The Chinese housing crunch

Twice a week, I venture off campus to teach English at Buhler Changzhou, the local branch of Buhler, a Swiss manufacturing company. I wrote an earlier post about it, if you are interested. I try to fill the classes with interesting subjects so that the discussions will go well, but also so that all of us can learn a little. Last class we talked about immigration, which went went very well. It was interesting to see the stark contrast of China (a country with almost no immigrants) to the U.S. a country where one out of every ten people is an immigrant. As a related subject, we discussed the 'hukou' system, which is the Chinese household registration system. I read the Wikipedia article about it and a few news articles about reforms to get some background information, but mainly wanted to learn from them.

The men in the class best described a 'hukou' as the right to reside. Essentially, a 'hukou' is issued to a person (normally to each family, and until 1998, was only issued patriarchally. They said it exists because it existed in the past. It existed in the past as a way to control the population under the various Chinese empires. As we all know, control of the citizenry is pretty important in feudalism. They were able to share a lot with me, most of them having similar opinions, but all of them pretty strong. The first main argument that I received promoting the system was that if the government needs to control the population, the system allows them to do it easily for any portion. The second argument was that it "can control diseases more easily"
and that it "controlled SARS very quickly." Most of them seemed to think that the system was unfair and outdated, and wanted it to be changed. Initially, it was used so that people in the rural areas could not move to the cities, and vice versa. They said with a "city hukou you can get a good job and a high salary." As they explained very clearly, more important than the inability to move out of your city or county (without significant government approval), is that the hukou grants the citizens the right to government services, like education and healthcare.

There have been plenty of changes to the hukou system within modern China's short history. Initially, it was used as they said "to control the population" or rather keep rural people rural and urban people urban. There are lots of comparisons to an 'economic apartheid' used to maintain a large supply of cheap labor for the state run companies of communist China. Now, though, via reforms, mobility is much more prevalent. There are three ways to change one's hukou, as they explained. The first is by getting into a college in another place. You are given a temporary hukou as long as you live there. The second way is to buy a house; "if you buy a house, you can get the hukou." The third, and most common way (for the people at Buhler at least) is to have a company sponsor the hukou for you. Living at company provided apartments or dormitories is common, and this is considered 'buying' a house within the modern hukou system. Thus gainful employment by a company with the ability to house you allows for most college graduates to gain a hukou for wherever they are employed. The 'students' in my class told me that these sort of companies are not giving hukous to all the factory workers or maids. This is a key point, these work issued hukous only apply to the upper echelon of workers. Instead it is designed for the educated to be able to spread across China to where they are most needed for development. Many students from poorer areas, though, are required to return home after graduation to help the underdeveloped areas catch up to China's booming coast. This is done through a scholarship/admission standard differences/hukou transfer forbiddance combination of contracted requirements. All in all, the fact is that you must be in college, college educated, or rich enough to purchase your own home in order to move in China. These reforms still cause a housing 'crunch' for a huge group of people. Migrant workers in China, if considered their own country, would be the seventh or eighth most populated in the world, bigger than Russia or Japan. In my opinion, they are the real sufferers of the hukou system, living as second class citizens while they contribute greatly to the growth of this country. The pics in this blog are of the workers' residences who are building the new library on campus. As one of the men in my class said about the restriction on moving within one's own country "I think it's ridiculous." My last comment will be how strikingly similar the migrant workers due to the hukou system in China are to the illegal immigrants in the United States due to our immigration policies.

An ego-killer

I felt that this post has probably been a long time coming, but as I have just finished up writing yet another set of flash cards, it is now appropriate. As most of you who know me at least a little bit, a small ego is not something I have had for quite a long time. My quasi-rock star status as one of about 12 or 13 foreigners on a campus of 15,000+ hasn't done much to keep it in check. But, don't worry, an old, non-assuming foe is taking my ego to the cleaners. That foe is known as Chinese. Or, more academically correct, the Chinese language family. I see and hear it constantly, even in my classes, despite my strict English only rule (as a college level oral language class, I think it's quite a reasonable rule). So, with the helpful introduction in the CIEE orientation classes, I have made a reasonable (well maybe not quite) effort at learning Chinese.

