COMMENTARIUS PERPETUUS

SOME RECENT PICTURES WITH THE NEW OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

noreply@blogger.com (Bill Dan Courtney) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 08:11:00 +0000

Someone recently showed some interest this blog and that was the long lacking motivation I have been seeking to get it rebooted. Worked on changing the layout and design earlier and plan on doing so redirection with the content. Way too much to catch up since the last post from April and so for now I am just going to share a few pictures of Ivy and myself and a couple of the pets. Lots of things to report as far as work and travel and pets go as well as more opinions on life here in China.

THE MYTH OF THE POLITENESS OF CHINESE PEOPLE

noreply@blogger.com (Bill Dan Courtney) — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 11:06:00 +0000

(NOTE: for whatever reason this post was removed from my blog somehow by Google. I am reposting here with one picture of a kid shitting on the sidewalk removed that Google may have found offensive. But with all the trouble they have in China why would they care?)

You may often hear of how polite and courteous Chinese people are and to a degree this is very true in the way they treat their own family members, close friends or people of importance in their lives such as employers. My students are typically very polite to me in a way that I think you would never find in the USA. However this politeness all but disappears when it is to be extended in some way to strangers. This will be my first post on this topic but not my last. I need an avenue to vent some of my frustration over the uncivilized manner people treat one another here.

First, a couple weeks ago Ivy and I were down town on a rainy day and both of us had our arms full of parcels and bags and had no luck hailing a taxi. We were finally, with reluctance, going to catch a bus back to the school with all our stuff when I saw a cab on the far corner let someone off. I stood and waited for some time while the driver and passenger conducted their business and when the cab took off and approached me I flagged him down. He saw he and began to pull over and when he was about ten feet from me at most and had stopped completely a woman flew past me and headed for the taxi door. I was in no mood for it and I ran to the door and when she opened it I pushed it closed. She looked at me and actually elbowed me and tried top open the door. I weigh almost 200 lbs and she may have been 100 and I promise you the door was not going to open. She looked at me with such hatred and yet she knew she was in the wrong. This goes into a good example of a Chinese person "losing face". She was in the wrong and was humiliated that someone called her on it. She did something outrageous but expected to get away with it and and when she did not she lost face and no doubt, as Ivy said, if she had a knife in her hand she would have stabbed one of us. Do you think I am lying or exaggerating? A woman was stabbed and killed at the Kunming airport last year when a man cut in front of her in line and she, being in the right, said something to him about it. He lost face and killed her. I doubt he ever got to where he was going. I will probably exercise some restraint in the future as I got so mad as she tugged on the door I told her "fuck you" to which she replied back with a good "fawk yoo". Maybe I should not have said it but that is a good segue way into my next example of Chinese impoliteness.

Breaking in line. Fuck yous. Spitting. Arrgghhh!

The other day I think I got about my 7th "fuck you" from a stranger in China. As in the other cases it was a younger man of late teens to early 20's or so. Ivy and I were going to sit down and rest from a long walk we were having and there were two young men, maybe 16 or 17, sitting about 20 feet from us and almost immediately I here a "fawk yoo" and some giggles. I stared at the skrawy little shit down and he did nothing more. I mean what was I going to do really? Fight some skinny kid? Get in trouble with the law? Maybe have a visa issue? And yet for one split second that was how I felt. What this is all about I have no idea. As is typical when I brought this up around some Chinese people they say something like "oh, they don't mean anything rude." Yes, they do. If people in the US say fuck you they mean it as rude and so do teenage boys in China. If a confrontation occurred you had best expect to not only fight the smart ass who said it but any and all of his friends and probably strangers who want to help their country man find an outsider/invader. Typically I get a fuck you when I walk by some asshole guys who give me this stupid "hellllooooo" with giggles or tells me "good morning" at 6 Pm wand I say nothing back. I don't have to say hello to every goofball who says it to me with those stupid ass giggles like they are talking to a zoo animal. The fact that they say fuck you behind me back -or throw a rock at me is an indication the person is not somebody I would ever want to say hello back to.

Standing in line and dealing with passengers on a bus in China is a horrible experience.

COMMIE BEAT IT VIDEO

noreply@blogger.com (Bill Dan Courtney) — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 10:41:00 +0000

Michael Jackson - Beat It (Communist Version) - Music Video from winterwood on Vimeo.

COMIC STRIP EXPERIMENTS

noreply@blogger.com (Bill Dan Courtney) — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 14:17:00 +0000

Comic strip experiments made with iPod Touch, Comic Life Software, and Faststone Image Viewer software.

FUN PICTURES FROM IVYS iPOD TOUCH

noreply@blogger.com (Bill Dan Courtney) — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 13:48:00 +0000

PHOTOS FROM OUR RECENT TIME OFF FROM WORK

noreply@blogger.com (Bill Dan Courtney) — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 06:16:00 +0000

Holiday time is about over and in a week we are back to work teaching, Ivy at her school doing art and me at mine doing English. The holiday had a cloud over it after the Thailand issue but we managed to salavge something from it all. We had a couple friends stay with us and we traveled north to a city called Dali and from there traveld to and walked all the way up Chicken Foot Mountain (Ji Zu Shan.) These pictures are from my cellphone and there will be some more coming shortly from Ivy's iPod Touch thingy. Rather than do a break down of what we did, though I am planning that when I get some more images to write around, I will just get up these pictures with some short captions and let it go for now as I am a bit tired from just waking up and need more coffee before I can really write anything.

Am I the only one that thinks Google could do something better with the way their photos are uploaded and arranged inside Blogger posts? I just would like to make a simple side by side presentation. but it is too much work just to do what I done here. I cannot add captions to the images without screwing up the way things are set up and that took a bit of work to do so I will just briefly describe each picture starting at the top and going left to right:

Ivy somewhere, me in our apratment, Ivy and her best friend Potato in Dali, Ivy and her friend Smoke in Dali, Ivy at Er Hai Lake, our friend Paul at Er Hai, an old building enar our place, at the Bamboo Temple near our place, food market near our palce, Paul and Lulu

CHINESE TOXIC WEIGHTS

noreply@blogger.com (Bill Dan Courtney) — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 08:56:00 +0000

Does this little dumb-bell look like something that should cause panic?

