Terrible Chinese Holidays

On November 11th, my students asked me, "Do you know what day is today?" giggling with anticipation as they quizzed me.

I played along.  "No, what is today?"

"It's Singles' Day!" they exclaimed over guffaws.

"Oh," I said, not amused, "what is Singles' Day?"

"Wahn, wahn, wah, wahn," they said, gesturing with their pointer finger to emphasize the digits in the date 11/11.

I could do the simple logic, without their explanation, to determine that the calendar date was made up completely of one's, and that this symbolized a single person, so I was left to question why they were so gleeful about the eleventh of the eleventh.

"So, what do you do?"

Confused silence.  Smiles.

"What do you do on Singles' Day?" I demanded.  I could not have spoken more plainly.

They were holding their smiles, mouths beginning to twitch.  Still no answer.

"What is Singles' Day?" I spoke as if trying to be heard over crackling radio static.

"It's wahn, wahn, wahn, wan!"

I was about to conduct an impromptu lesson in English invectives.  If it had been the first time I had played this game- repeating the simplest of questions to non-answers or no answer- I would have just thought it odd and dismissed it with a laugh.  But I had gone through this routine in every classroom throughout the semester, and the novelty had long worn off.

"I know.  But what do you DO on Singles' Day?  I am single.  What do I DO?"

I had them trapped in a corner of logic.  This wasn't memorizing formulas, so my Chinese students had no way out.  Still smiling, one of the students, bold enough to be one of the regular (i.e. only) speakers for the rest of the mostly dormant class, held up his pointer finger again and said, "One is for singles."

"All right," I asked, sighing and looking downward to compose myself, "Do you know what happened November 11th, 1918?"

No guesses.

"Today is a real holiday in the west.  In 1918, World War I ended, so in America, today is a holiday called Veterans Day."  I wrote "veteran" and a simple definition on the board.

This pattern repeated itself in my other classes that day: students barely containing their excitement over Singles' Day and asking me if I could guess their surprise (I suppose that since it was 2011, it was the only day in our lifetimes we would see 11/11/11).  It was a pointless exercise, but to be fair, Singles' Day wasn't a national holiday or significant cultural celebration, just some obviously clever (and hence, not actually clever) day for some of my Chinese students to have fun with, like when Americans say "Hump Day" for Wednesday and spend more time discussing Daylight Savings Time than is saved.

Singles' Day was just a minor distraction, but what of China's National holidays and cultural festivals?  Roundly terrible.  They fall into non-events, nonsensical mythologies and historical tales, or proud displays of past communist victories.  Take National Day, October 1st, China's patriotic celebration of the founding of the People's Republic of China on that date in 1949.  Schools and many employers give the week off for National Day, so after the holiday I asked the students how they spent their time.

"Watch TV."  "Sleep."  "Play computah games."

"Oh," I said, underwhelmed by their honesty, "Did you travel?"  No response.  "What about National Day?  Did you do anything on National Day?"

Another moment of silence, then "Watch TV."

On the 4th of July, Americans at least take part in the celebration of our nation's independence.  Friends and  families gather, enjoy time outside, eat summer food together, and attend fireworks displays, not watch them on TV.  Why wasn't anyone in China, land of firecrackers that rattled me as I looked through my refrigerator most mornings, telling me about some outdoor festival or gathering with food, parades, and fireworks?

One young man, after I mentioned Independence Day, told me (in reference to National Day) that China had a day of independence, too.  "Oh?  You celebrate independence from whom?" I asked him.

He repeated, "Yes, we have Independence Day in China, too."  I emphasized from whom again, but I don't think he caught my meaning.

The big letdown of the National Day holiday week was receiving a text message from my escort teacher on Saturday: "SO, ARE YOU READY FOR CLASS TOMORROW?"  (Most of my Chinese friends typed their text messages in all-caps.)

I replied, "You mean Monday, right?"

"NO, WE HAVE CLASS ON SUNDAY.  FRIDAY MORNING CLASSES ARE TOMORROW.  AM I CLEAR?"

I think I could have complained that Sunday classes weren't on my contract, but I wasn't going to protest.  I swallowed my personal feelings and told myself to do it for the students.  I would have to repeat this mantra to motivate myself on several other occasions throughout the year.

I wanted to point out to whomever was in charge that a day off on Friday is not a holiday if everyone has to work on Sunday; it's just a tease of a weekend followed by a 6-day work week.  I knew my argument wouldn't have made a difference, though.  I vented my frustrations and poked holes through the logic of the "holi-shift" (since it's not a free day, just a shift in schedule) to an audience of my escort teacher, Ms. Ding (she came with a car to my apartment and took me to class in the morning), and like an immovable wall of Chinese school status quo, she rattled off in Morse-code rhythm, "But the students have many tests.  They must have class on the weekend so they can take their tests."

Ms. Ding and me

Not only that one Sunday, the students would have tests occasionally on Saturdays and other Sundays.  Christmas Sunday my university students had tests all morning.  Not that the state recognizes any holy days, but the people still celebrate Christmas in their own way.

So schoolwork takes precedence over days of rest (they ought to learn from America that only commerce takes precedence over days of rest), and the state promotes hollow commemorations of Communist party history, but besides these, the Chinese observe a mishmash of historical and mythological celebrations.

There's the Mid-Autumn Festival, held on the full moon in late September or early October, which celebrates a story about the Moon's sister, who lives on the moon, and her husband who offers her sacrifices once a year (moon worship during the holiday was built up on this story).  Now, I'll admit that when the Santa mythology is layered over Christmas, it is certainly far-fetched, but there is usually some fantasy logic behind the magical yarns.  I tried to read through the story of the Moon's sister and gauge the people's reaction to it to see if it was just a tongue-in-cheek occasion for fun, if the story wasn't so important but just a lingering pretext for a holiday.  Well, I can say that moon worship still takes place (I didn't see it in person but discussed it with Chinese friends).  Why worship according to an irrational idea?  What other answer could there be than the ever-present power of cultural tradition.

The big plus of the Mid-Autumn Festival was getting a holiday, a real day off work not made up on a Saturday.  But what happens during the Mid-Autumn Festival?  Front and center, in my observation, were "standing outside and looking at the moon" at its brightest, and giving and eating moon cakes- a dense, disc-shaped pastry with a decorative top and a fruit or nut filling.

Taste as good as they look.

Stores stocked moon cakes leading up to the holiday so people could gift them to their friends, but I would have been glad to buy them year round.  After September, I never did see them again, sadly.  Moon cakes are a pastry, so it's not like their availability depended on ingredients being in season.  I suppose their popularity is not unlike the spike in sales of whole turkeys in November.  Americans could eat roast turkey any time, but they don't.

The other minor, food-related holiday is the Dragon Boat Festival, held in the spring and celebrated, if that is the word for it, by eating sticky rice triangles wrapped in bamboo leaves.  The rice would usually have a piece of meat or fruit in the middle.  I asked some of my Chinese friends and acquaintances about the significance of the Dragon Boat Festival, and all I got were uncomfortable grimaces and explanations that the history behind the day wasn't so pleasant.  My Christian friends said the day had a bad meaning, so they chose not to honor it, but still encouraged me to have some sticky rice triangles.  I had to look up the meaning myself and found out it commemorated a minister and poet, Qu Yuan (pronounced- oh, who am I kidding? make up your own pronunciation), who drowned himself in a river; the traditional story follows that the locals dropped sticky rice into the river so that fish would not eat his body.

Every time an acquaintance inquired if I knew about the Dragon Boat Festival, I replied with my own question, "No; do you have dragon boats in the river?"  They reacted like an American might if a foreigner asked him on March 17th, "So, where is St. Patrick?"  Of course they didn't have dragon boats in the river, I could tell by the awkward silence on their faces, why would they?

Dragon Boats not included.

I was left to conclude that it was another silly, minor holiday barely worth mentioning yet inspiring gleeful responses from the natives.  The sticky rice triangles they kept asking me about- I had already eaten four or five the week prior.  A fine snack, but giving these out or having them for lunch constituted a holiday?  Imagine May Day without kids having the fun of distributing cups of candy; instead the day was about eating bagels for lunch and asking friends if they'd had their May Day bagel yet.

