Author: edebock

Great Wall, fantastic experience!

/ edebock / 7 Comments

How can I possibly put the Great Wall of China, the most enormous construction project in human history, into words that truly do it justice? For most of my life I couldn’t possibly have imagined that I would one day stand on this historic structure but that’s exactly what I did on Friday morning!

Known as Tiger Mountain Great Wall, the segment of the wall located about 12 km northeast of Dandong sees far fewer tourists than the sections that are closer to Beijing. Built during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1664), it runs parallel to the North Korean border and is the easternmost section of the Great Wall. Buffeted by wind and rain for more than 500 years, the wall had fallen into ruin until a large scale restoration project was begun in 1992. Now fully restored, it snakes its way up the steep mountainside to a height of 146.3 metres. One of three watchtowers stands like a beacon at the peak and provides a panoramic view across the Yalu River and into North Korea. From the peak, the wall makes a quick descent down the back side of the mountain ending near a narrow branch of the river.

As we left our bus and walked up the road toward it, seeing the Great Wall winding its way up the hillside in the morning mist was an absolute thrill. Of course, we couldn’t help wondering how well our old knees would handle the climb but I think the sheer exhilaration of being there helped carry us up the steep incline.

The forecast called for rain on Friday but Colleen (the redhead in one of the photos) and I are convinced that the umbrellas in my backpack and the rain cape in her bag were good luck charms as the weather was great; not too warm or too cold, no wind and not a drop of rain all day!

Since it was a holiday in China, we shared the wall with many other people but it wasn’t overly crowded and there was a wonderful sense of camaraderie as we shared this incredible experience with one another. We only heard a few words of English all day but plenty of delighted laughter as people huffed and puffed their way up the steep cement stairs that made up much of the climb. There were also high fives given as well as the universal thumbs up sign.

After reaching the far end of the wall, we enjoyed a fairly challenging hike back to our starting point but I’ll tell you more about that in a future post. For now though, I’m happy to say that our knees survived both the wall and the hike and we weren’t even sore afterward. Obviously, climbing the 67 stairs up to our apartment more than once a day for the past six weeks was excellent preparation!

Dandong, gateway to North Korea

/ edebock / 5 Comments

Friday’s anticipated four hour bus trip to Dandong turned into more than five when it took an hour and a half for the bus to wend it’s way through congested holiday traffic and get out of Dalian! We were riding on a modern long distance bus, however, so it wasn’t too gruelling. Once outside the city, the four lane highway was in great shape all the way so it was a comfortable ride. Signs along the highway were posted in both Chinese characters and Pinyin (the system used to transcribe Chinese characters into Roman script) with occasional signs in English as well. I found it cute that the right hand lane was labelled Carriage Way and the left, Overtaking Lane but the sign that we enjoyed the most was the one warning drivers Do not drive tiredly!

Liaoning Province is largely agricultural so we rode by many orchards, fields, rice paddies and a vast number of greenhouses. Work has just begun in the fields and everything that we saw happening was being done by hand. With the exception of one donkey and two horse-drawn carts, we didn’t see any livestock.

When we arrived in Dandong, it took awhile to figure out where and how to purchase our return tickets. It’s a good thing we did that right away though as many of yesterday’s buses were already sold out and the earliest one we could get on didn’t depart until 3:15 in the afternoon. The language barrier was a hindrance, of course, but as always, people were extremely helpful, particularly the young security guard at the bus station who, when we asked for directions to our hotel, walked us all the way there, a distance of 3 or 4 blocks!

After settling in and having a late lunch in the hotel restaurant, we set off on foot for the Yalu River which separates Dandong’s lively riverfront promenade from the more desolate looking city of Sinuiju, North Korea on the other side.

China is North Korea’s only major economic supporter and Dandong, a city of about 750 000 people and the principal gateway between the two countries, thrives on trade with North Korea. We watched trucks rumble slowly across the Sino-Korean Friendship bridge which is the official border crossing.

Pedestrians are not allowed on the bridge and we actually saw Chinese soldiers escort a couple back to the Chinese side of the bridge. Perhaps they were simply on the wrong bridge. In 1950, during the Korean War, American troops bombed the older bridge between the two countries in an attempt to cut off Chinese supplies to North Korea. The North Koreans dismantled the mangled end of the bridge leaving only a row of support columns standing in the river. The Broken Bridge stands next to the Friendship Bridge and is open to the public who want a closer view of North Korea. Admission to the bridge is normally 27 yuan but when we noticed that seniors over the age of 60 with an ID card qualify for a lower price, I decided that we should show the ticket agent our resident permits to see if they would give us the reduced rate. Sure enough, we were admitted for only 10 yuan each or approximately $1.60 Canadian!

The Broken Bridge wasn’t the nearest that we got to North Korea nor was Dandong itself our main reason for heading north on our three day break from school. Rather than making this post too long, however, I’ll be breaking it into a series. Come back tomorrow to find out the biggest reason we chose Dandong as our destination. For the moment though, let’s just say that it was Great and truly unforgettable!

Tomb Sweeping Day

/ edebock / 7 Comments

Tomorrow, April 4th, is Qingming Festival in China. Pronounced Chingming and known as Tomb Sweeping Day in English, this is a day to honour dead ancestors by travelling to the family tomb to sweep, clean and place flowers and offerings of food and drink on the grave.

Burning paper that is meant to resemble money in hope that the deceased is not lacking anything, is also a common practice; so common, in fact, that the authorities are urging people to take precautions and not allow fires to get out of control. Apparently, across China, a total of 520 million people visited their ancestors’ tombs during last year’s festival and 200 forest fires were reported during the three day holiday!

This week, we see huge stacks of the gold coloured paper everywhere. Looking something like fancy paper napkins, it’s piled in the marketplace and outside stores waiting for people to purchase it and burn it, sometimes on the graves but not always. Paper burning was also part of the Lantern Festival that took place at the end of the Chinese New Year celebrations. That night, as fireworks exploded overhead, bonfires lined the streets outside our building and we already saw a couple of people burning a pile of the paper a couple of evenings ago on the sidewalk directly across the street from where they purchased it.

In addition to remembering dead ancestors, in modern times Qingming has also been seen as a time to pay respects to those who’ve died in incidents considered sensitive in China, incidents such as the Tiananmen Square massacre that took place in Beijing on Tomb Sweeping Day in 1976.

Qingming is celebrated on the 104th day following the Winter Solstice or the 15th day after the Spring Equinox. In addition to being a time of remembrance, it’s also a time to celebrate the coming of spring and in farming communities, it marks the time to begin plowing and seeding. Outdoor pursuits including kite flying are popular Qingming activities. Though spring seems a little late this year, the past couple of days have been the warmest since we arrived in China. The grass is finally starting to turn green and I was delighted to notice tiny buds on one of the trees we passed on our walk this afternoon.

We hope that the beautiful spring weather continues for the next few days as we’re off to Dandong for our three day Tomb Sweeping holiday. Dandong, a 4 hour bus trip north of here, is located just across the Yalu River from North Korea but more about that when we get back!

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

/ edebock / 2 Comments

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!