Month: March 2013

A most unusual Easter!

/ edebock / 5 Comments

For the second time in our lives, we’re spending Easter in a country where it isn’t celebrated; where very few people have ever heard of it. This is definitely the first and probably the only Easter Sunday that I will ever spend in a shopping mall!

Our Sundays are usually spent with students and today was no exception. We met Howard and Vicky at noon and caught a bus to Xi’an Road, Dalian’s most popular shopping area. They had chosen a Hong Kong style restaurant for our lunch and what a feast we enjoyed! Our Easter dinner included both roast duck and bullfrog! That’s right, bullfrog! Like us, Howard had never eaten it before but Vicky assured us that it was delicious and, believe it or not, she was right!

After lunch, the guys followed Vicky and I in and out of a few stores before deciding that that was boring and wandering off to a coffee shop to wait for us while we shopped. They had a great time visiting while we browsed. Can you imagine all the English that we used as we talked about colours, styles and fabrics and discussed what we liked and what we didn’t? Our afternoon was much more about spending time together and using the language than it was about shopping but Vicky did buy a pair of bright pink jeans and I bought a hat. It’s not an Easter bonnet but when I wear it, I’ll remember our most unusual Easter.

Of course, Easter wouldn’t be Easter without chocolate. I’d actually been craving chocolate lately and Easter seemed like a good excuse to check out the candy aisle the last time we were in the supermarket! In spite of the muffin top which seems to be growing around my middle thanks to the rice and noodles that make up part of almost every meal here, as well as the mochas that I drink whenever we visit a western style coffee shop, I felt justified in buying chocolate when I did my daily brain training today. As I waited for Lumosity, the internet’s most popular brain fitness website, to load one of today’s activities, I noticed the following quotation

"Chocolate can be good for your brain! Dark chocolate contains flavanols and antioxidants, which seem to be good for long-term brain health."

Of course, Easter isn’t really about what we eat or who we spend the day with. Whether we’re with family around a table laden with ham and all the trimmings or in a shopping mall in China eating bullfrog, as Christians, Easter is at the centre of who we are and what we believe.

As our day comes to an end, yours may just be beginning. I hope that, wherever you are and whoever you’re with, it will be a day of celebration and reflection.

He has risen!

Home improvements

/ edebock / 2 Comments

As I’ve mentioned before, we live in a very old building. The apartment seems to be falling apart around us but each time something’s gone wrong, it’s been quickly taken care of so the place is improving all the time!

We’d only been here a few days when Richard opened the cupboard below the kitchen sink and noticed that we had a problem. There was water where there shouldn’t be water and lots of it! A call to the school resulted in the caretaker showing up that same afternoon to fix the leak. When he left, the kitchen faucet was no longer loose and we haven’t had a problem with it since.

Then there was the electricity issue. You may have read about that in my post entitled An electrician’s nightmare. In the week since the breaker was replaced, we haven’t tripped it once!

That doesn’t mean that nothing else went wrong though! Late yesterday afternoon we received a text message from the school informing us that our downstairs neighbours had called the landlord to report that there was water coming through their ceiling, presumably from our bathroom! We’d noticed a small amount of water pooling beneath the pedestal sink lately but when your entire bathroom is a shower stall, water on the floor is commonplace and we hadn’t paid a lot of attention to it or determined where it was coming from. We gave permission for the caretaker to come into the apartment while we were out teaching our evening classes and when we got home, it was easy to see that he’d narrowed the problem down to the connection leading to the washing machine. Now there’s some shiny new plumbing under the sink and no more water on the floor.

I can’t help wondering what’s next. As long as it isn’t the gas line, I guess we’ll be okay!

[Home, home improvements, plumbing, electricity]

[China]

Can I have this dance?

/ edebock / 7 Comments

Richard and I came to China to teach English so what were we doing teaching a group of eager students to do the fox trot early yesterday afternoon?