Learning Chinese isn't really all that necessary here. It's not that too many store owners or sales clerks can speak English, because they can't (or are too shy to admit they can) it's more due to the fact that I live on a campus with roughly 15,000 willing translators. I am not saying that every student is enthusiastic about learning English, although many are, but most have at least some enthusiasm towards hanging out or spending time with a foreigner. Add this to the incredible generosity and hospitality of most Chinese people, and I really don't need to learn much Chinese. On the other hand, being here is a great opportunity to learn the most spoken language on Earth and I do have a small desire to have some independence; thus I have tried to learn some Chinese.

As alluded to earlier, Chinese is not actually a language, but rather a family of languages or dialects, the terminology isn't agreed upon as it is socially and politically charged (for more info see Wikipedia). I am learning Mandarin, or putonghua, which is the official dialect used in all schools and government proceedings, as well as being the most widespread dialect. It only came to generalized use during the last century, and currently not much more than half of Chinese people know it. Ideally, it should be the common language used in all business, travel, and other general interactions. Ideally. Instead, travel between various provinces has exposed me to vastly different pronunciations of even the most basic words. Well, even as the common, simplified, standard language, Mandarin still clocks in as one of the three or four most difficult languages in the world for an English speaker to learn. According to the US government's foreign service departments, Arabic, Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin make up the selective group of super, duper, crazy hard to learn languages (they used slightly more academic terms). I have to give a shout out to my grade school buddy Sean Noonan, who, already speaking Mandarin, is tackling Arabic. Needless to say, the journey has been slow and painful (I don't even want to imagine the words my tutors would use).

For all of last semester, I decided that I didn't want to learn the characters, but just how to say them, as well as the pinyin, which is the written approximation of a character's pronunciation with the Latin alphabet. Luckily, all college students know the pinyin, as it is how they now teach children Chinese, as well as the most efficient way to type and text Chinese characters. This was my first mistake. I thought that as long as I could order my food at the restaurant and have a conversation with someone, I would be fine. Well, in order to order food, you generally need to be able to read the menu. Even without trying to memorize the characters, which can get pretty complex (题, title, one of the 100 most common characters), it's not an easy language to master. This is because in Chinese, intonation is used for meaning, not for emphasis. Thus, a single vowel sound (within what appears to me to be the same word) changes the meaning. There are four tones in Chines, plus a neutral tone, so any single vowel can change the meaning of a word into five different meanings. Additionally, because the meaning is derived in the character, there are countless (and I mean countless) homonyms in Chinese. The sound equivalent to 'shi' in Latin characters has 28 different meanings in my pocket dictionary. Using the tones to whittle it down, 'shi' in the fourth tone has 11 different meanings. That is, if you can differentiate the tones. It's an uphill battle. My approach has been 'tone-less' Chinese, as recommended to me by Clark, one of the teachers here last semester. It's been working out pretty well for me. Instead of wasting time trying to say tones I can't even say, I have just accepted defeat and moved on.

At the beginning of this semester, I had finally shaken my head enough times to convince myself that learning the characters was beneficial. And it has been. Initially, they just look like a bunch of lines randomly thrown into a square. After some studying, though, there is a system to the characters, due to the simplification process that the current Chinese government has implemented. Because I have no real attachment to the ancient culture, the simplification has been wonderful for me, as it has standardized many elements, so that the meaning or theme of a character can be guessed based on its parts. Mainly though, learning more characters has allowed me to recognize them more as I am about, repeat it to myself, and constantly learn. There are lots of characters to learn, but I am trying to learn a few each day, or whenever I make myself do it.

