Pengzu Shan or Bust

This weekend James, one of the other foreign teachers, helped to organize a trip to a nearby local landmark, Pengzu Shan. This mountain is where Pengzu, supposedly one of the oldest men in all of China, was buried. Pengshan, where I am living, was his hometown, and is subsequently famous for longevity.

On Saturday after eating lunch, we all grabbed our bikes and hit the road, ready to get out of the town and see some of the surrounding area. The road getting to the mountain was an adventure, to say the least. The street itself was very narrow and had so many cracks and potholes in it that a dirt path would almost have been better. Along with a fairly steady stream of traffic, the bike ride was more than a little nerve-wracking. But the scenery on the way was well worth it. We biked along the Jinjiang river and went through a tiny old ghost village that was full of run down buildings, as well as finally got to see some of the beautiful forests enclosing our town. 

Devin is ecstatic that he hasn't been hit by a car yet.

When we got to the mountain itself, we discovered that our cardio for the day was far from over:

So. Many. Stairs.

Luckily, I love to hike and it felt fabulous to get out and do some real exercise outside of the gym. Breathing in the fresh air and walking among the unfamiliar trees was soothing in a way that's difficult to find outside of nature. All along the path, there were places to turn off and stop to see different landmarks or temples. The first one we came across was a shrine to give homage to Pengzu. Except on all of the English signs, they refer to him as "Methuselah", I guess because that's the oldest person a Westerner could relate to. Pengzu, it is said, was around 700 or 800 years old.

In the first little shrine, you could pay a donation to get a prayer ribbon. You are supposed to write down the names of the people that you never want to die, and then tie the ribbon to the shrine. We all bought one for 5 yuan, and the caretakers of the shrine were very excited as they watched us write down the names in English before tying the ribbons up. Pengzu, they said, would recognize any name, whether it's in English or Chinese.

Some other highlights were seeing the famous double Buddha and visiting the grave of the Fairy Queen.

I also feel like I should mention this...fruit? Root? Vegetable? The question marks are because I'm not totally sure what it was. Some of the Chinese students that came with us bought it from a vendor on the side of the path, it was very unique. It had the texture of an apple, but the flavor of an uncooked potato, and before we peeled it, it looked like a white turnip. Since none of us had any clue what it was called in English, we dubbed it a "papple".

Mmm...Papple.

At the very top of the mountain was a beautiful, massive temple complex dedicated to the grave of the Fairy Queen and to Pengzu. I'm not totally sure who or what the Fairy Queen was because none of the Chinese students could effectively explain it. But apparently during January, people bring her clothes, and she died when she was around 13 years old. The temple itself was tucked away in the trees, and was one of the most beautiful, colorful places that I've been to yet in China.

After spending some time wandering around the temple complex, we made our way back down the mountain. We stopped at the bottom to drink some tea at a local tea house before hitting the road, which turned out to be a mistake because as soon as we got on our bikes it began to sprinkle. The sprinkle turned into quite the downpour about halfway back to the school. But biking through a rainstorm isn't the worst thing in the world, and being from Oregon, the rain just made me feel right at home. Nothing that a warm shower, a blanket, and a cup of hot chocolate couldn't fix!

Troubadour

A couple of weeks ago, I came home to find this note slipped underneath my door. It looked like something that would not have been out of place in a Jane Austen novel.

After a moment of perplexed bemusement, I flipped the card over and found that it was not some sort of over-elaborate love note, but was instead an invitation to the English Club's first meeting and party. This came with the added condition that if I attended, they would "strongly encourage" me to prepare a performance for the members. In China, a "party" generally consists of a talent show of sorts, with people singing, dancing, telling jokes, or performing magic tricks. I chose to borrow a guitar from one of the students and dust off a song that I had written for my cousin's wedding over the summer. Of course, before I agreed to do it, I wish that I had known the English Club consisted of over a hundred students. In the end, though, my song was a hit and it was pretty fun and amusing to have instant celebrity status just by being able to strum a basic chord progression. Here's a picture of me singing the song. They couldn't find a music stand, so instead, one of the party hosts held up the piece of paper while I sang...and made eye contact with me the entire song.

That was a little bit awkward.

If nothing else, coming to China has definitely helped me to overcome any and all stage fright problems I might have had.

