Getting Ripped Off

Again interrupting Dandong...an interesting thing happened tonight. I was coming home tonight after going to a Chinese music festival (post on that later!!), and I wanted to buy some fruit for breakfast because I have a Chinese girl staying me through couchsurfing. Well, it was kind of late so the street vendors had already packed up and I had no choice but to go into a little indoor fruit supermarket. I don't really like to go into this supermarket because I would rather give my money to the street vendors. I picked up 4 not particularly good-looking bananas, the guy weighed them and wrote a price on the calculator that was more than double what 4 bananas should be- 18 kuai. I was so tired and didn't really want to deal with it. I looked at the calculator and took a deep break rolled my eyes. I didn't even look at the guy. I was mad but I wanted to buy the fruit and didn't have anywhere else to go and was not in the mood for bargaining. My attitude towards bargaining for food normally is this- if you're going to try to rip me off, I'm not even going to bother buying from you, because 100% of the time there is someone else with in 10 feet of that vendor selling the same exact thing. If I can find someone who will give me the right price the first time, I am much more happy to give them my money. For me, bargaining for food is just a waste of time and I don't feel that good about it.

Anyhow, the guy must have noticed my reaction or felt bad because all of a sudden he cleared the calculator and wrote 8.5 kuai. I thought that he was showing it to me, but I couldn't believe that he would change the price like that, so I thought maybe he was showing it to someone else and I handed him two 10s. He gave me one 10 back and 1.5 kuai. I was astonished. I was going to pay this ridiculous amount and he still thought better of it. My faith is restored in humanity. lol. All in all, I think I have more examples of people doing right by me than wrong (even just earlier today in the market I didn't notice that I dropped my wallet and this person picked it up and gave it to me...this is the second time this has happened lol) but it can still be really frustrating when wrong things do happen- you know you are just being targeted because of the way you look.

BTW, I have no qualms about bargaining for clothes...those people will try to rip you off no matter who you are!

The One and Only...Frank

I finally got a picture of my 'beloved' 4th grade student Frank. He is one of the most ridiculous children you will ever meet in your life. I think you can even tell this by just looking at him. Recently, his teacher has not been allowing him to participate again (we had an incident earlier in the semester which caused him to be temporarily kicked out of class), which for me is a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing because the best way to describe his behavior in class is like a raucous monkey, and a curse because I think his English is actually at a very high level and I would love to hear what he has to say. We have a love and hate relationship- in class I am giving him dirty looks but outside of class we always say hi and laugh together.

His class is one of if not the noisiest classes I have out of all my 26 classes, with or with out him. Although, I do think that if he was participating it would be my noisiest class. This class is so bad that the Chinese teacher has to stay in the class with me and essentially co-teach. I love her! She is definitely a hard-ass Chinese woman who rarely smiles and talks extremely loud but she goes above and beyond trying to help me control her class, especially considering that most Chinese teachers leave during my class (they do not get paid for that period). The funniest part about her is how she treats the bad kids like Frank- I've seen her hit him with books, fling his notebooks across the classroom, etc. She makes him sit in front of her during my class and if he says something she will not even look up from what she's doing and whack him on the head with a nearby notebook...hahah. I realize that this is really terrible, and I don't know what China has done to me, but I have no problem with her doing this. I think it's just that when you have a class of 50+ insane children there is not much else you can do to keep order. Plus, she doesn't do it to physically harm him, it's just enough to surprise him and maybe embarrass him a little.

So this teacher and I basically tag-team during the class- I say a few things, the kids get excited/noisy, she stands up and gives them a look, I look at her, she starts yelling at them in Chinese, she nods at me to go on and sits down, I chastise them for making their teacher have to discipline them, they be quiet for 30 seconds, they get loud again....etc. I don't mind them that much because they really do make me laugh and the noise is usually just excitement over the game but good lord I think someone must be slipping sugar pills into this classes lunch food.

At any rate, here is the infamous Frank. For a size comparison, here is a picture of him with one of his classmates. Do you see how big he is?! He's at least an inch or two taller than me. The people in Northern China are huge- I'm so short here- but this kid is like 9 or 10 years old! PS- this second picture was his idea, not mine, so I was not trying to exploit him lol, I was satisfied with just the first picture!

