Engagements, Hospitality and the Seaside...

If you have been following my blog posts, you know I am a big fan of my Chinese students. So prepare yourself for a little bit more about them in today's post.

One of the things I enjoy about my students is their willingness to engage in classroom activities that I concoct. You may recall from an earlier post (Travel is Fatal to Prejudice, Bigotry, and Narrow-Mindedness..., 11/8/2018) where I gave a lesson on stereotypes -- what Chinese students thought Americans were like, and what they thought Americans thought the Chinese are like. I was thrilled with their enthusiastic engagement in the process.

This past month, I taught a couple lessons that required high levels of student involvement...and the students did not disappoint me. When I teach, I often teach about American culture (they crave information about America and Americans!)...my lessons always include opportunities for the students to speak with one another in English -- practice, practice, practice.

The first activity we did was called Running Dictation. I had a very short story -- six sentences. I put each of the sentences on a strip of paper, and then placed them on a desk, but I placed them out of order. My students were divided into teams of four...one person was designated as the reader / memorizer, and another student was selected as the scribe for the team. The reader had to come up to the desk and memorize one of the sentences (all in English, of course), then run back to his/her team and tell the scribe the sentence. They repeated that until they had all the sentences transcribed. Then the team had to unscramble the story and put the six sentences in order. The winning team received a fabulous prize from the teacher (candy).

As mentioned, the students were enthusiastically engaged, some running from their team to the front of the room, then back. Here's a short (< one minute) video of the activity (there were a couple of near-collisions before I fired up my phone video recorder):

Chinese Students engaging in classroom activity

Dating is seldom part of a young Chinese person's adolescent years. In fact, out of 265 students this semester (six classes), I would say fewer than thirty have ever had even one first date. Their teenage years are spent studying, studying, studying, and preparing for the national Gao Kao (college entrance exam). And their parents expect that same attention to academics and the same level of study to continue at the university level, and so continue to discourage their children from dating while in college.

So I did another cultural lesson, this one about dating in America. As part of the lesson, I explained Speed Dating, and showed a short video clip of a speed dating session. Then I had all my kids go outside and participate in a Speed Dating session. The video below shows one of my classes engaged in the activity. You'll note the obvious enthusiasm and fun they were having. (Note: most of my classes have very few boys, so each class -- including this one -- had to have girls pretend they were boys.)  And yes, I had to remind about half of them to speak English!  :-) 

 Chinese students participating in Speed Dating Activity

Last semester, I made friends with a Chinese citizen (Qiao Hong) who also teaches at our university. Once I introduced her to Bonita, they became BFFs, and they have done many things together. She lived in America during a three-year sabbatical, and was so thankful for friendly, warm American friends she made there, that she sought the opportunity to return the favor when she returned to China. When she learned we wanted to go to Qingdao, a beautiful seaside city 225 miles from Jinan, she told us her husband was working in Qingdao (pronounced Ching-Dow) and had a flat there. She said, "Let's go to Qingdao, and you can stay with us!" So last week we spent a three-day weekend with them, and it was a tremendous delight. (FYI -- it is not uncommon for one spouse to work many miles from home, returning to his home and family only occasionally throughout the year.)  Here is a picture of the Han family:

Qiao Hong, Helena and Han Kao Kong -- good friends!

Helena (sorry, I didn't get her Chinese name) is their daughter, and had just returned from her freshman year at Ohio State University. We were there when she saw her father for the first time in a year, and it was a sweet experience to see their reunion, and their subsequent closeness while we were there. It was nice to stay with this Chinese family in their home. Mr. Han was over-the-top hospitable -- making sure our stay was pleasant and comfortable, and that we had enough to eat (and eat and eat!). Our friend Hong served as our tour guide and we went...and went...and went to places to see in Qingdao. (We walked nearly 21 miles in two and a half days!)

We will long remember the warmth and sincerity of the Han / Qiao family hospitality.

