Welcome to China! What’s new you ask?

Hmm…well…its COLD, really really, COLD!!

Sure, I’ve been in New Paltz for the last 3 years. I’ve had my share of cold winters, but its wet and cold in a place that’s supposed to be at the latitude of Macon, Georgia. This city was hot and polluted when I got here. It would never rain, and now when it just starts to get below freezing now it starts up at full force.

Its been like this for the past two weeks, and for the entirety of those two weeks I have had no heat. The heater, attached to the upper wall over my desk, just wasn’t plugged in right. I finally got a maintenance guy to come in and fix it for me, and OH how sweet it feels! Dreams of warm blankets and hot coco run through my imagination.

The down(er) side to this is that now, nobody really wants to go in. We all want to stay in our little warm hovels and hide from the outside world. I, however, managed to find the motivation today, to go all the way to the center of the city to buy my girlfriend a few gifts. I think she’ll be pleased with what I found. It was great, because the malls were less packed then usual. Mind you, it was about the concentration of a regular mall day back home, but with a population as big as China’s that’s a severe reduction.

Right now, I’m doing okay. I’ve got my heat running on high, an extra blanket I brought from home, and a couple extra layers I bought from Wal-Mart (they have’m in China). If I can brave another month of this I think I’ll come out in one piece when its all over.

Warm wishes (hehe),

Liam

I really need to apologize in advance, it seems that I always forget to right about my best adventures. Usually, I am in such a lull of excitement afterward, that words seem to spoil the experience. So, I retell this adventure of mine, about a week after it has transpired.

I need to say firstly that I have one of the greatest Chinese teachers. I may have said it before, but it is worth repeating: she is my speaking teacher, Hou Xiao Fan, but her English name is just Kiko. This is the same teacher that took us to the crazy shopping center at the edge of the city. She is ridiculously funny and always has an answer of strong experience whenever we have a question about anything Chinese. Of all things, our wonderful teacher decided to take us to a spa resort for the weekend.

This place was unbelievable! It had about…let’s see – seven different kinds of baths. There was one filled with wine, one filled with tea, one that was boiling hot, one filled with flowers, one for “medicinal” purposes, one just for swimming, and my favorite (probably the most interesting) baths filled with little pucker fish that nibble at your skin.

Its a total head trip. They have one with tiny little fish, and one for fish that are a little bigger. Mind you, these were all outdoor baths, and when we arrived it was already night time. When you first get in its hard to see what’s in there. If you sit still and get in just the right spot they’ll come right up to you and pucker at your skin. It doesn’t hurt one bit, I swear, but OH does it feel strange. Me and a friend challenged ourselves to stand straight up and let them swarm at our legs, while we twitched and uttered strange noises. I’m not sure what I actually got out of that experience….but hey its China! 🙂 When in Rome…

Best Wishes,

Liam

China is a “developing” country so any visitor end up in some sort of strange cross section between the modern and the old. There are a few new commodities coming into this country that Chinese people don’t seem to grasp. Why do Chinese people wear high heels on the sports track and why do they always use umbrellas when it is sunny out? If something seems strange it is easy to write it off, but when it comes to how they eat their bananas, I think they may have us beaten.

Someone may think I am kidding, but I am serious. The “normal way” has always been to grab from the top stem and pull down; seemed logical to me. In China they pinch the bottom and peel it open. The first time I saw this I thought that they just “didn’t understand” bananas, yet. I was curious and tried it their way, and much to my disbelief, its actually easier. Even if its unripe, it just pops right open every time. Try it sometime, you might not want to go back to the old way.

Thank you China, and your funny eating habits, for showing me a new way, and for getting rid of a few of my biases.

Below is a few pictures of the method described above.

This is from the Okunchi festival, the main strip of activities and food stands was near the heart of the city, in front of a place called Yume-saito

These shots are from a place called Megane-Bashi, translated from Japanese it means “Glasses Bridge”. This is a very famous place in Nagasaki, it was the first bridge to be built in Japan that used the roman arch. It gets its namesake from its appearance, when the double arch is reflected in the river they say it looks like a pair of glasses

These images are from Koshi-Byo. It is the only Chinese Buddhist temple outside of China that was built by Chinese hands.

To Japan actually.

I’ve been living in Nagasaki for a little over a month now. Nagasaki is a quaint peninsula on the southern island of Kyshu. It is wonderful to be living by the ocean again, but the mountains here are steeper than any I am used to in New York.

