I attended a large gathering of mostly Americans last night, with a few British, Australian, Canadian, and Chinese thrown in. Whether living here or just passing through, the word got out that there would be a 4th of July barbecue and some fireworks.
I made a giant bowl of potato salad, starting with 3 kilos of potatoes. With all the other stuff added in, I’m pretty sure we had at least 2 gallons of the stuff. I thought it needed more salt; nobody else seemed to notice. It disappeared within an hour of my arrival.
The fireworks were fun, but required us to explain to some of the locals what the big fuss was about. After all, fireworks are for the lunar new year. They nodded, but of course I have to wonder if they understood at the same level as we do. I want to say more, and my VPN makes it look like I’m posting this from Hong Kong, but I feel like I can’t post what I really want to say if I want this stupid little blog to remain accessible within China. After all, some foreigner just got deported for his actions on the internet, though he was clearly a bit of a stalker and a total nut. It sets a precedent. I hope that my reluctance to say what I want here speaks volumes, though I don’t want anyone to get the idea that I dislike everything here. I just hate the glaze of dishonesty that covers much of the official communication, so that one never really knows what’s going on.
P.S. For a happier ending to this post, imagine a handful of last night’s partygoers singing at least a few bars of our national anthem while the fireworks were going off. There was no all-encompassing chorus of patriotism, but a few were inspired, including myself.
After saying for months that I want a bike, not knowing where to buy one used, and trying to rent a bike from a friend who owns a travel company (it was too big…surprise!), I was told that basic bikes are only 350 yuan new. Today, I went and bought one. With a basket on the front and a lock for the back wheel, it came to 370. I briefly considered the folding bike since I could take that back to the states with me, but it was over 500 and not really a feature that I need. It has but one gear (freewheel, not fixie) and is a pleasing shade of lime green. It won’t go home to the U.S. with me, but it gives me more incentive to build that 3-speed I’ve been thinking about.
I got some taters in mah basket!
My first task with the bike was picking up the ingredients for the potato salad I’m making for the 4th of July at the wet market, where I was reminded of the #1 rule for market shopping: don’t wear sandals. I waver between wanting to know what made my foot wet and being glad that I don’t know. I was successful, and am now the proud owner of a huge jar of miracle whip, a small jar of yellow mustard, and all the veggies I wanted except for little red radishes. Gigantic bludgeon-a-whale sized daikon are the only available radishes.
The biggest shock, bigger than mystery water on my foot, was that I didn’t have to buy creepy Asian mayo that is shelf-stable for a decade or so. I had the choice between Hellman’s and Miracle Whip, and I chose the Miracle Whip so I could be faithful to my grandma’s recipe. It wasn’t until I made it home that I started to vaguely remember that the gluten content of Miracle Whip is unknown to me. I thought I remembered something about the fat-free variety being okay, but the original being off-limits. Luckily, multiple fora and the Kraft website informed me that I was wrong, and I can eat their HFCS-laden (you can’t win ‘em all…) goo to my heart’s content. The mustard also turned out to be ok. This is the downside of usually making all my food from scratch — on the rare occasion I need to buy something processed, I haven’t memorized the list of safe products.
My next task with the bike is to pick up the cake I ordered for a friend’s going-away party. She’s been an incredible co-teacher, and starts at Berkeley in the fall.
Just before dawn this morning – no idea what time it was – I started hearing loud banging. In my half-daze I just assumed someone was banging on the metal doors of the Thangka Center next door, but really had no idea why someone would need to get in that early. Eventually shouts of “Fire!” carried to my ears and the banging reached our door. We were told, quickly, that it was not our building or the Thangka Center, but the one behind it. Still, it’s not uncommon here for one roof to touch another, and everything depended on the wind. Since it was still dark, it was shocking to see the orange glow lighting up our whole block.
As I looked around, knowing that we were easily safe enough to grab whatever we wanted, I couldn’t choose. Everything is replaceable. To eliminate the possibility of hassle, I grabbed my computer, wallet, camera, glasses, and Kindle. I saw that the hubs was pausing to put on actual clothing, so I figured jeans would be an improvement over fleece pants. I tossed on a sweatshirt and my hiking boots and was out the door with a bucket. Next door, I went upstairs and started removing some of the thangka paintings from the walls and handing them to one of my students. Given that the right side of his body is badly scarred by burns he was handing things surprisingly well. No fear, no panic, just happy to have something to do and someone telling him to do it. I’m not sure how that person ended up being me.