Broken Bridge Chinglish

You can never escape the Chinglish...I tried my best not to speel there but it just was too hard to resist. However, I did notice my safety to sustain my family's happiness.

Seeing North Korea

Like I said earlier, Dandong is the biggest city on the Chinese border with North Korea. Smartly enough, Dandong has done everything in their power to capitalize on this fact- they have turned peeping at North Korea into a tourist trap. For example, in the picture to the left is a boat tour you can take. I wonder what the North Korean people think about this. Can you imagine your lifestyle being something that people travel long distances to get a glimpse of?





There are two bridges that go across the Yalu River (this is the river that separates Dandong from Sinuiju). One bridge goes all the way across the Yalu River into North Korea, and the other one only goes halfway. The one that goes all the way across is called the Sino(China)-Korean Friendship Bridge (see right). According to Wikipedia, it is "one of the few ways to enter or leave North Korea, it carries automobile and rail traffic. Pedestrians are not allowed to cross." In fact, we saw several cars traveling across the bridge to and from North Korea.





On the other hand, the bridge that only spans half the river is set-up for tourists. This bridge is called the Yalu River Broken Bridge (1911) and it is just on the other side of the Friendship Bridge. The reason that it's 'broken' is because it was bombed by us during the Korean War to cut off traffic and supplies between China and North Korea. According to Wikipedia, "The North Koreans claimed that they did not want to rebuild the broken bridge so that the United States could not deny the fact they destroyed it." I'm not totally clear on why we they thought we would deny that, but I guess they have their reasons. On the right is the entrance to the bridge, and below on the left are some brave-looking Chinese people going to help the N. Koreans during the war. Unlike some other parts of the attraction, I guess this time they made sure to put the sign in English- it says "For Peace" at the foot of the monument. I will talk about the Museum of American Aggression in a later post, but there was so much Chinese propaganda in there it was ridiculous. Below on the right they left part of the damage that was done to the bridge.














Along the bridge they had a few things to read and they were even projecting a video but none of it was in English. Once you get to the end of the bridge you can see the remaining stone piers which continue onto the N. Korean shore. Directly in one's line of vision with the stone piers, the North Koreans have erected a big, colorful, fun-looking ferris wheel...when I first saw this ferris wheel something definitely seemed off with it. Not only did it not fit in at all with the bleak landscape around it, it also just looked really fake, like an enormous toy. It was kind of eerie seeing it sit there so motionless. I looked around on the internet a little and it seems like it is indeed real (although rarely used), but when I looked through a telescope the carts looked pretty 2-D to me. At any rate, that ferris wheel sure made me think that N. Korea seemed like a fun place to be!! It's not likely that you would miss it either way, but I love that they built it right in front of the bridge to be 100% sure you wouldn't miss it...

In order to get a better look at North Korea, they have high-powered telescopes set-up at the end of the bridge. I wish I could have taken pictures through it- there were so many things that could not be seen through the naked eye going on there. There were a bunch of military guards walking around with guns and a bunch were talking under a tree. Some of the buildings didn't have glass in the windows and I could see more guards pacing in them. There were also all these colorful made-in-China looking animal statues that, like the ferris wheel, I think were supposed to make the shore look more appealing and fun. The worst part was seeing the normal N. Korean citizens walking around the shore. Well, I'm not sure if walking is the right word, because this was not like strolling on the beach. Most of the people I saw looked pretty aimless- hands clasped behind their backs with their heads down, moving very slowly. They all looked so sad. You can't tell from the pictures but there's actually quite a bit of debris on the shore and I saw a father and his very young son picking through it and pulling out things they wanted. There were also a few people wading out into the water but I saw this after we got off the telescope so I'm not really sure what they were doing.