All in all, I can say that if it weren't for a lot of helpfulness, patience, and general kindness on the part of my Chinese friends, I would be where I started. But luckily, many friends have been all of the three, so I am making small, small, baby steps. It's a big hill to climb, but I'm not at the bottom, so I am going to keep climbing.
(picture: www.symbols.net)

Abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia, and the death penalty

A few weekends ago, Dave and I went to Xuzhou to visit Kerrin and Ashley. They are two people we met during orientation week, from West Viriginia and Virginia respectively. Xuzhou is a town in northwestern Jiangsu province, about a seven hour train ride away. Lynn, the girl who accompanied Dave, Danthemanstan, and I skiing, taught with them there last semester. We had a good weekend, mostly hanging out, taking tours around their campus and seeing some of the sites Xuzhou had to offer. We shared stories of teaching and experiences here. They teach at a top 50 university in China, whereas Jiangsu Teacher's University of Technology in somewhere between 450th and 500th, there are about 750 total schools in the ranking. So, some of the activities and conversations they have had with their students are at a much higher level than those I have. Nonetheless, Kerrin had a great idea that I copied and used in my class. He said he had great success and really enjoyed having in class debates.

So, last week I split my students into groups, gave them a handout with instructions and such, and told them to prepare for the debates. This week we had the debates. Each topic had a three person affirmative side, three people on the negative, and two moderators, who also gave introductions and conclusions to the debate. The topics, as indicated by my post title, were abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia, and the death penalty. They all gave prepared short speeches, but after that each side was given some time to discuss and then question (or cross-examine, if you will) the other side. I was quite impressed with almost every single student, and on the whole they really outdid my expectations. I had given them some guidance to good research, and most of their speeches were pretty academic and clear. A few though, were quite humorous, as I could tell they copied them from some not so academic or objective sources. Of course, most of their speeches were essentially copied from a source on the Internet. I don't really think any of my students would come up with phrases like 'ruining the family institution, which is the foundation of American morality' on their own.

The questioning or cross-examining portion was by far the best. A few students really got into it. They really liked throwing a "why not?" at their opponents, which is not appropriate for a real debate, but was really amusing, and added to the competitive environment. One of my class monitors even mentioned the movie Juno in her debate about abortion, a very appropriate cultural reference. The most entertaining moment, and a good display of extemporaneous speaking, was when the girls in one group asked a boy in the other to act as if he had impregnated his girlfriend in high school. He was defiant that this would never happen, and refused to answer the clearly conditional sentence. At last he relented and said if it happened he would quit school and take a job and raise the child because that was his duty as a man and a father. He received a resounding applause from the kids in the class. I didn't intend for my debates to be a way for students to improve their date-ability, but he seems to have done so. I really like this activity, because although these issues may not be as important in China, it gave my students the opportunity to think creatively and critically about issues that have social implications. Needless to say (based on my impressions) this isn't something that they normally have the opportunity to do.

Trip to 西安(Xi’an)

A few weeks ago, 星星(xingxing), my good Chinese friend, called me and said she wanted to meet later to ask me a question. At first this sounds pretty worrisome, but (through experience) I have learned that in China this means a positive question just as often as a negative one. It was a great question, as she wanted to know if Dave and I wanted to go with her to Xi’an. She has a friend from high school who goes to college there, so he would be able to show us around. We of course said yes. Xi’an is the capital of Shaanxi province in central China. It is famous for two reasons, one, it is the home of the Terra Cotta Warriors as well as historically being the Western-most Chinese outpost on the Silk Road.

We grabbed some McDonald’s at the train station (the standard m.o.) and boarded the train to Xi’an. Xingxing had bought us all hard seat tickets, but seeing that it was a fifteen-hour journey, I upgraded to hard sleeper. After boarding and texting with her and Dave, I was quite glad I did. We were traveling on the long weekend of Qing Ming Jie, or tomb-sweeping day. This is a very traditional Chinese holiday remembering dead relatives, and essentially cleaning and sprucing up the graves. So the train was packed. For them. This is because there seems to be no limit on the number of tickets sold in the seat cars. So, they will be jam-packed with people, and I mean jam-packed. (To really understand, see this post.) But, in the sleeper cars, there is still just one person per bed, so there is plenty of room. I had a pleasant journey, was accompanied by a nice family (grandma and grandpa, mom and dad, and a young Chinese ‘princess’). The young girl, maybe five or six, even helped me read some text messages from Chinese friends I couldn’t understand. My decision was further vindicated when, in the morning, I received a text from Dave saying that one of the kids in the seats near them “just dropped deuce on the floor in front of 星星”, for those not familiar with the slang, a toddler had just pooped on the floor. Dave said that the parents punished the child and quickly cleaned it up, but that’s just one more reason why I always say take the hard sleepers for trips over 8 hours.

