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Notes from Changsha, Hong Kong

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Hong Kong

Oh man, I tell ya it felt good to leave work the Friday before Halloween and hope in a cab headed to the airport instead of braving Shanghai’s Metro. Halloween weekend was my first time leaving Shanghai since I arrived here in August. As it turned out, a commute from Shanghai to Changsha isn’t all that bad, except for the bad quality and exorbitant prices of airport food in China.

When I exited the airport at Changsha around 10:30 Friday night I inhaled deeply. After living in Shanghai so long the air… well, it smelled kind of provincial. Not that Changsha or its airport (many miles outside town) has clean air, but Shanghai’s air feels so adulterated most of the time. Not only is the city covered in smog but just walking the streets and subway stations you inhale a multitude of fragrances that have nothing to do with the natural world. Whether it’s the obnoxious construction smells I find in the People’s Square metro station, the sharp cologne burning my nose in the elevator, the smell of refuse on the street or the intoxicating scents of a decadent restaurant – no breath in Shanghai is free of man-made smells. Of course it wasn’t just the smells that made it clear I wasn’t in Shanghai anymore, there was something pleasantly inland and second-tier about Changsha that set it apart from the sterilized coastal city I share with 20 million other people.

My cab driver from the airport drove at tremendous speeds (what is it with Chinese cabbies driving obscenely fast to and from airports?) and I arrived in downtown Changsha in record time. First stop was the old hangout, Folk Bar on Jiefang lu (Liberation road). My friends had thought that my cab would take longer than it had so they had already moved onto a new watering hole, but that was fine with me because I had a nice time drinking a gin and tonic catching up with the bartender Jimmy. I met Jimmy last year and we instantly became friends, he is from the city of Huaihua in far western Hunan where I spent last year teaching English. I also got to say hi to the boss of the bar, who last year in a moment of memorable exuberance had bought me and a friend a few free Belgian beers. It was all very Cheers like, going to that place where everyone know your name and yadda yadda. While walking the streets I know so well to the next bar someone even recognized me. It felt like coming home, a feeling I had over and over again during my visit to Changsha.

The rest of that Friday night, my hangover-filled Saturday and the big Halloween party Saturday night don’t really need to be discussed. It was a blast, but parties like that don’t lend themselves well to blog posts. On Sunday, exhausted and happy after a weekend of reunions and making new friends, I caught a train back to Shanghai. Why a train and not a plane you ask? Well besides the fact that I like taking trains in China, I had to lug home two big suitcases packed with books. You see, I love books. Last year as a teacher I had shipped over a box of books before I arrived in Hunan and had continued to add to my collection as the year went on and by the end of it I had a sizable library. Unlike many expats in China I can’t just give my books away or leave them for future American expats to read, I just can’t let go. So I left my books with a friend in Changsha and on this trip I just barely got them home to my apartment in Shanghai before my arm fell off.

I had one day back in Shanghai before I was leaving again for Shenzhen on my way to Hong Kong. I was lucky enough to see my old roommate from my days as a student in Kunming, which was incidentally when this blog was begun. One highlight of his visit to Shanghai were the mugs (1 liter!) of excellent hefeweizen that we enjoyed at the Bund Brewery, a spot I will certainly be returning to.

The next day I headed back to the Hongqiao airport in Shanghai and flew south to Shenzhen, the special economic zone smack dab next to Hong Kong that is home to 10 million people and is a monument to the positives and negatives of Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening. The whole city is like one big construction site; yes, that can be said for every Chinese city, but in Shenzhen the land feels even more cut up and unfinished than usual. Luckily I didn’t have to spend much time walking around Shenzhen, a city that holds onto the adjective “soulless” well. There is a bus that ferries you from the Shenzhen airport to downtown Kowloon in Hong Kong, though you have to walk through customs yourself.

About the Hong Kong customs: it’s easy. I tell you it feels wonderful walking into a part of China and getting a 90 day visa just for being an American, such a nice change from the mainland where visas are a real headache. There’s one thing about entering Hong Kong that always cracks me up. They have big colorful posters everywhere warning visitors about carrying in drugs, infectious diseases, and animal products. Naturally, a tiny island city of over 7 million people next to the largest country in the world should be worrying about such things. The poster explaining that you can’t bring in animal products has this hilarious picture of a rather short portly Chinese woman carrying a cheap plastic tarp bag (the carpet bag of China), and right beside her is this super hot Playboy model of a Hong Kong customs officer literally towering over the peasant woman (who looks mortified) and what is this Angelina Jolie of a Customs officer holding? Why nothing less than a “black boned chicken” in all is dead raw-meat glory. You’re probably scratching your head and saying “what?” but believe me, the poster is hilarious.

The bus ride from the border into the city of Hong Kong is short and takes you through bald hills covered in thin layers of concrete, like so many chocolate truffles, and past the tallest skinniest apartment buildings you will ever see. Many of these skinny towers have a floor smack in the middle that has no rooms, so as to allow the wind to blow through the anorexic building. The sheer swaying that the people living on the top floor of these places must experience, it’s enough to explain why Fengshui practitioners advocate living on the ground level.