I was reading some other person's blog about N. Korea who took the speed boat ride, they said this- "There are two or three young guys on the navy cutter, dressed in humiliating striped sailor suits with Donald Duck caps. They’re built somewhere between scrawny and emaciated, puffed up at attention to project an air of malice." Very strange. He talked quite a bit about how skinny the people looked. It was a little cold when we were there and people were dressed warmly so I couldn't really tell. The blog author also described his first view of a person there as seeing "a real live North Korean." It sounds really bizarre and kind of degrading but it is a rare chance to be able to see this. Obviously some sort of zoo or rare animal reference comes to mind...

I think this picture sums up the experience best. On one side you have a very nice boardwalk with food vendors, restaurants, KTVs, hotels, office buildings, bridges, a real amusement park (I'll get to that in a later post)...and on the other you have, well, pretty much nothing- a few desolate buildings, debris, dirt/mud, barren trees, smokestacks, military ships, and some mountains which for some reason really creep me out (see first picture). They look like somewhere you go and never return...lol. It's hard to believe that just a small river separates these two very different ways of living.




Finally, here is a really nice S. Korean couple that we met while we were walking around the boardwalk. They currently live in China (Jilin, I think) and are operating an English school there. They were clearly highly educated and had even lived in Seattle for a while. They fluently spoke Korean, Chinese, English, and I think they also said French. Boy are they lucky to have been born on the side of the line that they were. It makes me sad to think about all the wasted potential and opportunities that their northern neighbors will never have.

Staring

At any given time when I am out and about, there are a number of people looking at me. The looking can come in several forms by all genders and ages (although I do think the old people are worse about it than the young people)- quick glances, surprised double takes, eye popping/jaw dropping stares, calm inches-from-my-face gazes, calm away-from- my-face gazes, sneaky peering, etc. I've been sitting on the bus before and had people analyze my face with both words and hand motions right in front of me. I especially find that people stare at me when I am daydreaming because I am not making eye contact with them and they can feel no shame in observing me. When I snap out of it, it's very obvious who has been staring at me because they look away quickly....or not. Some people just keep right on staring. It can be very uncomfortable but when I think about it I would probably stare at myself too if I was Chinese. In fact, whenever I see a foreigner or even a Chinese person who looks a little different than the rest I find myself stealing glances at them too...lol!

So today I was waiting at the bus stop, daydreaming of course, when all of a sudden I snapped out of it, looked up, and saw about 4 people staring at me from the back of a parked bus with big smiles on their faces. I was like are you guys for real. I looked back down in hopes that they would leave me alone. I looked back up a few seconds later and they were still at it so I decided you know what, if they're going to stare at me I'm going to have some fun too and take a picture of these clowns. So I got my camera out and snapped this picture as quick as I could. I don't know if you can see the faces that well but they're laughing really hard in the picture, I love it!

We both laughed together and I thought this would be the end of it but the next time I looked up I saw that they had opened a side window and were trying to talk to me. The girl kept shouting, "Good morning English teacher!" I think that must have been all she could remember from school. Well, I'm proud to say that I knew more Chinese than they knew English so our broken conversation was in Chinese. She forced her phone upon me so I could give her my number. I thought oh no am I going to have another person texting me non-stop in Chinese...but she hasn't texted me yet so maybe it's okay. Chinese people can be so friendly though!

I think my camera can be a good strategy for warding off unwanted stares...or possibly creating more commotion than I originally intended...I guess we'll see.

A Reason to Squat....

I am finding very little time right now to continue my Dandong story so I am going to interrupt it until I find some time! I came across a western toilet in the hospital today. I was very excited until I took a closer look at the toilet seat:


THERE ARE FOOT PRINTS ON IT!!!!!!!! I had heard someone saying that when Chinese women use western toilets sometimes they don't know what to do so they get up on the toilet and squat...well now I'm pretty sure I have evidence. I immediately found comfort in the squatter! I can definitely see how one could interpret sharing a toilet seat with someone as being gross though...perhaps the squat toilets are more hygienic when I think about it... Okay now I promise, no more posts about toilets.

Introduction to Dandong

I realized after my last post that I need to take a step back and give some more information about Dandong!

