Gordon in China

Signing Off：Zaijian！

2007-12-01T18:57:00.000-08:00

As I'd anticipated, my last weekend here has proved to be mostly nonstop activity: Almost immediately after returning from the visit to Gongbei I wrote about in my last entry, I was whisked off to dinner with the guys from the Zhuhai propaganda departments and most of the folks who'd gone with us to the Meixi arches and dinner afterwards a few weeks ago. Instead of taking photos, I used the videocamera to record the presentation of some of the dishes and several of the toasts, which were particularly numerous and enthusiastic last night.

At noon Mr. Jeung will be coming by to take C***o, R****i, and me to Cuiheng, a small village about 30 km north of Zhuhai, to see the birth site of Sun Yat Sen (his house has since been torn down, but there's a recreation of it), Tonight there'll be one final dinner, and then I'll finish my packing (how many DVDs can you cram into one suitcase? We'll find out) and turn in early to be well-rested for my flight home. I'll be leaving the campus at 8 for the two-hour drive to Guangzhou, where I'll fly Korea Air to Seoul and change planes there for O'Hare.

I can't really say that the two months have gone by quickly — I've done and seen so much that it somehow feels like I've been in China much longer — but I have a feeling that once I'm back in Chicago I'll wish that I could have stayed here a few more months (and not just because of the ice storm I've heard just hit the city). I'm counting on the pleasure I'll get from seeing all my friends (and boring them with tales of my experiences) and from being home for Christmas to compensate for how much I'll miss Zhuhai, my colleagues, and most of all my students.

Goodbye Gongbei — This Time for Sure!

2007-12-01T01:20:00.000-08:00

I'd said goodbye to Gongbei earlier in the week after I made what I'd thought would be my final shopping trip there. But a couple of days ago I remembered that I'd brought the tiny videocamera that I use for work to China with me, and I'd never even used it. So, just in time, I took it to my last class and asked my students to say hello to my family and friends back in America (those of you in Chicago will be able to view it soon, if you'd like).

Encouraged by the results, I realized that video would be by far the best medium to convey the sights and sounds of Gongbei (as well as those of other places I've traveled, but it's too late to revisit them armed with the videocamera). So I went back there this afternoon to document the back alleys and food markets, and I have to say that the results are quite vivid and evocative. After I get back, I plan to edit this post to add one or two of the videos; I've got a full plate awaiting me at home though, and this is relatively low-priority, so don't expect it for several weeks). But again, Chicagoans will be able to see them much sooner than that.

Final Fotos

2007-11-30T04:22:00.000-08:00

Since I've only got a couple of more days here in China, I figure it's now or never to post these miscellaneous photos that didn't quite fit into the subjects of any of my previous entries.

The living room of my apartment is very bright, thanks not just to the large sliding glass doors but to the blindingly white floor tiles and white walls that are found in every recently built Chinese home.

Students on their way back from class; most travel on bicycle.

At the beginning of the semester the various student clubs on campus recruited new members one weekend; this, obviously, is the kung fu club.

People here absolutely hate the sun, and use their umbrellas to protect themselves from it. Me, I've been seizing the opportunity to sit on my balcony and bask in it right up until this week, when it finally turned too nippy.

Kids at the Jusco department store in Zhuhai transfixed by a video featuring some anime-derived toy.

Every afternoon after the last class, the field across from my building (my apartment is the one to the right of the one with the white sheet over the railing) is filled with students playing soccer. The smoke in the background comes from a nearby construction site where they're burning rubbish (the smell sometimes got into the laundry that I dried on the balcony, as all Chinese do).

I join hungry students lining up for duck in the dining hall.

Here's the Duck Man (I obviously don't mean Carl Barks).

I quickly grabbed this shot of the sun sinking behind the campus as I left the classroom building after my final lecture last night, on my way to my farewell banquet.

Besides these unused (till now) photos, there are also a number of blog entries I never had a chance to write — for example, I wanted to do one on China's smells, which are everywhere, unlike antiseptic America — but in a few days I'll be blathering about such observations to anyone who'll listen.

I didn't even get to finish all the novels I brought over to read in what I correctly figured would be a fair amount of downtime between classes. I made it through Man's Fate, but I got bogged down about two-thirds of the way through Bleak House, so I turned to something livelier: Huckleberry Finn. Since I don't have any English-language magazines (I was tempted by the latest issue of The Atlantic in Hong Kong, but the price was about US$12), I expect I'll be spending a lot of time with the by-now-tattered paperbacks on the 13-hour flight back.

Final Farewells

2007-11-29T21:17:00.000-08:00

My official duties here are now completed: I just finished teaching my last class — the Friday morning session — and after taking this group photo I said the last of my goodbyes to my students (although I expect I might run into some of them around campus this weekend, or at the farewell party the English Club is giving me Sunday night).

The class gave me this lovely scarf, which they said they all took part in knitting (I imagine a sort of student quilting bee). I told them (with some exaggeration) that now I was glad it would be cold in Chicago when I returned, because that would give me the opportunity to wear it.

These two students had heard it's a custom in America to give an apple to the teacher, so they brought these to my final Wednesday class.

I'm glad I took these pictures of each of my classes (note that I'm holding one of the apples in this one); I'm sure I'll be pulling them out (or, since they'll be on the computer, pulling them up) frequently in the coming months when I want to recall the main thing that made these two months in Zhuhai so special.

Yesterday I also gave the last in my series of Thursday-afternoon lectures on various aspects of American culture, this one on holidays. I've especially enjoyed the Q&A portions of these lectures because they gave me an opportunity to interact with the students who aren't in my classes or even enrolled in the Foreign Language department. As is often the case, the questions this week weren't what I expected: I'd thought the audience would ask mostly about the major holidays, especially Christmas, which took up a disproportionate amount of my text (could someone be homesick here?), but they seemed more interested in such minor celebrations as St. Patrick's Day and April Fool's Day (I was asked for examples of pranks they could play on their friends; all I could come up with offhand was taping a "Kick me" sign on someone's back and gluing a coin on the sidewalk).

One student did ask me to sing a Christmas carol, and belive it or not, I complied with an a cappella rendition of "Jingle Bells" — I wish my freinds could have been there to hear that! (Actually, I don't.)

Last night after the lecture the Foreign Language faculty gave me my farewell dinner, a bit earlier than I'd expected because Presdient Wong (I have the place of honor on his left here) was going to be away this weekend. Professor Sun, the department head, is sitting on my left. We went to the same place in the Doumen district, west of the city, where they had said goodbye to my couuntryman Ken a few weeks earlier; it's said to be the best restaurant in the entire district, and after dining there twice I can readily believe it. This will likely be my last chance to post pictures of food, so let me present just a few of the 20 or so courses that we enjoyed:

The meal concentrated on local seafood, including two standbys I never get tired of: these sea snails . . .

. . . and these spiced-up oysters served on the shell.

Each of us was served a portion of what I was told was a "deep sea fish."

Two varieties of chicken: roasted on the right and — I don't know, boiled? Poached? — on the left.

Spicy crab, the likes of which I will not have for a long, long time.

This pork was tender and delicious — and was accompanied by an assortment of spices to dip it in — but it also had a layer of fat as thick as the meat. Sometimes, though, you just have to ignore health concerns.

Many toasts were given, of course, and the pijiu flowed freely. I was repeatedly asked to return to teach again in the future; often such alcohol-fueled statements are insincere gestures, but I have a genuine sense that the offer stands. And as I've said, I sincerely hope that I can take them up on it someday.

Goodbye Gongbei

2007-11-29T16:53:00.000-08:00

My final week here has been a heady mixture of melancholy and anticipation. While I'm eager at this point to return to my family and friends, the imminent prospect of leaving Zhuhai behind has been making me feel understandably downhearted.

I even felt sad taking the bus to Gongbei Tuesday afternoon for what I expect will be my final shopping trip here and passing the familiar landscape for the last time — a mood that was enhanced by the sentimental-sounding Chinese tunes playing over the bus's speaker system. My sorrow was tempered by a growing confidence that I'll be coming back to teach here again at some point. But even if I return, I won't be teaching this particular batch of students again (although since they're all freshmen, I may see some of them around campus if I can get back here within three years). You can come back to take a dip at the same spot in the stream, but the water's going to be different then.

The shopping trip turned out to be a bit of a bust: I was hoping to buy some cheap shoes to take back to Chicago, but most of them seemed shoddy even by Chinese-manufacturing standards, I had trouble find ones in my smaller-than-average size, and I couldn't bargain the price down to what I was willing to pay for the second-rate product. My clothes-shopping expectations have been spoiled by the five-story Beijing Silk Market, which offers a better selection, higher quality, and easier bargaining thanks to most vendors' knowledge of basic English.

So, characteristically, I went back to the DVD stalls, where I can always find my size and I've figured out the going prices. By this point, I'd bought all the must-have items, but I picked up a few more music videos they recently added (including Scorsese's Dylan documentary: The extra live performances that weren't included on the PBS broadcast were worth the US$3 alone) and some French classics that I'd passed up because the packaging didn't indicate that they had English subtitles (this time I asked the clerk, who said that the Chinese-language labeling promised them; we'll see).

I walked back to the bus stop through the back alleys that I'd found so exotic (and that I'd photographed extensively) on my first visit there. I still get a huge kick out of the rude, bustling scene — and I'm still stumbling upon alleyways that I hadn't explored before — but they no longer seem so quaint that I feel compelled to pull out my camera every few seconds.

I'll likely be coming back to the city before I leave China next Monday — I think Mr. Jeung wants to see C***o and me one more time — but I don't think I'll be venturing back to Gongbei — at least not this time around.

Hong Kong, Day Two

2007-11-27T14:55:00.000-08:00

Even though I'd gone to bed fairly early — before midnight — I managed to sleep until nearly 8 the next morning. Another way that Hong Kong is more Western than it's Chinese is that the inhabitants don't start their day at the crack of dawn (due, I suppose, to how late they stay up). My room was on the second floor, overlooking the street — I hadn't had the presence of mind to request a higher floor when I checked in — and I'd worried about street noise waking me up early (as had been the case in Macau); but the block was surprisingly quiet.

After checking out, I'd thought of getting some congee (rice porridge), since that's what they have for breakfast in all the classic Hong Kong gangster films. But then I remembered that I don't even like congee, so I headed for a nearby coffee shop on Nathan Road instead, where I scanned the latest issue of Time and relaxed to the sounds of smooth jazz. And I felt my first slight twinge of Christmas spirit when they played Ella swinging "Rudolph."

My next stop was going to be the Hong Kong Museum of Art, but it didn't open until 10, which left me with nearly an hour to kill. So I headed for a Starbucks down on Salisbury Road, where I got another cup of coffee, grabbed a Herald-Tribune, and took them over to the harbor promenade. It may not have been as spectacular in the daylight as it had been the night before, but sitting by the water enjoying that great view on a balmy late-November morning, sipping a cup of Joe and reading an actual newspaper rather than a computerized simulation, I experienced a near-transcendent sense of well-being.

The art museum turned out to be hosting a fairly spectacular traveling exhibition of Treasures from the British Museum, but I was nearly as impressed by the permanent collections — devoted entirely to Chinese art — which included calligraphy, painting, and a chronological, well-annotated survey of the nation's ceramics. A gallery on the top floor (which had a nice view of the harbor) was devoted to southern-Chinese painters from Guangdong province.

To the east on the promenade is a fairly new Avenue of the Stars, which consists mostly of slabs in the walkway devoted to the leading lights of the Hong Kong film industry, a la Hollywood Boulevard, many of which include handprints in cement, a la Grauman's Chinese (ah—there's the connection) Theatre. Surprisingly, although they have stars, many of the most prominent figures, such as Wong Kar-Wai, haven't gotten around to making their handprints yet.

By this point, I had exhausted all the must-do activities I'd planned and was beginning to run out of steam. So I walked back toward the ferry terminal by way of Kowloon Park (urban Hong Kong doesn't have nearly as many parks as Macau; this one is a welcome escape from the hectic scene on nearby Nathan Road), an HMV store (where I nearby bought a non-bootleg copy of Jia Zhangke's first feature until I realized that the package didn't indicate whether it was subtitled), and Harbour City, an enormous shopping mall where I'd noticed an inexpensive all-Asian food court (Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, Indian) when I was here a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, I picked wrong and had a barely palatable plate of pad Thai; the view of the harbor was nice, though (even if it looked out at Kowloon rather than Central).

I caught a ferry that got me back to Zhuhai by 5. Despite the common language and short geographic distance, the culture shock couldn't have been much greater if I'd been returning from New York or Paris. After the modern commercial and cultural Mecca of Hong Kong, Zhuhai's grubbiness struck me as disconcerting and off-putting. But by the time I caught the bus back to the campus I'd regained my bearings and my affection for the city — crass as it may be compared to its more glamorous neighbor — was beginning to return.

Hong Kong, Day One

2007-11-26T21:16:00.000-08:00

I got up early Sunday morning for my two-day trip to Hong Kong. While the process of getting there from the campus is relatively easy, it takes long enough — a one-hour bus ride to Zhuhai city, a short hop by cab to the port, then an hour-and-a-half ferry — that anything other than an early start would seriously cut into my time there.

Two ferries go from Zhuhai to Hong Kong; one arrives at Hong Kong Island, on the south side of Victoria Harbour, and the other at Kowloon, on the north. I'd planned to take the latter, since the terminal is just a short walk from where I'd booked a room. But when I got to the port in Zhuhai I was told the boat to Hong Kong Island would be leaving in a few minutes, so I decided to take that one instead of waiting another hour to go to Kowloon. I'm glad I did: I hadn't planned to spend any time on the island, which is modern and westernized (at least in the area near the harbor) compared to the more Chinese-feeling districts of Kowloon, but I enjoyed wandering around Soho, a neighborhood in the Central district (south of HOllywood Road) that I remembered from my previous visit ten years ago.

A short walk from Queen's Road Central (a major east-west thoroughfare) leads to the pedestrian escalator (in Cantonese dihn tai, or electric ladder) that carries foot traffic up the steep hills to the Mid-Levels.

The nearby streets are filled with Western restaurants of all varieties (including this Krispy Kreeme doughnut shop). Although the options — from pizza to tacos — seemed alluring, I figured that since I'd be home in about a week (and since it wasn't quite lunchtime), I'd hold out a bit longer before indulging myself in comfort food.

The escalator passes by the Graham Street Market. Although the requisite array of produce and unrefrigerated meat and fish were on display, it seemed a bit tame after the freewheeling markets on the Mainland. Maybe it was the occasional English-language signage or the hilly bisecting streets, but it seemed more like shopping on Stockton Street in San Francisco's Chinatown.

Since there's no Thanksgiving here to give them the official go-ahead, the shopping malls were just now getting around to putting up their Christmas decorations.

Landing on Hong Kong Island gave me another opportunity to take the Star Ferry to Kowloon.

The view across the harbor to Hong Kong Island remained magnificent.

I'd originally thought of booking a room in the Chungking Mansions — the grungy cluster of guesthouses depicted in Wong Kar-Wai's Chungking Express — but I chickened out and booked a room at a nearby place that was slightly more respectable and nearly as cheap, just a few blocks off Nathan Road, Kowloon's main north-south drag.

The room was spartan and as small as any I've ever stayed in — even standing outside the doorway, I couldn't get far enough away to shoot the entire room — but it was spotless and comfortable. The price was certainly right, just HK$300 (about US$38).

I decided to get some background for my exploration of the city by beginning at the Hong Kong Museum of History, which is larger, newer (it opened in 2001) and more elaborate than its counterpart I'd visited in Macau.

After a couple of hours at the museum, I walked north towards the Mongkok district. It don't know if it was a Sunday-only thing, but a number of large east-west roads were closed to auto traffic, and pedestrians were taking full advantage of having the street to themselves.

The last time I was here, I regretted not making it to the famous bird garden . . .

. . . where (mostly elderly) men take their feathered pets out for a walk and while the time away chatting (presumably about avian topics)..

Adjacent to the bird garden is Flower Market road, where locals come to buy — surprise — cut flowers.

A park near the bird garden has public ping pong tables.

It looks as though the ballet and foot boxing may be taught in the same facility.

By this time it was getting near dusk, so decided to walk back to Nathan Road and head south to the Temple Street Market, the city's most famous night market. I figured I wouldn't buy anything — the Mainland prices make even Hong Kong's best bargains seem wildly overpriced, and most of the clothes for sale weren't anything I'd be seen wearing anyway — but I knew I'd enjoy the lively scene.

I'd read there were some shops on Temple Street selling bootleg DVDs, but I figured the prices would be so much higher than on the Mainland that I wouldn't do more than browse. The pre-bargaining prices were indeed about twice those in Zhuhai — just over US$3 each — but nonetheless I bought a few music DVDs, including the new release of Bob Dylan's early appearances at the Newport Folk Festival, as well as some nicely packaged sets that crammed the entire oeuvres of Wim Wenders, Antonioni, and Ki-Duk Kim onto three discs apiece (now I can catch up on the early works that I'd missed in the Film Center's Antonioni series earlier this year).

The outdoor dining scene was tempting, but rather than join the diners here, I decided to vary my usual fare. If I was going to pay Western prices, I felt, I may as well have some Western food. Actually, I didn't venture all that far west: I opted for a mutton curry at a Pakistani restaurant not far from Temple Street.

A large reason I'd wanted to return to the city after the brief day trip I made with C***o and R***i a few weeks ago was to bask in the visual splendor of Hong Kong at night, especially the dazzling neon signage.

Although the increasing commercialization of the Mainland is producing similar scenes, especially in the largest cities, there's still nothing quite like that to be found in Hong Kong.

Some of the swank retailers on Nathan Road are decked out for the holidays.