I’m starting to think that Hong Kong is the home of my adult dreams. In fourth grade a friend of mine and I laid down plans to travel across the Sahara on a Vespa scooter, now (sadly) I dream of living in Hong Kong – wealthy and comfortable. (Hold on a second, I still want to travel through North Africa on a scooter! I can move to Hong Kong when I retire.)

The city feels less like a archipelago of islands off the Southern Chinese coast and more like a metropolis placed in the exact middle of every shipping lane that exists on this planet, like the bustling space stations of the never-to-be-realized future that I used to watch on TV as a child. It is simultaneously a place people go to on their way to another place and a destination in itself. The way I always notice the city’s oh so inviting internationalness is by going to a Hong Kong supermarket.

As I noticed last time I visited the city, the upscale supermarkets here sell absolutely everything under the sun. 2008 saw Hong Kong abolish all wine duties on imported wine and the city is now certifiably the new center of the wine world. If you want to auction off your case of 1982 Chateau Petrus, Hong Kong is the place to do it. So, when I arrived in the city, in the concrete cave of a fantastically large mall (the forum of the modern Asian city), I quickly passed by the Starbucks (somehow nicer than our Shanghai versions, but I can’t put into words why) and hit up the super-deluxe supermarket. There I perused the extensive wine collection that was, by and large, reasonably priced, unlike in Shanghai where wine prices are often jacked up like an American home before the recession. I went with an organic Australian Riesling that was a comfortable 99 Hong Kong dollars, a gift to myself in that city of self pampering. I also ordered a real cheeseburger that was fantastic.

While in Hong Kong I stayed in my company’s private apartment way up near the top of the mid-levels escalator in the land of polished Lamborghinis and private tennis lessons. I think I’ll let the view speak for itself:

The building was just as luxurious as the view. They even sterilize the elevator buttons hourly:

I managed to make it up to the top of Mount Victoria, which I had skipped on the last visit due to an interminable blanket of fog. I snapped some photos and walked slowly through the muggy forests and the egregiously expensive apartment complexes back down to the neighborhood I was staying in.

I then did the only natural thing and ordered a heaping pile of Mexican food for one. This was followed with the purchase of a full pint of Ben & Jerry’s Mint Cookie ice cream (Hong Kong is the part of China that sells Ben & Jerry’s) that I took back to the apartment to chow on while sipping my Australian wine. I had hoped to save the majority of the ice cream for breakfast (a favorite early morning meal of mine that I learned to love while studying in Burlington, Vermont), but the freezer was one solid block of ice. I had to bite the bullet and eat the full pint of ice cream and drink the bottle of wine while simultaneously snacking on the leftover chips and salsa from my diabetes-inducing cheese-covered Mexican feast. I decided to stay in and watch cable TV, so that I could more easily consume my ice cream (isn’t it interesting how TV makes eating forgettable, almost dream like?), before rolling my engorged body to the bedroom. Lucky for me the master bedroom had such a wonderful view I forget all about the extreme levels of heartburn that were burning apart my digestive system.

And that was my vacation.

Posted in Changsha, Hong Kong, Hunan, Personal, Photography, Travel | 1 Response »
Tags: Changsha, Food, Halloween, Hong Kong, Travel

Off to Changsha and Hong Kong

Friday, October 30th, 2009

qipao

General thinking is that for one to celebrate Halloween properly one needs a abundance of Americans. I mean, who else in the world grew up trick or treating as a kid before moving on to less PC non-candy-related activities. It binds us in a way. (If your un-American society also celebrates Halloween, I apologize. It’s easy to ignore everyone else when you grow up American.) Here in Shanghai there are not only an abundance of Americans but also a great big crowd of other party-loving folks wanting to get in on this holiday of badly dressed drunks. The amount of bars and clubs hosting Halloween parties in Shanghai this weekend is downright monstrous, I’ve never seen anything like it in any other Chinese city. For me though I need to leave town. I want a more pure American Halloween experience, plus I’ve been here for 3 months without a single trip out of the city. So I’m headed back to Changsha, capital of Hunan province, where many of my old American teacher colleagues still live and we’re going to throw a bombastic party. Instead of last year’s Baijiu punch watercooler (that poor machine still pumps out water that tastes like rubbing alcohol) there will be punch in a bowl, I believe. My costume will also be improved. Instead of my vile smelling Indian hair extensions and un-shaven bum look from last year I’ve borrowed a tailored Qipao (旗袍) from my Japanese roommate along with her fur scarf and fake pearls. While I’m still don’t have any heels to wear one of my Chinese colleagues just lent me her small purse, which matches the dress perfectly. I work with such thoughtful women. By the way, my coworkers are loving the fact that I’m wearing a dress for a holiday that they will all be sleeping through. They just don’t understand…

After Changsha I’m off to Hong Kong (via Shenzhen) for work. Pictures and stories will be posted once I’m back to my normal day-to-day.

