My Kids Need Glasses

This is Andy. No, he doesn't always have that deer in the headlights look. I took these shots on the first day of class so I could learn their names. It was day one of middle school and day one of being taught by an American teacher, and naturally a lot of them looked pretty silly.

Anyway, he's a good kid. Not the brightest bulb in the box, so to speak, but he's usually paying attention during class and does his homework about half the time. He seems to like English, when he's not too tired to focus on it. I feel bad, because he's got a pretty thick accent and I usually have a difficult time understanding his Chinese, but, at any rate, he's a good-natured soul and I'm rather fond of him.



This is Andy during class. No, he's not sleeping, although he does from time to time. Usually I tap him on the shoulder and say "Andy," and he looks up blearily and smiles sheepily, as seems appropriate for the sensation of opening one's seventh grade, rural Chinese eyes to the sight of one's very not Chinese English teacher.

No, this is Andy trying to take notes. Andy, you see, has terrible eyesight. He sits in the front row but still can't read the board. Andy has glasses, but they don't do him much good, it would seem. I asked him how old they were and he didn't seem sure how to answer.

Andy needs new glasses. I'd like to buy some for him, but I don't really know how to do that, and, even if I could pay for them, I'm not sure it'd be appropriate to give a student something so (relatively) expensive. Instead, I'm wondering if any of you fine folks who follow or stumble upon my blog know anything about organizations or other means of acquiring glasses of the proper prescription both for Andy and for some other kids. He's the extreme case in my classroom, but he's not unique. I bet across the school there are dozens of students whose grades could improve dramatically if they could, y'know, see.

Grocery Run

This morning after class I went into town—Heqing City. I didn’t need anything special, so I was in and out within an hour and a half. A trip to town always begins with walking a block from the school gate out to the Dali-Lijiang road that connects those two tourist spots and goes right past Heqing. Actually, from what I understand (although I could certainly be wrong), today's two-lane highway more or less follows the path of the "Horse and Tea Road," which some folks might better recognize as the "Southern Silk Road." There are two kinds of vehicles, both costing one yuan, that shuttle people to the city: 19-seater buses that I would say hold up to 40 when things get really crowded, and what I think of as “Oregon Trail” cars—five seater cabs with an arched wagon-like piece of canvas covering two benches in the pick-up truck style back. These benches hold 3-4 people each, but often there are also 5-6 people (or 3 people and a couple bikes) crammed into the small standing space between the benches. Kinda hard to picture, perhaps. I’ll try to remember my camera next time.

You flag down either kind of transport by sticking your arm out, and it’s a short ride—5-10 minutes, depending on how many times we stop to pick up or drop off more passengers. This morning I had to wait more than 10 minutes before a bus arrived. Normally, they’re much more frequent, and it was kinda chilly. I was wearing my fleece and an excellently warm alpaca scarf, but I haven’t broken out my hat or mittens much. Gloves are pretty common here, but we’re talking cute little skin-tight gloves or motorcycle gloves, not my Norwegian snowflake mittens. And, for whatever reason, I don’t see a lot of hats except for those worn by the Bai women, and those aren’t winter-knit caps. However, I’ve decided that I don’t care. Minnesota-trained or not, my hands and head are chilly.

Anyway, when I go to town, I almost always need to go both to the market and to the supermarket. Today I go to the market first, which is on the far side of town (keeping in mind that the “far” side of town is all of a 10-15-minute walk from the closer side). Once off the bus, I first have to walk through the meat and fish sections. There are two wheelbarrows full of pig heads. I have no idea why. There’s a lot of blood on them. There are always pig heads (and feet and legs and everything else), but there are not usually wheelbarrows fully devoted to the storage (display?) of pig heads. It’s really quite upsetting. So glad I don’t eat pork. In the fish section I try not to look at the flopping and suffocating piles, but peripheral vision—what can you do? Again, so glad I don’t eat fish.

Once free of the animals, I move to the potato trucks. The first time I bought potatoes, I thought they were russets and only discovered after scrubbing them in my sink that they were, in fact, red-skinned potatoes. The (mostly) ladies who sell them sit by small fires to keep warm. I buy eight—it is Chanukah, after all—and pay 5 kaui.

Then, crossing over the piles of discarded, rotting scallions and cornhusks, I make my way to my broccoli lady. I started buying broccoli from her a couple months ago, and she knows that, although I often buy other things, broccoli is always on the list. Today I supplement my large crown of broccoli with two sizable tomatoes and an eggplant, paying 7 kuai for the lot. Produce is getting a little more expensive as weather turns cooler, but there’s still plenty of it, and since it’s not hot I can buy more at one time. When I first moved here, I could really only buy veggies I’d eat within a day or two. Now I can leave food by the window and it’ll keep much longer. It’s pretty awesome.

