Langmusi, iPhone monks and the long journey back

There are 3 hours till our 20-hour train back to Beijing departures. We’re in Langzhou and Mikkel is fast asleep, so I figured I’d just internet the morning away since there’s not much to do here. Here’s the blog from the 7 hour bus ride from Langmusi to here:

22/7

That was one compressed Langmusi trip, but definitely worth it, We had to head back after only one day because we have to catch a train in Langzhou the 23th and the busses here in southern Gansu are a bit… Chinese. Stop everywhere to pick up people and a little girl just toiletted in the trash can. The scenery is drop dead gorgeous, though: Impressive red mountains, lakes and a beautiful mosque every kilometer. Feels like being in the Middle East all of a sudden.

We had decided to go to Langmusi yesterday, so while haven’t felt that I really experienced the monastery in Xiàhé, I got up at 5.45 to observe the morning prayers. The village was already starting its buzz, but still had the quiet holiness of early morning. I didn’t see the thick stream of Chinese tourists anywhere, so I thought I was too early, but turned out I was just in time. The monks were sitting in rows in lotus position, moving back and forth chanting partly in throat singing. It was such a strong experience; I never tried anything like it. It is obviously made for trance, and even though I’m not a Buddhist, I still felt the spirituality very strongly and got almost mesmerized. At around 7.00 all the Chinese tourists showed up in their corny hiking gear, monstrous cameras and no respect at all, walking the wrong direction in the monastery, talking in their cellphones, taking pictures inside and of local people in their obviously sacred moment. It was about time catching the bus as well, so I hurried back, woke Mikkel and the French-Vietnamese woman up and we only just made it.

When we arrived in Langmusi it was pouring down and the whole village was made of thick, brown mud. We took the first available hostel, but later found out that there was a whole street with youth hostels and cafés. Well, we know that for next time! Would definitely be worth it for a longer stay since the night atmosphere seemed a lot livelier than in Xiahe. We have to go back sometime for the horse trek anyway which we didn’t make.

What we did had time to see was the TWO Tibetan monasteries there. The village is right upon the boarder of Gansu and Sichuan with just the river dividing it, so it was even more a mix of everything and everyone, still mainly the Tibetan, Hui (Muslim) and Han (“normal” Chinese) people.  The Gansu monastery was a lot under construction, so we mainly looked at it from the outside and got our picture taken by Chinese people. If these ridiculously big cameras are supposed to be some sort of phallus enlarger I definitely feel assaulted by now. Since there wasn’t much to see, we strolled/hiked around in the fantastic green hills filled with sheep and nomads. We walked next to an old man and since it rained he got our umbrella. Really nice guy.

Then we walked to the Sichuan monastery which was really crowded with monks! And under construction, think the whole village was. The monks were working hard as well, repairing roofs, digging out the river, playing with their iPhones… It’s funny to see how at least the young monks/apprentices are just like other young people, not particularly holier. I think a lot of them are monks because their family thought it would be a good idea. Or I heard it’s kind of free high school, so a lot of young people choose it because of that. They’re laughing, joking, sleeping during the prayers – which still was awesome! After having been joking around with them, laughing at the French-Vietnamese woman’s ancient cellphone, we sat in the temple during their chanting (or perhaps chanting practice since they weren’t completely confident in it) and they (except from the sleeping guy) completely switched to being serious, moving back and forth with their eyes closed. They had around 5-6 different “songs” they switched between and there were special hand gestures, ringing with bells and waving incense around according to the songs.

Behind the Sichuan monastery was a gorge we just as might could check out. A lot of eagles again! And a lot of monks practicing playing these giant horns that reached the ground. It sounded a bit like farting and looked like it acquired a lot of concentration. They were joking around still, making fun of each other when they couldn’t get the proper sound, but it was still kind of magical in the gorge and all. It was a bit tricky getting through the gorge though. You had to cross the river several times by jumping stones in the water. Not my specialty! At one place we had 5 monks and a Chinese tourist family guiding/cheering for us and they lent me an umbrella for support. It was a bit more difficult on the return though since they had gone and there was more water in the river. The French-Vietnamese took her shoes off, threw them to the other side – and accidentally threw one in the water. Oops. I tried to walk through the bushes instead with no luck, so I went back and starred at the river again. It didn’t make it any smaller. I took my shoes of as well and also threw one of my shoes in the water. I did make it to the other side though.