Posted in Changsha, Hong Kong, Hunan, Personal, Travel | No Responses »

A Story of an Illness in China

Monday, May 11th, 2009

Chinese hospital bed

As an American child an illness like the flu or a stomach ache often didn’t seem dire to me at all, in fact if I missed school the illness would sometimes be welcomed and enjoyed. In those times I knew I was young and healthy and that my parent’s health insurance would allow competent and well paid doctors to solve whatever problem I had. I can’t ever remember feeling terribly scared about being sick when I was a kid. Now I’m older, though certainly young enough to be slightly cocky in the way I live, and illness is at the least a big annoyance and at worse a fearful and unknown hell. In China illness takes on new dimensions of worry what with the less than perfect medical system. Though believe me when I say that the Chinese medical system is very good and has been good to me, this story was an anomoly in almost every way. I got to go down the hellish unknown road of an illness this Spring and it is without a doubt one of the most intense experiences of my time as a teacher in Hunan.

I don’t want to give away what I had just yet, the path to figuring that out is what made this long drawn out adventure so absolutely interesting and scary. In March the American woman who had taught at my school here in Huaihua last year visited for a week. It was 6 days and nights of non-stop banquets and jovial drinking with friends. On top of that I was teaching 16 lessons that week. She left on a Friday and that morning I woke up feeling miserable. I reasoned that I had blown my immune system over the course of the hectic week of partying and figured I could cure myself with a weekend of sleep, relaxation, and lots of water and Tylenol. I found myself completely exhausted to a degree I wasn’t used to that weekend, I was acting like an old who needs to stop every few steps. All of that didn’t bother me too much since I am young and figured whatever the bug I had was it was nothing that I couldn’t fix. Monday rolled around and I still felt horrible, maybe even worse than before. I had an easy lesson for my students that week, having them prep question for my sister’s visit the following week, but nonetheess teaching was an unbearable chore that left me wasted.

After my first class Tuesday my body was noticeably giving away, everything took too much energy. Even walking out of the school to eat was a massive chore and left me in bed for hours between trips anywhere. Tuesday morning was the last time I would teach for two weeks. On Wednesday I went to the local hospital, the Number Five People’s Hospital. On the way there I learned that the teachers at my school never use that hospital, it has a crummy reputation. The doctor there told me I was fine and would be okay after some rest. He gave me vitamin C tablets.

I spent the rest of that week trying to recover, my mind focused on getting better for my sister Becky’s visit. I downed an obscene amount of Tylenol, ate basically nothing (really), stayed in bed all day watching movies and went through a full water cooler’s worth of water in 7 days. On Friday I went to Changsha to pick up my sister. I was still sick but determined to make her visit as I had imagined it. I still wasn’t eating more than a few bits. Nausea and a sore throat were added to my list of symptoms. On Sunday we took a bus back to Huaihua and I still felt horrible.

That first night back home I realized I needed to go to the hospital. Next day spent all day in the Huaihua No. One hospital. Nothing was discovered until they sent me to the infectious diseases building. There they told me that I had a serious infection “in some organ” (they didn’t know which) and needed to stay in the hospital over night. I called my field director told him I wanted to come to Changsha, Hunan’s capital, for better care. My sister’s visit was unraveling at the seams. I packed enough clothes and contacts for two days in Changsha. I was hopeful of a quick diagnosis and recovery, a foolhardy belief looking back on it. My throat by this point was becoming increasingly out of whack and talking or eating (not that I did that) became a very painful experience.

We took the early bus back to Changsha, I was out of it in every way. Arriving in Changsha at noon we hiked around the busy metropolis in the mid-day sun while we searched for a hotel that hadn’t opened yet. I sat down every chance I had. Got a room at my old hotel from last summer and taxied to the Provincial People’s Hospital, my home for the next 5 days.

The first day was pretty easy, just got some antibiotics and saline solution injected into me in the emergency ward. The nurses like my plump veins. Only took 5 and a half hours too, with ample time waiting in lines to first pay and then pick up my prescriptions. Got dinner while in a lucid feverish state, but I was hopeful and glad Becky was able to see more than the inside of Chinese hospitals.

Over the next couple of days my doctors (they changed almost daily) kept changing my prescription, apparently nothing was working (Hmmmm. A warning sign, no?). Started getting daily blood tests, watched as my white blood cell count skyrocketed. Every single test they ever gave me came back with a sad looking doctor and bad news, it was almost comical. By day three the doctors were showing signs of worry and didn’t understand why the antibiotics weren’t working. My family back home was worried as well while they tryed to figure out exactly what my medicine was. My field director began to show signs of fatigue and I slept all day on my rock hard bed while my sister read books. McDonalds milk shakes became my best friend and I watched the swarms of sick people around me.