Qingdao is a beautiful little seaside city (population: 5.8 million) on the Pacific Ocean.  Here are a few pictures from our Qingdao adventure:

Bonita loves, loves, loves the ocean.  Here she is in her happy place:

                                             Daniel and Bonita on the rocks in Qingdao.

This older gent's granddaughter approached me and explained that she had brought her grandparents from the countryside to Qingdao for a visit (their first time to a large city), and her grandfather was wondering if he could take a picture with me, as he had never seen a foreigner before! I was able to practice my Chinese with him...and even though it was a short conversation, he understood me and I understood him.

And a picture of the older gent and his lovely bride.

And now a few more random pictures:

We often see groups of old men gathered on street corners and in parks, watching a game that is going on:

We saw another crowd about a half-block away and our tour guide (Hong) suggested we get a closer look:

Hong explained the game was sort of like chess.

As we are nearing the end of our semester here (sigh), a group of my students wanted to take Bonita and me to dinner. We met them at a barbecue place near their campus, and had a delicious meal and wonderful association with them. As a group, they are some of my favorite students. These six gals are all roommates (and as you may have learned from previous posts, that is usually the case -- my classes are made up of seven or eight six-roommate groups). Here's the restaurant:

Here's the meal (after we'd put a serious dent in it). It consisted of roasted peanuts in a delicious sauce, skewers with fish, pork and chicken (all delicious), mushrooms, a yummy soup with lots of good things in it (and a bit of a kick!), and rice, eggs and vegetables all together. All of it was great.

On our trip to Qingdao the week before, one of our meals consisted of abalone, jelly fish, squid, octopus, cuttle fish and donkey...I liked this meal much better (although the abalone was superb!).

And here are the gals -- my cute students!

Berry, Icy, Amy, Bonita, DQ, Albus (yes, after Dumbledore!), Coco and Nicole.

I'd like to bring a couple of these gals home with me in my carry-ons, but I think there are laws against that.

Until our next visit: Zai jian! (Goodbye / see you.)

Family, Friends and a Surprising Anniversary

The past six weeks has been a whirlwind of teaching, traveling, talking, touring and just trying to keep our heads above water!

Six weeks ago, our daughter Katie and her husband Jason came to China. They spent a few days in and around Beijing doing all the tourist things (they were, after all, tourists!). They saw the Great Wall, Tian'anmen Square, the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace.  Then they took one of China's bullet trains (300 kph  / 188 mph) from Beijing to Jinan. We had the opportunity to share some of the parts of our city that were special to us, including Buddha Mountain, Baotu Spring, Furon Street, etc.

       

This lady owns a bread and soup eatery, and after just a couple visits, she and Bonita are BFFs -- no surprise to anyone who knows Bonita!  She loved being able to meet our piao liang (beautiful) daughter and shuai (handsome) son-in-law!

It was very nice seeing Katie and Jason and showing them many of the people and sites we love in this city!

The first week of May is May Holiday in China -- roughly equivalent to our Labor Day holiday. We chose to go on a tour with a group of about a dozen other BYU China Teacher Program teachers. As you can imagine, a group of BYU teachers can be pretty wild and crazy...not really, but we did have a lot of fun seeing more of beautiful China. We visited Hangzhou and Suzhou (also known as China's Venice), two large cities in southeastern China, near Shanghai. Five million souls call Hangzhou home, and ten million live in Suzhou. They have a saying in China: Heaven above, Suzhou and Hangzhou on earth. Both Hangzhou and Suzhou were beautiful.

Here are the BYU teachers we hung out with for the better part of a week. Some of them were friends from before, and about half were new friends. We loved spending time with all of them!

And a few scenes we were able to see:

                 If I titled my pictures, the title of the above picture would be Peace and Harmony...(it could apply to the picture below as well!).

On April 13, Bonita and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary. 

