Pictures and Update

So as you can see, I got a slideshow up and working on this site (although not without a lot of time and effort), but it's a little bit small, so if you'd like to see larger pictures, go here.

We went to Hangzhou on Monday, and stayed at Eric's uncle's apartment (this is a different uncle).  I didn't know what there was to do in Hangzhou, so Cherry and Eric just took me around to a few different places, including some markets and a beautiful park on a lake.  We also met up with Tracey and a few of her friends; it was nice to see her again so we could say goodbye properly.

Tuesday held much of the same, and Wednesday morning we left for a day trip to Shanghai.  As most of you probably know, it is the largest city in China (a good deal larger than NYC), and so this was a different experience to our time in Hangzhou.  The city is very westernized, and there wasn't anything particularly historic that we went to see, most of it had its analogue in the West.  Later, we had dinner with a former teacher of Eric's, an eccentric New Zealander who I came to like a great deal, and then we took a late train back to Hangzhou.

Thursday was a travel day, as we had a flight to Beijing, which ended up getting delayed for several hours because of fog.  Today, we went shopping in the morning and worked on some loose ends in the afternoon, including sorting through all the pictures (there were a lot) and picking the better ones to upload, as well as tabulating some expenses.

We may go to the Great Wall tomorrow, and I will upload more photos as they are taken.  Good night.

Day 21: Fin

Today was our last day. We woke up at 8:00 to see Mike off, and then spent most of the day doing accounting and marketing for the park. It rained all day, so we didn't get a chance to see the park, but it is essentially finished, except for a little cleanup. I wrote a one-page, single-spaced, account of the making of the park, which I think will be given to various potential donors. Once I revise it to a final draft, I will post a copy here for those of you that are interested. It's a bit more cohesive than these posts, but it won't give you any new information.

This evening the principal of the local school took us out to dinner at what I think is the only restaurant in Gaoxiang. We hadn't eaten there yet, and although the facility is somewhat plain, the food was pretty good. I'm not sure what it was about this dinner, but Eric's uncle started asking me lots of questions about my life, so I ended up speaking a fair amount of Chinese at dinner. I didn't mind the questions, and it was very helpful for me to practice Chinese. Perhaps the most frustrating part was trying to explain my father's job. He's a consultant, but I don't know how to say that, and moreover, neither Eric nor Cherry knew how to say it in Chinese, so I had to go through a somewhat clumsy Chinese-language description of what he does.

Looking back, it's hard to believe that we've spent three weeks (to the day) here. It feels like it went very quickly, but it also feels like we accomplished a great deal. I'll at least be posting to let you know where I am, and I'll also post when something interesting happens. But this post essentially concludes commentary on the park. Obviously that is subject to change if more happens.

Sorry for another short post, but today was another fairly low-key day. Good night.

Day 20: Things Are Winding Down

Although there was no typhoon, rain hassled us, but we continued to approach the finish line.

There was of course no typhoon here; we are a little too far inland for it to actually be an issue, but as I mentioned yesterday we had no class just to be safe. As a result, I got to sleep in until 8:00, which was pretty nice.

In the morning we did a little bit of work, mostly moving rocks and shoveling dirt. We were waiting for a friend to arrive. Mike Poon is a mutual friend and high school classmate of Eric's and mine, and he is giving a presentation on our project to a businessman from Shanghai, so he came by to survey our work and get a feel for what we've done. Our intention was to put him to work in the afternoon, but this turned out to be difficult, as there was little work to do. All we did was help move the tables and benches into the park. These are quite heavy, but it certainly wasn't a full afternoon's worth of work.

This post is probably the shortest that I have written thus far, but there are very few things of interest occurring at this point, so tomorrow may also be like this. Tomorrow will also probably be my last daily post, as we leave on Monday. After that, my posts will become more sporadic: sometimes more than one post a day, some days no posts at all. It will depend on how interesting my time in Shanghai is. On the 19th, I'm returning home, so there should be at least some level of posting going on until then. See you tomorrow.

Day 19: Typhoon Warning (And Other Stories)

Hints of a typhoon, though for today we only had rain.

Because of the aforementioned typhoon (warning), we aren't teaching English tomorrow, so today was our last day. We didn't find this out until about halfway through this morning's session. I was teaching my students the names of the months as well as the first few ordinal numbers (i.e. first, second, third...), but once we found out that this was our last day, we decided to do something fun. The kids asked us to teach them how to sing an American song. Because of our earlier karaoke experience (from a couple of weeks ago) the only song that we all knew the words and melody to was "I Want it That Way" by the Backstreet Boys. The kids of course insisted on hearing us each sing it individually, so that was interesting. But we managed to get them to learn the melody, as well as get the appropriate alternate pronunciations ("wai-ee" as opposed to "why," etc.), while of course making sure to point out that the lyrics were incorrect grammatically ("ain't nothin' but a heartache" is a double negative, as well as slang). It was quite an odd experience, listening to a classroom full of young Chinese students with severe accents sing a quintessential American pop song, but the experience can at least be described as fun.

After lunch, we made the 25-minute walk out to the "waste management facility" that Eric's father built. It is essentially a large incinerator, and may not look like much to us Westerners, but it is a fairly crucial service, as disposing of refuse is important, and often quite difficult for locals. The walk itself was absolutely stunning, as we came down the mountain on whose side Gaoxiang rests, and walked on a road that meandered between two others. The green was all around us, and the intermittent rain and fog provided a serene aesthetic. We also saw a buffalo by a small creek near the side of the road. It was a great, hulking, creature, and it stared right at me (just like the locals do) as if it too acknowledged that I was an outsider. This is not really an exotic experience, as buffalo exist in the U.S., but I had never been so close to one – we were only about five feet away, which gave us a wonderful (or terrifying) perspective on its size.