New crazy diagonisises became a daily occurrence. Strep throat became tonsillitis, and then infected lungs, which became an infected heart and then TB, finally ending in a scrapping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel HIV diagnosis (no, I don’t have that). I bought new glasses because my insufficient supply of contacts ran out and I wore the same filthy/smelly/sweat soaked clothes day after day. Two fellow American teachers, Tara and Maria, visited me sometime during the week and were a Godsend. They brought instant chicken soup and hot chocolate, filling a void I had due to complete lack of American comfort food.

Thursday night (after 3 days at the hospital) was the high tide of my misery. The hospital refused to let me take any pain killer whatever, it would affect my fever and they enjoyed watching it climb – seemingly just to see how high it would get. I couldn’t swallow water anymore because of the pain. So that night with frozen water bottles in my armpits (to lower the fever) and IV tubes stuck into my Heroin-addict-hands I slept at the hospital. At that point I was fully nuts and deeply worried about what would happen to me. Crazy scenarios popped into my head about being quarantined with Bird Flu or being evacuated to America. At that moment of sadness while my doctor thought I was asleep she talked to my field director behind the curtain saying in a serious tone that it was very possible that I had Tuberculosis. I lied staring at my IV dripping, full of despair.

On Friday with a high tide fever of 102 I flew to fly to Beijing to seek better care. The hospital was American run and, to me, was like a 5 start hotel (with prices to match). I started feeling better the minute I learned I had Mononucleosis. Yes, I have Mono. It only took the Beijing hospital an hour or so to figure that out. I kept thinking: “What the hell had they been doing in Changsha??” I flew back to Changsha the next day and took a bus to Huaihua. I was still sick, though thankfully out of my life as a patient with an unknown disease and rare bacterial infection.

The writer Katherine Ann Porter said in a 1965 interview regarding her bout of Spanish influenza, which she got while recovering from Tuberculosis in Texas in 1919, “I just simply divided my life, cut across it like that.” Now, I was never close to death but the long nature of my illness and the fact that I stayed bed ridden and insular after returning from Beijing for weeks and weeks brought a clean break from my life before my illness. Truthfully, before I was sick I had been lost. Life in Huaihua was annoying me and my job teaching at my school lacked the enjoyment it had before. My goals to learn Chinese, live in the present, and enjoy life alone in a far-off Chinese city were thrown aside and I wasted my days away. Mono gave me plenty of time to think and realize how little time I have left here. Right now I’m trying to act on those realizations. At least I have a good story to tell.

Photograph from eyeofstanley on Flickr.

Posted in Beijing, Changsha, Huaihua, Personal | 2 Responses »
Tags: Chinese hospitals, Illness, Sick in China

Off to Beijing!

Friday, October 31st, 2008

Today I catch a bus to Changsha. There I will celebrate Halloween and hang out with some people I haven’t seen since August. Then on Sunday I’m catching a train up north to Beijing where I will be for the next week.

I’ll be staying with my old host family and catching up with people I know in the capital. Then of course there is the fact that the U.S. presidential election is on Tuesday (polls actually close Wednesday morning here in China). Hopefully I’ll be able to celebrate with the many other American expats in Beijing, might even go dancing all over Tian’anmen Square.

Posted in Beijing, Changsha, Travel | 1 Response »

My Vacation Before the School Year

Saturday, August 30th, 2008

I left Changsha and my month of teaching orientation 10 days ago. In two days I have my first day of class as an English teacher here in Huaihua. The question when I first arrived here in Huaihua was, what should I do now? There were some necessary errands such as cleaning up my apartment, buying things to fill up my now clean apartment, and the very important task of getting my residency permit.

Let me explain a Residency Permit. I came to China with a visa that granted me thirty days to go and get this permit. A residency permit is just about the most important thing I carry with me here in China. It grants a quasi green card status, letting me work and live in China while also allowing me to leave and enter the country as many times as I want. The problem is getting one. You need letters from everyone and their cousin, an unbelievably thorough health exam done in China (blood tests for HIV, chest x-rays for TB, ultra sounds for my possible pregnancy, and urine tests etc etc), certificates from my school saying they can host foreigners, my passport, my Foreign Expert card, and a long list of other crap that they xerox many times. My field director recommended doing this towards the end of our week of freedom so we could travel, I wasn’t given a choice.

A week ago my liaison said that we would go to the police station on Monday. Seeing what was going on I settled my affairs in Huaihua and hopped a train for Changsha on Friday night to see some people and get out of the city while I could. Good thing I still had my passport when I went because the police at the train station (there were dozens and dozens, the Olympics were still going on) stopped me noting my passport information and grilling me for ten minutes. That has never happened to me before at a Chinese train station, a few days later the reason would be made clear to me. So after a almost completely restless overnight train ride, during which I vowed to always take the fast and comfortable bus from now on, I arrived in Changsha at 6 am. I got breakfast in the early quiet of my old home before taking a half-hour bus ride to the Changsha south bus station where I could catch a bus to Shaoshan, Mao Zedong’s hometown. I was thinking, at the time, that I couldn’t just chill in chic Changsha while I should be getting to know my new home, Huaihua, so I used a day trip to Shaoshan as an excuse for my excursion from the west of Hunan.