We had a great time in Xi’an. We hit the ground running after getting off the train, and joined what seemed like every other tourist at the Terra Cotta Warriors exhibit. I was pretty impressed with the exhibit, it was much, much greater in size than I had imagined. It was pretty mind-boggling to think that all these statues had been created over 2,200 years ago, and were still in pretty good shape despite being burned and buried. The Terra Cotta Warriors are touted as being (along with the Great Wall) the top tourist destination in China. They were worth seeing, but in my opinion, one could probably appreciate them almost as much by watching a good PBS special about them. All the display rooms really seemed to lack good explanations with the artifacts (and this wasn’t just due to not being able Chinese, as Xingxing concurred). We spent Saturday afternoon in a delightful park, and even went on a paddleboat ride. Xingxing’s friend, 奚海波(Xi Haibo) was as helpful as anyone could be. The Chinese people’s record for astoundingly good hospitality was kept up by him. Throughout the weekend he would always ask us what we wanted, tailor everything to us, and most amusingly, he is quite the frugal fellow, and would try to bargain cheaper prices for us because he and Xingxing are just students, and we were foreigners who had traveled such a long way to visit Xi’an. I can’t say enough about how helpful people have been in China. I attribute it to the incredible importance Chinese people place on family and close friends. Thus, whenever I have been to a Chinese person’s home, they have treated me incredibly well.

Dave and I spent the second day climbing up and down 华山(Hua Shan) one of the most famous mountains in China. It was located just a little ways outside of Xi’an. We spent the nigh before in a cheap hotel, and got up bright and early, and made it to the entrance gate by 6 in the morning. Only to be told that it didn’t open until 7. We wanted to climb the mountain because we had read a few reviews and seen some pictures that advertised a few dangerous and treacherous cliff-side pathways. We were unable to find these paths, but we are pretty sure that they have been rebuilt with much safer walkways (to our disappointment). It was still a great day, and the mountain provided plenty of steep paths requiring ladders and chains to ascend or descend. It is always great to get out into nature (albeit filled with tourists and vendors) and enjoy pollution free vistas.

One thing Dave and I occasionally did during the day was to go on litter patrol. In my opinion, littering is an incredibly big problem here in China. Either the police and other public servants have more important things to do, or they choose not to punish litterers, so it is rampant. Ironically, creating a ‘harmonious’ society and a much better environment is something the government, and every Chinese person desires and claims to be actively doing. The problem is, that to criticize (or even talk with) a stranger is something unacceptable and embarrassing in Chinese culture. I have asked a few Chinese people if it is rude that I make comments when people litter, or cut in line, or a few other things, and they say not for me. They don’t say anything because they might be embarrassed and maybe they don’t feel it is their role to do so. But they say it’s okay for me because I am a foreigner. I don’t accept this answer, as I tell them we are all people, nationality should not affect what is or is not acceptable in Chinese culture. When pressed, they have said the main reason they don’t say anything is because they don’t want to be disrespectful to an elder, or they are just shy. Because I don’t really understand the word shy, and don’t think that being older than me gives anyone the right to litter, I have decided that I will make comments. So Dave and I stayed pretty busy reminding people to put their trash in the trash can (all in Chinese of course). Maybe we are the fat, stupid, culturally insensitive Americans, but at least we’re making China cleaner (and for the record, I have had two friends say they wish they had the courage to tell their fellow citizens to quit being rude).

