer was some kind of musical instrument at first, which was what made me walk over to the area where I made the movies.



Hm. Two of my videos had some trouble uploading. Hopefully I can add them to this post.



I think I fixed it.

pictures of people

I have this pet theory that people should take fewer photographs of "scenery" when they're traveling, and more photographs of people. I think that when I return to the states, the pictures I'm going to want to look at are of the people I got to know in my daily life here. So, with that in mind, I took my camera with me yesterday. The other impetus for this was that Erin chatted with our friend Elliott online and he mentioned that I should post more. This made me miss Elliott like the Dickens, so here you go Elliott. Erin just got off the phone with her sister Megan, as well, and Megan mentioned being curious about what other foods we've been discovering here, after she read the post about the breakfast thing I ate. I'll try to take more pictures of food. If anyone else has suggestions of things they'd like me to post about on this blog, just leave me a comment. Like Mark Twain, I have a "truant disposition", so I need people to help me keep on the blogging straight and narrow.

Picture descriptions: 1) This is a picture of all the flags in front of apartment buildings in our neighborhood, in honor of the holiday for the founding of the PRC. Many women also wear a red berette in their hair for the holiday. I'm going to try and find information about what that's all about. 2) This is a picture of a waitress and one of the owners of the little restaurant that's around the corner from where we live. This place is very close to our apartment. People eat out a lot more frequently here, it seems, than in the U.S. Restaurants are loud, and lively, and social. We frequently see a large number of people from our neighborhood also eating out at this same place. You can see on the wall this gigantic block of pictures of food from their menu. The menu is written entirely in characters, without images, so I think Erin has set a challenge for herself to try and order just from reading the characters in the menu, but we sometimes break down and walk over to the wall to point at things like ignorant Laowai. I really wanted to take a picture of the waitresses, because they're very funny and we've gotten to know them more, but when they saw I had a camera, three of them scurried off. The remaining waitress in this shot is pretending to organize the chopstick and cup sets, but really, she's avoiding having her picture taken. After I took this shot, the guy I assume is one of the owners ushered me over so that I could take a picture of the woman behind the counter. We'll get to her eventually. 3) This is a picture of the lady running the cigarette and booze shop next to the restaurant. These shops are everywhere. All they sell are cigarettes and booze. We've never actually bought anything from this particular lady, but she seemed nice. You can't see him, but there's this guy sitting on the floor behind the counter to this woman's left, dead asleep and snoring loudly. He's the man we wave to who usually runs the shop. Also, I wanted to take this picture so that you could see the insane cigarette lighter they have for sale. Click on the picture to make it bigger. The cigarette lighter is the gold-looking...uh...elephant? I think it resembles those things the Riders of Rohan fought in The Lord of the Rings movies in front of the white city. Anybody want it? I could probably ship it, or fit it into my suitcase on the return trip. 4) I love these guys. These two men run the bicycle repair stand on our corner. There are bicycle repair carts all over the city run by men like this, but these two particular guys run the one in our neighborhood I walk by on my way to get a cab to work each day. I think they might actually be upstart bicycle repairmen, because there's another little shop deeper into the neighborhood that looks more elaborate. One of our friends here said that you should be careful of some of the stands in the city, because some of the ones close to the university sell bicycle locks for a very specific reason. They sell locks that they have the master key to, and then they go bicycle "shopping" after you have one of their locks. These guys don't strike me as running that kind of operation, though. They don't sell locks. And seriously, how could you not trust them? Look at how amused they are. I envy these guys. They get to sit on this corner all day. 5) This is the aforementioned "lady behind the counter" at our local restaurant. I would like to draw your attention to three things. First, there is a nice bust of Mao on the counter. Second, you can sort of see my head in the mirror. Third, this lady's ensemble is not exceptional; in China, feather boas, sequins and see-through, knee-high socks are adequate business attire. Also, pajamas are acceptable if you're just walking along the side of the street for a few miles.

books

Books written in English that I've found for sale in Tianjin:

The Castle, Franz Kafka
Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson
Beloved, Toni Morrison
Lady Chatterley's Lover, D.H. Lawrence
Emma, Jane Austen
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
The Red and the Black, Stendhal
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
The Complete Stories of Sherlock Holmes
Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
Sons and Lovers, Ivan Turgnev
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

