Fall Dance Party

 

The International Student's Association held it's second annual dance party on Saturday. They had me teach two dances. I chose the Macarena and the Cotton-Eyed Joe. Just four months ago I taught the Electric Slide and the Funky Chicken. Once I teach the YMCA and the Hand Jive (probably in another six months or so), I don't know where that will leave my resevoir of 80's group dances!



 

 

 

The "sexy" dance that began the event

 

 

Slowing it down with a partner dance

 

 

The Koreans brought a new hit--"jumping, jumping, jumping..."

 

 

As Chinese dance parties go, a group first performs and then teaches those who want to learn that dance. Everyone else just watches. Talk about wall flowers. Who knew China would be a whole garden?

 

 

Waka Waka by a girl from Mali.

 

 

The Association has some talented Taiji athletes. This girl flew!

 

 

The star in yellow.

 

 

Two Russian girls in traditional garb doing a fun quick-footed dance.

 

 

Near the end, one of the boys from the Association got down on his knee with a huge bouquet and "proposed" that this girl be his girlfriend.

 

 

DA3 got to the campus just before the dance party finished. While I waited for him a boy and a girl approached me and asked me for a favor. They said their club was having a welcome party for their new students. They had asked a couple of foreigners to come, since it's an English club, but now they couldn't get in touch with them. They practically begged me to come to the event, which had already started, to introduce myself, talk with them, and to play games. I told them I'd have to see if DA3 wanted to go and to wait a few minutes for him to come. After a long day, DA3 was not particularly enthusiastic about postponing dinner, but he agreed anyway. We gathered our things and went to the meeting. We were warmly welcomed and immediately rushed on stage. When it was all over, they thanked us profusely with candy and two bottles of Coke. It was kind of fun saving the day!

 

 

 

After the introductions and some games, a group of us sang an English song together. Can you guess which classic 70's hit it was?

 

 

 

Ignoring my Charlie Brown singing face, I'll tell you we were singing The Carpenters' "Yesterday Once More" (hence the Peanuts face).

 

 

DA3 had no intention of getting up, but they kind of forced him, so he went and introduced himself. Afterwards he said he was really nervous. The poor guy did a fantastic job playing charades in English, though! (Even if he did forget the word "cry" haha).

Fortunately

Sometimes things just don't go your way. Sometimes it's not just a one day thing. But whether it's by the minute or by the year, things always turn around. Inspired by one of my favorite books growing up, Fortunately by Remy Charlip, here is what's been happening with me since we last met.

Unfortunately, someone was not very nice to me.

Fortunately, I found a new place to exercise. I had to pay a little money, but now everything I want to do is all in one spot not too far from home. I go five or six times a week for an hour or more each time. I figure with every workout I burn at least 500 calories. In the last three weeks, I've lost almost three kilograms, about five pounds. My goal is to lose six more kilos before I go home in November. Six more weeks!

Unfortunately my neck and shoulder are on the fritz again. 

Fortunately the doctor is still seeing me. Adding stretches and yoga is helping. Also, I've learned that it might be a symptom of gallbladder issues, which may seem like an "unfortunate," but I'm actually happy to know the connection. As I've experimented with some suggestions on what to eat, I believe I'm feeling a difference. The biggest help so far? Fresh ginger juice! Mmm, spicy!

Unfortunately, I didn't do my yearly tradition of buying a nice, fancy box of mooncakes for the Mid-Autumn Festival. 

Fortunately, for once I was given a box of fancy-shmancy mooncakes! Giving and receiving the tasty treats is typically done in Chinese society. I look at the fact that I received some as achieving some sort of clout among my local friends.

Unfortunately, tutoring has been canceled a lot lately, which means my funds are considerably lower than I would like.

Fortunately, this has given me the time I needed to do more in-depth research for my thesis. I'm feeling good about the direction it's heading. 

Unfortunately, it took DA3 two months to get his new passport.

Fortunately, with its arrival we could get his U.S. visa application started! Wish him luck for his interview!

Unfortunately, due to a dumb mistake on my part, I'm unable to listen in on a particular writing class for Chinese.

Fortunately, I have been writing anyway. Just this week I started writing a short story in Chinese. Hopefully that can get finished in the next 10 years. I'm only slightly joking. There's no deadline and I am notoriously inept at keeping my own. However, I had a breakthrough while brainstorming for it and the more I write, the more excited the story makes me. On a side note, I usually read and write while riding the bus, and although I ride the bus often enough, it is still a contributing factor to why this might take a while to get finished. 