All I wanted was some weights, barbells, to work out with a couple times a day. Just stretch my muscles a bit and trim now the parts of my middle aged body that are expanding noticeably. I used to work out and knew I could develop a simple little daily routine to look a little better and feel much better with some barbells. I had the choice of metal weights or plastic looking ones and the plastic ones were a bit cheaper at 270 RMB for a set. I got those and got them home but in a matter of a couple days began to notice I was light headed after a quick workout and my throat burned. Soon I noticed spots of a green colored substance where the weights had set on the floor and the size of the puddle increased. I wrapped the weights in cellophane but the problem got worse and worse and soon small holes began to appear in the cellophane and eventually I decided to throw the weights away and go back and get some metal ones.

I recently read some comments from Chinese netizens trying, hopelessly, to defend the quality of Chinese products from constant attack by foreigners and foreign countries in places like North America and Europe where many Chinese products get exported to. They feel the need to defend the motherland and state products made in China are as good as those made anywhere else, but there is no way to defend a product like these weights. Toxic waste was seeping from my them! I inhaled the stuff for a while until I figured out what was going on! And forget about returning the product to the store and getting a refund or complaining to some consumer protection agency. There will always be some lost soul who says “this happens in America too!” and that may well be; in regards to products made in China and sold in the US. But I never in all my decades in the US had such a thing happen and if it did I cold get a refund or exchange with no hassle. Since this is only one story of many I have created a new category called ripped Off and Screwed Over to recount some of my consumer misadventures here in China. Brace yourselves!


Yellow-green toxic bile more noticable in this image. Shouldn't there be some laws about this? And shouldn't those laws be enforced? Not in China.

NIGHTMARE IN THAILAND

noreply@blogger.com (Bill Dan Courtney) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 11:50:00 +0000

Nong Khai is in red.

Ivy and I just spent one entire day in Thailand and it was the longest day of my life it seemed. To be clear I am welcomed back to Thailand but I was kicked out. And that best possible situation since I was first told I would be sent to jail and have my passport seized. There was a glitch on my passport dating back to 2008 when, during that short visit –of about one hour- Ivy was kicked out. The mistake was on my part and yet it was a simple mistake and one made out of inexperience. not a mistake that would ever happen again. To understand the current set of circumstances you have to know what happened in January or so of 2008. Ivy and I went into Laos and we would spend about 21 days there. It was a nice visit and it opened my mind to many things. During the visit Ivy suddenly wanted to go to Thailand when she heard reports of it from a friend she made while in Laos. I was opposed to the idea of suddenly venturing off to bordering countries and felt there was more than enough to see in Laos. I just had not prepared my mind for some spontaneous and unprepared trip to some country like Cambodia, Vietnam or Thailand. It is simply the way I am. If I make a plan to see, lets say Laos, then I am not in a state to suddenly fly into some other country. I am also a person who gives in easily to other people in many cases to either avoid harsh feelings or because I feel bad someone else did not get what they wanted. I seemed I would be able to simply cross into Thailand with a stamp with my American passport, but the Thai embassy in Vientenne was close during the days before we decide to cross the Mekong River into the border town of Nong Khai on the Thai side. We decided to just play it by ear and cross and see what happened.

Bridge over the Mekong at the border crossing at Nong Khai, between Thailand and Laos

I got in the line and had my passport stamped with no issue. Boom. It was over. Ivy had problems and I did not see her for about 15 or 20 minutes and when she appeared with her friend we were traveling with she was distraught. She is a Chinese national and could not just walk into Thailand, but needed either a visa or a departure plane ticket. She said the guy offered a ticket but she felt it was too much and said no. I said we could try it, though in hindsight that was a bad idea too in terms of money and would she leave Thailand on a plane while I left on a train and bus? I do not want to separate from her on a trip. But she looked hurt and I wanted to see what cold be done. When she wnet back the deal was over. The guy had changed his mind and told her she had to leave ‘The Kingdom’ and she had to “go back Lao” (the ‘s’ in Laos is silent actually.) We were in the little office and since she and her friend had to go back it followed that I did too. And after some hassle with taxis and buses we took a bus back.

What never happened in all of this –which took place over the course of about one hour- was that I had my passport stamped with a departure stamp. It seems there may have been some mix up about this back at the Loatian border but they remembered us from earlier and let us back in. What you have to remember in these situations too is that the people may not speak your language –whatever it may be- and there can be some loss of valuable information. I basically walked out (took a bus to be exact) out of Thailand and went back to another country without being cleared. I never thought about it. I caused no issues getting back into Laos or leaving Laos and reentering China. I have flown all over China since then and it has never been an issue that I did not have that departure stamp (see picture examples below.) Now we jump forward in time to January 2011.

Exit stamp = triangle

Entrance stamp = square

We had bought our tickets for two weeks in Thailand over the summer of 2010. Ivy got her visa in advance and I had checked into mine and they said I just needed to get a stamp at the airport with an American passport. We exchanged money and had our travel books in Chinese and English. We booked a room for three nights in Bangkok and then were going to play it by ear and head north to Chiang Mai. I certainly had premonitions and concerns as I always do. They were more around being scammed or flat out robbed than anything else. I had also been dealing with some food poisoning I had been fighting for over two weeks and I returned the night before we were to get up at 5:30 AM to get the ‘black taxi’ ride we had booked to the airport. I had maybe a couple hours of rest at best as much tie was spent in the bathroom. But the one thing I had never considered happened right off the bat. Ivy went through her line fat and I could tell from her walk she was excited and ready to start the adventure. I was too though I was still weak and shaky from a night of stomach distress. Within seconds I had problems. I though maybe it was because I did not have a visa like Ivy did and told the guy I should just get a stamp but he could not speak English. I waited to the side and other people went by as I waited. A girl appeared and looked at my passport and pointed out the issue with the lack of a departure stamp from 2008. My heart sank and I knew I had some issue and explaining to do but felt I would work it out and in 15 minutes or so I would be hooked up with Ivy and we would be on our way. No such thing happened.