So far I have been soaking it all in, and experiencing everything I can. I went to Nagasaki’s Kunchi festival, which is one of the most famous in Japan. I got a prime seat for watching the Dragon dance and it went though downtown. A couple weeks ago I experienced an onsen in Unzen, which is a small tourist town on a volcanic mountain. The geysers were beautiful and the spring water for the onsen was fantastic. I climbed mount Inasa, I’ve seen a number of Buddhist and Shinto shrines, I’ve seen traditional musicians and a Jazz festival, I’ve walked down the streets of Dejima, and Huis Ten Bosch, I’ve pet a penguin, seen some Monkeys, I took a nap in a park, and have met indescribably wonderful people. I am grateful for all of it and everyone.

Last weekend I helped out at the school culture festival. Every language region had their own stand where you could buy food specific to that country; there were Korean foods, Chinese foods, English foods, French Foods, German foods, and of course American. The JASIN students bounded together under the strict command Megan, the student in charge of the stand. We Jokingly called her our Taisho, which is Japanese for General. had a food stand, we made hamburgers, blooming onions, We made hamburgers, cheeseburgers, crab rangoon, blooming onions, and cheesecake.

After the festival quite a few of us went with some friends to an elementary school to participated in Halloween activities with the students. Unlike America, Halloween isn’t very big in Japan but its gaining popularity.

Ive noticed that small children tend to be shy and a little frightened when they see foreigners. Misa, a Japanese friend of mine, says she thinks it because they don’t see foreigners very often, and that its even more surprising for them to meet foreign individuals that can communicate in Japanese. I suppose since I grew up in the world’s melting pot, I’ve always taken America’s cultural and racial diversity for granted.

You know being in China is not easy. It is a real challenge to my sensibilities, and has been something of an initiation by fire. Not only have I been thrown head first into the culture of the East, but almost all the students in my surrounding dorm are from other countries. I’ve had to find ways to adapt to multiple cultures at once.
If there’s one thing China has taught me, its that I love my country, very dearly. I am very sure of this. Sometimes that expresses itself as homesickness, but on the whole, its just a clear, glowing gratitude for what I have. Sometimes, when I’m facing my trials here I think of what I have at home, and I wonder if I should be there instead.
I recently encountered some conflicts with my room mate, who is from Belgium. He made it clear from the beginning that he didn’t like Americans. His biases created a base for our tension that has just built into something nasty between us. I don’t like it one bit. Moments like this make me squirmy and start me wondering how it would be in New York.
Yet, I have found so much here. I have been adopted into the circle of a wonderful group of English folks, coming out of their native city of Sheffield. When I wonder what I might be doing elsewhere, besides China, all I can think is how many adventures I would miss with them. As of now, we are planning to take a trip to the ice festival, up in Harbin (northern china), during the winter, and every weekend there is always some sort of spontaneous excitement I can expect to come out of their circle.
I have no real worries right now. I am rather content, and am in the midst of getting ready for bed, but I don’t think I would enjoy myself nearly as much if I didn’t have my pals around to keep my head in the game. For now I rest thankful.

Best wishes from China,

Liam 8D

The Nanjing Skyline from my bedroom

As a study abroad student in China I feel I am in a very unique position. If I were to go to a country like Australia, England, France, Japan, etc. I would get to be part of well established programs in well developed countries. However, I’ve never been one for the easy choice so I am here in Nanjing in a program that clearly hasn’t been around very long, in a city that is very obviously still developing.

When you look out into the skyline of this city you can’t see much further than five hundred feet before it fades into gray. Its rare that you see the sun or the moon, let alone the stars, and every day the weather report reads the same: “Haze”. The pollution here is constant and hard to hide from. On a day like this it makes me feel sluggish and unmotivated.

It has pretty much been like this from the beginning, but there was a period where I actually forgot about it. During their Mid-Autumn Festival, China shut down most of its factories for eight days. During that time the sun shined nicely and you could actually see a few stars at night, but ever since that its just gradually built back to its original condition. I went on a trip to Guangzhou that week, and I think my opinion of the city may have been distorted because people have told me that its far worse than it is here.

Depressing, I know, but its a reality I feel I needed to talk about. I have a few things I need to do today, and an adventure to take part in later in the day, but on a day like this its hard to find the motivation. It makes me wish there was something I could do about it, but really I just have to suck it up and bear it.

On Thursday a funny thing happened to me. I was loitering out on the front steps of my hotel, reading a book, when a friend came up to me, “Hey, Liam what are you doing this weekend?”

“Mm, nothing yet.”

“Wanna go on a free trip?”

