Mianyang's Water Pollution

I've been reading a lot lately (in my China Studies book) that pollution is the biggest obstacle that the country has to face right now - and, of course, a couple days ago, we received news from half a dozen different people that Mianyang's water source has been contaminated. We've been told not to drink the tap water (which I never did anyway) and not to eat food at restaurants (only at the school cafeteria). Someone also suggested buying a lot of bottled water because the stores might start running out. We get supplied bottled water from the school anyways, so I'm not too worried.

Anyways, there's a news article here about it.

Mianyang Host Family #2

I went to Chengdu again last weekend. Same old, same old. Just realized even more how much I love it there, and how I wish I had picked a volunteer position there instead...oh well.

Anyways, I came back to Mianyang on Sunday and, within a an hour or two, met my new host family. There were two boys and two adult women - the women were sisters and the boys were their sons, although, of course, the boys referred to each other as brothers. I never met their fathers, who were absent the entire time I was there, and they never told me anything about the absentee fathers.

They did not speak much English, so I spent a lot of the last two days just using Chinese, which is always a good experience but incredibly exhausting. In fact, one of the boys really likes writing and his mom is very proud of his work - so proud that she brought up an essay he wrote on the computer and we read through together, out loud. We read in unison and every time I didn't know a character (which was frequently enough), she would read it and have me repeat after, and then try to explain the meaning if I didn't recognize the word. There were so many words I remember learning, but just. couldn't. remember. I really need to review more.

The boys and I went swimming together at a nearby university, which happens to really close to the Children's Palace, so hopefully I can go back there. The pool was very crowded but filled with a lot of people who didn't actually know how to swim - so they mostly lined the edges (the entire pool was 3 meters deep, so they could not even stand at any part of the pool). My host mom and aunt can't swim either, so they just kind of stood by the pool, talking. It seems to me that leisurely swimming and public pools is very new to China.

Monday morning, I went with the boys for a walk through the university. We stopped to see one of the boys' ping pong instructor, who had me play a bit with him. I've never really played ping pong much before, but it was fun and I held my own. It's a little funny to me how serious people here are about their ping pong. We also stopped to see his Tae Kwon Do instructor (chinese pinyin: Tai Quan Dao), who I talked with a little bit. We watched one of the classes go through exercises.

Ate a home cooked lunch (yum!) that included Mapo Dofu (a Sichuan-style Tofu dish). Took a way long nap. Went swimming again. Had more yummy food (roasted duck, cucumber, pancake things - all so good!). Returned to the school. Lamented the loss of my new family, the comfy bed, and the yummy food...

1 Year Anniversary of the Day I Left the USA!

Hey, today's a big day, because it's exactly today, one year ago, that I left the USA...and never came back. Aha, just kidding. But it has been a full year since I've been there, and, let me tell you, the American food cravings are coming bad.

And I have some photos from Chengdu. Notice the Tex Mex place I found...mmmmmmhhh...

Living the High Life in Chengdu

My trip to Chengdu for the weekend was great – I got to eat Tex Mex, sleep on a mattress, take a hot shower and hang out with Ellie. I took a train on Sunday morning from Mianyang to Chengdu. The ride was about an hour and a half, and for the first half I pretty much just watched the scenery go by and listened to music. However, about half way there, I was approached by a Chinese girl, who sat down next to me. She greeted me in English and started talking, urging me to join her in the seats behind us, where her friends were sitting. They had been to shy to talk to me, until she had gathered the nerve to start talking to me.

I still find it a little funny that Chinese people sometimes find foreigners difficult to approach (yet, other times not at all…) because I’m not exactly sure what they’re afraid of. Maybe that their English is not good enough. Anyways, I talked and played cards with them for the rest of the ride. They were students from Xi’an that were volunteering in the countryside close to Chengdu. I told them about my semester abroad in Xi’an and I had fun talking about the city with them.

I took a bus from the train station to my hostel (Holly’s Hostel in the Tibetan quarter, which I highly suggest), although there was a bit of confusion and wandering as I got off at the wrong stop. I found it eventually, with a little help on the phone from one of Ellie’s coworkers. As it turned out, my hostel was only like a block or so from their offices.

I had lunch with Ellie’s group at a Tibetan restaurant and ate a bunch of momos (Tibetan dumplings with potatoes or meat – mine had meat). Ellie, one of her coworkers (Summi), and I walked around in the People’s Park some too and ended up just sitting at a tea house, talking for hours. It was really relaxing. Then beef noodles at another restaurant (so good!) and a bar, where some people just started jamming out a bit.

I lazed about the next morning, which was really nice. Had a yogurt for breakfast but should have eaten at Holly’s Hostel…I looked at their menu later on and realized they had pancakes. Pancakes! I haven’t had pancakes in…a really long time. I feel like I say that about a lot of things.