We’re saying goodbye to tsampa, yak meat, butter tea and all the beautiful people now and started our long journey home. 7 hours of bus, 20 hours of train, 9 hours of flight. There should be plenty of time to adjust to the thought, but it still feels weird. I’m not sure if I can adapt to Danish life again. Food and transportation are gonna be ridiculously expensive and I have to pick up proper manners again. Sigh.

(We’ve been without internet for a few days, pics will come later)

20/7/2012

We’re back on the backpacker’s life again. Right now I’m sitting in the possibly worst hostel I’ve ever stayed at. When we asked for the dorm beds we reserved, they started out by saying they didn’t do dorms. Well… They have no common room, kind of expensive, 20RMB for wifi (which doesn’t work) which is usually for free, 20RMB for bikes they didn’t want to find for us and was broken which they wanted us to pay for to fix. When that’s said, Xiàhé and the surrounding areas are amazing.

After finishing at the project, we have one week to travel in. We really wanted to go to Tibet (cliché alert), but apparently you have to be at least 5 people from your own nationality going and leaving at the same time. Impossible with such a short notice, so now we’re in one out of two autonomous Tibetan counties in China, Xiàhé, in Gansu province. The village is roughly split up in three, a Han part (the vast majority of Chinese), Hui part (muslim minority) and a Tibetan part. The Tibetan part is dominated by a large monastery, Labrang, with beautiful white and golden stupas and flat roofed brown houses for the monks. Surrounding it all are mountains with eagles soaring surprisingly close to people. I’ve never been that close to a wild predator! And the whole area is so up high that not even clouds, long sleeves, hats and sunscreen can keep us whiteys from turning lobster.

Lobster or not, we had to explore this place. After walking up the hills enjoying the view, we met a Tibetan guy (who studied Tibetan at the University where the guy I was sitting next to in the bus was a teacher at) who followed us through the inner Kora around the monastery, clockwise of course, spinning all the prayer wheels which require a surprising amount of effort. Again, Asian old people are so much more hardcore than back home, observing all these old ladies long-falling (or whatever this lying down, getting up, lying down thing is called) the whole 3 km again and again. The outer Kora which was at the top of the hills around the village passing prayer flags and more eagles.

In spite of the not so socially equipped hostel, we’ve manage to hang out mostly with a Vietnamese/French woman and a Chinese guy (in our bus and dorm), an Israelian girl and Spanish guy (who met each other travelling) and a couple of Czech and Dutch guys who’s been hitchhiking around and sleeping under the stars (and randomly met as well).

Yesterday the four of us tried to bike to the closest grasslands, Sangke, but had to go back and have lunch with some monks. Freshly made Tsampa (small balls of yakbutter, yakcheese and barleyflour), Tibetan Baosi (steamed, stuffed buns) and Tibetan bread (which is sooo good). We tried to go for the grasslands after, but my tire went flat and had to drag it home while the others went – in spite of a very friendly attempt to fix it by the local people!

Today we went to the even further grasslands Ganjia. I’m not sure that our tour was as authentic as the tour the other guys at the hostel were talking about, but it was something! First of all, the landscape of the area is incredibly beautiful with grass coated hills with prayer flags on top and scattered nomad tents. To have such a big home is unbelievable. We then went to a 2000 year old village, then down into a holy cave (I and the Chinese guy chickened out on the halfway. I’m talking seriously narrow, steep and slippery here, which our guiding monk had no problems with), to another old monastery where women apparently were prohibited and then to a place for skyburials*. I’m not sure if the pieces of skull, hair, flesh and bone were really human, but included with the driver almost vomiting, it made up a better scene than any museum could have shown. Tomorrow we will hopefully go to Langmusi, another Tibetan village.

The Tibetan people are really beautiful: Their faces, their clothing – especially the scarlet monk outfit – and their monasteries. I must admit that I prefer the language to the Han Chinese as well, while it sounds more… Indian/Middle Eastern. Their style is really awesome and would make any hipster go jealous. The men wear big, round sunglasses, leatherjackets, earrings and Stetson hats while the women have colourful shirts, skirts, two long braids joined at the end and Stetsons as well. They remind me a bit of the native South Americans’ aesthetics, but in general it’s funny how many similarities there are to find between the native South America and more ancient/old school China.