I topped off the evening with my absolute favorite thing about Hong Kong: the nighttime view of Central and Wan Chai from the promenade along Victoria Harbour. My piddly little Kodak point-and-shoot can barely suggest the magnificence of this vista, which I strongly feel to be one of the absolute glories of modern civilization. I was tempted to purchase a postcard of the view and take a photo of that for posting; but since it's probably one of the world's most-photographed scenes — a guess borne out by the dozens of shutterbugs I saw with tripods and decent equipment along the promenade — I'll have no trouble locating an image any time I want to remember it.

Heading back to my guesthouse, by this time — nearly 11 — I was pretty well exhausted from my day's ramblings. But even at this late hour — and on a Sunday, no less — I was amazed at the number of shops that were still open: not just tourist traps and convenience stores, but clothing boutiques and other retailers.

My Students

2007-11-24T14:43:00.000-08:00

I was all set today to blog about my two days in Hong Kong, but I'm experiencing a recurrence of the problem uploading photos that I experienced earlier in my stay here. So while I'm waiting for that to resolve itself (as it always eventually does), I'm going to write a little bit about my students — who are, after all, the reason I came here.

Most of my postings have been about a selective group of topics — traveling, hiking, restaurants — that must make it seem like I'm on an extended vacation here. But I've been devoting a good portion of my time to my teaching activities — not just conducting the classes, but also preparing lessons (made more difficult by my unfamiliarity not just with the textbook but with teaching methods) and writing my weekly lectures on American culture.

Although I initially approached my duties with some trepidation, I have to say that the experience has been an unalloyed delight. When I arrived, several Foreign Language faculty members warned me that the students here were a disappointment compared to the harder-working, more intellectually gifted ones that you'll find at more-prestigious schools, including Jilin University's main campus. While that may be true — they certainly don't share the single-minded dedication to their studies that I've seen among the young scholars in Ling's family — I've found most of the youngsters here to be dedicated to their studies and ambitious about their futures, especially in comparison to their American counterparts.

The students in my classes — they're all freshmen, since this is the Foreign Language department's first year — seem so much younger than the ones back home: less worldly and more enthusiastic. Unlike in the States, where attending college seems to be a given after graduating from high school, they view higher education as a treasured opportunity that, if they do well, can open the door to a good job, the chance to experience other cultures (that's a big reason most of them selected this major), and the ability to provide for their parents later on (filial piety, one of the Confucian virtues, remains huge here).

Their childishness — they strike me as more like high-schoolers than college students — and lack of guile — it would never occur to them to try to act like sophisticated adults now that they've left home — brings out a paternal affection on my part. That feeling seems to be mutual: I find many of them confiding in me in a way that I'm certain they don't with the other teachers. One girl (and as I've said before, I use that word consciously: It's nigh impossible to think of them as grown women) confided in me over lunch about her frustration over her parents' orders not to have a boyfriend until she graduates. And several students who aren't even in my classes have struck up conversations with me to express regrets over their choice of a major (a common complaint, since students have to pick their field of study at age 17, at the time they enroll in college); none of the upperclassmen are able to be Foreign Language majors, since the department didn't exist when they entered the school.

I enjoy all my students, but my Thursday class is probably my favorite; their overall level of English fluency is a bit higher, which makes it easier to engage them. Last week as I walked in, they called out in unison “Happy Thanksgiving Day.”

During the mid-period break they presented me with this oversized card they'd made; everyone in the class signed it with such messages as "Wherever you go, we will keep you in mind forever," "Thank you for giving such an unforgettable experience to me," and "You're our 'family member' forever."

A student in another of my classes gave me this album with two photos she'd taken with her cell phone camera (the rest of the book was filled with "Love Is..." cartoons).

Now that I'm starting my last week of classes, I'm feeling strong pangs at the prospect of abandoning my young charges (and a bit of guilt at taking off before the semester's over, which makes the separation harder for the students). I assume that "real" teachers develop a sense of detachment that makes it easier to leave their students behind each year. If I ever do this again — and I hope to — I'm going to have to master their catch-and-release approach.

A Hilly Hike

2007-11-22T20:39:00.000-08:00

The American I met a few weeks ago (whom I've tried e-mailing at the address on his business card, but the messages kept getting returned; I think John's guess that he's CIA might be right) told me that there was a road going up to the top of one of the nearby mountains, and after my morning classes Wednesday I thought I'd investigate.

To get to the road, I had to cut through the apartment complex next to the South Gate restaurants, which is continuing to add new buildings. The scaffolding around this one, like that seen in other construction in China, is not metal but bamboo.

This poster seems rather ominous; can Ling, or anyone else, explain it?

Earlier I mentioned how common banana trees are around here. They're even found in the middle of a residential complex.

A short walk through the residences took me to the narrow road — barely wide enough for a single car — leading up the mountain.

After walking less than five minutes, the road already rose over the tops of a group of high-rise apartments next to the newer complex.

For some reason I'd thought that the road went straight up to the top of the mountain; but instead it took a gentle, gradual incline. It's a popular hiking path; I saw about a dozen other people on my two-and-a-half hour walk.

The route wrapped itself around the entire mountain, offering views in various directions.

The campus lay in the distance to the east. In this hazy telephoto shot, my faculty-housing building is on the left in front.

On the other side of the mountain I could barely make out the sea and nearby islands in the distance.

Below are some of the small factories along the highway to San Zao; the town is further in the distance but not visible in this picture.

There was virtually nothing here to remind me that I was in China; it resembled a bucolic country road back home.

This appears to be a trail that goes off from the road into the woods. If I make it back here, before I leave China, I might just see where it goes. . . .

. . .or maybe not, since (judging from the exclamation mark) this might just be a warning sign nailed to a nearby tree.

I'm guessing I walked maybe 4 or 5 km when I decided I'd better turn around; it was getting near dusk, and I didn't want to be stuck finding my way back in the dark. I'd hoped to travel to the end of the road, where I suspect it comes out on the other side of the mountain (two or three cars had driven by me without returning), but that'll have to wait for another hike. By the time I reached the bottom, it was barely light enough to take this shot to give you an overall view of the mountain.

I decided to walk back by way of the South Gate restaurants, with the vague hope that I'd run into some of my students and join them for dinner (the all-text menus make it nigh impossible for me to dine there by myself). But I hit the jackpot when I met a fellow teacher who was on her way to join some of the other Foreign Language faculty members for dinner and invited me along.

We went to the same restaurant I'd been to twice before (I've forgotten the Mandarin name, but it translates to Night of the Dream), which by all accounts is by far the best one in the shopping center (most of the others are small storefront ones with a limited menu).

No pictures of the dishes this time, since many of them were ones I'd had (and shot) previously. But I was honored with many toasts, which my fellow diners used my camera to document.

When our host, Professor Sun (with whom I'm toasting here), bought the last two bottles of beer (this was after most of the food had already been eaten and I'd thought we were getting ready to leave) I made a token demurral, noting that I had to teach a class tomorrow morning; but since nearly everyone else had an earlier class than mine, my objections were ignored (as they would have been under any circumstances).

The President's Pad

2007-11-22T16:15:00.000-08:00

Tuesday afternoon President Wong's wife took C***o, R****i, and me to Zhuhai to show us their apartment in the college-owned complex. Their unit is on the top floor of the building across from the one we'd visited last weekend. We took an elevator up to the eleventh floor — the first elevator I've been seen in a residential building in China (even ones as tall as seven stories, like the one I live in on campus, have only stairs), but I suppose that as modern high-rises become as common as they are in Zhuhai, they're likely to become standard.

The Wongs’apartment has two floors — another rarity for China — with two bedrooms on the lower floor and three upstairs.

Also unusual are the large windows that flood the living room with light, and the chandelier.

The apartment boasts many modern conveniences, like a projection TV with a large screen that lowers from the ceiling.

The eleventh-floor balcony affords a sweeping view, but unfortunately it encompasses nothing but the other high-rise residential buildings that have gone up in the past few years or are under construction.

After touring the apartment, we headed off for foot massages (which seem to be the favorite affordable luxury among many Chinese people) and then an early dinner (C***o had to be back in time for a 7:00 class) at a hot pot restaurant.

Hot pot, for those who don't know, is a style of dining that originated in the north where thinly sliced meats, noodles, vegetables, and other ingredients are cooked at the table in pots of boiling, seasoned broth. I prefer to have hot pot in the winter — it's a great way to warm up on a cold day — but it's popular here year-round.

The restaurant we went to — located in the Jida district behind the Jusco department store I've been to several times — had a feature I've never seen before: a table with condiments to add to the sauce that you dip the cooked items into.

Beef and lamb are the standard meats used in hot pot. They were accompanied by four or five different types of greens . . .

. . . and several varieties of noodles.

Restaurants in China always have individual pots for each diner; in America, for some reason, there's always a single large communal one that everyone dumps their items into, which strikes me as a far inferior system. Although all the restaurants I've previously been to in China brought out butane burners for each pot, here there were electric burners built right into the table.

Back home Ling and I have often served hot pot as a holiday dinner — it's graced our table at Christmas more than once — but this meal came a couple of days too early for me to think of it as a Thanksiving stand-in. It would have seemed an inappropriate substitute anyway: Cooking a small tidbit of beef in less than a minute strikes me as the antithesis of roasting a turkey for hours.

Thanksgiving Dinner

2007-11-21T22:48:00.000-08:00

As Hilary consoled me, duck is just as good as turkey — maybe better. But unfortunately, it doesn't come with cornbread stuffing or cranberries.

DVD Delights

2007-11-20T15:02:00.001-08:00

Although I hadn't been planning to buy any DVDs when I went to Gongbei on Monday, I decided to drop in on a shop that had the largest and most varied selection that I had seen anywhere in Zhuhai. I didn't spend much time there when I first stumbled upon it, mostly because their labeled price was 30 yuan per disc, twice the standard elsewhere; even if you take that as a starting point for bargaining, it wasn't a good sign. But as soon as I commented on the high price the clerk offered to halve it, and when I said I'd buy at least ten if he'd cut the price to 12 yuan — about $1.60 — he agreed (after checking with a manager, a move that might have been just for show).

I selected three vintage Chow Yun-Fat movies, plus The Myth, a 2005 Jackie Chan Chinese film; Ling and I saw a little bit of it on a TV in a department store the last time we were in China, and it looked watchable — certainly better than any of his American efforts.

I was surprised to see these obscure arthouse titles for sale in China: The top two are compilations of early American avante-garde cinema; The Pervert's Guide is an idiosyncratic bit of film criticism that I missed when it played the Film Center a few months ago; and Come and See is an acclaimed Soviet WWII saga from the 1980s.

The classics: Godard's Breathless, Schlesinger's Billy Liar, René Clair's Under the Roofs of Paris, and a Keaton hodgepodge of obscure shorts, commercials and TV appearances, and other miscellany.

Leaving with my haul of rarefied cinematic works, I headed for the back alley shop where I'd previously bought a few Hollywood pics of more recent vintage for a third of the price of the mall stores. This time I bargained the price down to 4 yuan, just over 50 cents — the cheapest I've ever bought DVDs in China (or, I suppose, anyplace else). I couldn't resist the chance to pick up a few titles that had come out since I left Chicago, to cut down on what I'll have to catch up on upon my return (although actually, none of them are likely to have made my must-see list). Brian De Palma's Redacted had only been in theatres for three days when I bought it; sometimes these newer-than-new bootlegs are made with a camcorder held in front of the screen at a preview, but in this case it was duped from a studio screener — the ID code ocassionally surfaced at the bottom. And I bought the cheaply packaged set of the first five seasons of Scrubs largely to satisfy my curiousity about how they squeezed 100+ episodes on just five discs.

The Gongbei Routine

2007-11-20T14:48:00.000-08:00

I'm a bit behind in my blogging, due largely to the fact that the pleasant weather has been enticing me to spend as much time outdoors as possible — especially after hearing the forecast of holiday snow for Chicago. And my plans to catch up tonight were nearly derailed by a fortuitous encounter earlier this eveing that led to a dinner with much pijiu and gambeiing (which I'll report on in a future posting). But I'll try to overcome my slight inebriation to forge ahead with my posting plans.

On Monday I made my usual weekly shopping trip to Zhuhai city. There wasn't anything that I particularly needed to buy, but after languishing on campus all day Sunday, I just wanted the change of scene. I must have made the trip between the college and Zhuhai a dozen times by now, but I still haven't tired of looking out the window at the countryside, the people, the shops, and even the crazy traffic.

After alighting from the bus, I strolled through that stretch of restaurants with the lively outdoor dining scene that had so impressed me one night last week. But as I expected, the stretch was pretty dull during daylight, even at lunchtime.

This sidewalk dishwasher gives you an idea of the sanitation standards here.

I ducked into a building that turned out to contain one of those vast indoor food markets that had impressed me, first in San Zao and then in Jida. Besides the merchants selling the same sort of produce that you commonly see at the outdoor markets, these enclosed ones also sell meat . . .

. . . and fish. And as you can see, refrigeration doesn't enter into the picture at all. But what I'm now finding more interesting than the lack of refrigeration is my level of acceptance of it. On my first visit to China, some ten years ago, I found such practices shocking. Six weeks ago, when I arrived for my teaching stint here, I suppose I would have made note of it. But now I barely even shrug. Perhaps it's my awareness that my the ingredients of my dinner that night will likely have been treated in such a fashion; it's either accept or starve.

When the food's been cooked, like these roast birds and other meats, the lack of refrigeration's a bit easier to accept. Even so, I decided to head for the undergrund Port Plaza mall for my favorite restaurant with the English-language menu.

After a tasty chicken curry, I headed upstairs and outside to the less genteel market area where the genuine bargains are to be found. I hadn't been planning to shop for DVDs that day — I'd figured I'd stock up before returing to Chicago — but I wound up finding some surprising titles that I just couldn't resist; I'll detail them in my next post.

Lugging my sackful of DVDs, I headed for the bus stop by way of the side streets and back alleys that I found so enticing the first time I encountered Gongbei. But again, I strode right by sights that would have had me pulling out my camera a month ago. Even the incredibly brazen streetwalkers (my online research has confirmed my assumption that the district is a hotbed — pun intended — of prostitution) didn't faze me. I'm not jaded — I still love taking in the scene — but at this point I guess I can state that I longer feel like a gawking tousist.

21st- and 19th-Century Zhuhai

2007-11-18T04:09:00.000-08:00

On Saturday, I tagged along again as one of C***o's coleagues took her to Zhuhai city to see the apartment buildings the college owns there. Apparently once you've worked at the college for a certain number of years, you can get a unit in the buildings; many faculty have both a residence on campus and one in the city (which explains how they can stand living in a region as desolate as the one surrounding the campus — they don't, at least not all the time).

The buildings are very modern — they went up within the last two years — and look essentially like the hundreds of others that are sprouting up around the city, especially on its outskirts. (These are in a similarly undeveloped part of town; other than dozens of other apartment buildings of similar vintage, the nearby area is largely barren, with hardly any retail stores or much of anything else)

We got a tour of the interior of one of the units, which are somewhat larger than the standard Chinese apartment, but with the same ubitquitous white walls and white vinyl tile on the floors. The landscaping is nicer-than-average as well, and there's even underground parking. President Wong lives in the building across from the one we visited.

Other new construction going up nearby dwarfs the older dwellings that probably aren't long for this world.

We then joined about a half-dozen other people, some of whom I think lived in the complex, for a tour of nearby attractions. As usual, no introductions were made (or, more precisely, half-introductions were made: C***o told the newcomers, in Mandarin, who I was, but never said anything to me about them), but I learned later that the three men all worked for Zhuhai's propaganda office, which meant that they promoted tourism to the city (I told C***o that the proper English word was "marketing" — "propaganda" connoted political objectives — but she insisted that was their actual title.

Our first stop was the stone archways located at the site of a village called Meixi, built by the emperor in the late 1800s to honor Chen Fang, the first Chinese consul to Hawaii. There were originally three archways, but one was destroyed by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution.

The grounds also include the residences Chen built for himself and his sons in the 1890s after he returned from Hawaii, where he'd started several businesses, served in the legislature, and married a princess.

The outdoor dancing room in Chen's residence combines Romanesque arches with Chinese ornamentation.

One of the buildings contained a wax museum depicting notables who hailed from Zhuhai. All eras were covered, from these early nobles to Communist Party leaders to China's first world table tennis champion.

More interesting was a small museum featuring a collection of 65 plaques from Chinese businesses and homes. The exhibit combined calligraphy and culture, although it obviously would have been more meaningful if I could have recognized what the plaques said.

Next on the itinerary was the nearby Agricultural Research Center, also known as the Agronomic Wonders Land (or, as the sign says, "Agricultural Paradise"). Unfortunately, we arrived there at dusk, too late to do anything other than take a quick look at a few of the many greenhouses on the grounds.

By then it was dinnertime, so we drove to a nearby restaurant. Our private dining room (where the waitress is icing a bottle of red wine — but it's Chinese wine, so that can only help) included the standard television set for post-dining karaoke . . .

. . . but also a ping pong table, an accoutrement I'd not seen before.

The dinner was another consistently scrumptious banquet, with one knockout dish followed by another, and then another — it’s kinda scary how blasé I've gotten about the meals here, and I know I'll look back at that placid acceptance in disbelief when I'm back home in a few weeks. I'll constrain myself and only post a few shots of dishes I hadn't had before:

These savory little pigeons weren't an alternative to duck . . .

. . . because that came later, albeit in a casserole rather than roast.

These pancakes were eggier than typical.

Okay, these clams aren't new — but don't they look great?

Near the end came these pan-fried items made of a Japanese-like glutenous rice flour, but with some sort of cruncy vegitable that varied the texture interestingly.

