Nanjing, China

It’s been quite a while since I last updated. Between moving out of the hostel in Nanjing, starting the second part of our program here, and teaching in Dangtu County, Anhui, it’s been pretty busy. During all this time, though, I’ve managed to take quite a lot of photos, so for this post, I’m going to let the photos do most of the talking.

During our four weeks in Nanjing, we were volunteering at Home of Blessings, a school for developmentally disabled young adults. The students gave us all nicknames after characters in a popular Chinese T.V. show called “Xi Yangyang and Hui Tailang.” The basic premise of the show is that there are a group of sheep (whose names all end in Yangyang, which means sheep) who are constantly pursued by the wolf Hui Tailang, and his wife, Hong Tailang, and most constantly outsmart him. As a present, Amy, one of the Chinese volunteers at Home of Blessings gave us fans with our respective characters on them. 

L-R: Jen (Lan Yangyang, Lazy Sheep), Laurel (Mei Yangyang, Beautiful Sheep), Laura (Fei Yangyang, Boiling Sheep), Eli (Hui Talilang, Big Big Wolf), Me (Xi Yangyang, Pleasant Sheep), and Amy in the center.

We spent our 4th of July weekend in Shanghai. That night, we took a boat cruise on the Huangpu River, and got to see the famous Bund.

The next day, we all went sightseeing around the city. Laurel and I went to the Ohel Moishe Synagogue, which is no longer an active synagogue, but has been turned into a museum about the Jews of Shanghai.

Afterwards, we went to the Yu Yuan Gardens, which turned out to be a giant tourist trap.

We spent our fifth week at a very fancy hotel in Nanjing for our orientation for the second part of our program.

During our last weekend in Nanjing, we visited the Confucius Temple. I was really excited to go, firstly because my Chinese surname, 孔 (Kong), is the same as Confucius’, and secondly because two characters in the level two Chinese textbook we use visit Nanjing in one lesson, and go to the Confucius Temple.

Me and my namesake

These past two weeks we’ve been teaching in Dangtu, which hasn’t given us much free time, but on Thursday there was a power outage, which our hosts, Mr. Shang and Mr. Cui, took advantage of to give us a day off and show us around Dangtu.  Dangtu is incredibly hot, but luckily we were able to see most of the scenery from inside the air-conditioned car of our driver, Mr. Fei. 

We were shown the tomb of the famous Tang poet Li Bai.

We also went to visit Mr. Shang’s family… 

… and Mr. Fei’s family, who lives right near a pool hall. I’m not sure if they own the pool hall or not.

Despite the fact that we’ve been busy teaching and going around Dangtu, I’ve come to miss Nanjing quite a lot. It will be nice when we can go back. Dangtu can be too quiet sometimes.

Till next time,

Dena 

The first two weeks of our trip we’ve been teaching English at the Hongshan School for migrant workers’ children.  We originally thought we were going to be teaching middle schoolers, but they gave us third graders instead.  We’ve divided up into two groups, with Laura, Jenn, and Laurel teaching one class, and Eli and I with another class.

Teaching hasn’t been nearly as stressful as I thought it would be.  Usually right before class the teacher gives us the English textbook to look at and tells us what ages she wants us to go over.  The textbook is quite simple, and tends to teach English through the use of dialogues and illustrations.  Usually we’re told to cover a two-page spread in the hour we teach.  Our basic teaching method is to write up the dialogues on the board in English and write the Chinese underneath it.  We then go through the dialogues word by word, making sure everyone knows the dialogues’ meanings in Chinese.  Then we have everyone read them out loud several times as a class.

One of the things I love about our students is how enthusiastic they are about learning English, and how excited they get when we come to teach.  As soon as they see Eli and I walk up the stairs, they begin enthusiastically smiling and waving.  When they get dismissed from their previous class, they immediately run out to the hall where we wait and swarm around us, asking us questions, and telling us things.  The day I brought my camera I couldn’t walk very far, because I was constantly stopped by students who wanted me to take their picture.  One day, before class, one girl was showing me a piece of candy she had.  She offered it to me, and I asked what flavor it was.  Before I knew it, she had unwrapped the candy and shoved it into my mouth, asked me if it was good, then turned to Eli and offered another piece of candy to him.

