Visitor!

This past week, I've had a visitor come and visit me in Pengshan: my good friend Nicole! She and I took many Chinese classes together in college, and this month she was traveling around China doing research on animal rights for a research paper in her final year of college. When I found out that she was coming by Chengdu, I insisted that she had to stay with me while she was here! Over the last week, we've had a blast. On Sunday, I took her into Chengdu and we visited a couple places that I have been meaning to go, but haven't gotten around to seeing yet: the local antique market and the Chengdu Zoo.

We went to the antique market first, and it was delightful! It consisted of a ton of stalls full of old Chinese artifacts, including pottery, jewelry, and other knickknacks.

One stall even had an old phonograph!

I could have spent hours there sorting through everything, but we had other things planned, so after an hour we headed off to the Chengdu Zoo.

Actually, we had originally planned to go see the Panda Research Base, which Chengdu is so famous for. However, google maps led us astray and instead of taking us to the breeding grounds for adorable pandas, it took us to a very industrial part of Chengdu, with no pandas to be found. Luckily, when we consulted the map, we discovered that we weren't actually far from the zoo, so we decided to catch a bus there instead.

Zoos have always been a conflicting experience for me. On the one hand, I love animals, and it's a treat so see so many exotic, beautiful animals in one place. But on the other hand, it's always slightly depressing to see them pent up in cages. And yes, I know there are a lot of justifications for zoos and that it's not like they can just release zoo animals into the wild, but that doesn't change the fact that zoos always make me a little uncomfortable.

The Chengdu Zoo, however, was even more depressing than usual. Their selection of animals was impressive and varied. I got to see some animals that I had never seen before in any American zoo:

This was my first time seeing a Golden Monkey. They're native to Sichuan!

The squirrel monkeys were adorable.

A beautiful White Tiger.

Some baby deer.

A hippo at feeding time. Look at that jaw!

But, while the animals themselves were gorgeous, their habitats left a lot to be desired. With the exceptions of the pandas and some of the monkeys, most of the exhibits were far too small for the animals containing them. The tigers, in particular, were almost all on edge, pacing the lengths of their enclosures. Additionally, most of the cages were open to the sky, which meant that visitors were throwing them bits of food to tempt them closer to the windows. At nearly every cage, the animals were right up near the edge, begging for food. Lastly, some of the animals' sleeping areas had large windows in them, which not only meant that they did not have somewhere to retreat to when they became agitated, but also that people were constantly banging on the glass, trying to get the animals to wake up and do something more interesting!

The lack of "zoo etiquette" was astounding. Simple things that are pretty ingrained in our culture (don't feed the animals! don't bang on the glass!) were simply ignored, and it made me realize how much I've taken that for granted. I can't say that going to the zoo was a pleasant experience, but it certainly made me think. What else is common in our society that is an anomaly elsewhere? What else have I taken for granted?

Halloween in Chengdu

For anyone who doesn't know, my favorite holiday out of all of the holidays (yes, including Christmas), is Halloween. I'm not totally sure what makes it my favorite; it's a combination of many different things. I love the spooky atmosphere, the unashamed delight in macabre subjects. I love scary movies and stories. I love carving jack-o-lanterns, feeling the squishy mixture of goo and seeds slip between my fingers as I scoop it out of the center. I love the crisp autumn weather and the smell of dead leaves and chimney smoke. I love the costumes, the ghouls and the ghosts, the witches and monsters. But most of all I love the childish nostalgia that Halloween brings. On All Hallow's Eve, everyone is a child again. We all feast on candy and play pranks and run underneath the pumpkin orange moon because we can, because we're alive, and tonight corpses and death are only a joke that we can laugh at and dance away.

And I was going to be damned if being in China meant missing out on Halloween, which is why, on Friday after school let out, all of us Americans banded together in our quest for Halloween festivities and made the hour long trek to Chengdu.

