By jenny on Thu, 29 Mar 2007

Tomorrow morning I will pick up my TESOL certification and feel like most other graduates: a lot smarter but with empty pockets.

I’d like to think that I’ve gained wisdom and experience from the past four weeks. But in such a short time, all I could really hope for was a better understanding of classroom logistics plus a piece of paper in my hand that says “This one did the time so she’s qualified.” Now that it’s all over I can confidently say that I did not waste my money. My learning expectations were exceeded and most of that was from watching my classmates bomb live lessons or perform exceptionally well.

I’ve also made ten really great friends from around the world. We’ve already started to make plans for getting together after class is over. Four of my classmates reside in Hong Kong so it will be nice to have those contacts, especially since we’ll be moving to Hong Kong tomorrow.

Yes, the Farr family has finally decided to move to Hong Kong. Wrapping up our past month in Zhuhai has been surprisingly painless. Maeli had her final day of kindergarten today. Of course she had a big photo shoot when I picked her up. No doubt Maeli will appear on the front of the school’s next brochure or advertisement. Tonight we’re getting out of the year lease we signed in Zhuhai which is our last loose end here. Tomorrow we are planning on packing yet again. This time I’m wondering if we should buy another suitcase.

All the excitement lately has made me feel rather exhausted so I treated myself to a massage and hair-cut today. The total bill came to $7 USD. Sad to say, I won’t be able to find a five dollar one-hour massage in Hong Kong.

However work is looking promising in Hong Kong. I have three interviews lined up for Monday. Hopefully by the end of next week I’ll have signed a year contract. Then we’ll just have to wait for our visas to process. That takes about three weeks. The missing link will be a kindergarten for Maeli and a place to live.

In the middle of April my mother will visit for two weeks. She’ll be just in time for us to move again. At least that will be the case if our current trend continues.

By jenny on Mon, 19 Mar 2007

I don’t know what I’d do without my iPod in the city. During my daily routine I have a few opportunities to plug in my headphones and zone into music land. Mostly I stick to tunes that transport me to the States so I can ignore street stares and bus elbows.

If I’ve had a long day at school I’ll listen to Rusted Root. All of a sudden I’m at the ‘96 New Year’s concert in the front row with my sisters and dancing long after the music stops. And then I bust out Bob Marley and I’m grooving with my best friends at Evergreen while we cook dinner on an open fire. Bob Dylan always takes me road tripping from Washington to Pennsylvania. Above any other artist I know, Bob Dylan never fails to make me feel appropriately placed in rural or urban China.

The artist that most connects me to the Chinese people is good old Bob Marley. My favorite for seven years now (after a 3 year run with Led Zeppelin), Bob is the voice of many nations…

some goin east
some goin west
some step aside to do their best
some livin big
but the most livin small
they can't even find no food at all

Every morning I pass an old woman rummaging through the garbage heap. In the mid afternoon I’ll see a woman and child sleeping in a cart on the sidewalk. I’ll think of this song when a man with no hands approaches me for a handout.

And the song continues:

stop that train 
I'm leavin

The older Chinese generations know all too well the effects of poverty and hunger. The rising generations have learned from their parents that being a fisherman or a farmer is much harder than factory work. Rural life doesn’t always pay the bills either. Within the last ten years, the great migration from rural life to an urban one has been progressively speeding up.

stop that train 
I'm leavin

And interestingly enough the rising generation are products of the one child policy. Imagine a whole population growing up without having to share toys or learn how to argue with a sister or brother. But, unlike previous generations, this generation has much more influence from the outside world. The government may have a tight grip on China’s media influence, but I agree with Bob when he sings:

You teach the youths to learn in school
That the cow jumped over the moon.
You teach the youths to learn in school
That the dish ran away with the spoon.
But you can't blame the youths
of today.
You can't fool the youths.

Yes, you can’t fool the youths. But children do have a surprising way of modeling their parents. It seems that Chinese of all ages share a general passivity. If someone cuts in line, the rest of the line fails to speak up. It shows in their “face”. The Chinese are leagues ahead of Americans when it comes to holding back emotion. Let me use the line cutting example. I bet every person in a Chinese line is ticked off at the line cutter, but it won’t show. It’s rude to get angry at someone. And if something or someone makes them feel uncomfortable, they just laugh in a low tone like a chuckle. Chinese rarely show their discomfort. It makes other people feel uncomfortable, and who would want to disturb the peace? The only instance that I appreciate the “saving face” phenomenon is on the road. There is no road rage here, just very loud horns. I wish that this practice would carry into the States. I can’t remember how many times I got a mad fist in the air or some other appendage directed at me followed by some cursing. Americans could lighten up in this area. Speaking of lightening up, Bob Marley has the perfect song for this:

Be what you want to be
Lively up yourself
Don't be no drag

On most days, I feel like singing this song at the top of my lungs. But in the end I am only a wei-guo-ren. I am a stranger in a strange land and all I really have are my skewed observations without the means to communicate or actualize them. All that’s left is my iPod and my friend Bob.

