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.

Twice-Cooked Pork

Ever since I first started planning to live in China for a full year, one of my biggest goals was to learn how to cook authentic, delicious Chinese food...and this week I began to work towards that goal! The very first dish that I made was Hui Guo Rou, or Twice-Cooked Pork. It's one of my all time favorite Chinese dishes, and my own version turned out better than I had ever expected.

It basically tastes like bacon. For dinner.

As part of this blog, I've decided to update it with my favorite Chinese recipes, and hopefully bring a little of China to my friends and family back home. The recipes that I use all come from Fuschia Dunlop's Land of Plenty, which I give the highest of recommendations. If you want to make real, true Chinese food, only Fuschia's book will do. But since I don't want to plagiarize her recipes on my blog, I've found a recipe online that is similar enough to still do the dish justice. Now, with out further ado, here is the recipe for Twice-Cooked Pork!


Twice Cooked Pork
Credit to Traditional Chinese Recipes

Gathering together the ingredients may take a bit of effort: the traditional hui guo rou uses several ingredients that will only be found in Asian groceries, including green garlic (saun miao), Sichuan chili bean paste (dou ban jiang) and sweet bean paste (tian main jiang) . Dunlop points out that one can substitute hoisin sauce for the sweet bean paste, but its distinctive sweetnesss and flavor is a bit overpowering.

12 oz pork belly, skin on

3 green garlic (suan miao) or leeks (sliced diagonally) 2 1/2 - 3 oz.)
1" x 1/2 " pc ginger, sliced thin
1 TAB rice wine or sherry (Shao Xing Chiu)
2 tsp Sichuan chili bean paste (duo ban jian)
1 TAB Sweet bean paste (tian mian jiang)
1 round tsp sugar 
2 tsp fermented black beans (dou chi)
1 tsp dark soy
1 Tab peanut or other vegetable oil


Bring 2/3 quarts of water (you can throw in a couple of chopped scallions and 3 or 4 slices of ginger if the stock will be used later) to a gentle boil; add meat and, depending on the thickness of the belly, simmer 20 to 30 minutes. Drain and allow to cool in the refrigerator at least a couple of hours--if possible overnight. When completely cool, cut the belly piece into sections so that when it is sliced thin across the striations of fat and meat, the pieces will be approximately 1" x 2" x 1/8". 

Make ready all the ingredients on the list. When the oil is smoking hot, stir fry pork slices until nicely brown on the edges. Don't overcook. Remember, you're frying what is basically bacon, so if you cook the pork until it is well browned, it will be crisp and somewhat tough. Fry it until it is lightly brown, and the edges begin to crisp and curl. When lightly browned, splash with wine, move the meat up the sides of the wok and add ginger slices, sliced green garlic or softened leeks, and chili bean paste. If you are using leeks, remove dryer outer sheaths, slice as indicated and stir fry the leak slivers to soften them. Stir fry for 30 seconds, add sweet bean paste for 30 seconds, and then toss in sugar and dark soy.  Toss the mixture in the wok for a minute or so, plate the hui guo rou and garnish with sesame oil.


Eat as an entree, with rice and steamed veggies as a side!

Road Trip!

Reflections After Two Weeks of Teaching

I'm two weeks into my first real job after graduating college, and I have to say...it's a pretty sweet gig. The hours are minimal, I only have to make two lesson plans a week, and the students are amazing. Overall, I'm more that satisfied, and glad of the opportunity to come here.

Of course, everything isn't all peaches and roses, and most of my frustrations so far have had to do with the administrative side of things. The network of administration in China is labyrinthine, with a huge number of people delegating tasks to other people, until no one really knows who is supposed to be doing what. To be fair, this is a very new college (founded in 2006), so it's only to be expected that they're still figuring things out. My first big surprise was when I found out that my News English course had a text book...after teaching two classes. And I only found out because a student was kind enough to let me know. Luckily, the first week I had already planned as an introduction/syllabus week, so it was no great loss. I picked up the textbook on Wednesday after class, and used it over the weekend to plan my next week's lesson...only to discover that the office had given me the student text book. This meant that in a text book comprised solely of listening exercises, I only had the CD for the 'take home' listening part, rendering about 4/5 of the book absolutely useless. I asked the office about it on Monday, but it seems they never saw any reason why I might need a teacher's text book in order to teach a course, and so had never ordered one. Sigh. They are hopefully in the process of rectifying this right now, but I'm planning to make next week's lesson sans textbook, just in case.