Upon our return, we set to work helping with the park, fulfilling our tasks of cleaning up the worksite and hauling stones for them to place in the path. We worked through the rain, and the work that the locals did, placing the rocks into the path, looks quite good, and it almost made me feel that the many hours we spent picking those rocks was worth it. We were interrupted by a visit from one of our students, who brought us each a gift for teaching her English. I haven't opened it yet, but I was again taken aback by the generosity of the villagers, and I feel glad to have developed a personal relationship with some of them.

After dinner, we went into town to buy water, and ran into another student (who lives next to the convenience store). We bought him a coke, and he invited us into his home (the first floor of which is a barber shop as his father is a barber). We were brought watermelons and we hung around to talk with him and his father. It was very interesting for me as an outsider to observe how different socializing is in China. Food is always involved, and it is much less casual than in the U.S. We in the barber shop, no door to the street, so that anyone we knew might come in and join us (and a few of our students did).

We only have a couple of days left here, and I can say that many parts of me are ready to return to the comforts of home, but I already know that I will soon feel the twang of nostalgia, as this experience has been one so totally outside any other I have heretofore experienced. With that, I must go to bed, so I have the energy to make the most out of my last two days. Good night.

Day 18: The Wet Season Sure Has A Lot of Rain

A railing went up and the rain came down.

Our day began as usual at 7:30 with English class, and it marked my second day of teaching alone. I have adopted a somewhat eccentric manner with these students for two reasons: 1) they are younger and it keeps their attention better, and 2) it is at times a good substitute for my lackluster Chinese. I essentially reviewed what I taught yesterday, as their are still a good number of blank faces when I ask questions. I will consider it an accomplishment if these kids master what I taught on the first day by the end of the week (our last day of teaching is Saturday). They are having a fair amount of trouble with the phrase "What day of the week is it?" They know what it means and they know how to respond to it, but it is a lot of words for them to say all in a row, and most of them don't have a great deal of reading skills, so they have to rely mostly on memorization to learn the question. The new material I did teach today was numbers. They knew everything up to one hundred, and I continued teaching them all the numbers up to one million. Towards the end of class, they seemed to grasp the way our number system works (where we have a new word for a number every multiple of 1000). They also are starting to understand the rationale behind our names for numbers (7500 is called "seven thousand five hundred" because it is the sum of 7000 and 500).

After class, some policemen came by and asked to see our documentation. This is not all that unusual in China, as they just want to keep their constituents safe. That, and they don't have all that much to do (case in point: they sent five officers to check on us). Tao Yuan and Cherry do not need paperwork, as they are Chinese citizens, but Eric and I had to get our passports (Eric is an Australian citizen).

It rained in the afternoon, but some work was done in the morning (although obviously not by us). A railing was put up around the upper tier of the lower worksite, and after going down to see it, I can say that it looks really good.

I realized as I was writing this that I haven't to this point attempted a physical description of where we are building our park. As you may have guessed, there are two small-ish worksites. The larger one is about 200 feet by 200 feet. Being on a hill, it has two level tiers. The lower level is mainly covered in the tiling that I mentioned, but there is also that large sandbox and a dirt patch in the corner where we will be placing a large rock for aesthetic value. The upper tier has a very large tree, more tiling, and the path that we dug out. It is around this part that the railing was put up. The upper worksite (closer to town) is smaller, only about 50 feet by 100 feet, and this is right next to a small pond, so will mainly serve as a pavilion sort of area. There will be the same tiling (which hasn't yet been laid down) and some tables and seats (which we have already picked out).

Given that we are nearing completion, we decided on Monday as the date for our departure from Gaoxiang. The park should be finished by then, and we can do the accounting/marketing off-site, while Eric tours me around some other parts of China. We will probably spend a couple of days in Hangzhou, as well as a few days in Shanghai, before I return to Beijing for my flight home.

Tao Yuan left this morning, as he had business to attend to at home. So now there are only three of us, but there is less work to do, so it should be fine. At this point, I am probably the most useless, because the accounting hasn't yet been translated into English (and won't for a couple of days), and it is done in very obscure and technical Chinese, with which I have exactly zero experience.

I am rather tired (you may have noticed my post last night was later than usual), so I should head to bed. See you tomorrow.

Day 17: A Day of Gifts

Though the thunder roared all afternoon, the sun never faltered, and the rain held off until nightfall.

Word of our English class has by this point made its way around the village; this is evidenced by the fact that although we started with two classes, we have been expanding and today split into four separate classes. The youngest class (of kindergarteners) is rather small, only seven or eight students, but the others are all fairly full. As there are only four of us, I have to teach my own class. I taught the age group up from the kindergarteners today (the second youngest group of four). I was a bit apprehensive coming into today, as these kids know even less English than those I was teaching before, and thus I will have to use Chinese more, but I soon discovered that I can use my Chinese to express most of what I want to say; it just won’t be pretty. The kids were patient with me, though, and for that I am grateful. I started by giving them a simple, sample, conversation: just an exchange of greetings and “How are you”s. This went fairly well, so I continued teaching basic English. I covered numbers, which they seemed to already know to some extent, and then math, which they did not know. By math, I mean I taught them the English words for “plus,” “minus,” “times,” “divided by”, and “equals” (I realize there also exists “add,” “subtract,” and “multiply,” but in the simplest construal of mathematical sentences, these words are not used). I also taught them how to answer the question “How old are you?” Later, I taught them the days of the week, the word “week,” and the word “weekend.” With each topic, some of them had studied it previously, but most hadn’t. It sounds like I covered a lot, but I’m sure that I will have to revisit all of these categories in the coming days.

