A Change From What We're Used To

There's less and less Winter outside now.  The background image of the blog is becoming less and less a reflection of what I see on the streets.  It's a high of 53 today, basically full-blown Summer in comparison.  Basically, not actually, Summer; let's not go crazy.

As it warms up, I'm taking off my peacoat.  I'm giving serious debate to wearing my scarf.  My gloves and hat sit in my bag, unused.  In the same way, I'm paying more attention to shrugging off the weight of all things heavy as we make a return to the seasons of growth, of warmth, and (at least historically for me) of travel. 

Once you've moved around enough.  And often enough.  And liked it.  There is a general mindset of being in perpetual motion that settles itself into your perspective of life.  There is a sweet spot I like to live in between concerns of having too little to survive and having too much to survive.  Any item that fits form over function I look at warily: are you a talisman? a paperweight? an anchor?  Everything needs to be light, durable, distinct, difficult to replace (though mostly only sentimentally), and also easy to replace with something equally distinct and durable (it's a contradiction, but it makes sense if you think about it a bit). The worst mental place to be is stuck between the thoughts that you can't win the fight to keep what you have and you can't give up the object of the fight itself.  One or the other has to happen.  Or you at least need to believe in one or the other.  

I don't mean literally always moving physical locations; what kind of a life is that?  I've loved Chicago and have been here for nearly 2 years.  Will I move from here one day?  One day soon?  Will I stay forever?  Not so important.  Primarily, I mean simply moving through Life.  Life is neither a lazy river nor a rocky hike through rough terrain.  It's whitewater rafting.  You are absolutely guaranteed to run into peaceful sections and dangerous sections.  Some fast, some slow.  It doesn't matter what you do, you'll get both...and more.  Either way, you keep moving forward.  Even if you don't want to, you are being carried towards something new and next, better or worse.    

I have tons of things I don't need.  Redundant coats, redundant bags.  I just checked a work email that rang up on my tablet as I'm typing this on my laptop.  Ridiculous.  It doesn't change my core belief though.  I just struggle to keep it in the center.  Sometimes, I lean far too ascetic.  The technological era has helped out.  The "cloud" makes it easier to keep photos and memories safe and tucked away, though I still have a paper journal that I'd be sad to find missing.  But what do I have that I couldn't leave behind in a fire (literal and figurative)?  I'd like to be able to brush off the ash and soot (literal and figurative) and walk away only inconvenienced rather than inconsolable:  loyal to what is (and should be) truly important to me, and agile in all other moments.

Kind of a preachy tone to this post, huh?  Feel free to preach back in the comments.  These posts go better when stories are involved, but I haven't been consistent enough to write down all the new ones that pop up.  Maybe with a more cohesive theme, I could stay a bit more on topic.  Until then, it's a going to be an inconsistent peppering of quick-writes.  Let's keep this thing going with an overall humor to the tone.  I'd like that; I think you're gonna like that.   

And we're back!

Back.  Back from the travelpod blog.  We had some fun there, we had some laughs, but now we're back to the beginning.

Things are going to start taking place by way of Chicago from now on.  After returning from China, I've relocated to the "The City That Works."  This post is just a quick primer to set the context for any subsequent posts.  The timeline's been a little hard to follow since I've had to switch between blogging websites.

So here we go:
-We are back to blogger.
-We are in Chicago.
-What's this blog about? I'm not sure.
-Does this blog have any defined topical direction?  No, it doesn't.

Great, we're all caught up.  If you missed out on the previous posts you can read up on the China time at the initial posts of this blog, or the posts at this site:  http://blog.travelpod.com/members/tony.wong

Let's start moving forward.

Moving to a new blog!

I'm finally succumbing to the China Firewall.  It's too difficult to get to blogger.com anymore so I'm switching over to a different site.  It's a lot easier to use for the sheer fact that I can actually access it.  This means that posts will be more frequent...so hooray! 

Here's the new address...http://www.travelpod.com/members/tony.wong

Try it out since I'm starting to post on it immediately, meaning that the last two months of Spring Festival adventures are going to be on there. 