I’ve recently rediscovered onions. Not that I’d ever not known about or liked onions, but I hadn’t really been buying them. Today I look around for one of the onion-ginger-garlic sellers. They often have other things too, but generally if people have garlic or ginger they seem to specialize in all three. I grab two red onions (I don't know if I've ever seen white or yellow onions here, actually) and 3 bulbs of garlic and pay 4.5 kuai.

The tofu lady I go to today gets into a long (because I have major accent issues) conversation with me about whether or not I can tutor her high-school-aged niece in English during the break. As over the break I won’t be in Heqing, I say I can’t do that, but who knows? Maybe next time I’ll ask if she wants me to meet with her niece on the weekend or something. At least she doesn’t seem annoyed as she cuts and bags up my 1 kuai slab of fresh tofu (about 2/3 of the size you’d get in a box in the states).

My noodle lady knows that I’m always after ersi— fettuccini-sized chewy rice noodles. I pay 1 kuai for a nicely-sized handful before moving past the many varieties of ground pepper and into the fruit lane. Here I stock up, bagging 6 or 7 clementines, 5 bananas, and 4 apples for 12 kuai.

Produce total: 30.5 yuan, or $4.50 at today’s exchange rate.

I walk past stalls bursting with socks, slippers, DVDs, and all manner of other things out of the market gate. I’m kinda hungry, so I approach a steamed bun seller and hand her 5 mao (half a kuai) for a small but warm roll, munching as I walk to the store. The market is at one end of one of the main streets cutting through town, and the supermarket I like to go to is almost at the other. It’s maybe a 10 minute walk. I pass by restaurants, clothing stores, blanket stores, convenience stores and the toilet paper store (all it sells is TP—I kid you not), as well as stands hawking papaya slices (sour and dipped in salt and chili powder, so not really my thing), spam hot dogs, and french fries. When I reach the store, I hand my backpack to the woman behind the counter (it’s not allowed inside) and grab a basket. I need a few things here: soy sauce (5.9 kuai for a 500 ml bottle), salt (1.3 kuai for a 500g bag), sponges (2.9 kuai for 4), tissues (3.8 kuai for 10 pocket packs), and sesame oil (a bit pricey at 10.8 kuai for a 180 ml bottle, but so worth it). When I reach the sesame oil aisle, I realize that I’ve forgotten the characters for it. Scanning the many bottles, I experience a brief moment of concern before centering myself and letting the characters surface once again in my mind.

Store total: 24.7 kuai ($3.71)

On my way back to the main road and my bus home, there are a few flower shops, a gaming den, and countless convenience stores. I drop into one and pick up 4 eggs for 3 kuai. Eggs are running pricey these days, but I'm a bit protein-conscious lately so I still like to keep a stock.

I wait for a minute at Heqing’s one stoplight but eventually end up jaywalking anyway, passing building supply shops, fruit and breakfast stands, and more restaurants before arriving at the seemingly arbitrary place where one can almost always find a bus waiting. Seats are already full, so I grab a handle, cushioning my eggs as best I can. This is always the scary part. I guess 10 AM on Friday is busy, because before long I find myself pushed far forward, directly behind a middle-aged gentleman and his cigarette. I'm forced to relinquish my handle in favor of the top of his seat. There are “no smoking” signs in all of the buses, but I think they’re paid about as much attention as the technical maximum capacity.

Three or four minutes after I step on, the bus sets off. We pick up two more people on the way out of town and let off a few before we get within range of my school. I yell “师傅，下车！” (Driver, get off bus!) which is, I’ve learned, the standard “Please stop” request. He pulls over and I step around people and baskets of produce to shove my not-at-all-graceful-but-at-least-efficient way down the steps. A dart across the street, a five minute walk, and I’m home again.

This Episode Brought to You by the Letter m (and i l y o h e n )

As I’ve written on a number of occasions, my language woes here are many. I have trouble articulating myself properly, speaking to my students, making small talk with teachers, etc. Just last week my banzhuren (the woman in charge of my class) came over to me saying something about a book and 25 kuai and I, to this day, do not understand what that was about. Apparently, however, I was not supposed to pay the 25 kuai (that much I could ask and understand the answer to), but two days later she showed up with a copy of a review book for me and the news that my students would be receiving theirs over the weekend. Why, and who’s paying for them? Mysteries both.

So that’s a classic case of language barrier in action. Another comes pretty much daily, when I stand in front of my class and say something in Chinese (like “last name”) that results in fits of giggles from my students. At first, I ignored these outbursts, but now I’ve started to question them with: “我说什么错了？”(What did I say wrong?) Sometimes the kids will tell me, and other times they won’t. I suspect that when they won’t it’s because I’ve said something inappropriate, but, again, mystery reigns.

