Done with Shaoyang

Well folks, I'm officially done with teaching in Shaoyang. I spent my day busing, flying, and taxi-ing my way to Beijing for a few days vacation before I head back home to the USA!

I'll write something more substantive when I haven't been awake for 18 hours!

As We Forgive Those Who Trespass Against Us

This past week I started watching "Glee". I know, I know, I'm a bad gay. But I've really gotten into it. It's a really enjoyable show with a great balance of humor and drama. I've already finished Season One and I'm well on my way to finishing Season Two.Yes, I am a Gleek now.

I've also discovered that it is one of the few shows that can reduce me to a blubbering, tear-soaked mess. This is largely due to the story lines revolving around Kurt, the openly gay teen who is a member of the McKinley High Glee Club. Watching his trials and tribulations has brought up a lot of long buried feelings and emotions.

I've written about my experiences with bullying growing up, so I won't bore you by rehashing the details, you can read them for yourselves.

Needless to say, Kurt is a TV character I can really relate to. But it got me thinking about those people that inflicted so much harm upon me. I haven't seen any of them in over 10 years, but deep down, I've been letting the bullying continue. And I've been just a cruel as they ever were, because for over a decade I was doing the bullying to myself.

I was letting their ignorance and hatred poison my self-worth, and self-esteem. My life philosophy is that our lives are too short and precious to waste them trying to please other people that don't matter. But I should have added a caveat to that philosophy: Life is too short and precious to waste time trying to please other people that don't matter, or letting their irrelevant views poison your own life.

So tonight I did something I never thought was necessary, or even possible: I forgave.

I forgave the bullies for making my life a living hell making me feel inferior.

I forgave the adults who could have taken action to try and protect me and did not.

Most importantly, I forgave myself. I forgave myself for letting a bunch of idiots I haven't seen in years dictate how I feel about myself and how I relate to the world.

And, in my mind, I went to the scared, lonely little boy that resorted to hiding in a church bathroom rather than go to Sunday School, and I did what I wish someone had really done for me: I gave him a big hug and told him that it was OK, that everything was going to be alright, and that he should be proud of who he is.

Kids are cruel, that's life. The things we do to each other when we're young can hurt, and they leave wounds. But we shouldn't have to carry those wounds with us for the rest of our lives.

I don't like negativity. I avoid it as much as I can. But I realized that while I was working so hard to avoid the negativity of others, I was festering in an ocean of my own self-directed negativity. And although I wasn't the one who put the ocean there, I wasn't doing anything to get myself across it.

Hatred is like radioactivity. A lot can kill you all at once, but having just a little bit in your system will work just as effectively, and far more cruelly. It gets in your blood and in your bones, it radiates throughout you, destroying your heart and mind and soul.

I have not been respecting myself like I should have been all along. Deep down, I had made myself believe all the horrible things that bullies had said about me. But that had to stop, and tonight, I took a big step toward doing that.

But it's going to be a difficult journey. Hatred becomes a habit. It's safe and comfortable, you don't have to question it. I'm going to have to work hard to get myself out of that mindset. Forgiveness is only the first step, but I think it is also the most important.

Here I'm reposting my video contribution to the It Gets Better Project, designed to help kids who are victims of bullying and are considering suicide as a way out.

The Exile's Adventure

Throughout my life, there have been certain words that have interested me. Why a certain word catches my fancy, I can never say. The first one I remember was "Oxygen." I remember being a child, probably around 5 or 6 years old and pulling out the phone book to see it written in a Yellow Page ad for a medical supply company. I would then copy it over and over in my little sketch pad. I think I liked it because it had X and Y in it, which to my young mind were a truly strange combination of letters you rarely saw.

Other words that have interested me include: silver, nuclear, purple, lunar, harbor, Terraform, flagship, coastal, sanctuary, enclave, legation... the list goes on. Just one of my quirks I suppose.

But  one word that has always figured very prominently in my list of words is "exile."

I can't really say why this word holds such power for me. I've always been fascinated by people, governments, and even nations that were driven out of their homes and into strange lands. Perhaps I was an exile in another life. Perhaps it's because that with very few exceptions, I have always felt like a bit of an outsider around most people; usually just a little, but sometimes a lot (now that I am older and hopefully a little wiser, I realize that everyone feels that way growing up). Either way, there is a pathos surrounding that word that envelopes me at times.

In many ways, I am an exile at the moment. When people ask me why I am in China, one of my main reasons is usually "economic refugee." This is a trite, if accurate description. Any economic future that I might have in the United States remains highly in question and it appears that it will be for the foreseeable future. All those direct and implied messages I received during my childhood and adolescence amounted  "You must go to college to get a job. But to get a really good job you must get at least a masters!" So like a good little soldier I did all that, but here I am years later, and still no job. All the time I was getting my degree, now I'm told I should have been getting 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 years experience. But to get the jobs that would give me experience, I need a masters. Do you see where this is going?

