New Concepty English

Sign seen near a fountain.



Don't play in it, and don't make fun of it either.

Zhenjiang

Here is a set of pictures from another outing that I didn't post about previously. In February we spent a couple days in Zhenjiang. It is a smaller city along the Yangtze river to the West. Of course, "smaller city" doesn't quite mean the same thing in China. This one, for example, has a population of around three million. I made some comments about relative city size in a previous post, so I will move on.

Some of you may know that Lee went to China two and a half years ago as part of the Sister Cities organization. This city, Zhenjiang, is where she stayed. It is, therefore, part of the reason we have ended up doing and being where we are right now. Lee's experience helped push both of us to consider teaching overseas. That had always been a eventual plan of ours, and I even tried to apply to the U.S. Department of Defense school system (for military dependents) clear back when I first got my teaching certificate. Back then, it didn't take long for me to figure out that a new teacher with a non-teaching spouse and two dependents was not an attractive candidate. The overseas plan was shelved indefinitely, and had in effect become a retirement plan. The plan resurfaced once we began to feel that the kids could really gain by it, and it would matter for their educational and personal growth. At that point, we decided that it was time to take action, rather than just have them experience it from a distance as something cool that Mom and Dad did long after they had moved out.

From the very beginning, Lee specifically wanted to go to Suzhou (she had visited it that summer). However, although China was the initial inspiration, once the actual job search began, we cast the net far wider. A number of schools took us very seriously as candidates, and with a few twists of fate, we might have ended up in Latvia or Croatia or Lebanon or Turkey or China. Each place, in its turn, inspired great enthusiasm, and since we took each of our interviews very seriously, almost every single one was briefly "my life long dream" of where to live. I will tell you that the mental whiplash of constantly switching between cities, climes, and continents was possibly the most surreal experience of my entire life.

In the end, we ended up only an hour away from Zhenjiang, and in the exact city that Lee had wanted from the beginning. I'll leave it to you whether that represents ironic fate, or the culmination of inspiration, hard work, good preparation, and blessings. I know where we stand on that question.



Zhenjiang is not a major tourist area, but it does have a really nice Buddhist temple. It is an enormous complex of jumbled buildings and twisting stairs. On the left, John is in the photo.



This is another nearby temple, that is on a small island in the Yangtze river. Ann as per your comment, here is further evidence that your mother was actually here (and evidence that I read your comments).


John, hamming it up.


It was a very misty day. This is an evocative scene of a ramshackle old boat on a quiet spur of the Yangtze. One interesting part of the scene is hard to pick out in the photo, so I have a closer view below.


A pig carcass washed up on the shore of the Yangtze.

An evening out at a Hotpot restaurant, a regional tradition from Sichuan province that has become popular nationwide. Basically, it is a big pot of boiling broth, into which everyone puts their selections of tidbits and delicacies, and which everyone then shares. Options include a variety of meats, noodles, vegetables, and dumplings. Strangely, a good Hotpot restaurant is something that we have yet to chase down in Suzhou. We know they are here, but few have English menus. We do occasionally go places without English menus, but it is a lot of work.

In the left photo is Janet (Lee's mother, who was visiting) with Emma. They are displaying their duck feet, if you can't tell. On the right, Lee is with Christine, the teacher who hosted Lee in her home during the exchange in 2006.


One more photo for good measure. A local boy under attack by fearless and overfed pigeons.

Cover the kids' eyes

Okay, here's the deal. Because this is a family-friendly blog, I've been putting off this post for some time, but I'm going to go for it. Parents, you are at your discretion.

I'm throwing a bunch of little stories into this one, so I'm going to be rambling. Here we go...

One of the things one eventually starts to notice about China is how chaste everything is. You don't really realize it right away, because it isn't about what you see, but rather what you do not. Then finally, one day, you see a woman dressed like a typical American out on the town, and you are suddenly shocked to realize that she looks half naked! Chinese women are, by comparison, very modest dressers.

This goes for advertisements as well. For those of us like myself who have spent extensive time in Europe, the difference is especially jarring. Ah, France, the land of topless women on family television, postcards of sex acts on souvenir stands, and condom ads towering above you on billboards... By contrast, in downtown Suzhou I have noticed exactly one store with a display of a naked woman. It is very incongruous.

Traditional moral values are still very strong in China, and but I'm under no illusion that a good part of this is also enforced from above by the government. In fact, there has been a recent well-publicized crackdown on online pornography. I don't have enough cultural experience to give a real opinion as to how much if this is reflects a real difference in what actually goes on in the Chinese mind, or whether this just reflects reserve as to what gets displayed in public. However, I have done some reading that suggests a certain level of naivite about the "birds and the bees" (particularly in rural areas).

I do have one funny little anecdote I can tell relative to that. A co-worker was telling me that last year he suddenly began to get a lot of, shall we say, inappropriate e-mail spam. He went to talk to our tech person to see if she could do something about it. She is a very sweet and friendly, very competent young Chinese woman. My friend tried to explain what the problem was, but he just could not get her to understand. He kept offering variations of "bad pictures" and "dirty pictures", but she just didn't get it. Perhaps it was just a language barrier, but in the end, he decided that he didn't want to risk being the one to shatter her illusions about the world, and he just let the matter drop (eventually, the spam tapered off on its own).

