Kindergarten, Meat and Beautiful Thighs

2 September 2005

For a family having a remarkably relaxing time in China, we're pretty busy, and I find myself scrambling to get photos processed and little blogs put together before too many days go by between posts. Any reduced blog frequency is not for lack of things to talk about. On the contrary. We're leaving this afternoon for a two or three day weekend hike up into the mountains to explore Lake Wenhai and some villages in the surrounding area. It's all close to here--in fact, the entire trip will probably take place within 10 or 15 miles of our apartment. But for now I'm going to toss out a few near-random bits.

Bei

Bei continues to have a great time despite her lack of Mandarin and the general scarcity of kids her age here on campus. I think she's enjoying having relatively de-stressed parents with reduced work schedules (I'm currently in the classroom for only 6 hours per week and Ellen hasn't started yet). We've been on lots of bike excursions with her riding in the seat bolted to the back and she is an immediate magnet for locals who like to come over to talk with us to solve the mystery of the ethnic discrepancy between her and us. A couple of days ago we stopped in a little store near a village called Yulong where about 8 Naxi people where hanging out. After quite a bit of discussion and laughter, the man on the left below came over to act as spokesman. You can tell from these guys' eyes that they are not strangers to laughter.



Kindergarten

Bei finally started kindergarten yesterday (Thursday) at a school in downtown Lijiang across the street from a huge statue of Mao. The school is large and institutional but lively and, of course, full of kids Bei's age. Bei starts at 8:30 and we pick her up at noon. She eats breakfast and lunch there from little stainless steel cups and bowls much like the ones that prisoners would use to bang on the bars of their cells. The school cafeteria includes a pig pen holding about 5 large pigs at any one time. For those of us who worry about the quality of snacks at Montessori schools, our frame of reference has closed its eyes and taken a huge leap. When asked about her first day, Bei said that it was "great". She still needs to learn how to use the trough toilet though and we may send spare clothes with her today.

Here's the kindergarten schoolyard. It's institutional but full of kids and deafeningly loud at recreation time.



Here are some of the kids in the school. They loved seeing their pictures on the digital camera.



This is Bei's classroom. It's a 4-year old class and supposedly there will be another non-Chinese speaker there soon. There is a 5-year old Norwegian girl in another class who apparently adjusted to the language issue in about a month. Kids are remarkable.



Meat

While Bei was in school, Ellen and I went to market to have a look around and to buy some vegetables. Old Town Lijiang has a large open market that is a pleasure to explore. I'll do a meat blog sometime, but I needed to include this photo of a vegetarian in distress.



Teaching

I started teaching this week--for now just 6 hours. I have two 2-hour writing classes and one 2-hour course in Engligh newspaper and magazine reading. Writing assignments will be a constant source of interesting material here. I started the courses with a couple of in-class writings. One was on “What you miss most about your homes?” and the other asked that students to introduce themselves to me. I’ll copy a few verbatim quotes below. The writings ranged from humorous use of English to poignant descriptions of life in China.

Zhang Jianru

“My name is Zhang Jianru. English name is Jerry. I come from Xin Jiang. My first English name is Jelly. But my oral English teacher told me that is a kind of food, not very good. So he help me to change ‘Jelly’ to ‘Jerry’.”

Jin Zhu

“I like to learn English, but I’m always lazy to increasing my English vocabulary. I think it’s very difficult. But I’ll try my best in learning English. And I hate cockroach very much.”

Zhang Luyan

“I don’t have the favorite food, because I like taste everything. My family and friends all say I am a girl very easy to feed on.”

And my personal favorite…

By Liu Xin Xin (a girl from Chongqin, China)

"My hometown is in the south of China. Chongqin is a beautiful city there are many beautiful thighs there."

I told another class about this and suggested that I would like to go to this city for a vacation but that my wife wouldn’t let me. They got a kick out of that.

Many students write of their closeness to family. This one was especially moving to me.

Niu Hong Lei

"First I miss my mother. She is very warm hearted even though she has the hot temper, but she loves me very much. She often told me something about what I should do. I miss her everyday. I miss my father too. There are four children in my family. My brother sister and I are students. Every day we cost so much. In order to let us study, my father work day and night. I think he is the great man in the world. I love and miss he very much. I can use word to express my feeling. Every day he told me study hard."

New Orleans

Finally, even from here we have followed the depressing news from New Orleans on the web. If any of you have relatives or friends there we hope they are ok and coping with the chaos. Maybe most distressing for me is to see how quickly the "first world" can descend into anarchy even with all of the resources we have. I remember New Orleans from trips to Mardi Gras and other visits and fear that the city I remember will not be seen again for a very long time.