As I was removing one of the paintings, I realized I could feel some warmth through the wall and decided to stop where I was. I grabbed the largest buddha statue on the altar, and the hubs successfully got a very old thangka down that I had struggled with and gave up on. I knew it was old, but we found out later that it’s a few hundred years old. The three of us headed down the street, and my student laughed and said he didn’t know where we were going. Again taking charge, I told him to take us to the student dormitory. He nodded and showed us the way.
We passed a firetruck sitting in the street in front of what used to be a guesthouse, but no water was pumping. A crowd was gathered to watch it burn, it seemed. We went back to our room and gathered less-essential-but-good-to-have items including clothes, books, and medicines, and took those down to the dormitory too. I had put our phones and cameras in a bag rather than a pocket, so the hubs asked me to bring him his phone and disappeared.
As it turned out, nobody was fighting the fire because there was no water pressure. I called a nearby friend to make sure he was up, then went to look for my husband again. He was on a nearby roof, probably helping remove shingles so there was less fuel. I never thought to ask. So I watched the guesthouse burn. I stood in the courtyard, and it sunk in that the woman crying next to me was the owner. By this time, there was water pressure and they had a few hoses going from each side. With my hand on her back in what I hope was a comforting gesture, we watched the men jump back as the roof collapsed, then watched more men come forward with long, hooked poles to pull down the large beams in a more controlled way.
View from the Roof. The side walls are packed earth and not in danger of being burned. The small windows did make it hard to get to the fire on the 2nd floor though.
I moved up to the roof of the Thangka Center to get a better view of the fire and my husband. My students were all up there helping to hold a hose to spray from the side, and I sat with the student who had helped me move the paintings. He watched, but did not seem any more disturbed than the rest of the crowd. I watched a few rather absurd things happen. Water pressure dipped again, and the firefighters took a drink from the hose and lit up cigarettes. On the roof containing my husband, someone took out a pack and passed out smokes to everyone who wanted one. Someone said, “where’s Kristin?” and I called the other English teacher here to find out. She had heard some commotion but was too groggy to comprehend and just went back to sleep. By that time, the danger had passed and she didn’t bother to move her things. I went back to the dormitory to make sure our bags were not being looted.
The aftermath. What the camera didn't catch is the stream of water still coming in at the top left.
In the end, they got the fire out, but the building was destroyed. To my knowledge, nobody was hurt. We hauled our things back, and the students proceeded to light a fire in the stove and cook breakfast. It was a little surreal. I’m asking the owner for a fire extinguisher today.
The hubs just walked in and handed me a baked potato. I almost got teary-eyed while imagining it was covered in sour cream.
Some people have expressed interest in seeing pics of our abode. Before I post these pictures, I must remind you that we have ONE ROOM in this house. It’s pretty huge, and I’m glad I don’t have to clean all of it.
I have a surprisingly easy time most days avoiding gluten, but the past couple have been rough. Something bothered my stomach, and I don’t know what it could have been.
Two nights ago I stayed up until about 2am. I had finally gotten the new update for my Kindle which allows books to be placed into collections, so I labeled all my books then stayed up even later reading. Without a small lamp to read by, I have to have the big bright room light on so it’s easy to stay up. The result was that I slept through breakfast, which was probably going to be butter tea and roasted barley flour (tzampa) anyway. So I pulled out my bag of emergency gluten-free oats given to me by my brother-in-law prior to the trip, boiled some water, and readied the honey. It was to be my first oatmeal since Kunming.
Yesterday morning I learned that rolled oats can go rancid, and no amount of honey hides this flavor.
I was later gifted with fresh yak yogurt, but without a clean spoon to dunk back into the honey, it was too sour to eat plain. If you think plain cow-milk yogurt is too sour (I don’t) then this would be unbearable. I suck on lemons, and I couldn’t eat this. It explains why I can’t find unsweetened yogurt in the store though.
Today, I woke at a reasonable time because I cut my reading off around 11:30, but breakfast was (wait for it) butter tea and tzampa. It looked like the cook had fried up some rice, possibly for me, but all that remained was a dirty pan.