Waiting for the unknown in Bangkok

I sat in a small room with the girl who had my passport and was talking to her boss. I explained what had happened and expected her to return and give me my passport and write some note in it and I would be having lunch in downtown Bangkok in an hour or two. The first thing she said, on returning, was “By the law you have to go to jail and stay until you pay a fine.” I froze. The last thing I want is to be in jail anyway, but if I have a choice I will take jail in the US over jail in some country like Thailand where I know no one and cannot speak the language. I did not have time yet to panic (and I would panic to some degree soon enough) and I again told my story and spoke slower and basically pleaded for understanding. The girls said “so you were only in Thailand one day?” and I replied “maybe only one hour.” She went back to her boss and they talked and she made some calls. She came back maybe five long ass minutes alter and said “Okay, there is a choice. You can go to jail or go back home.” Is that a choice?! I said I will go home explaining that I cam from China. She said okay, BUT that they would keep my passport. Whoa! If they kept my passport I would not be able to enter China or any other country. I was calm and said I needed my passport. She spoke to her boss for about ten seconds and ten made another call and then said “okay, you can keep your passport, but you have to fix it or next time is jail!” Sure. Give it to me. No problem. And she handed me my passport. There was some relief. It seemed they believed my story, which was all the truth, though she reminded me there was no proof my story was true. Obviously I had left Laos and been in China all this time, but I had no proof off how long I stayed in Thailand during those couple weeks or where I left from. This was all true and I did not push it. I was told no jail and to go back to China where I had a current working Z-visa and a return plane ticket.

I had to go call Ivy back from the legal Thai side. Her visa was cancelled and she came to the office where we waited for a man who spoke fluent Chinese. Mr. Liang (his Chinese style name) was our savior and I believe the man on the phone who said let me go and return my passport, though he came to confirm the story. He talked to Ivy and he accepted out story and made arrangements to simply flip flop out departure tickets for no extra cost. The next flight back to Kunming was 24 hours later and we had to drift around the airport for that time. We sort of felt obliged to spend $175 American dollars for an airport dayroom hotel for eight hours. It was the type of deal where you did not really want to say no, and offer we could not refuse, but definitely we could not stay in those rooms any longer than we did. The idea that I was not in jail and having Thai authorities calculating three years worth of overstay fines really made me not worry about the loss of $175.

The most expensive hotel room I ever stayed in

There was still the type of stress that develops in one when he is in an utterly powerless situation though. All day and night I fretted. Would Mr. Liang be at the ticket counter at 7:30 AM as he promised (he was not!) the next morning? Would someone else take over the matter and change everything? Would we have a seat? And what about the fact I was now leaving Thailand with no entrance or departure stamps for this trip? Only the open entrance stamp from 2008? Would I be deported in China? Would I go to jail? What would I do back in the US until I could work things out? Would I lose my job and apartment here? Shit, hardly ten seconds could go by that I did not sink into an anxious vortex. I had a Whopper meal at the airport Burger King that cost $10. It was damned good though! My first Whopper in over six years. I bought an Ozzy Osbourne auto-biography. I was not up to buying and war history books as I usually would in a good bookstore like this, which they do not have in Kunming. We wandered around and I felt bad for Ivy. I could tell she was stressed and disappointed. She had tried to ask if there was anything we could do to stay in Thailand and Mr. Liang told her flat out “NO”. Me leaving and being kept in a cell somewhere was the best the deal got.

Went all the way to Thailand for donuts.

I was totally uninterested in the swarm of cultures I saw at the Bangkok airport. I like to sit back and observe the varieties of life. I was in a panicky state and could care less. All I wanted now was out. Back home in my own bed and to get our dog and cat out of the kennel. Nothing interested me at all and I felt weak and drained. I had morbid visions and imagined I could lose Ivy and the simple little life I have struggled to maintain here. The last thing I wanted was to wind up back in the US trying to dig myself out of hole there again. I knew from past traumatic periods in my life that I was shutting down. Accepting that I was in a situation where all I could was wait and hope for the best possible outcome. But those tragic events happened in situations I was a bit familiar with. Places, faces and languages I understood. I was here in the airport with Ivy and I felt so sad for her and worried. We wandered around bored and snacked here and there and rested when we could on the comfortable sofas that littered the terminal. I will say that, the airport was nice and comfortable.

Allwe ever saw of Thailand.

We finally got to go to our room at 10 PM and have a shower and rest. Or in my case try and rest. I just wanted that damned ticket in my hand then I would worry about any problems at the airport in Kunming later. I slept maybe a couple fitful hours and we were out at 6 AM and then waiting for Mr. Liang, as he told us, the designated ticket counter. But he never showed! Shit. We went to the counter to see if our tickets were there. They were not. We explained we had to leave Thailand due to a problem with my passport and the lady said “what problem?” and took my passport and said she would call someone. Mr. Liang is not there. My passport is out of my hands and the lady knows there is a problem. She is calling someone. I almost felt I could vomited I was so nervous. Ivy was anxious too now. I can tell when she is losing her clam balance. When she gets panicky and shows it I get worse. I am walking around in circles when the lady called and then she I. We walk up to the counter expecting to here something like “he is coming so please wait over there” and instead we see our passports with the air tickets in it. I am not really, never have been, a person to display spontaneous emotion. I have a sort of dazed look most of the time, as if I have long ago been overwhelmed by life’s enormous weight and pressure. Burt when I saw those tickets I felt tears and my eyes and could have kissed that woman’s feet.