Right now I'm reading Winesburg, Ohio for my non-comprehensive lists book. I'm trying to find a copy of Moby Dick that isn't abridged, because I've seen shortened ones floating around. I don't know why I find this so interesting, but I'll keep posting the titles of books that I see for sale in case others are curious as well. One of my students is reading The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin for fun. I saw some other student had my student's copy in a different class, later in the day on Friday. They're passing it around. It's sort of a hot commodity. I never imagined this happening with that book.

more pictures of the neighborhood

Here are a few more pictures of our neighborhood. I particularly wanted to take a picture of the sidewalk with the leaning trees along it. One of my favorite moments of the day is the moment when I am walking past the entrance to the magic alley, on my way home, along this sidewalk with the leaning trees. There are also some pictures of the entrance to our building, our stairwell, and our front door.

the story of an American Ben in a Korean High School in China

These are some pictures of my daily life teaching at a Korean High School. Blogger is doing some strange things of late, when I try to post pictures and move them around or add captions, so I'll just try and summarize up front. The first pictures are of the entrance to the school where I work, along with some of its signs. There's a bust of someone to the right as you walk in. I'm not sure who this is. Does anyone know? Basically, the bust of this bearded guy is the only other Western-looking face I see in Tianjin during most of my days. I've become affectionate towards him. It think it might be Plato or Socrates. Later in the group of photos are a couple of pictures of my co-teachers. I would consider these people to be my friends. Casey, the woman wearing yellow, is another English teacher. She moved to China a couple of weeks ago, just like me, from Korea. The rest of the teachers don't speak English or Chinese, and I don't speak Chinese or Korean, but we all eat lunch together, and make jokes, look exhausted, or roll our eyes at similar things. We take turns buying juice boxes for each other. We let people jump in line at the copy machine. We share the instant coffee and take turns buying it when it runs out. These past few weeks have taught me that actually being able to speak to someone is highly overrated, in terms of forming a friendship.

One note: click on the photos to see larger versions of the images

the symbol using/symbol creating/symbol misusing animal

Kenneth Burke is one of my favorite rhetoricians and he once said that man is the symbol using, symbol creating, symbol misusing animal. One set of symbols I find curious in China are cartoon characters. The associations are different for cartoon character images here than they are in the west. Maybe this is partially the west's fault, or the new vortex of meanings are tied up with the west in some way. I'm not sure. I'm not sure if it's even possible for me to figure out entirely what they mean here. Western cartoon characters carry some connotation of wealth and "western-ness" in China. It might not be wealth exactly, but some feeling of "modernity" that isn't easy for me to grasp. Here's what I can figure out:

These images aren't as heavily associated with children, but with something new, or the new way of life. Just to clarify, I'm not talking about manga, or images from graphic novels. Manga and graphic novels here would be a whole other conversation. A long one. What I'm referring to are images we might code specifically as children's images. Loony Toons characters. Disney characters.





I don't know how to convey the prevalence of these characters in a variety of strange places here. They are everywhere. I will often pick up an object in the store and groan when I find that Mickey Mouse is on it. It's hard to find things without cartoon characters on them. There are a variety of different cartoon characters on objects in our apartment, in order to make the apartment seem more upscale, or attractive. For instance, there is a curtain that we draw in the bedroom of our place to shut out the light from the glass-paned door. Mickey and Minnie are on that. There's a light fixture in our bathroom. Pluto is chasing Tweety Bird on that. There's a Hello Kitty light switch cover in our bedroom. The strangest one in our apartment, by far, is the cartoon image of two little boys in briefs eating ice cream next to each other. This is actually the brand label that is on our fridge. It's the company's symbol.

batteries schmatteries

I haven't posted anything here in about a week. I remember vaguely, last weekend, taking my camera with me out of the house to get some more shots of Tianjin with actual people in them, only to discover that my camera batteries were dead. I still don't have any batteries, but why would that prevent me from writing? When I think about posting something to my blog, do I imagine that this must necessarily include posting pictures? Why do I feel compelled to put pictures up here all the time? Is it because of our visual culture? The commodification of culture? (i.e., I'm in a "foreign" place, therefore I must "get" something from this place to show people, and images somehow seem more tangible) I don't want to become reliant on a camera. Also, it bothers me when people are constantly photographing things. It always has. You can ask my family, or Erin--if I'm in someplace that I think is really fascinating, I get very annoyed at having to stop experiencing to take pictures of it.

