Hengyang Favorites

I think I dug myself into a hole. So, to remedy that I want to highlight:

“Reasons why, even though I am loving it in Siping,

my heart is still in Hengyang.” :)

• Familiar locals: corner store guy, regular restaurants “out back”, the fruit lady, gatekeeper in his pajamas, giggling motorcycle taxi drivers at the bus stop, shoe shine ladies, copy people, Muslim noodle, the electricians (why do we need a committee of 6 to fix my sink?), the man who brings us our cooking gas (one time disappeared with the gas tank and didn’t come back for a month!), should I go on?
  
• Mrs. Kuang. She was our waiban (foreign affairs office) and was like a grandmother to us. She has been working with foreign teachers for twenty years before she retired last year! While at home last term I was able to interview a woman who had been a teacher at our school in 1986! We found that while a lot has changed in Hengyang over the space of 20 years, we were able to share delightful stories about this precious woman.


• The students. Oh, the students. There was one particular class (class 6!) that came over quite regularly- cooking, playing games, cooking, watching movies, cooking. Cooking parties usually lasted for at least four hours! :) :) My time with them was precious! One night one of the girls was having a birthday party in my apartment and her brother got locked in my bathroom because the lock had jammed. Forty-five minutes later we had exhausted all efforts and my teammate ended up hacking down the door with a butcher cleaver. :) She kept saying this was a birthday she’d never forget. :)
• The Elephants Upstairs. This is what I used to call my two guy teammates who lived on the floor above me. Whenever students were over it sounded like there were large elephants upstairs. I loved that sound because it meant the presence of people having a good time. One time one of the guys who lived directly above me was teaching the students the tango or some cha-cha-cha in his apartment- "party through the roof" takes literal meaning here :). I miss the sound of the elephants.
  
• Learning about true community. I have a real family there and leaving them was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Ever. It has been a joy walking with them in their journeys and learning from their questions and insights into Life. They know who they are.
• The fact that they don’t speak standard Chinese and glory in their own Hengyang dialect (this may seem like a contradiction from why I like Siping, but you will discover that China is a land of paradox). Deep hearted laughs when we attempt to say a few words in their heart language make it so much fun! I laugh because on a bus, anywhere, everyone is yelling (yes, yelling) into their phones because they can’t hear each other…and neither can they understand each other because every other phrase is yelled “Huh? Huh? Shenme? (what?). Ah, the character of that place!


• The eight-year-old boys who come marching up the stairwell and banging on Ekren’s door as loud as they can to ask if he would come play baseball with them. I love arguing (quite logically, I might add) with one of the boys about silly things :)


• Team dinner nights- during my second year in Hengyang we started team nights that became like a potluck. Not much organization, so sometimes we’d end up with some of the most random combinations, or all five of us would come with dessert. :) :) The next year we got things together and had some of the best dinners ever- all the more true when you’re attempting to make western food in China, especially with ovens the size of toasters :) . Sometimes you have to be creative. :)
  
• The food. Before I came to China I never ate spicy food, now I find myself missing Hunan’s famous spicy cuisine. I miss the guys on the team having a contest as to who can withstand the most spicy in hot pot restaurants.
  
• The fact that there is NO central heating. I do not say this lightly. Because it causes one to reflect on what’s REALLY important. When we are stripped to the bare necessities what are the things that really matter? It means you have to sit closer together to stay warm, it means you always have people in your home because the more people the warmer, both in body and in heart. It allows you to truly empathize and brings solidarity. It is why I really appreciate something simple like the heat that much more. While I enjoy the “luxury” of the north (even though it’s bitterly cold outside until May), I would love to brave the southern winters again :)

While my heart is in Hengyang, I’m also learning to love Siping, and anticipating life in Xinjiang if that’s where I am to be…and I’m realizing that I don’t have to define favorites or choose one place over another- each has unique characteristics that cause me to love the whole of China that much more. :)

Top Ten Reasons Why Siping is the Place to Be

Let's try this one more time. :) I have a webblog now (a few weeks ago I began one and then China conveniently blocked the whole website-- figures :) ), so if you want to hear China stories in a more up-to-date version, feel free to read and leave comments here. I affectionately call this site The Story of My Journey.