I suppose it's my American upbringing that makes me expect some kind of ritual or public action, even for the stupid holidays with convoluted historical and mythological meanings, like St. Patrick's Day and the practice of wearing green, boasting how proud you are of your far-removed Irish heritage, and riding an excuse for public binge drinking.  Yes, in America, we don't make a big show by asking people if they've had a muffin for Flag Day.  We take a quasi-holiday like Halloween, shape a fun costume-and-candy children's tradition around it, and then take part in it ourselves, planning our costumes months in advance so that we are the cleverest movie character in the office on Halloween Day or the sexiest vampire at the after-hours party.

And when it comes to arbitrary dates, we don't settle for a giggle over Singles' Day on 11/11.  No, we take the entire month, call it "No Shave November" and grow ourselves a mustache.  Never mind the absurdity, we are a people of action and alliteration (e.g. "Taco Tuesday").

So, lest anyone accuse me of ignoring the plank in my own eye while pointing out the speck in China's, let me end by stating my disdain for the nonsense that takes place stateside, where radio DJ's and overly cheery colleagues squeal for attention by asking everyone in earshot if they knew it was "Talk Like a Pirate Day."

"So what do you do for that?" I might ask.

Giggles.  "You say, 'Aarrh!  Matey!"  "Arr!"  "Aarrg!"

"Anything else?  What's the point?"

"You get to say, 'Aarrh!' and 'Walk the plank!'"

"Oh.  Some holiday."

Election Parties

I may have been the only American in the small country hamlet of Fengyang, China (pop. 80,000, at least according to the only credible person who would give me an estimate), but I had the good fortune to be joined at the university by two other foreign English teachers from Australia, Grant and Sue Rogers.  Grant and Sue had already taught at the university (Anhui Science and Technology University) in 2005 and 2009, so they had seen the town before it had a major intersection, a traffic light, and cars.  Not that there weren't any cars then, but it was mostly the electric scooters that are still widely used throughout China.  And whenever anything is widely used throughout China, that means you would encounter hundreds of them whenever you walked out your front door.  Grant and Sue are world travelers, having been to the Andes Mountains, all across China and Tibet, and throughout Europe, even hiking the Carmino de Santiago de Compostela.  They exuded friendliness and carried a spirit of adventure that I admired and appreciated whenever we talked or went to a university event, like the English speech competitions or dinners hosted by the English department.

Besides learning from their experience as foreign teachers, and admiring their friendly relationships with nearly all the Chinese we encountered ("Hey, there's my friend!  Hello, mate!  Ni hao, ni hao!"), I took away some enlightening and entertaining stories from the land down under.  Poisonous snakes, mud crabs, vicious koalas, hazardous fishing trips, and more, yes, but Australians have pluck, so they take all that in stride and enjoy the good times driving up the beach and exploring the land and cities of their beautiful country.  About one poisonous snake encounter, Grant told me that he and Sue were in their living room one evening when he spotted something and told his wife there was a snake under her chair.  "It was an Eastern Brown," he told me, "They're not too dangerous, but I didn't want to muck around with him that night, so I went and clubbed him on the head and got rid of him."  Could you imagine that story taking place in any other country?  And the people just dealing with it coolly and the next moment back to acting cheery?  50 years ago in southern China they would have counted their blessings and ate the snake, but then they wouldn't necessarily go back to being cheery.  In America, I'm sure there are wives who would have moved out and sold the property after hysterically running out the nearest exit.

Sue and Grant

Anyway, the story I want to share today is a topical one, being that the Presidential Election finally takes place tomorrow.  Grant shared with me that, in Australia, they have Election Parties.  I gathered that, after voting, friends would get together and watch the results and generally discuss politics.  Gathering with politically-mixed company to watch election results: sounds like a great idea, right?   Americans can't even remain friends on Facebook because of political posts, but apparently the Australians can take the arguing in good humor.

Case in point: Grant was hosting an Election Party and wound up arguing with his friend Biuw (Australian for "Bill."  Just having a little fun with the Australian accent.) and it got so bad that he said, "Get out of here!" and threw him out of his house.  The next day, Bill came over to Grant's house, stood in front of the open door, and tossed his hat into the living room.  "Now," Bill asked, "am I as welcome in your house as my hat is?"  Grant waved him in with a big gesture, "Aw, Biuw, get on in 'ere."

It's a shame you couldn't hear Grant tell it.  I'll try and do his stories the best I can from here on out.

-Mantis

More on Thailand- 13 Coins Gym, Bangkok

After our weekend touring the city, Andrew and I threw our bags into another taxi and headed to the eastern outskirts of Bangkok.  We were about to meet the Man.

Our destination was 13 Coins Gym, most famous for being the training center of champion fighters Saenchai and Orono (their highlight videos are worth checking out on YouTube).  The gym itself is a hodgepodge of boxing rings, heavy bags, framed Muay Thai magazine photos, collages of the gym's fighters training and competing, portraits painted on wooden panels, flags from countries from all over the world (they even had Wales' medieval dragon flag- is that a real flag?), and tables and stools so spectators could have a drink or smoke as they watched the fighters work the Thai pads.  A wooden roof ran the entire length of the gym, and built into the underside were tiny rooms that some of the Thais accessed by ladders and slept in.  Adding to this eclectic rainbow was the pastel pink and blue hotel connected to the gym on the left side, and the lonely sculpture garden decaying on the right.


When Andrew and I walked in, the gym was practically empty (at our first practice, only a couple foreigners and a few young Thais were training, noticeably absent was Saenchai) and our eyes scrambled to scan over every picture and color covering the gym.  We noticed the pricing for training posted above the rings, but saw no one who looked like management, so we walked into the restaurant and up to the front desk.  At that moment, the owner of 13 Coins Resort/Gym came in, smiling and chattering in rapid English.  Mr. Coke strolled around in slacks, sandals, and a loose short sleeve dress shirt, usually with a drink, cigarette, or newspaper in hand.  Though his hair had thinned into wispy strands around the sides of his head and he had gone bald on top, the creases curving out from his eyes and the corner of his mouth (formed from years of speaking while smiling) gave his face a very childlike appearance.

Mr. Coke greeted us with such enthusiasm that I felt a fraction like an American infantryman in liberated Normandy.  I have never been in a situation where someone was thrilled to see me just because I was an American.  True, in China I had minor celebrity status, or at least I was a public curiosity, but that was because I was a foreigner, not because the people knew I was American.  Mr. Coke quickly settled the bills for our stay, asking us, "How many days you gonna stay?  Five?  Okay, that's 5,000 baht.  And you the same?  Twelve? Okay, that's 12,000 baht," which calculates to $33 per day for a room, two training sessions, and one meal covered at the hotel restaurant.  Not bad by American standards, but according to my friends in China, it was too expensive.  I had a big envelope of cash I had exchanged for at the airport, and so I paid him on the spot.

That first day, Mr. Coke waited for us in the gym as we dropped off our bags in our room.  We came in to find him watching some old Muay Thai fights on the TV suspended in the far corner of the gym.  One of the waitresses brought us iced tea as Andrew and I took a seat and talked to Mr. Coke about the gym and his time in America.

When Mr. Coke talked, he would repeat himself in the same narrative loops.  And he was almost always talking, like an old single stroke farm motor popping along and filling in his pauses with pidgin English phrases or tags about different groups of Thai people being good or bad monkeys.  I can't remember how many times I heard him tell it, but he spent eight years in America, mostly in Washington with a little time in Alaska, first as a student at the University of Washington, but earning his real education by working his way through every position in American restaurants.  He named his chain of 13 Coins restaurants after the owner of the American original agreed to let Mr. Coke base the name of his restaurant after it.  "Yeah I learned a lot from you I learned a lot in America," he told us (I mentioned that Mr. Coke often repeated himself, but he would sometimes speak without punctuation).  He had restaurants throughout the area, making him one of the big name businessmen in Bangkok.