It's hard not to be a little bitter and disillusioned about this state of affairs. But although you may not be able to tell from the tone of many of my blogs, I remain, unbelievably, the eternal optimist. I've decided to see this situation as the opportunity to do and experience things that I may never have had the opportunity to do had things in the world gone differently. And, of course, it's not like things were going my way back home before I left for China, either.

That said, I find myself at something of a crossroads, as though there were several versions of myself standing at a nexus in time, pondering which timeline to traverse.

1. There's the Tab that would like nothing more than to find a nice guy to settle down with in a fabulous downtown Charleston home (with a fabulous vacation home in Murrells Inlet, of course) and happily spend my days hanging out with my friends Nick and Naylor, maybe while our hypothetical future children had weekly play dates while the fabulous gay dads of Charleston swapped recipes and then took wonderful little family vacations together (Sounds nice).

2. There's the Tab that wants to keep traveling the world and seeing and doing new things, racking up new experiences.

3. There's the Tab that wouldn't mind moving to Europe with perhaps a  handsome Celtic gentleman who strikes my fancy and living my life as a glamorous (relatively speaking) ex pat Doctor's "wife", which sounds better than an exile.

4. There's the Tab that want's to be the popular author/actor/ Emperor of the World who solves everyone's problems, writes a bestseller, and wins a Best Actor Oscar for the greatest movie ever in which I get to play the romantic interest opposite Zachary Quinto (Hey, a guy can dream!).

5. There's the Tab that wants to follow the "correct" path that he's always felt was expected of him: Get into government and work my way up to some prestigious post (Ambassador, Senator, Secretary of State... I once wanted to be President but nowadays I pity any person in that position). 

When I arrived in China, I saw it as an exile. Now I see it as an adventure. But now that my time in China is nearing its end, as homesick as I have been at times, I find myself somewhat dreading my return to the "real world" and all its problems. I like to think that my time here has helped to create a new me. It has given me more confidence and faith in my abilities than I previously thought I was capable of. If I can survive here, I can survive anywhere.

Being Gay in China

In this world of ours, being gay is rarely easy anywhere. China is no exception.

Chinese gays rarely face any religious opposition, at least in the sense we are familiar with in the West. The government is officially atheist, so secularism is the rule. Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, the three primary religious/spiritual/philosophical doctrines of China don't really have the same concept of "sin" that is found in the Abrahamic religions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.

The main problem Chinese LGBT people face is the prevailing Confucian mindset that demands that children must get married and have children to continue the family name; A fact I find a bit ironic since, according to Wikipedia "Although there are thousands of Chinese family names, the 100 most common, which together make up less than 5% of those in existence, are shared by 85% of the population."

Additionally, children are expected to demonstrate filial piety by caring for their parents and grandparents in their old age. With China's One-Child Policy, this naturally means that one child could potentially be expected to help provide care for two parents, four grandparents, any great-grandparents, and, I would imagine, possibly the parents and grandparents of their spouse. This also helps to partially explain why there is so much academic pressure on students here, since they would need a well-paying job to provide proper care for so many people.

I probably don't even need to mention the concepts of Yin and Yang, the feminine and masculine forces. In traditional Chinese thinking, these must be balanced in order for harmony to be achieved.

This hasn't always been the case. History is replete with periods of Chinese history where male-male and female-female relations were accepted, sometimes even encouraged under some circumstances. There were even same-sex marriages, of a sort, in some parts of China during historical times. One of the more poetic terms for homosexuality is "The Love of the Cut Sleeve", referring to a Chinese emperor who cut off the sleeve of his robe, which his male paramour had fallen asleep on, rather than wake him up when he had to go attend to his duties. 

Homosexuality was unacceptable to the non-Chinese Qing Dynasty following their conquest of the Ming Dynasty in 1644; after this, it became far less prevalent. Even then, however, it was minimally punished.

Mao Zedong, like many Communists of his era, viewed homosexuality as Western, capitalist decadence. However, it is unclear that any specific prosecutions for homosexuality occurred under Mao. There are currently no specific civil or legal penalties against people in China, but there are also no protections. Since the liberalization and opening of the 1980s, thing have slowly improved.

Signs of progress are becoming increasingly common. In 2001, homosexuality was removed from the list of mental illnesses in China. Shanghai, by far the most cosmopolitan and Westernized city in China, recently hosted China's first Pride Parade. Legislation for the legalization of same-sex marriage has been introduced to the National People's Congress on several occasions, although unsurprisingly they didn't make it very far. Wu Youjian, known affectionately as "Mama Wu", has become something of a minor celebrity due to her acceptance of her gay son and her media efforts to promote acceptance among other Chinese parents of their gay and lesbian children.

Most gay and lesbian Chinese never come out to their families, and even rarely to friends.There is even a "marriage market" in Shanghai where gays and lesbians can meet for the purposes of entering sham marriages to keep up appearances and fulfill their familial obligations. Although, from what I have read, many of these "couples" lead completely separate existences, often getting divorced or living apart after a suitable period of time has elapsed.

The larger cities are understandably more open and accepting of gay and lesbian people. In  the largely rural Hunan Province, where I live, this is not the case.