By jenny on Sun, 11 Mar 2007

Now that we are living in China instead of hotel hopping, we’ve made some interesting observations about our new apartment and Chinese life in general.

First of all, tropical apartments are not set up for comfortable living during winter months. Our entire apartment floor is made of white ceramic tile which is great for cleaning purposes and effective for keeping cool in the summer. But for little two year olds who hate to be anything but barefoot, you end up with cold and dirty feet. Aaron picked up some .70 USD Hello Kitty sandals that are perfect for Maeli but we’re still having trouble keeping them attached to her. In reality we worry too much about Maeli’s body temperature. Have you noticed how little kids have this amazing capacity to wear tee-shirts in the snow?

Speaking of Maeli’s new sandals, there is a sandal phenomenon in China. It is EXTREMELY impolite to wear shoes inside anyone’s home. Instead you take your shoes off when entering a house and slip into something more comfortable. I guess this all depends on your idea of comfort considering that most Chinese will offer you plastic shower sandals. Aaron and I have gotten into this Chinese custom especially since our floor gets noticeably dirty with the use of street shoes.

On the note of cleaning, our apartment is missing a dish washer. I’m not sure if this is standard but I remember that Mrs. Li’s modern Chinese house was also lacking a dish washer. However, our kitchen is equipped with an ozone dish dryer. I’ve never seen one of these things in my life. Aaron has assured me that it’s purpose is to kill the bacteria off of the dishes after you hand wash them. The tap water is so dirty and unsafe that you need to blast them with a laser beam or whatever the heck that blue light is that saturates our dishes. Whatever the case, it scares me.

Our apartment is also missing an oven, paint on the walls, and a clothes dryer. I guess the Chinese consider a clothes dryer a waste of precious energy. So far the weather has been cool and balmy which is not ideal for line drying. The other big bummer to this scenario is that our clothes drying area is inside of our balcony so the sun can’t do it’s bleach effect. As far as I can tell, the Chinese don’t have the same bleach standard cleanliness that Americans do.

We are also missing a bathtub and shower curtain. According to some of my classmates, a lot of Chinese use a simple bucket and cup to wash themselves. At least we’re a step ahead on this basic necessity. But like most Chinese shower setups, we are minus a shower curtain. Ah…you’re asking, “Doesn’t the water get all over the bathroom?” Why, yes it does! And it gets all over the toilet and the floor and the walls, etc. But the remedy is a handy dandy floor mop. The only reason I like this solution is that the bathroom floor is NEVER dirty. And by the way, you have a special pair of sandals for the bathroom so you don’t track water through the rest of the house. Although one of my classmates only uses the sandals to avoid “Hong Kong foot” or in other words, athletes foot.

Since I’m on the topic of life’s unpleasantries, our apartment is unpleasantly loud. We only have a few neighbors and it’s not them who are noisy. Like most apartment complexes in China, it’s brand new. The industrial revolution is sweeping the nation and the nation is sweeping to the cities. That means construction and lots of it. So during working hours all we hear are drills, hammers, and a slew of other unidentifiable noises. Aaron’s Ipod is becoming more of a work essential rather than a perk.

Even though differences abound in our new Chinese apartment, things really aren’t that bad. It’s nice to have a home again.

Add an image from Flickr here:

By Aaron on Fri, 09 Mar 2007

For when sweet and sour sauce just isn’t enough.

By jenny on Sat, 03 Mar 2007

We’re finally back in Zhuhai. We were forced to spend a costly week in Hong Kong due to an unexpected twist in our visa situation. The six month multiple entry business visas we hoped for turned into one month single entry visas. Since I have to be in TEFL classes for the whole month of March, we couldn’t arrive in Zhuhai too early. This was a problem because we needed to find an apartment, a daycare, and a sense of home. We set foot in Zhuhai 30 hours ago and as miracles would have it, Maeli is enrolled in a daycare and tomorrow we move into our first overseas apartment. And just in the nick of time since my orientation is tomorrow afternoon.

