April through July 8th

Once again, sorry it has been so long. I have been pretty busy. I guess the last time you heard from me was more than two months ago. In that time I have traveled around the country a bit. Linda has always wanted to go to Guilin, and we had a guest so we went back to Beijing. I also experienced my first few earthquakes.

Guilin is in a beautiful part of the country, the southern province of Guangxi Zhuangzu. It has mountains shaped by sea currents and ice ages. The insides can be hollow, and the great fingers reach toward the sky covered in bamboo forests. The Li Jiang (river) runs from this inland city south to Yangshuo, which is a touristy mountain area with shops and merchants lining the piers and streets. The area only has a population of about a million people, but it sees over 15 million tourists come through each year. A cool fact is that Guilin was used as the planet Kashyyyk, home of Wookies, in Star Wars: Episode III; also, the 20 Yuan bill has the Li River on the back.

I saw an interesting fishing technique. They use the Cormorant, a kind of bird. (It looks kind of like a loon, but with a different beak and it swims more like a dolphin.) A snare is tied near the base of the bird's throat, which allows the bird only to swallow small fish. When the bird captures and tries to swallow a large fish, the fish is caught in the bird's throat. When the bird returns to the fisherman's raft, the fisherman helps the bird to remove the fish from its throat. It’s very odd to see happen, but the bird can catch 15 kilograms a day.

The Guilin area is said to be the most beautiful in China. I can understand why. The greens of the mountains are vibrant even during an overcast rainy day. The caves in the area are big enough to hold a wedding reception in, and I am pretty sure they do.

Linda and I only spent a couple days in the area, but it was such a wonderful treat to have fresh air. We had gotten two days off in a row at the beginning May because China declared Friday to be Sunday and Sunday to be Friday for the Labor Day holiday.

We got back and I wanted a copy of Iron Man. It was in the theaters, but only in Chinese. So we walked to Xiao Zhai to see our favorite bootleg DVD dealer. Along the way I stopped in some shops and had a Rou Jia Mo, or Xi’an Hamburger if you are in other parts of the country. A Rou Jia Mo is a pita bread sliced and stuffed with beef that has been boiling in soy vinegar. They are very popular as a local specialty. They also have vegetarian Jia Mo’s (so Mom, don’t worry you can have one of those in October while Dad and I eat the good ones).

May 12, Linda and I were going shopping in Xi'an when the earthquake occurred in Chengdu, about 400 miles to the south-southwest. We were approaching a major intersection only a few blocks from our destination of Xiao Zhai when we heard commotion from across the street. Some people across the street began yelling. It was localized at first, and we thought there was a fight or something. We stepped closer to the street to get a view of what was going on because at this point lots more people were yelling. Some began running. It actually reminded me of Godzilla. The people seemed to be looking over their shoulders and all around. I was not sure if it was a bomb or a gun or what. By this point I was beginning to feel disoriented. It was a feeling of being drunk and stumbling, mixed with a feeling of wanting to pass out or fall against a wall. Your sense of balance becomes distorted and you want to fall over. I just grabbed on to Linda and pulled her tight because now people were stampeding out of the buildings and shops near us. Several people flipped over the barrier that separates the side walk from the street. There was a wide median between the east and west bound lanes of traffic that was quickly filling up with people. The trees were swaying and when I looked up at a tall building in the distance I could see it visibly waving (like a wacky waving inflatable tube man). The quake continued for several minutes with us looking about and keeping an eye on the people that were scurrying around. When it was over Linda, Who-has-been-in-dozens-of-earthquakes said, "Okay, let's go see if the shops are open." Of course, I was still excited about being in my first earthquake. We marched up onto the bridge and crossed the street. The scene was more exciting and panicked than any of the pictures that I snapped depict, so I won’t bore you with them. We continued past thousands of people standing in the streets and running past the glass buildings. We met another American and a Brit who were looking for an English version of Iron Man as well, so we all walked together taking pictures and hoping that the shops would open up again soon. We stood at the top of the stairs at Xiao Zhai waiting for our DVD guy to come back (yes, we have a guy). Shop workers did come back, but only to lock up their stores more securely. Linda and I left the Brit and American who were studying at Xi'an Normal University and continued walking. We saw people sitting on the sidewalks in groups, children excitedly telling their parents what their teachers had them do, the children's hospital on the corner was evacuated and everyone was in the parking lot. Shops were not opening again. People had their small transistor radios out, and were listing to the news. Linda and I arrived home a few hours after the quake, and I left to get food. The supermarket was closed so I just picked up some fruit at one of the smaller stores. People and cars were lining the streets. Many refused to go back inside, some others were packing big “Rubbermaid” storage containers with emergency supplies and putting it in their cars which they would not put into the underground parking garages, or anywhere near a tall building. We went walking later that night, and saw people sleeping on the sidewalks. They had cots or mats or even entire beds lining the roads. The children had blankets or their mothers’ arms in which to rest. Many were running and playing, grateful not to be doing homework. The cars still lined the streets, many with people inside them. Linda was amazed that they were so afraid, but this is an area that does not normally get earthquakes. Chengdu and other cities got hit VERY hard. The earthquake was felt for several minutes in Beijing and trigged a second quake there. Shanghai felt it too. This would be an area equal in size and location to from Chicago all the way to Kansas and over to New York and down to Hilton Head. I read today they felt it as far away as Pakistan.