The students ask me a lot of questions.  They’re all fascinated that I write with my left hand.  I guess they still force students to write with their right hands in China.  My Chinese isn’t good enough to explain to them that I’m a lefty, and what the concept of a “lefty” is, so usually I just tell them that I find writing with my left hand more comfortable.  Another day, they asked Eli and I where we were from.  When I told them we were Americans they then asked us what language Americans speak.  I thought it was pretty obvious that Americans spoke English, considering that’s what we were teaching them, but I guess not.  Several students actually asked if we were from England because we spoke English.

One of the things I’m still not sure how much to focus on is pronunciation.  I obviously want to students to pronounce English correctly, but their Chinese accents do limit some of the sounds they can make in English, like the “th” sound, for example.  During one of our classes, Eli tried to get the kids to say “thank you,” instead of “sank you,” like they usually do, and tried to get them to use the “the” sound by trying to explain the meaning of “sank” in English.  It seemed to work a bit, but the kids obviously need more than just one class to work on being more comfortable with the “th” sound.

I think that if they pronounce words completely wrong, though, then it’s my responsibility as teacher to correct them.  In one of the dialogues we taught, when asked if they like skiing, one of the characters responds with “Yes, I do.”  While listening to the class read the dialogue out aloud, I noticed that one of the boys in the front kept saying, “Yes, I don’t.”  I tried to get him to say, “Yes, I do,” by telling him what he was saying didn’t make any sense in English, and repeating what he said in Chinese, but no matter how many times I tried to get him to say, “Yes, I do,” he kept saying, “Yes, I don’t.”

Since we were only teaching for two weeks three times a week, we weren’t able to make a huge impact in terms of improving the students’ English, but we were still able to make noticeable improvements.  I’m going to miss them a lot now that they’re on break, but I’m so glad I was able to have the opportunity to each them, even if it was only for two weeks.

Reflections

I bought a book of poetry today. It’s a volume of 150 poems, each four lines, with the English and the Chinese side by side. Since then, I’ve been thinking of the poetic side of life here.

Some basic info about the city:

-Nanjing is almost always grey. We had one blue sky the other day after a rain. It surprised us so much we took pictures of the light space over the skyline.

-It is either humid and wet or humid and hot. These are the choices of weather.

-There is heavy pollution in the sky, so that anything more than 100 feet away or so looks a bit hazy. The tallest skyscrapers are always a little dim. Looking down a straight road, the end of it is obscure.

-Although newer buildings buck this trend, most of the city is made up of utilitarian communist architecture. Concrete predominates. This lends the town a uniformity of appearance where many different parts of the city look fairly similar.

-It is quite common for people to stare at us. I think the etiquette surrounding this must be different in the US, because people aren’t bashful about it. Often, someone will continue to check me out even when I have noticed them noticing me. It’s a bit disconcerting.

Together, the plain architectural uniformity and the hazy air produce an effect that makes it seems like the city is receding into the background. It reminds me of the “brown fog” of London in T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland.” I feel at times like we are living in a dreamscape. This is all the more the case, I think, because of the degree to which the West romanticizes the East. Even now, nearly a month in, China retains a surreal glow for me. In this way, my time here has been somewhat akin to how many experience Paris. It makes me recall travelers and writers who have spend their whole lives under spells like these. It’s an enchantment in the old sense of the word: a hex that binds you even as you are aware of its power.

Today it is raining. The city is splashed with color, because everyone in the street uses a bright umbrella. The bicycle riders, similarly, wear colorful ponchos. They contrast the concrete and the grey sky. The ponchos and umbrellas reflect in the water on the ground, casting luminous shadows.

This mistiness only extends so far, and moments of clarity pierce through the fog. Especially loud car horns, conversations, and the smell of fried noodles (among other things) all pull me back from the floating reverie that I’m apt to fall into. Ultimately the unusual events to my eyes, like synchronized dancing in the park, mingle with more familiar city scenes, like couples walking together, pedestrians rushing to catch a bus, or street venders selling their goods.

It is both surprising how similar Nanjing is to Philadelphia—even many of the same stores are now in China—and how acute some of the differences are. A rooster’s crow woke me the other day, but only that once. I keep taking it in, and am newly impressed every day.

Signing off,

-Eli

On Friday the sky was blue. It was the first blue sky we’ve seen since we left America. After experiencing constant days of haze and smog, some that had so much air pollution we could look directly at the sun, we were put in a happy mood that lasted for the rest of the afternoon. Even the air felt lighter that day.

