A Sad, Sad Christmas

I know I haven't been updating recently. Besides being insanely busy, working extra hours at the training center and college prep center where I moonlight, my life has just been insanely boring recently. I mostly just lesson plan. Cook. Clean my house. Try to stay warm. It's not very exciting.

But I'm just so sad right now, I just have to share this story with you before I lose it:

Yesterday, I went to the annual Jiangsu Christmas and New Year's Party. And like last year, they gave out stuffed animals at the end of the evening. I got a stuffed duck modeled after the beloved Hong Kong Big Yellow Duck.

On my way home, I stopped at the copy shop to print out some papers for class tomorrow. Even though the people who work at this copy shop get really exasperated with me and my lack of Chinese, I go there because it's cheap, close, and because of Copy Shop Baby.

He's not really a baby, but Copy Shop Baby is adorable. I'm guessing he's the son of the owner. He doesn't have a lot of toys, so he's usually just running up and down the hill outside or spinning in circles in front of the bakery next door. Literally. One time, I saw him playing with a stapler, a roll of toilet paper, and some weird metal rods. As I said, not a lot of toys.

He's like the MacGyver of toys

So when he saw the duck yesterday, he was grinning and asking me (in Chinese) "What is that?! What is that?!" So I decided that today, as painful as it would be to part with 小黄鸭 (SHOULDN'T HAVE NAMED IT), I would give it to Copy Shop Baby for 圣诞节, Christmas.

Adorbzzz

So today when I went to make the copies, I told him that tomorrow is Christmas. I wanted to give him the duck. While my copies were being made, he used a box as a duck pond and had the duck swim... he and I took turns having the duck give each other kisses. And as I left, he gave me the duck back.

In my broken Chinese, I said, "it's for you!"

He said, "I don't want it."

"But I want to give it you! It's a present!"

"I don't want it. Unintelligible Chinese, which I think was something along the lines of, "I already have a lot of toys."" He took out a car and started playing with it.

At this point, the copy shop was filled with students. Staring at me. His mom urged him to take the duck. He wouldn't. My face burning crimson, I walked over and gave it to her, hoping he would want to play with it later.

Embarrassed. Sad. Depressed. As selfish as this is, I was hoping that giving Copy Shop Baby the stuffed duck would make me feel a little more cheerful. The laughter of a child and whatnot. But no. Sigh. Chinadoll is feeling those wintertime blues...

Chinadoll Needs Help

(This is a long, unecessarily drawn out story. For the highlights, check the sentences in bold. You're welcome.)

I knew I wanted to go to the Philippines for my winter break. Last year, as many of you remember, my 6 week break included a tour of Northern Thailand, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and a brief stopover in Hong Kong. All summer I had been looking forward to planning my Southeast Asian beach getaway.

Then, Super Typhoonn Haiyan hit. Much of the Philippines remained unaffected and I could have continued planning my trip as scheduled. But reading the devastating stories of makeshift hospitals, entire communities displaced and homeless, and bodies strewn across the coastline made me realize how selfish I have become in China. In America, I gladly spent my time volunteering to build, to teach, to sing, anything I could find. But in China my life has become consumed with earning money doing extra work, going out to bars with my friends, and dreaming of the things I want to do and buy both in China and the US. I forgot what it felt like to be so affected by the plight of others that I feel moved, even obligated, to help.

That morning the first of the online articles and photos started to roll in, the titles that touted,"Things You Can Do to Help Typhoon Haiyan Relief Efforts" started their viral online spread, I spent in bed researching how to help on the ground. Most organizations only needed monetary donations to send abroad to pay for food, water, and other immediate resources. No one was sending people to do physical work because there was just too much to do before that could happen. The only organization I could find that even suggested they would be sending people anytime in the near future was All Hands, a US based organization that rebuilds both domestically and abroad after natural disasters. I applied quickly to their program, but after doing so reread the fine print: they wouldn't be sending anyone yet and they didn't know when they would be able to organize a team.

Two, maybe three weeks passed. I desperately hoped I'd be able to find an organization going to the Philippines in January, but the chances grew slimmer.