Ivy hanging in there

I was so happy I got hungry and got a tuna salad sandwich with the last of our baht. I also bought a book about Led Zeppelin and a book of Buddhist daily affirmations. We got to see Mr. Liang again and he said I am welcomed back to Thailand once the passport is fixed (and that is another problem I have to deal with soon I guess) and in short my arrival back to China was issue free. They did not even check stamps and looked at my work visa and my photo page and that was it. He may have asked me where I was returning from but I just told him, in Chinese, I can speak a little Chinese but not too well. He smiled at my phrase and let me go through. Now I have to decide what to do about the issue with my passport but I am not going to back to Thailand on this passport, which expires in 2014, no matter what. The enxt out of China trips we are looking at would be to the US so Ivy can meet my mom if she get a visitor visa and then maybe Nepal. But I will have the Thai stamp issue resolved somehow by then.

All in all it could have been worse. The people must have believed me and figured I was simply an idiot and not a drug smuggler who went to the Golden Triangle or something. When I got back to China I felt I was back home and I am. I may complain and whine but this is home and I was so happy on the flight back to hear all the boisterous Chinese citizens. Sometimes there is no place like home, right? I could still be back in Thailand now, but I am hear listening to Steely Dan and watching the cat and dog play with each other. A choice between Thai jail and this? No choice. Send me home and I will back some day.

THE MYTH OF CHINESE PEOPLE'S POLITENESS: TAKING MY TAXI AND YET ANOTHER F**K YOU

noreply@blogger.com (Bill Dan Courtney) — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 05:31:00 +0000

You may often hear of how polite and courteous Chinese people are and to a degree this is very true in the way they treat their own family members, close friends or people of importance in their lives such as employers. My students are typically very polite to me in a way that I think you would never find in the USA. However this politeness all but disappears when it is to be extended in some way to strangers. This will be my first post on this topic but not my last. I need an avenue to vent some of my frustration over the uncivilized manner people treat one another here.

See kids shitting and pissing on sidewalks everyday.

First, a couple weeks ago Ivy and I were down town on a rainy day and both of us had our arms full of parcels and bags and had no luck hailing a taxi. We were finally, with reluctance, going to catch a bus back to the school with all our stuff when I saw a cab on the far corner let someone off. I stood and waited for some time while the driver and passenger conducted their business and when the cab took off and approach me I flagged him down. He saw he and began to pull over and when he was about ten feet from me at almost stopped completely a woman flew past me and headed for the taxi door. I was in no mood for it that door and I ran to the door and when she opened I pushed it closed. She looked at me and actually elbowed me and tried top open the door. I weigh almost 200 lbs and she may have been 100 and I promise you the door was not going to open. She looked at me with such hatred and yet she knew she was in the wrong. This goes into a good example of a Chinese person "losing face". She was in the wrong and was humiliated that someone called her on it. She did something outrageous but expected to get away with ti and and when she did not she lost face and no doubt, as Ivy said, if she had a knife in her hand she would have stabbed one of us. Do you think I am lying? A woman was stabbed and killed at the Kunming airport last year when a man cut in front of her in line and she, being in the right, said something to him about it. he lost face and killed her. I doubt he ever got to where he was going. I will probably exercise some restraint in the future as I got so mad as she tugged on the door I told her "fuck you" to which she replied back with a good "fawk yoo". Maybe I should not have said it but that is a good segue way into my next example of Chinese impoliteness.

Breaking in line. Fuck yous. Spitting. Arrgghhh!

The other day I think I got about my 7th "fuck you" from a stranger in China. As in the other cases it was a younger man of late teens to early 20's or so. Ivy and I were going to sit down and rest from a long walk we were having and there were two young men, maybe 16 or 17, sitting about 2o feet from us and almost immediately I here a "fawk yoo" and some giggles. I stared the little shit shit down nda he did nothing more. I mean what was I going to do really? Fight some skinny kid? Get in trouble with the law? Maybe have a visa issue? And yet for one split second that was how I felt. What this is all about I have no idea. As I typical when I brought this up around some Chinese people they say something like "oh, they don't mean anything rude." Yes they do. If people in the US say fuck you they mean it as rude and so do teenage boys in China. If a confrontation occurred you had best expect to not only fight the smart ass who said it but any and all of his friends and probably strangers who want to help their country man find an outsider/invader. Typically I get a fuck you when I walk by some asshole guys who give me this stupid "hellllooooo" with giggles or tells me "good morning" at 6 Pm wand I say nothing back. I don't have to say hello to every goofball who says it to me with those stupid ass giggles like they are talking to a zoo animal. the fact that they say fuck you behind me back -or toss a rock an indication that at me as happened one time- the guy is not somebody I would ever want to say hello back to.

Standing in line and dealing with passengers on a bus in China is a horrible experience.

NEW PICTURES OF LIFE IN KUNMING CHINA 20 DEC 2010: IVY's iPOD TOUCH PICTURES

noreply@blogger.com (Bill Dan Courtney) — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 13:08:00 +0000

IMAGES MADE WITH

IVY'S NEW iPOD TOUCH THINGY

Lots of new pictures to share. tons actually and so will get on with it. Still do not seem too inclined to sit here and type much up about my life here in China. Never seems to enter my addled mind, but still can share some pictures once in a while and a few anecdotes of course. These pictures are made with Ivy's new iPOD Touch toy and I have a new cell phone myself, an Alcatel, with a better camera than my old Motorolla had and will getting up some stuff from my cell phone soon as well. I am really into this cell phone pictures lately, the whole spontaneity aspect of it and disregard for over all quality. Rather we have come to enjoy getting the phone out of our pockets and capturing something that we may not have caught the same way with one of our better cameras, but there will be some posts with those images as well.

COME ON BILL! PEOPLE IN CHINA DON'T REALLY EAT DOG DO THEY?

noreply@blogger.com (Bill Dan Courtney) — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 06:11:00 +0000

There are a couple myths about China and the eating of or not eating of dogs I will try to dispel. The first one is that it is a myth itself and that the whole dog eating deal is a story made up by xenophobic foreigners who know nothing outside their cultures, and very little even then. Well I can assure you people in China eat dog and it is even sold in supermarkets here. Not all supermarkets of course but I have seen with my own eyes sliced up dog in the big supermarkets fashioned in design after the western models like Safeway and Krogers. More commonly you see skinned dogs being sold on the sidewalk here. Typically people on the streets here do not store meat in a refrigerator or pack it on ice. Any kind of meat including fish. By the way milk and eggs are sold without refrigeration here as well. So it is pretty interesting to see a sliced up mutt in the middle of summer in a pool of coagulated blood and covered in flies with a crowd of people haggling over the price.