The Longest (read: Best) Winter Break

Our Winter Holiday lasts from January 8th to March 8th.   That is a long time for holiday.  Some students are happy to go home and see their families (though most admit that two months with just their families might be a bit much) and some students are trying to find jobs so that they can stay in Loudi.  Kirby and I on the other hand are finishing packing for our trek around China.  We're starting out in Hong Kong and then we're gradually making a misshapen circle all the way around China.  We're going Loudi -> Hong Kong -> Guangzhou -> Guilin -> Yangshuo -> Loudi (so my parents can see it) -> Fenghuang -> Dehang -> Hengyang -> Harbin -> Beijing -> Lhasa, Tibet -> Chengdu -> and then home to Loudi.  Basically we're going southeast to east to south to far north to far west and then back to south.  This means the blog will be pretty barren while I'm gone, though long stretches of no updates are pretty common on this blog.  But it also means there are going to be a thousand amazing pictures when I get back.  

Just to get everyone in the mood for this trip, I'm gonna leave you with a little anecdote my friend sent to me.  It's a positive message about travel and hopes for the future...
      So I jump ship in Hong Kong and I make my way over to Tibet, and I get on as a looper at a course over in the Himalayas. So, I tell them I'm a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald... striking. So, I'm on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one - big hitter, the Lama - long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga... gunga, gunga-lagunga. So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice...

Apartment Fun

      Finally my apartment has water again!  I haven’t taken a full-fledged shower in days and I certainly haven’t washed any of my clothes in probably the last two weeks.  A couple of days before Christmas the toilet in my bathroom began to have problems so I deemed it “out of order.”  A few days later, Emily was taking a shower and leaned on the pipe accidentally cracking it.  Now it’s no toilet and no shower. Since the pipe was cracked and was spraying water everywhere, I had to shut the water off in my bathroom.  What I didn’t know is that shutting off that pipe also stops any water from getting to the rest of my apartment.  Kirby figured that little tidbit out only after putting her dirty clothes in the washing machine (which is oddly located on the balcony outside my apartment) and pouring soap all over them.  This means walking six stories up and six stories back down every time I want to use the bathroom.   It also means that when I do want to wash up a little in my apartment, I have to shove my head underneath a loose hose hanging off my bathroom wall, turn on the valve, and release freezing cold water to wash out all the soap and shampoo.  It’s a rough process. 

     So why in the world has it been broken so long?  It’s not for lack of attention to the problem (though it does seem to be lack of effort to actually fix it).  At least once a day I will either get a call saying the maintenance man is coming to my apartment or he will just randomly show up…usually with one or two other guys in tow.  One of these guys was a specialist there to deal solely with the shower problem.  He came three times before finally realizing that the brand wasn’t the kind he usually worked on and so refused to come back.  One man was there to fix the toilet.  He worked for about 30 minutes and then walked out the door telling me that it was now fixed.  After days of this routine, people coming in and out of my apartment and me running home from meals and class to try to meet them, I finally came to today.  Today, the college maintenance man came alone since everyone else had either given up or refused to come anymore.  He worked, he drilled, he tested, he smoked in my bathroom (jerk), and finally he got the shower working.  Looking satisfied, he threw his cigarette into the toilet and pressed the flush button to send it on its way.  The water filled back up the brim of the seat.  Still broken (thanks for the help toilet-oriented maintenance guy from before).  But now at least I have a working shower and water running in my apartment.  It’s still an arduous six stories up and six stories down for bathroom breaks but I’m just about used to it by now. 

Plans for the Winter Holiday

Why do we need new coats you say?  Maybe we just wanted to treat ourselves to something nice.  We work hard, we deserve it…back off!  Just kidding, we need new coats because we have a long, cold trip planned for February.  And we have an equally long but not so cold trip planned for January.  Our college gets out for Winter Holiday on January 8^th, usually this holiday is about 40 days long but this time it’s closer to 60 days long.  We’re planning on traveling over to Hong Kong on Jan. 8^th for a few days before heading back into mainland China and to Guangzhou, Guilin, and Yangshuo.  Then I’m taking Mom and Dad on a tour of Loudi, the place I currently call home.  After that, Mom and Dad will head north to Beijing and I will head south to Dehang and Fenghuang.  Then Kirby and I will meet up with Emily, who will be freshly returned from America, and begin our trip north too.  Our first stop is Harbin, so called “Icy City” since it is the coldest city in China with an average annual temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit.  It’s a perfect location for the Ice Festival which is when the city basically builds another city made entirely of ice.  Ice buildings and ice slides litter the landscape.  But it’s cold…really cold…freezing cold.  So that’s why we bought new coats.  After a few days in Harbin, we take the train (we always take trains, I haven’t been on a flight in China yet) over to Beijing for the Chinese New Year.  Chinese people like to repeat a quote by Chairman Mao in which he said “If one has not been to the Great Wall, then you are not a real man.”  Erik flies into Beijing on the night of the 12^th, so we four will become “real men” on a rugged, unrenovated section of the Wall called Simatai.  After squeezing all the sights and fun out of Beijing, we’ll take a 45 hour train into Lhasa, Tibet.  We’ve got a 4 day tour booked there.  The only way travelers can get in is to join a tour.  In fact, they only just recently opened up the border to travelers at all, it was previously completely blocked off.  We’d like to go to Everest base camp but we don’t have the time or money.  The closest we get to that peak is Nam-tso Lake, the highest salt water lake in the world standing at a little over 4700 meters above sea level.  When we leave Tibet, we’ll go back to China and into Chengdu.  From there, we plan on visiting LeShan Mountain and seeing the massive Buddha that sits on the river shore there.  Its toe is taller than the average man and it took 90 years to build. 