When I was teaching composition at Washburn a few years ago many of my students did not respond well at all when we discussed writing in terms of "voice", or the "sound" of a certain writer. This made me curious, so I asked them if, when they read books by different writers, they hear a voice in their heads reading the text, or if they imagine the writing of different people "sounding" different, because of style, word-choice, etc. I think this sound model of discussing writing has been around for a long time, but maybe it's lost some of its usefulness. Out of three or four classes, in successive semesters, none of my younger students said they thought of writing in terms of voice, or sound. I frequently taught evening classes and my students ranged in age from 17 to 55. The older students in my class did tend to discuss writing using words associate with sound, like "tone", "voice", etc. Did the older students feel more familiar with this because writing has been taught to them for so long using this sound vocabulary, or is the difference a result of an actual shift in culture to something more visual? Do people experience writing more visually than they used to? I know I'm kind of going on and on about this, but it's been in my thoughts a lot this week. Some of the reading I've been doing for my PhD comprehensives, and other things I've stumbled across, has mentioned how different groups of poets and writers, at different times, have taken issue with the privileging of the "sound" of poetry, prose, words, etc., over their visual characteristics.

I've read about this tension between the visual and aural qualities of poetry, specifically, a lot, and I thought that I was relatively comfortable in a neutral position, or rather, wanting both qualities to function harmoniously without championing one over the other. My former position of neutrality has been complicated by my daily life here, though, in a place where I have absolutely no written language. I have been experiencing, simultaneously, a renewed sense of respect for the sound of language, just as sound, and a renewed sense of respect for the visual that is not associated with written language. I can try to read the pinyin for a word in Chinese--for example, the name of my neighborhood--but without listening to native speakers say the name over and over again, I can't repeat it in a way that a taxi driver will understand. Also, something strange is happening to the way I encounter the world around me visually. In the states, I have a relatively bad sense of direction. This hasn't really changed in China. What has changed, though, is that my visual memory seems to be kicking into high gear. I will remember a certain bench, or a specific type of lamp post, or what kind of brick the streets in one area have, and as a result, I find that I know what part of town I am in most of the time here, whereas, if I were in a large city I'm relatively unfamiliar with in the states, like New York, maybe, I think it would take me a lot longer to recognize places, because my brain would be somehow lazy, relying on all of the English words everywhere to help me orient myself. Here, I have no understanding of written language, and this is causing me to remember how everything looks. The way things look is vitally important to me in my daily life, because if I don't know what things look like specifically, I won't be able to navigate my way around even my own neighborhood, much less find my way to the school I teach at, which is about twenty minutes by car from where I live. Enter conundrum. Finish very long blog post.

You know that scene in the first Harry Potter book...

...where Harry goes to the train station, and he's all "It's just a normal train station. I don't see what the big deal is," but actually, it's a magic train station? (I'm paraphrasing here. I hope that Phil Nel isn't reading this.) That scene from Harry Potter is sort of what the alley branching off the left of our little street is like. Yesterday morning I had to get up before Erin and catch a taxi down to my doctor's appointment, and when I left our apartment I smelled this amazing food, peered down the alley and saw several street vendor carts had magically appeared there. I've been bugging Erin all of yesterday and today about getting up and going out there in search of breakfast. Today she relented, and we ate the most amazing food. We also explored more of the magic alley. Forget Carre Foure. I'm never going there again. Our magic alley has everything in it--a traditional open-air market, a building with a bunch of different food shops, produce salesmen, a meat vendor, and a place to get ice cream. The magical alley has old men on stools playing Chinese chess, little twisting branching streets full of people with blankets selling things from Converse knock-offs to Pokemon toys, tea shops, you name it. It was such an unassuming alley. It might be my favorite magic alley that I have ever encountered, including the strange one in Port Townsend, WA that leads to the hidden bar with the half-door, hobbit-sized entrance, and the alley in Seattle that leads to the youth hostel and the Alibi Lounge. This alley blows those magical alleys out of the water. I feel like I'm a character in Pan's Labyrinth, only less terrified of everything. At the top of this post is a picture of the most amazing 0.439149 USD breakfast (that's right...43 cents) that I have ever had the pleasure of eating. I bought this at the mouth of the magical alley. Erin is trying to find out what the name of this thing is. Basically, the little cart has a flat griddle surface on it. The first part of the process is kind of like the process my French friends use for making crepes. You start with some batter, and smooth it into a circle with a tool just like the one used with crepes. Next, you crack two eggs onto the batter before it solidifies, and mix them in. Then, some sort of salty plumb sauce is applied. While this is cooking, fresh green onion and cilantro gets chopped up and tossed onto it. Next, this fried, dough thing is put on top and crumbled. Red pepper sauce is added, and then the whole thing is folded twice onto itself and placed into a little bag. I'm going to try and make a movie of the very nice lady who runs the cart making one some time soon. It was fascinating to watch.