Top ten reasons why Siping is the place to be :
10. It’s never boring in ol’ Siping. With a large team of 10 adults (plus one honorary member) and three children, there’s always stuff going on- hanging out with the guys at Korean barbecue or Chinese hot pot, or studying with the girls, or watching movies with the gang like “Akeelah and the Bee” (a must-see for all you feel-good movie fans- this spelling stuff is hard!), or watching Sonny and Robb play Scrabble with more intensity than I’ve ever seen… :). This week we began placing our bets on March Madness, which, according to Seth is the best sports team event ever and according to Sarah is just dumb. We have made our predictions and placed our bet (an entire $1.25, ya'll!!) and after the first round I am winning! Sorry, Duke.
9. Creativity of the students. Especially in their writing. I am teaching Creative Writing this year (Hooray!). Teaching paragraph formation and how to write research papers can be boring (yes, we all had to go through that back in the day) and mafan 麻烦(troublesome), but creative writing, now that’s something to write about… :). Stay tuned for some of their published entries!
8. When it snows here the “man power” comes out. Even horses help. Everyone just grabs a shovel and starts clearing the highway. There are no snow plows here. Not in “dry” Siping. Spare shovel, anyone? Now the snow is melting and we have rivers (yes, rivers) of mud here :).
7. They speak standard Chinese here (meaning their Mandarin is easiest to understand). Apparently, the most standard speakers in all of China! I can actually understand what the screaming fight at the market is about! Still can’t understand most of what people are saying, but “Hakuna Matata!” Instead of learning a local dialect (because there’s not really one), I can concentrate on Mandarin—with added Norwegian, Russian, Korean, and Japanese words (for my colleagues). :)
6. Benefits: Fridays off from teaching! (and Saturday and Sundays too), we have a maid who cleans our floors and brings hot water to our door every morning, and we are treated very well by the waiban 外办 (foreign affairs office). The other day he (the waiban) stood with me at the police station for 2 hours (!) helping me get my resident permit! They would say it is just their job, but it’s so much more than that! Also, you can take a taxi anywhere in the city for only 5 kuai!!! (60 cents)
5. Probably the nicest train station I’ve seen in China! I nearly fell over when I saw that at the train station they made people stand in line single file when waiting to get their tickets checked! People just don’t do that in China (which isn’t bad cuz they’re cool about it). Now they have “voluntary stand-in-line day” on the eleventh of each month. They even have mascots in Beijing that run around saying “stand in line, stand in line” to encourage preparation for when all the laowai 老外 (foreigners) come to town for the Olympics. Which I think is funny :)
4. Lesson planning together. Even after four years of teaching, I still don’t know what I’m doing. At all. We have little groups. For example, those who teach Creative Writing meet in a group, plan together, delegate responsibilities (one person makes the worksheet, another makes all the copies, etc.) and are all on the same page. At first I though this would kill my individuality, but no, no. It just allows for me to be a better teacher.
3. The endless supply of things, like from Mary Poppins: Seth’s endless supply of coffee and energy, and Jonny’s and Sonny’s (you’d think their names would rhyme, but they don’t—funny thing about English) endless supply of funnyness on situations, as well as Josiah's endless request for "funny stories" (he's 5 and apparently our stories aren't funny enough).
2. Playing “Twister” with the Chinese students was one of the most delightful things I’ve ever done! Hee hee! Left hand green, ya’ll!


And the #1 reason why Siping is "da bomb!"--
There’s central heating!!! Oh, you have no idea! No more writing on the board with gloves, no more heated blankets at night, no more torturous trips between the bedroom and the hot shower, no more five layers, no more hot chocolate (okay, we have to keep the hot chocolate because it's chocolate!), no more dropping chopsticks because our numb fingers cant' get around them, no more...well, until April when the central guy who controls the central heat turns it off. Snowing? No matter, heat goes off in April. Blazing hot in October? No matter, heat comes on. I'm not one to understand it, but I'm warm now :) :) :).
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Haven’t had a chance to meet many students yet, but when relationships begin to happen, I know that they will be at the top of this list. They always are.