I've tried keeping journals during my travels in the past, and it never has seemed to work. There's always so much that happens during the first few days in a new place that, by the time one has time to sit down and write, the sheer volume of stuff there is to write about is simply overwhelming. I could start this entry four or so years ago, when my Dad planted the idea of a gap year in my head. I could start it a year ago, as I started putting the words "plan gap year" on my to-do list. I could start it three months ago, when I really did begin to plan in earnest. I could start it on Thursday, August 31, 2006, when, at 5:30 AM, in utter, blinding darkness, I sat bolt upright in my bed, alarm clock blaring, and realized for the very first time what I was actually getting myself into.
I will return to describe all of those times, I hope, although even with the help of the notes and pictures I took, the true essence of my feelings has been lost to time and replaced by retrospect. But in order to capture what is truly happening now, I will have to start when I first set foot in China. I stepped off of the gangplank of the Hong Kong-to-Zhuhai ferry gangplank, and there I was. Not that that's what I was thinking about at the moment. I was happy, for sure, proud that I'd gotten myself, my baggage, my money and my passport from the Bishop Lei International House that morning, through Hong Kong and the ferry port, and now, off the ferry. I was idly paying attention to the people I was standing behind -- some extremely preppy, and, from what I could tell from their conversation, boorish and arrogant Australians who were climbing down from the VIP deck with golf bags on their shoulders. I was probably fretting a bit about clearing customs, because everyone seemed to have these little bits of paper sticking out of their passports.
Sure enough, there was a form I was supposed to fill out that I didn't get. A Chinese policeman, in a gesture I would soon become accustomed to, wordlessly pointed to a table with stacks of blank entry cards. I filled one out -- no, I have not been on a poultry farm in the past six months, and even if I had, sure as hell wouldn't tell you -- then walked through the first checkpoint. Then came customs. There was another card to fill out; again, I waited in line, only arrive at the window and be directed to a little table in the back corner with a pointed finger. More paperwork. How did everyone else know about this? My buzz was starting to fade. At this point, all of the other passengers had cleared customs, and all but one customs official remained at his desk. Finally, I handed my passport through the slit in the glass. He looked at it for a moment, typed something into the computer, then handed it back through. It was official now: I was in China.
But the fun for that morning was only about to begin. The first thing I noticed was the Bank of China window. With boards over it. Under construction or permanently closed, I don't know, but I immediately began to regret not buying some RMB at the murderous Hong Kong exchange rate. There was a Chinese policeman standing at the doorway, and I caught his eye, then approached him. Trying my best Chinese: "Excuse me? I need money." He gave me a look like, "so do I, kid, but why are you telling me?" I tried again: "RMB. RenMinBi." And again, a uniformed Chinese official, saying nothing, extended his arm, and pointed vaguely towards a none-to-promising parking lot to the left.
I had lots of time, and I vowed to keep my cool. I walked towards the parking lot, parallel to the Zhuhai port building. After perhaps 100 yards, there was a large arrival hall, and I ducked in. An information desk, dead ahead -- perfect. I walked up to the counter. A dour-looking young woman pointedly ignored me for a few moments. "Excuse me? Do you speak English?" She looked up. "Yes. What do you want?" I need to change money--" "Over there." She pointed to the ferry ticket counter. "Uh-- okay, thanks." I walked over. This was definitely not where I get money. I walk around the circumference of the hall. No ATMs, no banks, no anything. Eventually, I gave up, and went to the ticket counter. "Can I change money here?" "Over there." The receptionist pointed to the middle of the room.
I walked in a bee-line to where she was pointing. Sure enough, there was a small, semi-circular desk which seemed like it could be information of some sort. There was nobody there, but after a few minutes, a uniformed man came up to me. "Where do I change money?" He pointed to the information counter with the dour lady. I promptly drew a knife and disemboweled myself.
Or at least, that's what I felt like doing as I got Dour Lady's attention again. "Hi. Money?" "Right there!" she said, pointing. I looked very carefully. She was pointing at -- to this day, I don't know what, some kind newsstand/smoke shop hybrid. Frankly, I was so busy freaking out at this point that I didn't even notice what the guy was really selling. Dour Lady had pointed to a little newspaper-y hovel of sorts in the crotch of a staircase in the middle of a room. I walked up to the man attending it. He was slouched in a chair behind the counter, smoking. I withdrew $100 American. He stood, whipped out his giant calculator, and punched in "650". I threw back my head in scorn, and cleared the field. "750". He gave me a look to kill, but was unable to properly finish murdering me because his cell phone rang. For the rest of the transaction, he speaks loudly into the receiver. We finally settle on 720, which isn't terrible ( 7.78 RMB = 1 USD). Still, I feel a bit gypped as I confront challenge #2: getting to the Gateway Language Village (GLV).
I walked back the way I came, to the taxi lineup. Perhaps thirty or forty taxis were idling in the lineup, many of their drivers asleep, sprawled across the front two seats and the dashboard. A man in a white dress shirt approached me. "Taxi?" he asks. At first, I thought he was some kind of official, whose job it is to set people up with taxis. I hand him my map of Zhuhai, and point to the GLV. Then he quotes a price. "18?" 18. That was very generous; I was expecting to pay 20 or 25 RMB. It was then that I started to get a bad feeling about things. Had I misheard him? He began to lead me briskly down a concrete sidewalk.
"Excuse me, you did say 18, right? 18?" He gave an ambiguous response. Part of me was saying, 'screw it, just get there'. Another part of me was beginning to be genuinely worried for my saftey, because an unmarked white van pulled up, and he grabbed my bag, threw it inside, and hopped in the passenger seat. A skinny man was driving. White Shirt says something to Skinny in Chinese -- presumably our destination, although at the time, I suspected it was my price on the black market. As fast as I could, I withdrew my notebook and scrawled "18" on a piece of paper, then handed it forward. A pause, while he figured out what I was talking about, then, "No no no no no no! Here!" And he hands the paper back to me. Sure enough, there was a big "80" in a circle.
"Stop the car. Stop the car." I hold up my hands, point to the door, reach for the door. We were at a red light, so there wasn't much more stopping to be done, but I didn't want him to drive away with my bag, or, worse, my bag and my left arm. "Stop the car!"