About halfway through our class session today, the four of us were called outside to meet with some journalists. Unbeknownst to us, the principal of the school had also prepared gifts for each of us: a small desk organizer and a certificate (the translation reads “Honorary Credential” but that isn’t quite right; “Certificate of Honor” would probably be closer). The certificate reads: “During your summer vacation of 2009 in Gaoxiang, you wholeheartedly provided guidance for the students of Gaoxiang. This is an obvious and resounding achievement, and therefore the local people think highly of you. We give you this certificate to express our gratefulness.” This is obviously an imperfect translation, but such language is not used often in America. We were photographed with the principle holding our certificates, and then each of us said a few words on camera. At first I spoke in English (for which Cherry wrote a Chinese translation) and then I spoke in Chinese (I didn’t read the translation; I just greatly simplified what I said). I could care less about the media coverage, but I thought the gifts were a nice gesture, and I was a bit taken aback. I am told that this is a common custom in China, but it still made me feel good, which I suppose was the desired effect.

After lunch, we all rested a bit (as today was excruciatingly hot all day), and then we headed out to the worksite. As I mentioned in a previous post, most of the work at this point is at least semi-skilled, so we are limited in what we can do. All we did today was move up some marble slabs for the workers to install. The paths we dug out obviously lie below the surrounding ground, and these slabs are being placed on the sides as a sort of wall.

We had to cut our work short as one of our students (Feng Jichen, who I believe I mentioned previously) invited us over for dinner as a thank you. There were several of our other students there (related to her I think), and we spent about two hours eating an extravagant meal. Then one of her relatives (a very young student of ours) played some traditional Chinese music on the hŭzhēng (I don’t believe there is an English word for it). It is a long stringed instrument, which one plucks, and in order to play it one wears finger picks (like for a banjo). The music itself was beautiful, although it is always a bit startling to hear music that is so foreign to my ears as the Chinese microtones.

Today was a rather emotional day. I hope this does not sound too condescending, but although I am grateful for the gifts I have received, I can’t help but feel a little bit sad that I am taking something from someone who has so much less than me in the way of material goods. I know it is custom and they think nothing of it, in fact they are happy to do it, but it is still difficult to receive something that they worked so hard to give when what I offered in return (English lessons and the park) did not require sacrifice on my part.

On that note, I should probably go to bed, so that I can be refreshed for another day of teaching on my own. Good night.

Day 16: Sandboxes and Cicadas

Today was another beautiful day, which meant no rain from the sky, but plenty of sweat on our brows.

I had to teach for a short time this morning by myself, as Cherry had business to attend to regarding the park (Cherry is interested in architecture, and as such, she is in charge of the park's design). This was a test of my Chinese skills, but I came away feeling pretty good about it. We taught our students emotion words today; this is related to yesterday's teaching of description as you can sometimes describe people by what emotions they are feeling (e.g. "You look _____."). A distraction to today's class were cicadas, which several students (boys) had brought in to school. So I taught them the word "cicada," and they taught me how to say "cicada" in Chinese (zhī liăo).

At a break in class, some of the boys asked me to come out back with them to play basketball. As some of you may know, my basketball skills leave something to be desired, by which I mean that I am awful. This was not as big an issue as I had anticipated, as I am a lot larger than my students, which made up for it somewhat. When I returned to class however, I was drenched in sweat. I also played more basketball after class, so I was a little bit tired, even before lunch.

After lunch, we headed out to the lower worksite to dig a sandbox for the kids. This was probably the largest sandbox I have ever seen: it was 3 meters long, 2.5 meters wide, and 30 centimeters deep. Our students came by to visit, and some of them even helped us dig. It was a nice scene, and we appreciated their gesture.

At dinner, Eric's uncle joked with me that if he had a daughter, he would have liked to marry her to me. This may seem a bit creepy, but in China this is a very nice thing to say, and I was quite flattered, although Eric and the others teased me about it to no end.

Tomorrow we will be taking some of the stones we picked yesterday and placing them in the path we dug. The tiling continues, and is nearing completion, and after that, there are only a few finishing touches to add before we can deem the project a success.

I am tired after what has been a long day physically, so I'm heading to bed. See you tomorrow.

Day 15: Here Comes The Sun

Another song reference? Yes. We had a full day of sunshine today; it was hot and humid but the rain stayed away.

Today in class we taught our students how to describe people. We divided the adjectives into certain categories, such as physical appearance and personality traits. We still haven't gone over what I would call the "mental traits" category (this would include words like "smart"), and we plan to also teach the words for various common emotions. This return to vocabulary was brought on by an acceptance of some of our limitations as teachers. The main one is that we aren't trained, and so teaching grammar, which is a very complicated task, has been a struggle for us, and it hasn't seemed to make as much of an impact on the students as straight vocabulary. These sessions go well, and most students remember more than half of the words that we teach on any given day. I brought the camera into class and got some great shots of the kids, which I will put up once we get back to a city. Tao Yuan stayed home today, as he had his hands full with some of the accounting work I mentioned in yesterday's post.

