Helen's school website

There's our Huan Huan in the back row..this picture of Helen's class was taken on her field trip to the science museum at the beginning of the school year. Another parent told me there were pictures of Helen (and me teaching English) on the school's website. I actually ended up using Worldlingo (fun site -- translates any language...its a rough job but very enlightening) and reading most of the web site. If you want o find the photos, try pasting this link

http://www.xdyey.com/kljt/index3.asp

Then click on the second sentence, which starts with 大 三 (da san -- third "big" class -- refers to the age of the kids). It will take you to the class's website with photos and a description (in Chinese of course, but I translated it and it was very positive) of recent events, including the field trip and my English lessons. I was interested to finally see more about the curriculum, as well as the motto of early childhood education in China: "all for children, for children's all, for all children".

Another Xiamen Birthday

Our neighbor, Kate, who's mom is the other Fulbrighter here, turned 11 today, so we had the fun of another birthday party..with real ice cream form Wal-Mart. Happy Birthday Kate..sorry the picture is a little fuzzy..I still wanted to use it because her grandma checks the blog! She is head on a weekend jaunt to Shanghai with her mom...not every day you turn 11 after all. She and Thomas are both Rats (Chinese zodiac) and as this is the Rat year coming up in February at the Lunar new year, this is an auspicious year for both of them, I guess.

Its been nice having another kid here..even though Thomas hardly talks to her since she's a girl (and vice versa), they spend long periods of time emailing and instant messaging on the computer to each other and their friend in Xi'an. We will sure miss them when they leave, as they are only staying one semester :(

Digging to America and lunch with "Amoy Bill"

What are Thomas and Helen doing in this picture? They are digging a big hole...all the way to America! So if any of you want to start digging to China maybe you can meet in the middle. Do you see the man watching them? Nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon I guess. The really funny part is when Thomas traced 美国 (mei guo, or America) on the sand with an arrow pointing to the hole.

I have been in a blog slump, caused in part by spending more time on my Chinese which is a good thing. Today, though, I made time to go to the monthly lunch meeting of the Association of Xiamen Expatriates. Its an interesting group, but mostly the wives of men who have been transferred here for one reason or another. some of them are not that happy to be in China and confine themselves to the expat world uptown. But they are very nice, and this month had invited the author of Amoy Magic (Amoy is Xiamenin the local dialect-- see the link above to the web site. This is the lone guide to living in Xiamen that is available in English. Bill Brown and his wife, who I had met previously on campus, have lived here for 19 years, raised two children here and were the first foreigners to get residency in Xiamen. They are Americans, he is a professor in the business school. His wife was very friendly to me and had lots of good advice. The book is very funny and liberally sprinkled with puns and humor. He tells some very interesting stories about the history of Xiamen. For example, he says..."did you know that there without Xiamen there would be no USA? The Boston Tea Party which sparked the American revolution involved the dumping of Fuijian oolong tea off a ship that had just arrived from Xiamen ..." And when Columbus discovered America he was really looking for Quanzhou, which is also in our province, about 2 hours north of us along the coast. In ancient times it was the largest port city in the world...who knew? Fun stuff for a history buff.

Girls night out: Chaozhou, Guangdong shopping trip

Helen and I joined a group of teachers from Thomas's school and on an overnight shopping trip to Chaozhou...about 4 hours south of Xiamen along the coast and just over the border into the Guangdong province. They had booked a bus and a hotel here, which is well known as a porcelain center in China with a lot of wholesale dealers and excellent deals! Helen befriended one of the two male teachers in the group-- naturally it was Thomas's homeroom teacher! She and I had a nice time one on one for a change, including a late night tea party with the tea set in our hotel room. They had also hired a guide, and he and I had an interesting conversation about the pressures his generation (he is in his late 20s) is feeling with all the changes in the Chinese economy, the loss of company-provided (or government-provided) housing, urbanization, etc.

In the morning some of us went first to the Chaozhou Porcelain museum, where we saw some enormous and intricate pieces.

