Normal city on the river-Changzhou (常州)

inside one of the malls downtown

the street outside our university's gate

Looking back at posts I realize I write a lot about places I visit, but seldom share about the place where I spend most of time. More detailed information can be found on the Changzhou Wikipedia page. More or less, it's a city much like many others around China. It's in the Yangzi River Delta, which is the richest and most developed region in China. Although dwarfed by

a major intersection downtown

bigger, more important neighbors with longer histories like Nanjing and Suzhou, people in Changzhou are proud of how developed the city is-and of its reputation for having some of the best food and restaurants in the region.

the entrance to one of the malls downtown

Everyone seems to be of one of two mindsets: either from the country and happy to be here, or is a local and wishes they could live

a typical street in Changzhou

in Shanghai. Personally, I'm more like the people from the country. I am very happy with Changzhou precisely because it's not as big as Shanghai. The city extends out in all directions, as factories replace apartments. But, as I have discovered this year (due to the bus route being interrupted) Changzhou is very manageable on bike. Our university is about 25 minutes from downtown by bike, which is faster now than the bus. Downtown is only about 10 minutes from the train station. Some of my acquaintances in Shanghai live 20 minutes from the closest metro stations. Changzhou is a great mix of being big and developed enough to have wha t I need, and some American restaurants when I pine for the tastes of home while being compact enough that it's easy and convenient to go downtown for dinner without it being a big deal. I've thrown up some pictures I took the other night day while running some errands around town. Now, don't get me wrong-Changzhou is dirty, polluted, crowded, hustling, and loud. But, that's urban China.

Christmas tree and HaiBao mascot downtown

Cars in China

Frequent and positive is the news here in China about the automotive industry. The emotions and statistics here are as different from those back in America as they could be. Sales are booming, production is growing, and new companies are getting financed and putting new models into the Chinese car market. People are either thinking about buying a car, getting ready to buy, or driving their new car home from the dealership. This article (as well this one) about just how explosive the growth has been got me more about something that has rattled around my brain for a while.

I don’t doubt that Chinese people have or will soon have the cash (Chinese people are really debt averse) to buy cars (more than they already have). I know that they have the first world lifestyle aspirations and a strong sense of entitlement that they should live at first world standards. Nor do I doubt that the government’s subsidies to the car industry and campaigns toward ownership to help grow the ever important GDP will aid the two previous factors to drive up car ownership in China. But, and it’s a big but, I don’t know where in the hell Chinese people are going to drive or park their cars. Now, China is a big place, but the problem is that people don’t live in about 1/3 to a half of it because it’s either desert or the barely inhabitable Tibetan plateau. Chinese people are instead tightly packed along the Pacific coast, in cities much like Changzhou (or cities that will be like today’s Changzhou in ten or fifteen years). Which means that their cars are tightly packed into these cities. Right now, before the forecasted explosion in ownership. So, I think that my observations and concerns are pretty legitimate.

Currently, when I ride around Changzhou (on my sweet one-speed bike with a basket), most people are either riding bikes, electric bikes, electric scooters, or riding the bus. There are of course private cars, taxis, and supply/service trucks and vans. But most people are using bikes, scooters, or the bus-and many that are on the bus used a bike or scooter to get to the bus stop. The roads are packed, the sidewalks cluttered with parked bikes and scooters, and traffic jams are the norm. The pollution here is pretty bad, and I don’t need to write anything for you to know that pollution here is an issue (to say the least). Bikes and scooters don’t spew out any exhaust-and the food and electricity (respectively) used to power them can both be produced renewably with low emissions. That’s with bikes and scooters.

The thing with cars is that they’re big and heavy. And they take lots of energy. And put out a fair amount of pollution. I took some pictures around campus of some bikes and scooters and some cars parked. The bar napkin math is pretty easy to do; cars take up way more space. China has space, but not that people want to live in-which means cities that are more crowded, more polluted, louder, and countless other negative things. You can look at the pictures, and I simply think that the cars simply can’t fit. Not even close. China ought to learn from the problems in the American transportation system and not try to repeat it. They have the political power, industrial know-how and lack of eminent domain laws to create awesome public transportation networks very efficiently. But it seems instead that people are choosing to literally get the country stuck in one big traffic jam, in between nothing but endless parking lots.

Frank the English student

As a result of teaching primarily seniors this semester, most of my classes ended much earlier than others. I used some of that time to take the trip to Hong Kong, but still have had plenty of free time recently-and wasn’t traveling yet. So, one night, when accompanying 真真 to sign up for the IELTS test, I had her ask the secretaries if they needed a foreign teacher. I quickly had a nice part time job preparing students for the speaking session of the IELTS exam.