Like Dalian, Dandong is located in the Liaoning Province in the Northeast and it's about a 4 hour bus ride away from Dalian. As far as Chinese standards go, Dandong is a small city- there are only about 800,000 people that live in the urban area. The main reason people visit Dandong is to see North Korea. Dandong is the largest border city with North Korea, and with just a small river in between the two countries, it is very easy to see it. Now I admit I'm just going to copy and past a few factual things from wikipedia for some more background...

Maps and artifacts suggest that the area has been settled since the Zhou Dynasty. The area became known as Andong (安東), county in 1876. Andong, which stands for pacifying the east, was so named to reflect the power projection that China had over Korea at the time. It was occupied by Japan after the start of the first Sino-Japanese War in 1894. During the Manchukuo era it was the capital of Andong Province, one of the fourteen provinces established by Manchukuo. Then, in 1907, it was opened as a treaty port. It adopted its present name on January 20, 1965, which means “red east,” to avoid connotation of its previous name, which was considered imperialistic by some. Recently, the city has been gaining influence in this region of China because of its market with North Korea and the government’s future plans to develop the city into a special “Border Economic Cooperation Zone” for export and import, in order to expand the country’s ability to conduct trade.

Pretty interesting stuff :) Upon arriving in Dandong, Bell and I immediately felt that the people and atmosphere here were very different than Dalian. Dalian is a fairly international city and many tourists flock to the beaches here in the summer so the Dalianese are a little more used to seeing foreign faces. On the other hand, in Dandong, the foreign population is very small and they have way fewer tourists. When Bell and I got off the bus we were bombarded by people saying hello and trying to get a good look at us. They were so aggressive. I'll get a cheeky hello every now and then in Dalian and some people do stare but this was like everything all at once! It makes me wonder how we would be received in an even smaller city here. Tons of people wanted to take pictures of and with us too- I swear like 200 random Chinese people must have pictures of Bell and I on their cameras, especially when we had our Chinese outfits on (see left). I only got about 2 pictures on my camera in my outfit because I was so overwhelmed from being in photographed with other people's cameras and having to pose with them!



I'll write more in the next post about seeing North Korea, but here is a picture that shows the striking difference between Dandong on the right and Sinuiju, North Korea on the left.

Lost in Dandong- Taxis

I'm going to break my Dandong trip up into sections so it's not so long...happy Zach? lol. So first thing's first, the taxi drivers there are ridiculous. For one, there is a surplus of taxis and not enough people who need to take a taxi- the city is pretty small so there are not many places you would need to take a taxi to. So anytime Bell and I were walking we would literally have to fend off the taxis by hiding behind parked cars. They would pull up next to us and beep even when we were waving them away. One time a taxi driver tried to push us out of his cab because we were getting our money out too slowly and he spotted some more people who needed a taxi. Unfortunately, another taxi swooped in from the other side of street and nabbed them from him. I'm sure he was cursing us...

The taxi drivers there also don't know where they're going if you give them a street address, they only know landmarks (this is according to an English guy who lives in Dandong). I have never heard of a taxi driver not knowing street names! The streets in Dandong are also numbered 1 ___ road, 2 ____road, 3___ road etc. as you go up South to North and East to West so it's really easy. Our first experience with this was when we were trying to go to a bar, which we had the hotel staff write down an address for. When we gave it to the taxi driver, it was quite evident that he was very puzzled. He drove around for a while and finally stopped in front of a coffee shop. Bell and I were like great...he has no idea!! We told him it was the wrong place, but it seemed like he was insisting that it was the right place so we were about to get out and start from scratch when all of a sudden he looked at the paper again and jetted off. I thought maybe he had had a mental breakthrough....but then a few minutes later we went down a side street and he slowed down to pull up next to this old man burning something foul on the sidewalk. The taxi driver started talking to him and referencing the paper we gave him- I couldn't believe that he was having to ask this man for directions. Well he finally got us to a bar, but it turned out to be a Chinese bar...I'll save that for another post.

