Welcome, World-Citizen-Still-Skeptical-About-China's-Speedy-Rise, to the biggest non-event the world has ever blissfully ignored.  Watch in wide-eyed wonderment, you non-believer you, as billions of dollars in Chinese currency are invested into making nothing into something.  China is hosting the biggest sporting event no one has ever heard of in the biggest city no one's ever heard of, inspiring the same burning inquiry around the world from everyone who accidentally clicked that one CNN link:

"What? Huh? Where?"

In hosting the Universiade, alternately called the World University Games by its dozens of rabid fans, Shenzhen joins the ranks of such polished global cities as Poprad-Tatry, Slovakia ('99) and Zakopane, Poland ('93 AND '01).  And who can forget Edmonton '83? (hint: a watershed year for men's badminton).

The bid to host was a chance for Shenzhen to engage the international community, create lasting bonds among the youth of the world, and shovel more money than Mao at stadiums that will only ever be used again for Rec League soccer.  And after Beijing got the '08 olympics and Shanghai got the '10 World Expo, there was really nothing left.

So after two years of preparation, the Games are finally here.  President Hu Jintao joined the opening ceremony, evidently to make sure it featured more clapping than the State of the Union Address, and everyone from the King of Swaziland to the Prince of Gambia showed up with legions of student ping-pongers, windsurfers and hurdlers.

Even the USA sent a delegation.  Frankly, a 'Universiade' sounds like exactly the kind of foreign thing we usually stay away from, like the United Nations, or speedos.  Still, our brave athletes marched out there, marveling at the roaring crowds and still bitter they didn't make the real Olympics.

Amidst the pomp and circumstance and shiny new stadiums, you've got to feel bad for the next Universiade host.  Kazan, Russia, start saving your rubles, 'cause this is a tough act to follow.  And as for China, the next event they're vying to host is the only one guaranteed to garner less passion from US sports fans than the Universiade.

Ni hao, World Cup 2026.

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围观 [wéiguān] verb

1. (of a crowd of people) to stand in a circle and watch
   How many Chinese does it take to screw in a light bulb?  1.3 billion and one.  One to do it, and 1.3 billion to wéiguān.*

Now to be fair, realistically it only takes 3-4 people to weiguan a small activity like a light bulb replacement.  A larger-scale action or anything especially unconventional can warrant a dozen or more.

Don’t be fooled though.  The presence of those onlookers is vital.  They are a living breathing expressionless silent spitting smoking bona fide support group.  They add a net of moral support and validation to the mundane tasks that burden China’s workforce.

Changing manhole covers?  The next three guys to amble by will make sure you’ve got company.  Messy fender bender?  Cue dozens of eyes trying mightily to pop that dent out and get you back on the road.  Cleaning lily pads in a fake pond outside the mall?  Guaranteed fan club for hours.

Weiguan-ing happens enough here that if there weren’t a two-syllable word to describe it, the Chinese economy would lose more in productivity than it does from… people standing around doing nothing all the time.

Some claim language is a strong reflection of culture.  I once got a D in a Linguistics course in which we read a claim that Eskimos have a hundred words for snow, while the denizens of Southern Florida have a fairly equal number of words for cocaine.  If the course served me well, and I’m sure it did not, my conclusion is that languages reflect in often hilarious and revealing ways the incubators in which they evolve.

Chinese have been standing around and looking at things for millennia.  They needed a quick way to express this phenomenon, and voila! (a French word that is, in turn, evidently more concise than any English expression of the concept).  Eskimos have a strong environmental connection with snow, and Miamians with a different brand of snow, giving rise to a wealth of words in those departments.

So the next time you see someone doing something that needs watching, don’t shirk your responsibilities and keep walking.  Take a cue from the Chinese.  Weiguan for a while, offer a few grunts of acknowledgment to justify your loitering, and recruit your fellow pedestrian patriots to do the same. 

Because China’s on the march, and they sure didn’t get to where they are by not standing around in a circle and watching.

*Credit: Bennett Chinese-English Dictionary

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I'm just no good at it.  Paris to see Notre Dame?  The Coliseum in Rome?  Eh.  I know I'll just take a few pictures and cross it off the list.  Egypt to climb the Pyramids?  Maybe I'll do it some day, but oohing and ahhing at a stack of rocks and avoiding aggressive vendors is something I've done from China to Cambodia to Mexico.

Am I jaded?  Maybe.  I know I'm incredibly lucky to have seen the things I've seen at such a young age.  Absolutely so.  And to treat these world heritage sites so casually is a complete dismissal of their historical value.  But I'll read about the Blue Mosque and the Bund and the Great Wall on Wikipedia later, when I'm at home and bored.  When I'm there, I just want to casually explore the place with people I like.  Eat and drink and see exotic things with them in a new place.  For me, it's never where you travel but who you travel with. 

In my travels, I've met plenty of people going it alone.  Not just for a short stretch but for months and months at a time.  And I don't get it.  Traveling creates a set of shared memories exclusive to the people you travel with.  That's where the value is.  Austin and I traveled for six weeks through Europe.  Tomorrow he'll be hosting me in his city in Turkey, where he's working as an English teacher.  These are experiences we'll be able to look back on forever.  "Remember when...?"  "What about the time...?"  You can't separate the places from the people who were there.  Shanghai? Nicks F and G.  We tried to go to the 87th floor bar of the fanciest building in town but they scoffed at our attire so we bought beer at a grocery store and sat by the river.  Macau? Pretended to be high-rollers with Tori, Danny, Nick and Greg.  Mexico?  Skipped classes to go to Acapulco with John and Phil after they moved into my place because their host family was robbing them. 

