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

Eating Part 1

I have not tried dog yet.

Eating is one of the, if not the single, most important part of the day here. Every building has either a restaurant or shop as the ground level, while the remaining 7-12 floors are apartments. Restaurants are small, usually seating about 15 people inside and 10 outside, but everywhere. So far I have been out to eat for every meal. 

Surprises (a bit unnecessary, everything in China is a surprise): 
I have been served by a waiter smoking a cigarette. I have also had a waiter who was not wearing a shirt (very common among the average Chongqing male).

There is a large Muslim population here that comes from the China’s northwest providence of Xinjiang. Muslim restaurants are numerous and seem to be respected by the locals. I imagine a Muslim restaurant in China may be the only place on Earth where Muslims, Christians, and Jews unite, brought together because they are assured either chicken or beef (the Chinese will cook anything).

The least I have paid for a full meal (and I mean full) is 8 RMB. The most is 13 RMB. Beer and juice is 3 RMB and bottled water is either 1 or 2 RMB. One American dollar is 6.25 RMB.

Today I met Frank Wang, the man responsible for the international teachers. Have I mentioned there are only 10 foreign teachers here? Eight are from CSB/SJU. Frank took the group out for lunch at a fancy restaurant on campus. Lunch turned into a feast. Multiple dishes were ordered and placed on a spinning lazy Susan (can’t think of the right word) on the middle of the table. We ate dumplings, beef and chicken with veggies and peppers, pig intestines with roasted nuts, noodles, rice, soup, two different types of tofu, cooked pickled celery, goose, duck, mushrooms, fresh fruits, and drank baijou (rice wine) and local beer. 

The goose dish did me in. Served with noodles and green veggies, it seemed to me the one dish lacking the signature Chongqing blazing spice. I thought the green veggies were peapods as they were roughly the same size and color. I grabbed two with my chopsticks and started chomping away. Turns out they were Hmong peppers. I love spicy food and pride myself on my ability to eat it, but these peppers were way out of my league. My eyes watered instantly, and within 30 seconds I had a stream of tears running down my face. 

Overall I would consider it to be one of the best meals I have ever had. 

I am still trying to get my bearings and figure out many unanswered questions. I did get my luggage. Frank is leading the group into Chongqing city tomorrow for a mandatory physical and tour of the city. I have much to share, but one day at a time. I will try and post pictures soon. 

School starts next week and I will be teaching undergraduate English. Please email me with any creative ideas on how to engage a class that will likely be introverted and reluctant to participate in discussion. Actually, for reading this blog entry, I demand you send me one unique idea, game, activity or conversation starter. jcurranmurray@gmail.com  

JCM

Day 1: Hey Dad, no firing squad

I have arrived at the Foreign Teachers Unit at Southwest University in Beibei, China. I am typing this from my apartment and am glad to report that I am alive and safe (I think).

My flight from MSP to LAX went smoothly. After a four-hour layover, travel partners Brendan and Ryan (also SJU ’11) and I boarded our flight from LAX to Guangzhao. My best guest is that 85% passengers were Chinese citizens while the remaining 15% were young white Americans. I was thoroughly disappointed that the plane had only one level. If a 15 and a half hour flight over the Pacific doesn’t warrant a double-decker, what does? Only two of us could sit together on the plane, or feijei (translates to flying rooster), so I volunteered to sit alone. I, a 6 foot 3 inch lanky American, sat between two Chinese women roughly half my size, one mid-twenties the other mid-forties, in the middle of a four-seat row. Within one hour of take off, both women next to me had fallen asleep comfortably resting their pillows on my shoulders. Comfortably for them. The seat in front of me was the only seat fully reclined in the row. I thought back to my goal for the year: I can only understand the people once I am one of the people. I then fell asleep with my two cuddly friends as the plane crossed the Artic Ocean from Alaska to Asia.

The transfer from Guangzhou to Chongqing felt easy, or so we thought at the time. I met Seamus, a grad student from Hamline teaching English at a different university in Chongqing. Seamus was born in Ireland. Those who know me understand how comforting this was for me, especially since our travel group of four happened to be the only white people on the plane to Chongqing, and very possibly the only conversationally fluent English speakers on the two-hour flight.

The exhaustion after 28 hours of travel is, well, exactly what one would suspect of 28 hours of traveling. The terraced rice paddies and sprawling skyscrapers emerging from the smog of Chongqing did little to shake me from my trance like state. We arrived at the airport and went to the luggage claim. Seamus, who had been on all the same connecting flights starting at MSP, collected his luggage instantly, exchanged contact information and headed his separate way. The luggage never came for the rest of us. After ten minutes of starring at the fruitless conveyer belt, our posse was ushered into the baggage claim office. There were two employees in the office. One helped us track our luggage to Guangzhou and arrange for it to come on the next flight and be delivered directly at Southwest University. The other played Angry Birds on her IPhone.

 The baggage claims officer walked us to the general meet and greet (can’t think of the proper name). A five foot nothing young man was standing on the tip of his toes holding a sign in his outstretched arms with our three names. The baggage claims officer communicated the issue to the driver, who then gave the officer a phone number at the University. I’m not really sure when and how we will get these bags, but I’ve been assured many times over from both Americans and Chinese that they will be delivered with no further problems. I will gladly accept prayers.