English Names

So, when I first began teaching English here in Pengshan, I started by teaching only sophomores who were also all English majors. This meant that not only was their English quite advanced, but also that they all had given themselves English names from previous years of study. My freshman, who I began teaching two weeks later, were a different story. Only about one in every ten of them had an English name at all. Therefore, for their first night of homework, I set them to the task of finding an English name.

I found out later that the other foreign teachers had mostly all chosen to give their students a list of English names, which they could choose from. I, on the other hand, decided to let them follow their whimsy. It's a human name, after all--not christening a new element of the periodic table. How strange could it get?

Oh, how wrong I was. And it was the best mistake of my life.

Some of the "English" names that the students chose were obviously just pinyin of various Chinese names, such as Zhu Yi, Xiao Ma, or Lee He. Others were very average American names, like Steven, Sarah, or Jack (so many Jacks). And still others were badly misspelled versions of English names, which the students had evidently only heard before and never seen spelled, such as Criss, Krystal, Bulinda, or Alen. And of course, there's the nature inspired ones, including Leaf, Meteor, Wonder, and Rice.

But it was the truely creative ones that had me chortling with laughter as I created the class roster for each class. Below is a list of my favorite "English" names compiled from my freshman classes:

Faust (yes, it's 'normal', I know. But I just love that someone chose Faust)
Lanetia Wang
Nidhogg
Mr. Obamdon
Lingshaw
Longnius
Panthon
Jacksong
Emerhoucia
Elodie
Roya
Goshen
Scofield
Shellin

But my personal favorite would have to be: Illidan Stormrage. I can just imagine him introducing himself to a forigner: "Yes, hello my name is Illidan Stormrage."
"Call me Illidan."
"Here's your coffee Mr...Stormrage."

I'm not sure if he's confused or a genius.

Update!

Hi Everyone!

Sorry it's taken me almost a month to put up a new blog post, but I have been CRAZY busy these last few weeks. The good news is that I have TONS to talk about, so expect plenty of new posts this week! Some things to look forwards to:

A vlog post on my trip to Chongqing for National Day Holiday. A couple weeks ago, we got a week long vacation, and I spent it going to Chengdu and Chongqing. It was incredible. We went to museums, a temple, climbed a mountain, ate delicious hotpot, and lots more—but you'll hear about that later.

News about the college anniversary...and my performance with the other foreign teachers doing a dance in front of THOUSANDS of people. Yeah. That was a little nerve-wracking. I have a video of the dance that will be posted any day now!

In addition to these, I also have a few other posts planned. So, if you're wondering why it's taken me so long to get these all of these supposed posts up on the blog, the reason is that things got a little hectic after we got back from vacation. To preface this rant, I should explain a few things. We have had a vacation before. For the Mid-autumn Day Celebration, the school was given Thursday and Friday off, but then we had to teach Friday's classes on Saturday to make up for the lost time (luckily, I didn't have Friday classes at that point in time, so I just got a really long weekend). For the National Holiday vacation, we had a similar schedule planned for us. We got Tuesday through the next Monday off of school, but we had to make up the missed Friday's classes on the Saturday before vacation, as well as the missed Monday's classes on the following Saturday. So we did all of this, with a little grumbling about having to work on a Saturday, and got back to our normal schedule...or so we thought.

Midway through last week, after coming into the office for my office hours, I was informed by the administration (and I had never heard anything about this previously) that we had to make up ALL of the other classes that we missed during vacation, and we had to do it on our own time, and schedule it all ourselves. And apparently we also have to make up Thursday's classes that we missed for the Mid-autumn Festival. Which happened over a month ago. And they only told us now. So that was a fun little tidbit of information that would have been a whole lot more helpful to know, oh I don't know, at the beginning of the year. We are quickly learning that the administration here is not very big on planning ahead.

Nevertheless, after the initial flabbergasted response, we all kicked it into high gear, and the last week has been spent frantically rescheduling classes and figuring out when to have my makeup classes. And of course, this is all in addition to my regular office hours, Chinese class, and English corner, which all happen every week. I've had five makeup classes already, and I still have six to go that have not been scheduled yet. However, I'm hoping to get them all done by the end of next week, so wish me luck! The good news is that after this, going back to my regular schedule will seem like a piece of cake.