I have met many people that I suspected were gay, but I have only had one person come out to me, a college girl who lives in my city of Shaoyang. She surprised me by telling me that she actually tried to come out to her parents, but they didn't believe her (Did they think she was joking?!).

My students are surprisingly intolerant, although compared to American high schoolers,  young Chinese are remarkably naive (or innocent, whichever term you prefer) when it comes to human relations. Just as with "That's so gay" in America, It's considered an insult to say someone is BL (Boy Lover) or GL (Girl Lover). I hear that quite often from my students. If they bring it up, I just give them my disappointed face,  shrug and say something to the effect of "Nothing wrong with that."

As for myself, there are no gay bars in Shaoyang that I am aware of, so being here and isolated has been rather lonely. I am out with my foreign and Chinese friends, but given the fact that there are no legal protections against discrimination and out of an abundance of caution, for the sake of my job I *very* reluctantly decided not to be out with my Chinese co-workers. This was not an easy decision. Given all the grief I went through in the closet, I always vowed never to go back in. I just keep repeating the words of Brian Kinney from Queer as Folk "It's not lying if they make you."

Thoughts on Learning Mandarin Chinese

Based on what I've seen and heard, Mandarin Chinese and English are probably the two hardest mainstream languages to learn. I am constantly amazed at how English, using the Roman alphabet, has only 26 letters to represent all sounds in the language. Change a letter or two, make a mistake, mispronounce something, people can usually guess your meaning pretty easily. No problem, right?

Chinese, on the other hand,  is a whole different beast. Written Chinese (Hanzi) consists of tens of thousands of characters representing a mixture of ideas, sounds, and pictorial representations that go back thousands of years. These characters evolved from what were essentially caveman pictures carved into animal bones, and over the centuries developed into beautiful but perplexing conglomeration. To make things even worse, many of these characters look very similar, sometimes almost identical. The adding or changing of a stroke, even a slip of the pen, can totally alter the meaning of what you are trying to write. In the eight months that I have been trying to learn Chinese, I have learned a few dozen of the most important characters, and I am able to write a *few* very simple sentences. But for me it takes an immense amount of concentration just to do that.

The Chinese do have a Romanized form of their language called Pinyin, in which the Latin alphabet is used to represent the sounds in Chinese. The large and medium sized cities have Pinyin on all their street signs, and most businesses have at least a little Pinyin on their signs and menus now, so that helps a lot.

From a Western point of view, it would seem that it would make things so much simpler to just adopt Pinyin and stop using the characters. But my impression is that since so many words sound alike and the characters convey ideas and nuance as well (in some cases) the sounds, this would not be as practical as it would seem on the surface.

Fun fact: Most of the Chinese writing you see today is actually considered "Simplified". When the Communists took over in 1949, simplifying the written language was one of their first tasks. (Oy vey).

Spoken Chinese (Hanyu, or Putonghua) is a tonal language. There are four tones I can best describe as 1. high tone, 2. rising tone, 3. falling and rising tone, and 4. falling tone. Additionally there is a "fifth tone" that has no inflection on many words. Change the tone, and you totally change the meaning of the word. For a native speaker of English, as you might imagine, this is something of a nightmare.

One good example of this is illustrated by the fact that the Chinese consider the number four to be highly unlucky, much as many superstitious Westerners consider the number 13 to be a harbinger of misfortune. There are multiple stories and legends as to why 13 is unlucky to us. But for the Chinese, four is simply unlucky because in spoken Chinese it sounds like the word for death. If you get in an elevator in China, you will notice that buildings don't have a fourth floor; They are usually labeled "3A."

Of course, I am referring to Beijing-standard Mandarin Chinese.This is a language I can best describe as "choppy sounding." The words, even if I don't know what they mean, are usually very clear and distinct. But I don't live in Beijing. I live in Shaoyang. The local dialect, or "Shaoyanghua" is a very slurred form of Mandarin where (to myself at least) all the words seem to run together. Instead of sounding Chinese, there have been times where to me it sounds like Japanese, Russian, or even Spanish. The cadence of speech is totally different.

So when I speak Mandarin to the locals, they understand me quite plainly about 75% - 90% of the time, depending on how comfortable I am with the words and whether or not I'm trying something new. But when they answer back in Shaoyanghua, most of the time I am left baffled. I've been here long enough that I can usually pick up enough words to get the gist of what they are saying, but it can be immensely frustrating.

That said, I have come a long way in my understanding of Chinese writing, speech, and grammar in just a few months, and I must say that I am immensely proud of the progress that I have made. Hopefully with enough effort someday I will become relatively fluent!

Teacher, Teacher, do you know Sissi?

Talking to one of my classes about different countries, I mentioned Austria in passing. I don't even remember why it was brought up. But imagine my surprise when one of my students asked me "Teacher, Teacher! Do you know Sissi?"

Sissi being the Empress-Queen Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary, wife of Emperor Franz Josef. Sissi was a rebel to royal ways and a fashion icon, very much in the vein of Princess Diana who lived a century later.