The meal was obviously wonderful, but what made the evening stand out was the liveliness of the group, spearheaded by the three propaganda officials. The one in the middle is apparently their boss, judging from the way they deferred to him. The guy on the right had a rollicking sense of humor that I enjoyed even if I couldn't understand his jokes.

The rest of us (including, here, C***o, R****i, C***o's colleague, and the younger propagandist's wife) largely sat back and participated in the many toasts. As often happens when I'm a guest at one of these banquets, the men all wanted to share one-on-one toasts with me, so I drunk more than my share that night; once again, I impressed them with my capacity, and they loudly voiced their approval every tim I drained my glass. And I learned a new flourish from the jovial pudgy fellow: At the end of each gambei, I'd invert my glass to accentuate its emptiness.

I don't think I've mentioned that at these banquets there's always a waitress standing by — and often two — to refill glasses, replace dirty plates, and attend to any other needs. It's a level of service that's obviously lacking in the States, and I especailly miss it at Chinese restaurants there — it's just not the same when you have to pour your own tea.

The head propagandist turned out to be a remarkably talented singer, who entertained us with everything from traditional Chinese songs to Italian arias. He was so good that the rest of us were too intimidated for karaoke (which to me was just an added benefit of his performance).

Considering the vast quantities of pijiu I'd ingested (as well as just a bit of liquor), I was in pretty fair shape when I arrived home. But just the same, I was glad that I didn't have class — or much of anything else I had to do — the next day.

Spouting Off on Sports

2007-11-16T07:51:00.000-08:00

Thursday afternoon I gave the latest in my weekly series of lectures on American culture, this one on sports in the U.S. (delayed, ironically, by the campuswide sports event held last week). While I don't consider myself much of a sports fan (and many of you will call that assessment a vast understatement), as I told the students, sports are so pervasive in America that you can't live there for as long as I have without absorbing enough knowledge to talk on the subject for an hour or so. Even so, I was tempted to take Aaron's joking advice (based, I assume, on his current gig teaching Entertainment Journalism at Columbia College) to just make stuff up during my lectures, since who'd be the wiser? However, some of these kids follow the NBA avidly enough that I'd suspect they could call me on any fraudulent info on that sport.

However, the entire group of several hundred students possessed near-total ignorance of baseball or American football (just football, of course, refers to what we'd call soccer), although they feigned interest in my explication. Basketball is another matter: My previous visits to China had already revealed the high level of interest in the sport (when the Bulls were playing in the championships, the games seemed to be followed here nearly as closely as back home). I was a bit surprised, though, that while many of the kids — and not just the boys — watch NBA games, they play little attention to the Chinese Basketball Association. My queries revealed that the Americans’far superior level of play trumps nationalism.

The lecture seemed to be as well received as my previous ones, and I think that I managed to handle the questions fairly well; I even adequately fielded one on World Wrestling Entertainment (which I still think of as the WWF).

Afterwards, Mr. Wong — the president of the college and Ling's longtime friend — took me to dinner, along with two other foreign-language teachers: Hyoung Su (a.k.a. Leo), the Korean instructor whom I've shared a couple of meals with already, and Ken, the other American currently on campus. The faculty have been trying to get Ken and me together ever since I got here, but our schedules hadn't meshed till now. He's a Tourism Management teacher at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, which has a reciprocal arrangenemnt with the same department here (one of my own classes is under the Tourism department; obviously, English would be a valuable skill for anyone taking Chinese people to the U.S. or vice versa). Ken's only here for six weeks, and he's going back Monday; his imminent departure was apparently the occasion for the dinner.

Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get a very good pic of Ken; in this dim one he's between Wong (who was, obviously, seated next to me) and one of the college's vice-presidents (I didn't get his name or exact title; introductions here are often abrupt or even nonexistant, which is why business cards are so useful).

It's been a while since I've photoblogged individual dishes, so here's a selection of what Wong ordered. This was the first time I'd seen chicken feet other than as a dim sum item.

One of the best ducks I've had so far this trip, obviously surpassing the version I've been enjoying regularly in the campus dining hall.

I don't think I've been to a banquet here that hasn't included shrimp — but that's fine with me.

I think this delicately spiced fish soup, served in a coconut shell, was the best soup I've had here.

Two more regional standbys: whole steamed fish . . .

. . . and sea snails.

The picture's a bit dark-looking, but so was the dish: Pork cooked with black tea leaves.

Pastries for desert. Unfortunaely, I was still enjoying the other dishes when this plate was brought out, so I missed out on the custard tarts, always one of my favorite ways to end a meal. But I did manage to take full advantage of the plate of watermelon, papaya, and other fruits that came later (not pictured because I was too busy chowing down to shoot it before my fellow diners did damage to it).

This evening featured even more toasts than usual, many of them to mark Ken's leaving. We were drinking strong Chinese liquor (which I don't enjoy much normally — I'm a wine and beer guy — but the bottle we had here was top-shelf stuff, and even I could appreciate the difference) before we switched to pijiu later. At banquets, tablewide toasts are supplemented by ones between just two individuals: Wong and I drank a toast to Ling, and then another one to C***o. I drink enough without getting more than slightly tipsy that I now feel up to a real challenge: Hyoung Su and I are planning to go out drinking together next weekend.

Return to the South Gate Restaurant

2007-11-16T05:44:00.000-08:00

Ever since the English Club took me to that restaurant outside the campus's South Gate, I've been wanting to take C***o and R****i there, and we finally made it there tonight. C***o ordered, with some suggestions from me based on my prior visit, and I paid the minimal check. I had guessed that the place serves mostly Northeastern food, and I was right; it turns out the owner is from Changchaun, Ling and C***o's home town.

C***o ordered so much that we took home leftovers — that doesn't seem to happen much here (the uneaten food usually just goes to waste). We had the sauteed shredded potatoes that are popular in the Northeast, as well as a lamb and scallions dish, chicken and mushrooms, and the pork moo shoo that I had enjoyed so much with the English Club. After C***o and I drank about half of the bottle of wine I bought her in Hong Kong a week ago (Rongli doesn't care much for western wine), we also polished off a couple of large (one pint) Tsingtaos. The bill came to 78 yuan — just over $10. Back home, the beers alone would cost more than that. And，of course, dining outdoors in mid-Novmeber is a treat in itself. Is it any wonder that I'm already beginning to get glum about my departure in a couple of weeks?

From Mountain to Sea

2007-11-15T16:34:00.000-08:00

It was another gorgeous day Wednesday — every day since we returned from Hong Kong last Friday has been sunny and in the 70s — so I decided to make that return visit to Jin Shan Park in Zhuhai that I've been promising myself. This time, instead of riding to the top, I walked up a long, steep series of stone steps . . .

. . . under the cable cars . . .

. . . and past the toboggan that I'd taken down the mountainside a few weeks ago.

The view from the top looking to the north was just as impressive as it had been the first time (although perhaps it paled a bit after viewing Hong Kong from Victoria Peak last weekend).

Since I was by myself this time I had a bit more time to explore the summit, and I noticed another route down, this one on the southern side of the peak, which I decided to take for variety's sake. The view wasn't quite as interesting as the one to the north, if only because the buildings were further away.

The southern descent was much longer but more gentle, althoough the unevenly spaced steps made it a bit tricky to navigate at points. A spot about halfway down afforded a good view of the summit and the toboggan tracks. As I descended I noticed several smaller paths off to the side, all paved and most with steps. It's not exactly Runyon Canyon, but for an urban climb it's not too shabby.

The trail came out on the other side of that pond with the child-devouring plastic bubbles. I crossed the street and reached Haibin Park, a pleasant but nondescript park I'd visited on my first solo trip to Zhuhai.

I cut through the park and crossed a four-lane highway to reach the South China Sea.

Nearby was the Fisher Girl statue, one of Zhuhai's most popular attractions. The pearl she's holding over her head is the symbol of the city: Zhuhai means "Pearl City," and pearls are still farmed to the north of here.

If this highway is Zhuhai's Lake Shore Drive, this must be Oak Street Beach.

It's so popular to take wedding pictures — with the bride and groom in full western garb — by the ocean that a whole section of the beach is devoted to the activity.

Just like on Lake Shore Drive, exclusive-looking high-rise apartment buildings line the road overlooking the water.

Sometimes it's hard to make sence of what I see here.

I had planned to just walk along the sea until I started to tire, then take a cab to Gongbei to catch the bus back to campus. But the stroll was so pleasant (despite the cars whizzing by) and the day so nice that I just kept going.

After a couple of kilometers I reached the Lovers Road, where the seaside path widened and a narrow parkway separated it from the busy street. (As I mentioned last month, the name was suggested by premier Li Peng after he observed the many amorous couples strolling there.)

I timed my walk well: The sun was setting just as I approached Gongbei. (The buildings to the left on the horizon are Macau; Gongbei is to the right.) I figure I must have walked 8 or 10 km, not even counting my trek up and down Jin Shan Mountain.

As I discovered last week, Gongbei is even more lively after dark (although my photographic ability is unfortunately diminished; but click on the pictures to enlarge them for more detail). I walked to the bus stop through a section I hadn't explored before — a wide back alley between two larger streets — and discovered a vast dining district with rows of restaurants, all with tables outdoors.

A bit further on, the alley opened up into a sort of plaza with dozens of tables, all served by restaurants off to the sides. The diners were eating some fantastic-looking dishes — one group was enjoying a huge fish covered with a thick, rich sauce that was served right in the wok — but even I didn't have the chutzpah to walk up to the table and take a photo.

All of the amazing and varied food came out of a series of small, sparsely appointed kitchens like this one. I continued on to the bus stop, pleased with the discovery that even after all my weeks here, I could still stumble upon a scene exotic enough to stop me in my tracks.

It Might as Well Be Springs

2007-11-13T02:54:00.000-08:00

Today the wife of Mr. Wong, the president of the college, invited C***o, R****i, and me to go back to the Ocean Hot Springs Resort that I had visited a few weeks ago. I thought of trying to get out of it — although I'd enjoyed myself there, I didn't feel compelled to make a return visit — but it's bad form to turn invitations down here, especially ones from such a highly placed source, so I figured I might as well accept.

And as it turned out, I think I had a better time there today than I had on my initial visit. That seems to be true of a lot of things I do here in China: When I repeat something I've already done and I don't have to worry about learning the ropes or committing a cultural blunder, I enjoy myself more. When I pay a return visit to a town, I no longer have to fret about taking the wrong bus or getting off at the wrong stop. And despite the problems with my visa, my second day in Macau, when I began to know my way around, was much more satisfying than my first.

In addition to getting to spend more time in my favorite pools — mostly the herb-infused whirlpools — I also did a couple of things today that I had missed out on the first time around: We sat in a pool where hundreds of tiny fishes nibble at your skin (and I defy even the most skilled wordsmith to adequately describe that sensation!), and we all had half-hour foot massages (afterward I said that my feet felt so good I didn't want to ruin it by using them, and asked if they could arrange for someone to carry me; it's risky to make jokes like that in China, though, because there's a real chance they'll take you seriously and either think you're crazy or rush out to find someone to comply with your demand — or both!).

Afterward we had a quick meal in the resort's restaurant — C***o had to get back to teach an evening class. Once again I left my camera in the loocker room, and it's too bad because we had a couple of dishes from Guangdong province that I hadn't seen before. But I suspect my fellow diners were glad to escape my eccentric habit of photographing my food before eating it.

An Unexpected Encounter

2007-11-12T02:54:00.000-08:00

I was on my way back from getting a haircut in the strip mall near the campus South Gate when I glimpsed something I hadn't previously seen in my five weeks here — a fellow laowei. I'd noticed a few westerners at the mall and the supermarket in Zhuhai city, and they were more common in Shenzhen and Macau (and of course Hong Kong is swarming with them); but this was the first one I'd seen in the environs of the campus.

We both did slight double-takes and then struck up a conversation. Turns out he's lived with his wife, who's from Zhuhai, in the apartments next to the strip mall (I photographed a chicken coop there in my early wanderings around the area and posted it on the blog) for three years. He seems like an interesting fellow: He's an international "venture consultant" who was in the Marines in the early 1970s, is trained as a cultural anthropologist, and says that for several decades he hasn't lived in any country for more than two years until he came to China.

Even though we chatted for nearly an hour, I didn't really get to find out that much about him (and he didn't express all that much interest in me) because he was busy pontificating about a vast range of subjects, from doing business with the Chinese to the works of anthropologist Gregory Bateson. I joked that after lecturing to my students for over a month, it was refreshing to be on the receiving end. He might be full of hot air, but he did have a lot of facts at his disposal and I did learn quite a bit from him, from the macro (China's policies on alternative energy) to the micro (the grocery and restaurants outside the South Gate only opened a few weeks before I arrived here).

I'm a bit curious about how he wound up here (not just in China or in Zhuhai, but in a fairly remote area that must have been even more undeveloped when he came here) and how he met his wife (who was standing by patiently the whole time but contributed little to the conversation despite my occasional efforts to include her). He's also got some sort of business scheme brewing, but he wanted to keep the details under his hat, and I wasn't particularly interested in prying into it anyway. In any case, we traded e-mail addresses, and we'll probably get together for dinner next week, either at one of the samll restaurants in the strip mall or a Szechuan one he knows in San Zao; so I'll probably learn more about what brought him here then.

Shenzhen to Hong Kong

2007-11-10T16:46:00.000-08:00

Despite being kept awake by the rowdy students in the international dorm, I woke up early Friday morning so I decided to explore the campus a bit. As I mentioned in my previous post, the lake in the center of the caampus — less than a block from our dorm — is surprisingly scenic. It would seem downright bucolic if it weren't for the skyscrapers in the background.

With such an attractive view of the lake, I'd assumed this building was faculty housing; but it turned out to be a student dormitory.

As I circled the lake I saw, and heard, maybe 20 students standing at water's edge, reading aloud from their English textbooks — and this was before 7 a.m.!

I'm going to suggest this technique in my classes; such solo declamation exercises seems to be a good way to gain the confidence to speak loudly, something my shy, insecure students have a problem with.

Before we left for Hong Kong, Gao took us to a nearby dim sum restaurant. He was surprised when I told him how popular dim sum was back home, and I expressed my vast happiness at his taking me here — otherwise I would have missed out on the chance to have dim sum in the region where it originated.

As you'd expect, the dim sum here beat just about any that I've had in the States (although one memorable meal I had at Harbor Village in Monterey Park matched it for variety and perhaps even quality). Two more rounds of dishes followed these, including the best chicken feet I've ever had.

This concoction of sweetened liquid taro under a taro crust is the best taro dish I've ever had; come to think of it, it's probably the only taro dish I've ever liked at all.

Getting to Hong Kong from Shenzhen is a breeze: Take the city's new subway (it opened in 2004) to the border, go through immigration (the process was a bit speedier than it had been when enetering Macau), then hop on a train that leaves every five minutes or so for Kowloon. The train passes through the New Territories, a vast rural area that serves as a weekend getaway for urbanites; from what I've read (and saw from the train), the region is urbanizing rapidly.

In Kowloon we transferred to the subway to Hong Kong Island, where we'd take the tram to the top of Victoria Peak — one of the two things I'd insisted we do in our brief day in Hong Kong. Now that we were somewhere where English is spoken widely (and C***o and R****i's Mandarin wasn't always understood), I was taking over as guide — as well as host, since I had plenty of HK currency left from my trip to Macau, as well as an ATM card that I could use to obtain more.

There's a Madame Tussaud's in the galleria on the peak; this figure of Hong Kong's biggest star greeted the crowds lined up for the tram.

The tram hauling passengers to the peak — the highest point in the territory — has been running since 1888.

The view from the peak was stunning. It was amazing to be able to gaze down on the tops of the tall skyscrapers we'd seen from the street below.

Expensive houses line the peak, even near the summit (in Hong Kong movies, this is where the wealthy mob bosses and drug lords always seem to live).

Descending to the street, we took a cab to the pier for the Star Ferry to Kowloon — the other must-do in Hong Kong.

The view looking back at Hong Kong Island is iconic.

Disembarking in Kowloon, we wandered down Salisbury Road (going past the famous Peninsula Hotel), turning north on Nathan Road, the area's main north-south drag. By this time, C***o and R****i's energy was flagging — they hadn't been as enthusiastic about seeing Hong Kong in the first place as I had — so we veered in the direction of the terminal for the ferry that would take us back to Zhuhai. I had hoped to get to the markets further north, which I remembered fondly from my initial trip to Hong Kong ten years ago (Ling and I were here shortly before the handover in 1997); but I didn't particularly mind heading back early, because by that time I knew I'd be coming back for a solo return visit — this one overnight — before I left China.

By the end of the 70-minute ferry ride to Zhuhai, I was ready to head back to campus. But C***o and R****i wanted to spend a few hours shopping in Gongbei (prices in Hong Kong are prohibatively high for mainlanders, which was one reason they were less eager to hit the markets there than I was). As it turned out, I was glad we stayed in Zhuhai, because it gave me a chance to see how lively Gongbei is at night. Since C***o and R****i hadn't been there before, I continued to serve as guide, showing them the shopping areas I'd previously frequented by day (including the underground Port Plaza mall).

There's a bar street in Gongbei that was pretty dead in the daytime, but I knew would be a raucous scene after dark. A couple of dozen stalls like this offer outdoor imbibing year-round.

A side street jutting off from the one with the bars . . .

. . . had six or eight restaurants that all had outdoor and indoor dining.

C***o and R****i picked a Szechuan place . . .

. . . that served a nice, spicy boiled fish. It's a treat to still be dining outdoors in November.

On the bus back to campus a bunch of students recognized me from my lectures — I'm easy to recognize — and we had a nice chat (as an English instructor I'm never off-duty). As much as I enjoy exploring China, after all the traveling I've done this week I'll be quite quite contant to stick close to campus this weekend.