Another myth to be dispelled is that restaurants here will substitute beef or pork with dog meat and sell it to unsuspecting foreigners. That will not happen so relax should you visit here. Once you've learned the characters (狗肉-gou rou) you will see that dog meat is not something underground. There are dog meat restaurants and the item is put plainly on menus and is typically higher in price than beef or pork. Is is not seen as a cheap substitute but is a delicacy here I guess. And to accompany this post I am putting up a picture of some yummy looking pooch that my wife and I took right outside the gate of the school. The man who was selling was more than happy to let us take a picture of his Grade A dog meat. I have never eaten any and never will. I am not into that 'When in Rome..." stuff.

ASSORTED AND UNRELATED PICTURES

noreply@blogger.com (Bill Dan Courtney) — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 11:22:00 +0000

From top to bottom left to right:

>Ivy in on a side street in the local village

>Ivy having dinner in a local restaurant

>I get some decent underwear from Mom back in the US

>Johnny the hamster after a bath

Below:

>Village building

CLASSES HAVE RESUMED

noreply@blogger.com (Bill Dan Courtney) — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 05:41:00 +0000

Classes have resumed here at the school I work at in China. It is a private school and that does not mean the same thing here in China that it might in the west. In the US a private school is for the educated elite in many cases while here it the opposite. Private schools are diploma mills that only require you pay the tuition. You get the certificate (not really a diploma) whether or not you even show up to classes. No students really fail. I fail students of course but it is totally moot since those same students walk up and down the halls and sometimes even say hi to me. They do not even show up for retests much of the time. The school will not dismiss them and then develop a reputation for actually letting failing or bad students go. Parents will simply find another school where passing is more guaranteed.

This term has began and I will be honest I had had an arrangement, an agreement, since last summer as to what classes I would do. I jumped on this early. I was assured in an email –which I kept fortunately- that I would have a certain group of students who were, for the most part, English majors. I mean can you image –I doubt it- what it is like to teach unmotivated Chinese students English when they are not even English majors? I was given groups of non-English majors and even placed outside the Foreign language building. I had to assert myself -not always easy- and show my email and at the last minute my classes were changed.

For the 1st three weeks I did not even have a book. I tried to make some handouts but for the most part students do not even care about that stuff. One group I met with on the 3rd time and they insisted on seeing a movie that day. A movie on the 3rd class! I said no and the pushy insistence on their parts went on too long. I got all the typical “If you’re our friend you will watch a movie with us” type remarks and finally got upset. My tension only got worse after a girl, whom I thought was a good student, took my lesson handout and made a paper airplane of it and then left class an hour early without telling me anything. I confronted her next class about leaving early and she said “I went to the toilet and then my friend called me”. Who the fuck cares. I wanted her to sign a warning slip –totally a psychological ploy with no real value as far as the school policies go- and she flat out refused and cut me menacing stares. She did not deny anything on the slip but she simply refused to sign it. That is how much power we foreign “teachers” have in the classroom here. I had already told my boss about the situation and so he was familiar with it. I had the girl come with me to his office.

She stood up defiantly with a ‘okay buddy, lets go’ attitude but in the hall all that changed. The students here are difficult when in their groups but once isolated in it is different. She may have seen it as crucial for her to not lose face in class (the fact that she made me ‘lose face’ is inconsequential). But as we went up the stairs and I confronted her face to face about not signing the the note and why it was different. Her voice gets all wobbly and she says “yes I did those things but it was all an accident!” What? Accidentally made a paper airplane of my lesson and accidentally left class an hour early? But as we neared my boss’ office I knew what was coming. Oh God she’s going to cry now! Not the crying Chinese girl gambit. Oh come on. She was not crying in the classroom in any sense. She looked like she could have disemboweled me. In the end she signed the slip and apologized but only after she spent twenty minutes in the asst. dean’s office. Of course she comes back to class all red eyed and weak and the students all hate me because I am a big bully and not their big pal who wants to watch movies all the time and will not let them bellow in class and make paper airplanes out of my lessons. I also made them sit in assigned seats the next class in order to have some control and I traumatized an ‘innocent’ female student.

Oh well. Time to make another handout for this week and I will actually take it back at the end of class. Yes. I will take the handout back and use it again in the future. I pay for these myself and I do not need a bunch of dumb-asses ‘forgetting’ and ‘losing’ them from class to class. I wish to fuck they would forget their cell phones or unfinished homework for other teachers once in a while.

BACK TO UPDATING COMM PERP - JUST RETURNED FROM HOLIDAY TO EAST CHINA

noreply@blogger.com (Bill Dan Courtney) — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 09:12:00 +0000

I am determined to revive this China life blog. I am keeping it all simple and not going to over extend myself as I sometimes do when it comes to things like this and in doing so take all the fun out of it. I think shorter posts and simply covering day to day life is the new direction I will be taking. The best place then to start is by beginning a series of posts on the holiday Ivy and I just returned from. There are plenty of images but right now they are not available. I only have a few here to share. We spent about 16 days in the east of China where it was simply too hot to enjoy anything. We are back in Kunming where we do not even need to use an air conditioner and yet slept well last night and we are now both working away on our blogs and websites. No way we could do this in the heat of Beijing or Shanghai. Even with the air conditioners the rooms are hot and uncomfortable. More on that later.