His restaurant and success story were fairly well-known in Thailand.  In fact, I heard from a young Thai man living in Cedar Falls about how Mr. Coke grew up the second son of a rich father who didn't want to spend time minding to his non-eldest son, but was willing to give him the necessary start-up money for his first restaurant.  When Mr. Coke debuted American steaks, pizza, pasta, and sandwiches near Bangkok's biggest malls, the smell and spectacle of it attracted lines stretching down the block (being in Thailand, the people in line probably had to do a lot of swerving to avoid sidewalk motorbike traffic, but seriously...).  The novelty eventually wore off, but Mr. Coke built himself a small empire and his restaurants are still known for their blend of Thai and western food.

That afternoon, Mr. Coke took us to his favorite LEGIT massage parlor (I'm not saying he had other unsavory favorites, but whenever you mention Thailand and massages to a group of guys, you get a lot of filthy, cheeky jokes and ribbing, so I have to set things straight).  Andrew complained that the Thai-style massage left him sore, but I took advantage of the incredibly cheap rates (1 hour for under $10) and widespread availability of the massage parlors and just went to my mental happy place when the lady dug in her elbows.

After that, Mr. Coke treated us to dinner back at his hotel restaurant.  Andrew and I each chose something Thai; Andrew had a delicious concoction with shrimp and seafood, but we couldn't remember its name to order it again.  During and after dinner, we talked with Mr. Coke more about life in America an his time there.  Andrew and him got along really well and chatted quite a bit.  I bet Andrew could move to Thailand and Mr. Coke would take him under his wing, managing one of his restaurants.  Not such a bad idea, if you ask me.  The biggest difficulty would be learning the language.  I tried to teach Andrew how to say "thank you" and count to ten.  We reached four and he stopped me by asking, "Wait, so you just repeat it over and over?"  No, Andrew, you can write an essay about it and think it over until you get the hang of it.

The next morning we woke up at 5:30 to meet another American Andrew, this one a black guy from New York City, at 6 o'clock for the morning run.  Mr. Coke had told Andrew to show us the standard route up the alley, along the main drive, and to the sports stadium complex, then back to the gym.  Every day we would either take that route or run laps up and down the length of 13 Coins' incredibly long asphalt parking lot.  Side note: the restaurant was almost never busy, but on the weekends the local police officer candidates rented out the upstairs meeting hall to prepare for the qualifying exam, and the parking lot looked like a makeshift used Isuzu truck dealership.

The Mantis uses no hyperbole.

Practice was pretty sparse.  At Fairtex Gym, the square of four connecting rings was always filled with one or two trainers per ring, plus a rotating batch of professional fighters and foreign enthusiasts.  At 13 Coins, a boxing trainer coached two fighters in western boxing, a veteran Muay Thai fighter (the eccentric Mr. Long, sporting a radical Zach Morris haircut) trained two young Thai amateurs in another ring, and in the middle ring, the trainer/waiter Soren rotated between Andrew, the other Andrew, and me.  Soren didn't actually wait tables, but he worked for the hotel in between morning and afternoon practice.  There was also an American MMA fighter, who went by B.K., with a cage setup wherein he taught a couple foreigners basic grappling later on in the morning.

While we were at 13 Coins, Mr. Long showed us his downward elbow-strike technique and boasted, "I have a plan!  I will go around the world.  People want to learn technique.  I will show them.  I will make some money.  I have a plan!"  Soren would meticulously correct our technique and works us out till we about fell over and had no "POWER!  POW-AH!"  He would have me front kick him over and over, he stepping forward and me slipping backward each kick, until I lost my balance or became trapped against the ropes.  Then he would laugh at me with his metallic, wheezy laugh.  Soren and black Andrew (that's the name he uses at Starbucks, too- "Tall coffee for Black Andrew?") would go after each other verbally every morning.  Soren would tell Andrew that he was "cuh-razy, crazy" and he needed to "re-lak, re-lak" (relax) by seeing a lady boy, and also that he liked lady boys.  Andrew would respond, angrily, "Man, why you always callin' me crazy?  Why you pickin' on me?  You crazy.  You're crazy.  I don't like lady boys!  I think you do. You're crazy."  While Andrew was going on, Soren would look at me, smiling, and giggle a little.

Soren training with (just for clarification) white Andrew.

One time they were at it again, and I didn't catch what Soren said, but Andrew came back with, "You're blacker than I am!  Whatta you callin' me black for?  He's darker than me!"  Andrew wasn't light-skinned, but Soren was from the northeast region of Thailand, where the people are several shades darker than the rest of the Thai population.  Andrew Dostal and I had to walk quite a way down the alley (Thai alleys are very long side streets, not out-of-bounds zones in garage basketball) and over the canal if we wanted to buy anything, eat somewhere else, or find something to do, and the hotel TV only had one channel in English (Discovery), so watching the other Andrew and Soren tease and taunt each other was the best entertainment available.

A video of Mr. Coke giving a tour of the gym.  Looks a little like Oliver Stone's distant cousin.  A most welcoming host.  One contention: the water in the video is most definitely NOT clean.

Email I wrote to my Chinese aunt

My Chinese aunt Fang was supposed to send me my clothes, books, and souvenirs after I left China.  I didn't have enough room in my luggage, and she could do it through the China Post mail service.  She sent the packages out in August, she says, and I've been asking her for weeks now about their status.  I was about to write them off as lost, but I held my tongue because I did not want to believe in bad news and bring about the worst.  After the packages arrived this afternoon, I sent my aunt this confirmation email.  Because shipping took so long, I had to have a little fun with her.  She translates it into Chinese online.  I hope Google Translate can handle sarcasm.

"My mother had good news for me today.  My two packages came from China.  I was just thinking today about them, and I thought I might ask you again if they were coming.  I was feeling angry because they had taken so long.  But then I went out on the porch and there was a dusty old Chinese mule driver, smoking a cigarette as he looked over his wagon.  "Hello?" I asked.  He didn't respond.  "Wei?  Ni hao?" I said.  "Ni hao, ni hao," hello, he coughed back.  I used my computer and Google Translate to communicate and ask him about what he was doing on my porch and why he brought all the old mules.  He explained that he had traveled all the way from China with those mules, and they were only three-year old mules, in the prime of their physical strength.  He used the land bridge from Russia to Alaska, then traveled down to Washington state and went east over the Rocky Mountains, roughly along the same route as Lewis and Clark.  "I lost three or four good pack animals in those mountains," he said, a tear forming in his dust-caked eye.  When I saw the compassion in his weathered face, my anger melted away.  "Here," I said, handing him the money I had in my wallet, "Buy yourself some food.  You've got a long journey back."  Immediately he thrust up his hands and shook his head, "Bu Yao!  Bu Yao!"  He could not accept tips according to China Post regulations and Chinese customs.  "Well then, friend," I offered, "Enjoy your smoke and take as long as you'd like on my porch...  Or at least come on in and stay the night; get some rest."  He waved me off, explaining that he had an urgent Express Overnight Delivery due in Miami.  So as soon as he finishes his nap on my front porch, I'm sure he'll jump up and be on the road again to deliver his next package."

Thailand, Part 1

Perhaps the best part of China was that it is five hours from Thailand, or at least Hong Kong is five hours from Bangkok.  My aunt looked at flight deals for me and told me I would save money by driving a couple hours to Hefei, then flying to Hong Kong and on to Bangkok.  Wouldn't that be complicated? I asked.  "Easy, easy," she said with a smile.  Her husband, "Uncle" Jiang, told me, "Nooo...  No!  Tell her no.  Go to Shanghai."  Flying out of there would have been direct, but I was not about to tell the woman who showed me the most care, "No."  After nervously questioning her many times and receiving the same assurance, I told her to go ahead and book the ticket.  I knew it was a precarious gamble, but like I said, even if I had to suffer the consequences I would follow her instead of taking Uncle Jiang's advice and telling her no.  Her plans were so often full of childlike enthusiasm and zest; I always had to allay my apprehensions to her but nonetheless followed along.  Her plans did work when we were in town because she could just walk up to whomever she wished and talk to them and get help.  But by myself, I would have to experience the misery of being stuck in a bad situation.