Understanding each other: the vagaries of communication across a language barrier

Before I came to China, I was faced by an important unresolved question. Just how good were my language skills? After a couple of years of study, I have been alternatively satisfied and frustrated by my progress. It’s been incredibly difficult to judge how much progress I’m actually making at any given time. Although I couldn’t ask for better teachers than professors Chiang, Zhang, and Huang, the fact remained that almost all of the speaking experience I had was in a classroom setting. If I could answer questions on a test, so what? Would I be able to talk to someone who didn’t know the vocab words from my textbook? As I boarded the plane, I happily wondered how useless what I learned might be.

Once I arrived, I was immediately put to the test. A customs agent wondered where I was staying during my trip. How to explain I didn’t know the Chinese name of our organization? After generous charades-like gesticulation, helped by an English handout that Dena had in her bag, I managed to get a point across—most probably the one I intended to make. Either way, she let me enter the country (success!).

This interchange set the pattern for what has so far been a very common experience here. I can say talk on some topics reasonably well, and so far my comrades-in-conversation have been extraordinarily understanding. Nonetheless, communication is a very start and stop affair. Just today, I wanted to see if I could switch from my current room (with no window) to another that might have natural light. Simple conversation? Apparently not… As it turns out, I could get my initial desire across fairly well, but when the desk clerk responded, I was left stumbling and repeating “Zai shuo ba?” (say that again?) over and over.

At times this can be very frustrating. Yesterday, the other volunteers and I had planned a day trip to Suzhou, a small (by Chinese standards) canal town between Nanjing and Shanghai. Once at the station, however, I was unable to understand why the price (70元 ~ $10 for one way fare) was so much higher than the Lonely Planet guidebook had suggested (22元 ~ $3). With the pressure of a very long line of people all waiting to engage in efficient, effective ticket-purchasing activities, I ended up deciding I just couldn’t go. Annoying, to say the least.

But there’s an upshot. To be honest, most of the time my efforts at conversation, or “adventures in misunderstanding” if you will, have been more fun than anything else. Although I hardly look dignified, on the whole conversations with the students, waiters, and hostel folks have been, well, hilarious. By laughing through my mistakes, I also have shed much of my apprehension about messing up. As a result, I’m already able to talk much longer before I hit a blank stare (or chortle) from my partner in conversation.

The other wonderful side of this is that, despite the obvious limits on my language skills, I’ve actually been complimented on my Chinese fairly often. This has been more rewarding than any gold medal. Even if the 3rd graders bend in half laughing when at first I can’t understand “why is your arm hair so funny” (or something like that), I know that I’m getting better, and I can laugh with them because, well, arm hair is funny when it comes down to it. Also, pointing and acting is a good way to look silly.

Maybe this speaks more to the basic friendliness of Nanjing-ers (or “radishes,” as they’re nickname goes) than anything else, but at the end of the day, the odd ritual of trying to get my meaning across makes me feel closer to people than I might have if I was totally fluent. A good dose of humility and a big smile seems to be the best way to learn and make friends. So, Nanjing is teaching me a lot about the power of a bright outlook and effective non-verbal communication. It seems like I’m even learning a little Chinese, too.

Keep on laughing,

-Eli

We’ve been in Nanjing for two full weeks. It actually feels like it’s been longer, since we’ve done so much.

Some of the best experiences I’ve personally had here in Nanjing have revolved around food.  We don’t have a kitchen in the hostel, so we have to eat out for every meal.  While I do miss having home-cooked meals, it’s nice to be forced to try all that Nanjing has to offer in terms of food, and this way every meal is made into a small adventure.

We don’t know the names of too many different kinds of foods in Chinese (though we can, ironically, have a conversation about Chinese economic development after the reform and opening up of the country), but our Chinese is just good enough to be able to recognize what kind of meat is in a dish we’re ordering, if there are vegetables, if it’s spicy, if there’s tofu, if there’s fish, and possibly the kind of method used to cook it.  Usually, though, we just guess and hope it’s good.  The other night we went to a restaurant near us and asked for a dish we had there on a previous night.  We couldn’t remember the name of the dish, so we tried to describe it to the waitress.  Apparently we didn’t describe it very well, because we were brought something completely different than what we were hoping to eat.  It still turned out to be good, though.