We headed out to work immediately after lunch. We took a public bus to the outskirts of Tonglu, and we walked to a local riverbank, which had many stones on it. We need these stones to put on our paths at the park, in order to form a nice pattern on the cement. Therefore, we had fairly strict standards (which, admittedly, loosened as the day wore on and our patience wore thin) for which rocks to choose. We needed thousands of stones, and we were hand-picking them one at a time. This was a tedious task, made ever more excruciating by the presence of a strong Sun. It was not physically onerous work, but by the end of the day (we worked for about four hours) I was extremely tired, both mentally and physically.

For dinner, we went into Tonglu. There had been another student from Hangzhou who spent a couple of days helping us teach English; his name is Ken. I hadn't mentioned him before because he only spent that time with us and he didn't do very much of the teaching. But his parents took us out to dinner as a thank you (this is Chinese custom). In China, eating seafood is a sign of wealth, so of course they ordered seafood, which is not my favorite genre of food (I really only like fish). But I was obligated to eat many of these foods out of politeness. It wasn't terrible, and the non-seafood dishes were actually quite good. Afterwards we picked up some groceries and headed home.

I didn't get a chance to go see the progress that was made on the park today, as I wasn't in town all day. But I imagine that we are close to finishing laying the tile, so the stones are one of the final pieces of the puzzle. I'm heading to bed now as I am thoroughly exhausted. Good night.

Day 14: The Pieces Are Coming Together

It's amazing how it's only towards the end of a project that you see how much progress you have made.

Today we continued our teaching of time-telling with an exercise where we had the students talk about their days. They paired up and they each found out the other person's schedule. One person was to find out what the other person's usual schedule was (present tense), and the other person was to find out what the first person did last Saturday (past tense). As with the map, this went well for some students and poorly for others. Cherry and I have decided that it would be best to place a few of the kids who are struggling more in the class that Tao Yuan and Eric are teaching, so that we might progress a bit faster and make the class more worthwhile for the other kids.

Towards the end of class, a girl I had never seen before came up to me and asked me if she could have a word with me. I went outside and she and her friend explained that they were local high school students who had heard that we were here and were curious as to what we were doing. They were especially excited when they found out that I was American. So I spoke to them, sometimes in English and sometimes, when they couldn't understand, in Chinese, and told them about the park and our teaching English. They were also interested in what my life was like in America, so I talked about that a little bit, too. We exchanged e-mail addresses and they went home. I share this anecdote for two reasons: first, because this sort of practice would be considered unusual in America and thus illustrates another cultural difference, and second, to again highlight how much of an outsider I am here. I have been here two weeks now and still people stare whenever they see me. I don't mind much, but I'm surprised at how little they try to conceal their interest.

After lunch, we waited out the rain and headed out to work. However, a couple days ago (when we were lifting those marble slabs), Eric's grandmother saw us coming home and thought we looked tired, and so she yelled at Eric's uncle and told him that he made us work too much. He is now a bit more hesitant to give us what we consider to be our fair share of work. Additionally, the project is nearing completion, and this stage requires at the very least a semi-skilled laborer, which we are not. So our tasks are now restricted to hauling materials, shoveling dirt or stone, and moving rocks. Today we did all three. The pebble bed has been laid down in the paths we dug, and cement poured on top of that. Now we have to pick out attractive stones to place in the cement to make a pattern. We have to finish tiling the designated areas of the park, and move in the tables. This should take no more than three or four more days, if the weather cooperates.

Because we are not able to do as much labor, we have started to work on some of the other projects that Eric's father has already completed, including the building of a bridge and the opening of a waste management facility. Our tasks include financing (this evening we sat and copied the invoices from this project onto the computer) and marketing. As these efforts are entirely donor-funded, the accounting must be particularly meticulous. As far as marketing goes, we must make the project look attractive, not only to the businessmen who are potential investors, but also to the locals themselves, so that they see the projects as a positive contribution.

That's about it for today, but I'll be sure to keep everyone updated on our efforts with these other projects as well as the final stages of the park.

Day 13: Rain = Short Post

Easy come, easy go. It rained steadily throughout the day, and the fog has persevered into the evening, which does not bode well for tomorrow.

We continued teaching directions today, using a slightly different technique. We separated the kids into groups, and had them each pick a location where they were to start, and then they were to pick a mutual location where they would "meet up," and then they would tell us how to get from where they were to the meeting place. It went very well in some cases and not so well in others. The word "intersection" seems to be quite a stumbling block for them; they tripped over the word and forgot it many times. By contrast, 路口 (lukou), Chinese for "intersection," is very simple. After we finished that exercise, we moved on to telling time. Most of them had at least studied this before, so it went more smoothly, although there were a few students who didn't have a masterful grip on numbers, without having to incorporate the time aspect. We nevertheless explained different ways to say certain times (4:10 as "ten past four"; 5:45 as "a quarter of (or to) six"). Luckily the Chinese have an analogous practice in their language, so it wasn't difficult to explain.

The afternoon was disappointing in that we were confined to the indoors. I mostly read, and also did some coding. I'm trying to learn Java over the summer, as I don't really have room in my schedule for a computer science course, and Eric and Tao Yuan are helping me out, as they are both computer science majors. Other than that, the day was decidedly unproductive. I am hoping against hope that we can get at least an hour or two of work in tomorrow.

If anyone knows an anti-rain dance, I'm all ears.

Day 12: A Day Without Rain

I finally get to make that lame Enya reference!