Back in Xi’an we had a good evening walking around the Muslim corner, which although it is pretty touristy, is still a good time. It is essentially supposed to represent the old market that Xi’an was during the Silk Road days, when people from all over Central Asia lived and traded in Xi’an. It seemed now to be more of a way for the Chinese to boost the livelihoods of many of its ‘minority’ peoples from Xinjiang, Gansu, and Ningxia provinces. Whether or not this is the best way to ‘involve’ the people from China’s exteriors is a fairly complicated socioeconomic argument. Nonetheless, we had some really good 'yang rou pao mao', a soup/stew with fried bread, onions, green onions, and lamb strips. It was quite tasty, and wish it was on the menu at the Muslim restaurant near our campus in Changzhou. On Monday morning we toured the campus of Haibo’s school, which was very nice (it is a larger and much more prestigious school than mine). We had a failed attempt to visit what was claimed on WikiTravel as the world’s largest Internet café. We learned that it had broken up and spread to a few locations, as we went through a mostly empty building.

There was last thing to note that occurred on the trip back. The three of us were all in the hard sleeper on another overnight trip. The train wasn't too full, so there was only one other guy in our compartment (which holds six). At some point in the night he seemed a bit distressed, after having run to another car to grab his bags (he had upgraded his ticket). He and Xingxing had a little chat, and he had a thick accent/dialect so I couldn't understand anything he said. Xingxing was chuckling as she explained to me that he had two chickens in his big luggage bag. I was astonished. Now, I have plenty of fish, crabs, and other seafood on the buses and trains. And had seen two chickens escape from a regular looking box outside one train station. I just never thought that these clandestinely transported chickens would be in the bunk next to me. He was so distressed because one of the chickens had died because of the heat (and cramped quarters) inside the bag. It was now just in a plastic bag, with the head visible, on the floor underneath Xingxing's bunk. He had told Xingxing that we were lucky that we were getting off at 3:30, as they (now just it) usually make a lot of noise around 5 am. I think I now am getting a little better idea of why the bird flu spreads easily in China.

It was a great trip, Xingxing, with an amazing command of English and a good sense of humor, makes a solid travel partner and her friend Haibo was a great host. Many of my students have said I am crazy to have traveled thirty hours by train just to spend two nights and less than three days somewhere, you might agree with them. But it was a three day weekend, so I figured it best to make the most of it.

Party in the park

A few weeks ago, I was contacted by Connie (Zhu Xiaosha) from the English department asking if I was willing to help out one of her friends who 'needed' a foreign teacher. What this really meant was that someone she knew had a job to offer me, and she had some good points to earn by being a foreign teacher locator. I am always eager to meet a new group of people here, so of course said yes. In the short preparatory meeting, I found out I would be helping out at a party in the park held by an English training institute for their students and parents. The students ranged in age from 5 to 10 (in Chinese age, that's 4-9 by American counting methods). This company provides extra English classes on the weekends for pre-school and early elementary students. When I inquired into their English level, I was given a range of three weeks to over a year of studying. At that point I just wished I hadn't asked. While at the party I was able to find out that a good portion of the teachers are English education majors working part time jobs during college. My duties were to read a poem and plan activities for thirty to forty minutes for the kids, about 25 or so were expected.

I took a taxi to the park and was greeted very warmly by the 25 kids and their parents and some grandparents. The party was in a pretty park pavilion and the weather was cool but pleasant, and there were lots of kite flying families on the fields nearby. Pretty soon after I arrived, my suspicions came true. I had suspected that I was brought there as more of a guest star than as an educational tool, and this was quite true. As these children are pretty young and thus have very little English, they require bilingual teachers, which I am not. In my opinion, I was there more as someone special and to show the parents that they were getting their money's worth, as a real, live native English teacher (aka 'Foreign Expert') was there to help teach the children. I spent most of the time just being introduced to all of the students and repeatedly engaging in an exchange of: 'what is your name?'...'nice to meet you'...'I'm fine, and you?'...'how old are you'. The kids were cuter than buttons, and some of them had a pretty good command of these and a few more basic sentences.

