Ni Chi Le Ma

I have fallen into a routine in which everyday is an adventure. I am teaching 240 Chinese students, exploring my surroundings, balancing time between my “brothers” and making new friends, drinking beer and learning tai chi, and trying to study a language that I am still unable to distinguish from scribbles.

The one consent in China is eating. I am always eating. Everything I have eaten is blog worthy delicious (I still haven’t cooked for myself or had western food).

I will start writing more, or lose my sanity. Living in Beibei is a total cultural immersion. I want to avoid cliché travel blog writing, so here is my China. Children here have a different “potty training”. Instead of diapers, the Chinese cut slits in the clothing in necessary areas for their children to fire away. I saw two separate babies today in downtown Beibei (European style eating, shopping, and plazas) shitting in the street. I think I would rather shit in the street than use the public restrooms.

Learning Chinese, or trying to learn Chinese, takes all my free time. I have Chinese class twice a week for an hour and half at night, but that brings me only slightly behind the shitting babies. I am basically trying to study three languages at once. We study Mandarin Chinese, which is the national language of the People’s Republic of China. To learn Mandarin, I must study pinyin, which uses Latin phonetic alphabet. For example, “Ni hao ma?” is the common greeting which means “Are you good?” Seems easy enough, but each word also carries a unique tone. “Ni” is the second tone which means it rises, “hao” is the third tone its pronunciations drops than rises, “ma” is the fifth tone and is therefore said quickly. Still got it?

Next I learn the characters. Memorization appears to be the only way this is possible. I find the characters fascinating, but learning them is challenging. I have been here nearly a month and can now maybe recognize 15-20 characters.

So, after a night of studying, John walks out to a restaurant to get some food. The moment I walk outside of Southwest University, Mandarin is thrown out the window. Chongqing dialect is what the common Beibei citizen speaks. The dialect is not a regional accent, but a whole new language. My understanding is that the dialect and Mandarin is comparable to Spanish and Italian, which are similar, but nowhere near as similar as American English and British English. I forgot to mention English is only spoken on campus, and it is British English. I am now accustomed to asking, “Where is the W.C.?”

I must arise and go now. I am going to meet my Chinese brothers to plan my National Day trip. Chinese National Day is a week long vacation starting October 1st in honor of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. I will be traveling to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan. Everyone said it is a lovely city with a laid back attitude, not to mention the home of the largest Panda bear reserve in the world. Look it up!

I need to start writing more.

If you want to send me mail, my address is:
John Murray
NO.2 Tiansheng Road,
Beibei, Chongqing 400715
P.R. China

If you send me a letter or a package, I will send you something in return-Something that is made in China.

Love,
John Murray

Snapshots of Southwest Students

Today my conversational English classes talked about the importance of communication. We played the “telephone game” where a message gets whispered around the class student by student. The telephone game, for those that don’t know, is nothing more than a means for a teacher to kill time will proving a quite obvious message. I found it enjoying.

Today’s initial message: Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

We spent the first half of the class talking about all the new opportunities in China and throughout the world, so I thought the message would fit the theme of inspiration.

Student’s response (class 1): Today is the last day of your life
Student’s response (class 2): Today is Tuesday

This activity, especially the simplicity of student response 2, paralleled my students’ thoughts about China. According to my two classes, South Eastern China is viewed finically as European, while Western China (Sichuan, Tibet, Xinjiang) is comparable to Africa. Students at Southwest believe they are somewhere in-between. A teachers salary is poor, they said, but worth it because they will be able to help others.

I asked the students what they would do with one day left to live. I found out that some students believe 2012 is the end of the world. Overwhelmingly the students said they would go to their hometowns. No one said they would do anything out of the ordinary.

After my 8:00 class, a friendly, albeit slightly goofy student, came up to me and asked if he could sing me a song. I said of course. He sang all verses of “I’ll be right there waiting for you” by Bryan Adams. He sang with unbelievable passion. American John would have been rolling on the floor slapping his knee in uncontrolled laughter. Chinese John hopes he will learn the words to the song. After he finished the song, he told me that he practiced English in high school by riding a bicycle around his neighborhood while shouting (his word, not mine) speeches by Martin Luther King Jr. He said his neighbors thought he was crazy. I said it sounded pretty cool.

