Transition

For some reason, moving from Chengdu to Chongqing is proving more
difficult than moving from the US to China was. Perhaps the reason is
that I haven't had to do dishes, cook for myself, or take out the
trash for the past two months. Or maybe because we had been preparing
for our departure for China for over a year, while we didn't really
anticipate our departure for Chongqing to be very climactic. Let me
illustrate the last week of our lives:

Monday, August 23: Last day of classes at SNU. We were anxious about
getting our LPI results, getting ready to say goodbye to host families
and starting to feel nostalgic about our Sichuan Normal University
campus and training group. I came down with the head cold that was
going around. We said goodbye to our teachers and spent the afternoon
wandering around Wenshu temple. When we arrived home to go out to our
last dinner with the host family, I turned the key in the lock just as
someone inside seemed to turn the handle. The lock stopped turning and
we found ourselves unable to get in while our host family found
themselves unable to get out. Since the apartment is on the 4th floor,
I am not sure how they would escape in case of an emergency. A
locksmith was called. Dinner reservations were missed. Richy and I
waited in the stairwell for about an hour. Heated argument ensued
between Jiejie and the locksmith who tried to charge her more than the
price quoted on the phone. I spent the evening post-lockout helping
Yao Ying with an English newspaper project.

Tuesday, August 24: Departure for the fancy four star hotel. We
realized our baggage grew since arriving in China, mostly with
teaching books and Peace Corps issued medical supplies (not including
those we were yet to receive at the hotel). Gege was in a rush to get
to work, so we arrived an hour early to catch the bus so we could wait
in the rain with all our luggage. Luckily another early, enterprising,
host family member found us all shelter in the campus police station.
We were impressed by a huge panda-themed fountain when we pulled into
the hotel parking lot, proximity to the city center (just blocks away)
and an outdoor pool. We found out our LPI scores: Richy and I both
achieved Intermediate-Mid. We were hoping for high, and considering
that two of our similarly skilled classmates ended up with
Intermediate-High led us to believe that inter-rater reliability might
be a factor. Nonetheless, we surpassed the requirement of
Intermediate-Low and can retake the LPI later if we feel like it. We
spent the rest of the evening enjoying the company of our SNU buddies.

Wednesday, August 25: The complimentary breakfast buffet at the hotel
was knockout amazing. Refills of real coffee, bacon, fresh omlettes
and orange juice. Toast, real butter, and fruit trays. Not to mention
a huge selection of Chinese and Japanese breakfast choices (which we
ignored, with the exception of a purple sweet potato for myself). It
motivated me to promise to get up earlier the next day for more coffee
refills. The rest of the day was a long block of orientation
activities and finishing up our training. Again, we spent the evening
enjoying the company of the SNU folks.

Thursday, August 26: The counterparts, liaisons and/or admins from our
Chinese Universities showed up and we spent the morning trying to get
more useful information out of them. We were graciously taken to lunch
by our waiban-liaison-soon-to-be-counterpart, William. The highlights
of the afternoon session were practicing our oath of service, getting
our flu shots and our settlement allowance cash. Being our last night
with the SNU buddies, things got a little rowdy, people previously
not-coupled became coupled, and merriment was had all around.

Friday, August 27th: The day began with another lovely breakfast,
after which, we rushed to dress up in our Zhongguo yifu and get our
butts into seats for swearing in. Since the US Ambassador to China was
out of the country we were sworn "to defend the constitution against
enemies foreign and domestic" by the Charge d'Affaires of the Beijing
Embassy, Robert Goldberg. He was accompanied by the Ambassador to the
Shanghai Expo, and the Consul General of the Chengdu US Consulate.
We got some fancy Shanghai Expo pins and proceeded to take lots of
photos with lots of people. We then went to a luncheon in our honor
where there were speeches to be heard about the importance of the
Peace Corps mission in China. Then we ate, but we were still full from
breakfast. After eating, we rushed back up to our room to change out
of the Zhongguo yifu and finish packing, then to get back downstairs
to check out, say our goodbyes and find a taxi. Since there were 88 of
us trying to find transportation, taxis were hard to come by, so
William found us an unlicensed van to take us to the train station.
Unfortunately since the van was unlicensed, he feared getting ticketed
near the train station, and therefore dropped us off about a mile
away. So we then got to carry our luggage all the way to the train
station. Of course all the Chongqing volunteers were put on the same
train car so space to stow our luggage was scarce and things didn't
get settled until well after the train departed. Upon finally arriving
in our 5th floor apartment (no elevator) at about 7pm with all our
bags, reality hit us: although all we want to do is crawl into bed and
sleep off the events of the day, we have no clean sheets. So we went
on a 3 hour adventure trying to find appropriate sheets, after which
we had to actually put them on the bed, then we both passed out.