The class went easily enough, it was pretty similar to my oral English class. I had to do a little research about the IELTS test, as I was given no information about the test or class goals, which didn’t surprise me at all. Most of the students taking the test were recent high school graduates or college seniors who were planning to study abroad in Australia, Canada, or the United States (in order of preference). There was one student, English name Frank, who was quite different.

Frank’s English was markedly worse than any of the other students-but his enthusiasm was unparalleled. His weak English gave him trouble following my rule of English only, and he did come to class fairly tipsy one night (because had taken one of the high school graduates out to make him a man: aka drink 白酒). When he spoke, it was easy to see him struggle to find the right word, but he never relented and always spoke-rather yelled-as if scolding a child. With every other word he would aggressively thrust his forefinger to his listener-commanding the attention that his slow speaking pace didn’t.

Frank was married with a son, which he would often talk about adoringly during conversations, always prompting laughter from the other students. His mistakes with pronoun gender agreement (a very common mistake for Chinese people) further emboldened the others’ chuckles. Of course, this just made Frank’s finger wagging more severe and his speech more spirited. Frank worked as an electrician. He wasn’t native to Changzhou or even to the greater Yangzi River Delta (China’s richest and most developed region). Rather, he came from a town in the mountains of Anhui, the poorer, less developed, and occasionally derided province west of Jiangsu. As he so vehemently explained, he had come to Changzhou as a migrant worker, making his way up the ladder, working to provide for his wife and son. He wasn’t spoiled and “lazy” like the rest of the students, who he saw as children of rich parents who gave them “everything.” What he lacked in vocabulary breadth he certainly made up for in directness. I can’t say that I disagree with his estimations, but it was pretty funny to see him say these things to the rest of the students and see their reactions. Frank was taking the general (non-academic) version of the IELTS in hopes of gaining a work visa for Canada. It was a riot to see him continually boast about how great his mission in taking the test was-ensuring a better life for his wife and son. More comedic were his assertions that I “must smoke” because “all real man smoke.” I politely told him I didn’t agree. The one other thing that made Frank so entertaining was, despite his limited vocabulary, his ability to really string out his answers. With every answer, I could tell that Frank had a set of ideas that he saw fit to state, and he wouldn’t be stopped without seeing the job through. I’m not too confident of Frank’s ability to gain the score he needs to qualify for the visa, but I don’t doubt that a low score will deter him-perhaps if I go back to the IELTS school he’ll still be there, working on his English while waving his finger at other “lazy” “rich” spoiled students.

Hong Kong

Short but communicative was the message I got from Cary Wicker, a fraternity brother from TU: “making a trip to SE Asia, call me.” Call him I did, and we talked flights and visas. The visa for American tourist to China is ~$130, because that’s what we charge Chinese people to come to America, and China’s all about things being equal. Of course the number of people applying for those two visas (and the labor cost to process them) isn’t exactly equal, but the Chinese government isn’t too concerned about that. So Cary and I decided we’d meet up in Hong Kong. I hadn’t been there, and because Hong Kong knows where it’s bread is buttered, Americans can visit for 90 days visa free. Cary had quit his job to go back to grad school, but had racked up a fair amount of miles from his last job, so was taking advantage of them while he was young and free.

I took the super convenient and comfortable sleeper train from Shanghai to Hong Kong, got metro passes, and found a cramped but relatively clean room for three at a cheap hotel of off the Mong Kok metro station. I had great information about Hong Kong because to supplement the guidebook was 真真 a senior at my university that I recently started dating. 真真 isn’t exactly a traditional student of our school. Her college entrance exam score, and her dad’s relationships were good enough to get her into a large interview pool of Chinese students to study in Hong Kong. She passed, and studied there for two and half years. But, because she was in the interview group, she was assigned to study land surveying and geomatics, not English like she wanted. So, she transferred back home to Changzhou, but not before getting a great grasp for Hong Kong. So, before I left, we looked through the guidebook and she sifted through that information to help me out. I met Cary and Lee, his friend who was traveling with him at the airport and then we hit the ground running. Lee, as he explained it, worked really hard his first two years at University of Texas Law School so that he could study abroad at a law school on the beach in Australia-and that’s what he was doing. After Hong Kong, they would hit up the Southeast Asian peninsula and then go down to Australia.