American History will never be the same...

I did two interesting things today. First, I had to go to a Chinese hospital and have a full physical examination, even though I paid to have one completed in the states before I left. My physical examination forms from the states didn't have a giant, red stamp overlapping a photograph of me. Seriously. That was the reason the exam report wouldn't work. So, today I had to go to another physical examination, and have the following performed:

--blood drawn
--a chest x-ray
--an ekg
--a urine sample taken (after being told to drink anything or eat anything
--blood pressure checked

etc., etc., etc.

The whole experience made me a little uncomfortable. I would have been uncomfortable, even if I spoke any Mandarin. Not speaking Mandarin made me extra uncomfortable. If you ever happen to come over here and need to go through a government physical examination, I'll let you in on what to expect:

Basically, you go in, go to a desk, give them about four passport photos which you MUST have purchased ahead of time, then you get a form. Then you fill out the form, wait in a line, and have them take a digital picture of you that they check against your passport. This is so each of the different doctors in the building, at the six different stations, will be able to pull up your picture on their computer in the six different rooms and verify that it's you, as you continue on your merry way. After your digital picture, you go to the window and pay, and then you go around to each of the different doctors' rooms as fast as you can. All of the rooms branch off of the same hall, and there are a ton of people scurrying in an out of all of the rooms.

The hall reminded me of the Franz Kafka novel The Trial. It also reminded me of the Orson Welles movie-version of that novel ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXA7RtM_GFY ).

Each time you go into a room, to...let's say, take off your shirt, lay down on a table and get slathered up with that weird ultrasound lubricant they use for EKG tests,--wait, I'm getting confused--I had BOTH an ultrasound and an EKG test performed. Both of them had lubricant. Anyways, there will be several people continuously appearing in the room, waiting in a huddled line for you to finish and hop off the table so that they can have their turn. Everyone will be speaking Mandarin. Constantly.

So, here was the most hilarious part of the experience--I was a little bit stressed out, what with the scurrying and the lubricant, and when they took my blood pressure in the blood pressure room (I think it was room 3) it was a little bit high. I told my Laowai-wrangler Sylvia, who told the doctor, that I check my blood pressure regularly, and that it's normally very good; it was probably just a little high because I was nervous from running around for the examinations. SO, the doctor talks to my Laowai-wrangler saying something I'm not sure about and we continue on to the blood-letting room. While we're waiting on the bench in that room for the spot where the needle pricked me to clot, Sylvia keeps saying to me "Don't be nervous. It's okay. You should not be nervous with the exam," and making sort of soothing hand-motions to me. I thought at the time that this was really nice of Sylvia. She works for my employer and has been helping me out for the past week, so we're sort of getting to be friends. I thought the concern was sweet on her part. THEN she asked me "Well, are you ready?" I sort of blinked at her. Basically, the blood-pressure people told her that they were going to let me try the test again. That's why she was telling me not to be nervous. SO, we go back into the blood pressure room and I stick my arm back into the machine. Sylvia stands directly in front of me the entire time, this second go-round, and says "don't be nervous, don't be nervous, don't be nervous" over and over again. This makes me nervous. But, I eventually got out of there and I think everything went alright. After we left, I scurried over to the building that my employer's office is in and went up to the 11th floor to meet with the woman in charge of the contracts/teaching-jobs, etc.