"Nonononono!" He snatches my piece of paper, and writes "30", then hands it back. I look at it. I look at him. I nod: "hao." He says, "hao." The tension levels begin to subside. He explains brokenly that I was paying for the bigger taxi. I began to worry now that he's going to try to get revenge by driving me somewhere remote or dangerous. Perhaps that was an unfair thing to think, but that's what I was thinking. I was at the edge of my seat, scouring the road ahead. At one point, I held up my map and tried asking where we were, but White Shirt couldn't figure it out. (In his defense, it was a truly awful map, more of a suggestion of what things looked like than how they actually were). Even the skinny driver laid it out on the seat next to him and studied it for a while, which was troubling because we drifted directly into the center of the road. I later learned that traffic laws are strictly optional in Zhuhai, and that both lanes are available for both directions of traffic, even at twice the posted speed limit through a red light. But more on that later.
Finally, we arrived at the GLV. It looked like it did in pictures, and there was a big sign that said "GLV", so I was pretty confident. I grabbed my bags and got out to pay. Of course, I had to use a 100 Yuan note, and again, perhaps unfairly, I half-expected White Shirt to take off with it. But he didn't, and triumphant, but drained, I walked towards the GLV.
As I entered the GLV, fhe first person I met was Hill. His real name, I learned talking to him the next day, was "xiao shan", which means "little mountain", or, in English, "hill". But at the present time, I was on high alert, so when Hill claimed I was his roommate's friend and reached for my baggage, I was not going to have any of it. Eventually, we worked out that I was not the person I was looking for. I handed him my map of the GLV, pointed up the staircase inside the building, and asked, "GLV?", only to realize sheepishly a few moments later that the staircase went only to the GLV, and moreover, Hill was wearing a GLV name tag. I hauled my bags upstairs. At this point, my shoulders were aching from having so much weight on my back for so long. I walked in to a long room with a reception desk. A Chinese woman gave me a guest name tag and directed me to B206.
I found it, after a brief "platform nine and three-quarters" moment when the room did not appear in sequence. I opened the door and came face to face with Meiling, with whom I had been conversing for the past few months. She looked different from how I had expected, but then, I had expected her to look different from how I had expected, so perhaps I really did expect it after all. In any case, I was standing in a small, skinny office, with barely enough room to place my bags without blocking the only doorway altogether. "Please sit," Meiling said after introductions. It turned out I was the first one there. Meiling handed me a stack of, you guessed it, paperwork. I signed away the rest of the course fee, my right to speak Chinese on premises, and my ability to date GLV students, among other things. When I was done, Meiling passed me off to Amy, who was to show me my room.
It was here that I hit the lowest low so far in Zhuhai; it has been all uphill from this moment. It was beastly out, with a hot breeze like vinegar breath. My shoulders were pulsing with the ache from my bag. And worst of all, everyone was glaring at me. Everywhere I looked, people were squatting on stoops, walking by with children, everywhere, people were not looking happy to see me. As we walked through the gate of the building compound beneath the stern eyes of the gateman, I chanced a question with Alice, who didn't speak very much English. "What do the Chinese think of Americans?" She laughed -- bad sign. "Uh, they think they are, um, very open." Well, that didn't seem too bad. I figured I'd just leave my buttless chaps in my suitcase, and things would be fine. We went into my building, and she showed me how to key in if the doors were locked. (I later learned that there was always an attendant on duty, so you could just knock and he'd open it for you). Then, we got in the elevator. I was on the 17th floor (it is a 20-storey building).
My room was guarded by a metal-bar security door, behind which was a door proper. Amy slid a key into the lock and effortlessly opened it. I walked into the room. There was a tile-floored living room with a TV, a fan, a few desks, and a water cooler; a low divider separated the living room from the laundry room. One entire wall of the living/laundry room was an open frame of widely-spaced bars, like the security door; there was no way to close the window. That's one of the neat things about Zhuhai, I later learned -- practically everything is permanently open-air.
The kitchen was a tiny space attached to the living room with a fridge and a stove. The bathroom was also minuscule, but at least it had a western toilet. It used a French-style shower, with a bathtub to squat in and a hand-held shower head. Amy then unlocked my room. Once again, it was small, with only about 8 or 10 square feet of room to stand. The bed was rather large, and took up most of the floorspace. It doubled as a desk chair, as the desk directly abutted the bed. There was also a large cabinet with some cubbies, but no place to hang shirts.
Amy showed me how to turn on the washing machine, and tried to get the hot water in the bathroom to work, but to no avail. I thanked her. She left. And I closed the door to my room. For some reason, I was deeply unhappy. The strangeness of my new lifestyle was beginning to hit me. I was tired, for sure, and lonely. And all of those Chinese people glaring at me. . . I spent a few minutes fretting. I went to try to turn on the stove, so I could boil some drinking water. It didn't work (apparently, you had to turn the gas on but I haven't tried using it since). I went and looked at the washing machine -- like everything, it was tiny, and only used cold water. I had to be back at the GLV at 4:00 for orientation and dinner, and I couldn't decide how safe it would be to leave things in my room. There was a security box, but I didn't have a lock, and the desk had a locking drawer, but I didn't have a key, so I put as many valuables as I could into my bookbag and unpacked the rest. The clothesrack problem was solved by cantilevering one of my bags out over the top of my cabinet and hanging the shirts on a strap. My power converter seemed to work fine on the battery of my camera (although I was not ready to risk damaging the laptop).
I met one of my roommates, John. He had been at the GLV for a while, so he knew a bit of English. We talked, in English and Chinese, about what we were doing there and where we were from. He showed me a way of getting internet on his laptop using a special SIM card converter, something I should look into. He told me that the flat had capacity for seven people -- one person in my room, two in his, and four in the third room. But I was too tired to worry about it. I thanked John, and went to take a nap.
I walked into my room and threw myself down on my bed. Big mistake -- the 'mattress' turned out to be, literally, a 2-inch-thick upholstered wooden board. Still, there was air conditioning, and the comforter was thick enough to be used as a mattress, and above all I was tired, so I eventually fell asleep.
I felt slightly better upon waking. I realized how worried I was about the TEFL course, and how much my peace of mind hinged upon my getting a good feeling from the info session that night. I dressed, and walked back to school; it was a straight shot down NingXi Road, so I didn't need to worry about getting lost.