The bean cake fryer.
I filled up my mug with butter tea, (the electricity just went out as I was typing this) grabbed a metal food tin, and headed to the square for some street food. My favorite guy was there, and still setting up for the day. Luckily for me, he got his fires going and his food cooking before bothering with the tent and benches. Today my breakfast was liang fen, which is starting to become a delicious habit for me.
Liang fen is a cake made of bean starch. It wobbles a bit like jello and is usually white or sometimes yellow. In Kunming, I had it sliced into sticks and served cold with cucumbers and various seasonings. In Shangri-la is is a repulsive, delicious grey, served fried, mushed up a bit, and covered with hot peppers, green onions, cilantro, vinegar, some oil with what looks like crushed peanuts, and some hua jao (Sichuan numby peppercorn). It still requires a bit of attention though, since they have a big jar of soy sauce sitting there, and they want to use the ladle for every liquid on offer.
Half in my stomach, half in my bowl-thing.
Despite knowing that it gets dipped in everything for the other customers, I tell myself that if I don’t see them do it, it’s ok. Today I had a spoon with me so she used it for the liquids. One of these times, I’ll have to take a friend to explain to these nice people why I panic when they mix the spoons. I know enough Chinese now to keep them from adding the soy sauce, but not enough to explain that it’s more than a preference.
To wrap up, delicious breakfast for about $0.40, and it didn’t poison me. Now I wait for the electricity and/or the water to come back on. 
I’m deviating from the book more, and this week we’ve had some lessons on comparative and superlative adjectives. It’s not the most fun in the world, but sure as hell beats another day of “turn to page 12 in your workbook”. About a half an hour before the first class today, I decided to google “superlative song” to see if anything good popped up. On a forum somewhere, someone recommended “My Love” by Petula Clark. Doesn’t ring a bell? I’ll give you a hint:
My love is deeper than the deepest ocean, softer than a sigh.
JACKPOT!
I downloaded it and transferred it to my mp3 player and played it at the end of class. I asked the students to raise their right hand when they hear a comparative adjective, and their left hand when they hear a superlative. It’s a really fast song, so I did it with them and let them copy me.
This evening for the second class, I’ll have a lyric printout for them so they can read through and circle the words first. We’ll listen a few times and hopefully I can get them to sing along
I’ve been planning to show Finding Nemo in my class all week. I watched it ahead of time, taught necessary vocab and cultural references beforehand, and typed up a short list of questions for them to answer during the movie.
I’ve used a bunch of projectors for various presentations throughout college and grad school, so I thought I was giving myself about 12 minutes too many when I started to set up 15 minutes before class. Unfortunately, the sound system here isn’t set up to hook into a computer, so we had picture but no sound. One of the students said he had seen the movie at the Handicraft Center, so I sent him over to borrow the DVD.
They didn’t have it. So we’re watching The Jungle Book instead. Fifteen minutes into the movie, and I’m not happy. Half the characters speak with British accents, the narrators use vocab the students don’t know, and Baloo told Mogli he was “gonna learn him” how to do something. Shoot me now. On top of all that, it’s old Disney, which means it doesn’t have any adult appeal built into the script. I have one 14-year-old student who is laughing a lot, but it’s really too childish for everyone else. It’s a nice break from the textbook though, so we’ll see if they want to finish it during the evening class.
A few weeks ago, I went to a yoga class here in Shangri-la. It consisted of 2 of the LONGEST sun salutations I’ve ever done in my life, plus some time in boat pose and a couple of others. My yoga mat was not really something I considered packing, so I ended up using one there…against my better judgment. One can’t really do yoga in socks, so yeah, you can probably see where this is going.
Two nights later I woke up with intense itching and burning on my feet. I have been coating my feet in various creams and sprays both brought from home and purchased here ever since. It was gone for a while and came back with a vengeance 4 or 5 days ago, and I wrote to my MIL to make sure I was treating it with the right stuff. It’s never been so persistent before. If I had enemies, I MIGHT be cruel enough to wish this upon them. It is so distracting at all times of the day.