When these two starry-eyed youngsters married forty years ago, neither of us in our wildest dreams expected or anticipated we would be celebrating a wedding anniversary while in China. Surprise!

But we did.  

As part of her anniversary gift, Bonita crafted forty little origami cranes, and labeled each one with a memory from the past forty years -- our wedding day, the birth of each of our children, our moves to Boise, Salt Lake City, New Jersey and Colorado, etc. and etc. Then we sat together and reminisced while we placed them all in chronological order, and then  hung them from the ceiling in our dining room so we could remember what a wonderful forty years it has been.

And it has.

And now for a few pictures:

Chinese girls like to dress up in nice dresses and in traditional Chinese dress and have their pictures taken in public places like gardens, old town streets, etc. During our journeys over the May holiday, we probably saw at least 100 young women dressed in traditional dress, posing for pictures. Many brought their own photographers, others were taking selfies.  

Rural China -- New Experiences, New Friends, Warm Hearts...and a Strange Translation!

Last weekend Bonita and I had a marvelous experience – again. But this experience was so unexpected that it made the marvel all that much more delicious.

We had been invited by a woman with whom I work to accompany her to the village she grew up in, which was in eastern China. She wanted to show it to us before it disappeared. Her name is Zhao Wenjing. It sounded like a nice trip, but we weren't expecting much in the way of pizzazz.

Zhao Wenjing -- Deputy Director, International Student Department, Shandong Shi Fan Daxue (Shandong Normal University)

Her village was disappearing because the Chinese government decided to build auto parts factories in a large area of our province, which happened to be on the land where her parents and five other villages of people lived. In China, the government owns all the land. Her citizens are allowed to build homes and farms, etc. on the land, with the understanding that they could be displaced at any time.

And they were. The government built a number of apartment (called flats here) complexes, for the villagers to purchase if they could afford them. The flats were built in the nearby village of Qingzhou (900,000 population). The government razed all the homes in the five villages, and compensated the farmers for the homes they had built. Wenjing’s father had been industrious and had built a large, lovely home, and was therefore compensated handsomely for his industry and labor. Others who hadn’t been so industrious were also compensated for the homes they had built, but it was not enough for them to purchase a flat. So they had to find alternate accommodations.

Wenjing told us many stories about her village, growing up and going to school there, how fortunate she had been to be able to attend our university and thus change the trajectory of her life. It was a wonderful, rich, learning experience for us.

Statue in the courtyard of Wenjing's former primary (elementary) school. Note the red scarves -- symbols of the Communist party.

We met her parents, Mr. Zhao Guofu and Cui Guixiang, and had a wonderful, warm time with them. They invited us to their new flat, which was a large-ish 115 square meters (~ 1,250 square feet). Wenjing’s mother taught Bonita and me how to make jiaozi (dumplings), which were then cooked and served for dinner, along with a lot of other delicious dishes.

Learning how to make dumplings!

Dining on dumplings we made at the Zhao residence, Qingzhou, Shandong Province, China

We had the opportunity to visit the farm her father had worked his entire adult life. The edge of the property line of the nearest new factory runs through the middle of their farm. The lovely home her father had built was now rubble, but a smaller abode, which is slated for destruction shortly, is still standing (above -- in the picture behind us, and below -- behind Wenjing and her father). We sat out front of their other "home" structure on the property as he peeled and served us delicious pears from his pear orchard. (Note the pears in Wenjing's and her father's hands -- huge!)

<-- Zhao razed family home -- the rubble behind Mr. Zhao's first car -- an electric car.

I had told Wenjing that we would be happy to teach a lesson at their local elementary school while visiting, and the offer was snapped up by the school. So Quillen laoshi and Quillen laoshi taught fifth and sixth grade classes for about an hour. After class was over, we were treated like celebrities. (Laoshi is Chinese for Teacher.) J

I taught the sixth grade class and Bonita taught the fifth graders. Aren't they too cute?