We had a great time going around Hong Kong. For me, Hong Kong was a nice respite from the busyness and dirtiness of China. Now, Hong Kong is plenty busy, but it seems much more relaxed when everything is pretty clean, efficient, and in English. I can’t say enough about the Hong Kong metro, which was the best I’ve ever been on. For Cary and Lee, it was probably more of the traditional Hong Kong experience-a great mixture of modern technology with ancient Chinese culture. We went up Victoria Peak, had a trendy lunch in Soho, had drinks in Lan Kwai Fong, took the Victoria Harbour Cruise, saw the giant statue of Buddha on Lantau Island (which was humorously commercial), got lost making our way through the cities many gorgeous parks, window shopped some watches that easily eclipsed my annual salary, saw the Chinese export machine working hard on the docks of Victoria Harbour (as well as the pollution), and were wide-eyed as we wandered the streets all around Central and Tsim Tsa Hui. Hong Kong was one of the more impressive cities I have visited. It was hustling and bustling, yet the convenient parks offered a place to relax. You pass old women selling random gourds and live fish from rickshaw drawn carts in the shadows of modern, giant skyscrapers. While in some cities you have to work to get dinner after nine or ten, it seemed like some of the street vendors were just warming up their skillets at that time. Being on an island, it’s super compressed, but this was much of its attraction, that as you left one famous district you’d be entering another one. It’s a tough city on the wallet, especially for me, coming from a Chinese salary, but there were places to get discount meals-generally one of the many fast food joints, which actually were on every corner. I had a blast taking in the city, and being able to do so while catching up and joking with a buddy from school.

In order to amortize the cost of the train tickets over a greater time period, I stuck around for two more days after Cary and Lee headed to Saigon. I was able to spend lots more time walking around Central and Tsim Tsa Hui, as well as visit the south part of the island, which had some sweet beaches, piers, and ocean side cliffs. Unfortunately, due to the beaches, most of this part of the island was covered in gated communities. After getting on and off a few buses that didn’t quite get where I thought I wanted to go, I just headed down a few private drives and seemed to take some sort of electrical workers’ access road down to the beach. It was nice, but the water was cold, so I walked around a bit, amazed that such a calm beach and neighborhood was merely a half hour bus ride from the middle of the city. I also checked out a pretty neat bird garden and the Hong Kong history museum. It was most interesting to see its take on recent Chinese history, which was quite different from what I hear or read in Chinese media. Of course, Hong Kong is part of China-but its (quasi)independent government allowed the museum to be more like a museum, less like a propaganda center. I was also able to use the extra time to meet up with 真真’s old roommate and her boyfriend. They took showed me around some of their campus and then took me for a nice stroll along the harbor and Hong Kong’s own avenue of the stars. We had a great dinner together; she and her boyfriend are both very accomplished students and it was cool to talk to them about the drastic differences between their college life in Hong Kong (much more like that in the U.S.) and that of their friends back in China. In addition to all the great sites, good food, and convenient transport-the sunny weather in the mid-70s made for a fantastic trip.

Vacation time

I'll be hitting the road today, off to Shanghai to catch a flight to Bangkok. I took the trip to Hong Kong a few weeks ago (blog coming soon) and since then have been back in Changzhou, finishing up classes, doing some part time work, attending banquets, singing Christmas carols to the dorms, and reading travel books. I'll be traveling to Thailand to meet up with my friend John Thao who is teaching English there. Some of the other teachers will come down and we'll trek around Thailand.After a quick turnaround in Changzhou, I will head with Danthemanstan to India. No real plan except to meet up with at least one (if not two) of the Rob's from TU who are there doing missionary type work.

This may seem like a lot of vacation-and it is. I feel very fortunate to be able to travel so much, whether inside of China, or around the rest of Asia. China is a very different world than the one in which I spent the first 22 years of my life, and other parts of Asia are quite different from China. I'm incredibly lucky to have a job that offers me not only excessive vacation, but also pays me during it. Traveling is really attractive to me-seeing new places and thinking the new thoughts they inspire as well as the sense of movement-both anticipation and accomplishent as I move along a route. There are downsides to teaching here, but with the right attitude, I have a pretty sweet gig. Not only do we get summers off like all teachers, but our vacation for Spring Festival is ridiculously long, enough to allow a pretty sweet vacation.