I really put a lot of work into this blog and then let it die after Blogger got banned again last fall. We are using a service that allows me to update blocked sites like Blogger but I just fell out of the habit of doing that and I have to try to get back into being interested in keeping the site updated. I have to remember some people may want to know what I am up to here in China and what day to day life might be for someone from the west living here. There are tons of ex-pat blogs about life in China that cover many details better than I could ever do and so I will not try. I am going to delete my Mondo China blog which was supposed to cover topical event here in China. I just do not have the time and energy to do that I have decided. I will instead get back into maintaining this site and keeping it simple and easy. For now let me just post these images and I will get some more up shortly with some comments and stories to accompany the pictures.

FIRST REAL UPDATE IN HALF A YEAR OR MORE

noreply@blogger.com (Bill Dan Courtney) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 10:26:00 +0000

Well for now I have my Blogger blogs back up and running. Using a VPN service that has worked well for almost two months. The only problems seem to be when theives dig up the underground wiring in this neighborhood and then sell the copper from it. The we are offline until the line is repaired. A lot of things to catch up on and it will take some time. I am going to try and focus this blog on my life here and any sort of news will go to my sister China blog called Mondo China.Thats site will focus on news stories of a tabloid nature and not too much on any political opinions, of which I ahve few anyway. This site will,as I just said, deal more with my daily trials and tribulations here in China. One thing that has changed for me is that I now have a new Motorolla cellphone with a camera. At first I did not use it much but now I am snapping away with the little guy and capturing some interesting things that I probably would not get on one of our better cameras. Since pictures convey more tha words most of the time I will post a few images to get this site back and rolling.

One questiona bout the new Blogger editor. I like it over all but is there a spell check here or do I ahve to activate somewhere on the settings page? I make bukku typos. I can honestly spell the words 'have' and 'the' but when I type them thye usually come out 'ahve' and 'teh'. Without a spell check I miuss alot of those simple mistakes. Anyway, here are some cell phone images to check out:

SATELLITE SHOT OF THE HUANG TU PO 黄土坡 BUS STATION AREA IN KUNMING 昆明

noreply@blogger.com (Bill Dan Courtney) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 06:06:00 +0000

This is a satellite shot of a area called Huang Tu Po in Kuming which is a local bus station or transfer point. Since this post was made the area has changesd drastically and the bus station has been completely destroyed. Although the area has improved in one way the traffic is still a nightmare and this shot can only give a small idea of how bad it can be. There is no sense of order here when it comes to driving. There is no yeilding or giving the right of way to somebody else. It is every man for himself and to hell with everybody else. Here the cars are trying to navigate around the area that will later become an over pass (now completed but the traffic is still insane). There are no lights or stop signs. This of course must mean no one has to stop. The cars simply inch around each other while blaring their horns incessntly. Fender benders and more serious accidents happen all the time here. I will try to get an updated satellite shot but it cannot do the area the justice this image one can without the overpass which will conceals the reality of how cars try to get through this place.

我的石河子--My childhood city Shihezi

noreply@blogger.com (Bill Dan Courtney) — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 13:12:00 +0000

我的石河子--My childhood city Shihezi

今天，朱丹突然问我你知道石河子吗？我立马跳起来：当然了！我在那里长大的。
原来他看到网上关于"北大教授发配边疆的新闻"就顺口问的。

石河子大学现在都成了211院校了，我爸七十年代末在那个学校读医科的时候，还只是叫做石河子医学院，他毕业后留校，我们全家也就从我出生的阿克苏搬来了石河子，我在石河子读的小学。
这是一座沙漠中的绿洲，绿化率高达33%，跟全世界绿化率最高的波兰差不多，且几乎都是天然的林带，人工的很少。那时候整个城市是由密密的白杨林和白杨林间的小马路组成的，夏天风吹得道路两旁哗哗作响，路的尽头是黛青色的准噶尔盆地山峦，从学校教室的四楼窗口探去，可以看见远处的皑皑天山。我的雪山情节可能就是来源于此吧。冬天厚厚的大雪中，一群野孩子到处叫嚣着，疯跑着，玩雪橇、老牛（冰上抽的陀螺）、冰刀，堆雪人，打雪仗。春秋两季就更不用说了，由于是绿洲，这里的气候又特别好，加上我们读小学那会儿也没什么考试压力，现在跟这个城市有关的回忆完全就是蓝天白云金色阳光和肆意无度的玩耍。以至于刚上初中我爸调到南通医学院我们不得不离开那里的时候，我跟我哥都死赖着不走。

后来我竟然再也没有回去过，从小一起长大的朋友告诉我，石河子为了搞建设砍掉了很多树，马路两旁厚厚几层林带只剩下了一排。尽管如此，她依然是一个美丽的城市。今年我已经离开新疆20年了。真的该回去看看了。

______________________________________________________________________________

(Translation of above text)

Bill asked me if I know a place called Shihezi(石河子) in Xinjiang, of course I do, it is where I grew up in.

I was born in a city called Akesu(阿克苏)in the south of Xinjiang, then moved to Shihezi in 1983. By the end of 70's my dad passed the first examation of entry to university(it is call the gaokao 高考), it was stopped by cultural revolution for 10 years, after that the first one was in 1977 the year I was born, he attended and passed it in a very high score then he came to Shihezi medical college became a student in his 30. After he was graduated from it he stayed and worked for the shcool. Then my family moved there.

That was a really green city, an oasis in the desert, full of tress. When I lived there, all my memory is about trees, millions of tress beside the roads, believe me. It was amazing. I never knew othere cities can be so bald compare with it, then when my family left there for the east of China, I was so disappointed. For adults of course Shanghai or Jiangsu province were much better that Xinjiang the most northwest, the most abandoned land, but for a child like me, that is the best memory in life.

In 1989, my dad found a position in Nantong medical college, Jiangsu province, his father's hometown. We had to leave Xinjiang. I was 12 years old. I've never been back after that year. It is almost 20 years. Shihezi is already a city like thousands of other “Chinese style socialist” cities. From the pitures I got from internet, it is pretty but not so extremely green anymore. It's washed by "the develpment" to a modern city with big huge road and high buildings, but I still love it. I hope I can see it soon. Maybe this summer?