As I should have guessed Shaoshan was a dud of a day trip. It took me two hours in a cramped bus to get there. Once there a dude got me to pay him 5 RMB to carry me to Mao’s birthplace. I bumbled around there for like an hour trying to squeeze between the hordes of Chinese tourists seeing the sights. The best part were the captions found in his perfectly proletarian family home. The one in the kitchen read, I’m paraphrasing: “This is where Mao Zedong used to gather his family around to explain the teachings of Marxism and peasant revolutionism.” A little ridiculous. However the soldiers standing at attention in every room and the many elderly Chinese, who no doubt love the Chinese Communist Party for reasons a Laowai like me would never understand, put me in a serious and contemplative mood. It felt like I was walking around a Buddhist temple. The rest of my time in Shaoshan was a yawn, except that I talked someone into giving me a free ride on his moped. I arrived back in Changsha by 3:30 meeting up with friends for a fun night of food and drink.

–Me in front of Mao’s birthplace

I got to Huaihua, by bus, Sunday evening in time for my Monday appointment with the police. I really dislike dealing with the police, no matter what country they’re in. They are slow, often incompetent, far too numerous, and take forever to do simple tasks. That was exactly the situation I ran into when I first went to the station on Monday. Interestingly though I discovered that Huaihua is an area of China banned from playing host to foreigners, yet obviously not entirely. The city has military bases somewhere with nuclear warheads aimed at (according to wikipedia) American Guam. The Chinese, seeing as I am so dashing and crafty, naturally suspect me of being a spy and therefore had me fill out an extra form saying I was traveling to Huaihua. They told me it would take a week for the permit, so I hunkered down in Huaihua.

Then I had four friends visit and decided I should in fact do some traveling while I still could. So I went to liaison asking if we could get a receipt from the police saying they have my passport so I could travel and sleep in hotels, as the police had done for my fellow teachers in Changsha. They were not accommodating at all. Luckily my liaison has a classmate who lives near the police station and knows someone high up at the police station, guanxi baby! He is a short man with no noticeable commanding features, though going by people’s reactions he has a good bit of power. Previously we had just dealt with three unhelpful women who seem to have no power greater than a secretary. Once he walked in they got right to work, but as it turns out they had done their job on Monday when they xeroxed my myriad of forms, certificates and identifications. All that was required was the signature of some even higher male official who was away and no one knew for how long. Leaders of that caliber always seem to be away for no apparent reason. In the end guanxi (connections) saved the day and I got my passport on wednesday, a full five days before I was supposed to.

So off to Fenghuang me and my friends went! We left Huaihua at 4:30 and arrived to a touristy yet somehow charming riverside village. Fenghuang means phoenix and it looks like this.

Its getting late here so I’m going to wrap this up. Fenghuang was a nice place to chill and walk around. It reminded me of Lijiang in Yunnan, due to its almost (but definitely not) ancient feel and hordes of tourists. We were only there for a night, most of which was spent eating at night-markets and sipping imported coffee the next morning. I’ll get back there no doubt since it’s only two hours away from me. G’night!

Posted in Changsha, Huaihua, Hunan, Mao Zedong, Travel | No Responses »

Fried bee pupas, stir-fried stone frog and local muntjac

Friday, August 22nd, 2008

After my previous epic post that I wrote the night I arrived here in Huaihua I have been rather quiet. I would like to blame this on the fact that I played host to two UVM classmates who visited for my second night here. But in fact part of this wait is due to the fact that I hadn’t really warmed up to this mysterious city. My first reaction could be summed up in the phrase: “what the hell did I get myself into?” I wanted to wait until I was genuinely thrilled to be here before I wrote in this blog again. That time has come, on my third evening here.

Since I have to catch a train soon let me get to the point. This evening I had an Aaha! moment when it clicked that living in Huaihua is a blessing. Surprisingly enough this happened while eating dinner with a couple teachers and a vice-principal of my school. Earlier today I bought a train ticket back to Changsha after realizing that going to Kunming takes too long. I felt a little annoyed with myself for heading back to the big city so soon after arriving here. My spirts weren’t that high as I prepared for this evening’s dinner. I dressed up nicely and got out my Bostonian gifts for another less than plesant evening of Chinese formal eating. I met my dinner guests in one of the school plazas as hundreds of 15 year old students were going through their required military training. The top principal was also there, however couldn’t make dinner.

We hopped into the car of the vice-principal and headed out of the city. Five minutes out we hit pristine countryside. I was elated to realize that just a short walk from my school I could find mountains waiting to discovered and fields heavy with ripe stalks of rice. The air was cool and a comfotable breeze russtled the many bamboo and pine trees. The pollution was still there but far less noticable. We stopped at a “rustic” looking place called Butterfly Spring and ordered some dishes. Our meal consisted of spicy deep fried bee pupas (with some whole bees mixed in, though no one at those), a stir fried rodent that likes to hop around and is local to the mountains (no one could translate its name for me – I just found it in my dictionary listed as muntjac), stir fried spicy beef, a soup of black chicken, and finally a big bowl of stewed stone frogs. It was all new to me and apparently represented the local delicacies of Huaihua. It was a memorable dinner full of jovial conversasation and many toasts. They all loved their presents of MFA painting reproductions and Harvard calendars. I would write more but I must run to catch my train to Changsha. I’m hoping to get a ride to Shaoshan, Mao Zedong’s birthplace, early tomorrow morning right after I arrive in Changsha. Should be a fun weekend.