The driver walked us outside to the car without greeting us. I don’t think he was being rude, but rather he spoke no English. I could feel the thickness in the air as I made my first step on Chinese soil. At 10:00 in the morning, the weather felt like a recent August vacation to Orlando: muggy and hot. The driver, who seemed to me to be about 16 or 17, led us to a van. He had a pendent of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph hanging from his rear-view mirror. Before we pulled into traffic, he started his music player. The first song was Everybody by the Backstreet Boys.

The drive from the airport to Beibei took about 45 minutes but I felt like I saw a considerable amount: Isolated skylines the size of Minneapolis made up of only apartment buildings. Small patches of farms, more accurately gardens, underneath bridges the size of 35W. Trucks filled 15 feet high (literally) with boxes, one of which swayed with the wind and at one point, to the pleasure of our driver, nearly fell over. Many tunnels through the mountainside, including one nearly 3 miles long. Destruction or construction EVERYWHERE.

At one point, traffic came to a dead stop. Nearly every driver, including ours, put their car in park and stepped out onto the shoulder of the four-lane highway to have a cigarette. The driver offered each of us a cigarette in Chinese, but we declined. I’m still not sure why all the traffic had stopped. It might have been collectively agreed upon to have a cigarette break.

We arrived at the apartment complex and got dropped off. The driver explained the baggage situation to Keegan, a SJU grad of ’07 who has been in China for the last four years studying and teaching. Keegan speaks fluent Mandarin, which is a major relief. The apartments are very nice. I am on the first floor and bamboo grows freely outside my window. More thorough analysis of the new home will come soon.

I met some other teachers in the apartment and we went out to see the campus, get money from a bank, have lunch, and buy necessities. Each trip became an adventure worthy of a blog entry. I will not be short on writing material for the rest of the year.

After the errands, I passed out. Still very jet-legged, I awoke at around 8:30 PM to find no one else in the apartment. Just as that sinking, helpless feeling familiar to the traveler began to set in, I ran into a small Pakistani man who appeared to be in his late twenties. He introduced himself as Dr. Shekel (pronounced just like good ol’ Shaq-daddy). He said he saw some of the Americans at a restaurant across town and the others were sleeping. Dr. Shaq has been in China for three years and speaks fluent English and Mandarin. He recently finished his PhD in Agriculture and will now teach at the University, which means he lives at the same apartment complex as me.

Dr. Shaq paid for the two of us to take a bus across Beibei to the restaurant. The Americans had left by the time we got there, but he got a table and ordered me a delicious meal of chicken, veggies, and rice (much more on eating to come soon. It is very different from western style dinning in about every aspect imaginable and is an essential part of Chinese culture and lifestyle. Until traveler’s diarrhea strikes, I can safely say that the food I have had in the past 24 hours is among the best I have ever had in my life). The food was plentiful, and Dr. Shaq insisted on paying the bill, which came to about 10 RMB, or a $1.40. I was glad to meet Dr. Shaq and thankful for his kindness and company. We met the other Americans walking back by the apartment, but I was quick to go to bed.

China is unbelievable in every sense. Everything is new, everything is foreign. I imagine each day will be an adventure. Signing off after Day 1.

Love from China,
John Murray

I'm Leaving (On a Jet Plane)

I'm so lucky to have my friends and family. Thank you! Next time you hear from me will be from Chinar.

How do I feel right now? Better than the Georgetown Hoyas.

My email address from here on out is jcurranmurray@gmail.com. Skype me at sheepdogg24. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page on the right hand side, you will find an application that will send out an email every time I update the blog. Join me!

Cheers and kisses

White Suburban Graudate Finds Himself Headed to Chongqing

On August 25th 2012, the day after my 23rd birthday, I will be catching a flight west from Minneapolis/St. Paul to Los Angles. This is the first leg in my grand adventure to the Far East- To China (known by the Chinese as the "Middle Nation" or center of Earth). The plane ride will be 28 hours. My new home will be Chongqinq Municipality, which is roughly the geographic size of Kansas with a population over 30 million people. I will be picked up at the airport by a man I know through a few emails as Frank Wang, who will drive me to Southwest University where I will began teaching conversational English to Chinese University students despite having no training in education. All of this, of course, is according to the best laid plans of mice and men.
(The Google Chongqing-Kansas analogy will unfortunately be my last because I will be living in a highly censored communist country.)


I will be living and teaching in China for 11 months. Southwest University is tucked away in what the Chinese call a small village (400,000 people) called Beibei, which is about 45 minutes outside of the mega-city Chongqing. I will teach five to six one hour classes of 40 (I think?) 18-22 year-old English majors who must have a strong grasp of the language in order to be in the class. The class is conversational, and I fully plan on running an interactive classroom. I'm thinking lots of skits and presentations.

Why China? When 1.3 billion Chinese do something at once, the whole world hears. But I want to see it, maybe even be a part of it. How are they doing "it"? How will "it" change business, science, politics, religion, culture, and the future of human earth?

Thus begins the adventure. So.

This blog offers a distinctly human perspective to the American consciousness that is increasingly curious with China, yet remains confused and ignorant. This blog is a 23 year-old on a journey to buy spicy food and cheap beer while postponing a job-hunt. This is John Murray in China, or The New Adventures of Sean Curran.