Unfortunately, in the last couple of weeks I had a few bad days. I lost some sleep and felt bodily pain. 

Fortunately, things are looking up. Why, at this very moment I am making whole wheat, tuna-olive bread. Later, I'm making Borsch. Life is fine.

What do you think? After reading my list, do you think it might all be connected somehow? Also, did you run into some bad luck this week? How have you seen it start to turn around?  

Passing Scenes

Walking home one day, I pass the same woman I passed the day before on the exact same route, the exact same sidewalk. Only, I never see her face. The whole of her head, including her eyes is covered with a black jacket. She looks like the headless horseman without her mount.

As long as I leave the house I am guaranteed to pass by hundreds of faces a day. I see students, studious boys and girls who use the time walking to class or back to their dorm for socializing. I pass the elderly, perched on minuscule stools playing card games and chess under shady trees. Grandpas and their young charges walk from home to school and back. At night, husbands take their pregnant wives and cherished puppies out for after-dinner strolls. I can walk the same street at the same time every day, passing up to a hundred people, yet only spot maybe a couple that I have seen before. Some days I find myself at an intersection where each crosswalk has at least twenty people waiting at any given moment, and I wonder, "After three years here, how many different faces have I passed?"

All these foreheads, noses, and bodies usually coalesce into one body, one hair color, one word: Chinese. I don't think anything of it, except when something sticks out as particularly Chinese or especially Other. That's why today as I leave the dorm there's only one thing on my mind. Jog. 

I've already done some yoga this morning, a pumped-up version in preparation for running. Despite the yoga, I'm off to a choppy start. But I'm in no hurry. I've given myself an hour, set by my own body's clock. I head to the park with the hope to gather some energy from nature. I start out slowly, just focusing on getting a rhythm and regular breathing pattern. Oh, look at those trees. That's a nice distraction, I think, and continue with that train of thought for a whole stretch. Black squirrel I've never seen before! Wow, the things you notice when you just open up. I start to look deeper into the woods and higher up into the sky. My breath is regular and I'm coming up to a downhill stretch. Energies are flowing.

I'm not alone, as is always the case when one is outside in China. People doing lunch-break exercises walk in my direction. We pass and continue on our ways. I'm not people watching on this run, which is why I don't know what kind of person said it, except that he was an older man pushing a wheelchair. As he passed me he deliberately shouted, "Xiao chi dian!"

TRY EATING LESS! His loud, public words--that I understand--punch me in my chest. My breath catches. My face flushes. Tears pool in my eyes. Miraculously, I'm still jogging. I keep going, but his words, biting, stinging, sonant thoughts, keep up with me. Reason tells me to use them to push myself harder. "Overcome them!" she presses. Anger is digging around for his boxing gloves. Humiliation urges me to find a small tree in a deep clearing and cry. Ignorance wants to believe it didn't happen, that we didn't hear it right. Compassion, that mother of all those riled up emotions, lovingly listens to each cry. As she does, she gives strength to my lungs and my legs. I do keep running, still clocking in four kilometers.

A part of me still wants to shout back at him, something like, "Cut it down to one pack a day, why don't you!" But just as he knows nothing about my diet or habits, I know nothing about his. As tough as it was today to get outside and run in the first place, that man put a spotlight on the obstacle that's constantly in front of me: my own mind. It was with a lot of self-control that I did allow myself to cry, but that I also made myself continue to run. There's no other way around it. I had to let it pass.

Han Qiang and He Miao Get Married

He Miao was a music major at Northeast Normal University. Han Qiang works in a exporting company and has traveled all over the Middle East. Today they are getting married. Unlike the couple at the mosque a few days before, these two aren't nervous. I suspect it's because they've already been technically married for a while now. Today is the performance, so to speak.

 

 

 

The grand set-up

 

 

The mystical, metallic isle

 

 

Guests of the groom (pink tie in background). DA3 and his co-workers chat.

 

Lights, music, action! The bride plays the Erhu and then she and the groom sing a duet. They walk from opposite sides of the room to the gazebo in the center. They stand underneath to finish the song. He then asks her to marry him, giving her a bouquet. They walk down the isle together. The MC gives a short speech. He speaks on being there for each other and growing old together. He then pronounces them husband and wife. They hug and kiss on the cheeks. 

 

Xin niang (bride) and her Erhu

 

 

The couple sings a duet

 

 

Under the gazebo

 

 

"Will you marry me?"