That was later though.  At this point I was overjoyed to be going back to Thailand, my promised land.  It had been nearly five years since my first trip to Thailand.  I had saved some money after college to travel to a Muay Thai gym and train for four weeks.  It had been a long heartache in between, pining to return and make good on my dream of training Muay Thai.  As soon as inspiration struck to use my winter school vacation for this trip, I emailed my friend Andrew back in my hometown.  Andrew and I trained together at the same gym and had discussed making this Thai pilgrimage before.  I told him now was the opportune time, he managed to get leave time from work, and we spent the next few weeks scouring websites for travel deals, Muay Thai gym reviews, and travel guide recommendations.

We planned to meet in the Bangkok airport after midnight, the time when the international flights arrive, and take the car we reserved through Fairtex Gym to the seaside city, Pattaya.  Well, in Hong Kong they changed my departure gate three times and I didn't even board until after midnight.  Andrew told me later that, after waiting in line through the passport check and collecting his luggage, he was already running behind, and after making the driver wait even longer to see if I would arrive, he rightly decided to go ahead to Pattaya and then checked into the gym in time for the morning practice session.  Luckily, we both had cell phone service, and after I made it through airport purgatory to the exit doors, I received Andrew's text letting me know he had made it.  But my traveling ordeal wasn't finished yet.  I still needed ground transportation to Pattaya, so I waited around four hours for the bus counter to open up.  In the meantime, I had to fend off the advances of a taxi driver who said he would find me a lady as part of the deal, but I also met a gregarious college student (coincidentally studying abroad in Beijing) and her brother from the Caribbean.  We ran into each other later in the city, but never joined up with her group, which was fine by me, since she was mostly interested in partying at the most sordid nightclubs there.

Yes, although Fairtex Gym was a great facility with plenty of topnotch trainers, and there were amenities like beaches and islands, plus the friendly people and relaxed ambiance of Thailand, Pattaya was a filthy, debauched city worthy of a moral parable like Pleasure Island in Pinocchio.  Its infamous Walking Street is something I regret seeing, but only slightly worse than the rest of the bar and club-filled town.  Girls would sit at tables bordering the sidewalk in the many open-air bars, and they would either shout at you or try and grab your shirt and pinch you.  It was funny at first when I saw it happen to Andrew and a girl told him he was cute, but it was without end, and it turned severely depressing when I saw old men walking with a limp and a young Thai girl on their arm, or sitting speechless at a bar table as they "enjoyed" dinner together.  I had had enough when I saw lady-boys in miniskirts standing on the corner and trying to latch on to passersby.

I did go out with Andrew and a few Australians to have some beers at a bar where washed-up old Thai guys would stage fake fights and then walk through the crowd collecting tips.  That was fun, cheap entertainment, but I had to call it a night when the environment of Walking Street wore me out.  Andrew stayed out a while longer with the Australians, but they were eventually thrown out of the next bar for a bogus reason.  I'll let him tell the story if he cares to.

So I was ready to move on from Pattaya.  Fairtex was a good gym to train at, and I did start to bond and get into rhythm with the trainers there, but I think Andrew and I were both looking for a new place to explore.  We packed our bags and went back to Bangkok, where Andrew had reserved a hotel room for the weekend.  We toured the city went up the river, walked through the shopping streets, saw the boxing stadiums, toured the National Palace and its temple complex, and through it all baked in the sun from morning till night.  We would order drinks from shops throughout the day, and Andrew got to try his Sprite the Thai way: poured into a plastic bag with ice and a straw sticking out.

We also went to watch the fights at world famous Lumpini Stadium.  Having seen fights our first night in Pattaya, we could compare the two.  Of course the atmosphere was better at Lumpini, being the mecca of Muay Thai and a favorite destination of foreign tourists and gambling Thais, and the fights in general were of better quality, though Pattaya did have some very exciting, highly-skilled match-ups as well.  I had a nice surprise at Lumpini when I saw the trainer and owner of the gym I trained at back in 2007, Por Pramuk, and went over to greet them.  Overall, I think I did enjoy the Lumpini fights better, but this is also due to the downing effect of drowsiness at the Pattaya fights.  I was exhausted from traveling and going the previous night without sleep, so when the time neared 11 and they were still bringing pairs of boys out to the ring, I called out, "Come on, ref, this is a school night!"  I think I fell asleep twice, slumped over in one of those white plastic lawn chairs that weigh a pound and bend in the legs whenever you shift your weight.  That last fight did provide the most amusement though.  Between rounds, when the boy from the red corner went back to his trainer, instead of the trainer having him sit on a stool and stretching him out, would just pick him up by the armpits so the boy could kick and shake his little body out.

I asked Andrew what he thought of these little boys fighting, how it would fare back in the land of soccer moms, and he said he didn't think it would happen, the kids would be covered in pads or end up crying and quit.  Not that I, as my whiny child self, wouldn't have, but the super-lean boys who grew up in the gym, and looked like they hadn't been fed in a week, were clearly a special breed.

Andrew had another gem of an observation during the trip.  I was so excited to be in Thailand and so excited to talk to a friend from back home and, hey! speak fluent English!, I kept pestering him with observations and questions about Thailand, which he took graciously.  I asked him about the many soap operas on TV, or the light, airy pop music.  "What do you think?"  "I think that the country that came up with Muay Thai has a lot of lame stuff."  I laughed.  Thailand had Muay Thai, charm, craziness and trouble, and exotic environments and cities, but yes, the pop culture was well tamer than American tastes prefer.

More to come,

Mantis

First Impressions: Comparisons, Part II

What are you eating?

I was overjoyed- giddy- to get a gallon of milk in my hands again.  China had milk powder and individually-sized boxes of possibly tainted milk.  There was no cheese.  Their one plus in the dairy section was drinkable yogurt.  So, the simple pleasure of pouring a glass of milk or bowl of cereal became the homecoming prize I kept my eyes on.  That and pizza and Mexican food ("Look!  A Pizza Hut/Taco Bell hybrid restaurant!  I've got a deliciously sinister idea..."  (Yes, that is tongue in cheek)).  On the way back, at the Honolulu airport, I got my first whiffs of pizza, Starbucks, and Cinnabon.  Delicious smells, yes, but then I heard the people in line ordering.  "Do you have meat lover's?  What about extra cheese?  And gimme cheese sticks and Coke with that combo."  So what?  You might ask.  But this was a pattern with every customer in line, and the vendors had clearly been engineered to market the high fat, high sugar, high dollar craving food.  And judging by the bulging bodies people bought into this system whole-milk-heartedly.

I can say, contrasting China, that the people were very sensitive to sugar (they though Reese's Peanut Butter Cups were too sweet), seldom ate "very expensive" chocolate, and among the students, especially the girls, they would hound each other if a classmate became fat (according to the standards of a country that used to experience regional famines once every year).  I was let on to the diets of some girls who would routinely skip dinner or only eat an apple, saying, "I'm a little fat."  China has plenty of chubby kids, but among the young adults I counted maybe two or three girls who were what would indeed be called fat.  Really, Americans that I know would just say, "Well, she's not skinny, but she is a bigger girl."  But back to body types in a moment.

One more observation about food in China (for now, at least, I will have to write about this topic later).  A lot of the diet consisted of fruits and vegetables, and chicken and fish and ducks and whathaveyou, bought from the street markets.  These were filthy, shocking bazaars, having no health inspector to please.  Besides the obvious health dangers, there was the fright of whole animals, chopped up or cooked whole, staring at you from the dinner plate.  I could handle the adventurous eating, surprises and all, but I did wonder why I maintained my weight with all the ostensibly fresh, healthy, if not tainted, food.  I concluded that the main cause was the oil, which ran over everything and pooled in a layer at the bottom of the plate.  The Chinese may be resistant to the encroachment of processed foods, but their love of Chinese tradition means they are going to stick with the heavy oil habit.

