A Palm Sunday retreat

In China Palm Sunday is over-- (they cut the palms from the church yard!) and today I gave a short retreat for about 2 dozen members of my Xiamen parish..Christ the King Catholic community. As I have mentioned before, we have an English Mass, in addition to the Chinese one, so our parish is very international -- with members from China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Africa, Europe and North America. There is definitely an intensity to the experience of being Catholic and Christian here..the shadows of persecution in the recent past are there, and the intense devotion of the local Chinese Catholics, the emerging fascination that faith has for the younger generation, all have given our experiences here a lot of meaning.

So I was really pleased (and surprised)a few weeks ago when they approached Michael and I about leading a seminar or retreat time, which they are trying to have on a monthly basis. Michael is gone this weekend to Jinan, Shangdong giving lectures at Shangdong University, so I agreed to do something on my own.

It was a diverse group who showed up this afternoon, including our much beloved deacon and a mix of (English-speaking) Chinese and foreigners..
Preparing for the retreat was a very good time for me -- we are so far from the daily reminders of Christian life and the approach of Easter that at times I have had trouble focusing on it, which has never been a problem for me before, with a lifetime of choir practices during Lent under my belt. The big theme of life for me this year has been the notion of being "Available to God" ever since learning that song with St. Joe's contemporary music ensemble last year. ( you should really listen to it -- the Thompson Community singers recorded it among others...)
I had been thinking about it in terms of leaving everything behind to "follow the call" to come here this year..but I realized that I have needed to do this throughout my life -- stop clinging to the safe, familiar and conventional way -- whether about career, parenthood, whatever, and be open to whatever the good Lord had in store -- and that has been some pretty amazing stuff!!!

The sharing of the participants at the retreat was very powerful for me. I shared some information on Jesuit "imaginative contemplation" of scripture, and we used the "call of Peter" reading to try it out, then shared our insights. Despite the language barrier and a wide variety of different experiences of prayer that we brought to the room, people were really willing to talk about their faith, and that kind of conversation is something I have missed deeply since we left Buffalo.

So against the odds I actually feel ready for Easter, after all -- even though there is no Paas egg dye...

Parent Meeting at Sophia's school

Tonight was a parent meeting at the end of the day at Sophia's new school. This took about 1 hour with a Chinese dictionary for me to figure out..but I am proud of my achievement! ---I actually learned how to look up words in Chinese characters in the dictionary! First you figure out the main radical (part of a character) and then count the strokes in the rest of the character and look it up in the index which gives you a page number in the dictionary...did you follow that??? But anyway...we digress. I got to Sophia's school in time to take a few pictures on the playground. Of course I had some trouble following the meeting, since it was all in Chinese, but my friend from the waiban (foreign faculty) office translated a little as we went along. It also helped that I have heard it all before -- with 2 other kids..safety, hygiene, social skills -- the full pep talk. Suddenly at one point I realized the teacher was talking about Sophia...she pointed out that although she was the second youngest in the class, she was already dressing herself, feeding herself, etc. Then everyone looked at me..so I said..since I have 3 children she is always having to wait and learned a little early..or something closely resembling that in Chinese...the teacher then said that Chinese parents do too much babying of the kids, etc....a fascinating moment in parenting history for me-- and funny since the principal was afraid to accept her..


This isn't a great photo-- I snapped it during the meeting -- but that's Chen Laoshi in the black sweater. See Sophia in the background? She is sitting on the lap of one of the classroom aides having a lovely time -- watching them was the first time I felt I had made the right decision to send her --she is obviously beloved there. The teacher also said they are teaching all the children a few words of English. I was fresh from a very successful lesson this morning in Helen's class, so I offered to come in with a few songs for the littles in English periodically, which will be great since I will get to see her class up close. I was hesitating until I was sure she wouldn't have a fit when I leave, but I think that is less of a risk now....hopefully!

Note to the reader from Cardiff -- if you are staying in the foreign scholars building next week...stop by and say hello -- room 301. Sorry -- I can't reply to comments due to blogger being blocked in China, and you did not leave an email address.

Speaking of the great firewall of China--now I can read the New York Times (not that I want to this week -- oh Elliot, what have you been up to?!?!) but I can't access my yahoo groups ! The firewall is an unpredictable place!