So, with that as an only marginally relevant introduction, I have some pictures. I return to a theme on which I have posted before: the fact that so many Chinese produces are anthropomorphized in some way. This includes even household products that are not intended for children. Here is another example:

These are two humidifiers (which the Chinese love) for sale in a local shop. Aren't they just adorable? They look like they should have their own Saturday morning kids show, and maybe they do. The one on the left had me quite confused with the horns and all, until I finally made the connection that we are in the "Year of the Bull". That disappointed me, because up until that moment I had a better name for him, to which I was quite attached, which was "Satan's Humidifier".

So now I come to the two pictures that got me thinking about this post in the first place. They bring together the two threads of thoughts that I have been rambling about so far, the apparent gentle naivete, and the "cuteness" of consumer products.

Now.... I want to know, in all honesty, is there anyone out there that looks at these two products and does not think the same thing I do? Do the Chinese not notice, not care, or do they think it is funny?

Finally, now that I've brought up the whole topic, take a look at these packages of prophylactics.

Copulating while parachuting? That should come with a warning label of some kind.

Nanjing

I was feeling like I didn't have any interesting pictures to show, but I had forgotten that I had a whole bunch of photos still stored in my camera. I'll get at least a couple of good posts out of them, so I will start out with a daytrip that we took to Nanjing back in the first week of February.

There are two major cities that have, in turns, been the great capitals of China. Nanjing is one, and Beijing is the other. The names are simple, as "Nan" means south, and "Bei" means north. Beijing was the capital during the reign of the Manchus (originally from north of the Great Wall), but Nanjing was the capital up until the success of the Communist Revolution in 1949, when Mao and the gang relocated the capital back to Beijing. For that reason, the Taiwanese often continue to refer to it as the "true" capital of China.

As the capital of China, this city was singled out by the Japanese for especially brutal treatment. There is a major monument and museum to the "Rape of Nanjing", but we didn't go there this trip. We will do that later. In fact, I'm considering going with just John this Saturday, while Lee goes to Shanghai to do some shopping. One of the bargains we made with John to get him to accept this whole China project was that we would take him to see interesting World War II sites, and Nanjing is the closest place to us where there is really something to see. Once we quit worrying about the economy so much, I may eventually take him on a father-son outing to the Philippines. You can get there quite cheaply from here, and there are said to be really good tours of the Bataan Peninsula and Corregidor.

I have another motivation to go to Nanjing again soon... it has a very ominous nickname: "The Furnace of China." That sounds like a good reason not to wait for summer.


The grounds of the Nanjing Museum. In the background you can see the slope of Purple Mountain, a site of great cultural importance to the Chinese. Pearl Buck, the American writer of The Good Earth, grew up in sight of this peak, and wrote lovingly of it. I didn't even try for a good picture of the mountain, as it was overcast that day. I'll post pictures another time if I get good ones.


Some funky sculptures on the grounds of the museum


A mixture of clothes and meat hanging out together to dry.


A spot on the city wall. About half of Nanjing's original city walls are intact, more than any other city, I've been told. In the scene are Allyne, Emma, Lee, and Lee's mother Janet, who was visiting us. Once again, a word to you all: visitors are very welcome.



Emma and John on the city wall. On the right, John is standing in an embrasure over the highway facing east. It was from that direction that the Japanese marched through the gate below him and into the city during World War II.

There is one final photo of the Nanjing outing, but Lee has it on her blog. It is very much worth a look.

Nooooooo! Not the Cheese!

Okay, maybe this isn't such a good place to live after all. Apparently the Chinese authorities have recently declared war on imported cheese. Who knows why? Do even the people enforcing it know why? James Fallows speculates that it might have something to do with the big milk contamination scandal from last fall. It would be a real stretch to connect the dots between those two, but it makes as much sense as any other explanation. It also reminds me of the big DVD crackdown last fall, which I wrote about here. For myself, I don't know anything I haven't read, although I did notice that the usual selection of imported cheeses was available last night at the grocery store (not that I bought any, the good stuff is far too expensive to be anything more than a very rare treat).

The more I learn about Chinese bureaucracy, the more it reminds me of that old legend about J. Edgar Hoover, the first director of the F.B.I. Supposedly, he once wrote "watch the borders" in the margin of a memo. Rather than question him and face his wrath, his underlings ordered increased surveillance on the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada. Only later did they learn he was referring to the width of the margins on the memo itself.

So, did someone high up in Chinese customs and immigration enforcement say something to the effect of "don't cut the cheese", and everyone got confused? The world will never know, but by this time next month, it will probably all be forgotten.

Worst Places to Work?

This is an article I stumbled across in Business Week magazine. They ranked Suzhou as #14 in their worst places to work for expats.