Today, Saturday, August 28th: I woke in a panic to the dust, grime,
mold, lack of a teaching schedule, lack of hot water, and lack of food
in our new situation. After an hour spent cleaning just the microwave
I was convinced that the apartment would never be clean, never feel
like home, etc. At which point Richy reminded me that "this is our hut
in Africa." These are our "conditions of hardship" which we have
committed to serve under if necessary. Indeed, with time I'm sure
things will come together and after our second trip to the store I'm
feeling much more confident about how this will turn out. Many Chinese
people deal with much worse. It's also comforting hearing from my SNU
friends today and hearing that they are going through similar
scenarios. Although I did have a little momentary setback this evening
when the first giant cockroach crawled across my hand as I switched on
the bathroom light. I guess we're really in it now.

Some pictures from our friend Katie D. here, we're featured in the "host family..." and "language group..." sets.

--Richy

Winding Down

We are about to finish PST - Pre Service Training, otherwise known as
what has been keeping us busy since we arrived in China on June 30th.
We had our LPI (Language Proficiency Interview) yesterday, which was
an anxiety-inducing 25 or so minutes of speaking Chinese with someone
assigned to judge our speaking ability in front of a tape recorder. I
stumbled over my grammar more than usual, but I think I was able to
get my point across: introducing myself, explaining my work
background, asking about class scheduling and giving a short speech I
prepared about cheese (I threw it in when she asked me about my
hobbies - one of them is eating cheese, a substance hard to come by in
the middle of the middle kingdom). We get our results on Tuesday, and
I'm hoping for an Intermediate-Mid or Intermediate-High score, but
we're only required to be as high as Intermediate-Low.
After our LPI, I finally got to pick up the Chinese dress I had made.
It's not a traditional qipao style, but I had it made out of real
traditional style silk. I was supposed to pick it up last week, but as
Chinese dressmakers are unfamiliar with the Western "S" body type (as
they call it) it turned out rather large and sack-like. I had them
take it in, which meant it wasn't ready to wear to the host family
appreciation dinner on Friday, but now it fits me reasonably well and
I can still wear it to swearing in. It's not the knockout,
fits-like-a-glove dress I'd imagined, but it's pretty nice and not bad
for a $38 dress made out of real silk. I'm going to have to try the
qipao thing again over in Chongqing. Richy however had a pretty
amazing Zhongguo yifu (Chinese clothing) experience, and was able to
wear his 100% Italian wool Sun Yatsen suit to the family appreciation
dinner. As the Chinese host families said, he was very "Shuai ge,"
(handsome) and the fit seems perfect on his frame. Photos will be
posted as soon as we acquire a reasonably fast internet connection.
After picking up my dress, we headed over to see some of the tourist
sites over on Jinli Street, which is kind of a redone old-style
neighborhood with lots of snack stalls, overpriced souvenirs and a
Starbucks. Searching for the nearby Tibetan district, we came across
what used to be a Spanish restaurant getting ready to close their
doors. Apparently the wine importing business is more lucrative in
China than the ethnic food restaurant business. They shared with us
(free of charge) some of the best beer and wine we've tasted since we
left the states and we chatted about various foreigner-in-China
experiences. Afterward, we had our first meal of hotpot that did not
include the blood, brain or entrails of any animals, which was quite
enjoyable, followed by the not so enjoyable witnessing of an ambulance
tending to a stabbing victim a block away. It took a few minutes for
Richy and our friend Leo to ascertain that a stabbing had occurred,
after which we quickly hightailed it back to the relative comfort and
safety of the campus.

--Katie

Things to Know...