One morning late November, my alarm went off and I rolled over in bed. I mentally started checking off the things I had to do that day. Grade presentations. Grocery shop. I added "Plan winter break" to the list. I had given up waiting. But that's the day I finally received the email: "Your application has been accepted!"

Since I am entirely incapable of writing short stories, the end of this long saga is that I am going to Bohol (a community hit hard in the Philippines) for 20 days in January. During this time, I will "safe" houses (clear debris, makinng the homes safe for the occupants to reenter and find their belogings) and rebuild. I will be staying at an All Hands camping ground, and I'm still unsure whether I will have running water, let alone electricity or internet.

I don't know what the situation will be when I arrive. I know that a lot of work has been done this past month and will get done during December, but I think that I will still see the immediate results of the disaster firsthand when I'm there. All volunteers have been warned of the dangers involved with safe-ing houses, from physical injury to illness caused by asbestos and other mold. I've never been one for camping or roughing it. And to be honest, my rebuilding skills from the trip I did in New Orleans, LA and Galveston, TX (and from the years on tech crew at Tenafly High School) are a little rusty, no pun intended. But realistically, this is something I fee like I have to do. Selfishly, it's something I want to do. I would never forgive myself if I hadn't followed through once the idea to help in the Philippines popped into my head.

I am currently running a personal fundraiser for All Hands. All donations go directly to Project Bohol, for the materials needed for volunteers like me. My goal is $750, and after posting on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Grinnell Plans, I've already received a few donations. So please, help me out! Not everyone can travel to help physically, but everyone can donate money, even $5, from the comfort of their own home. Click here to see my fundraising page and to help me reach my goal!

I hope to keep everyone updated from the Philippines, but it might have to wait until I've returned to China. China Doll is gearing up to tough it out!

Thanksgiving and Other Foods

Anyone who knows anything about China Doll knows she can't cook. 

Is it cereal then milk, or milk then cereal? I never cared enough to find out. But recently, I've discovered what I thought was cooking inability is actually just a giant inferiority complex. Who would believe they were a proficient cook when their mother is Her Royal Highness of Culinary-land, perfecting recipes on the very first try and taste testing foods and saying things like, "needs cumin" when a) it tastes fine to me and b) what the heck is cumin.

But with my small kitchen and limited resources, I've been pulling together some awesome meals. My MVP moment is when, too lazy to go out and buy materials, I threw together a delicious meal with only the foods in my house. Balsamic-orange chicken, yum!

Food often tastes better than it looks, OK?!

I also used some Keebler pre-made graham cracker crusts (couldn't make home-made here) to bake mini apple-pies.

Leftovers meant cinnamon-nutmeg apple oatmeal the next morning.

My friends and I have been taking turns hosting Sunday night family-style dinners. It's a nice way to start/end the week and it reminds me of home. 

Lela's chili night

My turn to host, Evan and I made minestrone and ate bread from a local German bakery. I cooked for ten people! And no one died!

Fancy, huh

It was also a good excuse to hard-core clean our apartment.

But my crowning achievement was Thanksgiving. Natalie hosted everyone in her beautifully decorated apartment. Formal dress required. It was especially wonderful because Sophie came to visit from Hangzhou! We each provided different parts of the meal, and I was assigned stuffing. I've never made stuffing before in my life. I didn't even like stuffing until a few years ago. But hot damn, I ROCKED it. I used Smitten Kitchen's Apple-Herb Stuffing for all Seasons recipe, and it was super delicious.

Exemplary of Evan's artistic style

STUFFING!

The glorious plate

For actual Thanksgiving, we had dapanji (大盘鸡), which reminds me of a wintry Western stew based on the tasted and the fact that it has potatoes, meat and egg noodles. Plus, we had fried bread, bing, (餅)... I like to think it was in honor of Hanukkah. And for dessert, macaroons!

大盘鸡 and 餅 

Cooking in China takes a lot of creativity because I'm very limited by ingredient and cookware. I have only one hot plate (that is currently broken. But that's another story) and a toaster oven that has three settings: broil, bake, and toast. I also didn't bother buying a ton of cookware because I knew it would only be for one year. All measurements must be converted to mL. What makes me so proud is that I'm pretty much always winging it. I've always been able to cook, but only after following the recipe exactly. But now, I can eyeball and approximate, which is exciting.