Other fun quirks: you can't access teaching rooms outside of the regular class time, so if you want to practice a lesson, or test your powerpoint before class, you are out of luck. Also, teachers have to pay for their own printing, which means that if I want to have a single handout for class, I have to print out over 125 copies and pay for them myself.

Lastly, we had an administrative meeting with the dean of the college, the heads of our departments, and other important people. It was incredibly informative, and gave us tons of information about how we should be structuring our class. The only problem is that this meeting was held two full weeks after class had started. Much of it was information about what we should be telling our students on the first day of class (grading, missing class, etc.), which is pretty difficult to do when the first class has already come and gone. Oh, China.

However, as I said at the beginning, despite these sometimes aggravating, sometimes bemusing peculiarities of teaching in China, I have been having a wonderful time so far. A highlight from earlier this week was Teacher's Day, in which all of the teachers are honored. Students will often give their teachers small gifts, and there was an AMAZING free lunch in the cafeteria, complete with a choice between red wine or Sprite. There was a ceremony for all of the teachers in the afternoon, with speeches by various important people, and all of the teachers received a bouquet of beautiful flowers and a salary bonus.

Seriously, what's not to like about this?

I thought it was a great tradition, and it was great to have a day to really appreciate teachers, who play such an important role in our society and yet largely go unrecognized for it. China can leave me frustrated and bewildered, and yet then I turn around to find something that fascinates and delights me.

Home

Here they are: the long awaited apartment photos! It's a really nice place, with lots of high ceilings and windows, but best of all is, of course, the Western style toilet! I would have just posted pictures of the toilet because that's how much I appreciate it, but I can see how that might be a little weird. So instead, I've just included pictures of the two main rooms.

All in all, it's a very sweet set-up, and I have no complaints...well, except for the cockroach I found wandering around the kitchen on the second night. When I first spotted him, I tried politely shooing him out the door with a broom. But he's a big sucker (about the size of my thumb), and instead of moseying out the door like I had hoped, he only buzzed angrily at me and scuttled angrily away into the drapes. Then he spent the whole next night dive bombing my head from high places as I tried to skype with people. I'm convinced that cockroaches are a whole lot smarter than people think. Or at least hold grudges for longer. Anyway, I've named the sullen little bugger Walter and have been reduced to leaving out roach poison and muttering passive aggressively at him whenever I do things in the kitchen. Since I haven't seen ol' Walt for the past four days, I'm hoping he's vacated the premise or has gone for the poison and died somewhere.

Okay, enough of that thrilling play-by-play. On to the much more exciting apartment tour! Don't worry though, Dear Reader, I'll be sure to keep you updated on my battle with the bug.

This is the living room/kitchen area, with a view of the front door. As you can see, it's a sizable apartment, especially a studio apartment, and came furnished with a good amount of furniture!

Here's the view from the front door. I've got a full sized refrigerator, a stove, a dishwasher, and a microwave.

On to the bed room! The bed, as is common in China, is very, very firm. The other American teachers liken it so sleeping on "soft wood". From what I hear, it's great for your back, so there's that. But in all seriousness, I never have trouble sleeping on it and its size more than makes up for its lack of cushiness.

My desk and TV. I have yet to get the TV working, but supposedly there's a repairman coming at some point to help me out with that. In the back of the picture, you might be able to make out my ten tons of closet space. Seriously, I have so much space.

And the last "room" is my little enclosed balcony. I have a washer out here, and have racks on the ceiling to hang clothes from. 

 Last but not least is the view from my window!

And that's it for the apartment. I had meant to have the video blog of the Xi'an trip up by now, but alas, it's been a busy few days getting acclimated to teaching. However, know that I am working on it, and it should hopefully be up soon!