We accomplished a fair bit today. In the morning we taught the kids directions. I stole some ideas from when I was learning Chinese, and drew a map of a town on the board, including place names, which we had conveniently just taught them. Then, we taught them left and right; north, south, east, and west; directions; intersection, and traffic or stop light. Then we quizzed them, by either giving them directions from one place to another and having them tell us where they ended up, or by having them direct us from one specific place to another. It was a little bit of a struggle. There are a select group of students who clearly understood what was going on, but most of them took a little bit of encouragement and coaxing before they produced the right answer. We also had quite a few mixups with the proper grammar of certain sentences, but I feel as thought they learned a lot today.

We rested at usual after lunch and then went out to work. Today was a beautiful day; the sun was out for the first time since the third day we were here. Consequently, it was also quite hot, so we came equipped with water and sunscreen. We began to lay tiles at the larger worksite, and also started and completed digging the paths which will be covered with small stones. This was tough work, as the dirt was still heavy due to yesterday's downpour. We worked in teams: one person broke up dirt and the other shoveled it. I was surprised and a bit perturbed to learn that there no one has any spade shovels here, so we are using shovels that can't dig very well; they can only pick up loose dirt. After we completed digging out our pathways, we headed up to the smaller worksite and started shoveling stones into a wheelbarrow to be hauled down to the larger worksite. These stones will serve as a foundation. On top of this will be a layer of cement (or concrete; I sometimes get those confused). And on top of that we will place the best stones we have, as this will be the top layer and must be aesthetically pleasing. While we were shoveling stones, we spent a great deal of time digging through the stones and looking for the ideal ones which we will use as a top layer; they must be smooth, relatively round, and relatively flat. This process is very meticulous, and we were not even close to finished by the time we headed inside.

This post is short, but that is because most of the day was spent doing fairly monotonous work. We were all grateful for the sun, even though that meant that we sweated more than usual. Hopefully this is an omen of the good weather that is to come.

Day 11: We Work When We Can

When the rain arrived today, it came down with purpose, but not before we had completed some work.

Cherry and I continued teaching grammar for the entirety of our class time today. We organized a sort of simplified MadLibs, where each row of students wrote down a different part of the sentence: one row wrote a time (like now or yesterday), another wrote down a subject (like I), another wrote down a verb, and another wrote down a place. This lead to such wonderful sentences as "Ten thousand years ago, a hamster played computer games at the supermarket." The students task with a given set of words was to use them to write a coherent English sentence on the board, providing the correct tense and necessary articles and prepositions. Most of the time, with a little coaxing, the students understood this process, and with a few exceptions, they succeeded in their task. On our last trip to Tonglu, we had purchased some snack-size candy bars, and we provided all the students who wrote correct sentences with one.

After lunch, we decided to take advantage of the weather and start on some work for the park. This was the most physically grueling work we have performed thus far. Our task was to unload a big truck full of large, heavy, marble slabs that will provide the tiling for our park's walkways. We developed a streamlined technique, and though the work was tough, we were efficient. No sooner than ten minutes after we finished unloading, the clouds opened up. We had started on another mini-project (digging smaller pathways in which we will place pebbles for a contrasting aesthetic), but our short work on this was destroyed by the rain, and we ran inside, sopping wet. We rejoiced in the fact that we had chosen to work while we could, but I am at least somewhat discouraged that it rained at all today, making it the fourth day in a row.

After dinner, we took a walk (the rain had stopped) towards the peak of the mountain on whose side Gaoxiang rests, an area where I had yet to go. We were accompanied by Eric's uncle as well as a couple of students from our class. It was nice to get to know them a little bit in a more relaxed, non-classroom setting. By the time we returned, it had gotten dark, and we were all fairly tired.

So here is what we have done on the park so far, and what we will do next. We have cleared the land and leveled it by digging up dirt in the high places and dumping it in the low ones. We have dismantled one of the walls on the incline and built some steps; we have also built steps at the smaller worksite. Interesting Chinese cultural sidenote: stairs must always have an odd number of steps, because in China, to end on an even step means that you are at the top of the world, and we must symbolically admit that we can always improve. The steps are made of brick, and secured with mortar. Then we put down a thick (4-5 inch) layer of cement, which we made by mixing dirt, rock, and water in a mixer. This has now dried. The next step is to put down some concrete everywhere – a large task – and then to lay down the slabs we unloaded today in the appropriate areas.

Okay, now I'm off to bed. See you tomorrow.

Day 10: Maybe Tomorrow

It rained on and off all day long, which is an improvement from earlier days, but not yet enough to do much work. We will be doing some heavy lifting tomorrow though, and it looks like we'll finally get the weather we've been hoping for.

The day commenced, as usual, with English class at 7:30. We started with our skit, as promised, and it involved a bank, a police station, and a jail. I was the bank owner (as well as a corrections officer later), Tao Yuan was the thief, Cherry was the police officer, and Eric was Tao Yuan's roommate in jail. And of course, the skit was in simple English, even involving an exchange of pleasantries between Tao Yuan and I before he robbed me, and between Tao Yuan and Eric when they met in jail. Afterwards, the groups each performed their skits. Theirs were understandably less complex plot-wise than ours, but some of them were actually pretty good. I think my favorite moment of the morning was when one of the students, Tao Shan Shan, said during her group's skit, "That sounds great! We can kill two birds with one stone." We definitely are not teaching them idioms, but this is the same student who, when we asked them what vegetables they knew in English, came up with leek.

We spent the rest of the morning doing some grammar practice. They seemed relatively comfortable with the basic tenses, so I attempted an ill-conceived lesson in the subjunctive; it did not go well. We went back to the more basic grammar, and it soon became clear that only a few kids knew the material. So we wrote this on the board:

Last night, I ______.
Now, I ______.
Tomorrow, I ______.
On weekends, I usually ________.