One of my students, Cara, invited me to lunch after the second class and I happily agreed. It was my first experience in the school cafeteria, and the food was good, but still cafeteria grade. She paid for my meal without me knowing! I tried desperately to pay her back, at one point even putting money on the table and telling her that I would leave it, but she refused. I felt embarrassed and out of line as her teacher, but she insisted that it was her honor.

Side note: Chinese people do not all look alike. Many of them look like friends and family back home. Yesterday I met the spitting image of Mr. Henrich, my third grade teacher. Strange stuff. More soon,

LOVE,
John

Jei Fung Bei is no Beibei

Jei Fung Bei (inevitably spelled incorrectly) is the heart of downtown Chongqing, much like Times Square of New York City. Judging by my limited trips into the city, Jei Fung Bei is an hour fifteen-minute bus ride from Beibei or a 45-minute cab ride. Why the growth? Chongqing played an important strategic role in World War II, becoming the capital of China as both Communists and Nationalists fought together under the cover of dense fog and mountainous caves. In 1997, Chongqing broke away from Sichuan province to become a municipality directly governed by Beijing (think New York City breaking away from New York State). Chongqing is a major port city because of the confluence of the Jambei and Yangtze rivers. At their meeting point in Chongqing, both rivers are larger than the Mississippi in the Twin Cities and both are able to support barges and cruise ships. Chongqing acts as a gateway between Sichuan, with a population over 80 million, and industrialized Eastern China.

Jei Fung Bei is the booming China that increasingly occupies the American consciousness. Since my arrival, I have heard from numerous, potentially unreliable, sources that Chongqing is the fastest growing metropolitan center in the world. The entire city is under construction, with scaffolding and cranes at or around nearly every building. Bamboo is used as scaffolding and (apparently) provides support while increasing efficiency- a resourceful terrorist could cripple the city by unleashing a heard of hungry Panda bears.

Back in shirtless, littered, phlegm spitting Beibei (the China I love), I played basketball with my Sichuanese friends. To repay their generosity, a few of us foreign teachers decided to invite them to a night in Jei Fung Bei. They instantly and adamantly refused, complaining that Jei Fung Bei is too expensive. We insisted that they join, that we would pay, and we all would have a good time. They reluctantly submitted.

The bus ride from Beibei to Chongqing cost 10 quai a person, less than a $1.50. We found a restaurant by the bus stop that smelled of methane or some other industrial chemical and enjoyed a communal meal of spicy pig intestines. The owners of the restaurant brought out their baby girl to see us foreigners. A round of beer and food for eight people totaled 140 quai.

We walked 15 minutes into Jei Fung Bei, and then there was light- flashing lights, lasers, spotlights, and lights on buildings as if they were Christmas trees. People everywhere- poor people, a beggar missing his foot with exposed rotting red flesh, unaccompanied children, foreigners, limousines, prostitutes, police officers, and business parties. Overwhelming.

We walked to Club 88, a faux steamboat two stories above the street. To enter, we walked a flight of wood stairs with beautiful young employees dressed in trim white sailor outfits saluting us. We were ushered into the club, which felt like the Ball Room of the Titanic with a trendy flair. This was a China I had never seen, a China of luxury and excess that trumped anything I had ever seen back in the States. The club was full of Chinese youth, but these Chinese youth did not stare or even notice us foreigners. We sat at the only remaining table in the back corner. I realized we would probably only be able to afford one or maybe two rounds of drinks based on the decor and clientele of the club. A server, also dressed in sailor attire, came to our table with a drink menu and unapologetically stated the club was done serving beer for the night, and now only sold bottles of wine and liquor. The cheapest bottle cost 550 quai (nearly 100 dollars), while many bottles were over 3000. I was sitting next to my basketball friend Will, a college graduate from a poor family in rural Sichuan. Will works in an office in Beibei and his salary is 2000 quai a month. Most other tables, tables of impeccably dressed Chinese youth, had three or four bottles. Very few seemed to be drinking their bottles excessively like youth would in the States, almost as if the bottle and its contents meant much more if not consumed.