There’s not really much else you can say an offer like that. I had some vague suspicions, but otherwise, I was ready to have a blast of a weekend. I have been holed up in my room most of the time studying, and I thought an adventure off in some obscure part of china would be good for the spirits. I somehow managed to wake up at 7 o’clock on a Saturday morning and we were off on a bus ride to Shouxing, China, in the Zhejiang province just south of here.

Before my friend’s offer I had never heard of Shouxing before, so for those also in the dark: Shouxing is China’s “wine capital”, but this really just means Chinese White Liquor. If you haven’t heard of this drink before either…well, if you like drinking paint peeler, smelling of dank cheese, then be my guest and try it. I’ve never actually tried it myself, but I know a friend that’s made himself sick for a the past three weeks drinking half a bottle. I would only recommend this to someone who is either really passionate about the Chinese culture, or someone just trying to prove their own bravery.

On top of that Shouxing is China’s textile region. As a matter of fact the entire region pretty much only has textile shops. Really, that’s all there is in the city. We tried to find a place that sells ice cream, but we walked up and down a radius of a couple of blocks and couldn’t find anything, but fabric dealers. Apparently that’s why we got to go on the trip for free. A travel agency was hired to help bring publicity to the local Textile Convention by bringing in foreigners. A big affair certainly; There were cannons being fired, performances, and the marching of military processions, but it was still such an intensely dull place. Regardless, thanks to the good spirits of a free trip, and the energy of a few good friends we managed to turn a very drab place into a party.

We arrived at a gorgeous five star hotel. Each of us was given a room to share with another person. We all walked into our rooms to find gorgeous queen sized beds and full accommodations. This was the kind of place that was so classy it even had telephones in the bathroom. We all felt so at home that me and all my friends promptly decided to slip into bathrobes and never came out of them the rest of the night. Mind you we were there under the auspices of doing “business”. We were supposed to hobnob and schmooze at our best, but even when the cocktail hour hit, we went into the room, with full confidence, in our bathrobes.

We had ourselves a massage, which brought us all to a nice mellow state, and we decided to go to the karaoke lounge across the way. I think the front desk was a little shocked when we walked in, but we just acted normal and they let us into see our friends who had gotten there before us. We walked in to see a room of half alive, awkward people; half singing, mostly sitting and staring. In we walked in our bathrobes and the party began. None of us held back and the rest of the room really took to that. The party evolved from singing, into a private dance party in full force. It could have gone all night, but dancing in a robe is pretty hard. It’s far too warm and tends to start falling off when your moving.

From there, our berobed tribe wandered back to our rooms and decided to make a steam room out of our bathroom. The hotel actually had a sauna, but it was only for men. We had much more fun creating one for ourselves. We sweat it out the rest of the night, telling stories and enjoying each other’s company, until we all got tired and wandered back to our respective spaces.

The next day we got up early for breakfast and a few trips through the textile areas: nothing too eventful, and we packed up our stuff and made it back home. I wouldn’t recommend anybody spend time in this city unless they have to do business, but for us it was a total blast. In some roundabout way it will probably go down as one of my favorite adventures here in this crazy country we call China.

Best Wishes,
Liam

Cultural relativism is a very novel idea. I have studied enough philosophy to know that its not true in a literal way. Something isn’t right just because a culture decides to do it. But as a functional survival mechanism it works wonders.

Squat toilets are more dirty and harder to use: well, that’s just their culture. Okay. So, they have class 5 days a week, and sometimes on weekends: well, that’s just their culture. They smoke everywhere they go; restaurants, subways, busses, public lobbies, sports tracks (see last entry): well, that’s just their culture. Don’t mind the minor sarcasm. Most of this stuff I genuinely overlook. I am quite adaptable when it comes to strange situations, but no matter how flexible I am I have my limits.

I went to the medical center today, because of all things I had to go and catch the flu. I had a soar throat, headache, and achy muscles; Basic stuff. I’ve had it since yesterday, and thought it would go away. In my hope of not (involuntarily) missing more class, I figured I would get myself checked out at the student medical center. If I could I wanted to get this flushed out of my system ASAP.

I walk into the lobby and the first thing I witness is a lot of hustle and bustle; Lines and official paperwork everywhere. I was dumbfounded, so the first thing I do is go up to a nurse who looks like she’s in charge of information, and in my best Chinese I say, “”

“”

I listed my symptoms and then she says something which I don’t understand. I look confused and she asks if I have a fever. I tell her I don’t and she holds out a thermometer. I open my mouth and she shakes her head. She starts pointing to her shoulder and I realize…she wants me to put it in my armpit… I’m not a doctor, I could be wrong, but I don’t think skin temperature is a good indicator of core body heat. I think that they just use the same thermometer on everyone and it’s a little more sanitary that way if they don’t put it in your mouth.