 

Before the couple is allowed to be presented to the guests, it is an Asian tradition to kowtow to the parents. Both mothers and fathers are brought to the stage. They stand shoulder to shoulder, looking stately and distant. From my seat in the back I have to stand to get a good view. As the couple kowtows, I suddenly tear up. All the lights and the slide show, all of the decorations and the banquet are just parts of a single moment in an average life. The couple's honorable bow to their life-givers, however, is something different altogether. This is the grand scheme. This is the point of it all. This is life.

 

 

The new couple

 

The guests are getting hungry, but there are no chopsticks. The couple leaves back through the gazebo and it all ends abruptly. As the waiters hand out chopsticks and we're allowed to eat, the waitresses start to pack up the isle. Unfortunately, although the tables are piled high with dishes, only a few of them are really tasty. People eat and leave, no relaxing conversation or entertainment. Then again, I guess that was the point of the ceremony.

Xiaolin's Visit part 1

Last week a member of my Changchun family came back "home" for a visit. I've been in his shoes, returning to a place that made me feel independent, loved, and cared for in a lot of new ways. The feeling is extraordinary. On the one hand, you know how to get everywhere. You remember buildings, locations, and all your old haunts. On every street corner you see apparitions of past events and people. On the other hand, however, lives have moved on, including your own, and you become keenly aware that the place you're visiting belongs to your past. It is time travel in the most literal sense.

 

Xiaolin arrives from Tokyo on a Thursday evening. Bi yue, DA3, and I take him to one of the last restaurants he had eaten at before he left a year and a half ago. I'm sure that's the main reason he makes it his first stop. We order old favorites, some with new twists that Xiaolin hasn't tried. We chat and laugh. I introduce Xiaolin to DA3 and they hit it off. I can't say it feels like no time has passed. We spend most of the evening catching up on each other's lives. It just feels easy and natural. It's clear we are old friends with kindred spirits who are happy to be seeing each other face-to-face again. 

 

 

Xiaolin and I

 

 

DA3, me, Bi yue, and Xiaolin

 

 

The old classmates, Bi yue, Xiaolin, and I

 

Xiaolin only has a week in Changchun and he makes the most of it by planning all his dates before his arrival. He meets friends and teachers throughout the week, which means Bi yue and I get to see him almost every other day. Our dates fall perfectly at mealtimes, a testiment to Xiaolin's efficiency. I tell Xiaolin about the Arabic restaurant in a list of choices for the evening's dinner. He's never had Arabic food, so he chooses that immediately. DA3 and I meet him near the restaurant's location. There we introduce Xiaolin to DA3's friend, Salah, who also helps out at the restaurant. Salah and our waitress surprise everyone with phrase after phrase of Japanese. Xiaolin enjoys the food, the music, the atmosphere, and the waitress' enthusiasm for his language.

 

Salah, Xiaolin, me, and DA3

 

The next day I meet Bi yue, Xiaolin, and our former Chinese teacher, Shen Laoshi, for lunch at a very posh dumpling restaurant. In that DA3 doesn't eat pork, I don't eat it very often these days either. At this restaurant we end up ordering a lot of pork, however, and I unceremoniously eat like a pig--if pigs were cannibals. Shen Laoshi is fun to catch up with as well. I don't see her often now that I've started my major. She's still fantastic about listening to us and talks in a way that makes it easy to understand. We talk for three hours! 

 

Bi yue, Xiaolin, and I with our former teacher, the beautiful Shen Laoshi

 

After lunch, Xiaolin and I go shopping for the dinner I'm going to make him in a couple of days. It's Sunday, so he doesn't have much planned with other friends. He decides to come with me to visit DA3 after shopping. The three of us sit and relax, talking about nothing in particular. We tell stories and reminisce. I suddenly realize that this is what my family did on Sundays growing up. I remember sitting in my grandparents' living room with the TV on, but on one paying attention to it. My dad would sit on the couch, my grandma in her armchair halfway between the front door and the wood stove. Grandpa took whatever other seat was available. They would say things like, "Well, you remember so-and-so, don't you? You know! That Guy's kid! Remember that time we went to such-and-such place to do this or that? We saw That Guy and we talked about whatchamacallit?---Well, it's That Guy's son I'm talking about." My conversation with Xiaolin follows a similar pattern. The hours pass. It feels like home and Xiaolin like family. Xiaolin announces an appointment with another friend. I see him to the bus station. 