I don't actually remember much about the info session, except that I liked it. It was led by Meiling, although she told us there were two other teachers, whose names were Shireen and Jenny. We were in a classroom on the third floor that the GLV had put aside for TEFL's purposes, right next to the cafeteria. We played that name game where everyone goes around and says their name and home country, and the name and home country of everyone before them. We were a pretty diverse group, with people from India, Quebec, Hong Kong, the Phillipines, Australia, Macao, the UK, Nigeria, and probably a few other places I've forgotten.. After the meeting, we went to dinner at an upscale restaurant across the street which featured northern food. I was looking for someone to talk to, so on the way over, I struck up a conversation with Jett, a native of Montreal who had taught English in Korea for two years. We ended up becoming friends, but as we crossed the street to get to the restaurant, all I knew was that I had a good vibe.
In Guandong, you wash your chopsticks with hot tea before eating with them. It was a lazy-susan meal, with a stream of dishes appearing on the table. Something I still don't understand is the south Chinese perception of temperature. They eat spicy food, and wash it down with scalding tea. They wear long pants, and often long-sleeved shirts. You simply cannot buy an iced drink, and a cold one is hard to come by -- they believe that cold drinks are bad for the health. And yet every indoor facility is air-conditioned. . .
At dinner, I sat with Jett, Meiling, Endy (a softspoken Nigerian), Sumit (a very loud, extremely funny Indian), Greg (a large, gentle-looking man from America), David (another American, and teacher at GLV whom Meiling had invited to dinner), and Michael, an extrememly tall Aussie. For once, I picked the right table -- the meal was great fun, and I learned a lot about how to get by in China. The other table had one person I wanted to meet: Sterling, another Canadian who had been teaching in Korea, and who acted and sounded exactly like Ben Burdick. However, he was only there for the 1-week PELT program, so in terms of making long-term friends, I was in the right place.
Just to get a sense of how much food cost around Zhuhai, I asked Meiling how much the dinner cost, per head. It was about 70 yuan per person, or about 10 dollars in America. And this was about as expensive as it got. I was looking forward to meals in Zhuhai.
I don't know exactly how it happened, but on our way out of the restaurant, Michael, Jett and I got the urge to go explore Zhuhai a bit. First, though, we wanted to drop off our bags. We went to each of our room -- on the 10th, 13th, and 17th floors, respectively, and each spent about 5 minutes apiece wrestling with the locks on the security doors which Amy had made seem so simple. Then, we headed out. I dont know were we got the directions fro, but somehow, we came to understand that Guandong was where all the Zhuhai nightlife was. There are two main streets in Guandong -- Bar Street, and Walking Bar Street. Again, I don't remember exactly how it happened, but we foud ourselves on Walking Bar Street, a broad, pedestrians-only road, with shops on the buildings, and little, 10-person, umbrella-covered bars on the sidewalks. They were all shaped like 'u's, with three sides of seating and an open back end facing the street. And it was at the second one of these that we sat down. There was pink neon lighting running under the bar counter, and techno music coming from a little stereo.
Now, those of you that know me know I don't drink. But that night, I had a beer. I don't even think I finished it, because I hated the taste, but I had one. It was actually my own mother who told me the importance of having a drink while everyone else was, so as not to make anyone feel awkward or guilty. The important thing was that I have a beer in front of me -- just enough to clink glasses or raise a toast. And I needed the friends. My Taiwan trip was miserable because I didn't have a close friend. Now, I have Jett, who has taught me a lot about living in Asia, and whose companionship has made this trip tolerable for me so far. I truly feel the need to justify this -- I don't like beer, I would never drink it alone, and I have pretty much stopped since Jett has become a solid friend.
Apart from that, it was one of the most amazing nights of my life. There we sat, right on the bustling sidewalk, as all sorts of people walked by -- old men and young men drinking at the long lines of nearly identical street bars down both sides of the street; behind the counters, three or four girls serving drinks and playing dice with the patrons (women fill most of the service roles in China); uniformed attendants standing outside their shoe and clothing stores, boys selling flowers for people to give to their sweethearts; old ladies with their young children in arms, begging for money (they actually thrust the child at you and say, "thank you, thank you" in Chinese -- at first, I thought they were offering me their children, and I was horrified. I kept thinking, my goodness, at this rate I could be a father of five by the end of the night!). There were Chinese policemen making the rounds, and people trundling by with wheelbarrows stacked impossibly high with trash and boxes and God knows what else. There were people cooking up meat on little grills and selling it on the street. And of course, there were whores aplenty, but they stopped bothering us once we sat down at the bar. And despite the grit, and the heat, and the poverty, I felt fine. These were not aggressive people. I was bigger than everyone, anyway. They didn't try to rip us off on beer; nobody tried to pick my pocket; if you ignored a beggar, they would move on after about thirty seconds.
The only thing that took my attention away from what was going on around the bar was what was happening inside. Somehow, four girls maneuvered around each other in the tiny space, perhaps three or four feet to a side. There was one bar girl, whose name I don't know -- at the time, we didn't know that we'd be returning, so we didn't remember when she told us -- who spoke a bit of English. She said she was nineteen years old, and had lived in Zhuhai her whole life. That was surprising to me, because her Chinese had much less of an accent than anyone else's of the people I'd talked to in Zhuhai. She was pretty, too (don't worry, mom, I'm not going to do anything). And it's because of her that I had such a great evening. I've never spoken more Chinese in my life. I was remembering words I hadn't thought about in years. She could understand my accent (I had never properly realized the value of hearing Mr. Hou speak so much Chinese, but apparently my accent is pretty good -- perhaps more language classes should be interspersed with days in which the teacher just speaks in the language, even beyond the students' level of comprehension, to give them an idea of what the target sounds like). When I didn't know a Chinese word, she helped me out in English. It was the perfect learning environment.
Then, she brought out some dice shakers and dice. I was immediately worried -- I had already chanced drinking that night, and there was no way I was going to go for gambling. But there was no money involved. It later became clear that this dice game was the number one bar pastime in Zhuhai. The rules also became clear later, but that night, the game was way over my foreign little head. It seemed that you had to lie about your dice, and I remembered seeing something like it in Pirates of the Caribbean, and not understanding it then, either. Eventually, we gave up, and our bargirl brought out some cards for blackjack. It was also then that we met the person I will henceforth call 'flower boy' -- fifteen years old, and selling flowers on the street. At first, I treated him just like the other vendors and beggars -- I ignored him. I felt callous, doing that all the time, but you really had to, or you'd be swamped as soon as everyone saw that you gave out money. But with flower boy, it soon became clear that he wasn't going to try to sell me anything. He just plopped himself down at the bar, and we began to chat a bit. He became a regular sight at our street bar.