Sure, some places are better than others.  But I'd rather be in Cleveland with good friends than in Bora Bora by myself (Ok, please don't test me on that).  Life is meant to be shared.  People are more important than places.  Now that I'm leaving China, my friends are spread all over.  Turkey, Colombia, China (still) and every corner of the US.  My wanderlust isn't served by exploring the hidden corners of Amazonia by myself.  It's satiated by meeting up with friends, wherever they may be.

Of all the reasons to travel, that's the best.

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During my lunch break, I return from a quick run.  As their sweaty, baseball hat-clad foreign teacher stumbles through the school gate, six students obediently bow and give a unified "Hello, Teacher."  I wipe my hands on my gym shorts and wonder what I could have done to deserve this respect.

Class time.  They're noisy again.  Multiple warnings and I finally flag down their head teacher.  Five minutes of rapid-fire, barking Chinese convinces 55 children to line up and, one by one, deliver a bow and an "I'm sorry, Teacher."  Some faces are tearful, some smirking, some an awkward hodgepodge.  I stand like the Chinese teachers do, one hand grabbing the opposite wrist behind the back, and try not to laugh.

There's a devastating earthquake in northern China.  Rather than depend on spontaneous donations, Beijing decides that April 21 will be the official day of mourning and charity.  Entertainment outlets from video websites to bars are shut down, with visitors instead directed to a variety of donation options.  Schools across the country have a morning assembly in support of the rebuilding effort.  Last fall, when a typhoon hit Taiwan, my school pressured me into donating a generous sum.  During the northern China earthquake assembly, I hide off campus and eat dumplings.  Later that day I learn how much many of the students gave.  I feel bad.

Ten top students make it into an English speech contest.  Because I'm the only native English speaker, I'm the judge at the rehearsal.  Ten cookie-cutter speeches praise China's recent global resurgence and offer the Beijing Olympics and the Shanghai Expo and the Chinese space program as proof.  Some sing the praises of yellow skin and black hair.  I need to ask each student a question so I lob ten softballs.  This is not the venue for constructive criticism.  As Cindy recites her essay from memory, I steal a glance at Jason pacing as he practices his for the last time.  If I didn't know these kids I'd think they were brainwashed.  But it's just another assignment. 

Early one April morning, men and women in orange hats begin to appear at the school gates.  Soon there are dozens, moving in locomotive-and-caboose pairs to assume control of each of the thirty classrooms.  They answer the question, "How do you safely escort 1,538 children to and from and within an amusement park?"  They are professional child-wranglers.  Unburdened, the Chinese teachers wander the park with no particular destination in mind.  Incredibly slowly.  I sneak off to play with the kids.  Outside of the classroom context, they love me.  They fight over who gets to sit next to me.

Every morning, 1,538 students march outside in unison to do morning exercises.  1,538 uniformed, goose-stepping, flag-saluting students.  One foreign teacher.  1,538 smiles and goofy looks as they pass me.  I know what those looks mean.  After they're done goose-stepping they'll get back to flicking paper clips and making paper airplanes in their desks.  Underneath the patriotism and respect and order, they're just kids.

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If living in China doesn't whip your mood around like a roller coaster on a given day, you're doing something wrong.

Maybe you didn't have to yell at 850 kids this week, reporting two classes to their head teachers because you couldn't teach over the roar of them ignoring you.  But you also missed it when Helen (grade four, class one) finally got up the nerve to talk to you in your office.  "Hi Mr Kane. I enjoy your lessons very much.  I'm sorry my class is so noisy," she said as she got up on her tiptoes to peer over your cubicle wall.

Maybe you don't cross your fingers when you enter your cafeteria everyday, praying for quesadillas and watching dejectedly as the Monday bone, fat and white rice special slides into your Tupperware.  But then again, you couldn't possibly have met the noodle vendor in the alley at the end of Tianbeisi Road.  He's the one never missing his sports coat or his smile, happy to listen to your labored Chinese as he stir-fries your dinner for seventy-five cents.  He'll fire up the wok as soon as he sees you turn the corner because he knows exactly what you want.  You're a regular.

Maybe it's never taken you two hours on a bus to visit friends in the same city, staring vacantly out the window because you're late and your iPod's dead and you're packed into this hot bus like a Chinese sardine and there are just too many people in this country and right now you hate every one of them.  But you must not know why it's worth it to get there.  You must not know about McCawley's or that one carnival in Bao'an or the steps outside the Polison or Dongmen and KTV or Longhua or Kingway Brewery.  Because if you did, you'd go anyway.

At first, the natural instinct is to try to equalize.  Curb your highs and your lows.  Make life more consistent.  But it's not nearly as interesting that way, and you figure out that recognizing the temporary nature of moods is easier.  That usually, how you feel at a given moment isn't an accurate reflection of your experience.  It's how you feel looking back, when it's easier to straighten out the roller coaster and see the bigger picture.  And then you realize the final trick: only think about this when you're down. 

When living in China has you whipped, you find Helen in grade four, class one.  You look in that alley on Tianbeisi Road for the smiling noodle guy in the sports coat.  You think about how those treks out to Longhua and Bao'an and those far-flung Polisons were worth it.

But when you're up, just live it.

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I'm an expat now.  Somewhere along the way this transformation took place, and like so many things in life the change happened gradually but the realization took place in an instant.  I'm a bonafide, fully-fledged, card-carrying expat. 