Our other notable experience with a taxi driver in Dandong was also trying to get to a bar, but this time we actually had a Chinese person talk to the taxi driver and tell him the address and where to go. They talked for like 5 minutes so I thought all was going to well this time...but no. Keep in mind what I said earlier about the streets being numbered 1,2,3,4 etc. We were trying to get to 8 ___ road and when we got to 4 ____ road the cab driver pulled over, and this time asked some random guy who was working up on a roof for directions. I could not believe my eyes. All we had to do was go 4 more streets and then we would be there. If these taxi drivers did not have their pedestrian GPSs they would be totally lost in Dandong!!!

A Week of School Lunch

The school lunches here are amazing! They are so much more nutritious than our lunch options at home- I rarely buy vegetables because I can always get a full serving of vegetables at lunch. Plus, they are free and are all you can eat so you can get seconds if you're still hungry! However, in one school the students bring me my lunch so I can't get seconds there. I don't like that school... In most schools there is a small cafeteria for the teachers but the kids don't have a cafeteria so the food staff brings these huge bins of food into the classroom. Most of my schools provide wooden chopsticks for you but in my school where I can't get seconds they ask that you to bring your own.

Above we have rice, fried fish (I don't like this- it's very bony and it has its head), tomato and cabbage salad, and green bean, potato and beef. For this meal, I liked the salad the best- they put it in some kind of sauce so it's served hot.
Above we have rice (obvi), broccoli with ham, cabbage with tofu and carrots, and the main dish had these small little eggs with beef. This dish was pretty good- my only complaint is that they often serve the meat on a bone and there is a lot of fat on there. Many of meat dishes I get here have much more fat on them than I'm used to.
Above we have rice, boiled eggs, pork with green beans, and noodles with little bits of beef.
Above we have rice, cabbage and tofu, beef with pumpkin, potato and green beans, and one of my favorite school dishes- egg with tomatoes in a stew. It is a little bit sweet and it always hits the spot for me. Many school lunches have pumpkin in it too. Pumpkins are so much better in a dish than potatoes, trust me! lol @ Jeremy. Also, these pictures are not totally representative of the variety of school lunches that I have because they are all from one school- some of my other schools have hot buns, spicy chicken, seaweed, seaweed and tofu soup, crispy bread, octopus, etc.

Squat Toilets

The infamous squat toilets. Lovely huh? This one is at my school. They always smell bad and sometimes there is extraneous material on the floor. My friend Bell and I vowed in the beginning that we would never use them but I realize now that this would have been a difficult promise to keep because there are few western toilets throughout the city -the Japanese restaurants and the foreign bars are the only places that I've seen that have them. Once you pop a squat you just can't stop! lol. I never thought I'd say it but I'm used to them.

Big Smiles

Another child whose smile is so big that he can barely contain it. He covered up his smile in the first picture so I made him move his hand! I just love that his smile is so big that you can't even see his eyes. I awarded an unprecedented two Student of the Days to these students because they both tried so hard that it wouldn't have been fair to pick just one. The kids knew it too, I said I will award two today and a few students pointed at them. It's strange, at first I thought that I would always be choosing girls for the Student of the Day, but as I'm doing this I'm realizing that I almost always choose a boy. I think that this is because for the most part, the boys participate much more than the girls do, but the girls are better behaved. Of course, there are exceptions to this. For example, in the picture to the right are two twins who participate all time! They are super cute too, one time I gave one of them a sticker for her excellent reading and after I turned back around from walking up the aisle I saw that she was reaching across the class to give her sister the sticker because her sister didn't have any! They were trying to be so sneaky about it :) They bring me candy every class, and one time they brought me 4 pistachios and a chiclet, hahah.


At any rate, I would prefer to give the award to a student who both goofed around and participated than to someone who was good but didn't participate at all!

The next Lady Gaga?

Perhaps I should consider a career change? I sang "Telephone" by Lady Gaga last week for my students (to teach them about American culture and to have them read some of it) and the following week the student on the left gave me this note at the beginning of class. Finally, someone that recognizes my talent!!

The kids loved learning about Lady Gaga... even this week they were asking me if we would sing Lady Gaga again! Unfortunately, I'm a little Lady Gaga'ed out. I only had one student last week that knew any Lady Gaga songs though- this one little girl shouted "Pokerface" when I started talking about her. They are a little bit too young to know anything about her besides her name, which they love to say over and over again...although I did have one girl who said she had a picture of her in her house...I don't even want to know!