Like many social media sites, WordPress is blocked in China. I’m delighted that I can continue posting to my blog via email but one thing I haven’t figured out how to do is include links to previous posts. You may, however, have read the one entitled Sunday afternoon in Zhongshan Park that I posted a couple of weeks ago; the one that talked about me dancing in the park with a Chinese gentleman. Pictures of that event quickly circulated amongst our students who were clearly delighted that we would so willingly engage in the activities of their culture. Hearing about this and learning that we love to dance led one of our fellow teachers to suggest that we should consider starting a noon hour dance club for the students. Jesse, a retired science teacher, already offers a rocket building activity twice a week.

We loved the idea and so did the kids. With Bradley’s help, Richard started searching out and downloading appropriate music. Bradley, a bright 23-year-old, is one of my students that we’ve quickly developed a great friendship with. That’s him I’m dancing with in one of the photos.

Though our schedule is much lighter, our English immersion students are in school from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday to Friday. They have a two hour break at noon though which leaves plenty of time for a quick lunch followed by a dance class. Ten students showed up for our first class yesterday; five guys and five gals. Perfect, we thought, until we discovered that even though they go to school together every day, most of them were too shy to dance with a member of the opposite sex! They had no problem partnering up with someone of their own gender though and the classroom was soon ringing with laughter as they tried out the steps.

We started with the fox trot because it’s relatively easy but over the coming weeks we’ll be adding the polka and a couple of different waltzes to their repertoire. We’ll also introduce them to the jive. I can imagine already how much fun that will be!

The heart of the city

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We’ve spent the last couple of Sundays with students but today we were on our own so we decided to explore the heart of downtown Dalian.

In spite of the fact that Dalian is a city of some 3.4 million people, it’s quite compact and easy to get around by bus. Since almost everyone lives in an apartment and there are virtually no single family dwellings, it’s not a sprawling metropolis like a lot of North American cities are.

We started our day by catching a bus to the train station. Long-distance buses depart from various points around the station so we scouted around and figured out where the buses to a couple of the places we’re hoping to visit in the not too distant future leave from. Once we’d found what we were looking for, we set off on foot for Zhongshan Square stopping for lunch along the way.

KFC and McDonald’s are probably the most popular western fast food restaurants in Asia. They seem to be everywhere. I think the last time we ate at KFC was in December 2008 in Hanoi, Vietnam. We don’t eat at KFC in Canada and hadn’t really planned on it here either but we’d both reached the point where we were craving a meal that didn’t involve either rice or noodles and the KFC that we passed on the way to Zhongshan Square was just too unique to pass by!

Zhongshan Square (which is actually circular) is the hub of Dalian’s business district. With ten roads radiating out from its central roundabout, it is encircled by ten buildings dating from the early 1900s that have been declared cultural heritage buildings under the protection of both the Chinese government and the Dalian municipal government. Though the central part of the square is undergoing reconstruction at the moment, I was so enthralled by the classical architecture surrounding it that I hardly noticed. We walked the entire circle admiring each of the stately buildings and remarking on the contrast with the much more modern structures that formed a backdrop for them before continuing our walk north along Shanghai Road toward Russian Customs Street.

Dalian was originally a Russian seaport. In 1898, the Russian Empire leased Liaoning Peninsula from the Chinese Qing dynasty and laid out a modern city that they named Dalny. After the Russo-Japanese war in 1905, Dalny was yielded to Japan and its name became Dairen. Prior to the unconditional surrender of Japan in August of 1945, Dairen was liberated by the Soviets who once again governed the city until it was presented to the Chinese Communist government without any compensation in 1950. Dalian’s many squares with their sculptures, lawns and western-style fountains were constructed by Russian architects who were enamoured with French culture and design.

Russian Customs Street retains some of the flavour of Dalian’s Russian days but I was disappointed by the aggressiveness of the many vendors hawking Russian stacking dolls and other cheap souvenirs. I’m not sure if any of them were genuine. I did purchase a cute scarf but it was made in Taiwan!

From Russian Customs Street it was a short walk back to the train station to catch a bus back home where we’re spending a quiet evening resting our tired feet!