Anyway, I know chicken and apple pie aren't that interesting, but it was high time I learned how to cook more than scrambled eggs and sauteed veggies for myself so I'm pretty darn proud. China Doll is officially a master chef.

China Moment 二

My life is filled with China moments. That's probably because I live in China. Probably.

China Moment Part 1

Usually when I buy groceries vegetables from the market, I buy a ton at a time. We go through a lot of vegetables, I usually buy more every few days. But the other day, it so happened that all I needed was garlic and ginger.

Altogether, the garlic and ginger cost me 1 kuai. That's 16 cents. A whole head of garlic and a hunk of ginger: 16 cents. Incredible.

No picture necessary. If you don't know what garlic and ginger look like, I insist that you stop reading my blog and go to a market. At the very least, use Google images.

China Moment Part 2

My bike got stolen. There is nothing more "China" than getting your bike stolen when it was locked up, parked in front of your apartment. It was a sad day. I loved my old bike. Getting around without it, even for three days, was terrible. So this morning I bought a new one.

New bike

I dig the color. Note the multiple locks.

Unrelated

I hosted a Halloween gathering at my apartment on Thursday. Costumes required. I went a little overboard with the food and libations, but I love Halloween and it was fun.

Mint oreo-pocky stick-M&M spiders

Sheila, posing with my creations 

The spider in its homemade Reese's cup web

But Evan actually is a kitty cat...

Lela was a pumpkin.
She brought Oreo Dirt Pie and lots of decorations, and I am appreciative.

I was Arthur.

If you don't get my costume, click here.

OK, laconic China Doll out. More verbose China Doll to come...

The Big Bong Theory

I have now been teaching at Hohai University for four weeks, which is enough time to make a truly fair assessment of my new job.

I have ninety students this year, whom I teach for 190 minutes a week. All of my kids are pretty great this semester. Since they are all English majors, they are all motivated be active in class (and do homework!) They are still learning how to learn in an American teacher's classroom, but they have been doing pretty well. In fact, the most difficult thing about teaching at Hohai right now is how well they are doing in my class. When I try to teach them new words, they are usually already familiar with the vocabulary and material. However, when it comes to using the vocabulary, they really struggle, and their pronunciation leaves a lot to be desired. When I sneak a peek at the homework they do before class starts, they're learning words like "flummoxed" and "auxiliary" and "crepuscule" (OK, lied about that last one.) But I ask them "How do I get to the bus stop?" and I am met with the scared, blank look of a frightened doe caught in a Jeep's high beams.

Since I am teaching oral English, same as last year, I am basically just adjusting my classes to be double the length and more challenging. I wrote out a syllabus as soon as I arrived, after I surveyed the interests and abilities of my students, which makes lesson planning a breeze. Every week, the students do a presentation on an aspect of popular culture, which has had pretty hysterical results, the most important of which is the realization that I need to start proofreading and fact-checking their presentations before they are shown to the class. I wouldn't call Tony Bennett, Gene Kelly, or Bing Crosby female pop-singers from the past, and "The Big Bong Theory," though an interesting mispronunciation that would make for a hilarious thirty minutes about smarty-pants (smarty-harem pants?) hippy roommates, needs to be adjusted. It would also prevent this scene from being shown (with Chinese subtitles, to ensure that all my students understood the lewd joke) to the whole class while my face burned from embarrassment.

The worst part of this job, by far, is the commute, by far. Pun intended. I teach at Jiangning, the satellite campus of Hohai University. My schedule is such so that every day has a different but totally terrible aspect. Either the class is at 8 AM, so I have to take the 7 AM bus to Jiangning (and my wake up call is 6 AM.) Or my class runs really late and I have to take the bus back to the main campus at 5:30, a commute that should take 35 minutes but actually takes over an hour and a half with rush hour traffic. On Wednesdays, I get to experience BOTH ends of the spectrum, the 8 AM start time and 5:30 PM end time, with a five hour break in between. A five hour break in a suburb where there are almost no restaurants, where I don't have an office, and where the classrooms don't have internet. Wednesdays are more than just hump days for me: they're Mount Everest days. Fortunately, my wacky schedule means that I'm back, in my apartment, by 10:45 AM twice a week and that I don't have to leave for work until 2:50 PM on Thursdays, which gives me time to be tutored in Chinese and do tutoring in English.