My new 17 year old friends

Before I bought the bad apples last night, I went out for dinner at a tiny little spot by the market. When I walked in, I was greeted by these 3 giggling teenage girls who were all dressed in the same pink sweat suit. I immediately knew that this was going to be an interesting dinner...

Throughout the dinner they were either sitting at the table next to me (sitting in each other's laps of course, good lord I do not understand Chinese women) or standing together off in the corner. Everytime I looked up I caught them staring at me and they would start giggling again. I tried to talk to them a little during dinner but unfortunately they are the kind of Chinese people who can't understand anything you're saying! So a Chinese lady at another table who could understand me was translating for them. This happens to me ALL the time where the person I am addressing can't understand me and someone else who is not in the conversation does and helps out. I asked one of my Chinese English teacher friends about this and she told me that perhaps some people are not very clever, lol! What I think is that some people get nervous when they're talking to a foreigner or something and put up a complete mental block. Eventually, since it was too difficult to communicate, the girls came over with a piece of cardboard that had some Chinese written on it. I was like are they serious, they really think I can read this. Then I saw QQ on it so I figured they wanted my QQ number/name but I don't have one. So then one of the girls said telephone in English. I was like oh great...so I wrote it down for them and hoped for the best. Five minutes later the girls came back and asked me what my name was in English. I told them, and then they produced another piece of cardboard which had "what's your name?" written in English- they had prepared for my answer, haha! I wrote it down for them. When I got home after my apple shopping I noticed that I had 2 new text messages from the girls. They proceeded to text me all night and one of them even called me this morning while I was in class. Oh my god...what have I done! Half of the texts were in Chinese and I already told them last night that I couldn't read Chinese! Well I saw them again today when I was trying to get my money back for the apples so I said hi and told them again that I couldn't read Chinese. They of course did not understand, but some random group of Chinese people walking by did and they told them what I said. And so the cycle repeats itself again...

Bad Apple Update

So I just went back to the stand where I bought the bad apples last night. I was coming home from a long day of school/Chinese physical therapy so I was too lazy to go up to my apartment and pick up the bad apples, so I went straight there. I went a little cautiously to check out the scene first- I didn't really remember what the guy looked like since it was dark and I didn't want to accuse the wrong person. Well when I got there the nut vendor was there and I heard him start saying something about apples to the vendor next to him so I knew I had found them. My Chinese was way too limited to have an actual conversation about what had happened besides telling them "2 bad apples yesterday" but the nut vendor and his buddies seemed like they were trying to help me out. There was a woman with the bad-apple vendor today and she was doing most of the talking. I told her "I want money" and rubbed my thumb against my pointer and middle finger (I hope that is also the sign for money here lol...). Then a big commotion occurred for a while and I had no idea what anyone was saying so I just observed. Finally, I was rescued by a nearby Chinese man who spoke a pretty decent amount of English. I told him what happened and he talked to the nut vendors a bit then asked me where my evidence was. I told him that it was in my apartment and asked him if I should get it. He said no, the people still wouldn't give me my money back lol. I tried to get him to talk to the apple vendors for me but he said he was just an outsider hahhah. Well I was pretty much just laughing through this whole mess but I definitely did not win my case. The guy then helped me buy some nuts from my friends and buy some good apples from another vendor. So all in all I guess things turned out okay!

Grr I am angry. I just bought some apples from the street market across from me and when I got home I took a better look at them (it's nighttime) and saw that they were very bruised. I cut them open and they are all black on the inside. Sometimes the fruit sellers will bag your fruit for you so I didn't think anything of it but now I see that it was because he didn't want me to get a good look at them. A few weeks ago I probably would have just accepted it and moved on because he barely charged me anything but I decided that I'm not going to let him get away with this. I put the cut-up apples in a bag and went back to the market so I could show him the crappy apples he sold me and tell him that they were bad apples...and that he was a bad apple too, lol. Unfortunately he had packed up his stand along with most of the other vendors. However, a man selling nuts right next to him was still there so I showed him the apples and told him 'that man' and pointed at the vacant lot. The man selling nuts looked thoroughly disappointed and shook his head. He told me that either the man or the apples was/were bad and to come back tomorrow. Another woman must have seen the commotion and came up and said tomorrow to me in English! I just recently learned the word for tomorrow, mingtian, so the translation was unnecessary but how nice. I am slowly starting to understand people- all I need is to recognize one word and I can get the gist of what they're saying!