(*In the mountains it’s often impossible to bury the dead, so they cut up the body and feed it to the birds)

Goodbye CMC!

(We haven’t had internet for a few days, pics will come later)

17/7/2012

Sitting here in the airport on our way to Gansu province, our last travelling before going back to Denmark on the 25^th. These days have been hectic: a lot of packing, last goodbyes (except that it’s not goodbye, but “see you”) and struggling to get our 4.200 kuai* deposit back. The last thing is probably not happening since the agent claims never to have said or written anything and the police says that we have to sue them. We might have a chance if they find a new tenant to pay a deposit before we leave, but even then it’s not sure. The good thing is that our roomies and landlord are in a pickle as well. They can’t pay the rent by themselves, so this time they’re finally on our side!

One of Mikkel’s friends who is going to Denmark for studying is helping us a lot with both deposit and accommodation (at her friends’). I guess she is helping us partly because we will be useful when she comes to Denmark, but it is kinda how everything works here. “I scratch your back, you scratch mine”. In the beginning I really hated thinking like this “what do I get in return/what do I have to do in return”, but actually it’s very frank in a way and it doesn’t feel bad to ask people for favors since you know that it’s understood that you will owe them a favor then.

Well! Yesterday, in the middle of panic-pack-attack we decided to go swimming with a couple of friends in Tuanjiehu Park. We live so close and have never been there! And it was very nice. Except that it was a bit expensive and rich-people’ish. There was a lot of Chinese with tattoos! Really nice Chinese style ones, but it’s also the hip, rich, young elite, so it probably doesn’t represent the majority. Also it was very old school with all those men smoking in their speedos.

And today was the last day and I still can’t realize. I had something stuck in my eyes a few times I must admit, but except of the awesome ECD leader I was the only one. Strange. Either it’s not okay to cry in public, they are sure we’re going to meet again or they aren’t that bothered that we’re leaving. I’m going for one of the two first explanations; at least that’s what I want to believe. We got a “We will miss you” at least! Aww.

(*Should probably have explained that the Chinese currency is called RenMinBi (=people’s money) and that the official way of saying 4,5 RMB is 4 yuan and 5 jiao while the non-formal way is 4 kuai and 5 mao.)

Heiqiao Community Center

Yesterday I went to another CMC community center in Heiqiao, not that far from Dongba where we work. Even though I love our center and the atmosphere there almost is folk high school’ish because of the LVS living there, Heiqiao is really nice. Quite in fact!

They are doing summer camp courses and the ECD leader’s roomie (who works in Heiqiao) asked me to help doing the music because they are in desperate need of volunteers. They must be, ’cause apparently the few chords I know on guitar was sufficient to qualify me for the job. It was about 20 minutes on bike from the other center and I hadn’t planned anything on my day off, so whyyy not.

Heiqiao is built of containers, but the classrooms are bright and well equipped and I didn’t have to do anything, but sit and smile and play “Old McDonald” whenever I was queued. They had cute kittens playing around in the office and the atmosphere was great. Wished we had known about it earlier! But no, I’m definitely going home now. I think. Well, at least the tickets says arrival in Copenhagen the 25th of July, 16:15. But I might come back…

Anyway, even though the sky might appear blue to some people, thunderclouds multiplied quickly when we were off, making us bike fast through the slow, fat raindrops that darkened the dusty ground around us. We biked so fast that the chain of my bike got jammed and we had to stand in pouring rain for 15 minutes trying to fix it alone in the middle of nowhere except from all of the cars passing by not stopping to help us. With some frustrated shouting and hitting it with sticks it finally got loose and we joyfully biked home singing “Old McDonald” from the top of our lungs accompanied by the sound of thunder and occational Swedish cursing (it seemed more appropiate at that time) whenever the cars went full on through the 20 cm deep pools on the road making us – if possible – even more dirty and soaked.

We made it home safe and refreshed, had a shower and I borrowed some dry clothes and got a pair of one-time-use paper panties. There’s a first time for everything! As for my first Danish cooking (well, first cooking at all!) in China. I made a decent attempt to create frikadeller and boiled potatoes with garlic butter. I guess I failed a bit (of course because of the wrong ingredients and horrible substitute butter, not lack of skills), but the smell was enough to bring forth a small tear in the corner of my eye, longing for the Danish fjords. Could have been the spring onions or the disappointment of actually understanding “bu xihuan” which I wasn’t supposed to, but the first option sounds nicer anyhow.