If it’s Friday, this must be the Black Dog

/ edebock / 2 Comments

Until fairly recently, I would never have imagined that I’d someday be a resident of the People’s Republic of China but we received our Residence Permits today! They’re valid until July 31st.

Life has pretty much settled into routine and classes are going well. On Friday afternoons, I have a class that ends at 4:50 p.m. and Richard has one that starts at 6:00. That gives us just over an hour for supper; not enough time to go home and barely enough time to eat out. That’s when we go to the Black Dog.

We have no idea what the restaurant’s real name is but it was dubbed the Black Dog by one of our fellow teachers because the owner’s black cocker spaniel is often there. Cats and dogs in restaurants are not uncommon here.

Like many restaurants in the area, the Black Dog is tiny with just four tables and sixteen chairs. The red metal tabletops are badly scratched. When we arrived today, a group of men were playing cards at one of them. As they got up to leave, one of them grabbed a broom and swept up the cigarette butts that they’d left on the cement floor.

Though it may not sound like the place you’d choose to go out for dinner every Friday, it definitely meets our needs. It’s one of the closest places for us to walk to, the owner greets us at the door each week and the food is delicious. Perhaps the greatest draw for us though is the fact that the extensive menu has been translated into English and the school provided us with a copy. We choose what we’re going to have for supper on Thursday evening or Friday morning so that we can order as soon as we arrive. We usually share a meat dish and a vegetable dish and we each have a bowl of rice.

Our favourite vegetable dish so far is called Three fresh vegetables (potato, eggplant, green bean) in the menu but the green beans are actually green pepper! Broccoli with mashed garlic was also delicious as was tonight’s Eggplant with soy sauce. Since we’ve been eating a lot of pork, chicken and shrimp, we try to choose other kinds of meat when we eat at the Black Dog. Fried mutton with Chinese onion was pretty good but we learned today that ordering the Braised mackerel wasn’t such a good idea. There was nothing wrong with it. In fact, it was quite tasty but it took a little while to prepare and we weren’t sure we’d have enough time to eat it. That might have had something to do with the fact that when we ordered it, one of the fellows from the kitchen left the restaurant, rode off on his bicycle and returned a little while later with the fish in a bag! He’d obviously rushed off to the market to buy it. At least we knew it would be fresh. Within about ten minutes of his return, it was on our table and even though we had to pick out the tiny bones, we were done in time for Richard to get back to school before his class was due to begin.

The Black Dog menu has plenty of options to choose from but there are several items that we probably won’t try. We’ve eaten jellyfish before and don’t like the texture so we won’t bother with the Cucumber with jellyfish, the Chinese cabbage with jellyfish or the Mature vinegar with jellyfish. Besides, I have no idea what the difference between mature and immature vinegar might be! I’m not attracted by the Cucumber with pig ear or the Chinese onion with pig ear either. I’ll also avoid the Sauteed silk worm with chili and the Spicy pig intestines. After all, my stomach doesn’t do well with spicy foods. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it!

An electrician’s nightmare

/ edebock / 4 Comments

Our apartment building is very old. I have no idea how long it’s been standing here but it’s clear that the original wiring wasn’t designed to handle the number of electrical appliances and gadgets that are part of everyday life today even in China. We’ve only been here for four weeks but I’ve long since lost count of the number of times we’ve tripped the breaker.

That’s right. THE breaker. Until yesterday, there was only one of them for the entire apartment. Granted, it isn’t big. Just three little rooms plus the bathroom but there are way too many things in here that use electricity for one circuit to handle the demand.

There are wires and cords snaking all over the place. I haven’t begun to figure out what they’re all for or where they go. Some of the switches and plug-ins have obviously been added over the years as they’re simply shoved into rough holes in the wall and the wiring, rather than being inside the wall, is on the outside!