This seemed an effective template to help them understand the different conjugations of verbs for different tenses. We also changed pronouns every once in a while.

The afternoon was again uneventful, but all of us are very hopeful that tomorrow will be different. At dinner, I tried a new food: bird egg. Now some of you who know me well know that I have a great fondness for hard-boiled eggs. But these are better. First of all, they are bite-size. And second of all, they are boiled in tea leaves, so they have a flavor of their own; it is not necessary to season them with sauce. This was a wonderful discovery.

I think that about does it for today, but I promise to have a more detailed update of our progress on the park tomorrow night. See you then.

Day 9: At Least the Fog Is Pretty

Gaoxiang is a village on a mountainside, and on the rainy days, the fog rolls down into the valley; the result is a very picturesque scene. However, that is about the only bright side of the rotten weather we have been having recently.

Only the teaching continues unabated. This morning we began by providing some alternative answers to the question, "How are you?" The students have been replying, "I'm good," and we all know that's bad grammar, so I wrote something on the board that looked like this:

Q: How are you?
A: I am well. How are you?
A: Fine, thank you. How are you?
A: I am okay. How are you?

I couldn't help but think back to my days reading Gödel, Escher, Bach (part of this has to do with the fact that I just started the new Hofstadter book), and that this sort of setup could lead to an infinite loop of conversation. However, for the most part the kids understood to only ask the question once and leave the second sentence off the second time.

We then moved into new territory: place names. We started with things like post office and museum and moved onto things like police station and convenience store. By the time our list was done it was at least 30 in number and I still am confident we forgot at least one common item. But we drilled the names (with correct pronunciation) and translations into the children's heads for the rest of the day. We then split the kids into groups and will have them write skits involving at least 3 of the place names we learned. As an example, Eric, Tao Yuan, Cherry, and I will be performing our own skit tomorrow morning before the kids start writing. Today they only picked the places they would use.

After class was over, a journalist from Tonglu (a suburb of Hangzhou) stopped by to talk to us about the park, although at least a small portion of the discussion concerned the English teaching. We took her down to the park site, where the cement had thankfully dried before the rain started. While down there, I reflected with pride on how far we have progressed; I just hope the weather lets us complete what we set out to accomplish.

As we could do no work in the rain, we instead took another tourism-inspired trip into Tonglu, this time to visit the world's tenth biggest underground cave. The cave itself was beautiful, but there was too much artificial colored lighting for my taste. It was also quite wet down there.

After we returned and ate dinner, we stopped by two local businesses to pick out some marble tables and chairs for seating areas. The chairs themselves were somewhat unconventional by Western standards: they had no backs and were cylindrical like barrels. The first set actually looked like barrels, and were a little bit to small for one to sit comfortably. The other set was flared in the Greek style, and as a result had slightly more surface area for sitting. That set was slightly more expensive (100 kuai, or just under $20), but we decided it was worth it. There is still some debate as to how many sets we will get, but it looks like it will be somewhere in the vicinity of four. Afterwards, we walked down by the river, and on our way back up we saw a group of villagers socializing at one of the park sites; this was heartening to me, as I am glad that there will be people to use the tables and chairs.

I am hoping against hope that tomorrow will bring more favorable weather; I would think by now that there's no more rain left in the clouds. I guess we'll see if I'm right. Good night.

Day 8: More Rain

No progress was made on the park today as it rained all day long. We taught English in the morning as usual, and Cherry and I continued reinforcing the food vocabulary that we have been teaching. We used a turn-based team style game to get the kids to list the vocabulary for different categories, such as meat and vegetables. At the end, the losing team had to come up with another skit to perform, again centered around ordering food in a restaurant.

This afternoon was relatively lazy when compared to our usual manual labor. We all took much-needed naps, and I read a fair bit. We ate dinner early. At dinner, we had some bai jiu (literally, white alcohol, but the Chinese use it to describe all liquor). It was a clear liquid, and it was 120 proof, or 60% alcohol (compared with standard American liquors like vodka, rum, and whiskey which are all 80 proof). The extra proof made a good bit of difference. We had to drink it very slowly, and eat more to compensate. On that front, I tried two new foods (well two new body parts) today: chicken neck and pig foot. Chicken neck is pretty bland (just like chicken foot), and also not very rewarding to eat, as it is mostly bone. Pig foot, on the other hand, is quite tasty, although as a general rule pork is my least favorite meat. One of our students, Feng Ji Chen, joined us for dinner, but as her English is still very much in the developmental phase, the conversation took place in Chinese. This brings me to another tidbit of Chinese culture: in China, and especially in rural China, most people leave their front doors open, and if someone wanders into your house during dinnertime, you are culturally obligated to feed them. This social idiosyncracy is not taken advantage of; I have only so far seen this student of ours and the principal come to the dinner table (on different evenings), and they both had reason to be there.

This next part concerns differences between Chinese and English and is a bit esoteric, so if that sort of thing does not interest you, feel free to skip this paragraph. Feng Ji Chen was offered a particular dish of food while we were eating, and her response was chi bu lai (chi means eat, bu means no, and lai means come, but all together it means I can't/won't eat it). I inquired as to why lai was used instead of liao; chi bu liao would mean I physically cannot eat any more. To my friends', and hosts', credit, they did not lose patience with me as I struggled to understand. By the end, my understanding has evolved to where I think that chi bu liao has a stricter definition (only physically unable to eat), while chi bu lai is slightly more flexible. It seems, however, that chi bu liao might have been acceptable in this instance. This has been part of a wider pattern that I have noticed, and it is one that has been pointed out to me by native speakers. Chinese is a language of much fewer and looser definitions than English. It is conventional wisdom that as one's English gets better, one begins to use more and more words to describe their actions, as they can become more and more specific. However, Chinese works slightly differently: as you learn more, you say less and more is implied by your speech. The language is not overly burdened with rigorous definitions, so phrases are not bound as tightly by the strictures of definitional nuance that often plague English, confusing foreigners. I don't think necessarily think that the Chinese way works better, although it has its conveniences; I merely think that perhaps both languages are a little extreme in their method at times.