I've now been in China for a year and a half (minus a big vacation and trip home). Even when stationary in Changzhou, almost every day I experience or see something new or different, and pretty often shocking or unbelievable. Just last night I was having dinner with Danthemanstan, and we wanted to get drinks with dinner, but the cafeteria we were going to doesn't sell drinks. So, he kind of sighed when he thought we'd have to go a little ways to get drinks and come back. Instead, I introduced him to a fairly hidden restaurant adjacent to the cafeteria-that sold drinks. He was floored that this restaurant existed so close to the cafeteria we eat at all the time. It's things like this, and the countless things I learn everyday about Chinese culture (and occasionally about my own) that make this such a great job. As a college student, like so many others, I (well my parents) paid a fair share of money to study abroad. I did this to engage in a cross-cultural experience (as they call it these days) to live in another culture, experience it day to day, not just as a tourist. Now, I get paid to do this every day, and I get to assign the homework!

Even though I'll be gone, I have delayed some posts, so they should upload every few days.

Guest Lecturing

As is more common than you might think, I recently got a phone call from Connie-an English instructor that also works as the teacher’s secretary in the school of foreign languages-asking me to give a speech. The subject of my speech was to be, well, pretty much anything. Now, maybe you don’t often get calls to give such speeches, but that’s because you’re not an American living in China (or if you are, you’ve given a few). Connie set me up with Robin, who turned out to be an English professor at our university. Robin had some of the ever important 关系(relations) with some administrators at another school in Changzhou. It’s apparently a much lower ranked school than ours (so really in the gutter) and its students “didn’t pass” the Chinese national college entrance exam. How you can’t pass a numerically scored test is beyond me. Because this school was so poor, they had no foreign teachers, but via Robin’s relationship and some partnership with our school, I would give a speech to the English and International Business students. The poor quality of this school compared to ours was continually stressed to me, which I kind of took to be like a scene in a movie where a guy from Alabama explains that Alabamians love to make fun of Mississippi because, as he sees it, Mississippi is the only state worse than Alabama.

(yes, that's me chugging with the university president-part of my "cultural expertise"...)

So I gave a speech featuring my take on American identity, which was just watered down but more difficult version of the one I gave when teaching the middle school students at the English training institute. The most notable feature of the speech was the incredible noise coming from the students. In the book Iron and Silk by Mark Salzman, he recalls a Chinese person’s answer to his question about why no one pays attention at speeches. The Chinese person explained that they have to sit through so many uninteresting and inconsequential speeches that they realize that listening is highly unproductive. I have dealt with this a bit, but this was by far the least attentive audience I have spoken to here (maybe that has something to do with their low test scores). I had added some more efficient (but more difficult) vocabulary to the speech I had given to the middle schoolers. When I broke off and checked with one of the more frequent interrupters, I realized that about half the class wasn’t following much of my speech at all (despite the PowerPoint with an outline and pictures). I had overestimated the English skills of these students that “didn’t pass” the entrance exam. Easily enough, I slowed my speech down to almost a slur and really, really explained it. Which was fine, because Robin and his colleagues were hoping I would speak for an hour and half. I more accurately evaluated the attention span of students being forced to attend a speech in a foreign language, and wrapped it up quickly.

Ending early was fine, as the question and answer session is always the more fun part of these speeches. After much prodding, the hands started to go up. I got the customary questions of how long have I been in China, do I like China, do I find Chinese women attractive, do I have a girlfriend (to which I can finally answer yes). I was a little taken aback when one male student stood up and said something like “You are the first foreigner I have ever talked to, it is more special because you are so handsome, will you give me a hug?” Albeit a bit awkward, I went over and gave him a big hug, to much applause. One girl who didn’t seem to quite get self-deprecating humor stood up and said: “You made some mistakes in your speech” to which I responded, “Oh, please share them with me” she continued: “You said you weren’t handsome and not too funny, but in fact you are very handsome and very humorous.”

<-(imagine getting a lecture from that guy) As I was giving my speech, I noticed that one man was actually paying pretty close attention. He was a sharp looking, tall, and very well built man. After the speech he introduced himself in broken but viable English as one of the P.E. teachers at the school (compulsory P.E. in college is one of the things I like about higher education here). He asked me by far the most interesting question and wanted to know my thoughts about what China learn from America to improve its educational system. Having absolutely no education training and pretty limited experience, I tried to make it clear to him that I could just give him my opinion. But, of course, in the great absurdity of my job, I am a certified “expert in the fields of culture and education” here in China. So, he would probably take what I said much too seriously. I focused on what I think my students most lack, critical thinking and creativity. Of course these two skills can only really be developed and harnessed in an open society, which China is definitely not, but I didn’t say that. It was also odd that he, but none of the English professors, who clearly understood the whole speech, had a question for me.

