Chinese Roulette

One question I am consistently asked by my friends and family who are back home is "How is the food?". It's hard to explain...

The private school that is subsidizing our cost of living while in China pays for our meals, which we eat every weeknight at the hotel (and some weekends). The consistency is nice, and it's good to know that you have somewhere to eat every night. But whether or not our bellies are full by the end of the meal is highly inconsistent, and I think the best comparison I can make is to say that it's like playing Chinese Roulette.

 

The table is set with chopsticks, a plate, a tea cup, a bowl and a spoon when we arrive. Sometimes the food starts arriving really promptly, and sometimes it takes ages for it to come out, and it comes out one or two dishes at a time. Each dish is placed on a large Lazy Susan, meaning the dishes rotate from one person to the next. We have imposed a rule that we can only turn our Lazy Susan clockwise. The hotel usually brings fancier dishes to us first (read: the ones we won't eat because they consist of things like pig ears and cow stomach and/or we can't identify them), and near the end of the meal we get the things that we devour (broccoli, rice, plain noodles, and watermelon).

There have been dishes we really loved (cooked dates) and ones that we haven't touched (shrimp prepared any way with their eyes still intact, and a plate of duck including the head), but the hotel doesn't seem to do any diagnostics. It was a effort for us to make it clear to the hotel that we needed more vegetarian options (in the beginning there were only one or two dishes from the entire meal that our four vegetarians could eat, and it's still pretty inconsistent), and to insist that they bring us plain rice (which still comes at the end of the meal). But for the most part, as we get deeper into our stay here, we get more adventurous in terms of what we'll try, and there is always Grace who has a self-identified iron stomach to try things out for us and report through facial expressions if the way ahead is clear. Every night we ask ourselves if we will get boiled dumplings - something we haven't had since the first few nights here - because they are so much better than the fried ones, or if we'll even get dumplings at all. I guess you could equally compare our experience at dinner to a Forrest Gump box of chocolates - you never know what you're going to get.

 

They have fried eggs and toast for us at breakfast in addition to the enormous buffet of what appears to be re-heated/re-invented leftovers from the meals cooked the night before (they do not waste any food in China, and we are probably to blame for the quantities of food that are left-over each morning because so many of our dishes are left half-eaten or untouched). My favourite part about my breakfast at the hotel is the deep-fried churros-like bread. It's terrible, but it makes getting out of bed in the morning a little easier.

 

 

Weekends we usually go to the Western restaurants in the area, including an expensive Italian restaurant, and a not-quite-as-expensive-but-still-up-there Mexican restaurant. We have also found a great make-your-own soup place at the Parkson Mall and we have made Haagen Dasz Wednesdays a tradition (two out of two weeks!).

 

I think I will miss certain things when I go back to Canada, but it's hard to say until I get there, but I certainly appreciate the style of eating (it's a bit first-come, first-serve, but you can try a little bit of everything, a little bit at a time).

 

And I love eating with chopsticks so much that I bought a set! Look out Mom & Dad!

I'm Big in China

We made it through our first week alive, and after a solid week of rotating between the school and the hotel, spending all of our time planning when we got in each night, we were so ready to go out on the town.

Everyone was craving Western food and we had decided in advance that we would go to the Italian restaurant around the corner from our hotel. A few of the girls went ahead to make reservations while the rest of our group got ready. It was the first night that we weren't all planning to eat together, but we thought a group of 8 would be a bit difficult to seat at the last minute. When we arrived for our reservation, the host looked panic-stricken, and we didn't understand if it was because we were overwhelmingly good-looking (we were), or if they had forgotten that we made a reservation, but when we rounded a corner, we realized it was because three other members of our team had been given our reservation - they had assumed that because they were white that we were all together. Awkward! They moved to a different table in the same small back room where we were, but they hadn't received their food yet, so it wasn't too much of a hassle for them, and we got to the business of trying to order our food (always a challenge).

Over two hours later we were happily stuffed with pizza and pasta, and reminded of how much we loved and missed cheese, and were ready for the next adventure. Our hosts had recommended a bar called Oasis, so we went back to the lobby of the hotel to get taxis, but the English(ish)-speaking concierge insisted that it was too far away. He told us that he knew of a closer place that we would like, and it didn't occur to us to question this until we were already in a cab on the way. We had to take two cabs, and while the second half of our group waited for theirs, the concierge told them that if they got to the club and their friends (us) weren't there, to call the hotel immediately because our safety is important to them - this was the moment for that group that they started to question our choices.

