A little homesick?

We are in a good routine; life seems almost normal now.

We walk the girls to school, we see the same parents going through the same routine, rushing kids to school, wiping their faces or buttoning up their coats. We are stared at less but receive about the same number of smiles and nods. We have grown accustomed to our hot oatmeal in the morning with hot yo-tou (chinese fried dough) as our pre-school chaser. Even the afternoons of badmitten, walks in the neighborhood or visits to the store are enjoyable, relaxing, if somewhat mundane. (We still do take notice as kids pee in the streets or something really unusual hangs in a window (like a duck head) but we feel comfortable and relaxed here.

This is obviously good; we feel safe and we more relexad.

At the same time, it means that our life here is much less of an exciting adventure. It's not as fun when kids still call out your name and circle around you, as they do with Julia, but you can't understand all of their whispers. She tells me that she hears "American" "American" in Chinese all the time. What could they be saying?
It is certainly not as cute when you hear echoes of "hello" "hello" "what is your name?" as you walk down the street. We know now that there is little sense responding because that is usually about all they know or want to say.

Hana admitted last night that she was starting to miss people. I guess when the excitement wears off, it is natural to miss your house, your bed, your grandparents, your friends...and all the familiar people and things that you take for granted.

I too miss seeing the faces of parents and teachers at Everett and the people I have come to love at First Plymouth. What I wouldn't do for a random hug from someone on the street or a friend to just call and say, "hey friend, how about lunch today?" "Are we going to the gym tomorrow?" What I wouldn't give for a bonding session with my sister or one of my sister in laws ....with a glass of red wine in hand.

I never thought that I took my family and friends for granted, but today I just can't help thinking that I probably have. I wish I hadn't....

We are off this weekend to a town called Pingyao that is supposed to be like a historic Chinese village...hardly changed or affected by modernization or communism. We shall see. We will experience an overnight train and I am sure many adventures.

Hope you are all well..!

Figuring things out

We are all enjoying our China adventure but after this weekend, spending some time with Chinese friends and eating at yet another banquet, we realize we have a long way to go in our attempt to figure things out here. Last night we realized the one of the great things about travel is you are constantly challenged. Every day is a new word...or many more, you figure out how to mail or letter..or how not to..and you are constantly thinking about how this world and culture is different from your own. It is natural to make comparisons and to look for the similarities, because we all know or hope, that we all basically the same and, thus, the differences cannot be that great.

In fact, in some ways the differences are so great; most Americans could not imagine how hard Chinese people work. The construction sites are a 7 day 24 hour endeavor, the workers live on site in temporary housing and just work...they are, supposedly from rural areas, coming here for the good jobs and the allure of the city, but I doubt if they ever make it down to the city center or enjoy local food. I suspect that after 10-12 hours of hard labor, they sit around, smoke cigarettes and enjoy each other's company. There is no denying it, Chinese are incredibly social and enjoy communal life. (Is this a difference with Americans who spend so much time alone and with their TVS?)


The other unfamiliar reality is how average people life; the people who look just like you and me...work at the university, are teachers, or are deans of colleges live in apartments that are far worse than our college dorms or the shabbiest house on your block. Most of you reading this don't even have a shabby house on your block...and these are not even houses but are roughly the size a small new york city apartment with three rooms for four people...but w/out any of the standard features...ie clean walls, a decent bathroom, or even a kitchen to speak of.

Even though we have been here a week, I must say that I didn't expect this...I somewhat expected my well-dressed, polished colleagues to have homes like mine...or better. What world do I really inhabit? Do I really consider myself well-travelled? I keep reminding myself that it is easy to make assumptions and to search for the similarities when, in fact, there are so many differences.

Yet, and note the third difference here..is the level of generosity and the hospitality. By our count last night, we have been taken to elaborate feasts 5 times..more than one per week. This does not include all the other ways people have tried to welcome us to China, Xi'an and our neighborhood. The gifts that the girls receive at school...most hand-made by the kids themselves..I am not sure how people pay for these feasts and gifts, but they somehow feel that they must and that it is still not enough..and then they apologize for any lack of perfections or problems and misunderstandings we may have in China. They certainly know there are big differences between China and the U.S...and they apologize for our discomfort here...(by God, we asked for this...didn't we? Are we uncomfortable?? I would be embarrassed to detail the minor irritations)

Finally..at least for this week....is the desire here for harmony..which is largely lacking in the U.S. either on a personal or public level. Here, rather than speaking one's mind and "setting things straight" or someone straight, there is search and a real effort made for cooperation and harmony. We had a little problem at the girls' school...the children were getting too excited about the blond American girls and our girls were feeling overwhelmed..The very next day, I was in the school for a full hour of discussion...and reassurance. The specific problem was never addressed directly (never talk about problems directly ), but I thanked them for their efforts, time and patience and they thanked me for raising hard working, well behaved daughters who bring freshness and excitement ..and English..to their classrooms.