Eventually, we stood up and walked down the rest of the street. On our way back, we thought of stopping back at our pink-countered bar again, but it was full, and the other bars were charging a lot more for beer. So, st around midnight, we headed back home. It was a blessedly straight shot from the GongBei district where we were to the GLV, so it was easy to tell if the cab driver was going to the right place. Cab rides have been one of the consistently most stressful things for me. First of all, there is the issue of communicating where you want to go. Many of them don't read, and many of them have accents so thick that we mutually cannot understand each other (Zhuhai is an immigrant city). Then, there is the driving. As I mentioned earlier, traffic laws are optional in Zhuhai. Most of the streets are one lane, but if someone wants to pass someone else, then the opposite lane of traffic becomes the passing lane. Moreover, since crosswalks are all but irrelevant, jaywalking abounds. And unlike in most places, where the middle of the street is a safe zone for jaywalkers, when there are no other cars around, the lines on the street may as well not be there, because people drift back and forth between lanes like leaves in the wind.
Still, after the initial shock of the traffic, which I had been more or less prepared for, I began to see some order in the chaos. The Chinese driving was aggressive, for sure, but anything but malicious. Everyone was on the same side, helping everyone else violate traffic laws safely. I first saw this in the use of the horn. Chinese drivers use their horns very frequently. And yet, it's not the "HEY! F**K YOU BUDDY!" horn so prevalent in America. They use it as it is meant to be used -- as a warning. Watch out, bicyclist crossing the street! Just wanted to make sure you saw me! Watch out, car ahead of me! I'm about to pass you in the other lane of traffic, so please make room for me! Around Zhuhai, there are many places that function as both parking lots and open markets, and cars will beep gently as they move through these, clearing the path ahead. Nobody's going to kill you if they can help it. There is also frequent use of turn signals, adding to the collaborative spirit of things.
When we got back, the three of us got one last beer at a convenience store in the building compound, and just sat out in the courtyard and talked for an hour. It was a lovely end to the night. I got back to my room and went to take a shower. I flipped on the gas for the heating, but couldn't seem to draw hot water. Anyway, I didn't have high hopes to begin with, because Amy said it might not work during my tour earlier that day. So I took a cold shower. It felt fine, because as I said, nothing is actually cold in Zhuhai, and the cool water was actually very refreshing. It was only a few days ago I walked into the room and felt the hot steam of a recent hot shower, and only on Friday that I got it to work.
Sunday was our day off. I slept in, then woke up and fussed around in my room until 1:00, when I had planned to meet Jett and Michael to go to the Zhuhai hot springs. Despite the name, the Zhuhai hot springs are neither hot, nor springs. They are swimming pools, whirlpools, and spas filled with medicinal water of various temperatures, as we had learned during dinner the previous night. I went down to Jett's apartment, and we sat and waited for Michael. Most of the time, we talked with Hill, the man whom I had met on the steps of the GLV, and one of Jett's roommates. He was a big guy, and very loud and funny and boisterous. After half an hour, we tried Michael's door one more time, decided he wasn't going to show up, and headed out.
Jett and I decided to just walk around Zhuhai a little bit, and get the lay of the land. So we did, for about two and a half hours. We saw the richest of the rich -- gated communities with gardens and boulevards -- and the poorest of the poor -- litter everywhere, rust-smeared buildings, the smell of rot and sewage, empty lots where people burned their garbage. We started out the morning headed south, but when we finally relocated ourselves with the help of a bus map, we were north of the GLV. Eventually we found our way back. I was hungry, so Jett sat with me while I got a bowl of noodles at an incredibly good chain restaurant. The chain was run by a Chinese Arabic minority, and Jett had had it in other cities. They actually made the noodles from fresh dough right in the storefront; the meal was delicious, not to mention cheap. It cost me fewer than $0.75 for a meal that would have cost no fewer than $5 in the US.
Jett and I had caught wind of a great, upscale Korean place in GongBei, and wanted to check it out. So we went back to our building, and agreed to rendezvous in an hour. A quick stop at the GLV, and we had the name of the restaurant from a receptionist. Then, we caught a taxi.
The taxi driver was crazy. I'm sure he had some sort of neurological disorder, because he was rocking all around in his seat. Everyone drives manual cars here, and his arm was hyper-extended, clutching the shifter as if his muscles had only an 'on' or an 'off' position. Moreover, he was driving insanely fast. There is a big mountain between XiangZhou district, where the GLV is, and GongBei, where we wanted to go, and there are two ways to get between the two places -- to the west, there is a tunnel, and to the east, there is a long, winding road with no other roads attached to it that cuts through a man-made pass. The night before, we had taken the tunnel, but today, we took the pass. For this driver, and at this early time of day (the traffic was light), the road was essentially a downhill solemn. He would have done well as a NASCAR driver, so close were we to losing traction on the tires. There he was, jerking his whole body back and forth to shift the car with his hyperextended arm, dodging the cyclists cruising down the hill, passing a long line of cars in the wrong lane, and finally screeching to a halt in front of the Korean restaurant.
To be fair, the ride may have been worth the meal. We did Korean barbecue, sitting cross-legged at a low table on the hard wooden floor. Jett, who had been in Korea for a while, affirmed that the meal was authentic. He even ordered in Korean. First, they brought us some tea and a dozen side dishes of various spiced and pickled vegetables and meats. These, Jett explained, would be refilled as soon as we finished them. Then, they brought out some raw pork medallions, and lit the table-grill for us.
I must make a disclaimer. For the time that I am in China, I cannot adhere to strict vegetarianism. First and foremost, I must get enough food. Now, most of the time, the only way for me to get food is to point to random items on the menu until the meal seems to cost about the right amount, and just eat whatever they give me. I can't send food back, and I can't not eat it, or I'll starve. In other situations, especially with dumplings and bao.zi (another sort of dumpling), it is impossible to tell if what you're eating is meat. When I return to the states, I fully intend on resuming my vegetarianism, but as you have no doubt seen already from this journal, this is going to be a year of experimentation. There is no point in going to China if I act as if I'm just sitting at home.