Fear does weird things to people. They handle it in different ways. Some become paralyzed by it, others become more alert and responsive. It can inhibit or motivate. People are sleeping in the parks tonight even though there have not been any aftershocks here. There have been many further south, and actually they progressed north toward Xi'an, The USGS has a cool map that shows how they are progressing.

We have had several aftershocks. One came while I was teaching a class. We are on the fourth floor, so all the students, teachers, and staff took the stairs. The little ones were crying and some of the bigger students were rushing a bit, but for the most part it was a calm and orderly evacuation. It was less fun than my first earthquake experience, though, because I had to look after the students.

The government began sending out text messages to all mobile phones with the days’ earthquake activity and saying days and times that they believed could have an earthquake. The newspapers began publishing articles warning that there would be an earthquake “between 1:30p.m and 3:00 p.m.” To my knowledge earthquake science has not progressed that far. It drove all of us nuts because the people were scared and not going to work and taking extreme precautions. I taught the boy who cried wolf in most of my classes after that began. It has been almost two months, and the tents and mats that filled the parks and lined the sidewalks are finally gone.

In the middle of May Saint Mary’s University MIB students visited China. This time I was one of the people with whom they visited. I told them how things differed and some of the various observations I have made regarding the economy, news media, the internet, government, the environment, and just living abroad. We then went out to dinner, where we randomly met up with other Saint Mary’s students that are home for the summer. I ate cow stomach for the first time that night. We took rickshaws back to the hotel and just chatted for a while. I was hoping to see them again, but I was swamped with work as it was the weekend.

The next week Linda’s friend Morgan from St. Louis came to visit. She spent a week with us, the Cubs are doing very well so I was able to deal with her Cardinals fan thoughts being in my appartment. We took a day off and went to Beijing to show her the sites. The city looks much better now than it did when I was there in May, 2007. The preparations for the Olympics have been pretty impressive. They have even replaced most of the misspelled words in the airport and even around the city. An even more interesting thing is that they have installed a few western style toilets in some of the bathrooms. Though if you go to the Summer Palace, the girls say it is still a squatter.

One problem that we did have is that even when we were speaking Chinese, the taxi drivers did not always know the location of the Olympic venues. The National Stadium, commonly referred to as "the Birds nest", was like a black hole of knowledge for the drivers. We did rejoice when we got to TGI Fridays and had sour cream for the first time in months.

The girls went on an adventure to the Great Wall for a day. I stayed in the city looking for other western foods that we could not get in Xi'an. I did not find any that I was interested in. I did get a birthday present for my brother though. The girls met some interesting people on their tour, including some people that had survived the earthquakes in southwestern China. They told stories of others coming back to the hostel covered in blood and of people helping others down a mountain that was directly above the epicenter. Some were only carrying body parts and walking around aimlessly.

Beijing is more expensive than Xi'an, which, I suppose, is to be expected. But I am always impressed when I go to the Silk Market in Beijing and have the people try to charge me RMB350 (almost $44) for shorts and then I end up talking them down to around RMB 75 (just over $9). It is a funny system, but bargaining can be beneficial if you know what something SHOULD cost.

On June 28, 2008 I saw the mountains just outside Xi'an from work and home for the first time since I got here. I stepped out of work Saturday in the late afternoon, and turned to the left as I normally do. There before me was a magnificent sight. Towering above the high rises were the mountains that surround Xi’an. Every intersection that I came to I would look both ways and just stare through clear air all the way to the mountains. The mountains had obviously been there all along, but I would never had known if I was not out on this one day. It was not a perfectly clear sight there was still a tiny bit of haze, but to see something so large for the first time in 6 months, except for when we drove out to them, was very impressive. It was also very sad. The people of Xi’an consider this pollution to be normal and common thing throughout the world.

It is now the 4^th of July. I have been working around 30 classroom hours per week for the last couple weeks, waiting for summer session to begin and to get new classes. Many of the hours that I have been working were 1 to 1’s. The universities in China require that students know English. Hong Kong University teaches in English and many of my students listed as their main objective “to go abroad.” So the kids come to us to practice their English before the interviews and classes.

I have begun my own private Chinese lessons. I have been here long enough that the Chinese characters no longer simply look like fireworks. My employer, English First, provides basic Chinese classes, and I have learned to sing a song, ask basic questions, and give basic responses. I have felt the need to go a bit further in my studies, learn to write the characters and have a more complete conversation. Below is a great website that I use to practice my tones. There are four tones in Chinese. The different tones change the entire meaning of what would otherwise be the same word, so it is important to speak them properly and to be able to recognize them when you hear them. I added some new things to my computer so that I can start typing in Chinese. For instance this is my apartment number

博文南段盛事华蛗7# - 2 - 10 - 02. http://www.quickmandarin.com/chinesepinyintable/pinyintable_vertical.php

We are beginning to feel like the Chinese Government doesn’t actually want anyone to go come to China during the Olympics. It is extremely difficult to get a Visa and many of the hotels still have empty rooms. The government does not seem to care about the low attendance or making any of their $40,000,000,000 back from Olympic construction. They simply want the world to see how “perfect” things are running in this country and how they are as developed as any nation. Some of the people are getting upset with the current inflation rate throughout the world, but for the last couple of months the inflation rate in China has been around 8%.

I have pictures up on Picasa. The beer is Guinness Foreign Extra.

Okay, happy Independence Day everyone.