From Grits to Chopsticks

Like many middle-aged men, I’ve wondered what it would be like to feel the surge of power as I crank back on the twist-grip of a mighty Harley, enjoying the wind in my face and bugs in my teeth while cruising down the open highway.  Maybe someday Susan and I will get that chance (here we are in an earlier post, dreaming on Bob and Karen’s bike: http://www.robnetts.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Harley.jpg), but for now, we’ll have to settle for the Chinese version.

Thanks to some friends who have returned to America for the summer, we are now the proud borrowers of a typical Chinese scooter, joining the millions of others dodging cars on our overcrowded roads:

When you crank back on the twist-grip, the hum of the electric motor can coax this beauty up to almost 40 kph.  With the amount of chaos in the highway here, that’s fast enough for us.  Now, can someone tell me where we parked it?

Since our 20-week school semester doesn’t start until the end of Spring Festival, we’re just now getting around to final exams.  State-mandated procedures require all exams to be prepared in a uniform paper format and that every single answer be marked as right or wrong with a red pen.  It also requires each section to be signed, double checked, and counter-signed:

After 14,000+ correction marks and 1152 signatures, the students aren’t the only ones who are ready for the semester to close!

Many of our students will be returning to their hometowns for the summer, but some will stay for classes, internships, and summer camp.  Here’s a shot of our table at a farewell dinner:

Before Timothy left our city, we decided to ride the #10 bus to northeast corner of town and enjoy some of the local wildlife.  In this photo, you can see a typical shot of Timothy, fishing pole in hand.  But this is China, and the pier is not an ordinary fishing pier:

Over the past five years, he’s pulled in some pretty big catfish from Lake Allatoona, but when you go catfishing in Yunnan province, get ready for some serious action – click here to see what comes next:  Catfishing

The Yunnan Wild Animals Park was actually very well done, with a lot of interesting exhibits spread over 2800 acres of property.  When we walked up to the ticket window to pay for admission, it was interesting to note that they don’t show the price for the actual ticket, just for the optional personal accident insurance:

The reason for this became obvious while we were eating our picnic lunch, watching some guys in fatigues manage monkeys.  These monkeys were just jumping around the trees while their “handlers” stood beneath with switches and shouts to keep them away from the visitors:

Perhaps you’ve read about smoking in China.  It is estimated that over 300 million people of all ages smoke here, far and away the highest number on the planet.  And from this photo, it appears that the smoking habit is spreading:

When someone tossed a lighted cigarette onto this gorilla’s platform, he picked it up, took a few puffs, and put it down.  He was obviously very good at imitating the customers.  Of course, there are other dangers as well.  We enjoyed this sign that was posted on the tiger enclosure:

The park itself is quite beautiful, set on the northeast side of town with some good views of the western mountains:

It was definitely one of the most interesting places we’ve visited here so far.  You can get very close to the animals, sometimes in very large quantities – there must be a thousand peacocks/peahens in this section:

Definitely worth a visit if you happen to be in town!

For most people, it would be pretty far out of the way to drop in at our place for a visit.  But not for Mark’s sister, Barbara, whose pharmaceutical consulting business takes her around the world.  After spending time working at some of China’s east coast cities, she was able to swing by our city for the weekend before heading back to Delaware.  For such a special occasion, we thawed out the exclusive, frozen steaks and had a genuine Western meal.

The next day, we climbed the stone steps to the top of Western Hills park mountain:

It’ll take the breath out of you as you approach 7,000 feet above sea level, but the view is worth the climb.  Here we are with our obligatory “Tiger Rag” photo (since we are both Chemical Engineers from Clemson):

After the hike, you can stop for dinner on the way down.  I always find it hard to choose between the restaurant that serves eight different kinds of dirt or the one where you start off trying to decide about where to place the blame:

Instead, we chose to join some students at a hot pot restaurant behind our school.  Unlike the Sichuan hot pot, this is actually mild enough for Westerners to eat:

On Sunday, we traveled across town for meeting and eating with friends.  It didn’t seem fair to keep Barbara shielded from our normal world, so we decided to take the bus.  Can you spot the foreigners?