Among the Frosh

"Hut one, two, three, four!" echoes all over university campuses throughout China this week. Come September, freshmen at every school complete a week of boot camp before classes. This serves as orientation, and from what I hear, an exercise is fostering patriotism. Although university boot camp is not the first for most students (freshmen entering high school and some middle schools undergo a similar process), this is their last. After one week of this intense Follow-the-Leader the freshmen will have been initiated into the grand universal collegiate scheme. Next year they'll be the ones bossing wide-eyed newbies around and the world will continue in peace.

I love watching freshmen. I love thinking about all the ways their lives change after starting college. You can practically see their hopes written on their foreheads. Will I like my roommates? Will I find a boyfriend? Will I be able to keep up with my school work? When will I find a boyfriend? What if I don't like my major? Will I miss home? Can I really do this? Ooh, he's cute.... The eighteen and nineteen year-olds come to the campus, get their dorm assignment, buy some cheap plastic goods to fill their corner, and start aimlessly wandering around in groups of three or four. Boot camp starts and then they wander around aimlessly in groups of three or four wearing camouflage. Then you really know the new school year has begun.

 

Line up! Two, three, four!

 

 

 

Pick it up! Two, three, four!

 

Being a part of the International Students Association, I get the opportunity to stand behind the table at recruitment sessions. I arrive a little late but Vikki, last year's new recruit ushers me to her side. We talk like old friends. Here's the difference between freshmen and sophomores: Frosh don't talk. After her interview last term, Vikki and I barely said two words to each other the entire semester, most of our communication being through texts from her reminding me about upcoming activities (as co vice-pres you would think it would be the other way around, but not here). This term she's all too happy to relate her summer and find out about mine. 

 

As we chat, freshmen come up in pairs to sign up for our club. I like the ones who watch me from the corner of their eye, and who, once I'm finished, tell me my Chinese is good. My Chinese isn't worth commenting on, but it's that they listen on the sly, obviously wanting to say something more than just "you're the first foreigner I've ever talked to." There are also the really shy ones. I ask if they are nervous about starting university, to which they only nod vigorously. Unfortunately, I don't see any boys this go-around. But then again, we're a teachers college--there aren't a lot of boys to begin with.

 

One girl wearing a gold sweater and sporting a cute bob, both new purchases, I'm sure, comes by with her shy friend. The friend sticks to the script most students have been going by, but the girl in the gold raises her voice and acts like a brand of freshman I don't usually see in China. She exudes the kind of blown-up confidence and fake-it-til-you-make-it attitude I've only ever seen on American campuses. She begins asking us "mei nu's," (pretty girls, she calls us, and total strangers), for our phone numbers, starting with mine. I give it to her, knowing she'll forget about it as so many students have in the past. Vikki politely declines the request, saying pragmatically, "No need! We'll call you for the interview and then you'll have it." Talk about the perfect recruit. Diplomacy, confidence, and a pretty face. Take heed, First Years, take heed.

 

Meanwhile, when I'm not observing the Frosh, I'm playing with 3 year-olds. In a bid to build a partnership with a local preschool, I agree to teach a few classes once a week. I teach kids with names like Xixi (she-she), Haohao, and Feifei the songs Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree and Do As I'm Doing (both from the LDS primary songbook). They don't sing much, and they take a while to get the movements down, but they are entranced by me and are uber adorable to boot! Unfortunately, however, they keep me too busy to take pictures.

 

Speaking of cuteness, DA3 decided he wanted to be a freshman again and arrived just in time for line-up. 

 

Sticking out like a sore, blue thumb, DA3

 

 

Ironically, it is difficult to hide among the camo-clad

 

 

All the students snickered, that is until DA3 got caught. I love the looks on their faces when they see a Waiguoren do something unexpected!

A Wedding in Red

Today I attended the wedding of DA3's friend, ABD. His bride's name we'll call Y--. She's from Russia and ABD is from Quatar by way of Lebanon. It was a short, sweet ceremony held at one of Changchun's mosques. The bride wore traditional Chinese Red, and as you can see from the pictures below, a traditional (Chinese) Muslim gown. An imam married them and gave them an "official" document encased in a pretty booklet. I quote 'official' simply because, while it's totally legal in China as far as Muslim weddings go, who knows what will happen if visas are ever questioned or if it's taken abroad. Such is the risk of a wedding outside one's own country, perhaps? The couple, pale, agitated, and nervous before the ceremony, looked much more relaxed afterwards. After the signing ceremony the imam had another appointment, but the rest of us visited and had cake. I helped the bride cut the cake. It amused me when she said, probably for the first time, "Which one is for my husband?" 

 

 

 

 

Y-- and her friend

 

 

 

Y-- and ABD cut the cake

 

 

The groom feeds the bride