If you think you have a plan for your life, or know that plan, then I can say that I am not in your club. I guarantee (with a stamp) that one year ago I did not think I would be in China guiding 25 kids in rounds of the 'Wheels on the Bus' and 'If You're Happy and You Know It'. But I did. Those two songs, and a game identifying different pictures of food were about the best that I could come up with for activities (considering I had never met the students and did not know their skill level). They stayed pretty involved, and with the teachers help did an impressive job singing. Having no training or experience with early education (unless you count the occasional visit to my mom's first grade classes) I considered it a personal success. I really enjoyed the little party, the kids were just too cute, as their parents would force the incredibly shy youngster to come up and say hello to me. One of the craziest things is that one tiny girl, 'Candy' who looked no older than 4 and as you can tell from the picture, was quite cute, had some of the best English there, I would have told her parents how precocious she was, but I haven't learned that word in Chinese yet. There was only a single negative thing about the party. During some of the other activities, I cringed at hearing some of the teachers leading the students in saying 'sree' and 'sanks' in lieu of 'three' and 'thanks. Now I know that the dreaded inability to pronounce the 'th' sound starts very young. At the end, I almost felt bad receiving the money, as having the opportunity to meet all the eager and friendly kids was payment in itself. I am quite glad that I was free that Saturday to engage in another fun and horizon broadening experience.

A (not so) Hidden Meaning

The only rule in my oral English classes is 'English only, only English'. All of my students have more than enough English to function in a completely foreign language environment, and the benefits of maintaining a foreign language throughout a class are too numerous to count. So, as a way to ensure this occurs, I take down the names of anyone speaking Chinese in class and then assign them short homework assignments as a result. Personally, I am not a fan of punitive motivation. But, many of the students weren't too convinced by my stressing the importance of not shifting back to Chinese when they struggled with English. I tried last semester not using any punishment, and the results were dismal. Having studied a foreign language in college, I know it's hard not to revert back to one's native language; and know that having a watchful eye or ear can keep students honest. So I have decided that the punishment (short English compositions) isn't too bad. I assign various short stories, poems, or mini-biographies to get them working on creative or research writing (both of which are lacking in their other classes). So, the week before last, I caught one of my female students answering a question from a friend in Chinese. It was only two words, but I tend to think she knows the word 'yes' in English (insert sarcastic tone). So I told her to write a story about a pig and a cow. I know this sounds childish, but I think a very open and basic subject like this allows for a lot of creativity, and if the student isn't creative, is basic enough that he can make a good, simple story. This student is very unassuming, pretty quiet in class, and seems to be like most students in not wanting to stand out at all.

Thus, I was a little shocked and fairly amused when I received the following story the next week. For reference, she had Dave (or Mr. Wacker) as her teacher last semester. The story is titled 'Fight for Love'.
--On the farm, there was a happy pig and a handsome cow. The pig was called Wacker, and the cow was called Ferrell. They two loved the Mickey Mouse at the same time. In order to gain Mickey's love, Wacker and Ferrell decided to have a fight. The winner would get the love of Mickey. They all wanted to be a good husband. So they would cook for Mickey. Wacker was good at cooking food and knowed which food Mickey liked. However, Ferrell never cook any food, then he cooked a very simple meal. Mickey ate the meals. Wacker was proud of his food and thought Mickey is his. But Mickey went to the other side. "I know you try your best to make me happy! I love you" Ferrell was so surprise and then kiss her!--
At the bottom of the paper there was a note 'If you want to travel you can call me: 1555559999' and then the student's name. I will let you make your own interpretation of any 'hidden' meaning in the story. I was quite pleased with the creativity of the story and its continuity. I will say that the adoration from students that this story might convey is, in my opinion, something to be dealt with carefully, but a whole lot better than disrespect or indifference that many teachers receive.