Posted in Changsha, Huaihua, Hunan, School | No Responses »

怀化是我家 “Huaihua is my home”

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008

Today is one of those days you don’t forget. I am presently sitting in the study of my new apartment on the campus of Huaihua Railway Number One Middle School on a computer provided to me by my school. More on that later. First let me back track 24 hours to when I still lived in Changsha in a hotel with 50 other foreigners, worlds away from where I am now.

Last night was the last evening of my teaching orientation. To celebrate we had a banquet with all of us volunteer teachers, some representatives of the Hunan department of education, and our Chinese teachers of the past few weeks. I wore a suit jacket. It was a fantastic meal full of elaborate dishes and beer paid for by a certain principal, whom we had all just meet that night. I also made a toast in Chinese, which went over well and garnered me a compliment from the Chinese members of the audience. Towards the end it became more like a graduation party as we all posed for picture after picture and drank toast after toast. Everyone was on top of the world looking their best.

Of course we couldn’t all just go to sleep. So we gathered in my hotel room for some casual drinking and dancing before heading to a laid back place called Freedom House. There I learned a great new drinking game involving phoenixes and the flapping of one’s arms. After that we danced at a nightclub before me and some others went to McDonalds for a midnight Big Mac. I fell asleep sometime around 1:30.

Waking up I had a headache, but knew I needed to finish packing, eat, and buy a present for my liasion. Down into the blazing hot Changsha morning I went, first hitting up Whacko market for a fruit basket. The fruit basket was kick ass, yet as it turned out almost a waste of money. So at 10:00 or so all 54 of us went to meet our schools’ representatives and leave the insulation of life in Changsha. It was so hot that by the time we all meet our liasions we were all drenched in sweat, not really how you want to meet someone for the first time. Regardless I went back to my hotel room with the two school representatives from Huaihua Tielu Yizhong. Quickly packing my remaining stuff was followed by a long wait for the elevator and many hugs goodbye. After a lunch of numbing-spicy pork noodles we got a taxi to the Changsha south bus station. This station is far far away from Changsha and half and hour later we arrived there. The sun now hotter than ever.

Here in the bus station I made a fatal error. I put down my awesome $10 (American) fruit basket as we rushed to get bags through the x-ray machine that no one cared enough to watch. We moved on yet the fruit basket stayed. Catching the 1:30 bus to Huaihua me and my Liasion, Nancy, rolled out of Changsha. The other English teacher, David, stayed in Changsha to get my Foreign Experts Certificate, which, by the way, I can’t wait to have.

Oh what a bus ride! It was 5.5 hours long following a brand new expressway that was just completed in 2007. First following the hundreds of industrial buildings and factories that fill Changsha’s outskirts then striking into the tamed countryside of western Hunan. It was rather surreal trip. First, me and the other volunteers had really only stayed in downtown Changsha so after 10 minutes of driving I was somewhere I had never been. So I was naturally glued to the window. Also, the bus people decided (possibly because of me) to show two American movies: Herbie Fully Loaded and The World Trade Center. So me eyes darted between the rich landscape of Hunan outside and Lindsey Lohan’s breasts and later poverty stricken villages and a melodramatic version of 9/11. Those movies were like pinching myself to bring me back to reality. The people on the bus were all very kind and genial, already I was beginning to love the people of Huaihua. Me and Nancy had lovely conversation and I was already sure our relationship would be a good one. About 3 or so hours in we hit the mountains, big tall mountains. Remined me of driving into the adirondack mountains that line the west side of Lake Champlain in upstate New York. Nature in China never looks old, it’s always the traces of human civilization that seem the oldest. Forests never look old and trees usually seem as young as the skyscrapers dotting the bustling cities of eastern China. But out here on mountains too steep to be farmed the forests looked healthy and thick. The villages were made up of hand-made wooden houses whose design surely is thousands of years old. Of course there were plenty of power lines and billboards for China Mobile, but it was beautiful country and an area I hope to return to. I took a bunch of video and as soon as I can figure out how to hook my laptop up to the internet I’ll post the video on Youtube (hopefully before the site is blocked, again).