It was a wonderful, enriching experience for us. Several of the other China Teacher Program teachers expressed envy that we had been able to visit rural China – they had been trying to do that for several years.

One of the other CTP teachers uses Google Translate extensively in his and his wife’s jaunts around Jinan and beyond, particularly the voice translation portion. With that, he can speak into his phone, push translate, and it will translate what he said into written Chinese. It's a great assist to Weigou ren (outside people, aka foreigners) in China who speak little or no Chinese.

While out and about on the buses, he noticed that a mechanized Chinese voice always said certain phrases as they were nearing or leaving bus stops. He was able to emulate one of them – Dao le – in his translation software and learned it means “Arriving.” But there was another phrase which sounded as the bus left each stop, which he simply could not get a good translation on. He tried to say the same words he thought he was hearing into his translation software, but he continued to get some odd translations.

Today we were on an outing with other foreign teachers, and our friend thought to ask our Chinese guide what the phrase was. With the caveat that he was probably mis-pronouncing the phrase, he did his best to share it with her. She furrowed her brow and thought about it. She had him repeat it several times. Then sudden realization came: “Oh! What they are saying is: ‘The bus is leaving, please sit down or hold on tight.’”

The Pinyin (English-language letters that help with pronunciation of Chinese words) for the first half of the phrase (the part he had been trying to enter into Google translate) is:

Che liang qi bu (the second half of the phrase was: qing zuo wen fu hao) -- he couldn't recall the last half of the phrase, but our guide had ridden the bus enough that she recognized it.

What he was saying was:

Chi wai fu -- Which Google Translate interpreted as: Eat the foreign woman. Close, but not quite right... 😎 

Here are a few other pictures for your viewing pleasure:

Whenever we go places, we are celebrities of a sort. We are on many surreptitious photos and videos, and some of the folks even have the courage to ask us if they can take pictures with us, and we always say of course.  Today we visited an International Vegetable Exhibition (it was awesome). While there, we had one of the most heart-warming experiences of our entire China adventure. Bonita noticed a young man use sign language to tell someone he was with that he wanted to ask if he could take a picture with Bonita. She responded in sign, saying she would be delighted.  Oh my...he was beyond thrilled and signed back to the group he was with. They crowded around Bonita and loved, loved, loved having their picture taken with a Meiguo ren (foreigner) who could also sign.  Many pictures were taken, many smiles and very warm handshakes exchanged. At first I thought we had truly bettered international relations, but realized that what we really bettered was human relations. Bonita and the little girl in the front row were the only non-hearing-impaired individuals in the picture. The young man who wanted to ask Bonita to take a picture with him is in the back row with the NY Yankees hat on, as well as in the close-up.

Saturday we attended a world-famous Kite Festival in Weifang.  Here are some of the pictures from that:

And a couple pictures from Qingzhou, which we visited as part of our rural China trip:

What is Beauty?

So -- if you were asked that question and had to answer it within say, thirty seconds, how would you respond?  Go ahead -- I'll wait thirty seconds for your response.

******************************************************************************************************************

 Okay, time's up.

A couple months ago, the title of one of my blog posts was Chinese vs American Schools -- There's a Big Difference! (December 30, 2018). This past week I had an experience that reminded me of another significant difference between (most) American universities and the university at which we teach. As usual, I wasn't even looking for this insight, but it practically stepped right up and shook my had.

I have an activity I sometimes do with my classes which is designed to help them get over their fear of speaking English in public.  I have a list of 200 questions -- things like:

                                  What is your favorite hobby?

                                   If you could have a super power for one day, what would it be?

                                   If someone gave you 10 million yuan (about $1.5 million), what is the first
                                   thing you would do?

                                   If you could live any place in the world other than China, where would that be and why?

When I call on a student, I ask him or her to pick a number between 1 and 200. I have them give me the number in Chinese, so I can practice listening to and understanding Chinese. They think it's hilarious when I get the number wrong, but now I seldom get one wrong. (Hopefully my mistakes also send the message that it's okay to try and fail in my class -- but they just have to keep trying.)