Last day with LVS before going to Gansu province  hopefully experiencing a bit of the Tibetan atmosphere is the 17th of July. I guess it’s good to have a bit of travelling before going home to make the transition easier, but I can already feel lump in my throat when thinking about leaving. Now it’s for real, it’s actually happening in less than a week. Especially when the LVS students ask

“What will you do when you go back Denmark?”

“I will start studying at the university.”

“But you can study in China!”

“I know, but it’s more complicated, maybe I can come for one semester, I’m not sure…”

“Oh… I hope you come back China. I will miss you.”

The Wall

My sister and her friend are in Beijing after two months of travelling China, so we decided to go to the wall (the big one) together this Sunday.

First in the morning I was asked to give my students a test and give them grades. I decided to do a 2-5 minutes oral test with basic questions concerning their curriculum. But it’s really difficult with the grades, wish I could just write comments to them all.

1. Because they only had one lesson pr. week in 4 months and are coming f.rom very different levels and backgrounds

2. I don’t know if to judge them by the test alone, their perfomance in generel, their ability to conversate easily or by their grammar and pronounciation. And I have no training or guidelines in this.

3. It’s sorta my friends now or at least our relation is more friendly than teacher-student. This means a lot to some of them and I can’t just give them all good grades, that would be an insult to the ones who study hard. And I’m afraid that even though the ones I’ve been talking the most with ARE good in English (they talk a lot with me = practice), it still seems like I’m favourizing them because I know them more personally. Then again, they should know by now that it’s crucial to take responsibility for their own learning, especially in China.

WELL, enough about that, now the WALL. Mikkel and I hurried from Dong Ba home to pack a bit of food, water and extra clothes and then hurried to Dongzhimen bus station to meet the others. We had decided to find the least crowded part of the wall and sleep close by. Huong Hua Cheng seemed to be a good choice since it’s officially closed, so we found a bus (4RMB) and went. We had to change in a village and of course everybody wanted to scam us “there is no bus, mei you” , of course, but luckily we had a guardian grandma who was shaking her head at all the minibuses if the price was too high in her opinion. Tough lady, we didn’t even have to haggle, they could tell she was on our side!

Finally, 60RMB later we arrived in Huong Hua Cheng in the afternoon, just in the middle of the wall (it was cut on the middle). We found a guesthouse (100RMB a room), put our stuff and started walking south on the wall (2RMB). It looked something like this:

If it looks steep, it’s because it was.

We went back to have dinner at the guesthouse since the big trip was gonna be next day and went to bed at 9 pm. In the morning when the alarm rang at 4.45 it was raining cats and dogs though, so we cleverly decided to sleep a little longer since there wasn’t going to be much sunrise to see anyway. At 7 we got up, ate our breakfast and starred longingly at the wall, hatefully at the heavy rain. It stopped! And started again. It stopped again! For good! But no, not really. My sister and her friend wanted to go home and come back another day, but that wasn’t an option for Mikkel and me. (btw, try and imagine that picture up there with a small river on it…)

We convinced the others to give it a shot AND IT ACTUALLY STOPPED! We blame it on Bamses Regnsang, a magic children’s song that causes rain to stop. Man, that was some serious wall CLIMBING.

Good I don’t have any pictures of myself on that part.

But we had the wall all to ourselves and it was so beautiful, BIG and old. My sister and her friend  – the grannies as they called themselves – had almost only brought food/snacks and and a lot of it, so I guess we are the people that ate the most food on such a short trip on the wall.

We had to PAY 20RMB each to get OUT of the wall! Either that, going back the whole way or being eating by the gatekeepers vicious dogs, so guess which option we chose. We made it back safely and payed less than 100RMB pr. person for a trip when guided cost 2.000RMB…

And now I have to run ’cause I agreed to work on my day off, teaching music (I only know a couple of chords on guitar) to a Chinese class (the other teacher doesn’t speak much English) and afterwards cook Danish food (me and cooking is buhao, not existing, especially not with Chinese ingredients + no oven). Very interesting.