Meanwhile my group had arrived, and were immediately accosted by neon lights informing us that the club was called either the Fashion 3D Club or the Phebe 3D Club, and a man aggressively begging the white girls for change. Our understanding was that the same cab we took would go back to take the second group, so we started to worry when other people got into the cab and it took off. Thankfully, they arrived at the same place - another concern that occurred to us after the fact.
Now, safe and together, we decided to venture into the unknown, which turned out to be multi-coloured orbs hanging from the ceiling, excessive numbers of disco balls, glamorous people standing around tables and playing games while bobbing their heads to the DJ, who incidentally was the coolest person alive. We were in awe.

The manager brought us to a table near the DJ and we all bought extremely expensive beers. I was obsessed with the KPOP being played, which made the DJ even more impressive by my estimation and I couldn't see a dance floor. We were attracting a lot of attention from the other clientele and the staff alike - a group of 8 white girls is clearly not a common occurrence in Kunshan. Some people took videos of us (thinking they were being very subtle, of course) and some were outright taking pictures, but this was nothing new to us.

With the exception of CISK (our school) and our hotel rooms, we have had our pictures taken too many times to count. Some people bluntly approach us and ask to take our picture, but more often than not, people try to take pictures secretly, and when we catch them they awkwardly ask if they can have their picture taken with us. We have developed many theories about this, the best of which is the idea that very few white people come to areas of China outside Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing, even though Kunshan is a city of 2 million; the only white people that most citizens of this fair city are exposed to are the ones they see on TV, or the music stars that come over to perform concerts. Our theory is that they think that we must be famous, or we wouldn't be here.

The strangest experience, I think, was that night as we waited for our cabs. As usual, someone was trying to take stealthy pictures of us as we spoke with the concierge, and our friend, Stephanie, called him out so he asked to take his picture with us. Then his wife wanted a picture on her phone with us as well. Up until this point, this was all fairly standard - if you ever want to feel famous, come to China - but things got weird when this woman started flipping through pictures on her phone to show Stephanie her photos with other white people she had had taken. She asked Stephanie if she knew these people. Stephanie is hilarious and told her that one of the guys was her brother, another one was a close friend, etc., but then the woman asked if she could have Stephanie's phone number. It was just very hard for us to imagine what purpose that could possibly serve, and how someone's understanding of the world outside of China could lead her to think that all white people know each other.

If I haven't written about this before I will point out that it is really common for a Canadian meeting someone from another country to be asked if we know another Canadian. To be fair, the population of Canada is only 36 million (the population of Beijing is like 20 million) so it's not too outrageous of a question, but people fail to take into consideration the vastness of our country and the distance between towns and cities. I can understand that question. But for all white people to know each other???? It was bizarre.

Our night at the club was just as bizarre. For example, shortly after our arrival, a large white man brought his friends to dance on a platform near our table. Then he "accidentally" bumped into our friend Niki, and was so apologetic for it that he felt the need to offer our group a bottle of alcohol. Niki refused because it was creepy.

Suddenly, a singer came out and performed two songs and everyone was going wild. We were so confused. What club has no dance floor, but live performances by probably-famous singers?? We later learned (through the genius of Instagram videos) that he actually was famous back in the day; likely a two-hit wonder from the 90s.

 

We were truly perplexed by the lack of dance floor and looked around to try to determine what people were doing... apparently they like to play some sort of dice game. Asian Joseph Gordon-Levitt (the manager) tried to teach us, but his English was not great, and it was extremely loud, and we hadn't figured anything out yet, so we decided to order more drinks. They explained to us that ordering a bottle would be cheaper overall than ordering a beer each (pardon??) and while we mulled this over, a bottle of Cognac with a ribbon around the neck appeared at our table, courtesy of the creepy white guy. He invited us to come and sit with him, and while we refused that offer, we accepted the bottle and ordered some Cokes to drink with it.

Ten seconds later, a man approaches us and mimed to us that he wanted to play rock, paper, scissors... I couldn't make this up. He set down *his* bottle of Cognac, and enthusiastically tried to get all 8 of us in on the game. We were so confused. Some of us were willing to humour him and we put our hands in. When we revealed our choices, he decided some of us could participate and some of us couldn't; it seemed like if you won you were out of the game and if you lost you were still in it. Then the losers that were still playing faced off against each other. I lost overall and was *so sad* (not), but he kept gesturing something to me and I couldn't figure it out. Everyone realized before I did that the loser has to drink! It's a gigantic drinking game! We played a few rounds before we got bored, and then he started to ask us questions. It turns out this Chinese gentleman was from Scarborough, Ontario. What are the chances?? It also turned out that he was friends with the creepy white guy and tried to get us to come back to the seating area with them again. We still refused, but he left his bottle of Cognac as well.

