Thoughts on China: Week One

Nice to meet you, Asia. I love you.

Granted right now I am still in the honeymoon stage where everything is wonderful, but it really is wonderful. 

There is a “big city” feel to Changzou and the cities I’ve been to, but it’s not all jammed together like the tenement-style housing of New York. Subways and train stations are hospital-clean, haven't seen any sewer rats yet. There are wide streets, open spaces, rivers, boats, scooters and rabbits- little three-wheeled taxis.  The school we live in has a pretty campus, and my room is bigger and nicer than anywhere I've lived in the past year. Cafeteria food is hit or miss, and street food is especially bomb diggity. Everything here is, as my friend from this video likes to say, SO CHEIP! Food, clothes, massages, gadgets, bus rides, stuff, junky stuff, nice stuff, weird stuff, everything is cheap.

Big realization #1: My Chinese is BU HAO. 

China, yes, finally I can put my favorite Chinese phrases to use. I thought I knew enough of the basics to get around. But the first time I tried to buy something from a market, I choked. I forgot everything I knew and had to use sign language just to remember my basic numbers 1-20. 

I HATE being the stupid white American. 

The group asks me to translate for them a lot, and since I can’t read or write character, and understand less than a quarter of what people say, I’m pretty much useless. Sometimes I wish I didn’t know a lick of Chinese, and I could walk around in blissful ignorance like them. But no, I stress myself out trying to understand and remember a language I picked up working at the MTC and flirting with Asians. 

Good news is, I’m learning every day and it can only get better from here.

If the Chinese had a sleep number, it would be negative 10.

I understand if you grew up eating chicken feet and liver regularly, you would like how it tastes. But sleeping on a plank of wood? Given a choice between laying on something hard or laying on something squishy, wouldn’t you choose something squishy, no matter your culture? Isn’t that like choosing a sweater made of pine needles vs. silk? I thought humans in general like to be comfortable. Maybe after another 16 weeks I will be sleeping like an angel.

The Black Hole

There are some Western toilets to be found in China. But our school, like most of China, has squatter holes. And it really isn’t that bad once you get the hang of it. One week in and I finally don’t sprinkle my feet any more. Go me! 

Bathrooms here are also BYOTP, which I don’t mind. But for all the advanced technology that exists in China, you’d think they’d find a way to flush the stuff. Maybe that’s how they’ve done it for thousands of years, keeping a sack full of dirty poo rags next to the squatter? Is that a great Chinese tradition we wouldn’t want to break? But then again, it forces you to be diligent in your trash-emptying chores.

I'm a teacher, what?

I never thought in a million years I’d be an elementary school teacher. But here I am, teaching 3^rd and 4^th graders English. What they didn’t prepare me for was how to make the little punks to behave, i.e. not punch each other, not throw things at each other, not scream and cry, not pull out plastic toy guns to shoot me, and not speak Chinese constantly.

Go Big or Go Home

At first glance everything in China is loud and over the top. Upbeat Asian techno music is blasted in the streets, at the store, and at the school. We wake up to the sounds of T. Swift and Jordin Sparks every morning at 6:30am.

Packaging designs are bright, flashy, and have ridiculous images of a person holding an [insert product here] like a winning lottery ticket. I can almost hear their little Chinese voices shouting for my attention as I walk down the grocery store aisles.

Occasions that wouldn’t be a big deal in the US are a huge production here. Like our welcome-to-Changzhou-ceremony at the school’s assembly.  The kids gave us gifts, I gave a speech, the kids taught us calligraphy, and there was a news crew and plenty of photographers. 

China LOVES performances. We’ll be expected to sing and dance for students and parents on a minute’s notice, so we always have to have something prepared. Friday we did some Harlem Shaking for the school. Sitting through the first part of the award ceremony for the kids I felt more pumped up than I did at Disneyland. They just have a way of making everything so exhilarating! And then these six-year-old boys performed J. Bieb's "I Wirr Neber Say Neber" and I almost died.

So China can be loud, dramatic, and overly elaborate, and I love it all. Because why shouldn’t everything we do be awesome? As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Do Epic Sh*t.”  Thank you China, for reminding me that I’ll never get what I really want out of life by settling for just “good enough.”