Before, the label had a negative connotation to me.  The "expat" was the boorish, culturally insensitive American or Brit near me in the restaurant.  The type who came to China without a sense of cultural curiosity or a desire to learn the language and without common sense.  The type who looks down his nose at his host country and readily abuses the special treatment afforded foreigners here. 

That's not me, I told myself.  I'm here to explore, absorb and learn.  In Guatemala and Mexico I lived with host families, studied Spanish with gusto and made local friends.  I'm spending nearly a year in China - how could I NOT find myself immersed in Chinese language and culture by the end?

Well, it hasn't happened.  But here's what I've found: I don't want it to happen anymore.  I don't need to become one with the Chinese people and their culture to validate this experience.  Not to pass the buck, but part of the equation is China itself.  It's easy to make quick connections but not easy to build serious friendships.  There are language barriers that block off the majority of the population and cultural differences that can make interactions with many Chinese just ... different.  I'll stick with the classic study abroad mantra: "It's not wrong, it's just different."  But the more important point is that despite this lack of serious Chinese friendships, the expat life is great.

China is where I live, China pays my bills, China makes my food, China tempts me to travel and Chinese people are a very numerous part of my everyday life.  China is my job and living here makes each day fantastically, endearingly unpredictable.  But my life is still Western. 

If I knew this a year ago, I'd have been disappointed.  Wrongfully so.  I wanted to learn Chinese fast and "revelate" my way to an understanding of the politics and culture and history of this place; figure out what makes this massive nation tick.  What I've gotten is less academic.  But it's the best post-college year I could have hoped for.  What I'll remember from my year in China is traveling with friends here and goofing off on the weekends and venting about work and sharing funny China stories.  We eat Chinese food, we go to Chinese places, but we digest these experiences through a Western perspective. 

We're expats. We don't blend in, we speak broken Chinese and we're sometimes loud and obnoxious.  No, I haven't become the brutish American near me in the restaurant.  I'm making progress with Chinese and remain absolutely mystified and fascinated by this country.  But I'm not making breakthroughs in sociology or politics or linguistics or winning a Nobel peace prize here. I'm enjoying life the way it happens to have developed.

Immersion has its perks, but for now I'm an expat.

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Measuring the passage of time effectively while abroad or traveling is proving difficult.  In the past couple days I’ve realized that a) I’ve been in China getting on eight months; b) I’ve been back from my southeast Asia trip for nearly a month; and c) I’ve got three months of teaching left in my contract.  Since I’ve been back in China everything’s returned to normal surprisingly quickly.  And since I’m better at documenting events than non-events, I don’t have much to report.  But that’s largely a good thing. Same class schedule, same students, same China friends.  I’ve started tutoring kids again and I’ve got a fun language exchange partner helping me get more comfortable speaking Chinese. It’s a comfortable groove to be in. 

Now that I’m back in my temporary home, I’m enjoying watching others settle in abroad from the comfort of my desk; with John and Phil finding their places in Colombia, Austin getting a position in Turkey, and of course Connor dodging earthquakes in Chile, there’s been plenty to follow.  I’m also spending time between classes becoming an obsessive follower of airline prices, ostensibly for the purposes of finding a ticket back to the States but in reality because it’s my new fixation for some reason.  If you’re flying somewhere PLEASE let me know!

I just finished a pirated paperback I picked up in Vietnam called “Made in America” which focuses on the peculiarities and development of American English.  Facts galore.  Among others: the candy bar Baby Ruth was named after Grover Cleveland’s daughter, not the baseball player; 7-UP is so called because the original product came in a seven-ounce bottle; the Lincoln Futura was a concept car that never went into production but later became TV’s Batmobile; and all but 4% of American consumers will visit a McDonald’s in a given year (current 1995). The only catch to my telling you these facts now is that when I say them again to you in person you have to act surprised and interested.

Now that the end of my stint as a primary school teacher is less distant, I’m getting some questions from friends and family about what’s next.  Well, it’s safe to say that last March when I made the decision to move to China I assumed some career and life direction questions would become clear in a year’s time.  That hasn’t transpired.  But one happy development is that I’ve become much more comfortable with this uncertainty.  Being surrounded by people who have chosen to teach in China for a year, sometimes multiple years, generates a culture of support for an “off-the-beaten-path” usage of the early and mid-twenties.  Plenty of friends I’ve made here have elected to stay on another year, certainly not to further any career aims in the education field but because they’re just plain happy here.  And that’s fine! 

I considered staying another year but eventually elected not to apply.  I don’t even have a plane ticket home yet (although I’ll be back in the States for sure by early July) so the options are many.  Try and pick a career path?  Go for whatever falls in my lap that seems interesting?  Go teach English in a different country?  Try to set up an internship here in China to come back to for a while?  I don’t know.  But I’m open to suggestions!

UNC-Chapel Hill grad with 1 year experience working in China.  B.A. in Political Science and International Studies, minor in Spanish.  Past internships in web design and internet marketing.  Seeking entry-level work with an international twist!  Interested in marketing, logistics, and anything “Internet.”  Friendly, flexible, house-trained.  Call today!  rpatrickkane@gmail.com

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Back!  I've been off of my normal teaching duties about a month now.  I have a few more days before teaching starts again which I am filling with tons of movies.  So yea, the story begins a month ago.  Nick, Nick, Adam and I spent some time in Hong Kong before leaving for the trip.  I've written about HK before so I won't dwell too much on it except for a couple notes of interest.  I saw my first horse race!  Hong Kong has a well-known race track called Happy Valley which is right in the midst of all the skyscrapers.  I made some token dollar bets, winning on one race and losing on maybe six others.  Sounds about right.  Next, I met up with a guy I met while traveling in Colombia earlier this year.  He was looking for a job in South America at the time and I heard he ended up in Hong Kong so we grabbed some dinner with him and his friends.  It's a very small world.