As far as I can tell, the goal of a club in China is to keep you modestly entertained through the use of games, and intermittent shows. The next "show" that evening was some sort of drawn out advertisement for champagne (maybe) which featured five or six models dressed in camouflage outfits carrying (mock) machine guns for their first turn down the platform before they carried bottles of the champagne itself down the "catwalk". All of this was announced by the has-been pop star to great enthusiasm from the crowd. What???

At this point, we had two bottles of Cognac, an entourage, and seemingly every staff member in the club (there were a LOT) trying to be our friends. One guy came up and mimed that he hated drinking Cognac. We laughed but didn't really know how else to respond. Asian Joseph Gordon-Levitt (AJGL) would have been heartbroken, though, because he wanted to be our best friend. He asked for my phone number and I didn't know how to explain that a) no and b) I didn't have a Chinese phone number. I typed out on my phone that we were leaving in 3 weeks and that I only had a Canadian phone number. He took my phone and tried to dial his number - it asked if I wanted to take my phone off of Airplane Mode and he hit "OK". I was freaking out because I had no international plan and he gave my phone back so I could cancel the call before it went out (my dad is exhaling a sigh of relief). AJGL then asked if I had the Chinese social media platform. No. Then he asked me, "Then how to contact you?" and I just shrugged at him. He was heartbroken (probably), because after all, I'm big in China.

Shortly after this episode we decided to head back to the hotel. It had been enough excitement for one night, but AJGL chased us across the street. We were terrified that there had been some confusion about who would pay for the bottles and the free fruit that AJGL had procured for us, but it turned out he just wanted to make sure we were coming back and to introduce himself as Owen, pronounced "Ow", as in I stubbed my toe and it really freakin' hurts, and "en" like the usual ending to the name "Owen". We were like "Oh, Owen!" (pronounced correctly), but he insisted that it was the other way so we went with it. We each introduced ourselves and apparently my name is even more unheard of than the correct pronunciation of Owen in China.

We survived the cab ride back to the hotel and thanked the concierge for a really entertaining night as living examples of white privilege (as Cassie so aptly put it). And don't worry, he asked for his photo op with us the next morning.

Naming My Students

My first day of teaching brought some interesting challenges, but the most striking experience for me, was that several of my students did not have "English names". All but two of my students had previously taken ESL courses, and had chosen English names for themselves (or had been given English names by their parents) in addition to their Chinese name.

 

When you have a baby, it is a seriously huge responsibility to choose your child's name. It could be the reason they get made fun of for the rest of their life. The spelling you choose could ensure that teacher's (especially supply teachers) pronounce it incorrectly when they take the attendance. It could get rhymed with other (unflattering) words. It could get shortened to a weird nickname. You can see what I'm getting at....

 

Chinese parents must have carefully chosen their children's Chinese names, but they are willing to let ESL teachers the world over choose one at random for their child.

 

And I wholeheartedly wish it was possible for these students to use their Chinese names in the ESL classroom - it is identity-affirming for students to use/hear their own names. I would be deeply disappointed if I came to China and had to assume a new name. I love my name.

 

The problem is that I cannot pronounce a single one of my students' Chinese names. It would take me several weeks of constant practice to get the sounds right, and more time than that to feel confident saying them on a regular basis.

 

So I helped two students choose their English names - one was fairly certain he wanted to be called "Kevin", and it suits him, so that was easy enough. The other had a name that sounded to me like "Jiong Shaou" (hopefully), so I suggested all the J names I could think of: Jake (okay, this one was in honour of my dad), Josh, Justin, Jordan, and James (I already had a "Jimmy" in my class).

 

He chose Justin.

So now his name is Justin.

Because I suggested it.

 

What if I had started listing names that started with any letter? What if he one day comes to North America and decides he hates the name Justin? It is too much responsibility for some strange Canadian girl teaching someone's son for three weeks.

 

But it was kind of fun...... and I would do it again if I had the opportunity!

Kunshan: Be Flexible

Tomorrow I begin one of the most interesting teaching challenges of my career thus far (which I will admit has not been that long); I will walk into a classroom of 12 students, ages 10-13, who may or may not know any English, and attempt to teach them how to speak this ridiculous language.

I signed up for the trip in January, at the urging of my teachers' college friends, because it was an amazing deal and a unique opportunity to get a professional qualification in English as a Second Language. We all wanted to be together, and we thought of it as a sort of graduation trip. We signed up for the Kunshan campus, hoping that  we would have a better chance of being together there.