Oh, and btw, we’re probably going to one of the Tibetan areas in China (not Tibet, too difficult) next week, and we’ll probably be in Copenhagen the 25/7. More information on that the following days.

LVS films!

I feel proud as a mother hen watching her chickens taking their first steps! Or at least how I would imagine it feeling. The LVS teenagers has made films over two periods and we finally went and saw all of them at two exhibitions this weekend!

The first was in 798 art district as project between young Chinese and Australian people. I was really impressed, it was very moving, inspiring and visually beautiful. In this one, only two of the students was filmed: The student I visited talked about this bracelet they were given that they were to place on one arm when they were sad and the other when they were happy to become more aware of their feelings. The other one who is really fund of drawing told a story about a very famous painter who was very poor before he became famous.

The other was at Hua Dan, which is a theater organization, where we first did a lot of random games in Chinese and then watched the films from several migrant schools. They were suprisingly good as well! Hope that didn’t sound too suprised. These weren’t really with English subs though, but most of the other school’s films were about friendship and our student’s films were about story telling, either a true or a made up one. One of them had made a story up how she was getting involved with the mafia – really creative, I must say, usually she’s always very cute and all.

Hope it will inspire some of them about what to do with their life. A lot of the students have low self esteem and are in generel very negative about life and their future. But they’re awesome, they just don’t know it.

A little something about FOOD

While we’re waiting a week to get our visa extension (yes, we are now the proud holders of Chinese bank accounts), I want to talk a bit about food. I’m working on a big one about the migrants, but it’s too much, might have to chop it up in bits.

So – food in China. First of all, I love Chinese food. There seems to be an infinite amount of different cuisines and even the Chinese can disagree about the details of them. You could probably live all your life and never eat the same dish twice, since there are even a thousand variations of different dishes. There’s a lot of lovely, lovely spicy food (although Chinese food is never as spicy as e.g. Indian or Middle Eastern) from Sichuan – should go there some time – a lot of heavy soups from the north, rice noodles in the south. I don’t have time or knowledge to specify it more than that it is certainly a lot more impressive, entertaining and delicious than western Chinese food. Well, and they have a lot of dishes of the famine cuisine, which sounds much more smart and catchy than it is. Very little meat (only 20 years ago they had food tickets for meat) and a lot of it is intestines, chicken feet, brain and other gooey stuff. But it’s fairly avoidable. Ahem, but what I do know about Chinese food in general though is that you never go wrong with the 3 main ingredients:

–          Beans

–          Rice

–          Oil

And plenty of it. Firstly, you can get EVERYTHING with beans here. Of course a lot of dishes, but also bean candy, bean cookies, bean ice cream, bean snacks… It can be a real challenge to actually avoid it. The good thing about that though is that you sorta get used to it. I even started craving the bean-filled cakes. Maybe because it’s the closest I’ll get to romkugler for now.

Rice, because it’s true what they say about China; they do eat a lot of it. Most likely with every dish, especially if you go out as a group, sitting at one of those big, round tables with a spinning glass plate in the middle filled with shared dishes. The ordering is most likely “FUWU YUAN!!! Nigganigga… Zhege, zhege, zhege… Nigga… (yi, er, san, si…) LIU MIFAN!” Try google translate and let me know if the result is funny. But yeah, same story, rice snacks, rice candy etc.

Oil. Because it is probably some of the oiliest food you can get hold of, especially in Beijing they say. To the extent that we often consider Ken De Qi (KFC) or Mai Don Lau (McD) as the healthy alternative. Or just a variation to the rice, noodles, rice, rice, noodles, dumplings and rice. There are two things that furthermore justifies the act of going there (I am one of those who would avoid those places much as possible). It’s so much cheaper than home (still expensive in China) and there’s always drama there. ALWAYS. Like the other day where we went to Bruce Lee – or whatever the Chinese fast food chain with his face on is called: Girl threw her tray up in the air, crossed her arms and starred madly at her male companion. He picked some of the stuff up, shaking his head. Or else it’s a girl crying while a guy is trying to tell her something. Or a young couple trying to examine each other’s uvulae. With their tongues that is. It can never go wrong with a fast food restaurant.