We caught a flight from Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur to start the journey.  Kuala Lumpur, in Malaysia, is famous for the Petronas Towers which was briefly the tallest building in the world.  There for two days, we couldn't find much else to do but take pictures of the towers.  I was happy to move on.  A sleeper train brought us to southern Thailand (the efficiency of both sleeping and moving makes me giddy) and from there we took a bus to the beach town of Phuket, our first real destination.  Phuket is known primarily for the 2004 tsunami that nearly wiped it out, but it's come back to life as one of the most popular resorts in the region.  Five days in Phuket got us plenty of sun, snorkeling, live music and the chance to meet up with some teaching friends who were staying there.

A note about seeing people we knew: I couldn't keep exact count, but the total definitely broke twenty.  All of us teachers had break at the same time, everyone wanted to go to warmer climes and everyone used the same Lonely Planet travel guide to plan their trip.  So I guess it shouldn't have been such a surprise every time.  But seeing a familiar face so out of its normal context is quite jarring - seeing someone you normally see in Chinese class wandering through a market in Cambodia, for example.  Weird.

From Phuket, a bus and then another overnight train took us to Bangkok.  Feeling a bit pressed for time, we decided to only give this massive city one day.  Wandering around, we were approached by a guy who I was immediately wary of - like every scammer/aggressive salesman I had run into so far, he was suspiciously interested in our nationalities and was compelled to address us with the term "my friends." A note about street salesmen throughout Southeast Asia: very aggressive, sometimes obnoxious, sometimes funny.  Before they will admit they are selling something (even though they're holding a box of chips and books and cigarettes) they try to establish rapport by determining your nationality and then saying something positive about it.  Australian? "Crocodile Dundee!"  Canadian?  "Vancouver's nice."  If you're American they say "ah, Obama!"  It was so consistent that, after a while, we just said we were from Obama.

Anyway, this particular salesman said he didn't want anything from us, he just wanted to let us know that today was a special tourist holiday and tourists could take a tuk-tuk around to all the famous sites of Bangkok for 5 baht, less than 20 US cents.  There's always a catch, right?  "What's it really cost?" I asked skeptically.  They swore it was only 5 baht and that it was government funded to promote tourism.  Hmmmm.  We didn't know what to see in Bangkok, let alone how to get to those places, so we climbed in.  We were taken to a Big Buddha, then a Lucky Buddha, then a ... tailoring shop?  An Indian guy tried to sell us suits for a few minutes before we extracted ourselves, were taken to some temple and then... what turned out to be another tailoring shop.  As best I could gather, the cheap tuk-tuks were funded by some secret brotherhood of tailors.  This second tailoring shop really turned up the heat and I came out hundreds of baht lighter and one shirt heavier.  It really is a nice shirt though, I tell myself.

The next stop was Siem Reap in Cambodia, home of the famous Angkor Wat.  Angkor Wat was at one point the center of the Khmer Empire, an extremely powerful force in Southeast Asia that at one point ruled parts of Vietnam, Thailand and Burma in addition to modern-day Cambodia.  Modern Cambodians put huge emphasis on this heritage and the temple of Angkor Wat is their focal point.  It's on the flag, the national beer, and t-shirts around the country.  With this in mind, we set out with our tuk-tuk driver Mr. Tan, who knew what spots we would want to see since it was our first time.  It was spectacular.  The most popular sites had been well-restored but some of my favorite were the more out of the way ruins that hadn't, where you felt a bit like Indiana Jones exploring them.

More vividly than the temples, I remember the languages in them.  The tour groups from all over gave Angkor a distinct United Nations feel.  Each tour group had a Cambodian guide who specialized in that country's language.  Walking past one Cambodian speaking German to his group and the next speaking Japanese to his was mind-blowing.  At one point I saw a Cambodian tour guide and two Brazilians discussing the temple in Spanish.  The Cambodian kids I met made an even bigger impression on me.  As you walked into and out of nearly any temple you'd be offered water or bracelets or cloth or other trinkets.  These kids could speak English much better than my Chinese students, I suppose by necessity, but they could speak other languages too.  And they had great routines to the "No" answers they were so used to hearing.  "You want bracelet?" "No, thank you" "So, you want nothing?" "Yes, I want nothing"  "OK, I sell you three nothings for one dollar".  These kids were adorable.

Around this time I started reading again, which I hadn't done much of since I'd been in China.  Since we were about to go to Phnom Penh, the museum-filled capital, I picked up a book called "First They Killed My Father" about the massacre of Cambodians in the late seventies, a sobering history lesson.  Phnom Penh had been the base of operations for the Khmer Rouge.  There, a high-school-turned-torture-operations-center had been once again repurposed into a memorial to torture victims.  Also in Phnom Penh were the Killing Fields, mass graves in what is now a disconcertingly peaceful environment.  In the center of the field was a multi-level tower filled with the bones of the victims.  Phnom Penh was a serious lesson in history.

At this stage in the trip, we had anticipated some transportation problems stemming from the Vietnamese New Year, when everyone in the country travels home and the rails and roads clog up massively.  Sure enough, arriving in Saigon Nick and Nick checked rail tickets to get us to the north of Vietnam as per the original plan and found none.  Since we couldn't travel the whole country, we settled on spending ten days in a nice beach town near enough to Saigon.  Before heading off we checked out Saigon's "Museum of the War of American Aggression" - I think it's actually been renamed in recent years but it's funnier this way.  Their museum was filled with captured American tanks and aircraft and picture after picture of Agent Orange victims.