And some smaller, more modern pieces as well. Did you see the Mao Zedong piece above?

One of my motives for going was to spend some time with a new friend, Julia, and her 2 daughters who have just moved to Xiamen. She and I met online over the summer and she has previously lived in China, and both of her daughters are adopted from China, like Helen. We enjoyed shopping along with my neighbor Deborah and her daughter, although our motley group got the least shopping done, I think. I manages to buy a couple of tea sets at a heavy discount. This photo is of a cute baby and a really interesting old-fashioned stroller.

When we went downtown we, we stopped for some waffle-like snacks on the street, apparently a Guangdong thing, because Julia was familiar with them.

For, lunch rice and meat cooked in a bamboo log...which we spotted at some adjacent tables, since we couldn't read the menu we got lucky!

Finally, a harrowing and thrilling ride in a motorcycle pedicab back to the bus, since we were running late and no taxis to be found. The amazing thing about this city was there were almost all motorcycles on the street, none of whom paid the least attention to lights, lanes or rules of any kind, yet as long as you made no sudden moves, it seemed to work OK. Glad that motorcycles are banned from Xiamen island, though.

Movie Night

Ann and Helen went on an overnight bus trip to Guandong province. They are going to some village known for its ceramics. It sounds interesting but I decided to pass on spending a day as the only male on a bus of women and girls. The trip was organized by teachers at Thomas's school, XIS, and Deborah and Kate - our downstairs neighbors - also went.

Thomas, Sophia and I stayed in for a simple meal of eggs, noodles and broccoli. Then Thomas watched Pirates of the Caribbean 3 while Sophia and I read books. Sophia returned to the TV at the climax of the movie to exasperate Thomas. There was a lot of rain and Sophia kept asking "man need rain coat?". She just couldn't figure out why the pirates wouldn't put on rain coats. After all, she has a yellow plastic rain coat (left by the Fulbright girls last year) that is so nifty she wears it on sunny days. Then, when a lot of water seemed to come into a ship, Sophia very reasonably asked if they needed a "water bucket?". She proceeded to say "water bucket?" about 150 times - until Thomas almost pulled his hair out.

Dragon Fruit and learning Chinese

One of the joys in life awaiting us in China was the discovery of new fruits. Most significantly, the dragon fruit. 火龙果 (huo long guo, or "fire dragon fruit" in Chinese) is kind of like a kiwi on the inside, but infinitely more impressive on the outside..the skin peels off whole and makes a nice shell to display a fruit salad to impress your friends. The taste is very mild and juicy. We have now almost completely abandoned the supermarket for fruits and vegetables unless pressed for time and now proceed down an alley off the main street outside the gate to our favorite fruit and vegetable vendors. 6 oranges, a star fruit and a dragon fruit came to 11 yuan (about 14 cents) this afternoon. The vegetables are even cheaper...I can buy as many green vegetables as I can carry for about 15 yuan. The quality is simply amazing -- the freshest I have ever encountered, and even cleaner than the supermarket, although we still wash them all quite thoroughly. This alley was a place we were afraid to enter, let alone shop in a month ago...the butcher has the first 2 stalls, and you need some time getting used to the up close and personal relationship that the Chinese shopper has with meat before venturing past. Still haven't bought anything from him, preferring the impersonal wrapped meat packages in the store, where if the slaughtering conditions are unsanitary, at least I don't have to watch and I'll just cook it well.

So you may have noticed I figured out I can cut and paste Chinese characters into the blog...let me know if they are readable or not. Yesterday and today I spent more significant time pursuing my Chinese study and have slowly been coming to some important conclusions 1) that I should not be wasting my time reading novels in the afternoon during Sophia's nap 2) that time is going by and this is my golden opportunity to speak and learn Chinese and its up to me to seize it 3) that while it is a difficult language to speak and read and write -- it is not impossible and we have made excellent progress so far, but we need to increase the intensity if we want to get past one word statements and start understanding what's going on. 4) learning characters is not the enemy...even though we westerners are scared of them -- it can be fun and rewarding!