WHAT'S GOING ON LATELY

noreply@blogger.com (Bill Dan Courtney) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 04:36:00 +0000

I returned to work a couple weeks ago and have gotten behind on all my blogs. I am simply tired and stressed out from being back to the day to day reality of teaching and the ups and downs that that entails. I also got one of my semi-annual cases of either food poisoning or some intestinal virus that has taken on toll on my energy and enthusiasm. I am working just enough overtime to wear me out and yet still not make enough extra money to make it worth my while.

Here are some pictures from our vast photo collection of life in China. Almost all of these are from our strange little neighborhood here in the Northwest corner of Kunming. I included a little cartoon doodle I did one day on the white board that I am supposed to studying Chinese on. Also at the top are the two guinea pigs and we actually have a new one I need to post some pictures of soon. The puppy in the second picture is not sleeping. The dusty, narrow road outside out school is a death trap for dogs and cats.

The bottom images are art related. Ivy just did not know what to do with a little painting she was doing and the eyes became some strange series of experiments that ended with the "blinding" of the girl in the painting. One day Ivy was getting ready to go out and I noticed a striking resemblance. And speaking of resemblance the last picture is not a portrait of your humble editor despite how strikingly identical the faces appear.

THE COMPLETE OPERA: 红色娘子军 HONG SE NIANG ZI JUN-THE RED ARMY GIRLS

noreply@blogger.com (Bill Dan Courtney) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 18:31:00 +0000

红色娘子军

SHORT CLIP FROM THE CHINESE OPERA BAI MAO NV （白毛女) : THE WHITE HAIRED GIRL

noreply@blogger.com (Bill Dan Courtney) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 15:15:00 +0000

白毛女-THE WHITE HAIRED GIRL

RECENT CHINESE LESSON: 甜甜的河水-SWEET RIVER WATER

noreply@blogger.com (Bill Dan Courtney) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 15:28:00 +0000

甜甜的河水

小姐姐装了，一口袋糖。坐在小河边一粒一粒剥着吃。

Xiao jie jie zhuang le, yi kou dai tang. Zuo zai xiao he bian yi li, li bao zhe chi.

Little sister got dressed up and put some candy in her pocket. She sat by a small river and peeled the candy one at and time.

Here 装了 refers to the placement or location of an article in/into something else, not to pretend or get dressed up. So:

Little sister put some candy in her pocket.

Example: 我的手机装在我的包里。 My cell phone is in my bag.

一条鱼游过来，问：“小姐姐你在吃什么呀？”“没，没吃什么。。。
yi tiao yu you guo lai, wen” “xiao jie jie ni zai chi shen me ya?” “mei, mei chi shen me…”
A little fish swims up to little sister and asks: “Little sister what are you eating?” “Nothing, I am eating nothing…”

小鱼游走了。我干吗骗小鱼呀？小姐姐想送一粒糖给小鱼吃。

xiao yu you guo zou le. wo gan ma pian xiao yu ya? xiao jie jie xiang song yi li tang gei xiao yu chi.

The little fish swam away. “why did I trick the little fish?” Little sister thought about giving the little fish a piece of candy as a gift”.

“螃蟹螃蟹，你看见小鱼了吗？” 螃蟹摆摆打大钳子。
Pang xie, pang xie, ni kan jian xiao yu le ma?
Pang xie bai bai da qian zi.
Crab,crab, have you seen a/the little fish? The crab waves his large claws.
“乌龟乌龟，你看见小鱼了吗？”乌龟摇摇小脑袋。
“Wu gui wu gui, ni kan jian xiao yu le ma?” Wu gui yaoyao xiao nao dai.
Tortoise, tortoise, have you seen a/the small fish? The tortoise shook its head.

“青蛙青蛙，你看见小鱼了吗？”青蛙摇头又摆手。
Qing wa, qing, ni kan jian xiao yu le ma? Qing was yao tou you bai shou.
Frog, frog, have you seen a/the small fish? The frog shook his head and waved his hand.

小姐姐剥了一粒糖，丢在小河里。糖化了。水就变甜了。小鱼就能喝到甜甜的河水了。
Xiao jie jie bao le yi li tang, diu zai xiao he li. Tang hua le. Shui jiu bian tian le. xiao yu jiu neng he dao tian tian de he shui le.

Little sister unwrapped a piece of candy and dropped it in the river. The candy melted. The water then turned sweet. When the little fish finally drinks the water it will be very, very sweet.

RECENT PHOTOS FROM KUNMING

noreply@blogger.com (Bill Dan Courtney) — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 10:41:00 +0000

Ivy's cousin and a friend form Shangahi. Some meat above the Dodo Club.

Ivy's new friend. This is Paul's parakeet we are watching while the family travels.

A couple easy going Chinese dogs.

Some recent photos of Salvadors taken with my new Motorolla cell phone camera. Seems the place will be opening soon after all. Very good news even though I was hardly a regular there except for a black coffee at the outside window. Ivy and I ran into Colin and his girlfriend (see post below) and it all seems pretty certain. Some claim by the police states that Salvadors was not in fact the intended target. Maybe. Maybe not. But since the bomber is burning in hell now we can all relax a little.

STATEMENT FROM COLIN FLAHIVE THE OWNER OF SALVADORS

noreply@blogger.com (Bill Dan Courtney) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 10:19:00 +0000

There really has not been much follow up on the Salvador's bombing that happened here on Christmas Eve. The place is still closed down and I am not sure what all the details are about that. There are posters of support pasted to the iron sliding door but as of yet no clear information when and if it will open. I did not eat there that often but did stop in to get a black coffee a couple times a month. I had eaten there less than a day before the attack and the idea that Ivy and I or a teacher friend could have been there is chilling. Without a doubt in my ind the nut job was trying to target foreigners or anybody he could at a foreigner coffee house and restaurant on the eve of the most well know foreign holiday here in China. In a fitting twist he was the only one killed and he died a slow death. Excellent. Sorry, I have no pity for the swine. I did just find this statement from one of the restaurant's owners Colin Flahive a Denver Post article. I do not know the guy personally though I have seen him in the place, usually behind the coffee counter.