So tomorrow, I will either get my money back from him for the apples, or if he refuses then I will show the other vendors the bad apples and maybe they will help me. I already have the nut seller on my side. My last resort is to toss the bag of bad apples at his table and walk away. I will not lose face in this situation!! Maybe I'll go next door and buy some nuts from my friend afterwards...

Ancient Whip Game

Last week I was waiting for someone in the city center when all of a sudden I heard a whip being cracked behind me. I turned around and this guy was playing a game with a spinning dreidel-like thing and a whip. Whenever the dreidel thing would slow down, he would crack the whip right under it to keep it going. I was meeting up with a Chinese woman and she told me that it was some ancient game and that she didn't know how to play it. It seemed like a very aggressive game!

Classroom Back Massage

Last week I was sitting down and setting up my powerpoint in one of my classes where the students are particularly friendly towards me when a big group of girls came rushing up to me. It's so funny- I always see these girls nod in agreement to one another before they approach me, as if they're making sure everyone's ready to encounter the English teacher. They all have very different personalities- one girl just smiles at me really close in my face, another hops around so excitedly that I can't understand her, etc. Well one of them was behind me in my chair and she started massaging my shoulders. I have some sort of Chinese cold that I can't cure and I was not having a good day at that school so I think my body just immediately relaxed. The other girls saw her doing this and all of a sudden I had like 5 or 6 little girls massaging my back- one was on my shoulders, two were on my arms, and 2 were on my middle back. Man, if I had been in the states, I would have made them stop immediately for fear that I might get some kind of ridiculous pedophile charge. But I thought whatever, I'm in China, nothing's going to happen and this back massage feels amazing!! I don't know how or why but those girls knew what they were doing. They did it until the bell rang and when I got up I felt really sleepy. It's just one of those things...only in China!

More Chinese kids...

A few pictures of some of my students just for fun. The first one is of them rushing to the front of the classroom after I asked them if they wanted a picture. It was like a stampede! Look at the little cutie in the center of the second one- I love that child, he ALWAYS has a big smile on his face and can barely contain it whenever he speaks in class. He is definitely one of my faves. Also notice all of the victory signs!

My Chinese Haircut

I am getting way behind on my posts so I am finally going to write about my Chinese hair cut experience!

Well, I meant to get a haircut before I left China but after breaking my wrist and everything I just ran out of time to get it done. Well, I'm happy that I waited now because Chinese hair salons are way better than American hair salons! I don't think I have ever had a hair cut in the states last any longer than 30 minutes but my new 'do here took about 2 hours. It was definitely a little bit of overkill, but I think that the Chinese people in Dalian are really serious about their hair - after all, Dalian is the fashion city of China. Almost every other shop on a block is a hair salon here, for real. So you know they're going to do a good job for you!

April and Jonah (two Chinese women in the company) took my friend Bell and I to a salon where they usually go. Bell and I definitely got rock star treatment while we were in there! Our cuts started with a 20-30 minute hairwashing which for me just felt like the most wonderful head massage that I've ever had. The guy that did it had this huge poofy hair that was died a grayish color. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of him but it must take him forever to get his hair in its beehive state everyday. He was wearing a mask to cover his mouth while he did it so he kind of looked like he was about to perform surgery on me.


After that, I was led to my chair where the master stylist in the salon awaited me. I learned that he was the master stylist later because the other ones were having some trouble with Bell's hair and they called him over for some assistance. I don't know why he didn't just do Bell's hair in the first place because hers is way more difficult than mine- it's thick and really curly. As she says, it's Dominican hair. From the moment we stepped in the door, the stylists were obsessed with her hair because most of them had never seen hair like hers before. They ALL gathered around her to touch it, it was so ridiculous lol. They also were surprised to see someone with even darker hair than theirs. Basically she had a little fan club during her cut!