There were some things I never had an opportunity to learn about Korean culture, having never lived with a Korean family. I have however, had the opportunity to learn all kinds of interesting tidbits about Chinese culture living with a host family. This being our last week with our host family before setting off on our own I would like to share:

- Americans have a disgusting habit of washing their socks AND underwear with the rest of their clothing. Any self respecting Chinese family knows that socks and underwear should be washed in individual sock or underwear only loads and hung on separate drying racks.
- Bamboo mats and bamboo pillow covers are appropriate bedding choices for summer.
- Showering should always be done at night. Showering in the morning is strange, but acceptable for foreigners if it shortens the evening line for the shower.  
- There seems to be some disagreement about this, but some families find it acceptable to pour a glass of beer at dinner for children under 10.
- The preferred way to cut up a chicken for cooking involves hacking it apart with a butcher knife. This maximizes dinnertime activities by allowing diners to nibble around sharp bits of bone. Eating more slowly is good for health.
- Any type of animal bone or unwanted food can be politely placed directly on the table when you decide to discard it.
- Finishing off a plate of food can be insulting to the host, indicating that you want more food. Not eating enough can be insulting to the host, indicating that you don't like their cooking. Guests must endeavor to find the appropriate polite balance.
- Chinese families need not worry about appropriate times to put out the recycling. Any recyclables left on the street side at any time will be collected by roving bands of recycling entrepreneurs.

After coming back from Chongqing, I realized not only how much the above cultural practices have become normal for me, but also how much this little family and apartment has come to feel like home in the last seven weeks. As anxious as I am to get our own place, I know I am going to miss home style Chinese cooking, watching Chinese kids' shows, and not having to do any dishes or take out the trash. 

--Katie

Chongqing, Chongqing.

We’ve spent the past few days wandering around Chongqing (pronounced Chong-ching for those not familiar with pinyin), completing errands, checking out our new place and generally getting ideas about the next two years. To Richy and I, Chongqing has the feel of Seoul and Bangkok combined. The palm trees, heat, grime and elevated train remind us of Bangkok, while the sheer scale, dimensionality, and hyper-dynamic feel of the city remind us of Seoul. All in all, I feel we can be comfortable making our home here. Evidence: for some reason a high of 39 C today (102.2 F) didn’t seem that strange to me. I felt like I was going to melt into the pavement, but I was able to approach the situation with an “I know I can handle this” attitude.

Our apartment building is the only remaining building on what used to be the North Campus of Chongqing University of Science and Technology. Called “Peach Garden Building” on “Petroleum Road,” you can imagine the contradictions embodied in our neighborhood. The building appears to have been built in the 70’s or 80’s and houses teachers from our university and their families. It is surrounded by brand new high-rise apartments and construction sites, where the rest of the campus used to be. Between the high-rises are small, ancient-looking dilapidated homes where peddlers and retirees seem to make their homes and businesses. Since there are no longer any teaching buildings here, we will be commuting 50 minutes to “University Town” on the outskirts of the city, where the new modern campus is located. Teacher residence buildings are being built there, but are not yet complete. Thankfully, we will not be on our own getting to the campus, as a free school bus travels between the teacher’s residences and the new campus several times a day. Apparently if we miss the last bus of the day back to the residence, the school also provides a small teacher’s dorm room on campus where we can stay the night.

Our apartment itself is large by Chinese standards, and certainly huge by Peace Corps standards. It has 3 bedrooms: a master bedroom, a guest room and a study. We also have a large living/dining room and a kitchen, as well as one and a half bathrooms. The half bath toilet apparently leaks, so I’m not sure how much we’ll be using it (it’s not like we really need it anyway). It’s kind of been set up as a cleaning closet, so we’ll probably just go with that. We’re hoping our stove hood gets fixed before we move in, because at this point we can’t get it to turn on. We have cages around all our windows, which I am hoping I can fill with planter boxes of basil, oregano and all manner of salad greens. Disinfecting my store bought salad greens with bleach as the Peace Corps medical office recommends just doesn’t sound very tasty or wholesome to me. One of the former volunteers apparently had a cat (something which is now against the rules) as evidenced by the left behind cat toys, paw prints all over the walls and scratched up leather furniture. Luckily no cat smell! It gives me a good reason to scrub down all the walls and cover the furniture I suppose. At this point, I am just excited to get into our place and get going on this whole living in China thing. That place will feel like home in no time (well, no time in a few weeks).