Pipa fruit and a little culture shock

First..the Pipa: Helen demonstrates the essential eating goodness of the pipa fruit, which has appeared suddenly in the markets. One of the vendors I frequent convinced me to buy some.

The flesh has a mild almost nutty flavor, very firm and sweet, and the inside contains four pits (which Helen is planning to plant back in Buffalo..I didn't have the heart to tell her that anyplace where they get 20 inches of snow during pipa season is not going to work out)...


The pipa season is brief and much celebrated - everyone is eating them, and in just a week or two, they'll be gone, apparently. I guess they don't travel well, because I have not seen them before.


Now for the culture shock ..scenes from a classroom in a Chinese university. Imagine you have submitted a composition in your Chinese class, called "Wo de gong yu" (My apartment) which uses lots of recent vocabulary words to describe your home. It is your first ever composition in Chinese. The teacher corrects mistakes on each paper and assigns it a grade..OK, so far this feels familiar.
Does she quietly hand back the graded compositions....oh no, she does not. She holds each one up, acknowledges the author, and shows the class the grade and why it was received, pointing out the common errors.....we are on new cultural ground here. There was an audible gasp from one of the other Americans in the class -- it wasn't just me. Anyway, I did OK, so it was not too traumatic, but it made a very big impression on me -- glad I had taken the entire morning to do a careful job! Michael says that when he is subtle about handing back work..the students will walk up to each others' desks at the break and see what other people got on their papers. According to a young woman we know, the public review of grades is very common, especially in middle and high school. Quite a different approach to peer pressure I guess.

Helen channels her love of paper

After weeks of waiting and a little difficulty in reaching my intermediary, on Saturday Helen and I made our way to Teacher Liu's studio to learn to make Chinese paper cuts...Helen is now enrolled in a 10 week Saturday afternoon class.

The secrets of how to fold the paper and cutting patterns were explained for some simple 4-fold patterns. The flowers were hard for Helen to cut free hand, so the teacher had her hone her scissors skills with some cut outs..

Here is the teacher explaining some details to us. We are able to follow him for the most part with the visuals and a mix of my Chinese and one of the older girls in the class speaks some English.


Those are some very sharp and precise scissors and Helen is positively in love with them..Helen has loved cutting since the age of 2 when she removed one of her own pigtails..hopefully she can discover the artistic side of scissors, too! Actually she loved the class and is very attached to every single one of her creations..I had fun, too.

Miscellaneous updates

This morning I was walking Sophia to school when I took this picture...I have been meaning to take it many times. I love walking down the quiet lanes between our building and Sophia's kindergarten. They are much older than the other buildings on the campus, and built in a more traditional style - brick construction with walled courtyards in the front, balconies with no metal bars and only 2 stories. These streets are paved with uneven stones, and Sophia insists on riding her tricycle to school every day, so its slow going up the street and I get to peer into the courtyards a bit. I had assumed that retirees lived here, and while some do, there are also lower ranking employees and their families, according to my friend, who lived there for a semester when she first arrived 12 years ago.
This is a more typical building for faculty housing:

Five or six stories, this one happens to overlook the beach area, so I am sure the upper floors are sought after...There are clusters of 10-12 faculty buildings in several areas of the campus. I have been inside one apartment of one of Helen's classmates who lives in this area, and there are 2 or 3 small bedrooms, a living room, with a table for eating and a small kitchen. Every apartment has a small balcony, with bars (I guess for safety?) The balconies are where the laundry is hung every day to dry, since hardly anyone has dryers. It amuses me to see all the laundry hanging as I walk by -- lots of red underwear out there these days !

I will take some photos of the student housing soon. Most of the 1st and 2nd year students live on another campus of the university -- on the mainland. Some buildings for faculty and students are quite a bit newer, as the university continues to expand. The current enrollment at the university level in China is the highest ever..and a lot of the students can't find professional type jobs when they graduate because there are so may people graduating and looking for jobs in business. So many do what college grads in the US do..become even more over educated by going to graduate school! One of Michael's students is finishing her masters in philosophy and taking civil service exams all around China in the hopes of finding a good job in the government.