Every Monday, I am obligated to attend two meetings: a full faculty meeting at 3 PM, and an English department meeting at 10:25 AM. The full faculty meetings are usually long (although not painfully so) and dull, as much for the local teachers as for us CEI fellows. I sorta try to pay attention, but my language skills do not allow me to glean full comprehension of anything and do not even let me catch the gist of some topics. I always bring my little vocab notebook and scribble away; sometimes this allows me to acquire such useful words as “lawn” and “bonus;” at other moments, my listening skills and the speakers’ accents combine in such horrifyingly inaccurate ways that my dictionary spits out engineering and computer science terminology. I keep trying though.

The English meetings are both nicer and scarier, because they are smaller. There are perhaps ten English teachers at our school, all of whom speak English with varying degrees of success. A few try to engage Mark and me in English conversation, while others will utter a word of English only under extreme duress. These meetings are casual, with teachers throwing around various questions and ideas for the classroom. Mark and I have been mostly quiet so far, except when practicing English with those teachers who have shown interest. We try to follow along as best we can, and when conversation moves slowly enough we sometimes can at least get the main ideas. However, the English teachers truly like to talk, and sometimes a particular topic gets them fired up, and everybody starts to talk at once. When this happens, I’m screwed. It’s a cacophonous mess, the universe’s sense of order ripped into spheres of utter chaos. If I can ever come to understand those moments, I will feel as though I am the best non-native Chinese speaker in existence. For now, Mark and I just wait for passions to cool.

So those are all distinctly language-based examples of communication difficulty, but there’s other sorts of communication too. I have two excellent stories for you that nicely illustrate this point: The Wuzixi (Noon Study) that Wasn’t, and The Bank Account Debacle

The Wuzixi (Noon Study) that Wasn’t

So, last Thursday I was to teach my usual noon study. It’s only a 35-minute class and quite casual. I normally just let the kids have a study hall, and that was my plan for Thursday too. However, when I arrived at my classroom, I saw that it was already quite occupied, and not with my students but with my banzhuren and what looked to be my students’ parents. I remembered YiMing saying something about there being a parents’ meeting on Thursday during lunch, but this description had not included the idea of there being fifty adults in my classroom when I expected to be able to use it. Lunch ends, after all, at 1:20, which is the time my class was to begin.

At first, I assumed the meeting was just running late, and I tried to keep my kids (congregated in the hallway just outside the door) on the quiet side. However, with 1:30 quickly approaching and my kids growing ever-more-antsy, it was clear I needed to take more drastic action. There was nowhere to go but outside, so that’s where I took them. I lost a few of my boys along the way, but it couldn’t be helped. After all, my class was one of two or three without access to their rooms, and I had an assortment of not-my-students tagging along, bringing my count of 49 up to at least 60. So I led the kids out and we made a circle, and I improved like mad. We did chants and songs and name games. I shouted myself hoarse and then some. All the while, I kept an eye on our room, in the hopes that at any moment the door would open, the parents would leave, and we could return to normal. No such luck. At 1:55, the time my wuzixi was scheduled to end, I let the kids go and I went back to drink some tea and soothe my poor throat. My banzhuren never said anything to me, so I guess that’s what I was expected to do?

The Bank Account Debacle

Last Sunday (I know, banks are open on Sunday! What a concept), Ma LiJun, Mark, and I went to the Agricultural Bank of China to open accounts. Our school does direct deposit, and because we hadn’t yet opened bank accounts we hadn’t been paid for September. Ma LiJun’s account should have been pretty straightforward to set-up. She would just need her government ID card and a couple of other easily-acquirable things. Mark and I, being Americans, required our passports and an official note from our school stating that we were employees there.

Once we arrived at the bank, we discovered that Ma LiJun could not, in fact, open an account, because her old credit card number was from a different province and thus they couldn’t find a record of it. Why this makes any sense at all I really don’t know.

Then it was Mark’s turn, and mine. Nervously, we handed over our passports and the note. At first they were confused as to how to use a passport rather than a Chinese ID card as a proof of ID. Once they figured that out, the real problems began. American passports, you see, list one’s surname on one line and follow it up on the second with one’s first and middle names. Our note from the school had our first names first and last names last and included no middle names at all. We tried to explain that middle names were not important in America and that only the first and last names mattered, but they wouldn’t budge. Much more important than the lack of middle name, however, and even the fact that the names were written in different orders, was the fact that while our passports had our names written in all caps, our school note had only the first letter of each name capitalized. MAJOR issue! Big, big problem! As Mark and I spent our first weeks here teaching the alphabet, we were able to explain, using proper terminology, that in English there’s (in this situation) no difference in meaning between big and small letters, but according to our teller that was absolutely not true, and having all caps versus just the first letter in caps meant that our names were entirely different on one form of ID than on the other. BIG problem.