Jett had become quite the chef in Korea, so he sliced up the pork with scissors and laid it out on the grill with some onions and kimchi. When it was cooked, an attendant came over and lowered the temperature, pushed the meat to the side of the grill, and gave us plates of sauce, garlic, lettuce, and spicy green peppers. Jett instructed me in the way of eating Korean barbecue. First, you take a large leaf of lettuce, and smear some spicy sauce on the back. Then you take a piece of meat, dip it in one of the sauces they'd provided, and lay it inside the leaf. Next, you fill the leaf with whatever else you want -- kimchi, garlic, onions -- and fold the leaf over into a sack. Finally, you stuff the entire sack into your mouth with your fingers. Herein lies the foreign-food conundrum: say I went out for Korean barbecue in the States. Should Korean manners apply? Or American? Later, as I will tell you, we went out for real Indian food with our class' two Indians, who instructed us to eat almost everything with our hands, then lick our fingers. Try that at the Bollywood Cafe.
We also tried some Korean rice liquor. Again, there was some very interesting etiquette associated with this. Everything having to do with eating (and perhaps other things, too, I don't know) has to be done with two hands. So Jett picked up the bottle with his left hand (he's lefty), placed his right hand on the joint of his left elbow, and poured my glass. I then did the same. Then we drank. It tasted sweet rubbing alcohol -- I was not a fan. You must fill your friend's glass if you see that it is empty, so I filled Jett's and he mine. We ate for a while, then drank again. I told him I was only good for one more, and he was fine with that.
I balked at the price of the meal, only to realize later that it had cost us perhaps $15 USD. Jett picked up the tab. He said that in Asia buying was done in rounds, and that instead of paying him back, I should just pick up the next meal. We decided to go for a walk -- we got the feeling we were near the ocean, and we wanted to have a look.
Sure enough, the ocean was not five minutes away. We found ourselves on what could only be Lover Lane, a very long pedestrian road which runs most of the length of the Zhuhai coastline. There were many couples sitting on the railing, enjoying the moonlight. Out in the bay, the water changed from nearly white near the coast with the reflected lights of the city, to pitch dark in the open ocean. We strolled along, enjoying the coastal breeze, taking in the sights -- large pagoda-like building, on the water's edge; some upscale hotels and apartments -- it was really very pleasant. We walked until we came upon the Zhuhai harbor, where I had disembarked the day before. With that landmark, I pulled out the map I had bought earlier that day. I could find where we were, easily enough, but had only a vague idea of where Bar Street might be. We decided we'd wing it, and plunged back into the heart of the city, away from the coast.
We walked for perhaps half an hour, along a long, straight road. Still, there was no sign of Bar Street. Jett is a big fan of asking for directions, and so we picked the most likely direction-givers we could find, and approached them. It was a pair of girls. I began to ask where Jiu Ba Jie was, in truly terrible Chinese, when one of the girls interrupted me: "You want to speak English?" I stopped mid-sentence. "Uh, yeeeah, sure, thanks." Pretty smooth, Charles. "Bar Street is about twenty minutes from here if you walk. You keep going down this road, then you have to turn right at a big intersection-- you'd probably be better off taking a taxi." Jett and I looked at each other. "Alright, taxi it is." Taxis are pretty cheap in Zhuhai; I rarely pay more than $2 USD to get to the farthest reaches of the city. We walked to the road with the girls, and they flagged down a driver and gave him directions. We thanked them, and took off.
It was that night that we learned there were two Bar Streets. We were dropped off on the bigger of the two -- it had more dance clubs and restaurants, and was open to vehicle traffic. Through some combination of divine providence and a familiar-looking neon-tipped hotel, we found our way back to Walking Bar Street, where we had been the night before.
It was another lovely evening. I learned a lot of Chinese, and once again got to practice with everyone -- the bartenders, the locals, my flower boy friend. Flower boy was doing all sorts of magic tricks for me with the bar peanuts. He showed my his tattoos -- five or six very ornate roses tattooed on his body. In exchange, I taught him to play Blackjack in Chinese, which was pretty cool. We headed back early, because classes began the next day.
TEFL students eat free at the GLV (before, they had to lead a weekly 2-hour conversation session for free meals, but the Chinese government had cracked down on that, because they would need work permits to teach at the school). So on Monday, I arose at 7:40, walked to school, and had breakfast. It was extremely good, nothing like the nausea-inducing cafeteria food in Taiwan. TEFL students are required to mingle with GLV students, so I probably met some people that morning, but I made contact with them since. Then, I went to class. There were several people there who I hadn't seen before; apparently, a few people got in late and missed dinner. Frankly, that I or anyone else was able to make it there on time is simply amazing. I mean, it's like sniping -- four months ago, I took aim at a tiny, four-dimentional space (the doorway to the TEFL office at between 11 AM and 4 PM) from 15,000 miles away, and somehow, somehow, I hit the target.
I was a bit troubled at the beginning of the first class. In walked Shireen, a no-nonsense woman, probably forty years old, with the best mastery of English of any of the trainers (at first, I was deeply troubled by the idea of being taught grammar by a non-native speaker. But now I realize that it is often the non-native speakers who know grammar best, because they don't know the language innately and thus rely on the rules). She reminded us again that it would be a difficult four weeks, and gave us our schedules. We went over them: the first week consisted mainly of classwork. Meiling would be teaching us Mandarin Chinese in Foreign Language Experience class, to help put us in the mindset of the language learner. Jenny would teach a few phonology courses, which I'll get into later. Shireen would be demoing several teaching methods for us in the afternoons. There were a few other types of classes interspersed, but then on Friday, we would have our first shot at teaching. The TEFL course starts you out small -- at the end of the first week, you teach the language of your choice (even English) to the rest of your TEFL classmates. This is video-recorded for your viewing pleasure. All through the second week, you teach a GLV student English in a one-on-one setting. Finally, for the final two weeks, you visit various schools in the Zhuhai area and have observed teaching time.