Hopefully the weather will cooperate tomorrow, and we will be able to continue work. See you tomorrow night.

Day 7: Yes, We Worked on the Sabbath

We got a lot done today. The morning started as planned, at 7:30, with English class. Today Cherry and I finished teaching the children food vocabulary, and then proceeded to teach them words that have to do with ordering food in a restaurant. Cherry explained each item to the children while I wrote the item on the board and drew a picture of it. This culminated in having the children separate into groups and write skits using the words they just learned. They then performed the skits for us. It was a sight to behold. Although pronunciation is still a real problem, they are eager to learn and seem to want to work. After all, they are in school on a Sunday in the summer. I am hopeful that they will improve greatly.

This afternoon we put down a layer of cement at both worksites. This involved a massive cement mixer and lots of stones, dirt, and water. We had more workers than ever before and the operation was like that of a beautiful machine. Everyone had a job, and every job fit together. Now at the end of the day, the designated areas in our park each have a smooth, dry(ing) layer of black cement sitting on top of them.

This post is perhaps a bit more brief than those before it, but I am more tired now than I have been at the end of days previous. I was hoping to finish The History of Love tonight, but perhaps I will delay that in favor of getting a good night's rest. If my mind doesn't need it, the soles of my feet certainly do. Good night.

Day 6: Working Weekends

So today I got half of my wish from yesterday; it only rained for half the day today. In the morning we taught English to children at the local school. I neglected to mention in my last post that Tracey (the girl from Hangzhou) left last night because she has driving lessons this coming week. So there are only four of us in the house now. Tao Yuan and Eric taught the class of younger children, while Cherry and I handled the older kids, many of whom were 18. Their English was obviously not great, but I was generally impressed with their vocabulary. We started out very simply, as I wrote a dialogue on the board that went like this:

A: Hello.
B: Hello. What is your name?
A: My name is Joshua. What is your name?
B: My name is Cherry. How are you?
A: Fine, thank you. How are you?
B: Fine, thank you.
A: So what do you like to do?
B: I like to shop. And you?
A: I like to read.
B: That's great!

This was reconstructed from my very dim memory of learning French at a very young age. It was rather difficult to demonstrate in front of the class without laughing, the conversation was so bland. Of course we had the children practice, inserting their names and hobbies in the place of ours. Later we taught them the English words for various foods, and although my Chinese is much better than their English, I did not know the Chinese words for much of what they learned in English today.

We spent a good deal of time on pronunciation, particularly on the "th" sound that is rather difficult for Asians. Many of them were pronouncing "thank" "sank." But I must say that I was impressed with how eager to learn they were; there were no disruptions of the kind that I would normally expect in a high school classroom. For readers who have never been to China, municipal government is known for being incompetent and ineffective; likewise municipal services usually leave much to be desired. I have great respect for the principal of the school, whom as I mentioned, we met with yesterday. He seems genuinely interested in the childrens' well-being.

After a morning of classes, we ate lunch (no new exotic foods today), and then went out to start working. We were at the other worksite today, as construction as stopped on the first worksite until the necessary materials arrive (which they did at the end of the day). We were essentially leveling the ground in preparation for paving. In this manner, the rain of this morning and yesterday was useful; it provided us with an easy indicator of which areas were lower than the others. These we filled in with excess dirt from the high places. After our labor was finished, we took a walk to the other campsite, where we saw that the materials for cement had been delivered. Then, we decided to walk a little bit further to tour the river that runs through Gaoxiang. I had not yet been to this area of the town, and I am glad I got the opportunity. It was quite beautiful; it is difficult to impress upon you how green the fields are what with all the rain and humidity, but hopefully when I can upload pictures onto this site they will tell an adequate story.

I suppose that's all for today, and tomorrow should provide more of the same: half a day of teaching, and half a day of labor. I will report dutifully on both. Good night.

Day 5: Rain, Rain, Go Away

So as you can see I did not succeed in getting the pictures up. Oh well. When this is over I will put them up on Flickr, and then I can embed a slideshow on this site. Or you could just see me in person.

As you might have guessed from the title of this post, it rained today. All day long. Suffice to say we got zero work done. We met with the principal of the local primary school this morning, to discuss a schedule of teaching the children English and mathematics (incidentally, there is a sign near the school which is the only one in the area which I can read in its entirety; it says, "Happily go to school and peacefully return home."). From now on we will be doing a half day of labor on the park and a half day of teaching. Progress should remain swift though, as we will still have the few local workers on the job all day.

In the afternoon, we decided to go have fun in Tonglu, which is a suburb of Hangzhou. Tonglu is much larger than Gaoxiang, and I'm sure I am not the first American to go there, but I was more acutely aware of my race today than I think I have ever been. People stared unabashedly at me, and would stop what they were doing to look. It wasn't terribly bothersome, just a little bit jarring.