Overall, the thing that is most awkward about giving speeches like this is the respect and honor I receive, simply for being a Westerner. I recently wrote a whole post about this concept, but it’s just odd to be treated like a guest speaker. Unbeknownst to me, it was arranged for me to receive a handsome sum of money after the speech, which I was happy to give for free. While talking about the American identity, I was reminded of how proud we Americans are. I’m not sure that national pride is a wholly good or bad thing, but giving a presentation about America in China makes one think about it. When talking about America with Britons, Canadians, Spaniards, or the various other people I’ve been in contact with, I generally tone down some of my national pride; recognizing that American hegemony isn’t exactly popular or politically/morally acceptable to them. But, Chinese people have no problem hearing about America’s largeness. This is because I don’t know that the Chinese see America’s power and excess as a problem. Of course, the Chinese are very unhappy that China is not the richest and most powerful country in the world. But, they don’t seem to mind global dominance, but rather admire America and aspire to soon replace it. The default adjective I use for Chinese people is resilient, and I think it very appropriate. As a collective group and individually, the Chinese are also very ambitious. Very. Although they aren’t exactly forward with it, Chinese people kind of want to forget the half-millennium when Europe and then America really took off. They want to forget that, and especially the period between 1911-1978 and put China back in the position of one of the preeminent countries on the planet. I couldn’t be happier to have been born in America and am really aware of what a blessing it has been, but it’s kind of odd when I am the one that points out to a Chinese person that even America has its fair share of problems.

Runnin' Around

Throughout this semester I have frequently sent or received text messages and phone calls all revolving around one subject: water. Well not simply water, but running water. Due to massive construction on the road in front of our campus the water at my apartment has been sporadic. Now I readily recognize that there are hundreds of millions of people worldwide without adequate water resources, many of whose main daily worry is where and how to get water. This is not my worry at all, nor my complaint. I can always make the one minute bike ride to one of many corner stores on campus with lots of drinking water. 朱师傅, my “Culligan man” usually arrives with a fresh water jug within five minutes. And, if it comes down to it, I get paid enough to go to local spa to shower up if the water’s off for a few days (which has happened more than once)-I of course just kept it grungy.

My complaint is instead with the process that we mirthfully refer to as the ‘Chinese run-around.’ In the States, the modus operandi is that if the water’s going to be cut off, a day’s notice-if not more, will be given to all users. That happens about one third to one fourth of the time here. Back home, if the tap is dry, a simple call to the utilities provider will usually solve the problem, if not, one can be assured that a good explanation will soon come. That never happens here, or at least not to me. I can do without running water for a day or two, but not getting a proper explanation really, really grinds my gears.

To begin, the Chinese run around comes into effect. The Chinese bureaucratic chain is so long, that I think in general, people get too exasperated before they reach the top. There are the oft-mentioned examples of some high ranking leader visiting some village here or there, but just like the world around, that’s just public relations. To add to the long bureaucratic chain, when one complains, he usually gets involved in multiple chains of command. In order to save “face”, which is very important in Chinese (Asian) culture, no one ever takes responsibility. It is always someone else’s matter; one always needs to talk to someone else. Again, after running through multiple chains of command in multiple departments, exasperation usually cancels the complaint. As Jordan, another teacher astutely observed, it’s like filing an insurance complaint in the States (although maybe even that’s changing). On a personal level, Teddy, the assistant to the head of the international department, and my boss/advisor, is generally very helpful. He’s not overbearing like I hear many of his contemporaries are at other schools, and, he is very eager to do what he can to help us. The problem is that Teddy runs into the Chinese run-around himself quite often. Especially when fielding questions and complaints from us foreigners that most Chinese people have learned long ago to not mention. He has even complained to me that he too would like to get a meeting with the mayor of Changzhou to air some grievances. I want a sit down meeting with the mayor, because I have realized that he is the only person in the city capable of getting my water turned back on or giving me a warning before it’s cut off for the weekend.

Additionally, one of the most popular phrases in Chinese (and my least favorite) is 没办法 which is directly translated as “not, have not, none” “way, means, method”, but essentially means “nothing can be done.” Now, having a dad who is an engineer and loved to take things apart and show me how they worked as a kid and a mom who always told me the sky’s the only limit did not prepare me well for receiving “nothing can be done” very well. I of course, contend that although some decisions are hard, there is always a decision to be made, something to be done. Of course, something could be done here, that’s not the issue. The issue is that it won’t. That’s the problem with living in a country with an authoritarian government-there’s very little to be done. The way it is is the way it is, and the last time people tried to change it, things didn’t work out too well. Growing up in the Midwest, the concepts of responsibility and accountability hold great importance in my mind. Living in China has made me see how frustrating it can be when there is little to none of either. Getting the Chinese run-around is definitely one of the worst things about living here.