Being a fan of Austro-Hungarian history and the Hapsburg Dynasty, I was very much pleased by this. Particularly so when, in many ways, Chinese teenagers are even worse than American teens when it comes to caring about anything more than 15 minutes old. When I asked my student how she knew who Sissi was, she said she had seen the movies about her and liked them very much.

I think I made a new friend.

My Poor Class 145

Class 145 is my favorite class. These are my seniors, working incredibly hard to get ready for graduation in a month's time.

I feel compassion for all my students, but most especially this class. They start their day before 6 AM and I can look out my bedroom window across to their class at 10, 11 PM at night and they're still in there studying.

Unlike most of my classes, these are genuinely good kids and they work hard and many of them speak English decently well. I have them immediately after lunch on Mondays and Fridays. The last few weeks, when I have gone in there, they are absolutely exhausted. Most of them can barely lift their heads from their books, let alone keep their eyes open.

School's almost over, it's warm and sunny, and they've already passed their finals. I just let the poor things sleep today. They deserve a little rest. 

D@mn the Chinese Internet

Word to the wise. If you need to have a serious, highly nuanced, and potentially life-changing conversation with someone via Skype and your Chinese internet is not working, by all means, wait until it's working again. Mixed signals and unintended meanings get conveyed far too easily.Half of what I said didn't even go through. That can make for a lot of awkwardness.

On the bright side, it does make for great comedy, verging on the burlesque. I laughed myself silly when it was all over. :D

Don't teach at Shaoyang Number Three Middle School!

I've been meaning to write this for a while, but I'll just go ahead and warn anyone who is considering it: Don't teach at Shaoyang Number Three Middle School (AKA Shaoyang Foreign Language School).

Even the locals will tell you this isn't a nice school. The kids are mutinous and the staff is misleading, unhelpful, unfriendly, and at times, downright hostile. They go through foreign teachers like Kleenex. If you deal with anyone named Flora or Lisa, RUN.

If you have questions, I can give more specific information privately. But I know now is the time when people are making their plans for teaching next year, so I just wanted to give you a heads up.

I don't regret coming to China, and I've learned a lot and made a lot of good friends here. But there are much better places you could be. 

Voyage to Guangxi

The week before my 28th birthday was quite eventful. I traveled from Hunan Province with my friends Nick and Sarah to the cities of Guilin and Yangshuo in the neighboring Guangxi Autonomous Region. Guilin and Yangshuo are major tourist centers and I was definitely looking forward to getting a taste of Western culture after spending such a horrendously cold and dreary winter in Shaoyang.

We were to travel five hours by bus, leaving Shaoyang on the morning of April 3rd. The day got off to a rather unpleasant start when I had to make a quick visit to the restroom before departure. Whoever is responsible for cleaning the Shaoyang North Bus Station's mens room ought to be brought before the Hague for crimes against humanity. There was human waste at least 6 inches deep in every toilet. I have a rather weak stomach when it comes to such things, and I fled the bathroom coughing and gagging violently. I ran back to Nick and Sarah, my face red, hair messed up, tears running down my face, coughing and retching. They thought I had been assaulted... which was true in a sense. My mind and my psyche had been assaulted. Truly the most disgusting thing I have ever seen in person.

But enough about that. The rest of the trip was more pleasant, I promise.

The bus ride was rather uneventful, and we arrived in the city of Guilin early on a cool, rainy afternoon. Our first stop was our hostel, The Backstreet. I was excited and a little apprehensive because I'd never stayed in a hostel before. But it was quite nice and had a lot of people from many different countries. It was nice to just sit in the lobby and watch the people come and go, speaking dozens of different languages.

Since we were only spending one night in Guilin, we stayed in the tourist district, doing some shopping and sampling different foods and going to a bar. I tried sushi for only the second or third time in my life. I tried some crab with caviar on it and some baby octopuses in something that tasted a bit like barbeque sauce. They were ok I suppose, but I after a few bites I was done. I could never make a meal out of such a thing. Just not my cup of tea.

The next day we had to rise early to make a bus that was to take us to the Lijiang, or Li River, for a bamboo boat tour that would take us to Yangshuo. The Lijiang, along with Phuket in Thailand, was the basis for the Chewbacca's home planet of Kashyyyk in Star Wars. During the two hour boat trip we saw some of the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen. The karst topography along the river consists of hundreds of small, very steep limestone peaks covered in vegetation. The rain, mist, low-hanging clouds, and the overpowering GREENNESS of the area created a level of natural beauty verging on the mystical. It was a refreshing and much-needed dose of nature after the stark, polluted, industrial slums of Shaoyang.

While on the boat, I sat next to a very nice Royal Air Force pilot named Chris who was touring China. Chris was also traveling to Yangshuo. He and some other foreigners he had already befriended joined us for a round of drinks at the rooftop bar of Monkey Jane's, our very cool hostel in Yangshuo. We had a very diverse group of individuals over the course of the evening: Americans, Canadians, English, Scottish, Germans, and Dutch. It was like a mini-NATO summit. From the roof of the hostel, we could see all of Yangshuo. It was surrounded by the river on one side, and the lovely karst peaks were visible in all directions, some of them topped with brightly-lit colorful temples. I'm a sucker for a nice skyline and Yangshuo did not disappoint.