After that, it was off for ten days in Nha Trang, the beach town.  Smaller and less hectic than Phuket, Nha Trang was a great find.  A normal day found me flagging down one of the many traveling book salesmen to trade or buy something new to read, buying a sandwich and bringing both to the beach for hours of reading, swimming and finding new ways to ignore beach vendors.  A couple of days we rented motorbikes and rode out of town a ways, finding our own (undeveloped!) beach.  We allocated one day for a trip to Monkey Island, just off the coast of the town.  The name made it irresistible.  I guess I don't have to tell you there were a lot of monkeys there.  The story was the Russians dropped them there decades ago to do vaccine testing on them.  When they left, the monkeys got free reign of the island and reproduced until reaching their current number of some 700 today.  (Sounds like a bad movie, right?)  I fed some and watched them fight over the food and generally behave like animals.  Also there was a monkey show where, among other feats, the monkeys came out in little monkey shirts and rode around on monkey bicycles.

So following the final, exhausting stage of the trip - reading, beaching, watching monkeys - we headed back on a flight bound for Macau, which is close enough to Shenzhen to take a ferry on the last leg.  This is worth mentioning because of the number of modes of transportation involved in one day: taxi, plane, ferry, bus.  Could have pulled a hat trick if I had just taken the metro in Shenzhen.

Well that's the basic timeline.  I'll leave you with a few more thoughts before I get back to wishing I didn't have to go back to work. 
1) Dealing with exchange rates on a multiple-country trip can be mind-warping.  Between China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia (local currency), Cambodia (US dollars), Vietnam, and Macau, we had a lot to keep straight.  It doesn't help that some of these currencies are seriously inflated - take the extreme example of the Vietnamese Dong at 18,000vd to 1USD.

2) Excellent Western food is available all over the place for cheap.  In Vietnam?  Want a jalapeno cheeseburger or BBQ ribs?  A guy from Memphis owned a place in Nha Trang called Texas Steakhouse that had it all, and he even threw a live Superbowl party at 7am.  Tons of expats have settled in these tourist towns to provide Western food expertise, mainly in Thailand and Vietnam.

3)  A summary of new experiences that jump to mind: going to a horse race, going to a thai boxing match, not shaving for 18 days, getting a professional shave, seeing the world's biggest outdoor seated buddha, riding in a tuk-tuk, driving a motorbike, eating a crocodile burger, getting a fish massage (the fish nibble your feet), and of course feeding a monkey.

OK! Back to wishing I didn’t have to go back to work.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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So, after five-and-a-half months in China, it's finally here.  Two more days of teaching and I'm done for five weeks, off to exotic lands.  Well, these various lands have basically the same level of exoticness as China so it depends on what you're comparing.  Will I forget the bits of Chinese I've learned by the time I get back to China?  Will I remember how to teach?  Will I remember where I live?  Only time will tell.  Stay tuned.  Incidentally, my time in China now officially exceeds the time I spent in Mexico a couple years back.  It seems less like five months than that did, but I guess I'm older now so time goes faster (that's how it works, right?).  I've forgotten more Spanish than the Chinese I've learned, so maybe by the end of this year I'll just know... nothing.  But, I'm much better at hand gestures and miming now.  Probably a fair trade.

The specific exotic lands I'm going to include Malaysia (briefly), Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.  I'm traveling with a few fellow teachers.  We're flying into Kuala Lumpur and taking buses and trains northward back to China.  Also, we're growing beards.  Watch this space.  I'll be back in five weeks.  But not incommunicado, because I hear they have the internet all over the place these days.  So feel free to send an email. 

再见！(zài​jiàn​ - see you later!)

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Ahhh, Christmastime at Cui Bei Primary School.  The countless Christmas cards (really, I have dozens upon dozens and will definitely never count them.)  The classrooms decorated with Christmas trees and plastic wreaths.  The candy and Santa hats.  The smell of dumplings.  And the screaming.  Ohhhh the screaming.  "Missa Kane!  Missa Kane!  Merry Christmas!"  I made a video of this.  It's on a Chinese site but hopefully it works: http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/-49WGSi1Sk4/

In the run-up to Christmas Day, every foreign teacher in Shenzhen began dutifully teaching a lesson on Christmas.  At least, pretty much everyone I talked to.  You start running out of ideas for lessons pretty fast so it makes sense to latch on to a holiday that they know about.  Hit with another burst of inspiration, I am now doing a "New Year's" lesson.  Everyone from the little six year olds I tutor to the oldest of Grade 6 seemed pretty intrigued by Christmas carols, and most already knew We Wish You a Merry Christmas (up to the "glad tidings" part) and Jingle Bells (up to the "one-horse open sleigh" part).  In my classes we sang Rudolph and did a pretty rousing rendition of "Must Be Santa", in my attempt to replace my normal family celebrations in the D.C. area with 750 Chinese kids.  Note to family: you are more easily replaced by Chinese children than you thought.  At least, they have a severe advantage in numbers.  So watch out.