The bodies

Lastly, I want to comment on the most glaring of the differences I noticed on American soil.  The bodies.  Now, the rest of the world all knows that Americans are fat.  This is not to say that there are no other fat countries (see Russia and the United Kingdom, among others), but America is Number One when it comes to fat culture.  I often laughed and acknowledged this to my students in China, but when I returned to America the site of all the obesity hit me hard and took away my laughter.  I was saddened and hurt by it.  Bellies and thighs with their own momentum, masses of humanity whirring along on electric scooters because they had given up standing and walking, unrecognizable deformities of the flesh made in the image of God, people, like me, who were a slave to their cravings- in this case, the food.  So it makes me heartbroken to see this pandemic.

I have also noticed that men's bodies have diverged, either into weightlifters or beer bellies, but with considerable overlap between the two groups.  The men here have huge hands, and often monstrous arms.  In China, the men looked like the standard I have seen in many life drawing manuals, and what men in America looked like before World War II.  A thin, perhaps lean upper body, straight arms that expand at the elbow and upper forearm, making the joint look much larger compared to the pipe-like upper arm, overall moderate proportions and moderate height- not often short and not often tall- and most prominently, calves.

Calves

As a visual connoisseur of good calves, I can put my authority behind the statement that the Chinese have bulbous, bulging, and even wonderfully shapely calves.  In America, sorry to say, the people are starting to resemble Gary Larson's Far Side characters.  Big galoots with round bodies and awkward limbs.  It looks like a plastic surgeon found a creative way to hide his Play-Doh.  In China, I would see skinny young men, no more than 130 pounds, no definition in their chest or arms, (weightlifting has not caught on with the typical Chinese male and they don't spend their weekends idolizing football players), and they would have veins popping out of their calves and snaking down their inner knee.  Ladies, who largely did not work out, would still have shapely lower legs and the muscle groups would be plainly visible (from knee to ankle it should look like two narrowing ellipses, stacked one on top of the other).  I know a couple families in America with good calves, but I look around now and wonder where all the good specimens have gone.  A little strange, I know.  Well, at least in car-loving, skinny-calved America, it is ultra-rare to find a woman with feint black mustache or leg hairs, or a black dish scrubber hiding under her armpit, but that not uncommon sight is a topic for another time.

-Mantis

First Impressions: Comparisons, Part I

Well, things got quite polemical in my last posting when I had originally planned to offer some light-hearted comic relief.  It seems I cannot introduce some humorous observations without first tracking down a tangent. No matter, here are some of the things that most glaringly struck me about my return to American soil, and it is quite a thing to be glaringly struck; you won't look at things the same way after that.

Cranes

My family was vacationing in Texas at the beginning of August, so I flew into Dallas-Ft. Worth.  Outside the terminal were a number of things I had not seen in twelve months.  First was the multi-story parking ramp.  I never saw a sizable parking lot in China, save those moderate parking areas attached to the Wal-Mart and Carrefour shopping complexes.  And transitioning from the parking ramp was the aerial network of modern sculpture, the interstate and its on and off ramps.  But as we made our way from the outskirts of the city, we passed a handful of cranes outside the airport complex, if it is possible to quantify something so tall and massive with a handful.  I sarcastically asked, "Is that all?"  Because every city I went to in China had dozens of cranes throughout.  Most of the construction was for apartment complexes- high-rises of nearly identical shape and architecture, distinguished by color highlights and minor architectural flairs.  And there were also many new business and commercial centers as well as hotels and hospitals being erected.  I have a Chinese friend who works as an architect in Nanjing (He told me, "You know, Nanjing is really a city built on death.  When they built my apartment, they dug up bodies in the ground first.  I didn't know until after.")  He is in the office 7 days a week (not unusual in China) and he says he know he must rest, but the orders for new buildings are nonstop.

Driving- not so bad (here)

As I mentioned before, drivers in China are so pathologically bad they deserve a diagnosis.  Or, as I agreed with a fellow expatriate overseas, they could solve society's problem by taking all the cars to the junkyard and shredding everyone's license.  Yes, it is that bad.  Being back in America, it was refreshing, on one hand, to see drivers staying in their lanes, obeying traffic signals, (usually) watching for other drivers, abiding by the laws and flow of traffic, and (mostly) following the rules.  On the other hand, I was distressed to be back in a land that placed the car above all else and built its cities and lives around it.

The streets: Where is everybody?

When I slept at my aunt's apartment in the city of Bengbu, the noise of the street market served as my alarm clock.  By 6 o'clock, there was a mass of people in the streets.  This meant people streaming every direction over street and sidewalk.  And against all common sense, they never bothered to check left or right before stepping into the street unless it was to cross a major artery.  The people would just wander aimlessly in the middle of the road, only focusing on what was immediately in front of them.  The drivers were the same, so when they approached a crowd they would start honking unceasingly (well, they honked for every other contingency, too) and start barging their way through.  As a pedestrian, you could not count on vehicles slowing down for you, so when an American driver (in Iowa) yielded in the middle of the street and waved me across, I remarked, "That would never happen in China.  Never."  In Chinese streets, there is a blatant disregard for human life that would disgust me even further if I did not come from the land of Roe v. Wade.

When my students asked me the biggest difference between life in America and China, I would tell them "the streets."  American suburbs are organized by a house or property, a lawn or edging, a sidewalk, a parking strip of grass with trees lining it, and usually a two-lane street with enough space to park on either side.  When you walk down the street, or in American English, when you drive down the street, you will hardly encounter another person unless you are downtown.  Cars, bicycles, and pedestrians each have their space (though cyclists often do not receive respect or space, at least you would not see cars and motorcycles on the sidewalks like I saw in Thailand and China).

China has a free-for-all without strong boundaries.  If I went out, I would pass by chickens, street dogs, endless amounts of people, babies without diapers who might be in the act (aided by their grandmothers, right there on the street), piles of trash, piles of paving stones and other construction materials, food carts and food vendors, cars, trucks, and waves of motor bikes, and if I were passing through an area functioning as a street market, then I would pass tables of clothes, shoes, books, vegetables, and varieties of tofu, not to mention the farmers with their chicken cages- birds bound by the ankles in, on, or outside the cage- and the fish sellers who cleaned and cut their fish on a plastic tarp lying on the ground, wet with blood, water, and street filth.

No naps!

So, the Chinese were awake and active, in large numbers (when aren't they in these?), by sun up.  This can partially be explained by the population density and the dearth of private space for relaxation and recreation. Chinese apartments were not woefully meager, but they had few amenities other than television and (usually) a computer.  Not so unlike America, but at least we have carpeting, clean and drinkable water, ovens, clothes dryers, central cooling, and central heating.  Anyway, how could a non-coffee-drinking people have such hustle and bustle so early in the morning?  By taking an afternoon nap.  Businesses shut down and schools would schedule a two-hour break to accommodate this (most of the owners and clerks "shut down" their shops by pulling out a cot or lounger to sleep in behind the counter; wake them up for service).

Taking a nap was expected.  When I had lunch at someone's home they would offer me a blanket and a couch or bed to lie down on.  Chinese friends might wish me a good sleep instead of a good day.  Countless times I asked students for their hobbies and was told, "I like sleep."

How is it to live with that kind of cultural institution?  Well, besides having that down time at lunch, I noticed that I was also sleeping better at night, and, most surprisingly, I started dreaming on a regular basis.  Before, I would dream maybe once a month.  Napping every day, I didn't dream every time I nodded off, but it was almost a daily thing.  The downside to a post-lunch nap, for me, was compelling myself to lie down and fall asleep right away (instead of internet surfing), and the sometimes overpowering drowsiness that I would have to shake off at 2:00 p.m. so I could get to class.  I have kept up the napping habit in America, and my sleep schedule has had problems, but it is better than if I didn't take a midday rest.  Try it and see.  And then when you get fired for showing up late for work in the afternoon, you can come over to my place and we will dream together.