On Thursday, we had the chance to hike up to Haiyuan temple.  Our small group of students and friends started the hike in typical fashion, walking down a busy street and past a massive construction project:

As we started up the mountain, we stopped to peek through a hole in the door of an old church.  Notice the Chinese character painted to the left of the door: it means “destroy” and is written on many old buildings standing in the path of modernization (in this case, the third ring road around our city).

According to the caretaker (whom we met in a small house behind the church), about 100 people still gather here for Sunday services.  As you can see through the door hole, it’s pretty basic and probably hasn’t changed much since it was built 20 years ago:

It has been good to have Timothy here getting acclimated to China.  He has joined us for some student lunches, English corners, and outdoor adventures:

On the way up the mountain, one of our students introduced us to some wild berries that she claimed to be edible.  They looked a great deal like the pyracantha berries on the side of our house in the USA (which we always heard were poisonous), so I wondered if it was just a set-up by other students to get rid of the teacher before final exam week.  But she ate them by the handful, so we tried a few and have yet to suffer ill effects.  A quick internet search shows that, contrary to popular belief, pyracantha berries are bitter but not toxic:

Upon arrival at the temple, we walked around and saw the various buildings and objects of worship, including this large Buddha statue:

Nearby was an old woman working her way through a string of prayer beads, prompting a discussion about why and what people worship.  One of the members of our hiking group asked a good question: does it make more sense to worship a statue made with hands or the God who made our hands?

We enjoyed the lunch served by the temple cooks: our group of eight had “all-you-can-eat” rice and veggies for 40 Yuan (about $7).  The green stuff in the leftmost bowl turned out to be a wild variety of spinach that they had collected on the mountain the day before, and was actually good enough for us to ask for two extra helpings.  Timothy was the first to taste the preserved tofu (with red pepper garnish), promptly warning us to maintain a safe distance:

Many of the trees near the temple are “decorated” with bags of ashes left over from “tomb-sweeping day.”  During the ceremonies of remembrance, people burn paper money at the graves of their deceased relatives, then package up the money remains and hang them from trees, allegedly for use by the dead:

As I said in previous post, this hike is conveniently close to our school and quickly gets you out of the city.  Once you emerge from the valley and forest, the feeling of isolation quickly disappears:

We just returned from a visit to Chengdu, classified as one of China’s four “furnace cities.”  Unlike our city, they actually have air conditioning here which is a good thing, especially if you go out to dinner at one of their local “hot pot” restaurants.  Fortunately for us, we only got the “mild” version:

This was still more than sufficient to numb the lips and bring on a good sweat.  The local theory about extremely spicy food originates from the desire to achieve balance (yin/yang), but based on our limited experience, it seems like a good time to toss in a few pounds of unsalted grits.

We also had the chance to attend the Sichuan Opera, something that you shouldn’t miss if you ever get to visit Chengdu.  After an amazing display of talent by erhu and shadow puppet masters, we watched the famous “face changing” performance in which a group of actors instantly change their masks and costumes with the swipe of a hand.  Guarded as a national secret, we joined the ranks of amazed audiences who couldn’t figure out how they do this in the blink of an eye.

Although there are eleven million people (and nine million cars) in this city, it does has some beautiful spots.  Our hotel was directly across from a river park, allowing us to take some walks in relative serenity.  Of course, the fact that I would say such a thing shows we’ve lived in China for a while now (“relative” is the operative word here):

The highlight of our trip came at the very end.  After an overnight delay in Beijing, Timothy arrived in Chengdu airport in time to catch a flight with us back to our city.  We’re excited to have him join us here for two weeks.