Zhuhai to Shenzhen

2007-11-09T22:06:00.000-08:00

The school held a big campus-wide sports event on Thursday and Friday — students from the various departments competed against each other in various games — so C***o, R****i, and I took advantage of the cancelation of classes to travel to Shenzhen — the huge, thriving city that was the first of China's Special Economic Zones — and Hong Kong. After my travel travails earlier in the week, I was perfectly willing to let the two of them arrange the itinerary and handle the bookings.

We took an early-morning bus to Zhuhai, where we caught a high-speed ferry for the hour-long voyage to Shenzhen . . .

. . . where we were met at the ferry terminal by Mr. Gao, a colleague of Ling's and C***o's from back when Ling was teaching at Jilin University. He took us to a swanky hotel for lunch at a fancy buffet that was loaded with not only Chinese dishes but other Asian fare like salmon sashimi, maki, and Malaysian skewers as well as a few Western items. Just for variety, I supplemented my selection of Asian food with a plate of leafy lettuce from the salad bar and several rolls from the bread basket (crusty bread is one of the things I've missed here the most). It was the first time I'd used a knife and fork in five weeks.

We then were given a brief tour of downtown Shenzhen, which was enough to confirm what I'd read about the city: Compared to the rest of China, it's a soulless place that's given itself over to Mammon. Since being designated an SEZ iun 1979, it's burgeoned from a tiny fishing village to a metropolis of over 9 million. With a few horizontal exceptions like a massive government bulding and an even larger exhibition hall, the central area is nothing but office towers. Even the most modern sections of central Beijing and Shanghai have older structures interspersed among the new ones; but without the signage, there'd be nothing much in downtown Shenzhen to indicate that you were in China — or anyplace in particular. It's even largely barren of the subtropical plam trees that are everywhere else in the region.

Gao is dean of Shenzhen University's International Office. The school was founded in 1983 and Gao joined the faculty in 1987, which makes him something of a pioneer here. He proudly showed us around the campus, which is quite a contrast with the college in Zhuhai where I'm teaching: Unlike the sterile, utilitarian architecture, sparse and unimaginative landscaping, and flattened topography of Jilin University Zhuhai College, SZU has an impressive variety of buildings, plenty of trees lining the streets (including a small section of forest they left intact in the center of the campus), and gentle hills that don't impede the students' bicycles. Where the dormitories in Zhuhai are identical, massive barracks lined up next to one another, the ones at SZU are smaller facilities scattered around the grounds. Even the artificial lake — a requisite for campuses here, I'm guessing — is genuinely charming, unlike Zhuhai's rather dull version. Around 30,000 students are enrolled, about twice as many as JUZC.

The library was the campus's very first building, constructed in 1987, and the exterior is remarkably like the Brutalist style of Walter Nesch's libraries at the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago from the same period.

The growth of the university has been such that they're constructing a new library, across from the existing one; Gao said the old facility will continue to be used once the new one opens.

Inside, the library looked much like modern ones in the States (and better-maintained than many). It holds well over 3 million volumes, along with many electronic resourses — another vast contrast with Zhuhai College (whose library I've been embarrassed to blog about, although I expect to get to it before I leave).

I would like to have taken a full tour of the library, but that wasn't high on anyyone else's agenda. I did notice a lot of public-access computers, OPACs, and these self-checkout stations.

Gao put us up overnight in the dorm that houses international students as well as foreign faculty — and this was one area in which Zhuhai seesm to outshine SZU: My faculty apartment in Zhuhai is new and spacious, but this room was something of a dump. True, it was on one of the students' floors, but I got the impression that the faculty quarters were little better. And I was unpleasantly surprised by something I'd never expect in Zhuhai: rowdy students carousing until well after midnight. I was told the next morning that they were the international dorm's Korean students; the behavior did strike me as very un-Chinese (or at least un-Chinese-student) .

After settling into our rooms, we went out to explore the surroundings outside the campus. While C***o and R****i browsed at a department store, I wandered the streets, but I didn't find any markets or particularly interesting shops (of course, it's all relative — if this were my initial visit to China, I'm sure I would have found every storefront fascinating; but at this point it takes more than a kitschy botique or a downhome-looking restuarant to divert me. The only thing I found worth photographing was this fellow selling pastries he made on a burner on the back of his bicycle.

I'd been hoping to do some serious shopping while in Shenzhen —there's an area near the border where Hong Kong residents, as well as foreigners like me, come to buy cheap knockoff clothing and DVDs; but once again, that wasn't on anyone's agenda but mine. And unfortunately, I don't foresee coming back to Shenzhen, at least not on this visit to China.

I met up with C***o and R****i at a Yunan restaurant where we had a simple dinner of noodles, and then we headed back to our dorm and turned in early so we could get an early start the next morning (for all the good that did us, thanks to the noisy students).

Next: Shenzhen to Hong Kong.

More Macau

2007-11-06T23:16:00.000-08:00

After settling into the Holiday Hotel for my enforced sojourn in Macau, I set off to explore the neighborhood, and to try — unsuccessfully — to find an Internet cafe to let C***o know what had happened (I was scheduled to have lunch with her and some other faculty on Tuesday; fortunately, my next class wasn't until Wednesday).

If Macau's known for one thing, it's its casinos. Hong Kong residents have long flocked here to gamble (any HK film fans remember the God of Gamblers movies?), but now many mainlanders and foreigners come as well.

Local tycoon Stanley Ho had a 40-year monopoly on casinos here, but recently the scene has been opened up to deep-pocketed competitors like Vegas's Steve Wynn, who opened this gargantuan one last year.

Closer to my hotel, there were small shopping streets leading from the Lardo do Senado with food stands, electronics stores, and clothing stores like this one. I guess "Ick" means something different in Cantonese.

Many of the food stands sell these strips of dried, sweetened pork and other meats.

When you apply for a Hello Kitty Visa card, you also get a Hello Kitty rice cooker.

Many of the restaurants have tanks of fish in front, from which customers select their meal before entering.

I got an early start the next morning — even the side street where my hotel was located sees a constant flow of noisy motor scooters. I had breakfast at a Starbucks in the Lardo that I figured would be filled with toursists and Western businessmen, but turned out to be occupied largely by locals. The coffee and apple strudel were a bit pricy — about like back home — but I got to enjoy an International Herald-Tribune — the first I'd seen since my last trip abroad — as well as the song stylings of Bonnie Raitt and James Taylor.

After breakfast I spent a couple of hours in the Macau Museum, which has a terrrific series of exhibits detailing the history and distinctive culture of the territory. Nearby are the Ruins of the Church of St. Paul — essentially just the facade of the building, which was destroyed by fire in 1835 (at that time it was serving as a military barracks after the Jesuits were expelled in the 1700s).

Here's what's propping it up.

You can climb to the top from the rear and enjoy the view looking down towards the Lardo.

Not too far from the ruins is the Luis de Camoes Garden, a favorite spot for locals to play games . . .

. . . and play music on erhu and pipa.

I had lunch on this block at a little Portugese reastaurant where I got a pork dish that was just okay — or maybe I'm losing my taste for Western food.

Kun Ian Temple — a half-block from the restaurant — is said to be the most active Buddhist temple in Macau. It was quite tiny compared to the massive one I visited outside Zhuhai a couple of weekends ago.

This practitioner can't put down her cell phone even when burning incense.

Behind the temple is a cemetary this includes this high-rise mausoleum.

Next I strolled to Guia Hill, the highest point on the peninsula. By this point in the day — mid-afternoon — I was tired enough that I took a cable car to the top.

The view to the south
from the peak. In the distance is the 4.5-km. bridge to Taipa Island.

Looking north towards Zhuhai, which was where I wanted to be.

The lighthouse at the top is the oldest one on the China coast.

Just enought time for one more garden, Lou Lim Ioc, a tiny gem dwarfed by the surrounding skyscrapers.

I enjoyed the chance to explore Macau in greater depth, and unlike the dissatifaction I felt the previous day with the rather inchoate sense I had of the place, my wanderings made me feel like I had developed a general familiarity with at least the central part of the peninsula. But I have to admit that in the back of my mind I was counting the hours all day until 4:30, when my visa would be ready for pickup. I had some slight trepidation that there'd be a snag and I'd be exiled from China even longer; but everything worked, and I sailed through immigration and was back on the bus to the campus less than an hour after getting the visa. While I managed to make lemonade out of my predicament, I have to admit that I had a huge sense of relief to get back "home" to my campus apartment.

After my adventures in Macau, I wouldn't mind staying put for a while. But I previously made plans to go to Shenzhen and Hong Kong with C***o and R****i tomorrow and Friday, weather permitting (there's an all-campus sports event that preempts classses; but if it rains — and it was cloudy most of today — the classes will be back on). That'll mean I won't get back to blogging until the weekend, but I should have plenty to report then.

A Day — and Then Some — in Macau

2007-11-06T19:24:00.000-08:00

Monday I got up early and headed for Macau — right across the border from Zhuhai — for what I'd intended as a day trip; I wound up getting a lot more than I bargained for, but I'll get to that later.

Even though Macau, like Hong Kong, is ostensibly part of China now (it's officially designated a Special Administrative Region), the border crossing seemed just as bureaucratic and slow as thouse I've experienced between countries elsewhere. I waited in a long, slow-moving line for 45 minutes to exit China; a short walk in an enclosed area led me to another line where I waited for just about as long to enter Macau. Even though I'd gotten a fairly early start, the hour-long bus ride to Zhuhai from the campus plus the two slow-moving lines meant it was getting near linchtime by the time I reached Macau.

I would have taken a bus to the downtown area, but I had no local currency (both the local pataca and Hong Kong dollars are accepted here; the latter actually seems more common) and the bills the ATM gave me (HK$500, worth about US$64) were too large to break easily; so I just strolled in that direction to take in random sights.

Macau was a Portugese colony until 1999, and the architecture — as well as such infrastructural elements as cobblestoned streets and tiled sidealks (and the palm trees) — give it a distinctly Mediterranean feel, albeit with Asian aspects.

I'm guessing from the word "albergue" that this is the gate to a lodging. (Where English is the second langauge in Hong Kong, here it's obviously Portugese, which has near-parity with Chinese on signage.)

This is a school of some sort; many such impressive structures were not listed on my tourist map.

Although Macau was less Westernized than I'd expected — certainly less so than I remembered Hong Kong as being from my trip there ten years ago — upscale retail extablishments were plentiful on the main streets.

On the side streets, though, the markets and shops were much like those you'd find anywhere on the mainland.

The bright signs above many of the shops resemble those in Hong Kong.

Largo do Senado (Square of the Senate) lies in the heart of the peninsula (the urbanzied part of of Macau, connected to the mainland; there are two less-developed islands below it). The large Portugese-style buildings are now retail and hotels, aimed at tourists.

This little guy seems to be the city's mascot (Macau Mallard?); someone should tell him that it was Beijing that won the Olympics. (Actually, he's touting the Asian Indoor Games, which were held here recently.)

After wandering around largely aimlessly for most of the afternoon, I was beginning to tire and was ready to head back. Even with a map, I was having a bit of trouble navigating, and was feeling a bit frustrated that I wasn't developing more of a feel for the layout of the city. It took more than an hour to reach the border on foot, so by then I was feeling genuinely beat.

I breezed through the Macau departure station — late in the day, the lines were much shorter — but when I tried to re-enter China, I was told that my single-entry visa would not allow me to be readmitted. (I had wondered a bit if that might be the case, but figured it wouldn't be a matter of re-entry since the declared status of China and its former colonies is "One Country, Two Systems." When I'd left China I asked the clerk if I'd be able to re-enter, and he said yes; but apparently he didn't understand my question.)

I was sent back to Macau with the address of a travel agency, the China Travel Service, where I could apply for a new visa. This time I got a multi-entry one, and I paid a considerable surcharge for overnight rush service.

The travel agency also booked me a room in a small hotel at the more-than-reasonable price of HK$230 (just under US$30), which was the only bargain I found in Macau (prices tend to be pretty close to what you'd find in the States, but that's hard to shell out after a month of living on the yuen; that's why hordes of Macauites flock to Zhuhai every day to shop).

The Holiday Hotel (I had to make sure the cab driver didn't take me to the Holiday Inn) was a quite acceptable facility on a fairly quiet street in what turned out to be an ideal section of town: a block away from the lovely Portugese building in my first picture above, and a short stroll from the Largo do Senado. I was well-positioned to start the extra day that I now had to explore Macau . . . but that will have to wait till my next entry.

Any Old Port

2007-11-03T22:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday (Saturday) Professor Sun, the Foreign Langauge Department chair, and Delia (whom I'm begun calling by her actual name, Wang Jing, since everyone else does) offered to take me and a fellow foreign teacher, the one from Korea, for a bit of sightseeing. Unfortunately, they're not used to entertaining foreign visitors, since this is the first year of the department's existance, and they seemed at a bit of a loss as to where to take us. (Actually, I seem to know as much about Zhuhai attractions as they do, thanks to my research; but I didn't want to be pushy, and besides, I wanted to see what they had to offer).

Professor Sun came up with the idea of taking us to Zhuhai's seaport — not the one downtown used by the ferries and pleasure boats, but the commerical port where the big seafaring vessels dock. It was a long drive (at least 50 km from the city, out near the hot springs resort I visited last weekend) through an unappealing industrial area blighted with chemical factories and the like; and when we finally got there, we weren't allowed to enter due to security restrictions (which I'd somehow thought might be the case, but once again, I didn't want to play know-it-all).

We drove back along the seacoast and pulled off at a spot where wholesalers drive right up to the ocean in refrigerated trucks . . .

. . . and fishing boats dock there to sell their catch.

I have to say that I found this more interesting than the shipyard would likely have been. It was fun to learn how the fish markets like the ones I've seen in Zhuhai and San Jao obtain their merchandise. And they'll even sell directly to the public, if you bother to make the trek there: Professor Sun bought a fish that he'd prepare for dinner during the weekend (I didn't learn how much money he'd saved by eliminating the middleman, but it couldn't have been any fresher).

We then made the long drive back to Zhuhai, where we met a few other Foreign Language faculty for lunch at what I'd been told is one of the city's best restaurants. (I find myself using the formulation "I've been told" quite a bit, since I've got no way of verifying such things for myself.)

It's common for restaurants — especially in coastal regions — to display live seafood at the entrance, so you can select your dinner.

What's less common is to have snakes on display for the choosing. (Unfortunately, snake wasn't on our bill of fare that day.)

Inside, in the lobby, roast poulty and other items are behind glass display cases.

Upstairs in our private dining room (I've neglected to mention that at nicer restaurants — and even many everyday ones, like the place I was taken by the English Club — large groups almost invariably choose to dine in their own room rather than in the main public area), I enjoyed another unbelievable meal (I mean, without the pictures, would you believe any description I could come up with of how well I've been dining?). In my month here, I've been served many of the dishes — particularly the local specialties — repeatedly; but when it's something as delicious as these shrimp, how could I mind?

It seems like rich dishes often come second — In this case, pig ears, pig liver, and boiled eggs marinated in pig juices.

I've only included this simple-looking bowl so I could mention that it's crocodile soup.

This is the first time I've been served lamb here — it's usually eaten in the west or northeast — and I was glad to see it.

Nondescript greens, for pacing between the heavy meat dishes.

Probably the best whole steamed fish I've had here yet — and that's saying something.

Oysters on the shell, much like I had at the seaside restaurant near campus.

Steamed octopus, mild and very tender.

Mussels, just a bit spicy.

A tofu preparation; a bit bland, but lovely to look at.

Undersea snails; these always seem to be the spiciest dish of any meal at which they're served.

A selection of fried pastries came near the end of the meal. Two were savory — one had meat and some crunchy veggies, the other shrimp — and two sweet, with egg yolk or bean paste.

This pancake had a durian filling; not as noxiously pugent as the raw fruit, when cooked it has a pleasantly delicate taste, sweet and a bit nutty.

The standard fruit finale, this time a bit more elaborate by being carved into a phoenix.

As I've said after previous trips to China, there's often more food left on the table at the end of a banquet here than there is at the beginning of a meal at a Chinese restaurant back home. Surveying the damage are one of the faculty memebers and our driver. (One of the most democratic things about this country, and something I really like, is that the drivers are always invited to share in the meal rather than waiting in the car or van; and they never, never, partake in the drinking.)

The English Club

2007-11-02T16:52:00.000-07:00

Last night I was invited to dine with the campus English Club at one of the small restaurants located outside the college's South Gate. It was dark and dimly lit when we arrived, so I went back and took this picture of the place this afternoon; believe me, it's a lot more lively on a Friday night.

The first of the evening's many toasts. Hard-working Chinese students have little time to devote to extracurricular activities, so it's no surprise that the club supplements its weekly early-morning English-reading sessions by the campus lake and other academic endeavors with social outings like this. The tall fellow with the Beatle haircut is the group's chairman; seated next to him is his girlfriend, whom the others joshed by calling her his "wife."

Make no mistake: Even though the restaurant looks none-too-impressive compared to the elaborate ones I've been taken to in Zhuhai, the students eat very well when they come here. The first dish was chicken and mushrooms in broth with wide translucent noodles.

It was followed by very tender pieces of beef cooked with hot red peppers. (The first two courses led me to guess, correctly, that the restauarant specialized in northeastern fare.)

This dish is called "fire fish," and it's cooking in the foil after it's been put on the table — although you can't see them in the picture, it's enveloped in flames.

Unveiled, it turns out to have a crisp crust flavored with a slightly spicy sweet-and-sour sauce.

A mild dish with green veggies, unseasoned pieces of chicken, and I forget what else. (I should have taken notes, I guess, but my constant photographing makes me seem eccentric enough without jotting down recipes as well.)

