Last China post...maybe

Is it even possible that our time in China could be drawing to a close? Where did the time go?

This may be my second-to-the-last post. My plan is to do this post, and then the final post will be one which will contain my favorite pictures from our China Adventure. I will try to do it with little or no commentary...a tough mission for me.  That is my plan, unless something catches my eye, brain or heart in a manner I feel ought to be shared.

For this post, I thought I would share some of the insights, thoughts, etc., I have gleaned through our ten+ months here.

Things the Chinese admire about Americans:

Most Chinese love Americans and through a number of sources, I have gleaned a few things I think they admire or even envy about Americans.  I displayed one of those sources in a post I did about Stereotypes [Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness (11/8/18)].

Other sources were class presentations by the students, one-on-one conversations with them, etc. Here are a few of the things they envy about us:

High nose bridges (our glasses don’t slide down!)

Our “dazzling” white skin (many of us)

Different eye colors

Different colors of hair

How direct we are (blunt!)

Our enthusiasm for life

How adventurous we are

We are rich in facial and body language

Our freedoms!  While they the Chinese people are happy, they recognize they do not have the freedoms Americans have

• We can decide when we want air conditioning / heat on in our personal accommodations as well as all public buildings, nation-wide (now decided by the government)
• We can decide what kind of mattress we want – hard or soft (the government mandates very hard beds for health reasons – Chinese mattresses are essentially nothing more than box springs)
• They envy our Internet access and capabilities. The government routinely shuts down the Internet, sometimes for days at a time. Of course, Chinese citizens do not have free access to the Internet anyway...
• They are absolutely fascinated by guns…sort of like snakes -- some people fear and/or are mesmerized by snakes
• Our freedom of speech, Hollywood topics (even the trashy ones) are all envied.

Things I envy about the Chinese:

Family focus – particularly multi-generational families -- you can't go anywhere without seeing multi-generational families --> grandparents, children and grandchildren, enjoying their time together, running errands together, etc. That has been lost in America in great measure.

They have a pretty healthy lifestyle. They generally eat sensibly (large breakfast, lighter lunch, still lighter dinner), lots of vegetables, fish, fruit.

Drugs are illegal in China. That is enforced by death penalties for drug dealers, even for those who deal the "harmless" drug of marijuana.

Incredibly low crime rate. I have seldom felt as safe on a street in America as I do in China, whether during the night or during the day. Crime is punished quickly and effectively (albeit, I suspect, fairly harshly).

Incredible patriotism – the likes of which I have never seen. Our students are so proud to be sons and daughters of China. The closest I have been to seeing this in America was shortly after 9/11. The Chinese people are NOT the stereotypical "Communist-woe-is-me citizen" I have pictured since my childhood. Instead, our students are happy, quick to smile and laugh, and quick to accept us. Most Chinese citizens are pulling for their country to succeed.  America seems to be pulling in opposite directions.

Things we’ll miss about China:

Real Chinese food. We like Chinese food in America, but ****Newsflash**** -- it is not real Chinese food. The seasonings and sauces are different, I guess. Oh -- and we're eating it in China...but there is a difference. Very few items on the menu of an American Chinese food restaurant appear on a menu (or anywhere in the restaurant) here in China.

The people – their smiles, sincere kindness we experience everywhere.

People offering me their seats on a bus (I always feel awkward, particularly because it is often older women at least ten years older than me who are offering!)

The warm and welcoming smiles of our students

Our celebrity status here – lots of photos with Chinese people (some requested, far more surreptitiously!) Seriously -- we will really miss that.

                                                         (Yep -- that's Bonita being videoed by a woman at a market...)

     This was the first class I taught when I came to China. The picture of a portion of the class behind us was taken that first class period. The picture of us taken in front of that previous picture was taken after my last lesson with them.  Bittersweet memories.  Aren't they absolutely adorable?! (See if you can recognize any of them in the current classroom, that were also in the picture at the beginning of last year -- I can pick all of them out...but of course I love all of them and they are MY kids...)

Applause from students after a lesson they particularly enjoyed or appreciated.

The naivete of our students – truly precious.

The peace and harmony that is prevalent in the Chinese society.

The safety we felt while walking around large cities.

Things we’re looking forward to in America:

Bathtub - our apartment did not have a bathtub...while I don't normally take baths, when I am sick, or bone weary from a long day, it's a nice option!

Bathroom amenities: Toilet paper (you always carry your own), soap, hot water, paper towels, clean.

A thick, juicy steak - I tried repeatedly and never had a decent steak in China. Generally the meat was tough as shoe leather, and had an odd taste -- some spice or perhaps a marinate most restaurants use. Saltgrass or Texas Roadhouse, here I come!

Chicken, beef and pork without bones diced up in them (See my post: Lawnmower Chicken, 2/24/19).

Drinking water out of a tap or drinking fountain, and not have to carry a backpack everywhere I go with enough water to get me through a day or two, and toilet paper.

Real ice cream.

Being retired again – no lessons to plan, buses to catch, classes to teach. Just pretty much do what we want, when we want.

Internet service that isn’t arbitrarily blocked by the government for days at a time.

Internet access when I expect it.

Colorado Rockies Baseball!

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And now, below are a few pictures of my students and me during our last moments together. I have 265 students across six classes this semester. Since all my classes are Oral English classes, my finals are just meeting one-on-one with each of my students and speaking English for about five minutes. I have completed 216 of the 265 -- 49 more to go, which I will do this Thursday (June 20). The meetings I have had thus far have been precious beyond belief. There were lots of hugs (the boys requested them as often as the girls) and many tears were shed.

                    Wouldn't you buy a Coke from her? I would, and I don't even drink Coke! :-)

One young woman -- Grace (Sun Mengxin) posted this series of pictures on an app they have over here -- WeChat:

At the beginning of the first semester, I provided all students with tent cards that had their names on them -- these helped me learn their names. They also had a playing card printed on them -- I could quickly get them into groups that way, and mix it up with who they would be speaking with. "Okay -- all the aces are one team, the twos are another...etc." Or "Okay, let's have the ace through four of hearts be a team, ace through four of diamonds be another team, etc."

I taught my students about the various American holidays...so I of course gave them all Valentines Day cards.  I was touched by how many kept them, including Grace!

I have 208 more pictures (or thereabouts), but I will let these few suffice. Aren't my students the greatest?

A few more:

When the sun comes out, so do the umbrellas. Chinese people -- particularly the young women -- value light skin, and they constantly strive to protect their skin from the sun with umbrellas and face masks.  Also -- please note on this college campus -- about half the young women are wearing dresses or skirts -- very typical for spring, summer and fall here.

Some of you saw my FB posts of Shanghai -- the city was absolutely stunning (I thought). Here are a few of our pictures from there:

                   Shanghai Center Tower, tallest building in China, second-tallest building in the world (2,073 feet to the top).

                                             Buddhist monks in the Jing'an temple. Being taught by the Master.

                        Even monks have a light moment every now and then. "Did you hear the one about the

                       four Mormon missionaries who walked into a coffee bar?..."

                                           Bonita took this awesome picture of a monk in a hallway at Jing'an temple.

                                                                                                         I was framed...

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.