Ellie, Summi (btw, I’m guessing at her name’s spelling) and I went to Peter’s Tex Mex for lunch and I had tacos. Amazing tacos. And guacamole. And an oreo flurry (like a mcflurry but better). Afterwards, I took Chengdu’s subway for the first time (there’s only one line and it was just built in 2010). I visited a temple that was on the way to the train station, ran into Ellie and Summi at the station (they were there to pick up the students for their program), and got on my train. Made it back to Mianyang by 8pm…not bad.

圣水寺 (Holy Water Temple)

Sheng4 Shui3 Se4

My Mianyang Host Family

I've spent the last two days with the family of the school's director. And let me tell you, it was pretty nice. Bed with a mattress. Hot shower. Good food.

But, most of all, some really great people. My host mom is amazing - she's so laid back and always so happy! She paints a lot and let me flip through her sketchbook, which had a bunch of sketches from Lijiang (yay!!! lol, I also spent my morning texting directions to Mama Naxi's to Ellie; I hope she finds it, it's an an amazing place but really hard to find!). She does a lot of travel and also had sketches from Xinjiang, Ya'an, and Hainan (an island in the South that I realllyyy want to go to).

Her daughter, who's English name is Coco, is fifteen years old and reminds me a lot of Julia. Of course, she has no siblings, but she has two older girl cousins. They treat each other like sisters (like most kids here treat their cousins, seeing as they have no brothers or sisters) and remind me a lot of my own sisters. All three speak English very well. Actually, the oldest is a grad student in Michigan (she's on break right now) and basically speaks like an American. I was so excited in talking to her that I unfortunately started speaking too quickly for the others to understand. I've gotten very used to talking very slowly here.

So, I spent Sunday night there and on Monday we left Mianyang for a lake called Xianhai. We biked through the hills there, which were really beautiful. Then we got lunch out there - I was a little hesitant at first, because it was fish (from the lake) but it was really good. It was very spicy and so delicious! There was also eggplant, which always makes me happy. The restaurant we ate at was really cool too - it was made up of separate little roof-covered but open air areas connected by little paths in a big garden.

Afterwards, we played Mahjong. They were very surprised that I already knew how to play but, of course, I don't know the Sichuan version (I think my version is Guangdong...but I'm not sure - mostly it's my wierd, dunno-what-I-was-really-doing-Xian-version based off of the maybe-Guangdong-version). Anyways, my host mom helped me out a bit and I even won a few rounds.

Anyways, we just hung out at one of the girl's apartments for a bit, watched some of Slumdog Millionaire and then went to Pizza Hut. Only my second time there in about a year. Anyways, it was pretty good. I had some of the leftover pizza for breakfast this morning. They invited me to stay another night, so I didn't get back to school until about an hour ago. I had a great time there - I'm looking forward to spending more time with them!

Expat(s) in Mianyang

Yesterday, the girls and I decided to explore a little bit and see if we could find the bar that the British man from the day before had told me about. We found it easily enough, and it seems like a cool place so we’ll probably go back there. We’d already eaten dinner so we each ordered a pint of beer and talked with the owner. It was very early so there was not anyone else around.

I’ll take everything I heard from the owner (whose name, apparently, we never learned) with a grain of salt, but we learned a lot of very interesting things about Mianyang. Apparently, it’s actually one of the wealthiest cities in Sichuan. So much for our volunteer service…the school we’re working for is actually doing quite well. Part of the reason why Mianyang is doing so well (despite the earthquake of 2008) is because it is one of Chinese’s centers of technological development. In fact, Mianyang is the city in which China developed their atomic bomb.

The owner was curiously particular about life in China – he has his meals made specially (in other words, he doesn’t eat Chinese food), and he does not speak any Chinese. At all. Yet he’s lived here for a decade or so – and he hasn’t left the country in six year! Six years! Without speaking any Chinese…

He’s the first foreigner (other than the volunteers that traveled with me from Shanghai) I’ve encounter in Mianyang and I am very surprised that someone so resistant to, well, living the China life (if I can call it that), is living here. According to him, there are about 100 foreigners living in Mianyang, which has a total population of about 5.2 million Also, there aren’t really any Western tourists that come through here. No wonder I’ve only seen one other foreigner.

Anyways, it’s about time I give some visual representation of the Palace:

My bunk is on the bottom. Ricki's up top and every time she climbs up there the bunk sways precariously....it doesn't seem the most sturdy of contraptions, but it's held true so far.

We have no shelves or closets, so the empty bunk above Martha's bed is now a shelf.