As the sun was setting we entered the dusty city of Huaihua. The tall mountains gave away somewhat, a wide river and an unfinished new road followed the bus into the city. Nancy told me that the only reason Huaihua is a city is because of the railroads coming here during Mao’s time, before it was no more than a village. (I just learned that the city got its name from a Song dyansty official who was banished here hundreds and hundreds of years ago) But the city looks to me like a monument to the age of Reform and Opening that Deng Xiaoping started. All the buildings are young, yet terribly worn out from the booming population and ever present pollution. The pollution, by the way, seems worse that Changsha. Everyone here burns coal to cook, heat their homes, and power their air conditioning. It is a colorful yet dusty city due to the large billboards advertising the thousands of small businesses that line its hilly streets. Huaihua looks nothing like the gleaming images of Beijing that I see every night on CCTV. The title of this post comes from one of the propaganda slogans splashed on billboards and public buses throughout the city. “Huaihua is my home” is always followed by phrases urging the protection of the environment or the proper use of local resources, but I can’t help but think the local Communist Party leadership is welcoming me to my new home.

Nancy and I got a taxi to the school and I stared starry eyed out the window as Nancy argued with the driver over his inflated price. Advertisements with pictures of suave white men sold clothing above the one and only KFC, while an old woman searched through the trash for plastic bottles. The school sits atop a steep hill and is beautiful, a bastion of education for 3,000 teenagers in the middle of this teeming nation. My apartment is in the teacher’s dormitory. I have a luxurious spread. This place has 6 rooms, plus a balcony. A TV, computer, microwave, bath tub, stove, water cooler, air conditioner, and a fridge/freezer are some of the amenities that I now live with. It is furnished nicely and the left-overs from the previous foreign teachers that lived here are providing me with surprise afyer surpise. I’ve been unpacking while listening to the Kings of Convience and I just watched the US beat Austrailia in basketball.

It’s all very new and I keep telling myself these streets, neighboors and daily routines will soon become a part of my life as well-known as my life in America. But this evening as I walked back to my apartment from the local supermarket I looked up at the stars in the sky and I felt deeply alone, more so than I have in a long long time. Nancy told me the local teachers college may have a couple foreigners teaching there, she’s not sure. Surely though I am the only American living in this city of 400,000. My new life now begins.

Posted in Changsha, Huaihua, Personal | No Responses »
Tags: Huaihua, 怀化

Changsha Life & Photography

Friday, August 15th, 2008

I’m not so good at contributing to my own blog, but in my own defense this is the first free afternoon I’ve had in a week and a half. Between Chinese class, teaching English, going to eat, and being invited to multitudes of events by everyone around me I have had very little time to sit around and be bored. I’ve been telling myself to get started on my laundry for a week now, yet every day I get back to my room look at the clock and pass out. Today I got some done between doing errands and planning a lesson on international travel.

Living in China and teaching English are both wonderful. The later part of that sentence was not so clear in my mind when I first got here, now after a week of teaching I get hopelessly excited every night when I sit down and think up my lesson plan. Which reminds me, how am I going to teach international travel?

This post is really here so I can point y’all in the direction of a new friend I made here in Changsha. Her name is Dana and she is a native of Changsha who loves photography (film!). She and her boyfriend are doing an ongoing project documenting the ethnic minorities of China. Largely, it seems, in Guizhou province, right next to where I will be living all year. Their work is gorgeous and shows China in a light often left unseen. Last night I ate dinner with Dana (her sister is my Chinese teacher) where she showed me her thoroughly impressive camera collection. I had not realized that medium format, slide, and B&W film could even be processed here in Changsha, let alone that anyone enjoyed doing that here. Sometimes I’m just so stupid. Dana’s photography can (and should) be found at her Flickr site. Her boyfriend’s equally amazing work can be found at his Flickr site. Check it out!

Posted in Changsha, Hunan, Photography | No Responses »

The Olympics Opening Ceremony 奥运会开幕式

Saturday, August 9th, 2008

(Taken from a New York Times article)

Yes, the long-awaited Beijing Olympics have arrived. Right now I’m watching the women’s volleyball match between Brazil and Algeria. The entire Chinese television system seems to have turned into a 24/7 Olympics network. Earlier today I watched foreigners debate President Bush’s visit to the games on CCTV 9 (the English channel), before that CCTV 4 enlightened me on the celebrations in the streets of Beijing last night, and of course CCTV 5 (the sports channel) is a non-stop display of the hottest competitions taking place at the moment. My friend informed me that last night’s opening ceremony could be watched on more than 30 Chinese television channels. Every where I go there are people watching a TV.