So, in short, none of us opened accounts that day (don’t worry—we got a new note and opened them two days later).

Emily’s First Yunnan Cooking Experience (and Some General Food Thoughts)

Here marks the last of my “backlogged posts.” It’s all new from here, folks! Also, as an addendum to this post, two days ago I attempted rice cooker corn bread. It turned out ok, but I really need to find baking soda/some sort of baking soda substitute/have baking soda sent from the US. Ma LiJun actually said it was the best corn bread she’s ever had, but I think that’s mostly because Chinese cornbread/cake and American style cornbread are very different animals. Today I might try to do tortillas, but, again, baking powder/soda would be nice…. I also plan to get lunch from the cafeteria this afternoon, just to try it out. I’ll keep you updated.

Also, check out my newest batch of pictures! http://anamericaninheqing.shutterfly.com

For lunch on Friday (today, at the time of this writing), I decided it would be a lovely idea to break into my cooking supplies and the food I bought in Heqing yesterday and try to make some lunch. I should explain that I really lucked out in terms of kitchen inheritance here. My room has a hot plate, a kettle, a wok, a medium sized pot with a lid, a steamer, a knife, a cutting board, and several cooking utensils, as well as a few bowls and a plate. Yesterday, I replaced the rice cooker that was already in here, because it was cracked on the bottom and generally did not inspire confidence as far as cooking safety was concerned. Now I have a new one (recommended by Ma LiJun) that came with a steamer of its own. Convenient indeed! I can’t wait to make mantou (steamed buns). I also bought some chopsticks, a glass mug for tea, and a trivet (which, in retrospect, seems rather unnecessary, considering that I don’t exactly have a dining table/chairs).

The girl who lived here before left containers of cooking oil, soy sauce, rice wine, and a couple other things I haven’t gotten around to translating yet. Yesterday I bought eggplant, broccoli, peppers(hot and not, although the hot ones weren’t actually hot), garlic, ginger, and sesame oil. For lunch I put together a stir fry of sorts. I don’t usually fry eggplant, so I used more oil than I intended to, and I didn’t bother to look up what each of the buttons on the hotplate means, but altogether I think it came out relatively well. I also over or undercooked the rice or something, but then, I almost never use rice cookers (or cook white rice—I use brown at home), so I think that’ll just take a bit of adjusting to

I will need to get better at cooking for one person; I made too much rice (which I saved), and a little too much stir fry (which I ate, since I have no real means of keeping it/reheating it). I’m so accustomed to cooking for 2-3 people, or at least cooking with the intention of leftovers, that I’m really not at all used to judging how much I’ll want to eat in one sitting. There’s no fridge here though, and no microwave. I suppose I could reheat things on the hotplate, but I need to get better at using it before I want to try that.

Veggies (at least the ones in the supermarket where I shopped yesterday) are cheap. My eggplant was 3 mao, which is less than 1 yuan, which is in turn less than 20 cents. My garlic was 1.2 yuan for 2 bulbs, my ginger was 4 mao for a knob about the size of toddler’s hand, my peppers (two relatively small red and two long and thin “spicy” greens) were 1 yuan total, and my broccoli was 1.5 yuan for a huge crown. So, I spent a grand total of 4.4 yuan, or 65 cents, according to the 6.75 exchange rate I saw last time I checked. In contrast, the “chocolate milk peanuts” (I had to try them—not bad, but they didn’t taste like chocolate or milk) were 1.9 yuan for a small package. Still cheap compared with the US, perhaps, but more expensive than my most expensive veggie. A chicken sandwich at the knockoff KFC-type place we passed by in Lincang was 15-20 yuan, which is pricy even by American standards, what with “dollar menus.”

In Lincang, I indulged in a lot of 2-4 yuan ice cream bars and 6.8 yuan packs of oreos, because CEI gave us “debit cards” of sorts to use at the school store, but I’ve decided that I want to avoid such purchases as much as possible here in Heqing (I have half a pack of oreos left from Lincang and will not allow myself to buy more). When I studied in Beijing, I lost some weight, mostly, I think, because I ate far less sugar than at home. I’d like to reduce my sugar this time too. It’s easy to see why prices like those above (1 dollar oreos and 22 cent broccoli) are one of the reasons there are far fewer overweight folks here in the Chinese countryside than in the US. I do wish they did more whole grains here though—not gonna lie. And, as always, I would like an oven.