And it’s funny about the oily food, ‘cause in general they’re all quite concerned about health. Everybody’s always talking about how it’s not healthy to smoke, to eat cold things in the morning, to go to bed late, drink coffee (try and guess which ones we’re guilty of) how you SHOULD drink this and this tea, drink soymilk if you’re a girl, eat more vegetables and so on. A waiter refused to serve beer to this Italian guy because his hand was broken and would heal slower then. And then you got one of the most polluted cities in the world, oily food and some of the most far out food scandals I’ve heard. Children dying from bad milk, recycled oil used on most restaurants (they pull it up from the SEWERS and refine it or make it out of spoiled meat), serve cat meat instead of lamb (to fix the flavor, the meat is soaked in sheep urine)… I’ll spare you from the rest, it’s better not to think about. But yeah, I guess it adds up the whole thing.

Even though it’s cheap, cheap, cheap to buy food here (of course you can spend 20 € on lunch if you want to, but mostly you can get away with 1-2 € – for cooked food) the rise in price (haw haw) from the farmer to the consumer is apparently massive. Somebody told me that a kilo of cabbage will cost 0,4 RMB if you buy it from the farmer. That’s like… 0,05 €. But because the different cities and provinces have different laws and regulations, the taxes push the price up to maybe 4 RMB. Still not that much, but again if you look at the rise in price and people’s income, a normal salary is around 2.000 RMB/month. There’s a massive inflation in China and if people ever said that stuff here is cheap… Well, maybe a couple of years ago. The prices of food and transportation (0,4 RMB for a bus ticket) is kept somewhat under control (e.g. is gasoline here of the cheap and really nasty highly polluting kind), but everything else, especially imported “luxury” goods, are ridiculously expensive compared to the salary.

Ni chi le ma?

Life-changing Dragon Boat Festival + IKEA

Uff, so this is my 4th attempt this week of writing a post – it’s gonna be long, but I’m gonna make it!! The city is really polluted today even though the insane raining yesterday should have cleaned it a bit. It’s eyesburning-coughing-can’t-see-the-nearest-buildings bad.

This (extended) weekend is Dragon Boat Festival, one of many Chinese holidays. We talked a lot about going somewhere new and exciting; Tsingtao, the small villages around Beijing, Shanghai… But as we didn’t plan it beforehand and some friends suddenly were unreachable, it didn’t happen.

What DID happen though, was that I was invited home to one of my students. I didn’t know whether to go at first, if it was inappropiate, among other reasons because we earlier rejected an invitation from another student because we had other plans. But I decided to go. I knew he was living with his mother in Beijing, so I figured I could go the on a quick visit. When I met him at the bus stop though, he told me the trip was 2-3 hours. Auch, should definitely have brought a gift.

But the bus ride was nice, it’s always a good opportunity to have a look at the city. I mean, there’s a lot of city to look at. The building started to get lower and lower until they were only a couple of floors tall and then we arrived. Dao le. The first thought that hit me was “whoa, this is real China”. We’ve been travelling around in China in the beginning of our stay and this looked a lot like the rest of China. Central Beijing is of course still Chinese in that big-anonymous-concrete-building way or big-and-super-flashy-but-shitty-quality. Did I say a bad word? Sorry. But I you imagined that everything was made of wood and colours instead of plastic and grey, this would actually look like the cultural China as you would imagine it with small shops and maze like structure. The atmosphere was relaxed, people sitting on the street playing majong, washing their hair, smoking, doing nothing. Nobody were rushing. Of course everything was falling apart, there was garbage around, possibly a bit smelly, but that is only avoid if you go to the super rich and/or expat areas in Beijing and even there it would be so in the sideways.

He was living in a sort of hutong’ish house. He had warned me that his home was small, and I’ve assured him that it doesn’t matter with the house, but with the people. But it was small. You would enter a kind of outdoor narrow hallway that led past a number of tiny rooms, all occupied by a family. In my student’s mother’s room there was a bed. The room was maybe 5 sqm, but it felt like home. Especially because of the hallway that made it feel safe and hutong’y (a hutong is an oldschool Chinese style of building a home). His “aunt” and “brothers” (they call close friends of the family and cousins aunts/brothers/and so on) were living in one of the other rooms. My student was so happy to be home and that I visited him and his whole family came and asked me questions through my student. Thank god for his dictionary. They asked me a lot about food in Denmark (if we had this and that, e.g. the cooked peanuts & peas we were snacking) and were very fascinated that my pants were 20 years old. In China things last a couple of months that’s the price of the cheap goods. And his mother told me I have fat calves. Then they all wanted to have a picture with me and we had an amazing lunch. And of course zongzi since it’s Dragon Boat Festival. Small packets of glutinous rice wrapped in leaves. Yum. And watermelon. Because. Always watermelon. I was almost bursting with food and they kept asking me to eat more. I said I had to be going home, but they all suggested that I should stay the night over. ‘Cause everybody knew I didn’t have to work the next day, it’s the holidays! But I (hopefully) politely declined, and went home filled with impressions.