Anyway -- the other day, the student below drew the question:

"What will you teach your children about what the true meaning of beauty is?"

Aze (Zhang Xuan Xuan)

Aze's initial response was an immediate: "Me!" But then she got serious, and said, "The definition of beauty is virtue."

I loved her response!

Her response reminded me of a similar experience I had my first or second day of class at the beginning of the school year. I had each of the students prepare a short personal introduction of themselves, and then introduce themselves to their classmates.

In her comments, one of the young women concluded her intro by saying that she thought one of the values most important to her was her modesty. As I looked around the classroom, I saw the vast majority of the students vigorously nodding approval and acknowledgment of that great value.

Amara (Dong Zhitao) 

As delighted as I was with their answers, upon reflection, I think that is another significant difference between US universities and Chinese universities, or at least the one at which we are now teaching. I can't imagine either that answer (Beauty = Virtue) or comment ("I value my modesty.") being accepted, much less agreed to, by the vast majority of American university students. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they would get heckled or mocked for being courageous enough to share those personal values if they did so in the classroom of most American universities.

And it made me sad.

China is a wonderful place, but I see one major weakness.  That is -- they are maybe a little too quick to adopt western fashions and values. They wear clothing from western countries -- Pink, Adidas and Nike t-shirts adorn their bodies, North Face and Columbia coats keep them warm, Converse tennis shoes cushion their feet.

New York Yankees baseball caps are exceptionally popular.  They are beginning to develop a bit of a sweet tooth as more and more western candies (like Snickers, Dove, and Hershey candy bars, M&Ms, Skittles, etc.) find their way into China.  They love western music -- not REAL western music, like Garth Brooks, George Strait, Blake Shelton, etc. -- just music from "the West" (eg: Beyoncé, Ed Sheeran, Justin Bieber, Charlie Puth, Riyanna, Taylor Swift, etc.).  They are huge cinema fans, and love American movies and television shows.

I hope they don't adopt America's casual attitude about morality. But I see signs those values will erode here ere long, as they now allow movies and television shows into the country like Fifty Shades of Gray, Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad, all of which are very popular.

Here's to hoping that China is somehow able to maintain the lack of worldliness for their children and young adults.

(Note: Amara wants to be an English-speaking tour guide in China [and in fact, she has already been doing that as a summer job the last few years], and Aze wants to work in the travel management business in media. Both speak English very well.)

This Korean classmate on the right agreed to let me take her picture wearing her NY Yankees cap but was shy and didn't want her face in the picture. The mask she's wearing is very typical for people to wear here, to protect them somewhat from the pollution.

Below are a few pictures (unrelated to the topic of today's post) from recent days / weeks:

DQ and two of my Laoshi (teachers) -- He Li Na and Liu Yi Fei (He Li Na is one of my Basic Chinese teachers and Liu Yi Fei is my Chinese tutor.)

My classmates in my three Chinese classes (Basic Grammar, Reading and Listening). They hail from Korea, Tanzanika, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan and Brazil. Oh -- and one old guy from America! All are marvelous human beings. (It was a bit of a rainy / misty day.)

Ran into these beauties on the Food Street I mentioned in a previous post -- L-R -- grasshoppers, scorpions, cicadas. I tried the scorpions, and they were surprisingly tasty.  Crunchy, but the seasonings they used were delicious.

                                                                                                     In case you don't recognize them skewered on sticks...

                                           I don't believe this product will catch on in America...at least not with this name...

                                            Elderly man I ran into and chatted with (briefly) during last weekend's sightseeing.

Are all Chinese short (remember my Stereotypes lesson)? Um...no.  Here are three of my students from one of my classes.  Almost all my classes have several boys and at least one girl taller than me.  I look not unlike a Hobbit in this picture (without the hairy feet...)