Last Saturday evening while Richard was in class, I started to smell something odd. It had that tell-tale hot wiring smell but I couldn’t locate the source. I’d had a shower and had left the heat lamps in the bathroom on to dry it out so I wondered if they were the problem. I mentioned it to Richard when he got home but by then, he couldn’t smell anything so we didn’t give it another thought until the following morning.

I don’t remember exactly what we were doing but the breaker tripped again and this time, when Richard went out to the landing at the top of the stairs to switch it on again, the smell was very strong and the circuit box was hot inside! There was also a flash when he flipped the switch. Definitely not a good sign!

Though it was her day off, Richard called Wendy, the girl from the school office who handles things to do with teacher apartments. She rounded up the landlord and they came over to take a look. By then, the circuit box had cooled off and the landlord couldn’t find anything wrong. Just be careful not to use too many electrical things at once was all that they could suggest! When we mentioned the situation to our supervising teacher, his response was “Well this is China. That’s just the way things are.”

It didn’t take long to determine that those answers simply wouldn’t do! On Tuesday evening I was blow drying my hair when the breaker tripped and we were plunged into darkness. A little later on, when Richard was in the shower and we had the heating unit in the bedroom turned on because the apartment is chilly in the evening, the breaker went for a second time. Grabbing our tiny flashlight, I made my way out to the hall to flip the switch. It was hot again and it smelled terrible so when we arrived at school yesterday morning, Richard explained to the office staff that we were living in a fire trap and that something had to be done about it.

At noon, we went off to enjoy a home cooked meal at one of my student’s grandmother’s place and when we got home, the guts of the circuit box had been changed. We now have a double breaker! It’s too early to know for sure if that will solve the problem but it’s been over 24 hours and we haven’t tripped it yet.

Now, if we could just get them to install fire extinguishers on the landings, we might feel even safer! Never mind. This is China; not quite third world anymore but definitely not what we’re used to either!

 

Fountain of youth

/ edebock / 2 Comments

I think I’ve discovered the fountain of youth! Everyday as I walk across the university campus to school and back, I’m surrounded by literally thousands of students moving from class to class. They exude such energy that I am invigorated by simply being in their presence.

The 12 to 15 minute walk is a fitness program in and of itself and should also help us retain our youthfulness. We begin by descending 67 stairs from our fifth storey apartment to the ground level (there’s no elevator) then walk across the north campus to busy Huanghe Road. Crossing the pedestrian overpass to the south campus involves 35 steps up and another 35 down the other side followed by 6 more stairs down to the south gate. After walking across the south campus to our building, we climb another 48 stairs to the third floor where our office and some of our classrooms are located. Four times a week, I continue on up to the sixth floor where I teach my university classes. That involves climbing 72 more stairs! We often make this trip to school and back twice in the same day. I’m definitely thankful for the time I spent on the treadmill before we came to China and expect to be even more fit by the time we leave!

As a young person, I always thought my teachers looked old but the students here invariably guess that we’re much younger than we really are. Until they hear that we have several grandchildren, they always think that I must be in my 40s or perhaps my early 50s. How can I not love these kids?

I’m no better at guessing the ages of people here but I do know that people our age in China grew up in the aftermath of war and under the repressive regime of Chairman Mao. Life has not been easy for them and apparently it shows on their faces. Perhaps those who appear to be elderly are only my age.

According to the most recent estimates that I could find online (2012), life expectancy in China is approximately 6.5 years less than in Canada and until fairly recently the discrepancy was much greater. At present, a Canadian man can expect to live almost 79 years while a Chinese man’s life expectancy is a little less than 73. Women in Canada have a life expectancy of slightly over 84 years while a Chinese woman can expect to live until shortly after her 77th birthday. Perhaps the fountain of youth is really the country in which we live. How fortunate we are to be Canadian!

In spite of the facts and figures, however, I still like to think that my present feelings of youthfulness are the result of soaking up energy from the students who surround me. They are my fountain of youth!

