Pictures, etc.

I've updated my pictures to include a bunch of shots from the various facets of life here, including all the Christmas photos that I never posted before.

On a more entertaining note, one of my students is currently reading Lolita as sort of an investigation into Western culture and ethics. Here are his thoughts from the first part of the book: "Half of the words are talking about Humbert's eccentricity again and again. The other half? Depicting young girls' backsides and thighs in a hundred ways." I couldn't have put it more elegantly.

My Life as an Orphan

I'm all alone again since my mom and Rod left after a very short stay in Xi'an last week. They were only here for three days (after spending a few days in Beijing), so I tried to show them everything that was good and exciting about my life in Xi'an.
The best part of their trip was just spending time with them, since it had been over seven months since our last meeting. We had a lot of interesting conversations about life in China and differences from the West, which gave me a good opportunity to vent about certain things that remain frustrations. The really interesting part for me was the incongruities they noticed that I had long since accepted or forgotten about. Here are a few examples:

• The fact that there is no organized system of lines.. anywhere. It's first come, first serve, and even if you are surrounded by a gaggle of old ladies trying to make their way on to the bus, an elbow to the ribs would not be out of place to get yourself to the front.
  
• The lack of heat in most buildings. Unfortunately, my mom and Rod arrived here a few days after March 15, the day the heat was shut off by the central authority in Beijing. This is a country-wide policy and has nothing to do with the actual weather conditions. (In fact, only a few days before the shut-off, I was running the air conditioner along with the heat, because it was so warm outside). During my mom's stay, however, the weather was anything but pleasant. It was cold and rainy, so we were forced to do as the Chinese, that is, wear more clothing.
  
• The excess amounts of food. I got used to this a long time ago, that there is always too much food at banquets and other dinner parties with friends. It's a way to show your generosity and prosperity. My mom and Rod just saw it as a waste.
• My favorite thing and something I have been meaning to write about for a long time: crotchless baby pants. Until the age of 4 or 5, children walk around with a huge split in their pants, exposing their bums and nether regions. At any given moment, you may see a child squatting at the side of the road or next to a tree, relieving themselves for someone else to clean up later. Lily, my Chinese friend, also informed me that parents can train their children to pee at the sound of a whistle, sort of a Pavlov's dog thing. I was happy to learn, however, that diapers are used at some occasions when I was sitting next to a mother and child during a two-hour flight.
  

My mom and Rod's arrival at the airport. The flowers are from Ma Jing.. I'm not that thoughtful of a daughter.

Taken at the starting point of the Silk Road.

Some old Chinese guy who commented on Rod's youthful appearance and made Rod feel his strong thumb muscles.

New Teacher

This semester, I'm teaching one section of freshman students, the only class that I didn't also teach last semester. The first week, I spent some time introducing myself and getting to know the class. For their journal assignments, some of the students shared their first impressions of me:

"Our new foreign teacher is a lovely, beautiful girl and also a three-quarters American. It really make me feel friendly that she told us a quarter of her blood is Chinese. Her name, Kitty Hallin, had caught much attention because Hello Kitty is a world-known cartoon role."

"Kitty, it's very nice to meet you, my new English teacher. I have listened to your class for just one time but your special teaching skill slay me."

"Slowly but surely, the first English class of listening and speaking came. To our surprise, a new teacher turned up in the class. Of course, she is Kitty Hallin. Kitty Hallin really looked short. [. . .] As a whole, our new teacher is very interesting and smart and she would come up, with some new idea to improve our English skills. Am I right, Miss Hallin?"

News travels fast here

This past Saturday, I picked up a copy of China Daily, the English language newspaper published by the Communist Party. It's not a very reliable source of news (one travel book called it a "propaganda sheet"), but it syndicates the New York Times crossword puzzle, so I shell out the 1.5 yuan a few times a week to get it. This particular issue carried a headline saying, "Xi'an safe for foreign tourists, mayor says". The story went on to explain how a bus carrying ten Australian tourists was hijacked by a man with explosives strapped to his chest. The hijacker was eventually shot dead and none of the tourists were hurt. This happened on Wednesday. The news came out on Saturday, four days after this occurred. There was no other mention of this event, before or after it happened, and the reason for this attack is still unknown. After asking all my students about it this week, only a few had even heard about what happened.

This is just one example of the extremely censored media that I have access to in China. While vacationing in Cambodia, I read about a mine that collapsed in Shanxi province in December 2007, killing 147 workers. This happened only a few hours away from Xi'an, yet there was never any news about it. Part of the problem is that I don't speak Chinese, so anything I hear comes from the English websites that I can still reach through the Great Firewall (BBC not included), from word of mouth, or from publications like China Daily.

Still, I'm constantly amazed by the kind of information my students receive (read: completely biased). A few months ago, a student asked if I had ever heard of the student demonstrations in 1989 in Beijing i.e Tiananmen Square. He had only chanced upon this information by watching a documentary that had been officially banned in China but that he had downloaded from the internet.