Shrimp on skewers, and plenty of them.

Breaded, deep-fried squid, almost as common on tables here as those small boiled shrimp.

Batter-dipped fried bananas. This dish is usually prepared with sweet potatoes, or occasionally apples; but considering the plentitude of bananas in these parts, this version makes sense.

Of course, there were all kinds of toasts going on while we were noshing down. Defying their club's name, the members didn't always converse in English, so I often didn't know whom or what we were drinking to — not that it mattered. (Their English actually tended to get better the more they drank; it loosened their inhibitions without appreciably lessening their vocabulary.)

Fried tofu, creamy-soft on the inside. Another mild dish.

Chicken with celery.

Moo shu pork, eaten wrapped in the accompanying pancakes. I haven't had this dish in a while; I'd forgotten how tasty it can be.

Eggplant casserole.

Just like the grown-ups, the kids keep ordering long after everyone's hunger has been slaked; I thnk we barely touched this final chicken dish.

The chairman challenges me to gambei — Bottoms up!

The girls keep up with the boys — And, by the way, I explained to them that in America you were considered to be an independent adult once you're in college, so it's insulting to be called a "girl." They saw my point and took it under advisement, but I don't think my little English-usage lesson is going to alter anyone's vocabulary. And truth to tell, most of them are so girly-girlish that it's hard to call them anything else.

The evening's winding down, but there's still pijiu left to finish.

One final toast, and it's back to the dorms. Even though I was sober — Honest! — they insisted on walking me back to my apartment to make sure I got home safely. I found their solicitude sweet (if maybe just a wee bit cloying). The evening was tremendous fun: I was flattered by the rapt attention the students paid my every word and touched by their gestures of friendship; I'm certain I'll remember that long after I've forgotten how delicious the food was.

Talking Pictures

2007-11-02T08:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I delivered my long-awaited (by me, at any rate) lecture on American movies. Obviously, I was eager to talk about my favorite subject, and I knew that the students would be more interested in it than they had been to hear about American newspapers or global warming.

I started by discussing the various genres that are popular in America (and elsewhere), then listed the most popular movies of last year and the all-time box-office champs. Then I talked about the most popular stars (they knew all the action stars but not the comedians like Adam Sandler and Vince Vaughn; as I explained to them, comedy doesn't translate across cultures as readily as car chases and explosions). I then talked just a bit (I restrained myself) about art movies and film festivals (telling them I'd missed my first Chicago Film Festival in over 20 years to come to China and be with them).

Not only were the students attentive, but they were far more engaged than they had been for my previous lectures. When I asked them throughout the talk if they had seen a particular movie or knew about an actor or actress, the responses came without prompting — something unprecedented in my lectures to the normally shy students. And at the end, when I opened the floor to questions, I had trouble keeping up with all the upraised hands.

There was even one guy sitting near the front who was a genuine film buff: He knew nearly every title I'd mentioned, from the latest Hollywood blockbusters (virtually everyone had seen Spider-Man and Transformers) to The Departed (which I'd made a point to mention since it's a remake of the Hong Kong cop movie Infernal Affairs/Wu Jian Dao) and The Sound of Music. He even knew Audrey Hepburn ("Roman Holiday!”he exclaimed), who's big in Japan but not here, apparently. I joked that they didn't need to fly me here from America — he could have given the lecture

I also discussed the handful of Chinese movies that have made it to America. I explained that other than an occasional big-budget anomaly like Crouching Tiger or Hero, most of them are art films that are only seen by an extremely limited audience. They failed to recognize most of the directors I mentioned: Although they knew Zhang Yimou (especially after I said that he worked with Gong Li), they were totally unfamiliar with Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Wong Kar-Wai, perhaps because they come from Taiwan and Hong Kong (although I made it a point to write down the Mandarin names of the people and films I planned to discuss).

The best-known Chinese director was Ang Lee, whose success in America is a source of great pride; I expressed regret that I'd missed seeing Love, Caution in the States, and a student told me that it had just opened at a theatre in Zhuhai (no subtitles, though, otherwise I'd probably go see it this weekend).

They were more familiar with the actors, from Chow Yun-Fat (Zhou Run-Fa) and Stephen Chow (Chow Sing Chi) to Zhang Ziyi and Tony Leung (Leung Chiu Wai). And of course, they were suitably impressed when I told them I'd had my picture taken with Jackie Chan (Cheng Lung); I only wish I'd thought to bring along a copy of the photo.

After every lecture, there are always a few students who stick around to ask questions or just practice their English. This time there was a larger group of stragglers who wanted to chat not only about American movies (I was briefly thrown when one youngster asked me if I liked "horrible movies," until I realized that he meant scary films like Saw and Final Redemption) but also about other aspects of pop culture. They asked me what kind of music I liked, and I responded with the same hoary but accurate bromide that I fell back earlier on when someone had asked me earlier if I liked martial arts movies: I only like one kind of music — good music.

Since the only American singers that the students in my classes had expressed interest in were along the lines of Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, and the Backstreet Boys, I was surprised when these kids — who obviously had more on the ball than their peers, because, hey, they sought out my opinions — told me how much they liked "Bruce." Fortunately, they didn't mean Hornsby, so I could impress them by telling them about the several times I'd seen Springsteen back home.

Some of the students who stayed to talk with me were members of the campus English Club, and they invited me to join them for dinner tonight at one of the South Gate restaurants; I accepted, of course, and will no doubt blog this weekend about the experience .

Internet Glitch

2007-10-31T21:40:00.000-07:00

Weednesday afternoon something happened to my Internet connection, and I became unable to access any websites other than a few portal-like ones, namely Yahoo and Google's news pages (although I couldn't get through on any of the latter's links to newspapers). No e-mail (Yahoo Mail was blocked, although for some reason I could access my secondary Gmail account), no blogging, no New York Times or Chicago Tribune.

It was more of an annoyance than a genuine cause for concern, because I figured that like most such snafus here, it would prove to be temporary. And sure enough, when I returned from my morrning class today, everything seemed normal again. Frequent glitches like this are just an inevitable fact of life here, but it drives home just how tenuous my connection to the outside world is.

Last night I turned down the opportunity to go to Guangzhou for a visit: C***o is teaching a couple of classes there this weekend and asked me if I wanted to come along. I didn't really have much choice: The bus leaves at 11:40, so I'd have to blow off the last half-hour of my Friday-morning class, which I don't think I could do in good conscience (C***o will have to leave her class early as well, but since she's committed to the Guangzhou classes, she's got no other choice).

Maybe it's just as well: I don't know if the hotel where they're putting up C***o is in a convenient section of town, she'll be tied up in classes all day Saturday and Sunday so I'd be on my own, and going there involves a three-hour bus ride that I don't think would be much fun. But I'm probably just rationalizing: Before I learned of the problem with the bus schedule, I'd already snapped up the offer.

Anyway, the weather's turned a bit dreary and blustery (I used my umbrella today for the first time since arriving here, and it's a bit chilly as well — although nothing like what I hear it's been back home), so maybe it'll be a better weekend to stick close to home with my new stack of Dexter DVDs. And if it clears up, maybe I'll head back to Zhuhai and spend the day in Jin Shan Park or perhaps make my first visit to Macau.

Shopping in Zhuhai

2007-10-30T16:12:00.000-07:00

I made my weekly shopping trip to Zhuhai on Tuesday instead of Monday this week. The excursion has become routine enough that I didn't even bother to take any pictures this time, instead of exploring, I mostly confined my visit to a few shops that I'd already been to (although I did wander by an intriguing-looking area in Gongbei toward the coast that I hope to investigate next time I'm there).

The main item on my agenda was to pick up an additional memory card for my camera. I've taken well over 600 pictures since I've been here, enough to fill up the 512 megabyte card I'd hastily bought before leaving Chicago. I'd noticed that the underground mall in Gongbei (which I've learned is called Port Plaza) has a section of stands that sell small electronics — mostly cell phones and MP3 players — so I figured I could find camera supplies there.

I'm enough of a Chinese consumer now that I knew to always try out the product before I bought it; good thing, too, because the first two cards I tested didn't work. And I also knew to bargain, which lowered the price from 120 yuen to 90 (about $12) — pretty good for 1 gigabyte.

After that was taken care of, I headed for lunch at the same restaurant I'd dined at last week. I remembered seeing a chicken curry and rice dish there that featured large pieces of potatoes, which I've been having a hankering for and haven't been able to find in the dining hall (I ordered a steam-table item there that looked like it had potatoes, but they turned out to be large pieces of pork fat). As a bonus, the curry was accompanied by slightly undercooked julienned potatoes, a common side dish here.

I then swung by the two Port Plaza DVD stores to take a closer look at their stock. One of them had a nice selection of 1930s foreign films that I hadn't noticed last week — everything from Ozu's first talkies to French features by Marcel Carne — but I'm apprehensive about whether they're subtitled; I'll probably try one out later, when I'm feeling more experimental. This time out, I picked up a couple of box sets of cable TV series. I don't usually try bargaining at mall stores — I figure if there's a price sticker, the amount is pretty well set — but I was feeling cocky after bargaining successfully for the memory card, and since the clerk who was helping me spoke pretty good English, I tried for a minor reduction from 60 yuen each down to 50 ($6.70), which he accepted.

I also picked up a few music DVDs. The Johnny Cash set is fantastic — I watched disc one last night — with clips from his 1969-71 TV show, featuring everyone from George Jones and Bill Monroe to Bob Dylan, Derek and the Dominoes, and Louis Armstrong. The further you are from home, the sweeter roots music sounds.

Surfacing from the underground mall, I strolled through a market area near the one that I photographed last week, where I found the sort of back alley — literally — DVD shop that sells a more limited assortment of discs that are shoddily packaged — they come in a flattened folder rather than a case, and the part-English descriptions of the contents are often amusingly baffling — and notoriously unreliable, but significantly cheaper than the mall stores: only 5 yuen (65 cents) rather than 15. Unfortunately. most of the American movies they carry (about half the stock is Chinese and Korean, with very little chance of those being subtitled) are action or horror movies, which I have no interest in picking up, even at that price. But I did buy these two — I watched Spidey last night — and I'll probably go back when I have more time to browse.

On the way back to the bus stop I decided to drop into a large modern supermarket that had impressed me when I took a quick look at it last week. I only bought a few things: some cleaning supplies, a couple of cans of import beer, a Heineken for 70 cents and an expensive Guinness at $1.20; and a freshly baked crusty baguette. And since James Fallows raved on his blog chronicling his stint in China (thanks to Ben for reminding me to check it out) about the deep-fried peanuts and the peanut butter here, I decided to buy a jar of Jiffy as well as a bag of the nuts. So last night I had my first non-Chinese meal since I've been here: a peanut butter sandwich.

A Day in the Country

2007-10-29T17:03:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning I tagged along with C***o and her friends on what I'd been told was going to be simply a trip to a hot springs resort; but I was either insufficiently informed or plans were changed — both often seem to be the case here — because it turned out to be a more more elaborate excursion than I'd anticipated.

Our first stop was Jin Tai Si, a Buddhist temple maybe 10 or 12 miles outside of Zhuhi (or maybe more; my sense of direction failed me all day long, and I've been unable to lay my hands on a map — there seems to be a Chinese cultural antipathy towards using them — to get a sense of my whereabouts).

The temple is a modern recreation of one that had been destroyed; I wasn't told when, but I can only assume it was during the Cultural Revolution. Unlike smaller temples I've been to in the north, which strike me as only existing for the scattering of tourists they attract, this one seems to fulfill a genuine religious purpose; while we were there we witnessed a ceremony with dozens of chanting monks and a large number of visitors participating.

The temple is situated high above a large and scenic reservoir. C***o is flanked by one of her oldest friends, who's teaching at the college in Zhuhai now, and the former student who's been showing us around.

After leaving the temple we drove through the countryside — for how long or in what direction, I have no idea whatsoever — stopping in a small town called Doumen to purchase some fruit.

After driving some more, we stopped in another small town, Lianxi, to stretch our legs. Even though there wasn't anything particularly special about the place, I loved the look of it . . .

. . . especially the homes along the quiet canal that stretched through the town.

I could have spent hours wandering around the town, just shooting simple scenes like this.

We had lunch in a nearby restaurant, chosen so I could sample rustic food. Before the meal, by the way, the custom — especially in rural areas or elsewhere where the sanitation might be even more suspect than usual — is to rinse your chopsticks, bowl, and glassware with the tea that's already on the table; the Chinese have a strong faith in the antiseptic properties of tea. The large blue bowl here is for dumping the germ-laden tea.

Although my presence did draw some interest from the restaurant staff (not from other customers, as we had the place all to ourselves), I wasn't the first laowei they'd ever served: The manager explained that they'd once had a black visitor who remains a source of amazement to this day — He was dark everywhere, she marvelled, except his teeth. So after that, you might say that my own exoticism paled.

The first course was this egg dish (which someone sampled before I could get a pristine shot of it).

It was followed by this bland, starchy vegertable that I've seen frequently (particularly in the dining hall) but can't identify. Do any of my Chinese readers recognize it?

Instead of one large whole fish, we were served a half-dozen smaller ones.

These are river crabs — much harder to come by than the ocean variety, I was told.

These were the first jumbo shrimp that I've been served here — and they tasted every bit as good as they look.

This chicken dish struck me as the most rustic-seeming item: It had the scrawny, stringy texture and intense flavor of fresh-killed poultry, and the dish included every part of the bird, including the feet (well, maybe not the beak — but just because I didn't notice it didn't mean it wasn't there).

After lunch we drove through the countryside some more. I found the rural scenes extraordinary: lush farmlands dotted with small ponds, clusters of tiny homes that look like they date back a century (but some so ramshackle that they didn't look like they'd remain standing another week), and such sights as a massive flock of ducks covering the entire surface of a pond or a huge ox lying in thick black mud to cool itself. At one point we drove down a dirt road where the dust that coated the surrounding trees and plants made the passing scene look like a black-and-white movie.

At the same time, I had to remember that all this was in the environs of Zhuhai, a city that's fast-growing even by China's dizzying standards. We never drove too far before we were confronted with a disheartening sign of how quickly this bucolic scene was likely to change: a cleared patch of former farmland here, a newly built factory there.

If I'd been on my own, I would have been stopping the car every few hundred yards to photograph the sights. The area is such a paradise for a frustrated amateur photographer that I'm hoping someday to hatch a plan wehere I can return to document the region — in detail and at leisure — before it's altogether vanished at the hands of development.

Finally, at close to 4, we arrived at the Ocean Hot Springs Resort. I left my camera in the locker room — I didn't think it was waterproof, and as it turned out, photography was prohibited in the facilities anyway. Too bad, though, because it was a pretty impressive spread. The entrance to the main building, pictured here, only hints at its massive size. Inside, once you purchase your admission in the spacious lobby and pass through the locker rooms, you enter a large multitiered area with numerous mineral-water pools fed by the springs. Off to one side is a hallway with a sauna, steam room, and the Dead Sea Pool, a salt-water bath whose buoyancy lets you float effortlessly.

Outside there's a large pool with a waterfall and grotto that seems patterned after the one at Miami's Fountainbleu Hotel. Nearby are a water slide, a kiddie pool, and a long, narrow pool that's good for swimming abbreviated laps. Past that section lies an assortment of maybe two-dozen small whirlpools, each infused with a different health- or beauty-promoting substance, from Chinese herbs like ginseng to milk, coffee, and red wine (and those who have sampled Chinese wine will agree that this is a far better purpose for it than drinking it). Beyond those are several more small whirlpools that contained the only water that I'd label genuinely hot, like a Japanese ofuro; the others ranged from tepid (the large outdoor pool) to pleasantly warm (the main-building pools).

After taking a dip in each section, we changed from our swimsuits into modified kung-fu outfits and went to a lounge area on the third floor of the main building, where we relaxed on chaises overlooking the outdoor pool and, beyond it, the South China Sea and made a dinner out of the free-with-admission tropical fruit provided to guests.

Once we'd stuffed ourselves we returned to the locker rooms. I'd thought we were going to leave and had even taken a shower when Rongli communicated to me to change back into my swimsuit. We made the circuit of all the pools (except the big outdoor one) again before finally heading for home. We'd stayed at the resort for five hours, which I guess wasn't inordinate considering that it was phenominally expensive by Chinese standards: 168 yuen — over $22! Still, I was surprised that after all that time in the water, my whole body wasn't pruney rather than just my fingers.

Between Saturday's activities in Zhuhai and Sunday's excursion in the country, it was an exhuasting weekend, so I decided to skip my weekly Monday shopping trip to Zhuhai; at any rate, I needed to stay home and write this Thursday's lecture.

A Pair of Parks

2007-10-28T07:15:00.000-07:00

After lunch at Mr. Jeung's hotel Saturday, a former student of C***o's — she got her master's in public administration two years ago and now has a good government job — met us there to show us some of Zhuhi. Our first stop was Jin Shan Park, which consists mainly of a small mountain in the heart of the city (sort of like Mount Royal in Montreal).

More rules. In case it's not legible, #6 forbids that dangerous-sounding "bustup," as well as "hitting the pipe and superstition."

Cigarettes kill. . . and vice versa.

I would have preferred to walk to the top of the mountain to enjoy the scenery, but we opted for the cable car (ski lift, actually) instead.

The peak provides a panoramic view of the city, which looks particularly modern and gleaming from this vantage.

You can take the cable car back down, or — if you're in a hurry — ride a toboggan. . .
. . . which takes a winding path all the way down the mountain. The menfolk chose the toboggan, which was definitely high-speed but — since it hugged the ground and didn't have any steep dips — turned out to be a lot less scary than a roller coaster.

At the bottom was a pleasant pond enjoyed mostly by family groups. . .