In between all this searching madness we ended up at the local children’s health clinic. Don’t worry grandmas, Maeli is fine… she just needed to get a check-up so we can conjoin her with 15 other toddlers in her new daycare. Actually, they don’t call it daycare here. If your kid is too young for elementary school you send them to “kindergarten.” It’s formatted like elementary school but with more play time, a two hour nap, and they even potty train your kid.

Enrollment into a school requires a health check-up. That means going to the clinic. How to describe it? First of all, have you ever seen a bumper car ride in the middle of a health clinic, or a balloon man posted at the front gates? Have you ever seen a mini slide and rocking toys in the waiting room of a health clinic? Once I got over the amusement park atmosphere I had to deal with the swarms of people fighting for places in lines and seats. Of course everyone had to stop and admire Maeli. One nurse would spot Maeli and bring other nurses over to giggle and point. It made me miss being in Hong Kong where we were just another foreign family.

Being in mainland means that rules are tight and everyone is in a hurry. Now that I’ll be starting school in two days, Maeli will dive into her new environment and Aaron will become one with his code. We’ll be like other busy Chinese families or at least we’ve started off that way.

By Jenny on Fri, 26 Jan 2007

Our time in Zhuhai has been relaxing and truth be told, I am in need of a little relaxation. Actually Zhuhai is a resort for many Chinese honeymooners. It feels like California with all the palm trees, breezy air, and well tended landscaping. However, these city dwellers are far from Californians. People in Zhuhai aren’t as stylish as those in Shanghai and aren’t as proud as those in Beijing. Being in the tropics, you can find more leisure activities in the parks and malls. Other than relax in our hotel room, the only activity that we’ve done in Zhuhai is take Maeli to the jungle gyms and parks. Zhuhai parks remind me of Starbucks in Seattle. People are taking a break, enjoying themselves, and there are so many of them that sometimes you can see a Starbucks from a Starbucks.

Unlike it’s neighbors Macau and Hong Kong, Zhuhai isn’t known for much in the outside world. It’s size and population is comparable to Pittsburgh, PA. There are wide bike lanes with less bike traffic than in Beijing. The street vendors still haggle and passersby still stare, so at least that much hasn’t changed.

I’m getting used to the idea that we’ll be living out of our suitcases for at least another month and that idea can weigh me down. Our plans for Taiwan are still not solid as we can’t easily find the kind of hotels we want over the Internet. When we get there we’ll have to do some quick thinking and fast acting. So the stresses of traveling can make one feel like they need a little relaxation. Luckily Zhuhai is just the place for that.

By J Aaron Farr on Wed, 24 Jan 2007

Monday we left Shanghai on a train to Guangzhou (aka Canton). This time we enjoyed the twenty-four hour ride in our own room by buying the tickets for all four beds. This wasn’t as excessive as it sounds—our luggage took up a whole bed anyway.

Having arrived in Guangzhou I left Maeli and Jenny at a Starbucks while I scouted for the bus station that would get us to Zhuhai. Turns out that bus station is almost a mile away. Since Jenny wasn’t too keen on discovering the joys of bus travel anyway, we found someone to drive us for 400 RMB. I’ve never seen a nicer Holiday Inn than the one where staying in now, but then thirty hours of traveling can make a Chinese Motel 6 look like the Hilton. Having survived one of those few question marks on our itinerary (just how do we get from Guangzhou to Zhuhai?) I figured it was downhill from here. Almost.

Getting what you want in China is not always easy, even when you do speak the language. Two (of many) recent examples: Despite listing ‘On-site Guest Self-Laundry Facilities (washer/dryer)’ on the Holiday Inn website, this hotel does not have self-serve washers and dryers. Asking for such at the desk got us two directions to the hotel laundry service room and one very odd expression. I could almost read her mind, “You’re a foreigner, staying at this hotel, and you want to do your own laundry?”

Asking for a newspaper only got me bad directions. First to the fifth floor business center which has plenty of newspapers to read while you sit and wait for your fax but none to buy. The second set of directions at least got me in the vicinity. The store they suggested didn’t have newspapers but the convenience store another block away did.

As is often the case when language and cultural barriers loom, your search results in something quite close to what you intended but not quite an exact match either. This sort of fuzzy living that one goes through factors into culture shock and can lead to frustration if patience isn’t applied. Luckily Jenny and I have each other to balance out emotional irregularities so when paper towels are more like tissue paper and the toilet is really a squatter we have a sympathetic ear nearby.