One of the other English lads noticed that there was an unusual deal on the menu: Watch a snake being killed, get to drink its blood and eat its still-beating heart, get a snake meat meal cooked, and get a free Monkey Jane's t-shirt. Saying he would go through with it provided he didn't have to pay for it, we took up a collection and the snake was duly caught and brought to us for photos.

I am violently afraid of snakes, but having had a few beers, I was able to at least stand on the opposite side of the roof instead of jumping off. After a photo shoot, the lady who brought the snake whipped out a pair of scissors and proceeded to decapitate the serpent, much to everyone's horror. The blood was then mixed with baijiao, a ubiquitous Chinese liquor somewhat akin to antifreeze, which was then drunk. Unfortunately the heart was lost in the preparation process and he didn't get to eat it. Quel dommage.

But all was not lost, soon there was a steaming plate of snake rice and a bowl of snake soup on the table. I was game enough to try some of the snake meat, which was chewy and, true to the cliche, tasted like chicken, but had a consistency somewhere between pork and shrimp. I only tried a bite. I would like to have had a bit more, but having just watched the varmint being slaughtered in a bloody reptilian holocaust, I wasn't feeling much like chowing down.

The rest of our trip consisted of climbing Full Moon Mountain, which has a perfectly round hole straight through the middle of it. This was truly a trying experience; 800 marble steps to the top. I'm a good bit slimmer than when I arrived in China, but it took a lot of huffing and puffing and more than a few rest stops to get to the top... but I did it! I was quite proud of myself, too.

Our last day in Yangshuo consisted of a trip to an underground cave system, complete with underground river, mud baths, and hot springs. These were truly impressive caves, by far the largest I have ever been in. The sparkly rocks, huge stalactites and stalagmites, and underground waterfalls were truly impressive. I had an Indiana Jones moment when I was crossing a bridge over one of the rivers and the board gave way and I suddenly found that I was up to my thigh in broken bridge pieces. Fortunately I was unhurt, so no worries there!

I'd never swam in hot springs before, so I was particularly looking forward to this. They weren't as large as I'd hoped, but the water was nice and warm and we all had a very relaxing time. I was warned I'd probably smell like rotten eggs afterwards, but I'd never felt so clean in my life as when I got out! In the springs I met a cool guy from Tennessee named Derek who has been teaching near Shanghai for a while.It was nice to hear another Southern accent. It turns out his family has a beach house in Garden City, SC one of my favorite places in the world, and only about a 40 minute drive from my home. Just goes to show what a small world it is!

I hated to leave Yangshuo, particularly when I compared it to the gloom of Shaoyang. It's truly a beautiful city and I hope I can go back again someday. It's very clean and modern, with lots of foreigners and English-speaking Chinese. There's all the pizza, hamburgers, Western-style breakfasts and cheesecake one could ever want (Shaoyang not having much in the way of Western food other than McDonald's and KFC). If you're ever in or near Guangxi Province, it's definitely worth a visit!

The Loneliness of Living Abroad

Living abroad is not for the faint of heart. I know it probably wouldn't be so bad in one of the larger cities that had a real expat community that I could turn to; but here in Shaoyang (the "real" China), I can count the foreigners I see on any kind of a regular basis on one hand. It's just too far off the beaten path.

Most of the time, I'm OK. But there are times the loneliness hits and sometimes it feels like it will damn near kill me.

Today has been one of those times.

The Chinese are very friendly and accomodating and hospitable, but so few of them here speak good English and they seem to keep foreigners, even friends, at arm's length; at least that's the impression that I get. Assuming that I had any close Chinese friends, coming from such different cultures it feels as if they could never *really* understand me, nor I them.

As much as I love my solitude, I know that No man is an island entire of itself...  and yet, here I am, in a sea of humanity, over a billion people, yet so incredibly alone... so totally different from them and standing out like a sore thumb.

It's the worst at night, laying there alone in the dark. The times I need a hand to hold or a shoulder to lay on and there isn't one...

I realize that a lot of my posts have had a negative tone. I promise I will write some positive ones soon. Don't get me wrong, I am, on the whole, really enjoying my time teaching English in China. My first weeks in China got off to a bad start. This current humbug is unrelated to that. I guess it's just human nature to focus on the negative more than the positive.

Yes, yes, I know all the platitudes about making you a stronger person and preparing the way for the right person and being part and parcel of living abroad... trust me, I repeat them to myself constantly... which has become something of a rather pathetic litany of late. Most of the time I believe it... but not tonight.

The Curse of Being Different

Overall, I'd say I've had a positive experience in China thus far. But, as one should expect, it isn't all rainbows and unicorns. The last several weeks have just really walloped me with examples of how badly I fit in here.

The Chinese people have, overall, been very welcoming and friendly and hospitable, and for that I will be eternally grateful and love them for it.