. . .where you can envelop your children in a large plastic sphere and cast them upon the waters. . .

. . .in what I guess is a kind of Prisoner theme park.

Leaving Jin Shan, we drove to New Yuan Ming Palace, a 1990s reproduction of a palace in Beijing that was destroyed during the Opium Wars. It's actually a bit less kitschy than it sounds, more like the modern reconstructions of palaces in Japan that were destroyed by fires or earthquakes than a theme park.

The park has other period-looking buildings and other attractions set around a large lake.

Costumed performers provide entertainment on boats, but we arrived just as this one was setting off.

The kitsch apparantly comes at a kiddie park, Lost City, off to one corner of the grounds.

Judging from this bizarre-looking character, the theme park didn't license — or appropriate — any existing properties.

After the huge lunch at Mr. Jeung's, tonight we went for a simple meal of soft tofu, dumplings, and buns at an outdoor cafe at the park.

The evening's entertainment was staged at a large outdoor ampitheatre.

The show, which depicted various Chinese dynasties through music and dance, was a cross between a Chinese costume epic and a Las Vegas revue, reminiscent of the fare seen on the television variety shows here. It also featured (in front of and to the side of the stage) warriors on horseback and cannon fire.

The world-famous drum dance.

Off to the side was another stage — more like a movie set — that featured a martial arts performance complete with flying swordsmen on wires.

The program was to be followed by another, competely different show, but we all felt like we'd seen (more than) enough, so we headed back to campus. But the weekend was only half over; Sunday turned out to be even more interesting, as my next entry will reveal.

Mr。Jeung's Restaurant，Close-Up

2007-10-27T07:14:00.000-07:00

Some readers of this blog -- you know who you are -- have requested more coverage of the food I'm enjoying here, with a specific request for close-up photos of some of the dishes. Yesterday's activities made it easy for me to comply, because I enjoyed a sumptuous lunch at the hotel in Zhuhai owned by Ling's old classmate, Mr. Jeung.

The room we dined in was particularly nice, but I only had tie to squeeze off a quick shot of it because we started in on the banquet almost immediately.

Among the diners -- there were ten of us -- were C***o's husband R****i, Mr. Jeung, and Mr. Wong, president of the college. . .

. . .as well as Mrs. Jeung and their daughter Kara, who's majoring in business at a university in Macau.

The order of the courses in a banquet often appears to have little rhyme or reason. For instance, the richest course, this duck liver, was one of the first two dishes served, coming out nearly simultaneously...

. . .with this chicken, which looks relatively simple compared to what was to come but was amazingly favorful.

Two fried dishes followed: This perefctly done fried fish, crunchy with a bit of heat from the peppers on the outside, moist and tender on the inside. . .

. . . .and this rather bland but pleasing fried tofu.

Here's the obligatory but always welcome whole steamed fish.

Instead of the unadorned shrimps that I've been sevred nearly everywhere else, these were stir-fried with an unidentifiable ingredient; it looked sort of like seaweed, but you don't eat it -- it's just for flavor.

Stewed melon.

Some sort of greens (it wouldn't be a banquet here without at least a few dishes I couldn't identify).

Delicious mussels, stir-fried with peppers and other spices; much like the dish I had at the seaside restaurant a few days earlier, but even tastier.

Short ribs.

Ox tails, but prepared differently than I've ever had them before: Lightly battered and fried.

We were given individual cups of a mild fish soup as the meal was winding down (soup here is typically but not always served late in the meal, to aid digestion).

The small, unassuming yellow buns were one of the high points of the entire meal. A perfectly balanced study in contrasts: the soft, slightly sweet dough against the filling of mildly savory crabmeat and slightly crunchy veggies. The fact that the dough had a bit of salt and the crabmeat a little sweetness provided added nuance. They came at the end of the meal -- right before the plate of watermelon, cantelope, and grape tomatoes that's typically served as dessert -- and by that time nobody was very interested in eating any more, which meant that I had no competition in polishing off four of them myself.

If I look happy and content here at the end of the banquet, is it any wonder? The lunch was just the beginning of a jam-packed day in Zhuhai, but the rest will have to wait till the next entry. . . .

Week Three Report

2007-10-26T17:55:00.001-07:00

Just finished my third week of duties here. I feel pretty confident about how things are going: My students seem to be getting something out of the classses (although it's awfully hard to tell sometimes), and the lectures continue to be well-attended. That confidence serves as a welcome balance to the insecurity that comes from not being to understand what anyone around me is saying most of the time.

My third campuswide lecture was on the environmental movement in the United States. The turnout was down just a bit from my previous two SRO speeches -- the lecture hall wasn't quite filled -- but that was because I was competing with a presentation on the recently completed 17th Communist Party Congress that students were strongly encouraged to attend.

I had hoped the students might be engaged by this topic: I'd seen small signs that there was an inkling of an environmental consciousness here, although, as I've said, this is a hard country in which to practice green principles. However, when it came time for the Q&A, I had even more difficulty encouraging participation than before, especially getting the all-important first question (after the initial student sticks her neck out, subsequent ones are just a bit less reluctant). There are three factors working against me: a general shyness on the part of the students, a lack of confidence in their English-speaking ability, and a the fact that the traditional mode of instruction here doesn't seem to allow for much back-and-forth; the students are pretty much used to just being lectured to without asking questions or making comments in return.

However, I did eventually manage to get enough responses to fill out the half-hour I'd slotted for audience participation, mostly by wheedling and cajoling。I seem to be getting better at thinking on my feet in these situations: I came up with the idea of asking them what they would do to improve the environment if they were premier of China, which prompted some interesting if not-quite-spirited responses. And one girl actually brought up a point I'd meant to mention in my lecture but had forgotten: the disposable chopsticks you get in the dining hall and nearly everyplace else in China -- I could've hugged her!

As in previous weeks, though, after the lecture about a dozen students stuck around to engage me in conversation; they're far more willing to ask questions on a one-on-basis than to stand up in front of a crowd. One boy asked me the pointed question I'd been expecting and halfway hoping for: How can the United States ask China, as a developing country, to take expensive steps to reduce pollution that it hadn't made during its own development. I've already pondered this privately, and my response was heartfelt and genuine: True, it's absolutely unfair to expect China to limit coal-buring power plants and reduce auto emissions when the U.S. itself isn't even willing to take necessary actions in those areas. However, I love China, and I hate to see it making the same mistakes that America would have been far better off avoiding. And besides, I added, the pollution in Beijing is far worse than anything I've experienced in America (as the world is likely to see during the Olympics next year; perhaps I should have mentioned how much face the country is going to lose if the air quality is as bad as seems inevitable).

I don't think I have to worry about the turnout for my next lecture, which will be on American movies. Every time I mentioned the topic to my classes, and when I annouced it at the end of this week's talk, a huge collective "Ah!" went up (which is a delightful sound to hear). Obviously, the topic is close to my heart as well; I just have to remember that the students want to hear about Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts, and not Martin Scorsese and Orson Welles.

A Lot of Fruit for a Little Loot

2007-10-26T16:47:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd take a break from raving about the meals I've had in restaurants here to rave about the fruit I've been buying. This is the haul that I brought back from the campus grocery yeaterday. (I've started getting my produce from the grocery rather than the markets: Not only does it bypass the hassle of trying the undertsand the prices that they farmers are telling me, but there's a refrigerated case with cut-up portions like this pineapple and papaya.) Everything here cost me around $1.20.

I have tropical fruit for breakfast every morning, accompanied by yogurt and the Peet's coffee I brought from Chicago (the same routine Ling and I enjoy on our trips to Hawaii, except the coffee there isn't Peet's). Sometimes -- especially the day after I've had a big dinner like the one at the seaside restaurant I just blogged about -- I'll make my entire lunch or even dinner out of fruit.

In fact, I'd been planning to have an all-fruit lunch at home today -- I'd been thinking about the papaya during my class this morning -- but I stopped by the faculty room of the dining hall to see if C***o was around (that's where she prefers to take her meals: The selection's not nearly as large as in the vast rooms for students, but she hates the din there), and I couldn't resist this small steamed fish (an item I'd never seen offered there before), which only cost about 40 cents.

Seaside Dining

2007-10-25T18:08:00.000-07:00

The other night I went with some colleagues from the Foreign Langauge department to a seaside restaurant a couple of miles down the highway from the campus.

It was dusk when we arrived, I grabbed some quick shots just to show our proximity to the ocean. That's Professor Liu -- the friend of Ling and C***o's who's here from the main campus in Jilin for the semester -- on the right, with Professor Sun pouring him tea.

There were two other foreign instructors at the table besides me: The woman is from Japan, and the man from Korea (I was never formally introduced or told either of their names; at the end of the meal I exchanged business cards with the man and learned he was Hyoung Su Park of Korea University). Both of them speak fluent Mandarin, which made me feel even stupider than I usually do here.

The meal, as you'd expect, was virtually all seafood, although the platters in the foreground are a wonderful tofu dish with a sweetish sauce, and drunken chicken. That's a whole steamed fish on the left, squid with peppers in the center, and the ubitquitous scoop-'em-up shrimp on the right. We also had an oyster dish, some sort of undersea snails in a spicy sauce, crab, and a few veggies.

Ling always says I take too many photos of food in China; but as I told Hilary in an e-mail this morning, that's like saying I take too many pics of beaches and palm trees when we go to Hawaii.

DVD Bonanza

2007-10-24T21:35:00.000-07:00

When I was in Gongbei Monday, I finally found the DVD shops I'd been looking for. Shoddily packaged and otherwise iffy DVDs are widely available in the markets and even on campus, but they're nearly all recent Chinese, Korean, and U.S. hits; the type of store I was seeking offers a wider selection, arranged by category (Chinese, recent Hollywood, American classics, music videos, etc.) and professionally packaged (they don't look like bootlegs).

The DVDs in these shops cost a bit more, too, but they're still embarassingly cheap: I paid 15 yuen each (about $1.80), as opposed to anywhere from 6 to 10 yuen in the markets. And you get what you pay for: While you're taking something of a gamble with the discs in the markets (although at those prices, it's not much of a risk), with these you can be fairly confident that if they're labeled as having English subtitles they will, and they're relatively sure to play without technical hitches.

I'm always glad to find bargain-basement Criterion (or should I punctuate that "Criterion"?) DVDs in China. They almost never have all the special features — interviews, documentaries, commentaries, etc. — touted on the packaging, but enough of them remain that they're well worth the negligable price. The Stan Brakhage collection surprised me; can't see that there'd be an audience here for an experimental, nonnarrative filmmaker who's not even well-known in his own country, but at least there'd be no language barrier with his works.

Of course, I always sample the local fare when I'm here. Last night I watched Confession of Pain, a Hong Kong cop movie by the directors of Infernal Affairs starring Tony Leung, Takeshi Kaneshiro, and Shu Qi. The Banquet is a big-budget costume epic that was playing in theatres when Ling and I were here last year; I'd thought it might reach the States since it stars Zhang Ziyi, but that hasn't been the case. Likewise, I'd given up on seeing Jia Zhangke's Still Life on the big screen, so I bought the DVD. Unfortunately, it's the only one in the batch that lacks subtitles; too bad, because the film, set in the Three Gorges region, looks absolutely gorgeous, with an elegance that he had been moving toward in The World. (The disc also includes a documentary Jia shot concurrently, making my inability to view it all the more frustrating). At least I can watch the copy of The World that I bought; most of the special features are missing, although Jonathan Rosenbaum's video interview is intact.

No subtitles needed here, of course. The jazz discs are from a series of recently unearthed live performances from the 1950s and '60s. Watching the eccentric Mr. Monk on stage is always rather disconcerting — he was known for such antics as getting up from the piano and dancing oddly during the other musicians' solos — but somehow, viewing him over here seems even more strange and incongruous. On the other hand, Louis Armstrong did slam bebop by calling it "Chinese music". . . .

Return to Zhuhai

2007-10-22T05:14:00.000-07:00

On Monday I made another trip to Zhuhai, determined to find the Gongbei shopping district that had eluded me a week earlier. This time I took a different bus that I had been told went to Gongbei, and once again I wound up in a completely different part of town. After a bit of wandering I realized I was back in Jida, the same district where I'd spent most of my afternoon the previous week.

The first order of business, though, was to replenish my supply of yuen: The cash I had brought with me from the States was running dangerously low, and I'd found out that I wouldn't get paid till the end of the month. My online research had disclosed that Bank of China ATMs accepted American cards, and it didn't take long to find a branch. The transaction went off with hardly a hitch: I knew from experience that PIN codes in Asia are numerical rather than in words, so I'd already transposed mine. However, my first attempt was rejected, and I was beginning to worry until I took a closer look at the keypad and saw that "1-2-3" was on the bottom row and "7-8-9" on the top. Once I accomodated the backwards layout, it worked fine.

Feeling flush, I decided to splurge on a taxi to take me to Gongbei. Even though I've read that taxis here are among the most expensive in China, it felt like a bargain at $2.50. Since I didn't—couldn't—specify to the driver where to take me, he must have figured, correctly, that I was there for the shopping because he dropped me off at the entrance to a huge underground shopping mall.

The bright, modern mall consisted of hundreds of—manybe even a thousand—small shops, glorified stalls, really, mostly selling clothes and accessories but also electronics, toys, and, as I'd hoped, DVDs (I'll detail my purchases in a future entry). The layout was extremely confusing, and when I foud myself passing the same shop for the third time, I figured it was time for lunch.

The mall contained at least a dozen different restaurants, from lunch counters like this to ones with full waitress service and vast selections. I was tempted to try the J-Kung Fu chain that had intrigued me when I was in Zhuhai last week, but instead opted for a more comfortable spot that offered an English-language menu with a couple of hundred items. I picked something not too exotic, Cantonese-style sauteed beef with mushrooms in black pepper sauce.

The entrance to the mall is located right on the border to Macau, allowing the territory's residents quick access to cheap Mainland goods. Just go through the doors at the top of the stairs and you're on your way there. (I expect to make the day-trip with C***o and Rongli in a couple of weeks.)

Heading in the other direction at the top of the stairs takes you across a large plaza (situated above the mall) that leads to Gongbei.

The architecture and palm trees evoke downtown Los Angeles.

Department stores like this one are common throughout the city; an entire floor is taken up with a vast supermarket that offers nearly everything you'd see at a Jewel or Dominicks, as well as exotic items you'd be hard-pressed to find anyplace in the States.

McDonald's and KFC go together like Bush and Cheney.

This store is full of Peanuts merchandise that's likely no more legitimate than the DVDs I'd just bought.

The large, modern shopping street had much to offer, but I was more intrigued by the alleyways jutting off to the side.

The alley led to an open area with tiny, rundown shops; vendors selling a rather meager selection of produce; and street food with a small seating area.

Another turn took me to yet another alleyway; it would be easy to get lost in this maze, although eventually you always find your way back to a main thoroughfare.

This fellow was turning out tasty-looking stir-fries for a steady crowd of appreciative customers. (I had to wait a while before I could get an unobstruccted shot of him at work.)

If I hadn't had such a large lunch at the mall I might've been tempted by the street food. Just as well, because the sanitation was substandard—that is, nonexistant.

This is the Chinese street life I miss in the wide-open environs of the campus—You never know what you'll see around every twist in the alleyway. And it goes without saying that there's nothing like this to be seen back in the States.

This woman's selling freshly squeezed sugar cane juice.

Delivering slaughtered hogs. And if they aren't fresh enough...

...try these chickens, killed, plucked, and dressed while you wait.

Not sure what these birds are—doves, I guess—but they'll be on someone's dinner table in a matter of hours.

After I snapped this shot of a woman selling baked potatoes, she let out a stream of what I had to assume was invective, which I took as a sign to cut short my explorations and head back to campus.

Fortunately, I had discovered earlier that the bus I had taken the previous week did indeed brush by the outskirts of Gongbei, which relieved my earlier qualms about how to get back (and which will greatly simplify future jaunts to the city). The only thing worth mentioning about the journey home was that the bus driver had to pull off the highway to buy gasoline—I've never experienced that before.

The one good thing about my confused and aimless ramblings around Zhuhai is that I'm beginning to feel I can find my way around the city, even if it's knowledge gained by fits and starts. Some friends of C***o and R****i are taking them on a tour of Zhuhai next Saturday, and I've been invited to join them; at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if could show them a place or two.

C***'s Here

2007-10-21T16:32:00.000-07:00

My recent photo-uploading problems have put me a bit behind in my blogging, so I haven't mentioned that Ling's sister C***o and her husband R***i arrived here on Saturday. C***o's a political science professor at Jilin University's main campus in Changchun, and she'll be teaching here in Zhuhai for a month. Before I came here, I was thinking of C***o as a sort of security blanket: If I ran into any hassles, particularly of a bureaucratic nature, I only had to hold on until C***o could come and straighten them out for me. But as it turned out, things have gone generally smoothly, so now I can just be glad C***o's here for the chance to have family around.

On her first night here, C***o was taken to dinner by some of her colleagues in the Political Science department, and I was invited to come along. After eating nothing but dining hall food for a week, I jumped at the chance. I had assumed we'd be going o a restaurant in San Zao or even Zhuhai, but it turned out we ate in a private room in the dinning hall. Surprisngly—and gratefully—the experience and quality was every bit equal to that of a restaurant; I was amazed that food that good could be produced in the same building as the not-bad but not-top-notch meals I'd been having just a few steps away.

Next to C***o is Professor Liu, whom I believe is the head of the department. (Sorry, but I've forgotten the name of the other woman in the photo.) There's also a Professor Liu in my department who knows both C***o and Ling, and I'd originally thought we'd be dining with him; the limited number of family names here is an inevitable fact of life that presents occasional confusion, at least for me. Hard to believe looking at him, but Professor Liu (that is, C***o's Professor Liu) is 70 years old!