Back to America: First Impressions

Well, it's been over a month back in the United States.  I've had enough time to get back into old habits and see most of my family and friends again, not to mention all the people I didn't have to worry I'd see while living in China.  Back in America, I may have to avoid certain people again, but for the most part they have done me the return service of refusing eye contact and avoiding me.  In China, it was a luxury- going to the grocery store, or just meandering about the city, as a complete stranger.  I go to the Hy-Vee here in town now and I have to worry about running into someone I know or scanning a familiar face and trying to remember if I ever did anything to make them hate my guts.  China was a rough and miserable place to live, but the stress of life between China and America never left, it just changed forms.

But still, one of my new phrases stateside has been "Better than China."  As in, watching my family lose their patience over bad drivers, I had to remark that, after living in China for a year, nothing less than a crash could faze me.  I had seen the world's second worst drivers in action (a well-traveled Australian couple told me Croatians were actively homicidal behind the wheel, besting the Chinese who are only absent-mindedly homicidal), so I couldn't care less about petty blunders like running red lights and turning left in and through oncoming traffic (yes, I witnessed these daily at every busy intersection).  And while lifelong Americans resort to customary road rage, I mutter, "Hey, at least it's better than China."

Which leads me back to the commonly asked question, "Are you glad to be back?"  I may say yes, but I'm not as happy to be in America as I am to be out of China.  See, I love to travel and live in the midst of a foreign culture.  Walking around city streets, immune from tiresome interactions by way of my inability to comprehend the native's language, just exploring and taking it all in- it's a great, refreshing feeling.

I also relish the opportunity to analyze firsthand the culture, state of society, level of infrastructure, and general atmosphere of a place.  I like to question what factors contributed to the current state and what were the foundational beliefs leading to the culture's development and standards.  For instance, Chinese spit wherever they feel like and speak brusquely like children fighting on the playground.  The Chinese have to explain to foreigners, "We're not really arguing, just talking."  Why is that accepted as a fact of life in China?  Why, in America, is it considered below standard or surly to bark at full volume into a cell phone while in an elevator, or pushy to cough out your words whenever a customer looks over your goods?  And the reverse of that coin: what would happen if Americans had to live without the foundation of their society, the car?  And why does all the food have to be loaded with sugar?

After living in a foreign culture, I have become much better at recognizing the culture of my native land.  The things Americans take for granted, assume are necessities, learn to live with, and love, are not the essential ingredients of a fulfilling life.  Particulars vary wildly from culture to culture, each relishes its own pastimes and comfort foods, and in answer to life's basic questions each takes its own hardline or laissez faire approach.  This is not to say that all things are equal and merely variations on the same whole.  No, my time in China has educated me firsthand to the great discrepancies that will result when you take away the Christian beliefs that flourished Western culture and, in its place, erect a modern, statist system.  China is emerging as a world power economically, and it is doing its utmost to thrust a state education on the people and develop its cities and infrastructure.  And note that word "develop."  China, I believe, is now classified as a developed nation, which might be true in Beijing and Shanghai.  Anywhere outside the mega-cities, honesty would classify it as a developing nation.  But I have become convinced that China will always be developing and never be developed.  Though China has changed significantly in 20 years, I propose that if you gave it 200 years it would never arrive at a developed stage.  Not truly.

Ask yourself: if China became the number one nation in the world (economically, militarily) then whose business would it undercut?  Who would it copy?  Whose ideas and copyrights would it steal if it were at the top?  Leaders are expected to innovate; China's power has been leeched off others.  Again, I say it all comes down to the foundational beliefs, and right now, other than Confucian ideals like respect for parents and harmony, most Chinese have little to believe in other than China.  It is narrow, it is circular, and it is a testament to nationalism that so many people are devoted to such an impoverished country.  It is not just the squalor and decay seen walking the streets, or the haze felt and seen, often smelled, in the polluted environment.  It is the moral vacuum left after Communist revolution and decades of Maoism.  So, until China takes Mao's bloated face off every bill in their currency, do not expect significant development.  But do not expect that repudiation to come quickly, either.  The Chinese government is hyper-sensitive to criticism, and it builds its powerful reputation by pretending it (i.e. socialism with Chinese characteristics, i.e. government by the Chinese Communist Party) is a great and benevolent servant of the people.

My ultimate message to Americans, concerning China, is to learn the truth about China's current state and apply those lessons fearfully to our own society.

More to come,
Mantis

Just to Write

I've got to take a moment to be honest.  I don't want to use this space to tell everything (no, that wouldn't be prudent) but I want to share a little about China with some like-minded friends.

China is depressing.  For someone who is most of the time melancholly to begin with, living in China has taken a heavy toll on me.  In one respect, it has been a time to reflect on my life and do away with some of the entanglements and habits (thoughts and thought patterns, too) that were an unwelcome part of my life in America.  But as I've come to find out, day after day without the comfort of speaking fluently in conversation to friends and family, or without having the simple ability to make a joke or an observation about what I've seen here to an American friend, has left me sorely wanting.  If I pointed something out to the Chinese ("Look at that! That women is carrying a side of beef in the back of her motorcycle truck!  It's covered in flies in the open air!  Blood is dripping on the ground and that piece is touching the ground!") they'd be confused and wouldn't understand what I was even pointing at.  But to make my point, humans need contact with their close friends, they need to be able to converse and share their experiences.  I was lacking in these respects in America, but in China I don't have any choices for an outlet.

I'm ashamed to admit that I've spent a good portion of my time abroad closed in my room, usually on the internet.  Some habits die hard.  I tell myself that there's not much to do outside- everything is concreted over and dingy, and the shops are shoddy, and communication isn't going to be possible in the slightest (I loved trying to speak Thai to natives, but speaking Chinese is a different story.  I usually can't distinguish their sounds and their manner isn't friendly and courteous like the Thais, not that I haven't met many friendly Chinese, which I have).  Yet I think with some motivation I could find some healthier activities.  I do exercise a lot on the school's running track, but I think that I could also be working on things I enjoy, like reading, writing, and drawing.  I've done my fair share of these, but my inspiration for writing today has been because I've got a back order of creative ideas in my mind that could fill a warehouse.  And I've noticed, lamentably time and time again, that when I'm feeling depressed I get snared and I can't break out of my inertia.  Then, anytime I propose doing something, putting something out there for people to see, I tell myself all the reasons it would be too hard, or how people would criticize it or ignore it.  Sometimes, I don't want to work on something just because as soon as you put pen to paper the idea is no longer the ideal it once was.  Now, it's evidence that you're imperfect and you're not as skillful as you thought.  But I think to overcome these depressing feelings, I need to just simply work on something, make myself do anything just to get started.  Eventually, I'll have a goal or a new project to work on that gives me purpose and revives my spirits.  I've been praying about this quite a bit lately, and I need to believe that God does hear my prayers and has already set about fulfilling them.

So, here's a little joke I thought of.  It's based on some thoughts and observations I've had lately while listening to debates and presentations by Christians and evolutionists and atheists.

A: How many evolutionists does it take to change a light bulb?
B: I don't know, just leave it to itself.  It will change itself in a few million years.
A: Change itself!  How?
B: I don't know!  Make it a few billion years.  Fine?
A: Doesn't the light bulb need someone to change it?  Someone who has a greater purpose in mind for the light?  If it can change itself, why is there even a light bulb in the first place then?  Who needs it?  And how is there a room with a light socket and electrical wiring?
B: Why do you need an answer for all this?  What, you want the light bulb to change and then say, "Oh, God did it?"  Yeah, that makes about as much sense as imagining light comes from fairy dust.  We know how these things work from science, we don't need your primitive superstition.
A: But why is there something instead of nothing?  What is the light for?
B: I already told you!  Science has developed theories about the process of the light bulb falling out of the socket so that a new one could take its place.  We don't know how the room started, but just look at the beauty of the process!  Why do you need to complicate that just because we don't have an answer?
A: Well, I don't think I'm making anything up.  But I don't feel quite as preposterous anymore.  Thanks for enlightening me.

“It’s not a story. It is the truth.”

