Merry Christmas Everyone!

Hope everyone back home is doing well, we miss you. Beijing is wonderful, and we had as good as a Christmas as possible without seeing our families.

The Great Wall is amazing. Who knew?

Off to Beijing

Tomorrow, at around 5:30am, we'll leave for Pudong airport and fly to Beijing, where we'll brave the Wall in sub zero temperatures. I'll try to write again before Christmas.

Today in classes we had our Christmas parties. Last night, cole and I hiked over to People's Square (and by hiked I mean took a cab), where the only Dunkin Donuts in China is. Together, we cleaned them out. All the glazed, All the chocolate frosted. Eight dozen in total, about 480 rmb. The strange thing is that everything in the Dunkin Donuts is taken very seriously. Every donut is counted, each has a separate code to enter into the register, and every one is carefully wrapped and placed into a container. The whole process took us almost an hour, even though we called ahead and pre-ordered all of them.

Our kids appreciated the donuts, and for the entire morning they were bouncing around because of all the candy and donuts (later on that day, around 1:00pm, they had all completely crashed and were napping during my showing of Home Alone 2).

During class, I also found out that I'm losing one of my kids, Ellen. "I'm transferring to a school in America to be an exchange student," she wrote in her journal (I have them keep English journals).
"Really?" I asked her, "You're leaving after the semester?"
She nodded.
"Where?"
She thought about it for awhile, and mummered to herself. Finally she said, "I-da-ho? Boise?"
"Idaho???"
Really? Why there of all places? I looked at Ellen and saw a stylish (the epitome of Asian hipster), opinionated, and tough Korean girl (the Korean boys don't mess with her, because even though she's not that big, she hits hard, I've witnessed it). Would she fit in there?
Ellen then asked me if I liked Idaho.
"Um...I've never been there. I don't know. I'm not sure what's in Idaho."
"Smaller than Shanghai?" she asked.
"Yes, definitely smaller than Shanghai."

I still can't figure out if this will be good for her. Although Ellen is one of my better students, she doesn't speak enough English to have a real conversation with anyone, and I don't think (correct me if I'm wrong) that there are many Korean people in Idaho. How is she going to get by?

Then again, here in Shanghai, Ellen lives by herself in an apartment. Her brother is in college and her parents live in South Korea. She sees them on some weekends, and on a few holidays, but other than that, her parents just give her money and she fends for herself.

From talking to other teachers, I discovered that this isn't uncommon at all here. A good number of our kids live in the city either by themselves, with an older brother or sister, or with other students. At least Ellen is used to living as a stranger in a new country. Maybe she'll learn a lot from living in the States, but then again, maybe she'll also be bored senseless, have to deal with racism, and afterwards will never want to go to the USA again.
Ah well, I don't know. I'm going to give her my email address and tell her that she can email me about anything while she's over there; questions, translations, whatever.

That's about it for now. This past week I also made my first history exam, and I might have made the multiple choice questions way too tricky, especially considering that my history class's test averages run around 65. We'll see what happens.

Time for bed.

A Saturday in Shanghai

• Wake up at 9:00 am, a bit groggy.
• Take a shower, only four minutes of hot water left, darn you cole!
• breakfast is an: overripe orange, china yogurt, and a glass of tomato/strawberry juice (much better than it sounds).

(A short addendum about the overripe oranges. On Wednesday afternoon, Helen, the person in charge of us foreign teachers, calls up the office, and asks all of the male teachers to come out to help her move boxes of oranges. So, there are only three of us: Josh, Chris, and me. "Boxes of oranges?" I ask Josh. Shrug. Ok...when in china. When we get outside, a thin worker is bicycling a mountain of boxes on the back of his bike. All of them are full of oranges. "They're for you!" Helen says with a big smile. "Why?" we ask. And she explains that the sister city of Shanghai, an island that I didn't catch the name of, was in economic trouble because no one was buying its oranges and they were about to go bad. As a favor, Shanghai bought all of the oranges and was distributing it among its teachers.

"Some people sell it to the teachers for a low price," Helen tells us with a look of disapproval, "but we are giving them to you for free!"