Last night, in search of powder to keep my feet dry on the days when it’s too cold for sandals, I took my lovely hubs into a pharmacy. I had already tried searching and miming at two places, so his help was necessary. There was no powder, but there were 2 things I could soak my feet in. They would supposedly help my feet stay dry. The “better” of the 2, which was the one with all the commercials on tv, went home with me for the equivalent of $2.
The hubs also had to read the directions for me, and they stated that I had to mix the whole bottle of solution in an appropriate amount of hot water and soak for half an hour. If the problem persists, I have to wait 20 days to repeat.
I have no idea what is in this stuff. It stinks. And I’ve managed to misjudge the cold-to-boiling ratio, so I’m soaking for half an hour in lukewarm water past my ankles. And I keep having mental images of my Kindle sliding off my lap and into this bucket, so I grip it extra tight while I read.
So let me set the scene – I am in the bathroom, on the toilet lid, reading with my feet in a bucket of stinky, green, barely warm liquid. The hubs is at the desk, using his computer. It’s about 9pm. The lights go out, and we hear a huge smash. We still don’t know how or why, but a fuse had blown in our building which caused our light to break. Or maybe it broke, causing the fuse to blow. Either way, we ended up with a live wire dangling from the ceiling, glass all over the floor, and a searing hot light casing in the middle of it all.
The painting instructor who lives below us came up and peeled the wires apart to prevent a short circuit (the fuse was out so it wasn’t live then…I assume it is now) and lent us a broom and dustpan. I had emerged from the bathroom dripping green liquid (the hubs said, “what stinks?”) and wearing flip-flops to help with the cleanup, but went back in to complete my soak after it was over.
I wasn’t timing the soak, so I pulled my feet out when the burning started to become a bit worrisome. The tops of my feet and ankles were bright red, but my toes and soles looked like zombie leper feet. They had taken on a greenish-grey pallor and were enhanced by peeling and bubbling areas that I hadn’t been aware of. I dried them with the blow dryer, and the burning on the previously normal areas of my feet became actually frightening. I scratched, which removed some skin, so I decided a cold wet washcloth would be better. It was.
Wet again, I had to blow dry my feet a second time, then coat in the aforementioned cream. I went to bed, hoping I would still have feet in the morning. Now, they are…normal. All night, the itching was confined to a single toe, and was quite manageable. I am not afraid that people will run away in tears if I wear sandals.
What are you, noxious green wonder liquid?
For the first few days of the week, we were missing electricity for a good part of the day. Normally, it starts some time in the afternoon and is back on before dark. One day though, it went out sometime early in the morning before we awoke, and we noticed it because the electric blanket was no longer keeping us cozy. Unfortunately, when the power goes out at the Thanka Center, it’s out in all of Old Town and the first block of New Town…which means no coffee or internet. If you’re reading this, then I’ve been able to make myself a cup of tea and all is well.
Now that I’ve gotten the traveling and first visa run out of the way, I’ll be settled here in Shangri-la until sometime in July. This makes settling into a routine MUCH easier, and I look forward to seeing my students progress instead of wondering what they learned while I was gone. I also started thanka lessons on Monday, though I don’t spend 6 hours a day on it like the other students. It will fill up my days a lot more than they have been so far, but that will keep me from spending too much time on the internet and overplanning my lessons. I have started with drawing a lotus and some leaves a few times, and hopefully they’ll let me touch the paint sometime before I leave.
We also received our first package here, courtesy of my mum. She sent some much-needed Pepto and Ny-quil, which apparently annoyed customs enough to hang onto things for a MONTH. Also included were some warm weather clothes, which seemed pretty silly on the day they arrived. The package must have also contained sunny weather, since it’s been beautiful ever since and it makes me optimistic.
*I had to use that title since I was banned from making any Seoul Man jokes while we were there.
Oh, Korea. You and your respected traffic laws, delicious kimchi, active temples, and old and new friends. Why must you perplex me with your not-really-cheese-sticks, official lack of homosexuals, and actual lack of trashcans?
We’ve actually been back in China for a week now, but had 2 nights in Beijing (that made me think I might be able to really like Beijing), a day and a half on a train to Kunming, then the night train/bus combo that got me back to Shangri-la…where I immediately contracted yet another cold and lost my voice for about a day and a half.