Christmas was great.  I did miss everyone but with Connor in Chile and Mom and Dad and Colleen in Mexico it was bound to be a weird Christmas regardless.  So why not be in China.  Anyway, the Shenzhen Bureau of Education put on a Christmas banquet for all the foreign teachers.  They put us up in Silver Lake hotel, the hotel that gave us our first glimpse of Shenzhen back in August.  Although the setup was perfect for one of those "Wow, look how far we've come in five months" moments, and while that would have made for a great montage if my life were a movie (pleeease!), that didn't happen.  But this time, people weren't thinking about the uncertainties of our neighborhoods and schools and of living in China.  Now, whether you like it or not is a certainty.  This time, everyone knew one another better and had a good time enjoying the company of people for whom Christmas is an actual tradition rather than... whatever it is in China.  But we did have Chinese food and plenty of Chinese company present, since most people had one Chinese school colleague present.  Different but good.

Connor has been keeping notes on things that are weird in Chile and putting them in his blog.  Maybe I am dulled to the differences now but I only came up with one for China.  All of the ATMs in both Shenzhen and Hong Kong refer to receipts as 'advice', as in 'please take your advice'.  Maybe this is a British term?  But I could not help thinking of the fortune cookie connection.  Unfortunately the 'advice' doesn't mention lucky numbers or Confucian sayings, only your account balance.  Maybe it's saying "spend less money". 

I've been on a couple of trips recently through the big shopping district nearby, Dongmen, with the express purpose of finding hilarious t-shirts.  Funny t-shirts is a major hobby of mine that I have been neglecting, and I intend to come back with a new wardrobe of ridiculous things to wear.  So it's time to get started.  I found one the other day that says "I dig this - I'm a big fan of All things involving clip art in general, and this toasts my heart, because it reminds me of my youth reading the Invisibles.  Was there particular consideration given to which symbols were next to each other?"  If you try to deconstruct this and end up figuring it out, please tell me.  I lie awake at nights.

Final update: I just had an American friend come to visit for a week.  Park, if you're reading... there's your name.  Pretty cool to play host for a while and Park had been to China twice before so could get around on his own just fine.  He's the one in the pictures of us in Hong Kong again.  Oh, and the one blue-sky picture of my school was our 70-degree Christmas Day.  The first photo, "Intellectual books," was too perfect of a misnomer to not end up on the internet somehow.  And the photo of a guy selling chickens in front of the church is... the guy who was selling chickens in front of the church I went to.  After a pretty normal Christmas service, what a quick reminder that I was still in China.  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

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The end of November brought with it Sports Day and Thanksgiving.  In a Chinese primary school, Sports Day is a far bigger deal.  I did a Thanksgiving lesson and everyone seemed to have heard of it.  But since it's not really a commercial holiday, it hasn't really caught on.  In contrast, on December 1, everyone seemed to instantaneously switch to Christmas mode.  A massive Christmas tree went up outside the Wal-Mart near Chinese class, and all the greeters and attendents and salespeople in the store donned santa caps and red aprons.  Wal-Mart is a sort of ambassador of commercial Christmas evangelism here.

Sports day, on the other hand, got everyone pumped for an entire week.  Including me, since I had no teaching duties for two days while all the kids did their running, long jump, and jump rope events.  Sports day is like the field days we're used to in American elementary schools, except less goofy (no dunking booths or moonbounces) and way more competitive.  Kids would do intense 200 meter sprints, and on the last lap the expression on their faces was pure pain, every time.  Apparently there was some system that I never understood by which they'd win points for their class by doing well, so that must have added pressure.  The winners stood on a podium and received medals, which was especially cute when the winners were six years old and three feet tall.

Thanksgiving involved two celebrations.  One was a classy dinner with some friends, with real turkey and mashed potatoes and everything you would expect.  The second was the following Saturday.  All the foreign teachers got together at one school and potlucked some random foods.  I brought sushi and bread.  But plenty of people brought real Thanksgiving food as well, and there were I think three turkeys in total.  After dinner we went out to the school's athletic facilities and played some basketball and frisbee and football.  So, we brave Americans survived a foreign Thanksgiving with our traditions intact.  We even dragged one Austrailian, one New Zealander and one British guy to their first celebration of the holiday.  All in all, pretty great.

This weekend I had my first tutoring session.  It's a gig I recently fell into.  It involved teaching some little kids the finer points of 'What fruit do you like' and 'How do you come to school' in a public park.  A parent was behind each kid, ever-prodding them to respond.  Quite different from a normal classroom setting which is more like a dentist's office (pulling teeth joke).  Since we were on a blanket in the middle of the park, probably a dozen Chinese people in the park decided this was the most riveting thing going on.  To clarify, my talking about food and school supplies in English was more exciting than an incredible Tai Chi lesson and a soccer match and picnic lunches and tons of cute little kids.  But the Chinese audience was less an ego boost than a stressful test of my ability to consistently engage these kids for an hour and a half.  We played some games and sang some songs and it turned out alright.  But I'm not unhappy that the park location was a one-time thing.

Since the terms of my visa don't technically allow me to be paid for outside work, let's go under the assumption that this is unpaid work.  But if it did pay, let me just say that I would be very satisfied with the compensation provided.  For tutoring four second graders for a couple hours every Sunday, I definitely DON'T make 50% of my monthly salary.  Which definitely DOESN'T bode well for saving for my ever-approaching vacation.  English teaching is a big game here, especially private tutoring.  Plenty of native English speakers work solely as private tutors, operating out of their offices at Starbucks.  In Hong Kong, where the rates and stakes are both much higher, the top tutors become mini-celebrities, with their faces plastered on buses and billboards and Ferraris in their driveways.  No joke.

