Summer
June 7th, 2010 | Published in Teaching ESL in China | 6 Comments
It is so hot in Fujian right now you could fry an egg on my sunburned back.
It is hot enough to melt the flip flops to your feet.
Then again, it is June, which is officially a summer month, I guess. It’s hard to believe I have been here for just a few days shy of seven months, but anyway.
I am shortly about to venture out to town with a couple of students to try and find some “Western” ingredients so that we can make tacos in class next week. Which I am excited about. The students always ask me what I used to eat in America, and I invariably have to answer Mexican food, because that was the staple of my diet (after mac and cheese, which they would hate anyway because of the cheese part).
I went to the supermarket by myself last weekend to scope out the food options and found some diced beef and “cheese” that tasted like cream cheese mixed with butter mixed with flavorless gelatin. So cheese is out. But I’m hoping that with luck we’ll be able to find the necessary ingredients for taco shells and salsa, and then we can fry up some chicken or beef and make approximations of tacos.
Things have progressed pretty well the last month or so, despite the lack of posts. I got my residence permit and reimbursement for the Hong Kong trip and an offer to stay indefinitely. Which is cool. I tried to get a new apartment on campus but found that all the other apartments are about in the same shape that mine is in, and when I asked if the newest building we looked at also had rats, I received the reply that every building has rats, with a chuckle. Luckily I have gotten used to them, and they haven’t been in my apartment nearly as much the last few months (mainly because I stopped leaving the screened window open at night, which somehow they were coming in through, although I’ve no idea how).
Next week I’m giving final exams and then family is arriving for a two-week tour of the country. We’re going to get out and explore Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Yangshuo, which is supposed to be one of the nicest and most fun tourist destinations in China.
And I think I am gradually fumbling my way towards being marginally conversational in Chinese. There is still a ton of work to do, but that part of life is always interesting and exciting as it progresses.
This summer a friend and I are gonna try to teach private English classes and that will hopefully bring in enough bread to at least cover my student loan costs for the next year, if it goes really well. If it doesn’t go well, I’m thinking that it will at least be a good experiment in trying to work independently here.
And I met an American who’s been living in this town for three years, volunteering at an orphanage that is somehow linked to his church back home. He’s my age and certainly seems to be doing good work here, so next week I’m going to go to the village where he works and hang out with some kids.
More later. Off to buy taco stuff.
June 8th, 2010 at 7:16 am (#)
Explain for your idiot American friends back home why cheese is shunned. Please.
June 8th, 2010 at 7:50 am (#)
It is interesting. Milk is ubiquitous and so is yogurt. Most of my students drink milk every day. And ice cream seems to be pretty popular. I dunno why cheese is shunned. But I’m guessing it’s just one of those things that’s hard to imagine…a culture like this just loves its own stuff, whereas we love our own stuff, I’m realizing. For instance, we love cheese, and drinking a cold beer on a sunny afternoon. But the Chinese think drinking cold things is bad for your health, and drinking alcohol without food is bad, so they won’t just drink a cold beer. they’ll drink warm beer only with food. which is disappointing if you love beer on a sunny afternoon. likewise, they literally love chicken feet. It’s considered a delicacy, like something you eat as a special treat. And I can tell you, chicken feet are not a special treat. There’s probably a more technical explanation of all this stuff but I think basically it just comes down to they never learned to like it, and the idea of putting something slimy and mushy like cheese inside their mouths and eating it (especially considering the low quality of cheese here — chicken and egg story, anyone?) is unthinkable to them.
June 10th, 2010 at 7:04 am (#)
Hi Will! It’s great reading your update. I’d love to hear about your visit to the orphanage. Also, have a GREAT time with your family. Yangshuo sounds great; is Huang Shan still in the itinerary? Will you hike Hutou Shan with your mother? More questions: Do your summer teaching plans involve our mutual friend?
Another part of the anti-cheese story (in addition to the biological lactose-intolerant aspect) is cultural: China’s self-centered agrarian empire always perceived the cheese-making non=Han pastoralists to their north as less than fully civilized, so there may be a lingering association of cutlural inferioriy with cheese. Of course, emulation of the West and metaphoric transference of a national need for development to the development of the body has led many parents to add milk to their children’s diet these days, hoping it will make them stronger and more competitive.
Oh–one last question: will you be visiting Vermont any time this summer?
June 18th, 2010 at 7:17 pm (#)
I was just thinking of telling Kyle — “ask Mark, he would know” and then I decided to invent my own answer instead : )
I am excited about the trip. We cut huang shan out because the weather is supposedly not good this time of the year, and sadly they’re only spending a day in my city so there’s not much time for exploration. our mutual friend is not my teaching partner! but you did meet the other guy briefly on the way back to the hotel one night, another good friend of mine. I don’t know if I’ll make it back to vermont this summer; it half-depends on whether I get any students to take my class!
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