That said, they can really be quite silly and relentless in pointing out just how different you are in strange and ridiculous ways. My rugged American individualism is squarely at odds with the hive mind-like Chinese collectivist culture of conformity. Coming as I do from a melting pot culture, where you can meet people from a dozen countries in a single day and think nothing of it, I find it incredibly disconcerting to be the proverbial sore thumb, so completely different from the people around me that I elicit stares and gasps and sometimes even screams just by walking into a room.

Today it was nearly 70 degrees, so I didn't wear a coat and wore a short sleeved Polo shirt. In America, no big deal, right? The weather's relatively warm. I would be uncomfortable in a jacket. End of discussion.

The Chinese are taught, as best as I can gather, that you must wear your coat at all times, and if you don't you will get sick. Mothers tell their children that when they feel hot and get sweaty that means it's working and they won't get sick. In China, wearing no coat elicits gasps and stares and a flurry of comments. I can only imagine what they're saying. Frankly I don't care, but it does become tedious after a while. I'm the kind of person that just wants to blend into the crowd most of the time... and that's one thing I cannot do here.

Forget that. I'm hot natured, and I overheat easily. I'm all for trying to get along in a foreign culture, but I'm not going to be miserable and uncomfortable for some silly superstition. And even if I did get sick, I'm a big boy, I can dress myself and I think I can generally deal with any adversity that may come as a result of an ill-chosen fashion selection as it relates to climate and comfort.

"Teacher aren't you cold?" "Teacher, you will get sick!" "Tab, you should take care of your health." I've read this is the Chinese way of showing concern. Be that as it may, it comes off as nosiness to me and it takes all the diplomacy and tact I have not to tell them to mind their own business at times.

That's just the instance that stands out in my mind right now. There are others, though. Wearing sunglasses at anytime, swallowing a pill with a soda, being followed and stared at on the street, getting laughed at when I don't understand something they say the first time (imagine that!), being photographed by people anywhere I go... the examples go on.

I will say this, though: I think I now understand the real reason why celebrities wear sunglasses all the time now. When everyone is staring at you and taking pictures, sometimes the only place you can feel alone is behind the lenses. At least if I was a celebrity I would feel like I deserved the attention.

It's not all bad, though. Sometimes it can be quite funny. My blue eyes are a never-ending source of wonderment for the Chinese. My beard, when I haven't shaved for a few days, elicits a lot of comments. Body hair in general is a subject the Chinese are very curious about, particularly the men. I actually had a man at a restaurant grab my arm and held it an inch from his eye so he could see the hair that was revealed by my sleeves being pushed up.

I suppose I could look at things from another angle. Assuming I never get to achieve fame in another area of endeavor, at least I will have had a little taste of what it feels like. I'll probably even miss it once I'm back home in America. Once I'm in a better mood I'm sure that thought will make me smile.

And as far as culture clashes go, I'm sure it could be much worse, and I'm lucky there.

Macau Trip III: Day Three and Departure

Day three, my final day in Macau, turned out a little differently than I had originally planned, but also much better than it would have been otherwise. I made a trip to the A Ma Temple, from which Macau draws its name. The temple itself was not as impressive as I had expected. In fact, it reminded me of a putt-putt golf course more than anything else. Here I struck up a conversation with a nice German fellow who wanted me to snap a picture of him. While we were talking, we were joined by a group of English blokes who were glad to hear some other English speakers (as was I!). We got to talking for a long time and they finally invited me to spend the day with them. We had lunch and visited a few of the sites, including the Moorish Barracks, the Leal Senado (again... but they hadn't seen it yet), and a few of the casinos, which I hadn't been into at all. That evening we went to Pizza Hut of all places. As lame as it sounds, I was eager to have REAL pizza, and that Meat Lover's pizza with the stuffed crust was just what I needed!

After dinner we had to part, and I was feeling a little blue because I really liked these guys and was vaguely toying with the idea of delaying my departure so I could hang out with them some more. After being alone in freezing cold Shaoyang for weeks with all the other Westerners gone and only my Chinese friends Phenix and Summer to see only while helping them out, I was really missing some cultural companionship! But finally I decided it would probably be too much trouble and reluctantly decided to leave as planned.

I woke up at 5AM the next day. The border opens at 7AM, and I had to take a 45 minute cab ride to get to the airport to make my 9:05AM flight. I wasn't sure what to expect, and I was afraid if it took as long to get back into China as it took to leave I was going to be cutting it very close time wise. I was at the border by 6:30AM and had time to wait. There weren't many people there, so I positioned myself fairly close to the gate into the port authority building. But as 7AM approached, suddenly there were hundreds, if not over a thousand people surrounding me. At exactly 7AM on the dot, the guards opened the gate, and people were LITERALLY crawling under the gate when it was only inches off the ground. I found myself in the novel and exhilarating experience of running towards a border as part of a crowd carrying all my worldly possessions on my back and in my hands. I admit, I felt a little like a refugee in a movie.