All of the people in that area are migrants and work at clothing factories. They have maybe one day off every month and get paid (as you might have guessed) close to nothing. A normal monthly salary can be around 2.000 RMB or 10 RMB pr. hour and if you take to account that you have to support your family, that education and hospitals cost a fortune and that prices in Beijing are ridiculously high considered people’s salaries, it’s nothing. For example, Mikkel’s and my room are 2.100 RMB/month. We live in a bit expensive area, but it gives an idea.

My student is probably one of the kindest people I’ve ever met, and I’ve never seen that much wisdom and determination in a 19 year-old. Some of the things he said, especially with his enthusiasm, in the context and the language barrier, was some of the most inspiring things I’ve heard. How he’s studying that hard to get a good job, to be rich in order to help all the poor people in his community and bring his family back together. How a lot of Chinese really hate Japanese (they really do, WWII, the Nanking massacre), but he thinks it happened a long time ago and that you should be friendly to all people. And if was a good game on his computer? “No, I don’t like it. I think life is a good game.”

To change the setting completely, we visited IKEA yesterday. Mikkel has a Chinese friend who is going to study in Denmark this summer, so we are helping her a bit with the practical things. We were mainly going to IKEA to see if she should buy stuff here in China and bring it. Well, I went for the meatballs. I felt like a little child, jumping around on the backseat yelling “ARE WE THERE YET??” and ten minutes after we arrived. So surreal. You know all IKEA’s look EXACTLY the same inside, which confused my inner compass a whole lot. Like “Why am I in Sweden?” and “Why are there so many asians in IKEA today?”. Turns out that prices are exactly the same, so we spent most of the time eating meatballs with mashed potatoes and brown gravy and drinking REAL coffee!! And I really had to restrain myself from buying a whole lot of marinated herrings, snaps, meatballs, knækbrød, jam and cookies. Well, we bought a little snaps and cookies… Am gonna eat these things till I drop when I get home.

Afterwards we got back to our friend’s home where we drank some Swedish pear cider and ate Chinese “cookies” and grapes. And got a whole big box of zongzi. I love her mom. And my student’s mom. I think I just love moms. I miss my mommyyyy! Ahem. And then we walked through the deluge/storm/mayhem back home.

DUANWU JIE KUAILE!!

Two English classes + Sad Dino’s

There’s been two English classes from the beginning: the “high” and “low” level. Which mostly means the ones who know basic basics and the ones who don’t. I teach the “high” level which before only consisted of 8 students, but one of the students from the other class has been working so hard and focused that his English is almost better than my student’s by now, so he’s now in my class. Very impressive. Especially because he’s got really clear ambitions in opposite to most of the other guys.

They are supposedly all junior high drop outs and seems that most of them are completely empty of ideas for their future and optimism about their skills. Last class we talked about “dreams”. Or I talked. Most of them didn’t want to discuss it. My “new” student on the other hand told me that his dream is to become a boss, businessman or some other high positioned, didn’t seem to matter that much with the details. Maybe in the clothing industry since he used to sew clothes. He doesn’t seem that concerned about money, so I think it’s mostly based on his other dream – that he and his mother could go back to his hometown where his father is taking care of his grandmother. He and his mother are in Beijing to earn money and he sees his father maybe once a year… But he’s always SO enthusiastic and eager to learn and studies by himself whenever he’s got any sparetime. And learns phrases as “Please sit down” and “Ladies first”. It’s impossible not to love him! He’s got one major flaw in his speaking though: “I VERY like!” Which is pretty much my favourite sentence in the whole world. I love that phrase SO much, especially the way he says it, so I don’t have the heart to correct it. I promise I will.