This past weekend I found myself in Hong Kong for the first time.  My two friends named Nick and I went together to explore.  We didn't really have a clue as to what to look at so we wandered around and eventually headed for the top of the island: Victoria Peak.  This provides some pretty fantastic views as you can see in my pictures.  People often talk about how Hong Kong is one of the few truly international cities out there, along with maybe New York and London.  All of these places rely on English as a common tongue and contain people from very nearly literally everywhere.  Walking around, I definitely picked up on that vibe.  It's nice to get a break from being stared at.  In Hong Kong, I'm just another white guy.  Although I will confess that I've gotten very used to being special on the mainland and will not relish relinquishing this role.  After getting used to the stares and being referred to as 'waijiao' (foreign teacher) as opposed to having a name, the benefits of being different and interesting and approachable outweigh the drawbacks for sure.  I'm about to go grab some dinner at a Muslim noodle place around the corner, and I don't doubt I will be the most astonishing, unlikely, "Wooooaaw"-inducing person to walk into their restaurant since... last time I walked into their restaurant.  How many of you can say that?  What a crazy place.

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Time to get you guys caught up on some stuff!  Since I last posted, I've traveled to an international tourism festival in Guangzhou, had Sports Day at school and enjoyed my first Chinese Thanksgiving.  I'll break these events up into a couple posts.  I don't want you to be overwhelmed.

Our trip to Guangzhou was initiated and largely paid for by some kind of higher-ups on the Shenzhen Board of Education or in the Guangdong provincial government.  They bussed us up there, gave us a tour guide and matching jackets, and paid for our entry into the '2009 Guangdong International Tourism and Culture Festival'.  Why would they do this?  Apparently having only Chinese faces in the crowd would not emphasize the 'international' portion of the festival as much as they liked.  The solution?  Make it free (foreigners like free stuff) and spread the rumor that Jackie Chan might be there (foreigners like Jackie Chan).  I understand that Mr. Chan is a busy man but was nonetheless disappointed not to see him.

The festival was in many ways reminiscent of the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, though on a much, much smaller scale.  There were musical numbers and swans/egrets/flamingo type birds released and re-creations of Chinese history and really long speeches in Chinese and a Chinese boy band.  Like any Chinese event it could have been half as long and still had time left for an intermission.  But I tried to appreciate the effort they put into it and I did like seeing the swans fly around.  Although they were trained to fly in a circle around the stadium, some of them went a little rogue. 

Guangzhou is not far from Shenzhen but is very different.  Or, so I have been told.  I didn't really see that much of it.  It's older by a long shot: Shenzhen is only three decades old while Guangzhou is one of the oldest cities in China.  It used to be called 'Canton' (hence 'Cantonese'), so you might have heard of it by that name.  When China first began to open up to trade with the outside world, Canton was at the forefront. 

It's considered more of a traditional Chinese city than Shenzhen is, and I noticed this in what was probably the coolest moment of the trip.  We were walking around on a Saturday morning and spotted a group of old Chinese people who had formed an orchestra.  Many of them used a voilin-like Chinese instrument called an erhu, which when played well can sound wonderful but which also has huge potential for disaster.  A man and a woman sang, very high-pitched but very visibly enthusiastically.  All smiles.  It was all very dischordant to my ears.  But I sat there and listened to them for a while, imagining that this throwback to a more traditional China was of great comfort to these old Chinese people.  The grandparent crowd everywhere has plenty to teach us younger generations (especially those grandparents who might be reading this blog).  But I'm still awed by what older folks in China in particular have been through and have seen during their lifetimes.  I don't know about the people in this particular orchestra, but they were happy though odds are they've experienced their share of misfortune and tragedy.  I guess, as one of my classrooms has pasted on the wall, "Where there is life, there is hope."  Corny but true.

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Hong Kong's Big Wave Bay falls into the category of nicest beaches I've ever been to.  Maybe the most secluded.  The nook of the beach we traveled to required a rope-assisted climb up a steep, wooded incline.  We shared the beach with a handful of other campers.  One group had brought massive speakers and a generator to power them.  Not sure how they handled the aforementioned steep incline but I'm impressed.

The whole trek took a good deal of time.  Here's why this beach is still secluded and more Shenzhen residents aren't rushing it: I took a total of six separate modes of transport there (counting walking), over the course of maybe six hours.  And then did it again the next day to get back!  All with a sleeping bag and tent on my back. 

1.  Bus to Shenzhen metro
2. Shenzhen metro to Hong Kong border
3. (cross customs) Switch to Hong Kong metro
4. Take one long bus
5. Transfer to another bus
6. Hike for two hours

Whew!  Plenty of good scenery though.  You'll notice that I mentioned crossing customs.  Even though Hong Kong is now part of China, it retains such a level of independence from mainland China that going there has all the normal hassles of going to another country.  In fact, it's a bigger deal than crossing the borders of actual sovereign states like US-Canada and plenty of EU countries.  Going to Hong Kong, you get your passport stamped on exit and entry and fill out health forms and ID forms and wait in line.  Then you get there, and plenty of people speak English and everyone drives on the left side of the road.  Seems like a different country to me!

On the way back from the beach we stopped at an American Western-themed restaurant with native English-speaking staff.  I had huevos rancheros with (gasp!) sour cream and guacamole, plus orange juice and buttered toast.  A pretty cool novelty here, and a much-appreciated break from Chinese food.

Cool trip!  And Grandma: your grandson has now been back to Hong Kong in your stead!

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I've received a lot of feedback on my most recent post from my awesome family and friends.  A lot of you sent teaching tips or notes of encouragement.  I don't normally post this frequently so don't get used to it guys :)  But I'd like to address this now: although I do have legitimate problems with classroom management sometimes, I feel kind of whiny for mentioning them so prominently.  Because truth be told, they are a very small part of my overall experience.