We decided to try or luck at other places, but only found more of the same. My Chinese friends were disillusioned and anxious, knowing that they could not afford to buy us a drink and would feel guilty if we insisted on buying drinks. We decided to catch a cab back to Beibei, which felt like home more than ever. We raced to our favorite bar and bought rounds of drinks. We danced, we sang, we met new friends, and enjoyed what has become a brotherhood.

Imagine if the Minnesota Twins won the World Series, but you were unable to go to one game or even watch them play on TV. My friends feel pride in the wealth and growth of China although their benefits are moderate. This is a very interesting paradigm, which seems (for the time being) to be working quite well in China.

Love,
John Murray

Students of Southwest University

Yesterday, rain brought much needed refreshment and cooled Beibei. As I write, the rain continues to wash away the dirt, garbage, and sweat of Beibei.

I ended up only teaching three classes this past week after five of my classes were canceled due to hot weather. The classes went smoothly, mainly consisting of a brief introduction of myself followed by class introductions.

Here are the English names of my students so far. All names are spelled according to the student (spell check will hate this):

Kelvin, Layla, Janet, Ginger, Sophia, Yutty, Tina, Windows*, Linda, Seven, Shelia, Teinz, Binshow**, Sweat T, Joy, Helen, Iverson, Paul, Jean, Suki, Sophie, Rainy, Grin, Catherine, Angel, Yanan, Jess, Jarry***, Phoebe, Emely, Alve, Sue

Horace, Jesson, Donald, Gavin, Selina, Sophy, Now, Apple, Nancy, Mironda, Monica, Eunice, Mia, Aigus, Etta, Jessica, Doris, Gillian, Gemma, Greeny, Lily, Carrie, June, Jean, Kelly, Kay, Alice, Emma, Vanilla****, Helen, Flora

Steven, Jason, Luke, Shine, Jane, Sherry, Licy, Miranda, Aphrodite, Daisy, Rainbon, Lotus, Zillion, Helen, Susan, Cara, Cathelin, Zoe, Candy, Ducati, Vivien, April, Joanna, Avril*****, Jareau, Ann, Janny, Anna, Shone, Kelsie

*Windows is my favorite name. The class laughed when the student said this name (the student laughed also) and she said she wanted to change her name. I told her Windows is unique and beautiful and she should keep the name. She smiled, and decided to stick with Windows
**When it was Binshow’s turn to announce his English name, he paused and said he would like to be Binshow. I asked him how he got the name, and he said he had just made it up on the spot.
***Jarry was very concerned I would call him Jerry. He made it very clear that he is Jarry.
****Vanilla’s name was listed as Michelle, but she said she wanted to take a new name. I asked her why, and she said because of Michelle Obama. I asked her why she didn’t like Michelle Obama, and the student quickly responded that she liked Michelle Obama very much because she is a strong woman but (she paused) Michelle Obama is “just too black.” The entire class giggled, including Vanilla.
*****This student spoke the worst English out of all the students. I could not understand anything she said. She did not have an English name on the class list, so I tried to help her choose one, but she was unable to understand anything I said. After class, two other students brought her to my podium. The unnamed student apologized for her poor English (in very poor English) and said she was from Tibet. The other students said that her favorite musician is Avril Lavine, and she would like a name similar to Avril (I’m not sure what that means). If anyone can suggest an English name for a rural Tibetan girl who loves Avril Lavine, let me know ASAP.

I told the students I was very interested in traveling around China, and nearly every student offered to show me their hometown. I asked all the students how much they had traveled, and only one student in all the classes had been outside of China (South Korea).

I had the students say their favorite book, poem, or theater production. Jane Eyre, Gone with the Wind, The Little Prince were crowd favorites. Many students named Chinese or Japanese authors, and I felt terribly embarrassed by my ignorance of Asian literature. Not one student said Harry Potter. One girl said she was interested in reading Lolita, and she asked if I could help her. I told her it was a very difficult book even for English speakers, so she asked if I could help her with Black Boy. I said I would in order to further investigate her motives. One guy said his favorite author is William Butler Yeats from Ireland. Once again, I have no idea how or why.

I allowed each student to ask me one question. Every class asked me if I had a girlfriend, and nearly erupted with laughter when I said no.