This leads me to interesting thing-of-the-day #2:

I found out from her that I am going to be teaching American History to groups of Chinese students instead of English grammar, as I previously thought. I am intrigued by the idea of this, even though I am probably not qualified to do such a thing. I will research. I will "bone up" on teaching American History, even though I am full of questions, so that I will do a passable job. How does one teach American History in English to students whom are all under the age of 12? Will we sing "Yankie Doodle Dandy?" Is it appropriate for me to teach them to sing "The Battle of New Orleans?" I mean, I am living in a city that factored significantly in The Boxer Rebellion. Suggestions are welcome. It will all be fodder for poems, or critical essays, I say. This second interesting situation of the day is the reason for the picture of William Cutting. Also, here are the lyrics to The Battle of New Orleans:

Well, in eighteen and fourteen we took a little trip
along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip.
We took a little bacon and we took a little beans,
And we caught the bloody British near the town of New Orleans.

We fired our guns and the British kept a'comin.
There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to runnin'
down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

Well, I see'd Mars Jackson walkin down the street
talkin' to a pirate by the name of Jean Lafayette [pronounced La-feet]
He gave Jean a drink that he brung from Tennessee
and the pirate said he'd help us drive the British in the sea.

The French said Andrew, you'd better run,
for Packingham's a comin' with a bullet in his gun.
Old Hickory said he didn't give a dang,
he's gonna whip the britches off of Colonel Packingham.

We fired our guns and the British kept a'comin.
There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to runnin'
down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

Well, we looked down the river and we see'd the British come,
and there must have been a hundred of 'em beatin' on the drum.
They stepped so high and they made their bugles ring
while we stood by our cotton bales and didn't say a thing.

Old Hickory said we could take 'em by surprise
if we didn't fire a musket til we looked 'em in the eyes.
We held our fire til we see'd their faces well,
then we opened up with squirrel guns and really gave a yell.

We fired our guns and the British kept a'comin.
There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to runnin'
down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

Well, we fired our cannon til the barrel melted down,
so we grabbed an alligator and we fought another round.
We filled his head with cannon balls and powdered his behind,
and when they tetched the powder off, the gator lost his mind.

We'll march back home but we'll never be content
till we make Old Hickory the people's President.
And every time we think about the bacon and the beans,
we'll think about the fun we had way down in New Orleans.

We fired our guns and the British kept a'comin,
But there wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to runnin'
down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

Well, they ran through the briars and they ran through the brambles
And they ran through the bushes where a rabbit couldn't go.
They ran so fast the hounds couldn't catch 'em
down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

We fired our guns and the British kept a'comin.
But there wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to runnin'
down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

our neighborhood

Sally (my sister) gave me some good prodding about posting more here. I think I've been in a state of constant grok over the past few days. In my defense, our internet just got hooked up about fifteen minutes ago in our apartment, so prior to today posting wasn't very easy.

Also, I had this theory that I think my friend Jason would approve of, that I tested with our internet service guy this morning. I packed our modem, our router, and all of our connection cables in my luggage. I knew that the DSL would be "turned on" today, so this morning I woke up and gathered together every appliance adapter we own and proceeded to hook up everything. I figured that a tech-guy working for an internet company, regardless of country, would be able to visually recognize that everything was connected and we wouldn't even need to talk about it (which would be impossible, me not speaking Mandarin). The guy walked in, I pointed to a few things, showed him where the phone jack was connected, and he sat down, typed a few things, set a password, and was out of the apartment in about 10 minutes. Every interaction I have where I can actually communicate something to someone is becoming a sort of victory for me. In any case, on to the fun stuff!

I took a few photos and movies of our apartment and neighborhood:









This last movie I made after it rained pretty heavily. In it are two guys across the alley/courtyard area from us who are sweeping the standing water left after the storm into the gutter. Close to the spot where these guys are sweeping, there are a couple of older Chinese men who have adopted several stray cats in the neighborhood. I like to watch these guys feed their cats and (I assume) debate their relative merits from our kitchen window while I'm cooking dinner. My next blogging goal is to get some decent pictures of these guys with the cats.