By the time Shireen finished talking about all this, I was thoroughly scared. Then, she started in about her own story, and how she came to be a teacher there. The Chinese government had posted her at a University for a few years to teach English. She was terrified of her students, all of whom were bigger and smarter than herself. After that, she got a job teaching elementary school students -- the sons and daughters of diplomats, used to preferential treatment. After that, she was released from her teaching duties, and went to work as a document translator. But she missed the kids,so eventually, she got back into teaching.
Having her talk about her difficulties as a teach her humanized her a bit, so I was feeling fine for Mei Ling's class, which was next. The first teaching method she tried was called 'self-access' -- in other words, there is no teaching, only a teacher at the head of the room. I was able to pick up some important Mandarin phrases. I really liked her class, because she was so kind and gentle. After her class, we had lunch, which was about as good as breakfast. That afternoon, Jenny taught us phonology. At the time, I had no idea what it was. (For those of who who don't know, as I did not, phonology is the study of sounds. There are 44 sounds in the English language, each of which has a phonetic symbol; therefore, English words may be written phonetically, just as Chinese words may be written in Pinyin romanization). I had never learned the phonetic symbols before, but evidently some people in our class -- mainly non-native speakers -- had, because Jenny breezed write on through them. This became a trademark of Jenny's teaching, the way that everything she taught us, no matter how new, was treated as if it were just review, and we needed only skim over it to jog our memories. Her favorite phrase is "Hurry up." I don't think she realizes that it's kind of rude to say that. She'll hand out an assignment, and just say, "hurry up," as if our doing the activity is just slowing her down. She is also infuriatingly 'by-the-book'. But she is the weakest part of this course -- everything else has been top-flight.
After Jenny we had Shireen again. She walked into the classroom and began on a language activity with us. I immediately realized that something strange was going on. It was only after about ten minutes or so that I realized what that was: Shireen was treating us like ESL students learning English for the first time. The class was labeled a "demo" on the syllabus, only she hadn't ever announced that she was going to begin demoing, or that the people she was going to demo on was us! She just walked in the door and began. That was pretty cool, I thought. At the end of class, she snapped out of her teacher-trance, and we went over what she had just done.
Finally, we finished. It had been a very long day, I realized. I had dinner at the GLV, and was nonplussed; I decided after that to eat breakfast and lunch at the GLV, but to eat out someplace new for dinner each night. We had about two hours that night, so I went back, did mine, and went to bed.
The rest of that week, classes were largely the same, so I'll spare you the details. I would like to recount some anecdotes and things I observed, though. One night that week, Jett and I went to a Sichuan place right across the street from the GLV. They handed us a Chinglish menu (many restaurants have them), we picked a few things, they came out quickly, and we spent a lovely hour and a half just eating the spicy, fresh food and talking. The next night, Amy led us uptown a bit so we could look at some Chinese children's books at a department store there. The group consisted of Amy, myself, Jett, Michael, Robyn, and Marie. Robyn and Marie were among those who missed the orientation session, and were from Texas and the UK, respectively. Anyway, while we were in the store, it had begun to rain. And when it rains in Zhuhai, it pours. I saw real fork lightning in the sky for the first time since second grade, and the thunder was so loud and percussive that it was setting off car alarms. What all of this meant was that we didn't want to eat anywhere far away. So we took off down the street, until we came across Cornfield Coffee. On orientation day, the GLV had issued us sheets with the locations, descriptions, and taxi fares and bus routes for a few dozen of Zhuhai's sites and restaurants. Cornfield Coffee was on there, described as a place to "eat Western food, and enjoy some real coffee." Well, it was the only restaurant in sight, and we wanted to get out of the rain, so we braced ourselves for high prices and walked in.
It was one of the least pleasant dining experiences of my time here so far, in stark contrast to Jett and my meal the night before. The lengthy menus (yes, menus -- one 6-pager for meat, and another 12-pager for breakfast, dessert, drinks, soups, rice, etc.) took forever to sift through. Then, when we tried to order, things got complicated. We had three or four angry waiters and waitresses squabbling over the meal. One waiter kept trying to force a 4-person meat dish on the table, and my friends eventually succumbed -- I ordered some fried rice with eggs. Then, there was the issue of how well to cook them, and nobody could seem to communicate 'medium'. Then, one waiter opened a soup menu, and it was unclear whether soup was included with the meal, or if he was forcing that on us, too. Finally, we settled everything, and nothing came to the table for twenty-five minutes. When things did come, they didn't set a place for me, only the people getting the special meat deal. Moreover, Robyn's steak was horribly undercooked, even though everyone else's was fine. Overall, it was an unpleasant experience. After dinner, I went to the bathroom to find a man squatting in the corner, taking a crap right there on the tile floor. Needless to say, it was disgusting. Nobody has been able to figure this one out -- all of the Chinese people Jett and I have talked to say they have never heard of such a thing. Equally strange, when I came out of the bathroom, there was a man fast asleep on one of the benches of a booth, like an indoor hobo.
Many Chinese do have some habits Westerners have trouble getting over. There is a lot of hacking and spitting, which doesn't bother me so much outside, but people will hack up and spit right on the floor of a restaurant or other indoor facility, or 'farmer's blow' their noses the same way. This, apparently, is a big problem in China, one that fines and laws have been unable to stop, but that a kindergarten-aged indoctrination program seems to be solving. People smack, slurp, and chew loudly with their mouths open. Then, there is the smoking. I have taken up second hand smoking since I've come here, I admit. I second-hand smoke about a pack a day. You can buy cigarettes anywhere, and people do. Smoking is allowed indoors pretty much everywhere. You see other strange things, too -- a construction worker fast asleep in the storefront window he's been renovating; men walking around, indoors and out, with their shirts off; the occasional man defecating in the corner of a bathroom with an available toilet.
That's why the GLV is such a good school. It really is a special place. First of all, it is total immersion -- no Chinese spoken on the premises. There is no spitting, smoking, swearing, anything allowed. They have Western toilets downstairs (apparently, one problem with Western toilets is that people tend to climb up on the seat and squat on them like a squat toilet. This is prohibited with a sign in the GLV). But the students who go there are incredibly serious. Jett says he has never seen students voluntarily speak English outside of class in any other school he's been at, but on Thursday night we sat down at a restaurant next to one of my roommates, and he was talking with a classmate in English. It was wonderful to see, and they helped us order, because the menu was untranslated.