Actually, I take back what I said earlier. The worst part of teaching at Hohai is that since my students are all English majors, they have all chosen respectable and sensical English names. While I have a few standout weirdos, they are, for the most part, completely average. My weeks of planning the grand name Olympics, all gone to waste. Damn you Lily, and Jeremy, and Lucy!

Pandaland

I promised you 熊猫, and 熊猫 are what you're going to get!

熊猫 means panda, and I spent last weekend in Pandaland, AKA Chengdu. Of course, I didn't go to Chengdu just for the pandas, though they are worth a trip in and of themselves. Chengdu, located in Sichuan province, is known for having the tastiest and spiciest food in the country. Plus, the surrounding towns have some interesting tourist sites that draw in big crowds.

Who's that random girl?

This was an impromptu trip to say the least. I had just finished lunch with a friend and I went to a popular "laowai" cafe (a cafe where mostly foreigners go) to get coffee and do some lesson planning, when a nice German girl struck up a conversation with me. After chatting (procrastinating) for quite some time, she told me about her upcoming trip to Chengdu that weekend, and how sad she was that she had to go alone. I told her how much I wanted to go to Chengdu, but how I couldn't find anyone to go with me. So, completely spur of the moment, we booked flight tickets to Chengdu together and began planning our trip... for which we left four days later.

Even though we had just met, Berrit and I had a really wonderful time traveling together. I arrived very late Friday night (Saturday morning), and then woke up really early to get a head start to Leshan. Leshan is a nearby town (two hours by bus) where you can visit the Grand Buddha. The Buddha, built during the Tang Dynasty, is 230 feet tall and is carved into a giant riverside cliff. For a small fee, we could enter the park and see the buddha from the top, then wait in a long line to climb down and see the buddha from a better vantage point.

Damn that's a long line.

Along the way, Berrit and I met three older people traveling from Canada and Liverpool (two were married and the third guy was the wife's brother.) We ended up spending the whole day with them. I was really impressed that they climbed down the stairs at the Grand Buddha, they were really difficult even for me!

While still in the Buddha park, Berrit and I went to go check out a temple. At the top, a Tibetan woman was preparing to pray. Berrit struck up a conversation with the man who was with her (she didn't speak any Chinese) and we ended up getting a picture with her. It was really interesting to hear her speak and watch her pray.

Some other Chinese ladies insisted on hopping in too.
Ruined my picture or made it better? Not sure.

After seeing the Buddha in the park, the three older travelers wanted to take a boat ride so that you can see the Buddha from the best vantage point: the water. Not really sure if it was worth the money, but they wanted to do it so we joined them.

But at least I got to wear a cool life vest

We didn't get back to Chengdu until really late, but Berrit and I had already planned to go to a Tibetan restaurant. Even though it was 9 PM, the five us walked to the touristy temple area and found this back alley Tibetan place. Although the restaurant was next to a well-known youth hostel, we were the only foreigners. It was us and the monks. And the food was incredible! The only thing I didn't like was the yak butter tea, but I'm glad I tried it because it's so typical Tibet. It was salty and gross and ew. The rest of the food was great, and unlike anything I had ever had before... even the Tibetan food I had tried in Beijing.

Made me want to yak 

The next day, Berrit and I just walked around Chengdu. We went to three tourist sites that were each about a 30-40 minute walk from the previous one, so we had a route with destinations, but we also got to wander a little bit. We went to a monastery, an ancient tomb, and a Taoist temple (which was interesting because I had only been to Buddhist temples in China before.) We also stopped at a famous Mapo Dofu (spicy Tofu) restaurant and had the most delicious mapo dofu I've ever had. It's one of my favorite dishes in China, so I was pretty excited to eat it.