While we sat complimenting each other and developing strategies for the other kids to adjust and my girls to feel more comfortable, a fellow teacher was scolding some boys for bad behavior. (so, yet another difference...discipline is an absolute requirement in school and teachers RULE!! Yes, Ms. Nore..you read that correctly and parents even thank teachers for being strict...! Frankly. that teacher scared me and I doubt if those boys misbehaved again.)

In some ways, I feel like we just arrived when I was struggling to say thank you and figure out where to buy water...In other ways, we have all come a long way..Julia now understands her playmates more at school and we can all order in restaurants. Yet, we have so much more to figure out..and I guess that's why we are here..to figure out more about China, but also our own country and ourselves... as for me now, I promise to start each day with something that I am grateful for...and today, I am truly grateful for this experience. What a gift!

A night in China

Crowds swarm everywhere, you can barely take a breath when another one comes
Then you see the lights, like little snowflakes staying in one place
They are so colorful: red, blue, yellow, green... They are so pretty
you can almost imagine, the little snowflakes falling on top of your head
You go on to the wall, where you can see the whole city of Xi'an
There you can see lamps everywhere, then you see the people, crowds swarming in the road
The people give way to the traffic, traffic is like little ants swarming around their colony.

Xingqing Park

Perhaps the most interesting facet of my routine is the daily feast of eye candy I consume during jogs and walks in Xingqing park. Every morning this park, located just around the corner from our apartment on the site of a former royal palace, is packed with thousands of Chinese, coming primarily from the 50 - 80 year old set, exercising.



As you pass through the gate you enter the park's largest plaza and find it overflowing with couples and individuals engaged in dance classes drawing from an array of traditions. These are mass, public classes that seem to follow some sort of routine, but hard for me to discern. The different styles integrate and blur with competing sound systems cranking out various fast paced dance tunes that merge into a rhythmic, moving mass of humanity.




As you dive further in the dance music fades and is replaced by the swish of ad hoc badminton courts which are squeezed into any available open space or path. This is probably China’s main outdoor sport and you see couples engaged in what look like long standing court dates all over the park.



Tai chi and kung fu classes are another regular, with tai chi sometimes in smaller groupings in rather serene, woody settings; while at other times featuring their own traditional sound accompaniment piped in and featuring larger clusters of practitioners in similar, traditional dress. Spread out rather evenly throughout the park, these more mass tai chi groups battle with the dance classes for the title of Xingqing’s most popular exercise form.



There is also the occasion 50+ person singing group working on a piece, random collections of flute players, kite fliers, paddle exercisers, sword enthusiasts, and even a jazz corner on a dirt path going up to the park's central temple. One of my favorite activities takes place on the trail surrounding the pool on the park's northwest corner where people come alone, face the lake and yell out single syllable words at the top of their lungs.




There is also the spinning top area, where people manipulate low-toned, humming tops on strings around their bodies or the huge floor top that the master keeps spinning with a perfectly positioned lash from his bull whip. Then there are the random artists working water brushes on beautiful lines of calligraphy that fade before they are completed, bird enthusiasts that descend on a woody area to tease songs out of their caged pets with the false hope of a return to nature, and the clusters of what appear to be religious practitioners of some sort, reading lines from delicately drawn text around the park’s central fountain.



All these activities intersect along the Xingqing’s meandering trails which are highlighted by beautiful stone benches, ornate light features, and a few carefully placed temple buildings / cafes. The winter has taken the edge off the foliage, but given their attention to detail in the other features of the park, I'm sure spring in Xingqing will be spectacular.