In the foreground on the table are locally caught crabs. In front of C***o is a tasty dish of spicy frog (don't know if they're local as well). The shrimps in front of Professor Liu are a Cantonese preparation: I'd already had them once here, so I impressed the group by knowing that the proper way to eat them is to just scoop up a handful off the platter.

The next night I took C***o and R****i to my favorite place in the dining hall, a Szechuan spot where they stir-fry every dish to order. Since you have to tell them what you want them to cook for you—write it out on an order pad, actually—I have a hard time going there by myself; the pointing technique I use at the other stands isn't an option (although now the woman who runs the stand recognizes me, and if she's around she'll help me out). The dishes we got were all excellent—by any standards, not just those of the dinning hall—and C***o's subsequent meals at other stands there have led her to agree with my assessment that this place is the standout there.

C***o says that the apartment they gave her (same building as I'm in, next entrance down) isn't nearly as nice as mine: It's dirty, some of the electrical outlets don't work, she doesn't have kitchen utensils (I gave them mine, since I won't be using them), and she's having trouble getting her Internet access set up (unlike me, she had to bring her own computer). So apparently the school gave me special treatment befitting my status as a foreigner, and I have to say that I'm glad to accept it; life's challenging enough for me here without having to dwell in substandard conditions.

Meet My Students

2007-10-21T16:24:00.001-07:00

Now that Blogger's letting me upload photos again (don't know for how long, though: the problem comes and goes), I'm grabbing the opportunity to post some shots I took of my students last week.

Here's my first class, held early Wednesday morning...

...which is immediately followed by this small group of just six students. I particularly enjoy this class because I have a better opportunity to get to know the students.

Here's my Thursday-morning class...

...and Friday's students (who seem rather more awake for the photo than they actually are by that point in the week).

As you can see, the classes are predominently female. It was explained to me that most students majoring in English plan to become either teachers or tour guides--two professions that are female-dominanted, just like here.

Almost to a one, my students are a delight. As John (who worked for a year in China) wrote me, "Aren't the Chinese young-uns dear—I mean very enthusiastic and curious and cautious and wishful and naive and worldly (given Chinese—however much lost—civilization) all at once? Aren't they dear and sweet and at the same time dreadful (I mean ignorant and deprived and inexperienced)?" To that I'd add that they're eager and amibitious and earnest, at least the majority who are obviously relishing this opportunity to improve their English through contact with a real foreigner (just like in the U.S., some cower quietly and just hope they don't get called on).

I gave them a homework assignment last week to write a page on why they came to university and what they hope to do after they graduate, and their goals are plaintively simple: to get a job with a good company, and to see foreign cultures. Some—the ones from less-advantaged backgrounds, I imagine—mentioned that they want to earn money so they can provide for their families.

And I haven't found any evidence of the 'tude that their American counterparts commonly display; even the ones who look pretty hip or punked-out turn out to be unabashedly sweet. The topic of last week's unit was The Weather, and one of the exercises was to agree or disagree with a series of statements, one of which was, "Rainy weather makes people depressed." When it was one spikey-haired lad's turn to answer, he nodded his head in agreement. When I asked him why, he quickly answered, "Because it messes up my hairstyle!"

Mystery Fruit

2007-10-21T16:11:00.000-07:00

When I was shopping at the campus grocery the other I day, I ran into a group of my students, one of whom recommeneded a type of fruit that I don't think I've ever seen before: As you can see from this photo, it has a reddish-purple skin, and the pulp inside is white with numerous small black seeds that look kind of like sesame seeds. The taste is mild, almost bland, and the texture a bit like a soft melon. Can anyone fill me in as to what it's called? (In English; I was given the Chinese name, but that won't help me if I want to look for it back home.)

Here Comes the Judge

2007-10-19T07:55:00.000-07:00

I gave the second of my weekly lectures yesterday, this one on the American media.

I was relieved to see that the turnout was every bit as large as it had been the previous week, filling the 300-seat hall, which indicates that they found last week's content compelling enough for a second dose (or that there's nothing else to do on campus at 4 p.m. on a Thursday).

After detailing, albeit with a simplified approach, the history and variety of the nation's newspapers and magazines and the recent changes and challenges resulting from the Internet, I did my bit to promote the concept of a free press by pointing out to the audience that they could access any of the publications I'd talked about on the Internet, which would not only open up a whole world (literally) of information to them but would also enable them to practice their English.

After the lecture and dinner with colleagues in the dining hall (a bowl of seafood congee), I went off to help judge the finals in the big campuswide English-speaking competition (the winner goes on to the nationals). This was a major deal, with a lot of hullabaloo; they even decked out a couple of students in traditional garb to greet guests at the door (although they actually looked just like the hostesses at the fancier restaurants here).

Each of the 18 finalists had to give a three-minute speech they'd written on the theme "One World, One Dream," tied into the coming Beijing Olympics (the assigned theme for last week's semifinals was "My Olympic Dream"); improvise a brief performance with another contestant (in one sketch a shopkeeper helped a foreigner select an Olympic souvenir; in another a reporter interviewed an athlete who'd just won an Olympic medal); and read a poem they'd chosen from a selection of English works (none of which, remarkably, dealt with the Olympics).

I was one of six judges from the Foreign Language faculty, and while I don't think I was on the same wavelength as my fellow judges—the one contestant whom I thought was head-and-shoulders above the others didn't even make the top five, and the winner hadn't even been on my radar—I'm sure the winner will do Zhuhai College proud.

On my way home from the lecture, a student named David struck up a conversation with me. (Almost every time I'm walking by myself on campus—and even sometimes when I'm with someone—eager students approach me for the opportunity to practice their English; I enjoy the encounters as much as they do, because I always have questions to ask them about their lives or about something I've seen and wondered about.) He spoke better English than just about anyone I've met here, including the faculty members, so I was surprised when he told me that his major isn't foreign languages but business administration, which turns out to be a big frustration for him. He has no particular interest in business, but he had to pick a major at the time of his enrollment. David's a sophomore now, and the Foreign Language department didn't even exist when he was a freshman; it was newly established this year. And he explained to me that campus policies made it impossible for him to change his major. Bureaucracy can be crushingly brutal here.

A Day in Zhuhai

2007-10-17T17:04:00.000-07:00

Blogger seems to have fixed the photo-uploading problems, so I can finally post about my day in Zhuhai on Monday.

The bus ride from campus took about an hour. About the first two-thirds was mostly through countryside consisting of vast stretches of farmland, although the only crop I could identify was banana trees. The fields were interspersed with ponds，many set off by a single shack with the same dark wood and thatched roof as the ones by the sea that had caught my eye on Saturday.

The outskirts of Zhuhai were one big construction zone, indicating that the already-sizeable city is expanding rapidly. I had been told that the bus went to Gongbei, the city's main shopping and tourist district, known for its markets and street food; but even with the limited knowledge I had of the city, I knew it was going in the opposite direction (I was also misinformed as to where to catch it, but some helpful students set me straight). I was going to just ride to the end of the line to see as much of the city as the route would allow; but when all the passengers other than me had departed I figured there wasn't much more to see further down the line, so I hopped off in what turned out to be a bustling section of town called Jida.

Zhuhai is so modern (20 years ago it was a small agriculturally based town, but once it was designated a Special Economic Zone it took off) that it seems much bigger than it actually is; my research tells me the population is 460,000, but it feels a lot more like Beijing or Shanghai than, say, Ling's home town of Changchun, which has a population of 7 million.

Parallel to the large street that the bus took, there were attractive smaller shopping streets like this one, with clothing shops, food stores, and other smaller merchants (as well as farmers who just plopped their wares down on the sidewalk).

Above the shops there was a second-floor fish market that took up the entire block. It reminded me just a bit of Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, only much smaller and with a far smaller variety of fish available. Still, it beats any seafood selection you'll find in the States.

The main street was taken up more with department stores like this one, which has a supermarket on the second floor (where I verified, to my relief, that they do sell ground coffee in Zhuhai) and clothing and household goods on 2 and 3 (plus a McDonald's, thankfully obscured by the palm trees on the left).

I walked along the street for about a mile, when it gained some elevation and led to a park overlooking the South China Sea. The road below, which you can barely make out through the trees, hugs the shore for a good stretch; it's Zhuhai's version of Lake Shore Drive.

The park, Haibin Park, had ponds, palms, and playgrounds, although it seemed somewhat underpopulated. On the other hand, it was a Monday afternoon; a day earlier, it was likely packed.

Thankfully, though, there were no bustups (see rule #6).

This isn't part of Haibin Park, but is some sort of private park behind a closed gate, back on the commercial part of the same street. Pretty, though.

Zhuhai has fallen victim to American fast food restaurants, although they're not nearly as pervasive as in Beijing or Shanghai. (I don't have any fear of being tempted by KFC, but I'm afraid can see myself succumbing to Pizza Hut after two months without American food, fast or otherwise.)

China also has home-grown fast-food chains. This one, which sells dishes like steamed rice with mushrooms, noodles, and soup, is called J-Kung Fu. I wouldn't mind seeing them open franchises in the States; it looked a lot tastier than Panda Express.

I'm not accustomed to acting as a tourist in a strange town without the help of a map or guidebook (Zhuhi is considered of such limited interest to Western tourists that Frommer's, Fodor's, and the like either devote just a cursory page to it, of little help, or ignore it completely). Although I sorta enjoyed wandering about aimlessly and blindly, the experience of having no idea where I was going or what I was seeing was ultimately frustrating and unsatisfactory. However, I expect that the next time I go to Zhuhai it wll be with C***o and R****i, and I figure I'll be able to lean on them for guidance—or at least to find Gongbei.

Posting Postponed

2007-10-17T02:58:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting to post an entry about my visit to Zhuhai city last Sunday, but for two days now, every time I try to upload a photo I get an error message. At first I'd assumed the problem was my sometimes-iffy Internet connection over here; but I checked the Blogger help boards and found out that everyone else was having the same difficulties. I don't know how long the situation will last—the Blogger crew said they were working on it, but that was, as I said, two days ago—but rather than try to describe the sights of the big city in prose only, I figure I'll just hold off till the problem is resolved.

In the meantime, I'll just mention that I ate my dinner last night to the strangest musical accompaniment I've heard here yet. I find myself pretty much tuning out the intermittent concerts that are broadcast by loudspeaker throughout the campus—usually early in the morning and before mealtime—when they consist of nondescript Chinese pop songs. I haven't heard any Chinese-language renditions of American tunes since the first few days of the semester, although very occasionally they'll throw in an unexpected original version of a song from our shores: I've caught a Dean Martin mambo number, as well as the oldie "Rhythm of the Rain" (by the Cascades, I think). But yesterday around dinnertime we were treated to a rendition of "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen," performed in English but by unmistakeably Chinese singers. It was disconcerting but not entirely unwelcome, as it served as an early reminder that I'll need to start my Christmas shopping before I leave here in December.

Duck at Last

2007-10-15T07:49:00.000-07:00

I was beginning to get a bit weary of the dining food cuisine (which I'll blog on in some detail in the future), but tonight the window offering roast duck—which has been closed every night for the past week—was finally open, so I had the chance to try something new. It's neither the best such example of the dish that I've had (that would have to have been at Quanjude in Beijing) nor the worst, but it certainly is the cheapest: 5 yuen, or about 60 cents.

As for the Styrofoam packaging (as well as the disposable chopsticks that I can't seem to make them understand that I don't want), I'll also have something to say on that later, not just on the blog but in the lecture on America's Green Movement that I'll be giving next week. Suffice it to say that the only environmentally positive thing I can note in China's favor is the prevalence of bicycles and motorscooters, and even that's diminishing rapidly.

Stroll to San Zao

2007-10-14T03:50:00.000-07:00

I decided to take another stroll this afternoon, this time heading towards the nearest town, San Zao, about 5 km from the campus.

The first km or so was relatively bucolic, even though it was along a highway. But it wasn't too long before the route became dominated by small factories producing everything from automobile glass to printing supplies.

It was a relief when I finally reached the retail area of San Zao.

The town struck me as larger than it seemed when I was there briefly on my first day here. It reminded me of every other smaller city I've been to in China (that is, every one other than Beijing or Shanghai), but covered much, much less ground. It gave me the sense that a large chunk had been lifted from a genuine city and plopped down in the middle of the countryside.

I found another market, but unlike the rural one I visited yesterday, this one sold not just food but all sorts of housewares and other goods.

These stands will do sewing while you wait...

...and these will repair shoes and other leather goods.

There's fruit and other produce to be had, of course...

...including nuts and grains. Somehow, though, it didn't look as appealing as yesterday's market.

Bananas are big in these parts.

Biker wannabes.

The return walk to campus wasn't interesting enough to do twice, so I hopped a bus back. I think it was the same bus that continues on to Zhuhai; I'll find out tomorrow.

Market Day

2007-10-13T20:09:00.000-07:00

Just as I was about to head for home on my walk yesterday, I noticed an increasing amount of foot traffic along the highway. Following the crowds, I found that they were heading to an outdoor market.

In a few hours many Chicagoans would be spending their Saturday morning scoring the dregs of the season at the Evanston Farmer's Market; but I was admiring some of the best-looking produce I've ever seen。(Of course, who knows what sorts of insecticides and other chemicals the farmers here use to harvest such a bountiful crop.)

The market seems to be where the fishermen I observed earlier take their catch. (At this booth, you can select a live fish from under the table.)

The bounty available for purchase made me wish that I was doing my own cooking here. All I wound up buying were a tasty fried squash cake from this cart and a few bananas and tangerines.

Even the kids help out (although I couldn't tell if the boy sitting on the table was selling the eel that's in the bag, playing with it, or both).

...The market's the one-stop spot for provisions of all sorts: Meat...

...tofu...

...buns...

...roast poultry...

...tea...

...and hens awaiting their fate. (The merchant who cleans and chops them for buyers is in the background with the cleaver).

My tiny Kodak may not have been all that I'd hoped for with the seaside shots in the previous entry, but it was ideal for unobtrusively catching the merchants and their wares (or as unobtrusive as a laowai can be in rural China).

Saw the Sea

2007-10-13T03:42:00.000-07:00

It was another dreary, overcast day, but I got antsy, so after lunch I decided to take a stroll in the opposite direction of the one I took the other day，this one along the coastline.

I started out outside the college's Main Gate, where there's a rather unprepossessing little beach.

There are always a few of these small boats just offshore. On one of them I saw a man who was fishing with a net; I imagine all the boats contain fishermen.

The beach wasn't particularly attractive, and it had a strong silty smell, but the kids don't seem to mind.

The beach isn't very long, and then I had to walk along a dull stretch of highway for a little over a kilometer...

...at which point I was rewarded with a more picturesque stretch of the sea. There were many more boats here...

...and even more tied up alongside the fishermen's homes.

These ramshackle homes intrigued me, so I took a closer look.

Whenever kids see a foreigner, they scream, "Hello, hello," or something else that I can never understand (and probably don't want to).

I'm a little disappointed with the results from the Kodak EasyShare camera we hastily bought before Ling went to Amsterdam last month. Sure, it's convenient, but the viewfinder's impossible to use outdoors, the telephoto is inadequate, and overall I don't think the pictures are as sharp as the ones I got from our old Canon. But the cloudy conditions weren't optimal for the sort of long-distance shooting I was doing today; maybe I go back there when the sun's out and see if I can do any better.

At this point I was nearing the Zhuhai Airport and nearly decided to turn around, but I decided to press on just a bit further. I'm glad I did, because I stumbled upon a wonderful market that'll be the focus of my next entry.

A Welcome Weekend

2007-10-12T04:25:00.000-07:00

Just finished my last class of the week, and I'm looking forward to spending the afternoon holed up with Dickens. My relaxation is somewhat enforced because we're finally getting some rain for the first time since I arrived over a week ago (I'd been wondering, if this is the tropics, where's the rain been?). I'm anticipating a pleasant day sitting on the balcony, reading high and dry while the rain falls. Reminds me just a bit of relaxing on the lanai in Hawaii, waiting out a shower. While I much prefer our uncovered deck at home, there are some times when a covered patio is just the ticket.

I hadn't made any plans for the weekend, although I was toying with the idea of taking the bus to Zhuhai city on Sunday just for a change in scenery and to get out of the comfort zone I've developed around the campus. But now I'm not sure if the weather will be accommodating for a day trip; and besides, C***o and R****i (Ling's sister and her husband) will be arriving next week, and I expect they'll want to travel to Zhuhai too. So maybe I should wait till they get here and go there with them.

By the way, I've been discovering interesting tidbits about life here that probably won't fit into the topics of my blog entries, so I'll be inserting them willy-nilly. For example, walking back from the dining hall last night, I noticed a steady stream of students heading to the classroom buildings. Delia told me that the students are not allowed to return to their dorms after dinner because they'd just socialize there rather than studying, so the dorms are closed and the classrooms open, where teachers take turns monitoring to make sure everyone's working hard. I've been making it a point to mention in my classes and in the lecture yesterday that college students in the States are considered adults and are therefore given a high degree of independence; the students seem to find it an interesting contrast to the way they're treated.

First Lecture

2007-10-11T17:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I gave the first of the weekly lectures they've asked me to deliver on various aspects of American culture, which are open to the entire campus community. This one was on American education, with an emphasis on the university level.

Even with the online research I conducted, I couldn't come up with enough to fill the hour they'd scheduled for the talk (90 minutes, actually, but I counted on the audience being engaged enough to offer a half-hour of questions), so I took the opportunity to put in an extensive plug for the library system and expound upon the phenomenon of the Internet (ironic, considering the concurrent disruption in my life caused by the lack thereof) and distance learning.