At the monastery 

"Only above ground tomb in China."
Big woo hoo for you, above ground tomb. 

Taoist monks look really different from Buddhist monks. That hair!

Monks in training

THE BEST! 

Our older travel friends from the day before recommended that we see a Chinese opera performance that could be booked from our hostel (we were all staying at the same hostel, believe it or not.) Even though Berrit and I knew it would be really cheesy, it was a fun experience and I'm glad we went. There was a man who played the arhu (a traditional Chinese instrument) and scenes from a traditional Chinese opera. There was also a man who, for some reason, did these weird tricks with a bowl of fire on his head. He was supposed to be a "stupid husband" and there was a woman who was supposed to be his exasperated wife. Even though they spoke with an extremely strong Sichuan accent and I couldn't understand a word of their dialogue, their body motions made it obvious that they were a typical comedic arguing couple. The most amazing part with the Sichuan "face changing" and "costume changing." Within a blink of the eye, the performers changed the mask they were wearing from happy to sad, then from green to red, then from full mask to only an eye mask, it was crazy! One guy changed his whole costume, from black to red to gold to green. I still have no idea how they did it.

Chinese opera 

Dude with a bowl of fire on his head. Why, just, why? 

There was also an AMAZING shadow puppetist. Puppeter? 

Really amazing.

Day 3 was the day that will go down in China Doll history: Panda Day. Our panda tour left at 7:40 (with transport and the price of the ticket, it was actually cheaper to go through our hostel) because the pandas are most active in the early morning. By 10 AM or 11AM, they settle down for a nap, which usually lasts the rest of the day.

Seeing the pandas was AMAZING. There are no words. I almost cried in the panda nursery, I just really love baby pandas. Really, really, really love baby pandas.

I had been going back and forth between whether or not I wanted to pay the exorbitant extra fee and actually hold a panda. But in the end, I was convinced by my family and friends and the fact that I am sometimes a little too frugal for my own good (as a child, I saved my tooth fairy money for a car. I was seven.) And oh, my friends, it was so worth it.

OH. HAI

CUDDLEZ TIME

U DA BEST

I CAN HAZ PANDER?

OOOOOO

I LUV U

Believe it or not, that's actually a toddler panda, not more than two or three years old. They grow up so fast... literally. I am so glad I got to hug a panda, I feel insanely lucky.

When the pandas settled down for their nap, we headed back to the hostel. Berrit and I, along with the two other people on our panda tour (a boy from Canada and a girl from South Korea) went for Sichuan hot pot. Even though Berrit possesses truly phenomenal Chinese language skills, she accidentally ordered us the second most spicy hot pot, instead of the second least spicy hot pot. Sichuan food features these little spiceballs called "Sichuan peppercorns." They literally numb your mouth. The hot pot was so spicy that I felt like I had just chugged Seltzer mixed with pop rocks. Or maybe like I had done the exploding Coca Cola with mentos experiment in my mouth. I've never eaten such spicy food in my life. It was, in a word, amazing.

Afterwards, we walked around the biggest temple, and the touristy street next door. Even though we were still full, we went to a Xinjiang restaurant for dinner, and she got to try Da Pan Gie (big chicken dish), another one of my favorites. From there, I went straight to the airport for my flight back to Nanjing. Unfortunately, the flight was set to arrive in Nanjing at 1 AM, giving me just a few hours of sleep before my 7 o'clock bus to the satellite campus for class. Even more unfortunate, the plane left 1 1/2 hours late, so I was especially tired for my Tuesday class, but c'est la vie. My trip to Chengdu was totally worth 95 minutes of sleepy teaching.

Big plate chicken, amiright?

I wanted to go to Chengdu for the Buddha, the pandas, and the food. And I was not disappointed at all. Another amazing place China Doll can check off her China "to visit" list!

Here are some more pictures of pandas and food. Just because.

Sichuan peppercorn breakfast 

PANDA PILE 

The red pandas (no relation to actual pandas) walk right up next to you!

熊猫

Some kind of doughy sweetness thing

Yummy noodle soup breakfast. Also super spicy. 

Pineapple rice