We thank her and eventually get around to trying the oranges and they're....well, most of them are past the point of edible. Hmm, a box of rotten oranges. I eat six of them anyway to prevent scurvy). (in current real time, sunday night) a fat fruit fly just meanders pass my line of vision. maybe time to get rid of oranges.

• Pack up grading and head over to Xujiahui for lunch.
• Lunch is pork cutlet curry for me, and vegetable ramen for cole. Pretty good.
• Proceed to Pacific Coffee, home of free internet (also free in the sense that it doesn't come attached with school firewalls), and reasonably priced snacks. Cheaper than Sahtarbuckoos too.
• 6 hours of test grading commences. I try to stab myself with an unsharpened pencil, but miss and only manage to smudge my shirt. A pool of drool collects near my socks.
• A waiter comes up to check on us approximately ten times during our stay. Hey, we paid 24 rmb for our stuff, a bit more than $3, we can sit as long as we like.
• The afternoon passes and the sun sets. Outside the window, three men set up white-wire reindeer on top of fake snow and blue lit trees. They love Christmas here. Shopping and blinking lights, what more could they ask for? They carefully position the trees and reindeer for an hour, and then, the moment comes. They plug it in, and another corner of Shanghai is engulfed in China Christmas spirit.
• Finally, at 6:30 pm, we leave. I can't feel my legs. I resign myself to amputation.
• Cole and I get home and collapse on the couch. Two episodes of Naruto Shippuden clears our head. We pass out for ten minutes, and then it's time to leave for a concert.
• The concert is in Yuyingtang, and the band is Hedgehog, a Chinese indie rock band that sounds pretty good via myspace and youtube. I'm excited, even if I can't quite remember my own name.
• We meet conks (aka rebecca), and steph at 8pm by the school gates.
• Dinner is at Kung-Fu, a fast-food place in Shanghai South Station that has images of Bruce Lee stamped on everything.
• I order pork and tofu over rice (meh). cole has mushroom chicken (slightly better than meh). conks orders broccoli, lettuce, and rice (ok). steph gets tofu and rice and pokes at it suspiciously.
• After dinner we hit up the 1 line, and transfer to the 4 line. "Yuyingtang is right outside of the subway stop," conks tells us. Good, because I didn't wear a jacket.
• We get out and....no yuyingtang. Where is it? We wander left, we wander right. I ask for directions in two stores. In the first store the girl I ask laughs at me, either because of my stilted formal beijing taught accent, or because of my stilted formal cantonesed beijing accent. In the second, the guy stares at me like I'm insane, and then points to the right, just like the girl did before him. Right is the consensus.
• We go left.
• And it's not there. Conks goes off on a two mile jog in search of the club, because she feels responsible for our lost state.
• cole, steph, and I go to a starbucks.
• ten minutes later, conks returns. bad news, no yuyingtang. It's 10pm now, an hour after the start of the show. It's looking bleak for Hedgehog. The solution?
• We walk into the nearest McDonalds and order two deep fried pineapple pies (one for conks, one for me), a sundae for cole, and a fish fillet for steph (she was still hungry). The night just got better. Everyone in the McDonalds watches us eat. Free entertainment.
• Outside the smell of stinky tofu permeates the air. Boo.
• We make one last gasp effort to find the club. During our walk through a park, we find street karaoke, late night rollarbladers, and more stinky tofu, but no club. Alas.
• In a desolate strip of closed stores, we come across a plain, unadorned door. "Jetlag" it says on the awning.
• "I want to go in," steph says, and she opens the door. There's some kind of light....
• "It's a bar!" she tells us. We ask a waitress about the club, she doesn't speak English. Might as well go in, steph decides. Ok.
• We go inside. "Moshi, moshi!" they greet. Huh? Where am I?
• We sit down, and the server says something to me. But it's not Chinese, or English. In front of us, a large group of women are drinking cocktails and sitting on the floor. Wait, no, on mats. "Kampai!" they shout while clinking tall frosted glasses.
• We are definitely in a Japanese bar.
• The menu is only in English and Japanese. The prices are high.
• Cole and I order plain water, and eat the free cheese. We start to wonder how we went from McDonalds to high-end Japanese expats only bar in the span of five minutes.
• The service is impeccable. Cole and I can't stop starting our sentences with "In Japan..."
• The check arrives, and it's 180 rmb!! for a gin and tonic (steph) and pineapple juice (conks). For perspective, 180 rmb is enough for most Chinese people to eat on for two weeks. Turns out there's a 50 rmb sitting fee if you order a drink. Oops.
• Around 11:30pm, we cab it home in a sketchy, broken, peeling, rusted red cab.
• 12:00 am home.
• 1:00 am, pass out.
• Saturday is over.