This is what we are doing to learn Chinese -- we have a tutor who works with us 1 hour twice a week and we are attending a 2 hour class on Sundays. We now have 2 textbooks, one for each teacher. I am also going to spend more time on the Rosetta stone program we bought...now that I have some vocabulary it is more rewarding! Most importantly for me -- trying to put myself in situations where I hear Chinese in conversation, and especially where I am expected to respond. Whether its at the market a restaurant, at Helen's school or at my tai chi practice, I am making a little progress in comprehension.

The latest Tai chi news is that I was dragged by two of the ladies to a free workshop on the 24 basic positions (dragged because I had only a vague notion of what they were trying to tell me). I think for the next seven days --but each day I just ask one of them "mingtian ma?" (tomorrow?) so I know when to come-- I am spending an hour in a large group receiving more in depth instruction for beginners. Some of the folks I have been practicing with are also attending. The lesson in in Chinese of course, but its pretty visual, and I have the advantage of daily repetition over the past 2 months already, so I am really getting a lot out of it ...I had missed a lot of the finer points.

Some commenters asked about Malinda...she is much better and is now staying with her parents for a few weeks (see her mother's comment from a few days ago). Thank you for all the responses about my mom -- we are waiting to find out when her surgery will be, but probably not for 2 weeks or so. Its hard to wait, but keeping busy helps.

Second Intermittent Chinglish Post

If you have noticed that the blog posts have been less frequent lately, it's because Ann is working through the complete detective novels of Dorothy Sayers. At least it seems that way. So while she is reading "Gaudy Night" (which she assures us is "the best by far"), I am launching into our second Chinglish post.

As those of you who read the first post are well aware, Chinglish is that uniquely Chinese style of composing English. We met an Australian at a Xiada party who teaches communication and cognitive theory. He claims that Chinglish actually follows specific rules that makes it comprehensible to the Chinese. He was given a long Chinglish-laden report to read on local television. He rewrote it so that it sounded like natural English. He was then informed that he was not to read that but to go back to the original since the Chinglish-ey version would be more easily understood.

So, here's to Chinglish - long may it reign!

The advertisement below comes from an in-flight magazine on China Air.

Ann and I rented flats for the first 10 years of our marriage before we bought a house. We had a lot of good landlords, but we had a couple landlards as well. But it must be really tough to be a foreigner and have a landlard.

Ann nearly dropped the coffee cup below when she first saw it in the store. Now she drinks from her blissfully Chinglish style coffee mug every morning. Whenever we have to go on a trip, Ann begins shouting "Animal Family General Mobilization!" while packing up our things.


I also want to let my sister-in-law Laura know that we have found a pig family general mobilization coffee mug. We have purchased it and it is awaiting her arrival in Xiamen to collect it. Maybe we will post a picture of it next month to further tantalize her.

The picture below does not count exactly as Chinglish, but I thought it worth posting. It lays out the PROCEDURE to follow at the Xiamen airport.

We understand the need to check-in first, but we think that buying aviation insurance even before security shows a lack of confidence in the whole system.

Below is my favorite pen that I mentioned last month. The picture might be hard to read but it says:

If you have what problem.
I answer this hard nut to crack for you.
The thought which uses me answers your question.

If anybody wants me to buy one, just send a message and I will bring some back for you. They are readily available at the local snack shop on campus.

Speaking of Chinglish on campus, we have spotted several t-shirts that are worth reporting. We cannot verify these with pictures as they are spur of the moment experiences (and a bit rude to photograph someone's chest).

I spotted a student with a shirt that read:

Two many chef poil the brot.

That's not a misprint. Ann has seen a 70-ish year old women (3 times) with a t-shirt reading:

Harsh Love Vibrate

We are pretty sure that she doesn't know what it means (and we are not sure ourselves, really).

This is Thomas's water bottle for school. Classic Chinglish sentence: Make living a more fascinating than a day.

And finally, remember to warn the children:

If I've said "No Striding" once, I've said it a thousand times.