Also another guy who’s had enough of the bad environment in the other class (most of them don’t really want to learn English which really challanges the teaching and the seriousness of the class) and is moving to my class. I’m a bit curious to find out if he can match not only the enthusiasm, but also the level. There’s only 5 classes left. Time goes by so quickly…

…

Oh, and then I finally went to see the Natural History Museum of Beijing (after the other day of having been looking for it for ages and ending up going to the sad and poorly maintained city planning museum instead). Well, I really dig dinosaurs (joke unintended), so of course it was cool with the skeletons and to see Asian dinosaurs. But Chinese museums tend to be a bit tragicomic. The ideas of the exhibitions were really well thought, but everything was so poorly maintained, plastic dinosaurs falling apart, dirt everywhere, BADLY stuffed animals..! And real human embryos and bodyparts… Uhhhrrh…

Documentary and brats

Here’s an summary of an ordinary day:

5.45 I got up. There are apparently both exams and a big party meeting going on these days, so with a transportation time ranging from 30-90 minutes, so we wanted to play it safe. Strangely enough I wasn’t tired at all. Can’t say if it’s because of the qigong I did before going to bed or the 3 cups of coffee I had at McD (it’s HORRIBLE there btw). Showered. Ate the other half of yesterday’s dinner on our way down the elevator – rice and tofu”skin” – and we headed out in the polluted as always city.

8.05 we arrived at Dong Ba, almost on time. But besides the bright faces of our young, excited LVS students (jk, they’re usually fast asleep across the tables) a film crew with cameras and everything was waiting in the classroom. No, we didn’t get the notice of a documentary being shot these days. If we’re okay about being filmed? Well… Alright then. A Chinese woman is making a documentary about CMC (Compassion for Migrant Children) with focus on one of our students’ family as her final project. Should seriously have had a cup of coffee before, but luckily we had prepared a quiz in the bus. No panic. Hope we’re not going to appear in the doc, but I’m looking so much forward to see it! Not that many people know about Chinese migrants, not even residents in China.

8.50 we got rid of the camera crew. The 2-3 years olds from the ECD program started to arrive and I could already feel by then that this wasn’t really my day. I really like the small children, they’re adorable, but I know for sure by now that I’m never going to be a kindergarten teacher or anything like that. They were (supposed to be) practicing the numbers by writing them on the ground. I felt completely random (today as with many days before that) trying to contribute to their learning in a non-verbal way. I still don’t speak Chinese except from the VERY basics and they all have a parent or grandparent who can help them. I mean, their “Yi, er, san…” should be sufficient. Then a bit random ballgame (every kid grabs a ball and runs off, holding on tight to it and spends the rest of the time threatening people to start crying if they touch the ball). Oh, but before that, they played with instruments. Noisy.

10.20 the children started heading home for lunch and nap and our looong break began. I looked at the PowerPoint for Saturday’s English class with the LVS and we chatted with one of our colleagues who was back from his hometown in Guangdong province (it’s the one where they speak Cantonese). Nobody in Beijing is native Beijingers. At least none of the people we meet. And a Chinese girl from the States asked us about the projects. She’s working with immigrants back home and is interested in the way children learn a second language, so she might join some of the classes.

12.30, Chinese style lunch at the local restaurant with shared dishes. Always nice being full for 12 RMB.

14.00, we started teaching the 3-4 years olds ECD children. Well, to begin with it was only the two most regularly attending children who had showed up, no moms in sight. It started out pretty well; I got big hugs from both of them. And from then on it went downhill. With no parents to spank them every now and then, they were running franticly around in circles alternately screaming and hurting each other. We tried to sing Old McDonald Had a Farm, but alas, no response. We tried Head-Shoulders-Knees-and-Toes and they usually love that. Uh-uh. Animals, fruits, colours. Nope. Then the girl pulled off her panties and threw them at me. My god… One… Two… Three… And then she started fiddling with herself. Pleeease behave, will ya! Four… Five… Six…

15.15, after a long and hard struggle, their real lesson began, thank god.  The head of the department advised us to stop teaching-teaching them although the parents expect it and just start playing with them, occasionally slipping in some English words. Sounds good to me.

16.30 we arrived at our flat. It’s hot as frying pan today, so we slept all the way on the bus. And Mikkel is sleeping now. Trying to prepare for Saturday’s lesson, but it’s so hot… Ohh… And getting worse, glad we’re not here in August.