There's a big, cheap internet cafe right next door to our building, on the way to the GLV, and they have Counter-Strike. That makes me so happy. They have a permanent LAN game running, and there are always a lot of people on. We played for an hour one night, Jett and I, and I was kicking butt against some pretty good players. I named myself 'wai.guo ren,' which means "foreigner," and I had people coming over to look at me.
My tolerance for loud and annoying things has skyrocketed. Chinese people generally don't mind noise. At our Korean restaurant, there was someone who must have been some kind of Canto gangster sitting by himself at the table behind me, ordering massive amounts of food and yelling angrily into his phone. At the time it bothered me. Now, I wouldn't bat an eyelash. I don't know how that adaptation happened, it just did.
I was sitting in Jett's apartment with Jett and two of his roommates (Hill and Todd), and we were trying to find out whether the best way to say "where?" was "zai na.li" (that is, the standard way), or "zai nar" (which is with the Beijing accent). We tried asking how they said it on the CCTV news, but somehow the question didn't register. But the strange thing was, Hill, whose accent in Chinese I found harder to understand than Todd's, said "nar", or "na.li", while Todd was distinctly saying "lar" and "la.li". Moreover, they didn't seem to notice that they were saying what I perceived to be completely different words. Pronunciation differs in ways I have no way of understanding -- I'll ask someone to say the same word twice, as close to identically as they can, and there are huge differences to my ear. Anyway, if I ever make anything of it, I'll write about it.
At the end of the week, we had our day of teaching practice. Everyone in the class prepared a lesson in the format we had been learning. I taught in Chinese. Mine class went alright, certainly not one of the worst, but I was nervous and kept forgetting things. Still, I felt fine afterwards -- the ice was broken. I would be calmer next time. Some of them were just god-awful, although I will reserve my judgments on people for when I am sure I will never see them again. Jett's was great (he did French, his first language (although there is no discernible accent in his English)), and he was very composed. Sumit's was incredibly energetic and loud and fun; he is an engineer, but also an engineering trainer, so he's used to addressing audiences of four hundred. He didn't stick to the paradigm, but I still learned the stuff. In any case, he'll be a great teacher, if he ever gets to do it. A couple other people did a very good job, and a few people just didn't get it or didn't care.
On Friday night, ten of us decided to go check out an Indian place Sumit had been to a few times (he was in Zhuhai frequently for business, so he knew his way around a bit). We went back to our building after class; I took a shower and changed. Then, we met in front of the Min Run supermarket nearby.
I had counted on there being problems getting there, but I was mostly expecting the taxi drivers to not know the restaurant. I was not expecting to not be able to find a taxi. We stood there on the corner, a group of ten foreigners, watching full taxi after full taxi tear through the crazy rush-hour traffic. Finally, we got two to stop. Neither of them knew where it was. It also became clear that the taxi drivers would not allow us to go five to a taxi as we had a few nights earlier. We stood for a while longer. Taxi drivers we tried to hail literally swerved away and accelerated. I was deeply offended.
Eventually, we decided realized that traveling in an orderly convoy was a pipe dream, and so we broke into groups. The de facto leaders were Ambuj, who had the business card, Jett, who had some experience getting around foreign places, and myself, because I spoke the best Chinese. I was nervous to be responsible for getting these people to dinner, but it was only fair I be away from Ambuj and Jett. Jett's group disappeared quickly (I erroneously assumed they had caught a taxi right away). My group tried several locations around the intersection, and managed to hail one cab, but the driver didn't know the place. Finally, I ran back to Ambuj and explained the new plan. He would stay with us until we got a cab, show the driver the business card, then go back and lead his own group off. We repositioned on a side road, and blessedly found a cab. He gave us a tolerable flat rate to get there, and off we went.
It turned out that Jett and I had actually walked past the restaurant on our stroll the previous Sunday. It also turned out that we were the first people to arrive. Sumit (who had come from his hotel) was sitting alone at the head of a long table, eating some spiced bread chips. I was surprised not to see Jett's group there, as we had lost contact with them almost a half an hour before hand. Sumit explained that there was a hotel across town which sounded nearly identical in Chinese to the name of the restaurant, and that taxis were riskier than the bus because they often misheard. So I assumed that's what had happened to group one. As it turned out, they had gone further up the street to catch a taxi, and had not been able to for quite some time. They showed up about fifteen minutes after we got there. Ambuj's group came ten more minutes after that.
So reunited, and desperate for some food, we began the ritualistic drawing-out of the Indian meal. Sumit perused the menu and discussed the food for about twenty minutes, then ordered a few dishes in Hindi. Hindi is very interesting in that great swaths of the lexicon have been replaced with English. There is rarely a Hindi sentence which does contain an English word. I spent most of the meal talking to Robyn, whom I had never really talked to. She was extremely interesting, and we were of a like mind about many things. She had graduated from collge with a degree in creative writing, and she wanted to write for a living. But after a year of feeling stifled as a waitress in Texas, she set out to see the world a bit.
After dinner, one contingent of people went home, while the rest of us hopped a taxi to Walking Bar Street. Jett wanted to show Sumit our little place. I did not want to drink that night, so I didn't. Jett and I had an impassioned conversation about American history. Eventually, Sumit headed home. I felt responsible for getting Jett and Michael home, and they were kind to let a young'un like me tag along with them, so I decided to stay.
The town was pretty much dead. We stopped in a few other bars and clubs between Walking Bar Street and Bar Street but didn't see anything to our liking. Then, on the regular Bar Street, we found a dance club with some people in it. There was great atmosphere, and good, pounding techno. I really got into the dancing for a while, even though we were practically the only ones. At around 2:00 AM, the club was winding down to close, and so we followed some ex-pats whom Jett was speaking French to to another club not far away. This one I was much livelier, and had many more people, but I was beginning to flag. The only difference, I realized, between a club and a school dance was that fewer people were drunk at the school dance. Sober, it was all the same. Fortunately for me, Michael had had about enough, too (although not before dancing on a lighted podium for about ten minutes). We headed home, leaving Jett with a transcribed copy of the directions back.
I slept in late the next morning. Then, I worked on this journal until I could no longer bear the hunger, and went out. There is a decent bakery nearby, and I found something that passed as a muffin, with, as I later learned, the occasional tooth-breakingly crunchy Flake O' Titanium. Then, I went to change money at the bank. There was a long line when I arrived, as I knew there would be, so I took a number and sat down.