After I wait five minutes and find out that I’m “normal”, she points me to a line where they make me fill out some forms and then pretty much fling them in my face and shoo me away. Having no idea where I’m supposed to go, I start asking people until a man come up to me and tells me the exact room I need to go to in English. Mind you, my Chinese isn’t fantastic, but it said nothing about this room in the form they gave me.

In the room, with one dirty hospital bed and a couple of office desks, the doctor looked at my throat, without any instruments, and told me I needed to get blood work. At this point I was so tired and so weirded out that I just walked out, and didn’t say anything else. Why would they need blood work to test for the flu? I usually get the flu at least twice a year back home and they just look at my symptoms and can tell from that.

Worry not, however. I am not endangering my safety in any way. I just decided to take another root. I am downing tea and resting up back in my room. I would say that at this point I feel pretty good. My sore throat is almost completely gone and I have no aches at this point. Later tonight I am even teaching a Capoeira class. Lesson of the day: Chinese medical centers are scary, avoid them where possible.

Scene 2: a rice paddy somewhere in the middle of rural china. Many Chinese people are about, hunched over in their field work.

In steps a smiling American man in a suit and brimmed hat – 1950’s style.

American guy (AG): Jeepers! What a swell place *big grin*, but you know I can’t help but feel its missing something *scratches his head in an exaggerated way*. I know *lifts an affirming finger in revelation* –

Local Villager: who are you and what are you doing on my land? –

AG: You need a little *star wipe* Modernization (TM) !!

Star wipe knocks over the villager

Village turns into a city, and everybody suddenly looks very trendy.

AG: There you go all better now. You have all the great things that we have in the good old US of A. Western Medicine, Infrastucture, and go ahead and burn a little coal while you’re at it. *wink* we had our turn at it once too.

Just for good measure we gave you your own track so you can keep in top shape for a long healthy modern lifestyle.

Well my work is done here!

Puts hands on hips and looks contentedly into the distance.

KAPOW!! *disappears in a puff of smoke that makes everyone cough*

Scene 2: Everybody has adjusted quite nicely, and is getting along in their daily business, but a little less hunched over this time.

AG: *in a flash of smoke* KABLAM! I have returned. *with a look of total satisfaction on his face*

*goes up to a stranger* So how are things getting along here since we added patented Modernization (TM) to your country.

Local Chinese man (LCM): Oh yeah, you. *rolls eyes a little* Well, you gave us a real shock the first time, but yeah, we’re doing just fine. We especially love the track. It seems a regular past time around here.

AG: Super duper! Well you must have some real titans of fitness by now.

LCM: uh..what do you mean?

AG: Well gosh. You must have some pretty fast runners around here. Endurance or dash, you must be in real tip top shape, yes, sir.

LCM: Well some of us are going there now. Why don’t you come along and join us.

They go to the track together. The American guy is now in short shorts and ready for a brisk run. He warms up by doing some stretches and pumping his legs a little. By the look of his build he does this a lot.

AM: Alright, let’s do this. I’m ready for a bit of a race.

LCM: okay we can do that.

They start off at a sprint, the American guy is very excited, then all the Chinese people stop at the end of the straight and start flailing their arms and walking backwards in strange ways.

AM: *stops his jog and runs in place near his friends* What are you doing fellas? Hey, why are you slapping yourself in the torso, doesn’t that hurt? Maybe you want to face the other way while your walking. And hey buddy why are you moving like your swimming? We’re not in a pool we’re on land.

LCM: Good for the health. *smiles a little and goes back to flailing his arms strangley* Want a cigarette while we’re here.

AM: Umm…gosh! Did I miss something? Wait why is she wearing high heels on the track? Maybe she should put down that handbag and change out of that miniskirt. – Wait! Is everybody here smoking? I thought we were running.

LCM: we did run. 10 seconds as planned. Now we flail – and smoke. Isn’t that what we’re here for?

AM: *big smile* Well, I’m sure confused! *claps his hand and tries to poof out again, but just walks out of the smoke cloud dejected and slouched over*

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All based on real events (aside from the star wipes and clouds of smoke, but yes everybody smokes…everywhere). I don’t think Chinese people have figured out the concept of exercise yet. They just do tai chi and socialize while they walk. Makes it very hard to exercise…
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