                Just to reiterate the need for the coat…Harbin will be about 10-12 degrees, Beijing will be around 25 degrees, and Tibet will be about 11 degrees.  We’ll be gone for two months.  It’s a long, cold trip.  We’re all very excited.  Extremely excited actually.  I’d like to leave to tomorrow morning if I could. 

Christmas and New Year's

   The thing about this blog is that you’re really not getting every story.  I wish you were because there are a lot of really good small ones but I can only remember the more major events since I don’t write regularly.  If it’s any consolation, I’m writing more regularly in a journal I’ve got going but that doesn’t help you much.  Maybe when I get back I can fill you in on the little things.  I say that because I’m having a little trouble remembering what all happened during December.  There was this…and that other thing…and that thing or two in Hengyang…plus that place that we went to with that person that time…lots of stuff really. 

                Most of December passed with us doing work.  My schedule for the last 4 or 5 weeks has been 25-30 hours of classes every week.  Not a ton but enough to take up a significant portion of my time.  It’s good though since my new classes were all English majors.  Their English is miles above the students I had prior to them so it made my classes a lot more fun.  We work out of the textbook sometimes (but it’s boring).  We do classroom activities the rest of the time.  Anything from movies to discussions to playing tag outside (I have videos).  I’ve made a lot of little student buddies from these last few weeks.  Last week was finals week.  My final was easy, really easy I think.  All they had to do was write a 1-3 minute speech and present it to the class.  Some were great, others not so much.  It’s surprising how much stage fright Chinese students have.  It’s really evident how much emphasis is placed on rote memorization rather than creativity.  If you walk outside of the rules a little bit, they freak out.

                I’ll try to do this in mostly chronological order.  On December 23^rd, our friend May from Hengyang had her wedding ceremony.  For her wedding, we all met in a large hotel reception area.  The decorations were nice and the people were happy, but the ceremony itself was nothing too religious.  It seemed more like a collection of people speaking about how happy they were for the couple and then the couple themselves speaking about how happy they were to see everyone.  A couple of kisses later it was all over.  But the customs surrounding it were pretty cool.  As soon as we walked in, cigarettes were shoved into our hands.  They love cigarettes over here!  I’m not kidding…love them.  The entire wedding party continuously handed them out to us in celebration.  When the bride and groom came around visiting the tables, every guest received at least two cigarettes from a man following them who was carrying a tray full of cigarettes.  In the center of our table was a large bowl.  When we sat down it was filled with candy and boxes of cigarettes (apparently expensive ones).  I left that wedding with 18 cigarettes.  The meal was the standard multiple courses with all of the dishes brought out and placed on the lazy Susan for everyone to pass around.  I don’t know a whole lot about Chinese weddings, but the meal seemed to be a very nice one.  The MC (because that’s really what it was, no priest or anything) was the hotel manager I’m pretty sure.  There were some elements about the wedding that almost made it seem like a game show.  Bright lights, lots of people taking the microphones, and loud noises all the time.  It was fast too.  Two hours after we arrived it was all over.    

                Christmas came along soon after that.  Emily came from Hengyang to spend the holiday with us.  Kirby’s mom sent her “The Christmas Story” and we watched “Home Alone” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” on the computer.  It really sets the mood, especially since we didn’t have a tree.  The Wal-Mart here has a few Christmas decorations but we decided against buying much since we’re planning a trip for the Winter Holiday.  This time Kirby’s mom was the one who mailed over the holiday food.  But we didn’t buy the chicken for this meal.  Just stuffing, potatoes, and mac n’ cheese.  It was all delicious, except that for 3 days I was terribly sick.  I had to lie in bed during the entire 27^th…just awful.  On top of that, my bathroom pipes burst.  And the heater in my bedroom went out.  So every time any of us needed the restroom or a shower, we had to climb six stories (which meant that I got to make that trip weak and nauseated…woo hoo!).  The heater’s been fixed since then but my bathroom is still broken and my apartment has no water.  The maintenance men keep coming but there’s always one little detail that they miss and have to return the next day.  At least the college is paying for it and not me.  I lied in bed hurting for a few days until I made a partial recovery on the 29^th and resumed my classes to administer the finals.  However, on the last day of finals I somehow lost my blue folder that contained grade sheets and all of the finals for one of my classes, so that’s fun.  I’m working it out but that’s just annoying. 