A bit harsh, I think, although I am certainly glad to know we rank better than Lagos, Nigeria and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The magazine knocks Suzhou for "pollution and the limited opportunities for culture and recreation". I guess I can recognize their point in some ways. This certainly isn't the most cosmopolitan of cities, and I know that some of the younger expats here have been frustrated with the "sleepy small town" environment.

The irony of that, of course, is that it is a city of six million people. That might sound like a lot, as it makes Suzhou larger than Phoenix, Philadelphia, or Dallas. However, in China, even a city this big does not support a middle-class population large enough to have the range of entertainment, cultural events, and restaurants that one would find in similarly sized American or European city.

For those things, one really does need to live in Shanghai, and I can tell you that the contrast between Shanghai and Suzhou is huge. For us, however, Suzhou has really fit the bill nicely. We have found it to be a great family environment.

And we just got a Burger King. I suppose that is a plus.....

The Shanghai Museum

More of my ongoing project to post various orphaned photos that didn't get used before. These are from the Shanghai Museum. There are some very good museums in Shanghai, but this one focuses on antiquities. I didn't make any attempt to keep track of when these works were made.


A bronze water bowl with a fun feature: there are sculptures of aquatic creatures molded into the bottom, so they are swimming in the water when full.


A bronze wine vessel. About half of the bronzes in the museum are identified as being wine vessels, which no doubt tells you something. This is a very typical Chinese form, and in fact, the building itself is in a stylized shape of one of these vessels. Sometime later, I'll comb back through all my photos and see if I have an exterior shot.




A huge bronze bell. Unless it is actually an inverted wine vessel.



A stone relief known as the "Thousand Buddha Stele". I quite liked it.

You ain't yet seen crowded.

I'll be trying over the next while to put some random unused photos to good use. We really need to go out and do some real travelling again, because I'm not sure how much entertainment I can milk out of some of these (there are reasons I haven't posted them before). This particular batch is from my cell phone, which is my camera of last resort, as the quality is low.

Contrary to its reputation, not everywhere in China is crowded, and even crowded places are not so all the time. However, if a tide of humanity is ever going to sweep over and drown you, it will be it may well be in the aisles of the Auchan grocery store. It is actually a French chain that got in early when Chinese consumers started to have a little money. Although the more traditional market streets are still thriving, Auchan attracts huge crowds. They don't always appear to actually be shopping. Last year (before we were here) during the big freak snowstorm that virtually paralyzed all of China, the poor crowded in and milled about all day for shelter from the cold.

The store was already huge, but in December, an entire interior wall was opened up for a major expansion. It is now, hands down, the biggest store I have ever been in, and that includes American mega-stores like Bass Pro Shops. Amazingly, it can still be completely packed. When it is, it feels like an entire shopping mall of shoulder to shoulder humanity.

By contrast, there is another French chain here, Metro, that is more of a warehouse store, which caters to restaurants and businesses. It requires a membership, but most of the expats have one through their employers. It is, unsurprisingly, much less crowded, although not useful for regular grocery shopping. We don't go that often, as it is on the wrong side of town for us. However, it is one of the few places in town that I will buy meat. I have made it a point to observe how they are handling and storing the meat in most of the shops around here. Suffice it to say, I haven't liked what I've seen.

Back to the crowd topic. Here is a comparison of Auchan on the left, Metro on the right.

Notice how the people just sort of blend into each other in the distance. Now imagine that you can see the same thing 360 degrees around you. Remember that a typical camera can't capture distance and depth very well. You get the picture.

This China project is good for a few years, but I intend to save enough money that, when it is over, I can go live in a nice, quiet rural area.

Monday Miscellany

I'm thinking of abandoning my post naming schemes, because I don't always post often enough to avoid having a chain of the same titles. I'll stay with it for tonight, however. Here are various pictures that didn't make it into any previous posts.


Our Christmas tree and Santa spread. Christmas photos were supposed to be Lee's blog topic, but she has waited too long and lost her privileges.


The kids with some Christmas morning treasures, which was actually held a few days late due to our Hong Kong trip (which was where we bought all of the presents anyway).


These were for sale all over Hong Kong, but I've never seen them in Mainland China. Click on them for a good look. I'm not sure what that has to say about cultural differences. I didn't visit the homes of any locals, of course, but dare I imagine convenient underwear dispensers on bathroom walls?




These are from a few months ago, on our very first foray into Shanghai. This is in the area known as the French Concession (or the "Former French Concession" for those who are sticklers for their anti-imperialism vocabulary). In other words, it was the part of the city that was on long term lease to the French government during the days of empire.

In their day, the concessions all had "extra-territorial rights", meaning that within their boundaries, the laws of China were superseded by the European laws. Today, that is held up as an example of the humiliation of China, and therefore a rallying cry among ardent nationalists. I really do sympathize, but the fact is that even the local Chinese did their best to keep themselves under European jurisdiction, rather than face the arbitrariness (and brutal punishments), of the Chinese Imperial courts.

In any case, this area of the city really does look like a blend of France and China. It is quite pleasant.