A favorite dish of ours has been “qing cai,” which is steamed greens and mushrooms.  It’s delicious when eaten with rice and we’ve been ordering it at every chance we get.  We’ve often said that we could probably eat nothing but qing cai for the rest of this trip and be perfectly content.

There’s no shortage of foods available for breakfast. We usually grab something to eat at a food stall on the street, since we’re in a rush in the mornings.  My favorite option is jianbing, a northeastern street food which is a crepe cooked on a griddle with egg, fried dough, and various garnishes and seasonings, which are different depending on the region of China.  The jianbing stand near us puts chili power, some sort of brown sauce, seaweed, shredded cucumbers, and pickled vegetables in theirs.  One can also get buns filled with either meat or vegetables, flaky rolls baked with scallions and sesame seeds, or small rolls that have some sort of green vegetable baked inside (we’re still debating whether it’s spinach, scallions, or something else) sold by one of the Muslim restaurants near us.

I was actually surprised by how many Muslim restaurants there are near us.  On the same street where we get jianbing there are several Muslim restaurants in a row (I think they’re run by Hui Muslims, one of China’s ethnic minorities), and right across the street from us is a food stand run by people from Xinjiang, who are of a different Muslim ethnic minority in China.  Their specialty is mutton kebabs, but they also sell grilled fish, corn on the cob, and a flatbread they call “naan.”  We’ve all come to like the Xinjiang stand quite a lot, because the food is cheap, it’s good, and the guys running it have awesome accents.  They speak Mandarin with an accent that sounds more Middle Eastern or Central Asian than Chinese, which makes sense, since Xinjiang Province borders Kazakhstan and Pakistan, among a few other countries.  Unfortunately, because their accents are so thick, we can’t always understand what they’re saying, but it doesn’t stop us from trying to have conversations with them.

Not surprisingly, there is an abundance of bubble tea stands here in Nanjing.  The price for a glass ranges greatly from 2.5 RMB to 7 or 8 RMB  (about 25 cents to just over $1) depending on the neighborhood you’re in.  There is one particular bubble tea place I prefer to go to near our hostel, because the woman who runs the stand is incredibly nice, ordering gives me a chance to practice my Chinese, learn the names of the different flavors, and it’s only 3.5 RMB for a large glass.  I wouldn’t be surprised if I ended up drinking my weight in bubble tea by the end of the summer.

There are a surprising number of Western-style bakeries here in Nanjing.  All the pastries there have a very distinctive Chinese interpretation of typical Western baked goods.  It seems like every pastry has either a meat or red bean filling.  Taro is quite a popular pastry filling, too.  One of my favorite pastries I’ve discovered in Nanjing are little taro-filled cakes that we buy at a small bakery near Nanjing University.  Despite their similar appearance to Western cakes, some of these pastries can be quite deceptive.  Last week Eli and I got what we thought was a miniature baguette with melted mozzarella cheese on top, and turned out to be more like a cheese danish.

Generally, my experience with food here as been to keep an open mind, and allow for language barriers to occur and small surprises to happen.  The best thing to do if you didn’t get exactly what you wanted is just shrug, laugh about the lack of understanding, and try this unfamiliar dish.  Maybe it will be good, maybe it won’t, but at the very least it will be an interesting experience.

Shopping in China.

Before I came to China, I had heard a lot about the wave of consumerism that has been sweeping the country. Since the opening up and reform of the 80’s, China has been absorbing global brands and producing its own consumer culture. All of this is set in sharp contrast against the concrete-and-propaganda images that one might see from the Maoist era. So, I was curious to find out for myself what shopping was like here.

What I’ve found is a thick mix of wealth and poverty, of global brands and local produce. It is incredible—a huge bowl of noodles at a local restaurant cost 6元, yet the smallest cup of latte at Starbucks cost 25元. These prices seem ridiculously out of proportion, until one realizes that the cup of coffee only translates to about $3.50 (in line with international prices). It is expensive when compared to most Chinese prices, but it is no more wildly unreasonable than any other Starbucks—if you have an income in line with Western consumerism. Fruit markets are side by side hunched between boutique fashion shops that sit next to drug stores that sell both Chinese brands of “milk-tea” and 可口可乐 (Coca-Cola). My first impression of Nanjing was that is was a city with nearly endless shops with very cheap prices occasionally peppered with more expensive western goods.