I found I needn't have worried about timing. There were no foreigners crossing the border at this time, and the line designated for non-Chinese/Macanese/Hong Kong residents was empty. In going through BOTH the Macau and PRC immigration lines, I was done in 13 minutes. This was a pleasing contrast to the hour and a half it took upon my arrival. I made it to the airport in plenty of time and the trip home was relatively uneventful, aside from the now-typical "foreigner in China" travel headaches I have come to expect, and even those were minor.

Back to Shaoyang!

Macau Trip III: Day Two

Day Two began with a hike up to the Guia Fortress and Lighthouse, which sit on the highest point in Macau. This wasn't too bad of a hike, since my hotel (The Hotel Guia) was literally right at the entrance to the park. From this old colonial stronghold, you can see the entire territory, from the harbor on one side and across the narrow waterway to the coastal hills of Guangdong Province, China on the other. From this old fort, the sight will bear witness to the unique blending of Asian, European, and international cultures as reflected in the buildings, ranging from graceful colonial mansions, rough-looking apartment towers that have seen better days, and up to the glittering glass and steel towers and spires of moder skyscrapers and the numerous casinos, hotels, and resorts.

Next, after descending the hill, I visited in quick succession several very beautiful Catholic churches and finally found my way to the Largo do Senado. The Largo was once the center of the Portuguese administration of Macau, home to the Senate of Macau. It is covered in alternating irregular stripes of black and white tile, and surrounded by many old, eye catching structures.  This area appears to have become a very chic and hip shopping district, with many recognizable companies having stores in this area. Fortunately, the effect of this gentrification does not detract from the exciting atmosphere or the grace and beauty of the architecture. Here I visited the Leal Senado (The Loyal Senate). It received the "Loyal" title from the King of Portugal due to their continuing to fly the Portuguese flag during a period when Portugal was being dominated by Spain. There is an inscription quoting the King over the door leading to the stairway that takes you to the Senate chamber extolling the loyalty and devotion of the Senate. There wasn't much to see at the Senado, unfortunately; lots of blue and white tile, a few statues and inscriptions, a small garden and fountain, and an exhibit of Ming vases.

Following a quick stop at Saint Paul's again (You just can't avoid passing it. All roads seem to lead there!) followed by a little souvenir shopping and a look around at the casinos, I headed over to Macau Tower. The tower is over 1,100 feet tall and, unfortunately for my intermittent acrophobia, has windows in the floor of the observation deck. I admit, I had a brief spell of vertigo but I pulled myself together after a minute or two and had the pleasure/horror of watching several people bungee jumping from a platform just above the observation deck. I always have loved getting to see interesting cityscapes and skylines and looking out at the sea, and much to my delight, I could see all of these from the tower.

The evening consisted of a brief rest and a trip to try another Portuguese restaurant. This time I had an appetizer plate of various foods (All delicious... except I couldn't finish the fried sardines. I just have too much trouble eating something that still looks like the animal), stuffed crab (one of my favorite foods), and an orange pudding for desert, again with some Portuguese wine, it made for a delicious way to end a long day of being a tourist.

Macau Trip II: Day One

So after the ordeal that was described in my last post, I finally reached my hotel in Macau. There, I promptly took a much-needed nap. I didn't even eat first, despite the fact I had just gone nearly 2 days without eating.

Once I was rested and felt better, I took my camera, my map and my guide book and struck out to explore glorious Macau.

As I said before, Macau was a Portuguese colony for over 400 years. In that time, they built up a remarkable and charming city that is a spectacular mix of Chinese and European culture, not to mention the dashes of African, Indian and Brazilian culture that came from the mother country's other imperial possessions. In other words: Just the kind of melting pot/ cultural crossroads city I love.

Macau is only 11.39 square miles and has a population of 544,600, giving it a population density of 48,092 people per square mile, which is the highest in the world. Incidentally, it also has the world's highest life expectancy, at 84.36 years. It is 95% Chinese and 2% Portuguese or Macanese (mixed Chinese/Portuguese) with the remainder belonging to other minority groups. It consists of the Macau peninsula, which has a small land border with Guangdong Province, and the islands of Taipa and Coloane, which are connected to Macau by bridges.

OK, geography lesson over. Since Macau is very small, you can pretty much walk anywhere on the peninsula you need to be in under an hour. My first find (since I wasn't really going anywhere in particular) was the Protestant Cemetery. This is an impressive little plot of land packed to overflowing with marble tombs, tombstones, vaults, and statues. I didn't get as much of a chance to look at as much as I would have liked since it was sunset and the cemetery was closing.

Next I wandered through the streets, the architecture lover in me having a field day looking at all the beautiful Baroque, Neoclassical and European Colonial-style buildings with their white columns, wrought iron, balconies, verandas, and ice cream-colored stucco walls glowing beautifully in the fading light of the day.