I was glad to see that I'd drawn a standing-room-only crowd, but as I was delivering the speech, I worried I was bombing: The mild joke I started off with drew no reaction at all, and when I stopped at appropriate points to ask for questions, all I got were impassive looks. I didn't know if they weren't understanding me or if the material was as dull as I feared, and I was burning through my text alarmingly quickly.

But once I got to the end and opened the floor, the floodgates opened, with a steady stream of questions raging from the pragmatic (How many books can you check out from a library, and how long can you keep them?) to the touching (My parents want me to work hard and get a good job in business, but I want to follow my heart and pursue something else; I wasn't even sure what his question was—I think he just wanted to know if his peers in America faced such pressures—but I assured him that his quandary was universal and probably eternal). So I'm feeling pleased about how things went today, but the real test will come when I see how many of the students return for my second lecture next week.

After dinner at the dining hall, Delia mentioned that she was off to help judge an English-speaking competition that night: Three-dozen students from various departments were each giving a three-minute speech on the theme "My Olympic Dream"; the best dozen would compete in the final next week, with the winner representing the college at a nationwide competition. I earned Brownie points by asking if I could come and observe the contest, and while I have to admit that my attention was flagging towards the end of the event—it stretched for about three hours in an overheated lecture hall, and the presentations ranged from proficient and heartfelt to basically inept—it was a testament to just how highly English-speaking skills are valued here. (And I was drafted to help judge the finals.)

Lifeline Severed

2007-10-11T17:32:00.000-07:00

The Internet was down all day yesterday。Doesn't seem to have been any particular reason for it; it's just one of the commonplace occasional outages here: The other day my water was off for a couple of hours, and Delia mentioned that her electricity had been off the better part of the day recently.

Not that I needed the reminder, but my severance from the outside world really drove home just how dependent I am on the Net over here—even more than at home. It's not just the e-mail lifeline with Ling and everyone else, or the news updates I get from the New York Times and other websites I check regularly, but the sense of normalcy that's offered by being able to keep up with the same sites that I've got bookmarked back in Chicago. It's hard to imagine what an extended stay in China would have been like even a few years ago, before Internet access was as readily available—at least to academics—as it's become just recently. It certainly would have been a more exotic experience, but I don't think that would have been worth the trade-off.

First Day of Class

2007-10-10T01:33:00.000-07:00

I finally began earning my keep today by teaching my first two classes. The experience was exhilarating, challenging, a bit exasperating, exhausting, and unexpectedly rewarding.

I had been given a textbook to use that contains conversations for the students to read aloud, taking the parts of characters; group work and role play exercises; and springboards for discussions. I was also encouraged to fell free to have open conversations and to talk to the class to allow them to hear spoken English. Frankly, I didn't get a lot of guidance in how to conduct the classes, so I took that to mean I could feel free to be informal and take whatever approach seemed to work to get the students engaged.

The first class contained about 30 students. I'd been warned that their ability levels would range from minimal to relatively advanced, but I was happy to learn that nearly all of them were more proficient than I'd expected, making my job much easier. But it was their eagerness and their delight at being taught English by a real foreigner—mixed with a bit of evident apprehension—that I found most rewarding. Even during the 10-minute break in the middle of the session, about half the students came up to the podium to ask me questions and take the opportunity to talk more (it's a good thing that I didn't feel I needed to take a break myself).

The second class is called English Phonetics (all my others are labeled Oral English), and it only has six students, obviously allowing for much more interaction and an even more informal approach. Unfortunately, when I got to the classroom I found that the students weren't using the textbook I was given, or any other textbook; the only materials they had were audiotapes, which I wasn't privy to. Before the next session (all the classes are held once a week) I plan to choose some selections from the text or find others in the library and have them photocopied for classroom reading. But today all I could do was improvise and, after telling them a bit about myself, ask them to introduce themselves, talk about their hometowns, and tell a bit about why they chose to study English.

The small class size gave me a welcome opportunity to get to know these students a bit better, a process that was helped after the break when one of the students suggested that instead of me standing at the lectern and them sitting at their desks, we arrange the chairs in a circle and chat more casually (so much for any stab at formality).

All the students have adopted English names, which makes life much easier for me. One has been called Rocket since he was a youngster; he explained that he had a pet turtle by that name, and when a friend of his stole the turtle, somehow his family transferred the name to him. He's taken the opportunity of going away to college to assume a new English name, Ben. Another student's English name is Wood. Not Woody; Wood. I asked him how he came up with that, and he said his girlfriend gave it to him. I didn't inquire further.

Ling had warned me to speak very slowly to make sure I was understood; but during the break, Stephanie—the class monitor and the only sophomore (the others are freshmen) asked me if I could speak less slowly, and everyone agreed with her. I guess my dumbed-down drawl was as annoying to them as it had been to me.

The first half of the second class was observed by an older woman—I'm guessing from the Foreign Language department—who never said anything to me but simply sat in the back of the room; she left after the break. Other than that I've been totally unsupervised and unmonitored, so I have idea how I'm doing (for that matter, I have no idea how the students are supposed to be graded or otherwise evaluated). But the students seemed to understand me and respond appropriately, so I guess I'm holding my own.

I found conducting two 90-minute classes back-to-back to be exhausting—especially with the tension from not really knowing what I was going to be getting myself into—so I'm feeling pretty wiped out now. I'll relax this afternoon before finishing my preparations for the lecture on American education I'm giving tomorrow.

An Afternoon Stroll

2007-10-09T04:37:00.000-07:00

The weather finally cooled down a bit today, so I decided to explore the area immediately outside the university gates.

In residential areas, brand-new construction is going up adjacent to long-existing homes.

I saw many spreads like this one, too big to be considered a garden, too small to call a farm.

Despite all the recent development (residential, commercial, and industrial), the region still seems essentially rural.

As far as I can tell, this factory produces sincerity.

This new housing development lies across the highway from the more agrarian scenes I shot earlier.

With its curved design, bright tiles, and palm trees, this building seems more like Miami than China.

These hens (a bit hard to see) were in an enclosure behind a residence of recent vintage.

Ennobling Biscuits

2007-10-09T00:41:00.000-07:00

Letting My Pictures Do the Blogging

2007-10-09T00:09:00.000-07:00

As promised, a few of the pictures I took on my first days here:

The view from the window of my fourth-floor apartment. The running track is convenient, but it's been so hot that I've been using it after 10 at night.

Classroom Building Number One, where I'll be holding all my classes, viewed from across one of the campus's three lakes. (Note the speaker in the foreground.)

Some of the dozen or so dormitories, across the lake from the classroom building.

The South China Sea, across from the campus's Main Gate.

The banquet at Mr. Jeung's restaurant on my second day here. From left, that's Mr. Jeung, Professor Sun of the Foreign Language Department, me, and Mrs. Jeung.

A portion of the meal, which was mostly Cantonese, including three or four kinds of wonderful dumplings and cogngee (in the foreground). The whole steamed fish came later.

Music in the Air

2007-10-07T23:36:00.000-07:00

Classes finally started today (though my first class won't be till Wednesday), and the campus is beginning to look less sterile now that there are more than a handful of students about (although it still seems underpopulated considering how large I'm told the student body is; they might be staying indoors avoiding the heat, like me).

This morning I was awakened at 7 (actually, I was already awake but trying to doze) by music that was being blasted across the entire campus by speakers located in virtually every nook and cranny of the grounds (somehow I hadn't noticed them before, but once I was made aware of their presence I couldn't help but see them everywhere). Most of the selections were saccharine-sounding Chinese pop music, but we were also treated to a rather martial arrangement of“El Condor Pasa”and a jaunty rendition of Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl," both with lyrics in Mandarin. It made me flash back on a similar treatment of American pop songs in M*A*S*H (which, coincidentially, I watched on my flight back from Beijing last summer). The final selection was a solemn version of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic”(ditto Mandarian) at around 8, which came as a huge relief, since I was scared the enforced concert—far too loud to ignore—would be going on all day.

Here's one of the fairly unobtrusive speakers that are scattered around the grounds—and as this demonstrates, I decided not to wait for C***o's arrival next week to tackle the photo challenge. Expect more such visuals to spice up future entries.

No Photos Yet

2007-10-06T19:59:00.000-07:00

I started to upload the photos from my camera this morning—the first step in putting them on the blog, or, barring that, on Picasa—when I realized that, unable to read Microsoft's on-screen instructions, I'd be flying blind and likely to click the wrong button when asked whether to "Delete photos from camera?" or other such irrevocable request. (Just another example of the sort of obstacles presented by my inability to read instructions, which makes even such mundane tasks as operating a washing machine a challenge.) Ling's sister C***o is coming to campus next week, so I'm thinking that when she gets here I'll have her walk me through the uploading process. At least I've determined that the computer is installed with the necessary software to handle photos.

Looks like another slow day for me today. I'd like to take another, longer walk and explore the area, but it seems even hotter than yesterday. So I'll probably stay indoors and familiarize myself with the textbook I'll be using in my classes. They've also asked me to deliver weekly lectures on American culture that'll be open to the entire student body; topics are likely to include education, government and politics, and (closest to my heart) entertainment and popular culture. I expect they'll be largely extemporaneous, with as much Q&A and back-and-forth as I can elicit, but I may as well start outlining what I want to say.

I'll also be sending the rest of the morning with the Sunday New York Times, just like back home (well, not just like, but the online version's a more-than-acceptable substitute). I'm even accompanying it with a cup of Peet's coffee! (And I just saw the news that the Cubs got swept, just like I figured; if I was a sports fan, I'd probably be wishing that the technology didn't give me such easy access to the devastating news. )

By the way, as I've mentioned to some in e-mails, for some reason I'm totally unable to access this blog, which to be blocked by the Great Firewall of China. But I've been assured that my entries are getting posted, and Ling's been forwarding your comments to me by cut-and-pasting them into e-mail messages.

On My Own

2007-10-06T03:45:00.000-07:00

After two days of near-constant orientation, touring, and wining and dining, I've been left entirely to my own devices today; and while I appreciated all the hospitality, I'm finding it refreshing to fend for myself. The campus is sprawling, many of the buildings look alike, and I haven't seen a map and can't read the signs; so I decided to spend a good chunk of this morning wandering around and learning the lay of the land so I won't get lost on my first day of classes. After circumnavigating the campus I decided to broaden my horizons and stroll along the sea for a bit, following the route that we took to the nearby town of San Zao on my first day. But even by midmorning it had grown　uncomfortably hot and humid, so after about an hour I headed back towards the campus.

The other day I was taken to a grocery just outside the South Gate of the campus (the entrance closer to the faculty housing), which I managed to find on my way back. I discovered that the grocery is adjacent to a brand-new strip mall (the cement is still blindingly white) that consists mostly of small eateries of various sorts. Most of them look a little dodgy, and they don't strike me as being very conducive to non-Mandarin-speakers; but I suspect that they'll offer a welcome respite from the campus dining hall, and I can use the standby "I'll have what he's having”gesture.

Spent the afternoon watching one of the DVDs I burned off Turner Classic Movies before I left (if they run out, I saw that the campus bookstore—more like a newsstand—has an assortment of bootleg DVDs for sale, although most of the titles are nothing I'd watch back home)，practicing some of the Mandarin phrases that I failed to master when I took classes years ago（maybe this time they'll sink in out of necessity)，and doing a load of laundry (now I feel like I'm a genuine resident here, with clothes stretched on a line across my balcony like everyone else; no one in China owns a dryer).

I even squeezed in a run before dinner on the athletic track that's across from my apartment. I cut it short, though: Even at dusk it was miserably hot and sticky, and it wouldn't do for me to succumb to heatstroke when I couldn't tell anyone what was the matter with me.

Another Day, Another Two Banquets

2007-10-05T06:33:00.000-07:00

This morning, after going to the police station to get my ID card, we traveled to Zhuhai city, about a 40-minute drive from campus, most of it along the South China Sea. Twenty years ago Zhuhai was a small farming town, but after it was named a Special Economic Zone it quickly grew into a prosperous center of commerce. However, its newness, as well as its status as a seaside resort, make it a lot cleaner and greener than any city I've visited in China. We drove along a stretch of Lovers Road, which hugs the sea for 40 km (the name was suggested by premier Li Peng after he observed the many amorous couples there on a nighttime stroll with his wife), stopping frequently to take photos (which, if I can't manage to post them on this blog, will eventually turn up on Picasa).

We were treated to a sumptuous lunch (is there any other kind in China?) by Mr. Jeung, a classmate of Ling's who's done very well for himself as the owner of a hotel and several restaurants in Zhuhai. (He and his family visited us in Chicago last summer.) When Ling's sister C***o arrives here later in the semester, he promised to take us on a more extensive tour of the city.

The meal consisted of, oh, maybe two-dozen items, most of them Cantonese specialties like steamed fish, delicate little shrimp, dumplings, and congee. I impressed my host by identifying one dish as Chiu Chow noodles, a regional specialty; even the people from the university, who are all transplanted northerners, didn't know the name. There was also plenty of of beer, of course, far too much of it consumed in "gambei" (dry glass or bottom-up) toasts. It's hard enough to save face by complying faithfully to such demands at dinnertime; in the middle of the day it takes a resolute spirit, which I've somehow managed to develop over my repeated visits to China

After lunch we did a bit of shopping. (Before the nearby town of San Zao developed, faculty and staff took weekly trips to Zhuhi by bus for their shopping needs.) Although we were in the Gongbei area, which is known for its markets and street food, we confined ourselves to a single department store, one floor of which consisted of what seemed to me like the largest supermarket I've ever seen anywhere, further fueling my belief that China has leapfrogged over not just the U.S. but the entire world as the leading bastion of capitalism.

Tonight I was honored (along with another "foreign expert" foreign-language teacher from South Korea) with another banquet, at what I was told was San Zao's foremost restaurant, hosted by the vice-president of the Zhuhai campus. The other special guest was Liu Shieng, yet another classmate of Ling's, who expressed his disappointment that Ling's original plan to accompany me to Zhuhai didn't pan out.

The dinner was every bit as outstanding as today's lunch. It takes effort to avoid taking the wonderful food here for granted when you have two such amazing meals in a single day, either of which would qualify as a high point of a year's dining in Chicago. But tomorrow I'll be confined to the campus dining hall, which, as I found out last night (and as I'll detail in a later posting) will bring me back down to Earth.

A Warm Welcome

2007-10-04T00:51:00.000-07:00

After a four-hour flight from Tokyo, I arrived at Guangzhou late last night. (The dinner offered by Japan Air Lines—teriyaki mackerel, sushsi, assorted Japanese delicacies, and maple pudding, was likely the best meal I've ever had in main cabin, compensating for the two near-inedible ones served by American on the way to Tokyo.)

I was met by representatives from the two departments from which I'll be teaching, Foreign Languages and International Business, for the drive to Zhuhai, which took nearly two hours. By that point I'd been up for well over 24 hours, other than a brief bit of fitful dozing on the Tokyo-Guangzhou flight, but I felt compelled to maintain my chattiness for the final leg of my journey; after all, I was brought here to speak English, so I figured I might as well start earning my keep.

This morning I got an informal tour of the campus—the Zhuhai branch of Jilin University, the provincial university in Ling's home town of Changchun—which is only about four years old. It consists of two huge classroom buildings (I believe I heard that the student population is 17,000), maybe a dozen dormitories, several faculty apartment buildings (one of which I reside in), a gymnasium and a sports arena, a large dining hall, and three man-made lakes. It closely resembles other campuses of similarly recent vintage in the west; I'll try to post some photos in the coming days, technology willing.

Driving through the darkness last night—it was nearly 1 a.m. by the time we arrived—the campus seemed isolated, with nothing around but forests, farmland, and the South China Sea; but a few hours ago we went for lunch to a nearby town, San Zao (about a 10-minute drive), where I enjoyed what I hope was the first of many fine Cantonese meals in the weeks ahead: steamed fish, garlic-stuffed shrimp, crystal chicken, and fresh greens.

I'm sure the coming weeks will be full of surprises, but one thing I wasn’t prepared for is the steamy climate here. I knew Zhuhai was tropical (well, subtropical), but somehow I'd overlooked the fact that just because it's October doesn’t mean it can’t be oppressively hot and humid. I’m back in my apartment now until dinnertime (when I get to try out the dining hall), and apparently they turn off the residential air conditioning during the day(similar to the way they treat hot water); so I guess I'll just have to try to lay low and keep cool until tonight.

Greetings from Tokyo (Well, Narita)

2007-10-03T01:28:00.001-07:00

Yahoo has a cafe at Tokyos Narita airport where they offer free Interet access, and since I have nearly two hours before catching my connecting flight to Ghuangzhou, thought Id take the opportunity to write my first blog entry (and to see if Blogger is as easy-to-use as it appears). Im probably too sleepy to say anything coherent, though, since its about 4 a.m. Chicago time. (And as you can see,　I also cant find the appostrophe key on this Japanese keyboard, but at least I was able to figure out how to switch from Kanji to Romanji.) Just strolling around the shops here at Narita makes me sorta wish I had scheduled myself a day or two in Tokyo before heading on to China; but I think Ill be better off sleeping off any jet lag in Zhuhai than knocking myself out sightseeing here and showing up for work even more exhausted than Im going to be tomorrow. In any case, I may as well shuffle off to my gate, since my impressions of Tokyo Airport dont exactly make for scintilating blogging material. (But if anyones interested, Im in Terminal 2, which is quite new compared to whichever terminals Ive landed at in my previous trips here--Its full of modern shops, although most of them are devoted to duty-free luxury goods. However, there are a couple of cafes--of the non-Internet variety--that make me wish I hadnt eaten that last awful meal they gave me on the flight from Chicago; a donburi or bowl of soba would have been far preferable.)