The clearest day in Shanghai

About once every three weeks, maybe four weeks, the overhanging mist lifts, and the sky opens. What is this feeling? This odd sensation? And then you realize that it's the pollution dissipating for a day. Fresh air?

We had that kind of day a few weeks ago, and have yet to see another one. It was by far the clearest day in Shanghai. No black residue in our tissues, no film of soot on our skin, no construction dust to ride our bikes through.

"I can even see stars!" I said later that night, but then I realized that it was mars and venus (or saturn?).

Oh well, even the clearest day in Shanghai has it's limits.

These days, in mid-December, it's a freakish seventy degrees out. Our kids are wearing shorts, mosquitos have sprouted again, and I spent most of yesterday afternoon playing basketball outdoors with a combination of teachers, local students, and international students.

It has gotten all the way down to around 40 here (which is nothing compared to home I know), but even though I sometimes miss the cold, I'll take the occasional 70 degree day during the winter.

the month of sickness

I've had the same cold for a month now; it's stubborn and tricky, changing itself every few days into a new kind of sickness. These days it's in my lungs or my throat, and surfaces as empty, hacking, propulsive coughs.

"I'm dying," I say to my smaller English class.
One of my Korean girls, Helen, laughs at me. "You're dying? Really?"
"Yes," I respond with all seriousness, "and I don't know why."
"Mr. Wong, have the last cookie," she says, holding out the last of the chips-ahoy I brought in for them that day. We're watching The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe as a reward for finishing the book and I thought they could use some snacks.
"No, no, you keep it," I say, declining the medicinal cookie. And for an hour my kids and I watch the movie together, and we forget that we're in the 105 classroom of the Zhong Xing building.

Before I got here, I would read on other people's blog about the constant illness once winter arrived, and I didn't believe it could happen to me. My immune system has been good to me. I thought of it as an old, reliable friend. Sometimes he would have occasional lapses in judgement, too much gambling, or forgetting a promise we had shared, but those instances were few and far between, and always forgivable. A hang of the head, a quick smile, and we would be ready to move on.

Now it's as if he decided that enough was enough. This China thing, you know, is asking quite a lot. More than your average favor. Can't be expected to handle all of it.

One of the teachers here, a New Zealander that I only knew as "Nook," recently left. Absconded. Peaced out. Right before the kids' monthly exams and a few weeks before the end of the semester. She lived below us, and would play her music loudly once every two weeks. Her TV exploded a month ago, and for days the smell of chemicals seeped through her roof (our floor) to permiate our apartment.

She taught in the elementary school, and seemed relatively content. Yet, last weekend, she managed to covertly slip away without anyone from the school noticing. A little blonde woman scurrying through the bushes.

Leaving in the middle of a contract is technically a crime, and the school has the right to stop you. In fact, Nook is now blacklisted by the Chinese government, and can no longer work in the country. If she's still in the country, she'll be held if found, if she's out, she can't return.

In some ways I can understand. The school, to say the least, has countless convoluted rules and regulations, many head-scratching policies that may or may not have anything to do with education, but we're here, and we agreed to work for ten-months, and kids are depending on us. Leaving isn't an option.

Besides, Shanghai has a dirty, confusing charm. It's affection can be easy, if you're willing to dive into the expat scene, or become the token laowai (literally "Old Whitie") for a group of Chinese friends (well, I can't do that one since it applies to only paler folk), or it can be hard earned by learning the language, and living life her like you normally would, but I like it here enough to stay for at least ten months, perhaps more even once we truly figure the city out.


Videos of last weeks ninth and tenth grade art festival coming up; you'll get to see some of my students in action, dancing inappropriately, and singing Chinese power ballads.