One of the things that stood out about our trip is that I’m a total dork for subways. In Seoul, we used them to get to where our hosts wanted to take us, but in Beijing I purposely planned my free days around places near the subway lines. It was easy, cheap, and I got to zoom around in underground tunnels like a mole on speed. What could be better?
Our arrival in Seoul was on a Friday around lunchtime, when our friends were both at work. They had given us directions on how to get from the airport to Insidong so we could entertain ourselves easily. We found lunch (kimchi stew!) and wandered down the street to the old palace and nearby folk museum. It was easy to see that building wooden palaces made it too easy for the Japanese to burn them down; this was also the case at the old summer palace in Beijing. In a wide open space that used to be occupied by houses for concubines, we met a lot of magpies. They’re huge, funny birds that like to hop around, and I’ve heard that they are rather mischievous. It seemed fitting that they had taken the place of the concubines. The folk museum was our next stop, and I really wish we had had more time there. The displays were well kept-up, and the English on the signs was both correct and informative. In China you tend to see a lot of physical descriptions of an object on display, but no information on how said object was used or why it’s in the museum at all.
As we waited to meet up with an old HS friend of the hubs, I wandered into a little convenience store to check out some Korean snack food. I emerged triumphant with a little bottle of plum juice and what looked like a cheese stick. The hubs eyed it warily and thought it might actually be some sort of bizarre white sausage. After running back to the store to get it snipped open by the clerk, I walked back towards the hubs with a big grin, peeling the wrapper off the top. As I took a bite, he watched my face take on an expression of absolute horror and he laughed as I ran around looking for a trashcan. I had to settle for a large sack of trash sitting in a corner. It wasn’t cheese, it wasn’t sausage, and it shouldn’t have been called edible. I briefly recalled the clerk’s smirk as I was paying for it, and tucked away the rest of it so I could ask our friends about it. I pulled it out shortly after meeting them, and before I could even ask, their expressions simultaneously turned to panic and they shouted “Don’t eat that!”
In all, the trip was great. It was great to meet an old friend of the hubs’ (G) and his fiancée (M), and absorb teaching tips from them. I got to visit a very large yarn market, and was finally able to pick up buttons for the coat I’m making. It was also interesting to discover how much I had in common (including internet friends) with M, and we enjoyed taunting the men about how they were essentially partnered with the same person. She even brushed up on her glutenny vocab to help me figure out what was safe to eat and found a bottle of safe soy sauce for me to bring back. Lastly, their apartment had one of the most amazing features I’ve ever encountered in a house—sub-floor heating. It eliminates the nasty problem of walking around with cold feet, and radiates up to warm the whole place. The only downside was that we were sleeping on a guest mattress on this floor, so it actually got TOO hot at night.
In the middle of all this, I got to have 2 lunches and visit a temple with a Korean friend from my TESOL course. As she took us around, she kept mentioning how she had never been to certain places even though she was from Seoul. We were tour guides for her in her own city! The temple was really interesting too. I’m so used to temples in other Asian countries being tourist attractions. The one we went to in Seoul obviously had a large congregation, as they had a few thousand lanterns hung for the Buddha’s birthday celebration, and were doing some sort of ceremony for children when we were there. The place was packed.
As mentioned above, we left Korea and spent 2 nights in Beijing. Since the hubs was meeting with folks, I had the city to myself. I spent my first day wandering around the old summer palace, which has extensive grounds and both smashed and burned ruins. On day 2, I ventured out to find a store called Jenny Lou’s. It’s a well-known store stocking all sorts of imported goods from around the world, and I read online that gluten-free products were available there. The location I chose to try was in the section of town that held all the embassies, so I got to walk past a lot of well-guarded, identical buildings. I paused to squint in front of each one just to see whose it was, and noticed after a while that the guard in front of each one was picking up his radio when I stopped. I imagine there was something said about a nosy girl with a green bag, and I decided that taking pictures was out of the question. I never saw the US embassy, but did eventually find Jenny Lou’s. My purchases there were limited to tortilla chips, a grody avocado dip from Australia, fake nutella, and two of those Happy Cow 8-piece cheese wheels. Out of the 16 pieces, only 2 made it back to Shangri-la with me.
Me and cheese. We are friends. Unless you’re Korean “cheese”. We are not friends.
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