We spent the afternoon stopping by The Bookworm, our favorite coffee shop and bookstore, and then headed over to People's Park. It was my first time seeing the park, and it did not disappoint. Unlike western parks, it did not have many open places, but was instead a network of trails that wound around trees and streams and hills.

A monument at the edge of the park.

Vendors sold fruits and nuts along the street outside.

Sunset at Tianfu Square.

After poking around Chengdu, it was time to head back to our hostel and get ready for a night out. Brenna and I were actually the only ones that put any effort into our costumes. I went as a broken China doll, and Brenna made a lovely zombie.

Our taxi driver got quite the scare.

After hanging out at the hostel for a little while, we met up with some of our Chinese friends at a bar downtown. We spent a couple hours just hanging out an chatting.

Devin and Wayne had beautiful singing voices

Around 12, we left the bar in favor of the nearby clubbing district, and danced into the night. In the end, it turned out that Halloween wasn't a very big holiday in China, and while I saw a few other people with costumes, we were definitely not the norm, and drew even more attention to ourselves than usual. Do I regret it? Not one bit. I got tons of complete strangers telling me that they loved my costume, and even more doing horrified double-takes as I walked by, which I treasured even more than the compliments. I might live in China, but there's no way I wasn't going to celebrate my favorite American holiday.

As a reward for the crazy night, we all slept in late the next day, and treated ourselves to brunch the next morning. It'd been ages since I had a western breakfast (and breakfast is by far my favorite meal), so it felt like sunshine and rainbows on my taste buds.

See that expression on Brenna's face? Pure bliss. PURE. BLISS.

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.

Getting the Ball Rolling

Here in Pengshan, it was my second day in training as an American teacher. Each day, four of the American teachers team up to create a two hour long lesson for some volunteer students at the university, and are afterwards critiqued by our director, Tim. In the afternoon, we have an hour of Chinese class, and then the rest of our free time is spent making lesson plans, exploring the town, and generally bumming around wherever there is air conditioning (it is as hot and humid as I was warned it would be). The Chinese students are hardworking and cheerful, and creating a lesson plan and teaching is not nearly as nerve wracking as I feared it would be, for they are all very forgiving and supportive of their American teacher.

China itself is just as I remember it: confusing, fascinating, quirky, and delicious. The "delicious" aspect speaks for itself. I have never had food I enjoy more than actual Chinese food (don't get me started on American Chinese food), and the food here in Sichuan, the 'land of flavor', is no exception. I will freely admit that I've been positively gorging myself on Ma Po Doufu, Huo Guo (aka Hot Pot), Gongbao Jiding, or so many other of my favorite dishes. As for the "quirkiness" of China, that's a little more difficult to explain.

The reason I keep coming back to China, time after time, is that there is always something new to see or learn. Its history is so rich and vibrant, and its civilization has developed for so long separate from the Western world, it has a completely singular culture. Now, I'm not talking about the distinctive architecture or jade carvings or haunting music. Those, of course, are all part of the makeup of China, but it is certainly not everything. By 'completely singular culture', I mean that there is a nagging twist on everything you see and do. Everything, from people's body language, to the smells on the street, to the coca cola bottles in the store, is familiar, and yet slightly different from what your brain is expecting. The insects in the trees sound kind of like cicadas, but not the ones I know. The street signs are a different size and shape. The buses, the flowers, the leaves on the trees, the skyscrapers, the elevator music. Of course there are huge differences, such as the language and the people, but it is the little differences that sneak up on me. Add to that crowds of people staring at me, and it quickly creates an eerie sense of disorientation wherever go.

However, while this feeling of vertigo is not always altogether pleasant, it is definitely the reason I keep returning to China. It is fascinating and alluring, and forces me to look at my own country through a different lens. Always with something new awaiting me outside my front door, I have the opportunity to explore every time I leave--explore new territory, explore new tastes and smells, explore the trivialities of China that make it something all its own. Staying away from this country for long is simply not an option.

Also, the food. 

Laowai

Chinese: 老外; pinyin: Lǎowài
n. foreigner