My students have already invited me to run, go on walks, hike, eat, travel, play basketball, watch sports, learn to cook, and go out for fancy dinners.

These are the students of Communist China.

Teaching will be challenging, but potentially incredibly rewarding. I will have to put in much more outside time than I initially assumed. The classes are a bit squirrelly and immature, both physically and socially, but are good natured and excited to practice English with a native speaker. This is an experience of a lifetime.

I found a cockroach in my apartment yesterday. I kicked it on a piece of paper and threw it out the window.

Monday is Mid-Autumn Festival, so there will be no school. Mid-Autumn Festival is comparable to Thanksgiving and is considered a time to be with family and eat mooncakes. Although I do feel like I am becoming Chinese, I wish I could share a mooncake with anyone reading this right now.

LOVE,
John Murray

Beibei: Its hot!

My friendship with the three basketball players, Kobe, Crazy and Will, has flourished since the last entry. I still play basketball everyday, but I now eat dinner with them every night and hang out in their apartment. The three share a small apartment five stories directly above the basketball court. There is no elevator in the building. There are no windows either. The tenants on the first floor are an elderly Chinese couple who recognize me and smile as I pass their door. The apartment is littered with beer bottles and clothes like any college apartment in the States. The heat and humidity is suffocating here, so we choose to share the discomfort. Americans may prefer to pass a heat spell isolated in air conditioning. We pass the time listening to music, playing cards, and drinking beer together in a small living room. Between jokes and games they remind me: We are best friends, we are brothers.

They call me Chen Shway (spelled phonetically), which means “very handsome”. The three most important things to my friends: 1. Finding me a Chinese girlfriend. 2. Eating 3. And paying for everything in pursuit of both quests. I am humbled and uncomfortable with their generosity, as they come from rurally Sichuan, where their families live simply (Americans call it poverty). The other day we were at a restaurant and I tried to sneak away early to pay the bill. They ran up to the cashier and semi-violently pushed me away. I think I will have to buy them gifts when they aren't around.

Their favorite drinking game is rock, paper, scissors. They go wild playing it, imagine English swear words and Kung Fu moves.

I woke up early this morning to prepare for my first lecture. I am scheduled to teach two Sophomore Conversational English classes at 2:30 and 4:10, or at least I was scheduled to teach. I got to my teaching building today  (#5 Teacher’s Building for Foreign Languages Study) and went to my office to make a PowerPoint introducing myself, only to find that the electricity had shut off. Apparently the Chongqing locals are not even equipped for the heat we are experiencing! I received a call from my boss stating that all afternoon classes are cancelled for the next two days, which means Wednesday morning is day 1 for Prof. Chen Shway.

Here is my teaching schedule. Each class is an hour and a half long, which includes a 10 minute break in the middle of class:
Monday: 2:30 and 4:10
Tuesday: 2:30 and 4:10
Wednesday: 8* and 2:30
Thursday: 8 and 9:40
Friday: NOTHING

*All my class are Sophomore Conversational English except Wednesday at 8, which is Junior Creative Writing. I have been warned that this will be my toughest task and I realize that in no way am I qualified to teach this class, but I am excited to see what Prof. Chen Shway can pull off.

Love,
John

We're playing basketball

I bought a basketball on my first jet-legged shopping trip. I had noticed a basketball court half a block down the small hill I live on. Day 2 came around, and I laced up the sneakers and chugged water to prepare for the muggy 96-degree weather. Mom, I drank lots of water. 

The court lacks nets and has smoothed cement in heavily trafficked areas like the lane and free throw line, yet despite imperfections is respected by locals as a sanctuary. Trees provide shade on one side and block the main highway that runs through Beibei. Although the court is flat, it is still on a slope, and a nice restaurant is built into the corner of the hill 20 feet beyond one baseline. The opposite baseline is underneath the first row in a series of multi-storied cement apartments. Old men and women play mahjongg on outdoor tables at the base of the apartments while roosters lounge nearby like unleashed cats or dogs in the States. Trees also shade the other length of the court. A 15-foot path weaves through the trees and connects the court with a public open area, where Tai Chi takes place every morning at 6am and a “jazz-ercise” (think 50-70 year old Chinese women and Michael Jackson) begins at sundown. 