It was autumn.  Late enough that I brought along my jacket, but early enough in the season that I could leave it in the back of the charter bus.  After a two-hour ride, split between high-speed highways and hilly village pathways, our group collected itself at the statue of the Han Emperor Liu Bang.  My aunt Fang, me, and her colleagues- both fellow faculty and some professors from nearby universities- assembled into rows to take pictures in front of the mounted, charging emperor.

It was a simple day trip, and although I assumed that because of the cave and its history this tourist area must have been well-known, whenever I tried describing it to my students afterwards they had no idea what place I was talking about.  Perhaps it was my pronunciation; Chinese isn’t a language accommodating to outsiders (I describe it as permutations of ch, sh, and j sounds with rising and falling tones).  Our plan was to hike through the woods to the cave at the top of the hill, enjoying as we went the greenery and the bluest sky I had yet seen in China.  Although that doesn’t mean the sight was spectacular, the sky still shined clearly through the tree canopy.  The environment was remarkable in another way, that is that it was the largest space in China I’d seen uninterrupted by the detritus of civilization.  Outside of vendor huts loaded up with the same wooden, seemingly-traditional goods and the bright rainbow of junk toys and junk food, there were no remnants of concrete buildings, no car exhaust (or blaring horns), and no litter pooled together by the roadside into a disgusting rainbow swamp.

One of the professors from another university, English name Lily, was an English professor who occasionally translated for me or interpreted the sights along the ascending pathway.  She also asked me a few grammar questions, point blank.  An example, not necessarily one of hers, but of the type I’ve heard from her and from students: “What is the difference between may not/might not and cannot/ could not?”  I also had one student ask me why words have more than one meaning, or why two different phrases can mean the same thing.  As a rule, when answering theses types of queries, the first thing you will say- no, drone- is, “Uh...”

Lily was a lovely lady, though, who told me about her college classes and about her son studying computer science at Stanford (many of the Chinese I’ve met aspire to study in America at one of the top 50 universities.  In China, extracurricular activities are a nearly non-existent priority compared to test scores, so in their system the bright and ambitious can realistically study abroad at a prestigious university.)  Then, after we climbed the stone stairways overgrown with roots of 2,000-year old gingko trees, and passed through the colorful, incense and idol-filled temple, we approached another statue of the Emperor Liu Bang and the heralded cave he and his men hid in from their enemies.  An eroded stone stairway led the way up, and a crowd of people ascending and descending, balancing and slipping, made their way in and out of the cave.  Without its history, the cave wouldn’t attract attention.  Hardly ten people could comfortably stand in its space.  But one significant feature was the large stone covering the mouth, said to have fallen “from heaven” to protect the emperor.

Lily explained this all to me, and she said that it was similar to the way a stone was rolled over Jesus’ tomb and removed by angels.  Now this pricked my ears.  I knew that, as a professor, she was required to be a member of the Communist Party and disavow religion.  I also knew that, at her age, she had grown up in a China slowly opening up to the West, with a foundation of atheistic beliefs laid over centuries of Chinese philosophy and folk religion.  So, her knowledge of the Resurrection account could have been simply knowledge, or, more likely, because she was Christian.  I tread carefully.  I asked her an opening question about the similarity between the Emperor’s cave and Jesus’ tomb.  Then, I followed up with, “So you know the story of Jesus rising from the tomb?”  Without swaying, Lily replied, “It’s not a story.  It is the truth.”  She said it with conviction, and I quietly explained that “story” can also be a true story; it does not only mean a fiction or fantasy.  I don’t know if she understood me; as we walked on I was left to think of her words and replay them in my mind.

I’ve been surprised at the number of Christians I’ve met in China, and the openness with which students of mine have happily volunteered that they went to church for Christmas or that they believe in Jesus.  I had assumed that religion, the Christian faith especially, was kept quiet about in public.  I knew that persecution in the forms of imprisonment and execution were still real.  And I knew that the government expected to control its people’s religious activities to a certain extent.  The state won’t accept divided loyalties and will arrest the leaders of independent churches that attract too much attention.  As part of my teaching contract with my university, I’m not allowed to participate in religious activities that violate the government’s laws and interests, which would include religious meetings with students.

I’ve been careful to watch my words here.  I’ve been in China long enough to have heard the people speak about religion, but not long enough to publicly interject my own opinion.  I’ve wanted to first gauge the Chinese’s own attitude towards mentions of Jesus and discussions of faith.  I meet brothers and sisters who said they saw me praying in the cafeteria and ask me if I’m a Christian and then say, “That’s so great” or tell me how they believe in God and the times the first had their prayers answered by Him.

And I have been pleasantly and hopefully uplifted when these rays of sunshine do break through, when the new green shoots do grow up through the crumbling concrete and life springs forth.

Wounded Soldier

A few weeks into my Sanda (kickboxing) training, my Sifu (teacher/master) had us sparring.  Sparring, in my experience, has an uncertain level of danger and intensity.  From the outset, the exercise might be called “light sparring,” but the intentions of the combatants and the natural vigor of the activity can escalate things quickly.  In Brazilian jiu-jitsu or wrestling, each grappler can push the pace as hard as they want to, since there are no punches or kicks there’s no normal risk of injury.  And as soon as one grappler secures a submission- which would lead to injury or unconsciousness if the opponent didn’t have a chance to yield- then the action stops and the action is reset.  But the end goal in finishing an opponent in any kind of striking is a knockout, either landing a blow that makes him blackout momentarily, or double over, unable to stand up and fight.  So to simulate this, the chance of injury is obviously real, and even with safety equipment and controlled technique the level of contact is still imprecise.  Besides that, sometimes both sparring partners decide they want to let fly and hurt the other guy.  Maybe at first they just wanted to show they were better, had the edge, but after they got punched too hard in the nose they need to let their partner know who’s boss.  Trainers have different opinions about the intensity level in sparring.  I’ve heard that sparring is learning- which it is- and the point isn’t to take someone’s head off but to practice technique in a live-speed environment, and I’ve also heard that hard sparring is necessary to prepare for a real fight’s contact, speed, and pace.  I think I’m of the opinion that a fighter should be built up in steps.  The only reason I’m able to keep up with the level of sparring partners I am today is because I had the opportunity to practice and refine my technique, after first analyzing its mechanics and logic, in increasingly lesser-controlled settings.  But that’s all just background, so back to the main thread.

I was partnered up with my Sifu’s nephew, a seventeen-year-old who’s far above the rest of the students and a couple levels ahead of me.  I didn’t know how they did things at Wei Sifu’s gym, or in China, but I had a decent level of experience sparring so I took to it and went back and forth with Sifu’s nephew for a few minutes.  I tried settling into my game, my usual habits, and seeing how well those would succeed, but I wasn’t able to catch my rhythm and establish myself because he was getting the better of me.  It was a rough start, and I became a little frustrated after trying to sidestep and falling on my back when he came forward with a leg kick that caught me sideways.  After I got up, I wasn’t angry, wasn’t vengeful, but I was definitely more loose.  I dropped the tension I was holding by trying to establish myself and dazzle with perfect technique.  So, not long sparring in my newly relaxed state, I let go with a left-leg head kick.  It was quick and effortless, without concentrating on it beforehand, and unexpectedly, and as it turned out, unfortunately, it found its mark.

His pupils rattled into place as everyone watching either gasped or grew silent.  We both stopped, and a trickle of blood came down over his lip.  He went into the bathroom to check and clean out his mouth.  Some of the older students, around my age, who knew English were excited and said, “Wow!  You are strong!”  I felt terrible.  I was trying to express my apology, afraid that he’d come back twice as hard at me, but Wei Sifu said it was nothing, not to worry.  There would be no grudges, it was understood as part of training.  Sheepishly, I went aside and checked my own wound.  I had a small gash on my foot, at the head of my second toe.  It had been cut open, I don’t know whether by the force of the impact or by his teeth.  I had felt terrible about hitting my training partner so hard, but I was soon to feel even worse.