I tried to find the Largo do Senado (Senate Square) and though I failed at this task despite my map, I did stumble upon Saint Paul's Church, the most famous symbol of Macau. This old church was destroyed many years ago in a fire, and only the elaborately carved front wall remains standing. The area was swarming with people. As twilight fell, the strings of lights in the bushes and the exciting bustle while the saints and the Blessed Virgin smiled down upon everyone created an electric environment that I could almost physically feel. Yes, Macau really is my kind of town.

I ended my evening at a Portuguese restaurant I stumbled upon that I later discovered was just a few blocks from the Largo do Senado. I have always had an unaccountable affection for Portugal, though I've never travelled there, and I had always wanted to try Portuguese food, so this was finally my chance. I was a little surprised to note a vague similarity to the food I grew up on in South Carolina. Portuguese food, it seems, emphasizes rice and seafood, both Palmetto State staples. I had Portuguese roasted sausage, shrimp and octopus rice, and tarts for dessert and a glass of vinho. Quite enjoyable.

So ended Day One.

Macau Trip Part I: Getting There

Once again, it has been far too long between posts. A lot has happened to me since I last blogged.

The semester ended on January 18th, and I don't need to tell you what a relief that was to me. After taking a few days off, I helped out my Chinese buddy Phenix at his English tutoring service for a few days. While I was there, he helped me book a flight to and vacation in Macau. Due to the approaching Chinese New Year, all the hotels I could find on English websites were booked, so I needed the help of a local to make reservations on a Chinese website.

Macau is, like nearby Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People's Republic of China. It was a Portuguese colony for 422 years until it was returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1999. It is guaranteed to continue to operate with a high degree of autonomy under the Portuguese-instituted civil code at least until 2049. Therefore it is not subject to the same controls and influence of Beijing. I visited Macau very briefly (only a few hours) in 2004. I fell in love with it immediately, and I had always wanted to go back and really explore the territory. Now I finally had my chance.

The day I was scheduled to leave was a bit of a nightmare. Phenix had arranged for me to be picked up in a private car to be taken to the airport in Changsha, the provincial capital of Hunan. I was told that the car would pick me up around 5 PM at San Zhong (my school). However, I got a text at 2:30PM saying that the car was going to pick me up at Phenix's school at 3:30PM!

I was not nearly ready to go, and so I had to rush and throw everything together and run out the door. Because of the Spring Festival, there was not a cab to be had, and all the buses were filled to bursting. So I had to walk the 40 minutes to Phenix's school. When I finally arrived, at 3:40PM, the car was not there (of course). So I figured I would have time to go to the bank to get my money for the trip. However, this was the first time using a Chinese ATM (lack of foresight on my part) and I entered the wrong code too many times and was locked out of my account for 24 hours. That meant that the only money I had was what was in my wallet at the time plus RMB 200 that Phenix and Summer gave me as a New Year Present.

I shared the car with several Chinese guys, and I know enough Chinese to know they were making fun of me the whole way to Changsha but not enough to respond, so I just tried to ignore it and read my Kindle to pass the time.

Finally I got dropped off at the airport hotel, but the only room was a deluxe suite that cost RMB 788 for one night (!). Finally, I had to take the airport shuttle bus almost 45 minutes back into downtown Changsha and had to find a room at a hotel there. The girl at the desk wanted 300 but I talked it down to 159... Lord knows how I did that though! This meant I would have JUST enough to get me to the airport in the morning!

By this time it was getting late, I hadn't eaten all day and was starving. But there were no open restaurants near the hotel and that really didn't matter because I wouldn't have had enough money to buy food, anyways. So I just went to bed. By this time it was almost midnight. I can never sleep when I know I have to get up early, so I just tossed and turned until 5 AM.

5 AM came and I was off again, after some kind of hullaballoo about giving the front desk clerks some piece of paper they gave me last night. I had to hunt through my bags for it right there in the lobby. They were pretty insistent that I give them this reciept or whatever it was. Travel tip: If they give you a piece of paper in China, keep it!

After a long and expensive (for China, especially when you have no money) taxi ride to the airport, I still only just barely made it in time before they stopped check-in for my flight! But make it, I did, and off I was to Zhuhai, gateway to Macau.

The flight was uneventful and only took a little over an hour. I was finally able to get to a currency exchange and convert some US dollars I had been keeping for an emergency (this qualified) into Renminbi. With that I was able to pay for the shuttle bus to the China-Macau border crossing. The bus doesn't drop you off AT the border though, so I had to use my intuition (which was fortunately correct) and found the border crossing.

Crossing any border is a daunting task, I have found, but this was especially crazy. There are FIFTY lines to get into, and almost all of them were open. Some were for Hong Kong and Macau residents, some were for Chinese citizens, and some were for foreigners. THOUSANDS of people were trying to cross into Macau at this particular time, and I had to wait nearly an hour and a half to get through Chinese emmigration to leave the PRC and then go through Macanese immigration to get into Macau. It seemed a little ridiculous, since China owns Macau, now... but I guess that goes with the territory (pun intended). :)

The denoument of this 24 hour spell of travel hell was a quiet taxi trip to the hotel followed by a brief nap before some sightseeing. But that's a story for my next post. Zaijian, y'all! :D