I learned a few things about Chinese culture today. First of all, if you wear a green hat in China, it means that your spouse is being unfaithful to you (I have no idea why; it is the equivalent of horns in the West). Also, you should never give a Chinese person a clock or a watch as a gift, because when they receive it it means that "their time has come" (i.e. to die). These I learned through conversation. I also went to Chinese karaoke for the first time today. You are put in a room with a large television and brought drinks, and you have a certain amount of time, during which you may select songs and sing to your heart's content. And yes, they do have American songs. I must confess that I felt a bit uncomfortable at first, but it was actually pretty fun. There were at least five songs in a row by the Backstreet Boys (not my choice, I swear). Then, we went out to dinner, and a very delicious meal consisting of a wide variety of meats and vegetables, including bamboo shoots, which I tried for the first time (I also ate salamander back in Gaoxiang, and that was quite good actually). Chinese dining is buffet style, and they have a turntable in the center onto which they place all the dishes which have been ordered (usually only one person orders the food), and then you spin it to get at the food you want. Quite efficient, although I still feel slightly awkward with chopsticks.

Work should resume tomorrow, provided that the weather cooperates with us. I added two new things to the site today: a reading list and a blog roll. I feel like this site is relatively bland and boring, so hopefully this makes it more worthwhile. I recommend everything that goes on there, unless I say otherwise.

I'm going to bed, but most of you should go make yourselves some lunch. See you tomorrow.

Day 4: Finally A Post!

Sorry to be away for so long; the internet here is not what you would call reliable. Anyway, we've been here for several days, and have already made some progress on turning some land into a park.

It is quite hot here, close to 110 during the day. This means a lot of sweating, and the need for lots of water. This is bad, because tap water in China is undrinkable (even by locals), so water must first be boiled before it can be drunk. I was told the food would be mediocre to bad, but in fact it has been pretty good, if eccentric. I tried chicken foot two days ago as well as snail. The former was rather tasteless and the latter quite good.

I am somewhat of a celebrity in Gao Xiang. It is only a town of 500 people, and I am the first white person who has ever set foot in the village. This just means that everyone stares at me. The locals are very friendly, but completely incomprehensible for me, and mostly incomprehensible for my native Chinese friends. I can speak to them, because everyone understands putonghua, but anything coming back that is more complicated than one sentence needs to be translated before I can understand it. However, I have found that I have an easier time understanding children, perhaps because they speak slightly slower. We went to a convenience store last night, and there were children inside, and of course they automatically turned their attention to me. I greeted them, and they pointed at me and said "Foreigner!" and laughed. I said to them, "I am from America," and one of the girls said "America!" and ran around telling the other children in the store. Then, one of the younger boys came up directly behind me and hit me. On the butt. He proceeded to do this four or five times before we could finally leave the store. This was possibly the weirdest experience of my life.

There are usually about 2 or 3 spectators at the worksite at any given moment, and they love to chat. Most of the time they ignore me, as I am a lot of work to talk to, but a woman today made an effort to converse with me. I should interject here and say that in small talk, food is to the Chinese what weather is to us. So of course she asked me about my diet in America. She was particularly interested in how much rice I usually consumed (and here I am eating lots and lots of rice). She also said something that I would roughly translate as, "If I were your mother I would be sad to see you involved in such hard labor." I wasn't sure how to respond to this, and so I didn't.

I apologize if this seems like a rushed post, but it's late and I'm tired, and a lot has happened. I will try to post more regularly, and thus you can get a fuller picture of my experience here. Speaking of pictures, after I post this I will try to upload some, and I don't know how successful I'll be. But in case I am, the shorter Chinese guy is Eric, one of my best friends from high school, the taller Chinese guy is a friend of Eric's from Carnegie Mellon, the taller Chinese girl is also from Carnegie Mellon, and the shorter Chinese girl lives in Hangzhou, and none of us know her that well. She is very nice, although it is difficult to communicate sometimes because here English is not that much better than my Chinese.

I think that's all for now, but I hope to have another post up tomorrow. Good night.

Arrived in Beijing

So I made it. I haven't slept in 24 hours, but I'm here, and about to go get some dinner. It's 87 degrees, and we have a ways south to go to my final destination (see below post). Fun.

Sorry this isn't more involved, but I'm really tired. Once we get to Gao Xiang it will become more exciting, and I'll probably be uploading photos to this site. I think that's all I've got.

Oh! Walter Cronkite died. That's a bummer.

Overview of Trip

I'd like to give you guys an overview of the trip that I'll be on, but first I'd like to give special thanks to Luke and Amy for posting such supportive comments yesterday (hmm... it's rather difficult to be sarcastic while typing).

So I will be in a small village called Gao Xiang which is in the province of Zhe Jiang on the coast of China. We are about an hour outside of a fairly sizable city called Hangzhou, and also a few hours south of Shanghai.


View Larger Map

This is where my friend Eric's father grew up. He has decided to commission the building of a park there, as a way to give back to the community he was part of. Eric and several of his friends (myself included) will be overseeing the operation, all the way from design through material purchase and construction to completion. We will also be teaching English and possibly remodeling some classrooms. I'm leaving this Friday (the 17th), and won't be returning until August 19th.

This is a very exciting opportunity for me, as it is a chance to be creative and get some experience contributing to the management of a project, and it is a good way for me to improve my Chinese. I am very grateful to Eric for allowing me this opportunity.

Welcome to My Blog

So I haven't actually left for China yet, but I decided to set this up a few days early, and perhaps get into the swing of blogging daily. This blog will mainly be a catalog of my adventures in China (see title of blog), but I am not above using it as a soapbox to rant/link about/to other stuff. Enjoy!