                I skipped over this a bit but on December 24^th, we attended (and performed in) our school’s Christmas pageant.  The students had worked months on preparing dances and skits complete with costumes and music.  They were great dances too.  They seemed to come from all over China and the neighboring countries…the costumes alone crushed our pathetic rendition of Jingle Bell Hop that Kirby and I sang.  Twenty-one groups performed in front of us, all of them impressive.  Plus, some of the groups were our students so that made it even better.  I’ll post a link to the Christmas pictures at the top.  It’s worth mentioning the dinner that we went to right before the pageant.  A couple of hours before we had to be at the school, our Dean invited us to a dinner at a semi-nice restaurant.  We all crowded into a private room (they always use private rooms here) and took a seat.  The President of the school and some of the other top officials had decided to join us, and I was sitting to his left.  Now for some reason the officials of the school are obsessed with knowing how much Kirby and I can drink.  That would be somewhat fine in a regular situation but the Chinese are not good drinkers.  Their technique is all wrong.  Every drink is a toast and a full glass…of something like red wine or white liquor, not just beer like regular people.  So after a full meal and several alcohol-related challenges, we impressed the leaders enough for them to relent and we soon left for the pageant.  Still though, the President continued to ask me if I were feeling alright from the drinking.  To which he gave a slightly disappointed nod when I reassured him that I’m just fine.  Seriously, they cannot drink over here.  But you do have to respect the fact that they persist.  They complain that their “head is swimming” after two drinks (by which I mean Dixie cup-sized glasses) but they keep right on chugging along. 

                New Year’s Eve came quickly after.  The “Eve” part really isn’t that important to the Chinese.  They prefer to celebrate on January 1^st rather than the night of December 31^st.  For New Year’s Eve we went out to KTV (karaoke) with our American friend Dan and his students.  Dan is a teacher at the other college in Loudi.  After singing and dancing in an awkwardly intimate setting for a while, we made our way down the street back to the infamous Night Impressions and Vogue Club.  The place had a sizable crowd so I bought us a round and we took a table to settle in and get ready for the countdown (it was about 11:20pm at this point).  We drank, we laughed, and suddenly the DJ started the countdown from 10 (or “shi” in mandarin, the whole thing was obviously in mandarin).  No one passed out Champagne, which I can forgive.  But literally three minutes after yelling out “ONE!!!” and confetti bursting from the ceiling, the bar was empty.  I am not kidding…12:03am the place was empty.  I have photos.  Everyone just got up and left.  What were they celebrating?  “Alright we made it into 2010, let’s get out of here and get into bed.”  It was a really weird sight to see the mass exodus of previously partying people.  So we did as the Romans did and left too.  We met back up with Dan’s students at a small restaurant down the street.  Starving, we devoured 6 bowls of soup and about 80 dumplings between the 7 of us who were there.  The cops came in and laughed and played with us for a while.  Police seems like a very relaxed profession over here.  We soon left and went home…honestly, a little disappointed.

                Today we did a little bit more traditional celebrating though by making dumplings with our friend Helen.  The Chinese make dumplings for New Year for good fortune and luck.  We got there just in time to help roll the outer coverings flat with small rolling pins (which I’m terrible at) and to fill those coverings with the pork mixture they had made and fold them up (which I’m much better at).  The whole family was there.  Helen, her husband, her daughter Francesca, Helen’s best friend and her husband, their son, Helen’s parents, and Helen’s husband’s grandmother.  It was a big gathering, really fun too.  Right in the middle of it though I had to run, literally run, home because the maintenance man had finally come to fix the water in my apartment.  False alarm though.  He had brought the wrong part.  I returned back only to find that everyone had just finished the meal.  Not to be deterred, I resolutely ate the leftover dumplings and drank the homemade wine while playing guns with the two younger kids in the living room.  Afterwards, the three of us (Helen, Kirby, and me) went out shopping for a purse and some coats.