Strangely enough, the seven classes I've taught since writing that post have gone much more smoothly.  Part of it is that my lesson flows better as I teach it more and make modifications to it (I teach each lesson fifteen times), and part of it has been that these are some of the most advanced classes.  But I think another factor is that I've gotten a teaching confidence boost from you guys.  I haven't implemented any of the great suggestions sent to me yet.  I'll respond to those excellent emails on an individual basis.  But things have gone great recently and teaching today was fantastic. 

I'm also pretty pumped up from how fun it is to play with kids when you're not directly in charge of them.  I went outside on Sunday afternoon and found some of the kids had come to the campus to play.  Jumping rope and playing badminton and basketball for a couple hours with these kids reminded me of how great my setup can be.  I'm even slowly learning names (I've probably got about 12 out of the 750 of them).

I've done a lesson on space for the past week.  When the kids are into it, it's been amazing.  I got some hilarious answers to questions like "If an alien came to your house in China, what would you do?" 

"If I see an alien I will talk to it and we can be friends"
"I will fight it and kill it"
"I will keep it as a pet and feed it KFC"
"I will eat the alien"

You can probably guess which answers were favored by the boys and which by the girls. 

All of them know the name of the first Chinese man in space, Yang Liwei (most know Neil Armstrong too).  My last class knew the name of every planet in English and corrected me when I said there are nine planets, Pluto having been recently reclassified as .. not one.  Although I knew this (gimme a little credit, right?), their textbooks said Pluto was a planet so I didn't feel like rocking the boat.  Plus, I learned there were nine planets in my own wonderful elementary school.  Saying eight sounds like a slap in the face to those teachers.  Sorry, Mrs. Gentry!

I'll also use this as an excuse to post a couple pictures of my school-issued basketball jerseys and shoes.  The Chinese characters on the jersey say "Cui Bei", the name of my school, meaning something like "jade-green north".  There's a park nearby so I think that's the origin of the name.  The jerseys are definitely my best China souvenir so far.  Thanks for listening, guys!

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When I created this blog, I gave it the subtitle “sporadically consistent updates from an English teacher in China.”  In an effort to fulfill that goal, I have recently been giving you guys what are maybe better termed consistently sporadic updates.  Sort of the same either way I guess.

But this is the natural order of things.  As I get more comfortable in my skin here on the other side of the world and more accepting of my role as a member of the working world, what naturally follows is that I just have fewer new and interesting things to report.  Things that were astonishing before are now less so, and many things I’ve previously reported to you in the form of oh-so-witty cultural mini essays are now just daily routine.  I don’t look twice when I see a dozen Chinese people squatting like they’re about to play leapfrog while waiting for the bus (that’s what they do here) or little kids peeing in a bucket on the bus.  Oh well.  While not everything is so culturally bright and shiny anymore, this development also means that a big part of the adjustment phase is over.  I can spend less time adapting and more time just living out life here.

And life’s still pretty good.  I’ve got some good friends among the other teachers.  I anticipate weekends more so than I ever have, much more so even than in college.  In college there would always be work to do on Saturday and Sunday, so the total workload was spaced out more evenly across the week.  But here it’s full on and then full off, the weekend being a total vacation from thinking about the past week and the week to come.  I also have a few fun things lined up for the next couple of weekends.  Tonight is Halloween, so we’re having a party downtown.  Next weekend I’ll be going on a camping trip to what is supposed to be the best beach in Hong Kong.  And the following weekend I’m going to some kind of dinner and festival with great fireworks in the nearby city of Guangzhou.

Teaching is about the same as before.  My colleagues tell me I do a good job and I like all of my students outside of class, but during class classroom management becomes a big issue almost every class.  The students who perform and behave the best are grouped into the same classes, and those usually run well.  The students in these classes are more eager to answer and participate.  They also often have Chinese teachers supervising their behavior during my class.  There are maybe six of these classes.  The other nine vary but usually involve me addressing the constant problem of noise levels and paper airplanes and comic books with a variety of techniques, none of which really work.  At the same time, enthusiasm for participation is really lagging lately.  The novelty of my being here is wearing off.  There are usually three to five kids who will be happy to do what I ask but the rest would much rather covertly look at Pokemon cards or do other assignments.  Sometimes the Chinese teachers are in the class but distract everyone by handing back assignments during my lesson.

My main beef is that I spend way too much of the working week yelling and being angry at kids.  I could hear my voice deteriorate as this week went on, and by Friday there was very little left.  It’s frustrating because it shouldn’t have to be this way, but these classes are so huge and so incredibly difficult to manage.  I want to be happy and smiling in the classroom like I was the first couple of weeks, but then they assume we’re buddies and all fifty of them can do what they want.  I can see the kids’ perspective sometimes: this teacher has no real authority, he doesn’t give grades, I can’t really understand anything he says except “Good morning” and this is my one real class of the day to goof off in.  But it’s me versus them. 

My English Corner has a classroom now with a computer and projector, and this is one of my saving graces.  These kids are definitely engaged and have a great command of English for their age.  I’ve got 30 minutes with them twice a week, and I leave that class feeling great.  I feel like this is what teaching could be all the time, and it’s frustrating that it’s not and that I seem to have very little control over this.

One of the teachers took some photos of me with the students for a big collage that the school put together titled “Mr Kane is in Cui Bei Primary School”.  A very matter-of-fact title.  Anyway, he documented some classroom action and had me do a few photo sessions (“Pretend like you’re having a conversation with them!”  “Play basketball and jump rope with them!”), so I’ve gathered up the results here!

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