Most of the streets near our hostel are densely packed with shops and storefronts, above which are people’s homes. Everywhere there is laundry hanging out of windows. These streets are not very clean, and the shops range from rather Spartan and inexpensive, with no paint or peeling painted walls stacked with shirts or food, to sleek, polished ventures with more expensive prices.

All of this has been exciting and new to experience. It has been thrilling to enjoy my purchasing power balloon with the exchange rate. As an example, we have each been living on less than our budgeted 50元 a day for food (~$7). With this money we have been able to eat out for every meal. I bought a cool T-shirt at the night market for 30元, under $5. Prices have been so far under my expectations that I initially had difficulty weighing and comparing what was a reasonable amount to pay.

Since the first few days, we have wandered into parts of the city that cost more. My early wonder at the inexpensiveness of it all was put into perspective when, as we were exploring the other day, we found an enormous mall. Still in the middle of the downtown area, set apart from the buildings around it (but still close to an apartment complex), the mall contained extremely high-end international brands. Whereas in most of this trip I have easily been able to afford most of what we have come across, here I was deeply priced out of my range. I also felt (in my T-shirt and shorts) extremely under-dressed. The mall shows the second side of China’s recent economic growth. While it has on the one hand allowed a broad rise in incomes across the city and an explosion of style, it has also endowed a small elite with incomes to afford Dior, Bulgari, and Louis Vitton. Here I saw a degree of wealth that I virtually never see, even in the US.

On the whole, these observations have given me great insights into Nanjing, and a glimpse of the transformations China is going through right now. It amounts to an experiential translation of the meaning of abstract numbers like GDP growth or foreign trade. Always bustling and busy: cheap or expensive, casual or elite–it’s all here.

Until next time,

-Eli

Internet connectivity has been spotty… A day late, here’s the post I wrote on the first night.

Arrival.

We’re here at last! After the weeks and months of planning, packing and inoculations, at last we have survived the long plane ride into China. In the end, our flight was relatively uneventful, although it was long. It took fully 13 hours to travel from New York to Beijing, and then another 1:40 to go from Beijing to Nanjing. Because of the time zone difference, we arrived only 2 hours after we had left and got to eat two dinners on the plane instead of a dinner and a breakfast.

Once here we settled into our rooms. They are spacious, but (surprisingly) the beds are extremely hard. A few notable features of my room are: a wall of rose wallpaper, a bathroom that fits inside the rest of the room, and a cute picture of “the ball washers,” my favorite touch. So far, we’re settling in well, resting up, and readjusting from jet-lag.

Today we can all look forward to a day of exploration. Tim, our liaison with Amity, has promised to show us some of the highlights of Nanjing, as well as the places we will need to get to (bank etc). Best of all, I look forward to more great food!

Embarking,

-Eli

Getting checked for swine flu…

More pictures to come as I figure out my camera!

Topic: Arrival + Day 1

Well, here we are, on our first full day in Nanjing. Getting here wasn’t bad, but the flight was incredibly long. It took about 13 1/2 hours to get to Beijing, and then another 2 hours to Nanjing. 

It was a pleasant night when we arrived; not hot at all, and not too cool.  There was a certain smell in the air that reminded me of the way Beijing smelled last time I was there three years ago. I can’t describe what exactly it smelled like (though there was a slight undertone of burnt rubber in the air), but as soon as I inhaled, I immediately thought of Beijing. Maybe it’s all the air pollution that makes Nanjing and Beijing smell the way they do.

The hostel we’re staying at is pretty nice. I only have two complaints:

1) Our room doesn’t have any windows. None. At all. Later, Laura and I are going to see if we can switch to a room with windows.

2) The bathroom is basically a glass closet right near the door, which makes me wonder who thought it was a good idea to make clear glass bathroom? Luckily we have a shower curtain, but there’s basically nothing to block the toilet from the view of the occupants, which makes for slightly awkward situations.

Last night and today we all walked around exploring the neighborhood. We went to a Xinjiang food stand, located all the banks, found the nearest convenience stores, and ate the Nanjing version of jianbing, which is my favorite street food from the last time I was in China. The Nanjing version is much spicier and has slightly different fillings.

Soon we’re going to meet with the Amity people to find out our itinerary, and get help buying international cell phones and exchanging money.

Eli Blood-Patterson ’11 and Dena Kronfeld BMC ’11 will be blogging from Nanjing, China as part of their summer internship with Amity Foundation Teaching Program.