Coffee by the sea

/ edebock / 6 Comments

China is traditionally a country of tea drinkers. According to the English language newspaper, China Daily, annual coffee consumption in this country is 3 to 4 cups per person compared to 240 cups worldwide. The majority of older adults don’t drink it at all and it isn’t available in most restaurants. Western-style coffee shops are quickly catching on with the younger crowd, however, who enjoy the aroma and the ambiance of places like Starbucks.

The recent surge in coffee consumption has pushed up the demand for coffee beans and led to a rapidly increasing number of coffee plantations in the southern China province of Yunnan. Fields that once grew corn now produce coffee, a much more lucrative crop. In addition to providing for local consumption, coffee is also becoming an important export.

Tasty is a chain of bakeries that also serve as coffee shops. Like their counterparts, they serve mochas, lattes, caramel machiattos and a variety of other hot and cold drinks. It didn’t take us long to find the Tasty that’s within easy walking distance of here. With it’s comfy couches and laid back atmosphere, it’s a great place for us to meet with students to relax and visit and it doesn’t take much to convince my poor coffee addicted husband to stop in for a treat on our way to the supermarket across the street! Since coffee makers and filters are hard to come by, he’s making do with instant coffee at home.

On Sunday, we were invited by two of our students to a coffee shop much further from home. It’s located in a quaint seaside area of Dalian called Fisherman’s Wharf. Most of our students are from fairly well-to-do families but Sissi’s is obviously wealthier than most. She has her own car which made getting there easy.

It was a cool, misty afternoon. When we arrived, the coffee shop was full so we walked around and enjoyed the sights for a bit before going back and finding a table. Time flew by as we sat and chatted. By the time we left, the lighthouse, unlike any I’d ever seen before, was lit up and it’s warning light flashing.

In addition to providing a great place to visit and serving delicious beverages, western-style coffee shops in China have something else going for them; western-style bathrooms! If you read my earlier post about bathrooms, you know that most public washrooms in China have squat toilets. It’s always a delight to find one that has a western-style one. When I went to the bathroom on Sunday afternoon, I was thankful that I’ve been carrying my camera in my purse wherever I go. Otherwise, I couldn’t have shared the hilarious sign in the bathroom with you! I can’t read Chinese but the message is unmistakable!

Things are different here!

/ edebock / 9 Comments

We’ve spent quite a bit of time in Asia over the past few years. As a result, we haven’t really experienced culture shock since arriving in China but there have definitely been some surprises. In no particular order, here are a few random differences that we’ve noticed so far.

  • Waking up in the middle of a densely populated city and hearing a rooster crow! We haven’t figured out where the rooster resides but we did see a chicken wandering beside the street one day. I wonder if it ended up in someone’s cooking pot?
  • Two or more girls walking arm in arm or holding hands. This is extremely common amongst women of all ages and is nothing more than a sign of friendship. I quite like it.
  • Spitting! Everywhere. All the time. That I don’t like! The spitting itself is bad enough but it’s the loud hawking up of phlegm that precedes the shot that really gets me. I have to constantly remind myself that these people (men and women) aren’t being intentionally rude or gross. This is simply an accepted practice in their culture. I must admit to giving the man who nearly hit my shoe at the street market on Sunday morning a very dirty look though!
  • Using paste to attach a stamp to an envelope. I still chuckle when I think of the expression on the face of the post office clerk when I licked the back of a stamp the first time we mailed something! He hastily pointed to the pot of paste and the worn out brush that I was supposed to use to apply it to my stamps. I’ve been careful to do it the right way ever since even though it doesn’t work half as well as licking the stamp!
  • Toilet paper without a cardboard core. You can buy it with the core but it isn’t as common and since we have nothing to hang the roll on, it isn’t needed. Also, when the roll gets small it fits easily into a coat pocket or purse which is very handy considering the fact that toilet paper isn’t provided in public bathrooms including the ones at the school.
  • People burning stuff whenever and wherever they choose. I was about to hang some towels out to dry one morning last week when I noticed a group of men burning a large pile of trash directly below our window. The fire smouldered all day while the towels dried indoors!
  • I’m not sure what the law says but in practice, pedestrians DO NOT have the right away in Dalian and since parking on the sidewalks is commonplace, one needs to be constantly vigilant while walking. We take our life in our hands each time we cross a street!
  • The city employs an army of street sweepers. Dressed in green and yellow, they use straw brooms to sweep the gutters and gather up the ever present garbage. Their efforts seem somewhat futile as people think nothing of throwing more trash on the ground.
  • In an environment where cleanliness doesn’t seem to be a priority, who would have expected to find scented kleenex? I’m not sure if all the tissues here are perfumed but the ones we bought have a lovely lavender scent! Richard doesn’t particularly care for them but I think they’re great. He may suggest that we look for unscented ones next time but since we can’t read the labels, he could be out of luck!
  • Many of the vehicles on the road are made by North American, European or Japanese manufacturers and look just like the ones we’d see at home but some are also manufactured by Chinese companies. It’s the three wheeled ones that make me giggle every time I see one! They look like Mr. Bean should be behind the wheel!