The Sophia update: Sophia has stopped 90% of her morning protests for school. At the end of the day she is always very positive, but in the mornings, she says -- "no go to school", but then gets her shoes and coat on and waits by the door. The teachers all seem relieved that it is going so well, and I am relieved, too. I think the language barrier is not much of an issue. I tried to take some pictures in her classroom this morning, but realized I just needed to get out of there while the going was good! As a reward for taking a nap at school, every day she gets to watch a a little TV after school. and every day she picks the same thing : "Watch ballet!" We have a DVD of the Nutcracker which the entire family has now memorized. It could be worse! Today's video, primarily for grandparent's sake, features Sophia in her daily ballet mode...



My school update: My courses are very busy!! I have forgotten what it is like to sit in a class for hours at a time. Each class period is 80 minutes. Each week I have 6 periods of Elementary Chinese (every day with a double period on Tuesdays) and 4 periods of Chinese Listening, 2 in the lab and 2 in the classroom. Yesterday we spent the whole 80 minutes listening to words on the recording and marking the tones. I did not do very well -- but the teacher is patient and says --"don't worry!" I should explain a bit about the tones. There are different ways to say vowel sounds in Chinese. There is (1) a high even tone (2) a falling tone, similar to the way the voice falls naturally in English at the end of a sentence (3) a falling then rising tone, sort of like swooping the vowel, but subtler (4) a rising tone, similar to the way the voice rises at the end of a question in English. We use little marks to indicate these on the pinyin (the word written in roman letters, like "ni hao"). I have progressed to the point where I understand the concept and can do it myself, but have trouble hearing it and identifying which one, also trouble remembering which tone each word has.

The courses are very good. The class is not too big and we are all at about the same level in Chinese, with some having more strength in speaking and others in writing. I have opted out of 2 additional courses offered : oral Chinese and reading Chinese, because its too busy, and instead I am taking Calligraphy. Well actually, Michael thinks he is going to sneak in the class pretending to be me -- but after seeing all the cool supplies for the class, I am not going to let him -- we got huge paper, brushes, ink and paints for traditional Chinese painting. I can't wait for the next class.

Actually I should be doing homework right now...I always think I will have so much time in the morning, but today I started back teaching English at Helen's class (we did the hokey pokey again), so I had better get moving.....

A Xiamen Sunday...

Our church on Gulanyu is being repaired, so for the next two Sundays our Mass is on Xiamen, downtown near the ferry dock -- this is where our parish has daily Masses, and where they worshiped during the years before the church on Gulanyu was reopened. It is a much simpler place, with a corrugated roof and located up an alley..

The choir is rehearsing in the photo above, and our Deacon (white jacket) is talking to some other members. Right after I took this picture, they approached me about Michael and I leading a retreat meeting after Mass this month (a short 1-2 hour reflection)...Michael is gone that weekend, so I will do it, with some trepidation, but I think everyone has so many stories of faith to share, especially having moved around the world in many cases...

Here is the outside of the church..how about the laundry? The priest walking out is a guest priest from Taiwan who comes to Xiamen 3-4 times a year to say Mass and support the pastor and community here..he was also at Mass on Christmas Eve. We have noticed that in the Mass they have started to include the line about the pope in the Eucharistic prayer (just recently)...also read in the China Daily that the Chinese government has laid out a series of steps to lead to formal relations with the Vatican..that plus the successful installation of a bishop in Beijing with support of both China and Rome is signal ling a small thaw I think...

After Mass we headed uptown at the request of the children (especially Thomas) to the best Italian restaurant in Xiamen -- and it was fantastic..roasted garlic, a lovely green salad with real cheese, good pizza..this place had it all. Also ran into some American students from Florida and their professor whom I had met at the placement test for the Overseas College Chinese courses. They are here as a group for a semester abroad program.
I know you people are probably tired of all the beach photos I post, but I am never tired of posting them..temperatures in the 70s and blue skies brought all of Xiada out to the beach, including us. I love to people-watch there...especially I love to watch the women teetering in their high heel pumps in the sand..

I love to watch Sophia contemplate some mischief...

I loved this girl's get up most of all..kept trying to figure out how to photograph her surreptitiously and then she asked for a photo with the girls! In case you can't tell, she has a green sweater she is wearing as a miniskirt, purple tights and hot pink high heel pumps...wow....