My Chinese “aunt” and “uncle” told me not to wash my cut.  I didn’t understand at first and I was insisting, but then they communicated that the water was not clean.  That’s right, I agreed, the tap water here isn’t the same as in America.  So, instead, my uncle swabbed my foot with alcohol-soaked cotton swabs.  I requested a band-aid, but either they thought that was unwise, unavailable, or they didn’t understand.  The next day the wound had hardened over and my sock had a large rusty blotch.  Also, it was surprisingly hard to walk and painful to move my toes.  I felt like a baby not training the next day, but my aunt made the call and I really couldn’t have even if I had tried.  Besides, there was a three-day trip to Shanghai beginning the next morning.  Yes, it was the week of the National Day holiday, the day when China marks its modern founding in 1911 and the week when most people have time off from work or school.  We had planned a trip to Shanghai, to see the city and visit Aunt Fang and Uncle Jiang’s son (their surnames are different because the women in China keep their father’s name even after they marry).  The morning of our trip, Aunt Fang had to pull out to go meet someone, so it was just Uncle Jiang and I headed off to meet his son, his sister, and his niece in Shanghai.  I hobbled along as best as I could, trying not to wince and thankful when I could rest and elevate my foot.  Throughout the trip, we swabbed my increasingly sore, red and yellow wound, and applied generous amounts of ointment to it.  I had a gauze bandage held on by tape (given to me by Aunt Fang’s sister- a nurse- when we made a brief visit into what I thought was the scariest hospital I’d ever been in; it wouldn’t be much longer until I experienced the scariest) and that was completely soaked and had mostly stiffened.  (I’m not trying to be unpleasant, so to make the point cleanly: my foot was swelling, sore to the touch, and the wound was festering.  I was sucking air in through my clenched teeth as I slipped on my shoe and pulled it off; I couldn’t even bear to tie the laces.)  Well, I spent most of the vacation in the hotel room, which wasn’t all bad in itself, but I felt disappointed that I wasn’t able to tour the city more.  I was hoping that Uncle Jiang would allow us to go out and see the city- despite my foot I thought I could endure it- but he insisted I rest and so either he or the whole group kept me company most of the time.  We did go out for one evening to see the river (gorgeous night scene with lights all up and down the river) and a shopping area, and we spent most of one day touring the city center and taking pictures of the famous skyscrapers (check my Facebook page if you’re interested in those).

When we came back to Bengbu, where Uncle Jiang and Aunt Fang live, we went out for dinner with some old colleagues of Uncle Jiang’s from when he used to work with Aunt Fang at Bengbu Medical College.  They all had a great time catching up as I enjoyed the lively atmosphere, removed from the table by some distance due to culture and language.  Afterwards, instead of going back home, Aunt Fang had Uncle Jiang drop her, their doctor friend, and me, off at the hospital affiliated with the college.  My foot was still bad, no, it was worse, and after having several nurses and doctors look at it and say it was fine- nothing broken that is- she wanted to have her close friend look at it and fix the problem.  Note: before I came to China, I was concerned about the health care here.  What were the hospitals like?  Will I be able to access what I need?  Could I afford it?  I found out that if you know someone, you just walk right in.  I’ve been to a few hospitals for more than five visits, and I’ve never filled out any paper work, sat and waited, or paid any money for the services (this includes quick checks, new bandages applied, and x-rays).  With Aunt Fang, I walk past the crowded lobby full of people with morbidly miserable faces, up the stairs, or in the case of the second hospital up the overly-crowded elevator, past the patients lying on beds in the hallways with their family members massing around, and right up to the doctor in his office.  So, in the doctors’ office behind the nurses’ desk, Aunt Fang pulled up a chair for me to sit down and wait until the physician she knew could come and see me.  As Aunt Fang and her friend (also a doctor, I think) talked, other doctors and nurses shuffled by, returning supplies and gathering medicine to take on their rounds.

By this time I was already scared, praying and trying to focus past the panic.  You see, my foot was in bad pain at that point, the surroundings were crowded, busy, dingy, and poor.  All the meager surroundings you’d picture in a third-world hospital: large, cold rooms populated by scant wooden furniture that was worn and usually in need of paint or repair.  Inside the wooden cabinets, there would be a few supplies, but nothing like at an American clinic, a collection of glass bottles, thin cardboard boxes with gauze and bandages inside, and simple instruments you’d be just as likely to find in your neighbor’s medicine cabinet.  All of this is dimly lit by fluorescent bulbs, so the atmosphere is getting to me, but I hate hospitals to begin with.  If you know me well you know I hate needles and I can’t even have a conversation about blood without getting faint.  Going into a hospital, my mind races and I have to fight my rationalizations that the worst will happen and I’m going to have to have my foot amputated.  I know, it’s dramatic, but sitting in that terrifying hospital, I almost would have signed a confession of guilt for a made-up crime if meant they’d release me.

When Aunt Fang’s physician friend came in, he took out some cotton swabs, a bowl, and some very large metal tweezers, just like the doctors who’d looked at my foot before.  But this time, Aunt Fang and her friend looked at me sympathetically, clutched my shoulder and gripped my hand, and covered my eyes.  The doctor went to work, and I did my best to hold on.  As he plucked and tore out the infected tissue, the pain came in intense shots.  I was repeating the same psalm in my head, or when the pain was too much that it distracted me, I switched and tried focusing on something else, like the sensation of another body part, to try and ignore the pain in my foot.  It was bad enough that I started to feel flush and get hot; I knew what was coming.  My posture slowly collapsed in the chair as I vainly struggled to take in fresh air.  I was going out, and I knew if it continued for a moment longer I would either faint in my chair or fall on the floor.  Blindly, I waved the doctor off with my hand, motioning for him to stop.  He was already done though, and so as he stepped away Aunt Fang and her friend tried pulling me up by my arms and reviving me.  It just wasn’t going to happen, and I ducked my head between my knees to try and allow blood back into my brain.  After a couple minutes watching me bent over, Aunt Fang and her friend helped me up and carried me with my arms, one over each of their shoulders.  I protested, or at least tried, barely able to mouth words and so drained that I couldn’t open my eyes or find the strength to move.  I didn’t know where they were taking me; I thought they meant to take me outside when I was in no condition to attempt to walk home, even if it was only three blocks away.  Of course, they had my best wishes in mind, and they took me around the corner, into an empty exam room to lie down on the bed.  Slowly, as Aunt Fang held my hand and wiped the sweat off my forehead, my breathing began to return to normal.  It was quite a while, I’m not sure exactly how long since in my trance the time didn’t register to me as it normally would, before I was able to sit up.  And when I did, they all watched intently, bracing themselves with the worry that I might topple over.  But I managed to make it out and down the elevator, aided of course by her and her friend.

We weren’t quite done; we scheduled a stop by the radiology department and found two doctors standing in the hallway, on smoke break, to take some x-rays.  Yes, smoking in the hospital hallway, and yes, holding the cigarette in his off hand while he adjusted the camera with his right.  Even though I’d just been through trauma, I had a small smile.  A radiologist working with a lit cigarette- that’s just too funny an experience, too out-of-the-American-world not to enjoy.  Nothing was broken or fractured, so with that I hobbled home.

The next day we went back, my aunt and I, and had another doctor (this one spoke decent English) examine my foot.  He took out the tweezers, and the bowl, but this time he only pulled off the gauze, cleaned the wound, and replaced the bandage.  It took hardly more than a minute, and when I walked out all the nurses were smiling and joking with my aunt.  I guess, even compared to the craziness they’re used to, I made quite a scene the day before.

As we left, Aunt Fang tried translating a Chinese expression or some apt words she thought of to describe the situation.  I helped her sound it out and she meant to say “wounded.”  She called me a “wounded soldier.”  I told her, as best as I could in simple English, that when I was about seven, in a similar situation, that time walking home from the hospital upset because I had to go through the nightmare of getting a shot, my mother told me I was her “brave little soldier,” but I told her, “No, I’m not!  I’m a sad little boy!”  And I pouted the rest of the way home.  I don’t know how my young mind came up with that so quickly.  But now, after the nearly three-week layoff and several more doctor’s visits, once I returned to Sanda training, whenever I come back bruised or sore, Aunt Fang always tells me, “You are wounded soldier.”