We learned that the appealing price tag was too good to be true. There was a pre-departure workshop while my family was away in Europe in June, and they notified us that the Kunshan group would be split in two groups, and some people would have to go to a campus in Taicang, China. My roommate, Cassie, and I were separated from the rest of our friend group. This was the first time we would hear that we needed to "be flexible".

 

As the date of departure approached, there was no new information, and often the coordinators warned us that any information they could give us would be subject to change at the last minute. We had no idea what age groups we would be teaching, where we would be staying, what materials we would need to bring with us, or what we were expected to do on a daily basis. We held onto the promise of seeing our friends on the weekends in Shanghai, or on the group tours.

 

With less than a week before we left, we were told that our friends going to Taicang were being moved to Weifang - a city 9 hours from Kunshan - and that two of them would be rejoining the Kunshan group, meaning that they would be a group of five. Once again, we were told we needed to "be flexible".

Online we prepared as much as we could for the themes that we were told we would be teaching, but for each thee, we had to prepare to teach from four different workbooks of varying levels (from beginner to extremely advanced). It was a challenge in and of itself, and we had no idea how it would play out in the classroom. We made flashcards, produced resources, planned sample lessons, downloaded songs from YouTube, and did our best to be prepared to "be flexible" upon arrival.

The day we left, our flight was delayed and it felt like a sign of what was to come, but the fourteen hour flight was a blast. I was seated between my roommate, Cassie, and a good friend, Gianluca. We were laughing for basically all of the hours that we were collectively awake. It was so obvious that a gentleman across the aisle that we dubbed Mr. Fix It (he was constantly volunteering his services to anyone that seemed to be in the slightest need of them) pined to join us... he glanced over every time we found something particularly funny. We took breaks from each other to watch movies - I watched 12 Years a Slave and almost bawled - and then we were right back at it, looking out the back window to see Baffin Island or the Arctic Ice, asking for extra water or tea or whatever.

The only time there was anything to complain about, it was that our tour company hadn't told the airline that we had four vegetarians in our group. All of the food that was prepared had meat in it, and there was nothing but over-dressed sad-looking salad and some plastic bread for them to stock up on. They were unhappy with good reason.

I opted not to sleep at all - the time change is 12 hours exactly, and when everyone else started to go to sleep, it was technically daytime in China - I played Child of Light on my laptop for four and a half hours (It was awesome, even though I can feel my mom rolling her eyes as I write this).

Arrival at the airport was smooth sailing, and before we knew it we were through security and had collected our luggage. We blinked again and the Weifang group - our best friends for the past 14 hours - were leaving us. I was actually pretty upset about it. I don't know if everyone else had come to terms with it, but it just felt so unofficial as a goodbye, and honestly, we don't know the next time we will see each other. One member of our team made a comment that it's not like we wouldn't be seeing each other (talk about being insensitive...) and then changed her mind when she realized three of the people leaving us were the guys. She wasn't making friends in a hurry.

We were still annoyed as we rolled our suitcases onto a moving sidewalk to get to the bus... only to crash into everyone in front of us because no one was capable of handling all their own luggage. Instead of turning the moving sidewalk off, the Chinese security man started shouting at us as if we were continuing to crash into the pile-up on purpose. It would have been hilarious to watch our faces as we slowly moved toward our inevitable crash, but we were unimpressed and worried that all of our electronics were broken, and our supplies were crushed. We worried for no reason, but the next obstacle to peace of mind was getting onto the bus that didn't have enough room for our luggage in the undercarriage. We could just hear the coordinators of the trip emailing us to tell us that when it comes to luggage, you have to "be flexible".

Cassie was a warrior and hauled all the overflow bags into the back seats, and we jammed ourselves in before we filled the aisles with the remaining bags. We were relieved that we were finally on our way to the hotel....

....which turned out to be way beyond our expectations. It was air conditioned, beautiful, and the food was not as foreign as I had been mentally preparing myself for. It was similar to what Andrea and I had eaten in Chinatown in London, England when we met up with my friends from Lyon before our cruise in June - the dishes were served on a massive Lazy Susan, and there was way more than any of us could finish eating. We had dumplings that were amazing and got a tonne of recommendations from a family who had been living here for a year (they were leaving the next day because their son's eczema couldn't handle whatever is in the air and he had a perpetual rash). On the elevator ride up to our room, a man came in smoking which was a bit of a culture shock, and the beds were pretty hard, but after at least 24 hours of sleep deprivation, I fell to sleep in an instant.