Colin Flahive's first-hand account of Kunming bombing
Posted: 12/30/2008 01:00:00 AM MST
Updated: 12/30/2008 01:01:10 AM MST

Colin Flahive, an East High grad, is co-owner of Salvador's, a café in Kunming, China, that was bombed Dec. 24, 2008. (Courtesy Diana Flahive)
Related

From: colin flahive

Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2008 9:23 AM

Subject: Salvador's Update

Because of the fact that the attack on our cafe is still an ongoing investigation, the police have yet to make any official statement. This has resulted in many false reports by the media. I would like to share with you all that I know and witnessed. The sequence of events proceeded as follows...

At about 10:30 in the morning on December 24th, I was sitting downstairs at our internet port. A friend came in, and she was looking for Christmas gifts, so I suggested that she go with me to see all of the stuff Kris and I had bought in Thailand to sell in our new shop. We had just begun walking down the street when we heard a
Colin Flahive and his girlfriend, Aling. Flahive is co-owner of Salvador s, a café in Kunming, China, that was bombed Dec. 24, 2008. (Courtesy Diana Flahive)
large explosion. Looking back to the restaurant, we could see people running out of Salvador's.

I ran in as quickly as I could and went straight to the gas line to turn it off. I had assumed that our gas line had exploded. It was then that I saw the body of the individual on the ground near the table closest to the bathroom. The scene was more gruesome than I wish to detail. My initial feeling was that it was one of our workers. And that brief moment of thought is really what continues to haunt me the most. A feeling that we had caused the death of one of our workers who are all so close to us. Luckily, such was not the case. A couple of seconds later, all of our girls came running out of the kitchen. The explosion had not been very intense there.

Three Korean customers and one Chinese customer were seated very close to the explosion. All of them, all of our staff, and all of the other customers upstairs were miraculously uninjured. From there I made my way to the electric box to cut off the electricity which is when I noticed many 100 RMB bills scattered all over the place. The money did not belong to any of our staff or customers.

Everyone made it outside safe other than the one who was the victim of his own malicious attempt. Kris made it from home to the restaurant within minutes. Outside we all comforted each other while the ambulance staff went inside. They dragged what they could of the body out and into the ambulance. They then made Kris accompany the ambulance to the hospital because they were under the impression that the man was one of our staff.

Somehow, the man was still alive when they got to the hospital, and he was interrogated before eventually expiring. Kris unfortunately had to lay witness to all of this. In fact, they even confiscated his phone to use as an audio recorder for the interrogation.

Today, a press report was released that ties the bomber of Salvador's to the bomber of the public busses back in July. There was DNA evidence that links both crimes, and bomb materials were found at the home of the suspect that are the same as the bombs used on the busses and our cafe. The suspect has served 9 years in prison for an assult-related crime. Like most expats who have lived in China for some time, it's very easy to be skeptical of the media, and this report seems so convenient to solve 2 crimes in 1 shot. But I have to say, that from our own experiences with this investigation, that we both feel very confident in today's report. In addition, I thought you'd all like to know that the police have treated us quite well and have been extremely professional with the handling of the investigation.

It was also revealed that the bomb was placed in the bathroom and appears to have exploded prematurely. The night of the 24th is perhaps the busiest night of the year for cafes in the neighborhood, and I can only assume that the bomber had higher aspirations than the outcome. We are lucky in so many ways; it's really quite difficult to talk about.

For now, our greatest concern is the mental and physical health of our workers. We have been spending time together discussing the event and making sure that everything gets talked through. Everyone is in much better spirits now, and we hope to move on. The future of our business is at present uncertain, but you have not heard the last of Salvador's.

Thank you for all of your kind words and support.

Love and Peace,

Colin

My last meal at Salvador's, just a little more than half a day before the bombing, was the fantastic Mexican Breakfast. It may be awhile before I, or anybody in Kunming, has this fine meal again. Lets hope everything is worked out and the staff there all get past this terrible event.

A FEW RECENT PICTURES, SOME TAKEN WITH IVY'S OLD STYLE CAMERA

noreply@blogger.com (Bill Dan Courtney) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 09:38:00 +0000

I grew up in San Antonio Texas and around real Tex-Mex food and it something I miss here in China. There are a couple restaurants in Beijing and I even heard a foreigner tell me the food at Pete's Tex-Mex restaurant was a good as anything he had in San Antonio when he was there. Well, it is not. Not even close I assure you. You are lucky to get a decent hamburger or tuna sandwich made by Chinese cooks much less an enchilada or carne asada. Their carne asada was not even close since carne asada is NOT an enchilada.

When I can find the supplies and have the money to blow I like to whip up something special for Ivy and myself. Imported food (or imported anything) in ethnocentric/import paranoid China is taxed very high and so the items can cost as much as three times to four times what they would cost in the States. My students sometimes feel China should only export and not import anything. I guess luck finding trade partners with that mindset. So for a bag of chips, one can of refried beans and some cheese dip it cost me about fifteen bucks American. Remember too people here get paid in Chinese RMB so it cost me almost two hours wages to get this treat... but it is worth it once in a while. These were some great nachos and I am ready for some more.

A few pictures taken with Ivy's old style camera. She had some problems with developing some of her rolls and a lot of pictures in this batch were lost. For some reason all the pictures from this camera all look old and timeless. The picture of us on the bottom looks like it could be from fifty years ago. Strange effect. I am encouraging her now as I type to get her other camera that distorts the colors and try some new pictures with that one since she is doing her own developing these days.

IVY AND SMOKE'S EPIC BUS TRIP VIDEO: GOING FROM TIBET TO NEPAL

noreply@blogger.com (Bill Dan Courtney) — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 11:53:00 +0000

This is the final version of Ivy's documentary video about her week in Nepal with a freind of her's she met while in Lhasa. I do not know what all the details are or who is who but I figure that does not really matter. Hopefully you'll enjoy this little video she put together and redid a few times. She uploaded it to the Chinese Youtube called youku.