 

Always a teacher!

/ edebock / 5 Comments

As much as Richard and I have been enjoying retirement for the past few years, we’re definitely having fun being back in the classroom this term. The job isn’t exactly what we expected but in some ways, I think its even better than what we anticipated.

We were hired to teach at the School of Continuing Education at Liaoning Normal University where all of the students are required to take one year of English. They have the option of taking it from a Chinese professor during their regular school day or they can pay extra to take it from us. We teach our university level classes during the evenings and on Saturday mornings.

I have two university classes with 27 to 30 students in each one. Teaching a foreign language to that many students at once is difficult but student motivation is probably a bigger factor in whether or not they succeed. Since attendance accounts for 50% of their final mark, working hard in class isn’t a high priority for many of them. Add to that the fact that, on most days, they come to a two hour class at 6:30 p.m. after having been in school since 8:00 a.m. I can hardly blame them for not being overly enthusiastic!

My university classes are very different from one another. One is made up entirely of students who are art, music and phys ed majors. In spite of the fact that they started learning English in third grade, their knowledge of the language is weak and prying spoken English out of them is like pulling teeth. The other class is made up of academic students who have a much higher level of English. The majority of them are somewhat fluent and they participate well in class discussions.

There are only twelve students in Richard’s university class but their level of English is more varied which presents different challenges in teaching them. Instead of a second university class, Richard spends two evenings a week teaching a class that has become fondly known as the Munchkins. This is a new course made up of 11 and 12 year olds who participated in an English camp put on by our school last summer. The camp was such a success that the parents, who are obviously very keen on having their children learn English, asked for a continuing class for them. Thus the Munchkin class came into being last fall. As a well seasoned grade 5 teacher, Richard was the obvious choice to teach them this term.

We also have two small classes of high school graduates who are spending a year in English immersion in preparation for going to college in Canada or the US. In order to qualify to do that, they must achieve a high score on the very rigourous IELTS (International English Language Testing System) test which is made up of four components; reading, writing, listening and speaking. Richard teaches Reading and a course known as Pronunciation and Idioms to the 7 students in Class B while I teach Reading and North American Geography to the 5 students who make up Class A.

Class A is without a doubt my favourite part of the job. These kids, who range in age from 17 to 23, are absolutely delightful. They are the ones who are eagerly taking advantage of every opportunity to spend time with us outside class soaking up the language and trying to learn as much as they can about our lifestyle and culture. In addition to being our students, they are quickly becoming our friends.

Though it may sound as if we’re very busy and though we do have classes at various times between 8:00 a.m. and 8:30 p.m. five days a week, our actual time in the classroom is equal to approximately a half-time teaching assignment in Canada. There’s preparation and some evaluation on top of that, of course, but all in all it’s a pretty sweet retirement project!

(Pictured below: our first meal with some of my A students. Known as hot pot, we cooked various meats, tofu and greens in the steaming broth in the centre of the table. It was delicious! The young Caucasian gal is Courtney, the only young teacher on our staff of six. The rest are golden oldies like us.)