When you’ve spent 50+ years in a single country, it can be very easy to focus on many of the different, dirty things in your new culture.  The pile of trash at the end of the street, the kid peeing on the sidewalk, the “stinky tofu” cooking on a roadside grill, the pollution in the air/water, the deep, gross sound of someone clearing his or her throat and preparing to spit.

But if you expand your search, you might see some new beauty as well.  We are very blessed to live in an apartment complex with wonderful landscaping.  Even though we are in a large city, we enter a tropical courtyard when we step out of our door:

Bordering many of the city streets and fencelines, there are vibrant colors:

Our city has planted thousands of trees in the past two years, attempting to achieve the status of “green city.”

In spite of many temptations to the contrary, we’d like to spend more of our energy thinking on the things that are lovely, commendable, and worthy of praise.

Almost every (cheap) airline connection from the US to our city requires an overnight stay on the east coast, so I flew to Shanghai and met Susan on her recent return from the States.  Since we had planned an extra day into the schedule, we decided to pay a visit to the World Expo.  It only made sense to spend the entire day on our feet since Susan was 12 hours behind on her sleep…

A key learning: if you ever want to hold a big event and draw large crowds, plan to do it in Shanghai.  Right away, you have a guaranteed attendance of at least 20 million people.  The Expo venue is huge, covering 1300 acres and spanning both sides of the Huangpu river.  There are 190 countries represented, most of them with expensive, elaborate buildings.  But don’t plan to visit all of them in one day, especially since you’ll be waiting in line for 3 hours to view the major ones.  We tried to get into the American exposition, but the line was overcrowded and closed when we showed up:

Since we couldn’t get into the USA, we decided to do an easier thing and visit Russia (the line was a reasonable 1.5 hours):

The center of the exhibition hall was a multi-level artificial garden with huge flowers, reducing the hundreds of tourists to a swarm of bugs winding along the paths, listening to stories by Russian children about their visions of the future of their country.  In addition to visiting Russia, we enjoyed our tour around the huge “Urbania” pavillion which took you through a day in the life of six different families around the world, each one living in a separate city.  We also entered a number of smaller country pavillions (short lines!) to hear them pitch their worthiness to tourists and potential investors.

One of our favorite exhibition halls was constructed by the Netherlands.  They turned the standard building inside-out, allowing large numbers of visitors to flow up and down ramped walkways, peering through windows into small houses enclosing historical and technical artifacts.  From the top of one ramp, you can get a good view of the UK pavillion with Shanghai in the background:

At the center of the UK exhibit is the “seed cathedral,” sporting 60,000 transparent rods, each containing seeds sourced from the Kunming Institute of Botany (imagine that).  In the midst of all the high-tech exhibits on-site, it’s interesting to stop and stand amazed at the amazing biodiversity placed on this planet, fingerprints of our Creator.

Actually, the external architecture of each pavillion is one of the best parts of the entire Expo.  If you get a chance to visit, skip the lines and just tour the grounds.

While we still aren’t exactly sure when the last day of school will be at our university (there’s still a month to figure that out), the end of school just arrived for our son Stephen.  After two years of study at Harvard Business School, he graduated last week with his MBA.  Fortunately, Susan was able to travel back to the states and participate in the festivities.  Although he will begin his “real job” with the Boston Consulting Group in September, he’s still considering options for the summer.  Perhaps he’ll find time to visit his mom and dad in Asia (hint, hint).

For those of you back in the USA, it’s time to get outside and spray broadleaf week killer on those pesky dandelions.  I’ve always been amazed at how quickly they can go from a cute little ball of puffy seeds to large green intruders.  Before you know it, they can take over your entire lawn.

Of course, we have a different solution to that problem here in China – why kill it when you can eat it?

These women were carefully picking weeds (literally) behind our main school building recently, then sorting and cleaning them.  I watched for a few minutes to confirm my suspicion: they really weren’t grounds keepers – they were actually cafeteria workers!