I shot around at one end of the court with a fellow American teacher, but we were quickly invited to play 3 on 3 with the four Chinese guys shooting on the other end. We had no ability to communicate besides our hands. The tallest could have been 5 foot 8 (with high heels). We played a half court game, and my team won as a result of my god-like post moves. The guy guarding me might not have been five feet tall. The air quality is so poor that it felt like playing while smoking a cigarette, and on top of that, the Chinese all smoked cigarettes between games. Although they lacked height, it was clear by the constancy of their unorthodox shooting methods that they practiced and emulated certain NBA heroes.

One player stuck out from the rest. He is the Sichuanese Kobe Bryant. He mimicked Kobe’s moves perfectly from the forward between the legs followed by a quick pull up jump shot to a disorientating headshake. When he scored, and he did quite often, he celebrated by pumping his fist. Unlike the rest of the Chinese, he was not shy. He goofed around, laughed, and loved trying to talk to me about NBA players. He called me out to guard him one on one between games. His confidence was not quite cocky, but what one would see between friends in America. We played until we couldn’t see any longer and he communicated that I should come back at 5 tomorrow. “Jazz-ercise” was about half way done.

So I played the next day. Kobe saw me walking down and yelled “Michael Jordan”. We played basketball. There is no language barrier in basketball, and although it sounds cliché, it is truly a beautiful form of communication. I began making other friends, but Kobe continued to goof around and gave me “knucks” and handshakes like an old friend.

So I played the next day. More bonding, loads of craic. After the games finished, he communicated that we should grab a beer together. I showered, and another teacher and I met him at the basketball court. He was with someone he introduced as his best friend, who was equally extroverted and entertaining.

My Chinese friends flagged down a taxi on the main road next to the basketball court. The taxi took us to downtown Beibei, which is less than a ten-minute drive. Neither of us teachers had been there before. I had been told that Beibei was a suburb of Chongqing, and it is, but is a suburb with between 5-7 million people. Surprise! Downtown Beibei is full of shops, apartments, and large European-esque public squares where people of all ages visited with each other.

Surprise number two quickly followed. We were not going to a bar, but a club.

Snapshots of first Chinese night out:

Our friends bought rounds of beer. Each beer is served with a tumbler glass, which is filled and drank like a shot, over and over again. We drank enough beer to be drunk over the course of the night, but the strength of the beer is roughly the same as a 3.2 beer in the states.

TVs showed a concert of Beyonce, while music ranged from Blacked Peas to Justin Beiber to Partyrock to Reggaetone (in Spanish).

Dancing takes place on elevated stages around the club. Of course, as an American, I was forced to dance.

Will, Kobe’s Chinese friend, is a high-energy womanizer. He spent the entire night talking to girls in the club and running back to me and saying that they loved me or thought I was handsome. The girls were very shy, but Will would literally drag them over to our table and demand they shake my hand. He would tell them they had to kiss me, which inevitably led to nervous laughter and a frantic run for escape. He would dismiss each girl with a wave of the hand and tell me “no good!”

Note to reader: The very fact that Will could say “no good” makes him one of the best English speakers in Beibei. Besides students at the University and a random resturant worker or two, nobody speaks ANY English. My friend Kobe probably knows about as many English words as he does basketball players or terms.

Another guy I recognized from basketball met us at the club. His English name is Crazy. I asked him how he got it, and he simply responded, “I’m crazy.” I just smiled and nodded- those moments happen all the time in China.

Everyone smokes cigarettes.

Go-go dancers and singers perform sporadically throughout the night. One singer  who wore multiple gold chains, fake diamond earrings, and a du-rag sang Backstreet Boys songs in perfect English. I approached him afterwards and chatted with him. Initially I thought he was American because of his lighter skin and good English, but I found out later he was from the Philippines. He came over to our table and joined us for the rest of the night, rounding out a table that had become the main attraction of the club.

The next day we played basketball. Kobe said “You are my brother” through his thick accent. Pretty cool.

Class begins Monday! A bit nervous, but actually a little excited.

More soon,

JCM