The opening ceremony was utterly amazing. The best I’ve ever seen, almost too good for words. I watched the 4+ hour long ceremony with a bunch of my fellow teachers at a local hole-in-the-wall KTV place. Its hard to explain the significance of a moment like last night. For countries like America and Australia such ceremonies are a time to celebrate and show off, but there is no need for such countries to prove themselves. For China it really really means so much more. Because for China it was a coming out of sorts, a display of their fantastic history and power which has been discounted by the world for so long. Such heady feelings were in the air last night, even here in Changsha hundreds of miles away from Beijing. Standing on the dilapidated roof of that KTV place last night I couldn’t help but look around Changsha and get excited and feel so lucky that I was here in China for such a moment. There were hugs and flag waving and many many bottles of Qingdao and Harbin beer emptied. Awesome night. Even the police officers who busted into our party didn’t hurt the vibes. (Apparently they were startled to see 52 foreigners walk into a small KTV spot and were worried for our safety, so decided to make a fuss). Well I got to go visit the Hunan Television station with my Chinese teacher right now. 和！

Posted in 2008 Olympics, Changsha | No Responses »

A Wonderful Valentines Night

Friday, August 8th, 2008

Today is the Chinese Valentines day, or at least the twenty minutes left of it, and tomorrow is the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. If there is a better reason to party in China I don’t know what is. Tonight was also the birthday of two of my fellow foreign teachers. Fifty of us went out to dinner then hit up the hottest club in Changsha. We brought the party, even though the dozens of happy couples were already having a good time. A bottle of whiskey cost 420 kuai and came with eight bottles of iced tea, a bowl of pistachios, a fruit platter, and a kind of helpful waitress who poured it into cups for us. Then, as is common in China, we all got on platforms and danced to Soulja Boy while drunk Chinese sang along with us. In the middle of this sweaty insanity a group of about twenty police officers came into the club. They had 4 video cameras with bright lights attached and 2 expensive regular cameras, all operated by police officers. A lone reporter followed along. They busted into a private party room in the back, filming all the while, pulling out someone and leaving the scene. At no time did the music stop and no doubt some foreigners are dancing on that cops’ tape. At around 11 I walked back to my hotel along with hundreds and hundreds of happy Chinese couples, eating watermelon on a chopstick. It was an awesome night and surely one of the best ways to welcome this historic day in Chinese history: 8.8.2008. 加油中国！！

Posted in 2008 Olympics, Changsha, Hunan | No Responses »
Tags: Police

Busy days in Changsha

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008

(This is a picture of Martyr’s Park, which is right by where I’m living, at 11pm)

These days I’ve been waking up every morning at 7:30 getting a bite to eat, some soy milk and Nescafe before walking to a middle school in downtown Changsha. Once at the school I have a morning TEFL training session then two hours of advanced Chinese class. We have a break for lunch. Mostly I’ve been eating 兰州拉面 (Lan zhou pulled noodles with beef) from a place right by school where the employees, including a kid who can’t be more than 9 years old, know me pretty well. After lunch when the temperature is somewhere in the nineties and the sun is at full force I head back to a sweltering classroom to learn more about teaching English in China. Getting out at 5:00 I shower before heading out to dinner at a brand new restaurant and spending the night exploring this new and fascinating city. Arriving back to my hotel room at some late hour I pass out and start a new day all over again. It has only been a month… no wait! just a week since I arrived in Changsha. My days are dense with the smells, sounds and copious amounts of sweat that come with living in Changsha in the summer and I am tired. I love every moment.

Posted in Changsha, Orientation | No Responses »

My first few days in Changsha

Friday, August 1st, 2008

The last time I wrote in this was three days ago during my short layover in Hong Kong. From where I’m sitting that feels like it was years ago (the passage of time is most certainly heightened when one moves to a new and different country like China). So my deal right now is that I am living in a hotel in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province. Me and my fellow volunteer teachers are taking part in our three week long orientation, where we learn about living and teaching english in China. It is tiring business that fills our days from sun up to sun down.

Changsha is a wonderful city. I’m sure if you ask the myriad of foreigners sipping imported wine in Beijing or Shanghai they would say that Changsha isn’t worth the time it takes to visit. These people are wrong. (And most likely rather boring) Changsha is no stand-out city, its far away from the coast, a little polluted, still in the throws of early economic development, and hot as all hell in the summer. What Changsha is though is exciting and jubilant. The people here are warm, strong, and relaxed (to a degree). The weather however has been less than perfect. It has rained every day here and there and the heat and humidity make me sweat gallons of water all day long. The food is fanastic and I can’t wait to explore it some more on my own. Some memorable meals I’ve had here include a meal at a communist themed restaurant that served Mao’s favorite dishes and a restaurant that serves cuisine from the northeast of Hunan, including the greatest scallion pancakes I’ve ever tasted.

I want to quickly mention a few things that have kept me smiling the whole time I’ve been here. My fellow volunteer teachers and the two wonderful leaders I am with are all amazing people, I am lucky to be with them. They have also helped evaporate any fears I had of being a teacher in China. My Chinese language skills are also doing very well. Before I came to Changsha I was worried about how much Chinese I’ve lost since I was last living here, but alas those worried were unwarranted because it’s all coming back. And just today while I was shooting a bunch of pictures of a grand tunnel opening ceremony I was interviewed by a local paper! The interview was in Chinese and the reporter told the crowd watching that I was an honored foreign friend. I told him I am a teacher and added that the tunnel was far superior to the one’s in my homeland. It felt great! For now that is all, good night.

-Some spectators at the Tunnel opening ceremony

Posted in Changsha, Hunan | No Responses »

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Jonathan In China

An American in Shanghai.