My weekend

Last weekend, we had the newest adventure going out of the city. First we rode in a long and tiring bus, that made me feel constantly ill, and finally arrived at a tea pot factory where they made the old green tea pot there was a whole museum which we eagerly went into only to find out it was a waste of fifty yuan or 7 dollars. Where we looked at countless rows of the same green pottery. The back on a bus and heading towards a temple. WE were let of f the bus to my relief and emptyied into a town where 50000 of our favorite friends had all decided to take the same outings as we had. Before visiting the temple we decided to break our fast, for we had missed the majority of breakfast feasting hour. And we continued onward with a German family who now lived in the US and had daughters that were younger then us. We stopped at a good looking place, where a man we shaving noodles into a blubbling pot, we proceeded on to the seats, and found on our way, a huge rusty pot filled with the leftovers of someones soup. Half price we nervously joked, but little did we no that half price would mean one yuan or 20 cents. We were growing more anxious as we inspected the floor were an inch of grime lay. And it was also showered with spilled soup and then with a fine layer of trash. However we were all starving and so we went on to the seat and tried to avoid sitting on the gum plastered to an edge. It was the easiest place to order at. For you needn't order everyone got the same thing, a bowl of shaved noodles in a fantastic sauce. It was the best noodles we had had in all of or time here. SO far. ANd it was the cheapest. 30 cents per bowl. Our stomaches satified for now we raced into the throngs of chinese. We were pushed everyway, and then fell into a dozen more people because someone had stopped to stare at us, however this time there was another person who could take away some of the attention, the girl whose mother was from germany and father who was from America. We pushed them in front of us, and didnt gather quite as much attention. We hurried from side to side trying to avoid the mass of people, but even going to one side to great frogger[the videogame] skills, doggin each person five more taking there place. When finally we reached the temple. And it turned out bveing closed, of course we could wade in though the mass of black heads for a least another 30 minutes and make it to the othertemple, but we were already exausted by all the sounds ringing in our ears. WE went back the way wehad come dogging people surging forward before someone could take your place, then came the horses, the stallions surged forward in the crowd as well, summing up all the chaos that there already was to making it unreasonable chaotic[is that spelled right?] We hurriedly bought some popcicles and sucked on them while my dad got his first two pictures and Julia another picture taken and I got a picture request. WE continued back to the restaurant more to avoid the crowds then to eat more soup, but julia and I still gulped down spoonfuls of the spicy soup. Then we continued on to a park, hoping for a quieter place to talk. We were assulted by a massave throng of chinese who wanted to know everything they could know about the pretty doll[julia] and the beautiful barbie[me]. We hurried back to the bus even though we had an hour to spare. On to vineyard. Where countless wines were tasted by my mom and dad before being bought, and I was allowed a simple sip, and I must comment that wine does not have any good taste to it at all and it is my opinion that I think no one should even drink it! We visited the factory where the wine was made and everywhere you glanced there were 6000 bottle of full wine ready to be carted off to grocery stores. Then we played a spot of badmitten[ I was getting fairly good] and played several games before returning to our apartment at JiaoDa DongMein or the Zhaotong university east gate. At ten. Exausted we fell asleep immediately.

In that day I also found out that my favorite park the one by our house was 2000 years old and was made by the tang emporer, and was a royal courtyard.
Hana

Today was as normal a day as comes in china, i survived through 6 hours of pure chinese school except for the 45 minute break for english class, we got out early today and so we strolled around the streets that were around the wall. we got caught in some bargaining trouble in which we argued the fact that we did not have a lot of money right now and the sellers demanded that it was very cheap in which we were forced to say we had NO money. WE walked onwards and stepped on to a street in a moment a car drove past, breaking around five traffic laws, because he was speeding and partly on the side walk while smoking and talking on a cell phone, my dad ot yet realizing he was there walked into the car. THe driver didnt even blink, then we arrived back home.
Hana

Our first trip outside of Xi'an

We had a busy weekend. I'll let the girls give you some of the details but wanted to remind myself of the huge gap that exists between cities and rural areas. On Sunday we took a bus trip with a German/Australian group to a nearby town. First we went to a pottery museum and then a temple and finally, to a local wine distribution center. We had a long and interesting day. Most of the time however was spent on the bus and in traffic. The "little town" we went to vist that housed the temple was chuck full of no fewer than 40,000 people...and maybe more. Instead of a relaxing day in the country, we were fighting the crowds. When we stopped and tried to find a bit of space outside the throng, we were almost immediately surrounded by a large group of people who found us (mostly our children) incredibly fascinating to watch. All of the blonde Germans/Australians helped diffuse the attention away from our girls but when all the children were together, it made for almost a zoo like experience for the Chinese...dusty, crowded streets lined with garbage, the best "shaved noodles" we could imagine. We liked our restaurant so much we went back again for noodles. After the hours of crowding, we all needed some wine tasting. After tasting a least ten different bottles and purchasing a case at least each, the adults joined the kids for some games...the flying dutchman..(I think..taught to us by a sweet German woman)...tag and Simon says...on the journey home Marko, the fun-loving German, took out his harmonica and played for the kids. Back at school and work on Monday. Hope everyone had a good weekend too.