My hair on the other hand is not so interesting to them besides the color. They asked me if it came from nature (aka was it natural). I just had one lone fan who stood there smiling and watching my haircut the entire time. Maybe he was the master stylist's apprentice? My stylist was very serious during my cut though. I tried to say a few things to him in Chinese but he didn't even crack a smile. I learned later that this was probably because Jonah told him in Chinese when we came in that if they did a bad job on Bell and I's hair, we would never go back there. I can't believe she did that to him...that's not very cool. At the end of the process he was curling my hair and I didn't like where he was going with it so I got April to tell him to change what he had done. He seemed really frazzled and distraught when this happened so I told April to ask him if he was mad at me for making him change it (lol) and then he says in English, "Not alright", the only thing he said in English the entire night. I was like omg this guy is really nuts. Well, two things I learned afterwards- first, his behavior is easily explained by his fear of displeasing us for Jonah's threats, second, April told me later that he meant to say "Not at all" but of course she didn't explain this to me at the time so for the whole rest of the hair cut I thought this crazy hair stylist guy was mad at me. At any rate, two hours later my hair looked great and I was very happy with the job he had done. I felt terrible when I went to pay though- my cut cost only 30 kuai, which is less than $5. I know labor is cheap in China but seriously that is just ridiculous to me that they all spent so long pampering the crap out of me for that little money. You don't tip in China either so I couldn't even show my appreciation that way. I asked Jonah what I could do and she told me that next time I want my hair cut I could go back to the salon and only let him cut my hair- then perhaps he would get a raise.

So a few things I noticed while I was there-

Many people working there were completely unoccupied and that's where the fan clubs came in. There are so many hair salons in Dalian that it is rare to see one that's packed with people. This is also true of the restaurants, they are always overstaffed.

The people there were really cracking me up. During my cut my stylist called over a guy wearing a vest and said something to him in Chinese. The guy pulls open his vest and I saw in the mirror that this was no ordinary vest- it was specially made for hair stylists because it had all these little places for him to put his hair cutting tools, and trust me he had a plethora of them. Again with the medical references, the whole scene reminded me of when a surgeon is operating on someone and he says "scalpel" and his assistant just hands it to him silently as he works.

Bell only asked to get her bangs straightened and cut, but 3 hours later they had done this along with chopping off half her hair. The guy cutting her hair said that he had seen someone cut this kind of hair before so I think he was just itchy to mess with it. Thankfully she said she had a mini heart attack when he started going at it but she just accepted it.

All of the hair stylists were male except for one. I'm not sure if this kind of ratio is the norm in Dalian but I really wouldn't be surprised at all if it was.

Silk Worm Pods

I decided to be brave and try the silk worm pods. The guy holding the dish told me that they were good so I went for it. Well, I think he made my expectations too high because they weren't really that great. I would eat them again, but I wouldn't go out of my way to order them. They were pretty salty, had an exoskeletonish texture, and the stuffing in the middle just had a very weird taste that I am unable to describe properly- kind of like a bad smell in taste form?

PS, this is Sean, one of the teachers in the company, and he said that on his first day of school all of the kids asked him if he was Harry Potter LOL

How many Chinese people does it take to...

sort out a minor car accident? Apparently enough to block traffic in one direction. A few weeks ago I was taking the bus home and right before my stop we came to a complete standstill for about 10 minutes. I couldn't see what was going on from the bus but there was a ton of honking and commotion going on. Finally when we pushed through I saw that there were hordes of people gathered around two cars which had been in an accident. They were just standing there observing. I didn't have my camera on me at the time so I couldn't get a picture of the insanity but these pictures were taken about 20 minutes later and there were still quite a few people gathered around so you can imagine how it was before! People here seem to like to get up in other people's business. Also note the trolley in the bottom picture- it is really really slow because people drive all over the tracks and get in the way but I take it occasionally.