Footy in Nanjing

Last weekend, Dave and I headed to Nanjing to meet up with Kerrin and Ashley, two Americans also here with CIEE, whom we befriended during orientation. They are teaching in Xuzhou, a city in northwestern Jiangsu. I had yet to meet up with them, as they were both trekking around China during the entire Spring Festival break. We met up in Nanjing to go to a soccer (football) game. Kerrin played soccer in college and I became enamored with the sport while studying in Spain. We had been talking for awhile about seeing some games, and as the Chinese Super League started recently, we checked out the schedule and headed to Nanjing. Dave and Ashley came both with less enthusiasm for the soccer, but we really just wanted to see each other anyways.

Now, soccer in China promised to be pretty interesting. The most popular sports here are clearly badminton, ping pong, and basketball. But soccer does pretty well, and the government is really promoting it through its many sports academies and national programs. This is due mainly to the Chinese obsession with success in international sports, and as soccer is the most popular sport in the world, it sees quite a need for the Chinese to be successful at it. Yet, the Chinese national team is ranked 100th in the FIFA world rankings, just behind Cuba and ahead of Ethiopia. That's not exactly the company with which the world's largest country expects to be associated. Even the most avid soccer fans can most likely not name a Chinese player or a team from the Chinese Super league. Even with plenty of cash from the government, it has struggled to even be a competitive league in Southeast Asia, with South Korea and Japan fielding much stronger leagues.

When we got to the game, we had no tickets, but seeing that the game is played in a stadium that holds over 60,000, we didn't think it would be a problem. Outside the stadium were a bunch of people selling noisemakers and many also selling what looked like advertisement fliers. They said they were tickets, but we decided that the ticket office would be more trustworthy (and I am not a big enthusiast of the scalping profession). Well, the ticket office was as closed as closed could be, so we went out, bought some tickets (which were advertisement fliers with a ticket in one corner), and headed on in. The tickets were 15 yuan. Yes, that's $2.19 for those keeping track at home. My small economics education tells me that the supply and demand for these tickets has a long way to go until 'equilibrium'. The stadium was about 1/3 full, and we got good, midfield seats. The game was a good experience. There was a motivated and entertaining cheering section, a la European soccer, the play wasn't horrible (although still a bit inferior to that of TU), the "line" (and by line I mean rambunctious mob) at the concession stand was so typically Chinese, and the only really negative thing was the ubiquitous cigarette smoke throughout the stands. We were cheering for the Jiangsu Sainty, the local team in Nanjing, so the result was disappointing. We lost 1-0 to the team from Changchun, a city in northern China I visited on my trip to the northeast in January. More frustrating was that one of the forwards (who Kerrin and I were very annoyed with) actually missed the goal on a penalty kick. This miss swung the momentum to Changchun, who soon scored the games only goal.

The most interesting thing about the game though, wasn't on the field. It was just outside it, on the track surrounding the field. Located at two of the four corners of the field were troops of riot police. About 20 in each group. There were also about ten lining each sideline, facing the crowd. They were legit, full fledged riot police, with helmets, masks, shields, and billy clubs. It was outrageous. Now, I am pretty used to the constant police and security presence here, as China is a pretty well policed state (even if they are aggressively pursuing 'reform and opening up'). But this was just obnoxious. Although they push crazily in lines, Chinese tend to be very well behaved and regard authority with a lot of respect (dissident jails aren't a lot of fun). So I was incredibly surprised to see such a large security presence, even if there is a small history of conflicts surrounding the fledgling soccer league.

My trip to Nanjing did feature two other highlights. A Subway sandwich was the first. In a more positive move than the McDonald's and KFC expansion, Subway has caught on in a few of the cities in the south Jiangsu area. Sadly, Changzhou isn't one of them. But Nanjing is, so with some help from my friend Qin Chen on her computer and on the phone with me, we made it to a Subway. The sandwiches were a little different, but the small differences didn't hurt the great sandwich too much. We also ate at a passable Mexican for dinner. But, as Mexican food is almost non-existent in China, even mediocre Mexican tasted great. Only other thing to note from the weekend was that Dave and I chose to save thirty yuan by choosing the windowless hotel room. As I see it, everything looks the same when I am sleeping, so it's a great bargain.