Tastes Like Noodles

Oh what a few days it has been. It's been a bit of an emotional roller coaster since we got our site placement, since we're going to be splitting off from so many of the people we've come to know and depend on at our training site. We had what felt like an intensely competitive "language simulation" on Friday, which basically felt like we were on some kind of Try to Survive in China game show. Followed by another "go find your way to this place and answer questions" field trip (on which I was thankfully able to score some occidental culinary herb seeds, which I will hopefully be able to grow), followed by beers with the training sitemates, followed by host family, followed by not enough sleep, more language classes, Chinese banquet simulation, then KTV (Chinese Karaoke), and finally, our very first Sichuan hotpot experience.

Our host family decided that celebrating our site placement was a good opportunity to introduce us to Chengdu style hotpot since Chongqing and Chengdu are in fierce competition for the title of Best Sichuan Hotpot. Chengdu is known for being more oily and Chongqing is known for being more brothy, but also more spicy. This particular eating venue also featured miniature Sichuan opera style performances. The pot looked generally like the ones Richy and I had eaten from for previous cook-your-food-in-broth-meals in Korea and at Beijing Hotpot in Portland, but you could tell that the oil to broth ratio was leaning much more toward the oil and that there were a heck of a lot of hot peppers floating on top. Spiciness is something we have definitely become accustomed to and expect from any decent Sichuanese meal, but we weren't expecting our typically non-offal eating host family to suddenly order duck intestine, cow stomach and cow kidney. What a celebration!

First to come to the table was a rack, kind of what you might expect to hang doll clothes on. But there were no doll clothes on this rack. There were clean, thinly sliced strips of duck intestine, looking very much like slightly pink shiny noodles. Not too terrifying looks-wise. Ge-ge puts one in the pot, pulls it out a few minutes later, dips it in sauce and slurps it like a noodle. Jie-jie asssures me "it does not smell or taste terrible." I followed Ge-ge's example and slurped up my duck intestine, which as long as you don't call it duck intestine, is actually not bad. It tastes just like a noodle, but with a very delicate texture. The next dish was very thinly sliced, and the way Jie-jie refused to tell us what it was, we knew it came from somewhere deep inside an animal. She told us she would tell us after we tried it. Again, she assures us, "it does not smell or taste terrible." We dipped the slightly shiny, pinkish-grey slices into the broth, let them cook, dipped them in oil and ate them. Flavor was not a factor, the texture reminded me of mushrooms, and I found myself thinking, "I am fine not knowing what this is." Apparently it was cow kidney. Next, Ge-ge offered us dark grey, prickly-looking slices that were most definitely not going in my mouth. At this point, I draw the line at things that look hairy. Which apparently means I draw the line at cow stomach. I don't think I would ever order these items for myself, but I feel I've reached a certain cultural turning point knowing that duck intestines taste as inoffensively as egg noodles.

And the winner is...

… Chongqing! We are pleased to announce that we will be teaching in one of the biggest up-and-coming cities in China. Separated into it's own municipality from Sichuan in 1997, Chongqing municipality has over 30 million residents. The city itself houses only about 10 million, and we will be living near the center of it. Apparently our "Peace Corps experience" will include a 5^th floor, 3 bedroom, 2 story apartment with 2 bathrooms (and a bathtub). This is why Peace Corps China is sometimes referred to as "Posh Corps." I would like to point out however, that this is also one of a handful of Peace Corps China sites where we will be issued a household air filter as a matter of course (can't wait to breathe in that filtered apartment air!). We will also be living in one of China's so-called "three furnaces" which as you could guess, means the summers will be unbearably hot. Consider: we find Chengdu unbearably hot and humid as it is, but there are people visiting here to escape the heat of Chongqing.

 

Nonetheless, we are pretty excited to finally have a form with which to mould our future plans. We will be working at Chongqing University of Science and Technology where have been told we will be teaching mostly male students. Also many of our students will be majoring in petroleum-related fields. I am hoping the "green curriculum" we have been given by the Peace Corps will be well received. We'll have a much better idea about all this after our site visit next week. In the meantime, we're trying to get our heads around this next phase and preparing ourselves for another stint in one of the mega-urban centers of Asia. Ni Hao Chongqing!