This was one of the most decent service experiences of my life, as well as a wonderful time for me to practice observing life in China. There was a take-a-number machine by the door. For some reason, there were a bunch of the little number tickets on a tray on top of the machine, too. I eventually realized that it was so people giving up on the wait could hand transfer their lower number to newcomers. Still, however, there were unclaimed numbers, and the servicepeople behind the bank counter would wait about thirty seconds before going to the next one. The girl sitting next to me, sensing her opportunity, stood up and went to the window after it was obvious the number currently up was unclaimed. She stood up, handed her ticket to me, and went to the window. I looked at the ticket -- this girl had just knocked half an hour off my wait. As I waited, I looked around. What I really wanted to know was whether I could eat my muffin. I looked for other people eating -- nothing. I looked for food refuse or wrappers on the floor. Nothing. There was a Chinese policeman at a desk near the door, so I decided not to take my chances. I amused myself by reading what I could off of the interest-rates board.
Finally, I did get to the window. (Of course, as I walked up, a little girl eating a dumpling wandered by). The lady behind the counter spoke English. I handed her my American money, and she asked for my passport. I had forgotten it. With a sigh, I collected my money, and my original service number, and sprinted back to my building. Somehow, I wasn't collecting stares at all, a far cry from my first day in Zhuhai.
I got back to my room and couldn't wait any longer; I ate the muffin. Then I grabbed my passport and sprinted back, to make up for the time I spent eating the muffin. I would feel like a fool to miss my number.
I walked in, grateful to see that I hadn't been called yet. But a woman behind the counter called me right up to the window! They changed my money on the spot, at a fantastic exchange rate. I walked out happy.
Later that night, I was supposed to meet Jett and a few GLV students for dinner. I was sitting on my bed working, once again, on this blog, when I was overcome with tiredness. I glanced at my watch, and somehow '4:50 PM' registered as '4:00 PM' in my brain, and I set an alarm for an hour and ten minutes, supposedly giving me 50 minutes to get ready before our 6:00 rendezvous. I woke up at 6:00 to the alarm, freaked out, threw some clothes on, and ran down to Jett's room. They had, of course, just left. So I walked along the street, looking for a place to eat, and keeping an eye out for Jett and Company. I got to the end of the strip, and it was beginning to rain, so I ducked into the GLV. It was a ghost town. The TEFL room was even locked, so I couldn't watch the video of my teaching. Dinner had just ended, I learned, so I went back out and grabbed some noodles at the Uighur noodle place. Then, I went back, wrote Jett a note and left it with his roomies, and returned to write. I didn't expect Jett to actually come back to the apartment before going out that night, but at 8:00 he showed up at my door. We decided to go watch X-Men 3, which had just come out the day before in China. It was cheap, and I really enjoyed the movie, although I don't think I've ever not enjoyed a movie when I'm starved of American culture. I was extremely happy that they put the Juggernaut in the movie -- a little bit of online culture permeating big entertainment. The theater was good, too; there was good sound, and a big screen. People were talking the whole time, but it truly did not bother me (yet another example of my becoming acclimated to the incessant noise here). And the walk-through-walls girl was cute. Just throwing that out there.
After the movie, we walked uptown a bit; on the night at the bad Western restaurant, it looked like there might be a nightlfe there, but really it was just dead. Dead, with a lot of litter. So we walked back; round trip it was probably about an hour. It felt good to walk, especially when most of my days are spent sitting. In the Culture Plaza, where the GLV is located, there is a little passageway cutting through the middle of one of the buildings. We were feeling a bit hungry, so we decided to stop at a bar we had seen on a previous expedition. They didn't have food at that hour, but there was inexpensive beer on tap, so we each got a glass and sat down and just talked for a few hours. It was nice, and I didn't have to worry about giving the taxi driver directions back, because, obviously, there was no taxi. We just walked.
Which finally brings me to this morning. I woke up late, and wrote until once again I couldn't bear the hunger. It was perhaps 1:00, so I went to the GLV for lunch. Jett was there, and afterwards, we went back to the little bar in the culture plaza. He had coffee (they have real coffee there, something hard to come by in China), and I had the pearl milk tea I'd been craving since I had it in Taiwan two years ago. We took a little detour to check out a store called "The Killer Game Club," which turned out to be a role-playing game popular in China. People would sit in groups of twelve or so in special rooms at a 'V'-shaped table, and take on a persona, led by a Dungeon Master (or the equivalent) who sat at the mouth of the 'V'.
I went back to my room, and wrote and slept intermittently. I started feeling kind of dizzy and tired this afternoon, so I hope I'm not getting sick. Time will tell, I guess. It's hard to come by good fruit or dairy here, so maybe it's related to that.
And that just about wraps up my first week in China. I don't have an easy way of getting this blog online, so expect long, occasional posts such as this one. I miss you all terribly, but life is pretty good here, and the year will be over before any of us knows it. I've taken a few dozen pictures, but I don't have time to put them all up right now. So, until next time. . .
One of the flower-selling boys.
Playing cahds at deh street bah. Nick in the background, Jett in the foreground.
More cards. We were playing "President" with no giving or taking cards, among other sucky rules.
Jett and myself.
Our bar girl, brandishing a giant spoon. Note the distinctive pink neon underlighting.
Bar girl again. Her name is Jing Yi.
'The Local'. Our little bar, with a view down Walking Bar Street.
Walking Bar Street, still a-bustle at 1 AM.
Three or four bar girls somehow move around eachother in that tiny space.
Walking Bar Street; the sidewalk.
The internet cafe nextdoor.
Inside Club Tomorrow. The man in red is the bartender; he's just finished pouring vodka all over the countertop, and now he's lighting it on fire.
The Cabana, on regular ol' Bar Street.
Lights in the trees on Bar Street. I wish I had a picture of the neon-underlit sidewalks. . . Anyway, I hope you get the idea -- it's a colorful place.
Boys versus girls at the huoguo restaurant. Clockwise from the left: Robyn, Marie, Mandi, Diana, Nick, Michael, Jett. This is our little dinner club; we go somewhere new almost every night. It rocks.
At McMinarete's. Top to bottom: Jet, Michael. Yeah, sorry it's sideways.
McMinarete's. From the left: Nick, Diana, Mandi.
A rather haggard me on the ferry to Zhuhai.