A main occupation of people at the beach is taking photos of my kids, it seems. This one was really funny -- a group of preteen girls gathered at a safe distance form Thomas and proceeded to take photos and giggle for at least 10 minutes..he was embarrassed but secretly pleased, I think..there they are standing on the stone computer mouse...



Thomas dug a pretty big hole while those girls were watching..


Finally the sun began to go down on another day...Monday would dawn as my first day of real classes...

Classes are still pretty loose. After this first day I had a splitting headache, the start of a cold, and a vague sense of satisfaction that I am not completely lost. It seems some thought went into separating the students into sections of the "beginning" group and I am in the highest level of the 1st semester students. Everyone in my classes has been studying Chinese for 1-2 semesters. So the teachers speak nearly all Chinese, and while we look blank a bit, the class is figuring out how to respond. I still do not like the all-afternoon schedule, but I am unlikely to move because the next level will be too hard, the level below too easy, so by skipping the electives I can pick up the girls up on time except Mondays and Tuesdays, Michael will do it. We asked our teacher to try to change the class on one of those days, so we'll see what happens. At least I can study in the mornings and run errands, etc. I will have to leave Sophia in school all day, but she seems to be managing and each day her morning protest is a little less intense..

When the class introduced themselves, many people gave their age and they are all younger than me, even one of my teachers -- the other I'm not sure of...when it was may turn I said (in Chinese) that I had three children and I was not going to tell my age! That got a laugh...My classmates are from all over -- Jordan, Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, Japan , and the US. It gave me a start when I glanced over at the notes my neighbor was taking and they were a mix of Chinese characters and Arabic!

The 1001 annoyances of enrolling in school

I had a dark time this afternoon. The whole college thing has not been getting off to a very good start...the placement test was very difficult, out of my league, so I placed in the lowest class, which seems too basic. This morning I found out the section I am in has classes until 6:00 which will definitely not work for me -- when Michael is teaching or traveling, I need to get Sophia at 4:20, Helen at 5:00 and in between Thomas gets off the bus. There is no one around to ask for help until Monday..and I am a small basket case -- I so want this to go well. Sophia woke up today, Saturday, saying -- "I am not going to SCHOOL!" Is this really worth it? Plus if I have class in the afternoons, she has to stay all day every day, which is not what I had planned.!! Ugh! Its all the usual annoyances of a new job/school/etc. except in a foreign country where you have only a vague idea of how to go about each step. On Monday I will try to get my section changed and/or move to the higher class -- not sure which! It will be very interesting to be in class -- the students are from all over the world. I took a campus tour the college offered the new students, just for fun, since I had been living here, but I did get up on the roof of the administration building for some overhead photos. This is northwest towards our building and the temple...our building : Zhuan Jia Lou 专 家 楼 (literally : "Experts Building") is the second of the white buildings in a row on the right. In this picture you can see how close we are to the mountains...love it.

Here is a better view of the temple on the mountainside. The renovations are finished so I need to go back some day and take some more photos.

And the jewel of the campus is Furong Lake..


Sophia in school has been delightful for me, as I have been able to feel more freedom, just to walk around, run errands, etc. I took a friend to see the Xiamen flea market, which I enjoyed infinitely more without Sophia's tantrums in the stroller. The bad news is I now know how to get to the flea market on the bus, which is dangerous for my budget, as it is filled with such interesting things, and I want them all!

We saw some folks near the market playing mah-jong, which I love to watch...especially at the beginning of a round the way the players set up the board is fascinating.
I actually own a lovely set, inherited from my grandparents, so I should really learn to play - add it to the to do list!

I just finished reading the two books I bought in Beijing, and I would really recommend them..Red Dust by Ma Jian and Wild Swans by Jung Chang. Red Dust is a personal account of China in transition in the early 1980s, when an artist feeling suffocated by the slow pace of China's opening up spent three years hiking around the country. The better book is Wild Swans, which many people have read, as its been out a while, but the author has also written a biography of Mao (Mao: the Untold Story, now in paperback!) which I believed is banned in China (it makes a nice housewarming gift if anyone is coming to see me, however). I couldn't believe I was able to buy Wild Swans in Beijing, as I thought it was banned from sale here as well. It tells the spellbinding story of three generations of women --the author and her mother and grandmother-- and in particular the inner life of the author during the Cultural Revolution. I read it many years ago, but re-reading it here in China was very, very powerful.