My night table. Well, the only night table. Just bought those massive water guns today with Josh, and had an epic water fight in the park with a bunch of kids.

We don't have hot water or mattresses, yet we have two computers with internet. Strange. BTW, the book is a Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism. Dad passed it on to me and it's so good! Definitely recommended.

Our toilets. I think the photo speaks for itself.

Communal showers. Same as above.

Wide shot of the whole bathroom (except toilets). We will never be lacking in sinks, although I think about half of them are broken.

Mango the Waixingren on Display

So, I have a correction to make from the last post – we only teach three times a day (9:00 AM, 11:00 AM, and 5:00 AM), which actually gives us a lot of free time.

Generally, my classes tend to be younger kids. Yesterday, I even had four year olds, who were really adorable but entirely not what I was expecting. The younger kids tend to be more challenging in some ways but also a lot of fun. Their teacher basically ran the class and I helped out. For instance, she would ask them to recite a line in English and if they got it right, they could come and give me a hug or a kiss on the cheek, which was really cute. Of course, they also liked calling me 外星人 (waixingren), which means alien. More commonly, kids tend to call me Mango because they have a hard time with the r (besides, Mango is an easy English word for them because the Chinese word is Manguo). Anyways, it’s a fun nickname.

I’ve been trying to avoid using too much Chinese with the students, because I feel like sometimes they know more English than they initially let on. However, I feel like they get more talkative with me and more confident with English once they see that I know some Chinese.

You know how I keep having very random experiences that sort of spring upon me when I’ve though I’d settled into a familiar routine in a place cut off from that sort of strangeness? Well, it happened again yesterday.

A woman accompanied by a little boy suddenly came into our room and walked up to me, asking me, “What’s your name?” I took off my headphones, clicked out of facebook chat, and answered, “Uhhh, Margaux.” She told me to follow her, without explaining why. I traded questioning looks with the others, before leaving the room silently.

I asked her as we waited for the elevator why she wanted me to follow her. Her English was not very good, so she explained in Chinese. I didn’t quite grasp what she was talking about.

We got to the entrance of the school, where registration takes place. It’s generally crowded by parents and kids, who wait in line to talk to the teachers staffing the computers they use to register students. The woman I’d be following gestured me towards one of the teachers, Candy, who I’d met before.

Candy explained they wanted me to just sit out in the front so that parents could see a foreigner was teaching at the school. Ironically, I was missing class in order to sit out there. I sat there for about an hour and a half, mostly just talking to Candy. Eventually, I was allowed to leave, but honestly, it was very strange…

Also, tried to play Left for Dead at an internet bar with Josh and Al. Failed miserably without anyone around to set up and lead the game…darn. On the way back though, we met a British expat whose been living in Mianyang for years now. He owns a restaurant bar close by (with burgers!!!), so I’ll probably be going there sometime soon.

The Children's Palace - Mianyang

Friday evening, I arrived in Mianyang with the other volunteers. Two teachers from the Children's Palace (I'm not kidding - that's really the name of our school) came to meet us and they brought us over to the Palace. We are all living on one of the top floors of the school, and are perpetually serenaded by the concerts taking place in the auditorium next door (by perpetually I mean from 8:00 AM to about 5:00 PM every day). Our bathrooms are composed of four holes in the ground separated by three foot high walls (and without doors, so entirely visible from the entrance to the bathroom) and a very large communal shower with about eight shower heads. There's really cold water or just cold water, but it's so hot here that I don't mind it at all. My bunk is basically a comforter on top of a wooden board, but I find it strangely comfortable.

According to our schedules, we're supposed to teach four classes a day, at 9:00 AM, 11:00 AM, 3:00 PM and 5:00 PM (each lasts an hour). The kids are usually either 6 - 8 or 9 - 11 years old. And we have to teach every day except for Mondays, which, honestly, is a little much. I don't know how the English teachers here manage to teach 6 days a week for eight hours a day. I think it's a little crazy. We're asking for weekends off (well, Sunday at least) because, when we signed up, they said we'd have the weekends free. After all, I do want to be able to make a trip or two to Chengdu!

Although I've loved teaching so far and the kids are a lot a fun, I have been a little frustrated with how patronizing the school is sometimes. We were told not to leave the school when we arrived, which I found a bit much. That and a few other things have just been hard for me to stand. I've explained to a few teachers that I've been in China for a year now and am pretty good at situating myself and getting around in unfamiliar places. They look at me in strange disbelief sometimes and don't seem very interested in what I've seen of China but there's not much I can do about that. I certainly don't assume I "know" China or anything else like that, but it's a little irritating that a long year of experience is just tossed aside so easily.

Anyways, other than that, I'm having a great time. The food is great, people are interesting, and the students are fun.